Osamu Dazai's Entrance Exam (Bungo Stray Dogs 1)

“I really hope we can get along, Kunikida.”

Our new hire gives me a toothy smile, perhaps oblivious of my internal apprehension.

However, being personally recommended by a prominent figure doesn’t make you any less of a nuisance when you’re tripping on mushrooms this early in the morning.

Today marks three days since I was paired with Dazai.

I’m mentally exhausted, almost no work is getting done, and we’re receiving more complaints by the day. If I take my eyes off him for even a second, he’ll either leap into a river and claim he was trying to drown himself; get blackout drunk at a pub after what he calls a “pick-me-up”; or chat up some pretty lady, saying he had a divine revelation. He’s a twenty-year-old self-centered man-child who throws a wrench in my schedule every chance he gets.

Having said that, work is work, and coworkers are coworkers. Admitting defeat after only three days would damage not only the president’s trust in me but my dignity as a detective as well.

“How’s the newcomer?” the president asks while we play Go in a small tatami room near the office.

“A disaster. Imagine the devil, a poltergeist, and the god of poverty all combined into one entity.”

I place a black Go piece on the cypress board with the distinctive click of rock sliding over wood.

“But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

The president and I always play Go at the same place after work. He sits up straight, facing me from across the board in the empty room.

“I appreciate it.”

He then places a white Go piece on the board, pushing me into an unfavorable position.

“It’s nothing. After all, this is what Chief Taneda wanted. But…why would he send a man like that to our agency?” I ask while contemplating my next move.

Should I go for the white territory in the bottom right corner? …I shouldn’t. I’m having a hard enough time making an approach move as it is. But if I try to hold out on the left side, it’s only a matter of time before he takes the center and the game is over. There’s nothing I can do. It looks like it’s going to be a while before I’m a match for him.

“Chief Taneda may be a free-spirited individual, but he has a discerning eye when it comes to remarkable talent. He must have sensed something unique in that boy.”

I have heard rumors about his extraordinary judgment. After all, he wouldn’t be the leader of the Home Affairs Ministry’s Special Division for Unusual Powers if he didn’t. But “remarkable talent”? You could shine a light in Dazai’s left ear and see it come out the right.

“And I agree with Chief Taneda’s decision. Osamu Dazai passed the written and field tests with perfect scores. He is extremely capable—dangerously so, even.”

“…What do you mean?”

“We looked into his past but found nothing. It’s completely blank. I asked a close friend in the military’s intelligence department to check, but he couldn’t find a single thing. Rather eerie, I must say. It’s as if someone very carefully wiped his background clean.”

It is rather odd that even the military’s intelligence department couldn’t find anything.

“Maybe all he did was loaf around the house for the past twenty years?”

“Perhaps. Because otherwise…”

He frowns even deeper than usual before continuing.

“Have you heard about his skill?”

“Not yet.”

I heard he was a skill user, but I didn’t get the chance to ask about it.

“He can nullify any skill simply through physical contact.”

I thought I was hearing things. Nullify skills on contact? At a glance, it may seem like nothing special, but it’s extremely rare. If properly utilized, it could be used to defeat an entire organization of skill users. My skill, The Matchless Poet, allows me to materialize objects just by writing them in my notebook, ripping out the page, and willing them into existence. However, I cannot produce items larger than the notebook itself. While it’s versatile and highly valuable, it doesn’t quite exceed the realm of convenience. That’s because if I really needed something, I could simply bring it with me before I went out.

But Dazai’s skill is different. In theory, there are countless enemies only he can defeat. Even the strongest skill user in the world is nothing more than an ordinary person before him. It would be no surprise if organizations from all over the world gathered to recruit him. I’m slowly starting to get what the president is trying to say.