The Gifted Vol.2 - The Return of the Dead Kitten

By Ryosuke Akizuki

When a girl opened a box of cheesecake, inside she found a dead kitten that her mother had buried in the ground. While such a rumor is spreading among high school girls, there occurred a perfect locked-room murder in the north of City.

Saya and Riccardo start an investigation into the urban legend "The Return of the Dead Kitten", to identify the source on the one hand, but Milo and Chloe are trying to unlock the mystery of the murder case on the other hand, independently of each other. In the end, an incredible fact of the two strange cases emerges when the respective results found by the two pairs of four "gifted" are pieced together.

This work was exclusively written for The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312649750

Book preview

The Gifted Vol.2 - The Return of the Dead Kitten

The Gifted Vol.2 – The Return of the Dead Kitten

Originally written in Japanese by Ryosuke Akizuki

Translated by Eiji Mihagino

Cover illustration by Makoto Sakuma

Cover design by Makoto Sakuma

Japanese edition copyright © 2014 Ryosuke Akizuki / The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books

English edition copyright © 2014 Ryosuke Akizuki / The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-64975-0

Prologue

Evangeline Newman was sitting back on a sofa in the living room, after her husband and daughter went out. Then, a phone rang. The caller was Louise Bonnat, who lived next door in the same apartment house. She was a typical urbane woman, aged 27, doing office work for a company in the center of City. They were on good terms to the level that they visited each other or dined out together once in a while.

Help me, Eva. I don't know what to do! cried Louise, sounding distressed.

What happened, Louise? Please tell me.

Evangeline thought briefly that she might be put in trouble. But, while concealing her feelings, she encouraged Louise to tell her the story.

My kitten … my kitten is dead.

Your kitten? Louise, as you know …

She remembered the residential agreement, which said that pets were not allowed in their apartment house.

I know I shouldn't, but I took one from a friend of a friend of mine last week. They said it would be okay if I kept it secret. It died last night. What should I do now? sniffled Louise at the other end of the line. Actually, Evangeline had been hearing catlike whine from the neighborhood as of late, but she had not taken it seriously. She could not understand why people would even try to keep things secret to do certain things. Just last night, Evangeline learned that her daughter got a well-made cabinet as a present from her daughter's uncle. Even though it was not large, it was a pseudo-antique cabinet and far more expensive than Evangeline would expect. He was too soft on females in general, and he could not even resist a teen-age girl's nagging. The daughter apparently knew how to take advantage of her uncle's ulterior motive for winning her favor. Evangeline scolded her daughter on the spot and commanded her to send it back. She suspected that there already were some other presents in her daughter's room, which she had not investigated for quite a long time.

You hear me, Eva? What shall I do?

Hearing Louise's voice, Evangeline snapped back to reality. She also didn't know what to do about a dead cat.

How did it die?

It may sound unusual, but … Louise hesitated for a while. Evangeline felt her neighbor's uneasiness over the phone quite clearly.

Well, a cabinet's leg was broken suddenly … I don't know why. My kitten was crushed under it, said she timidly and even with a joking overtone in a way, for she herself couldn't believe what she was saying. Her story reminded Evangeline of a sound of shattering glass from the room next door she heard last night, about half an hour after she got back from shopping.

Louise said, I gotta go to work now and can't leave it like this. Where shall I take it?

"How should I know? Anyway, put it in a bag or something and leave