Parents?
Ichijō Mirai scanned over the prompt and the quest in the upper left corner, and over the almost ghostly look of horror on Mr. Fat Officer's face.
He commented briefly: the expression is well done, quite vivid and realistic.
It's just a little too vivid, so vivid that even the stiffness of his face makes it hard to tell if it's an overly frightened stiffness or a modeling stiffness.
Ichijō Mirai frowned.
He didn't engage in normal communication, ignoring the complete long-winded narrative as humans always do with AIs, and only briefly uttering the keyword, "Parents."
'Humans communicating with humans' and 'humans communicating with AIs' were very different, most typically characterized by the fact that the latter tended to only require humans to utter keywords.
And hearing this short and stingy keyword that did not emit extra syllables, Mr. Fat Officer exuded enough reaction as if a specific point had been triggered.
He was even more horrified, half slumped on the ground looking at Ichijō Mirai with stark fear, "I was forced to do it, really!"
"You, your father found out about my dealings with the Amano Group, I wasn't going to kill him, I was going to pull him in! He was so good to me, how great would it be to make money together?" He defended himself eagerly, "But he refused! He refused!"
"I couldn't help it, I really couldn't, once he told me about my white powder deal with the Yakuza..."
The fat officer screeched, swallowing his defense hard and even, spitting out new bones anew, "Once he reported those mafia to the police department, the group's right people would surely be watching them closely, and they drank in the fact that I had to be silenced."
He was half on his back, at some point in a kneeling position, and could only look at Ichijō Mirai's expression from the bottom up, and after realizing that Ichijō Mirai didn't fluctuate much, he trembled with a pale face and surprisingly reddened his eyes for a few moments, "I've been a friend of yours for many years as well as your father's, and I've kept him in mind when he took such good care of me. "
"I went to him, was trying to persuade him, at first also did not want, did not want to lay hands on your mother."
"But she saw it!"
The features on the fat officer's face squeezed together, a few tears squeezed out of his eyes, barely forming a tearful face of remorse, "She saw that the gun I was carrying wasn't a documented police gun, it was a Yakuza gun."
"She... she was supposed to be working overtime... There was just a murder at the station, she was supposed to be working overtime! I don't know why she came back so suddenly, and I don't know how she immediately noticed the black gun I was carrying, I tried to explain but she was still trying to sneak in a phone call!"
"I couldn't help it, I really couldn't," he trembled on the floor, putting his head down, his whole body forming a penitent kneeling and stooping position, "I was in such a hurry that my mind went blank, and when I reacted, it was,"
"It's the scene you saw..."
The fat officer's voice lowered until it was silent.
In the lower right corner, several unlocking prompts flashed in turn, prompting [Old Friend?] There was a new development in the mission:
['Motive for Murder' has been unlocked.]
['Hostile-Amano Group' is unlocked.]
['Victim 1'/'Victim 2' identities have been unlocked.]
['Murder weapon' has been unlocked.]
Ichijō Mirai scanned through the prompts and combed through the clues, first confirming one thing: this was the 'player' plotline for the parentless opening.
Based on the keywords that the fat officer automatically spat out, Ichijō Mirai could easily roll out the pre-plot of this plotline: this fat officer made an illegal deal with the Yakuza, and was silenced by the 'Player's' father when he was caught red-handed, and was silenced again when his mother broke in on the spot.
And: the 'player' was there at the time.
And this fat officer is the 'player's' father and mother's murderer.
This corresponds to the 'clues related to the death of your parents' in the game's loading, and the 'you heard that there are clues to the death of your parents from the mysterious man' that appeared in the upper left corner of the quest bar.
The Mysterious Man's mission request was: solve the fat officer.
Ichijō Mirai gripped his gun for confirmation, "Any more?"
No, he was about to do the mission.
Fat officer: "..."
Half hunched over in the corner, he noticed Ichijō Mirai's grip on his gun, his stretched neck, and the made-up expression on his face frozen, only the liquid, indistinguishable from tears or sweat, sliding down his face.
"I... I..."
"I'll be damned, Mirai, I'll be damned, I regretted it right then and there, I regretted it when I saw the look on your face, you were seven years old, and I did it right in front of you..."
"I remember it all, you even called me uncle, your birthday wish was still to become a detective in the future to be able to help me and your parents solve many, many cases, I was in too much of a hurry, I woke up when I shot you, I wanted to turn myself in, but, but my wife had just found out that she was pregnant."
The fat officer slumped to the ground, his face lowered, his body trembling, his voice took on a distinctly sobbing tone, as if in deep tearful repentance, "I wanted to go back to see her, just one look, thought about talking to her and turned myself in."
"But just as I entered the house I got a call from the bureau, the bureau said that a Yakuza had broken into your house to exterminate you, that both your parents were dead, that you were missing, that they were urgently tracing traces of the mafia, and that I should return to the team quickly."
"I can't believe they didn't find it, they just decided it was the Yakuza from the bullets, and you disappeared, and in a moment of haunting, I just, just...!"
Vocally.
Even without showing their faces, just using their voices and bodies, the listener is deeply moved.
Ichijō Mirai then dared to move, "Any more?"
If not, he was going to do the quest.
Once again, a prompt flashed in the lower right corner, indicating that Ichijō Mirai had unlocked half of the case, and he scanned through it, briefly extracting the useful information from the vocal defense he had just given:
1. 'Player' was seven years old at the time.
2. 'Player's' family and the fat officer were on good terms, and the fat officer tried to kill the child after killing the parents.
3. The police believe that the murder was committed by the Yakuza, so the fat officer is still alive and well and smiling.
The fat officer who was alive and laughing looked up in dismay.
He obviously did not expect Ichijō Mirai's reaction to what he had said to be rather flat, not sad, not even angry.
What's more, he didn't expect to see Ichijō Mirai's calm expression of impatience, more like waiting for a twenty-second stoplight than facing his parents' murderer.
Ichijō Mirai: "No more?"
The fat officer shivered and immediately shouted out, "There is! There is!!!"
He was no longer covered in penitent tears, but wiped his face and gritted his teeth, "I know you hate me, and you just want to shoot me right away, but if you kill me, how will you find those Amano Group guys?"
"Yes, I'm the one who directly killed your parents, but they are the ones who gave the order to me, by definition I'm just a knife, they're the ones who hold the knife, they're the real culprits behind the scenes, they're the ones who really killed your parents!"
As he spoke, the fat officer's voice sharpened, urgent to the point of breaking a little, "Are you willing to let them go?"
"Mirai, I know you're good, you've been smart since you were a kid, you could help your uncle solve a case at the age of six, it's definitely possible to find them by smothering them, but so many years have passed, and the gangs in the neighborhood have changed generations long ago, is it really possible to find the real culprits in a short period of time?"
He took two steps forward on his knees and crawled over to the young officer's body, reaching out his left hand to grab Ichijō Mirai's pants leg, then withdrew his hand in fear and only pressed his hand against the body, "Leave me, Mirai, I'll help you find the real culprits."
"I heard that the Amano Group was targeted by a mysterious group of guys a few years ago, those who died fled and those who are alive haven't been seen for a long time, you don't know them at all, finding them on your own will surely be a pain in the ass, uncle can help you find them!"
Prompt in the lower right corner: ['Mysterious Force' has been unlocked].