There was a knock at the door.
Inuo opens the door and sees two young police officers who briefly glance over themselves, their eyes bore down the doorway into the living room, seeing no superfluous information, and then retracted.
One of the police officers showed his police ID, "Hello, we are police officers."
The other police officer spoke seriously, "Sir, we received a call from the police not long ago that a resident had seen a wanted man in the neighborhood, have you seen anyone suspicious?"
There were too many floors and too many residents, so the police officers sensibly organized themselves into groups for a more efficient search method.
At this point, there were four groups of police on this floor, two in front of Inuo's door, and he heard about three or four police standing in front of the door of the house in the deepest part of the corridor.
It was occupied by a single woman.
"The wanted man is dark-haired and red-eyed," Added the police officer who showed his ID, "but he may be disguised in some way, did you find anything?"
There were only two of them, and they couldn't beat the bad criminal in the room who was saying, 'Don't be afraid, sir, I'm actually a police cadet, so how about it, did you get some false comfort?'
Inuo feigned impatience, "No."
Before the police officers proceeded to ask questions about whether or not anyone was at home, he frowned and asked the two police officers in turn, "What's going on? How can there be a wanted man? It's not the kind that kills people, is it?!"
The police officer who showed the ID averted his eyes for a moment, and his partner, who was a few years younger, spoke seriously, "That wanted man is very dangerous, he is a home invasion robber and murderer, and probably has other murders on his hands, so please make sure that you..."
"Well," The ID police nodded, "Please inform the police immediately if you find any suspicious persons. There will be police in the apartment building for the next half hour."
He was clearly more mature than his partner, and keenly aware that Inuo's words just now tended to evolve towards questioning, he resolutely excused himself, "Excuse me."
Without further questioning, they turned and left.
Inuo watched their backs and quickly scanned the area with his eyes, closing the door after a few seconds and walking back.
He tiptoed to the sofa, squatted down in line with his new name, and put himself much lower than Ichijō Mirai, then spoke softly: "The police have left, Master."
"They were lax, they didn't ask much of anything, my neighbors are a family of five, they only sent two police to question them, and I was two police, the family on the deepest side of this floor is a woman who lives alone, and has recently moved in, and from what I've read it looks like there were four police there to question them."
That means, "They think you'd be more inclined to take a young woman who lives alone."
That's normal.
Most criminals would choose a woman who lives alone if they were going to break into a house to take her hostage. It avoids having to subdue multiple people at once and having an accident, and avoids having to subdue a strong man at once and creating too much commotion... just... haha.
Inuo recalls: he didn't seem to struggle for more than a few seconds.
He was strangled right after he opened the door, and even with the time it took to knock and open the door, it was less than a minute, haha.
He gave a smile that was meant to be fawning, but looked rather like crying, and waited with bated breath for Ichijō Mirai's reply, only to realize that he wasn't even looking at him, and was watching the news as if he'd found something that would attract his attention.
It wasn't about a burglar.
It's a news story about a street interview, and the live broadcast has ended, so it's now a replay of the highlights.
Inuo looked over and saw that a reporter had just struck up a conversation with the interviewee about the overtime rate in Tokyo, and the interviewee was talking so eerily about her company and coworkers that you couldn't help but nod your head in agreement and join in the conversation.
Do criminals care about such things?
Inuo tries to look away, searching for what Ichijō Mirai cares about, and after a few seconds, he finally finds it: a car sliding past the reporter and the interviewee.
The car, with its peek-a-boo film on the windows and black curtains on the inside, looked rather odd, and as it slid past, the passenger-side curtain shifted and pulled back a bit, revealing the face of a male in his forties who looked practiced and badass.
The curtain closes again.
...Huh?
The car slides past the edge of the camera, there's no panorama, and Inuo only hastily recognizes that the guy looks bad, and can't help but swing his eyes between the TV and Ichijō Mirai, who's following along: is the guy in the car an accomplice of this bad criminal?
As the news replay continued, a loud noise suddenly came from off-screen, and the reporter and interviewee subconsciously looked away as the cameraman adjusted his lens to catch a car accident in progress.
The car seemed to have hit something, the rear wheels shook unsteadily out of the car body, the whole car was shaking in a twisted way, the black curtains inside the car were shaking violently, even the car door was thrown open, and the person inside the car rolled out with the impact.
It was a young man with blonde hair and brown skin, wearing some kind of deathly fluorescent colored clothing.
Blonde hair in Tokyo, normal, brown skin, normal, blonde hair, brown skin, normal, young man in a car, normal, car shakes and young man is thrown out, normal.
What's not normal is that the young man's eyes are covered with thick black blindfolds.
He rolled to the ground with the force of the impact, rolled in a circle on the ground to remove the momentum and stopped, maintained a one-knee position, and lifted his face to 'look' around.
There were screams all around.
The car crashed into the wall of a store, and the police officer in the driver's seat struggled to open the car and shouted something.
The blonde, brown-skinned young man scrunched his shoulders, hesitated for only a few seconds, recognized that he wasn't in a remote no-man's land, but on a street, surrounded by people, and immediately leapt out on his hands and knees.
He leapt into the crowd, was overwhelmed by the stunned crowd, and quickly disappeared.
He didn't even take off his blindfold.
The cameraman, dumbfounded, pointed his camera in the direction of the crowd, catching its occasional evasive movements.
The reporter and the interviewee were equally dumbfounded.
Off-camera, the voice of the interviewee, who had just been spouting off about her job, said, "Eye, eye patch? In public? Restraints?"
After expertly ejecting a few very bad keywords, she breathed in, "Amazing,"
And in awe, "
Inuo hears a low chuckle, and rushes to look back to see Ichijō Mirai's solemn look of seriousness, "It seems that our... cough, cough,"
"Sorry, I suddenly thought of something happy."
He was even more serious, his tone had no ebb or flow, not a hint of an upturn, as he continued, "Our classmate, has encountered an emergency, and needs our help."
"How unfortunate."
"...Pfft."