"I thank you with all from the bottom of my heart."
"I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
"I thank you..."
"...From the bottom of my heart."
"..."
Inuo was dialing.
He's like a blindfolded donkey, tirelessly walking round and round the mill, except that the donkey only has to walk, he has to call and call and call.
After making a call, he checks a check mark on a handwritten form.
The handwritten form is a list of programs, TV programs, radio programs, but all the programs that will be taking calls from viewers in the current time slot.
These programs are not too many, but Inuo not just call once, every time he calls once, he needs to change a cell phone, try to adjust the voice line, dial again, until the end of the program, do not answer the audience calls.
So there were already five or six check marks on the list.
There are also more than a dozen hosts who answer the phone and politely ask Inuo if he's in danger, if he needs to say something outlandish to get attention, if he's performing some mysterious religious act, or if he's sick.
There are even programs that cut off as soon as their voices are heard.
Ichijō Mirai had collected the list of programs to call from the Internet, and the cell phone that could be changed constantly was...
Inuo scans the phones on the table: they're all different styles, all pushbuttons, white, black, pink, blue, etc. Some have pendants on them, some don't, some look like they've been in use for a long time, and some look like they're new.
The cell phones were from different people.
The phones were already on the table, and what happened to their owners...
There was the sudden sound of the door opening, followed by a young man's soft voice, "I'm home."
It was like a husband returning from work after a tiring day, and although he was tired, he lightened his tone of voice and was filled with joy because he was about to meet his beloved wife.
A very Japanese-like homecoming greeting, but Inuo gave a jolt and immediately sat up on his knees from between the sofa and the coffee table, bowing deeply in the direction of the door, "Welcome back, Master!"
He heard footsteps, two footsteps.
The first belonged to a young man, light, light as a lion or a tiger on the hunt, which can easily approach its prey without a sound.
The second footstep belonged to a woman, with the crisp sound of high heels, who, after closing the door consciously, hesitantly followed the owner of the first footstep, "Shall I make a phone call here?"
It was a female voice, a real woman, and she was calling. Inuo wanted to look up in surprise and seriously look at his companion who had come to suffer, but he wanted to save his life more, so he kept his forehead pressed to the ground without saying a word, fully playing the role of a passerby in the train, a sleeping husband, and the main point was a well-behaved one.
This would have satisfied Ichijō Mirai.
But as if it were too much satisfaction, Inuo felt the first footsteps come up to his head, pausing briefly for a few seconds to send a cool breeze to the back of his head before he was helped to his feet by his arm, "Good boy, I'm back from the hunt, my friend."
"Come and meet your new friends, this is Mr. Inuo, come on, say hello, and this is Ms. Inuo, yes, say hello."
"Well, they're both good."
Letting the two victims meet, Ichijō Mirai reassured the first victim, "Don't worry, you'll always be first in my heart."
Though the system didn't pop up for pets and allegiances or anything like that, and there was no indication of loyalty levels, he patiently planned ahead for a rainy day and calmed down, "Look what I brought back for you."
He took out a small box.
Inside the box was a single cell phone card, each one freshly activated, and there were so many of them that a cursory scan of the box showed that there were almost a hundred of them.
Ichijō Mirai defines it as "Thank you for nature's gifts."
And handing the box over to Inuo, "You'll be in charge of assigning jobs, making individual calls, and trying to bombard the program with as many as you can, so that the program is contaminated to the point of being unbearable."
'Bombard', 'contaminate'.
Inuo: "…"
It seems that this gentleman has a very clear sense of his own behavior.
From Ichijō Mirai's deliberate gesture of reassurance, he sensed that he was not a passerby in a tram with a sleeping husband, but a wife who had welcomed her husband home only to find that he had brought home a young lover to share in his misery, with a certain status to command the other man, and immediately reached out to take over the identity, "Yes, as you wish."
"This Ms. Inuo will take charge of one-third first, you may not be proficient in the business as you're dialing for the first time, but the program is not wary of female voices, so you'll have plenty of time to finish."
He glanced at his wristwatch, "It's three in the morning."
"At five, you'll be able to share half the program."
Reporting back to Ichijō Mirai, "While you were out hard at work robbing...ah no, hunting, working, and hard at work poking around for information, a call came in from one of your police academy classmates."
"Up to now, a total of thirteen police cadets have called, two of them are in a somewhat urgent situation, I have informed them of a safe house location as per your request, and explained that there is a locator on their cell phones, but don't be afraid, the liaison officers in the safe house will try to cover them."
'Police academy classmates', 'safe house' and 'liaison officer', in my personal opinion, Inuo found these words to be very apt, with a beauty that was diametrically opposed to reality, and inadvertently indicated what Tokyo was being oohed and aahed about.
"One of the students gave a name that partially duplicated the one you specifically asked for, he said his name was Kujō Rei."
"However, he called from a phone booth and seemed to be using a voice changer, so I didn't ask him to borrow a cell phone or call from a phone booth again."
Ichijō Mirai: "?"
He responded, "..."
Ah, it seems Furuya-san is so ashamed of his public eye-patch play that he won't even give out his real name and wants to change it overnight.
Well, it's definitely not that he's not sure if the program is a trap for the police, and he's trying to draw fire on behalf of Ichijō Mirai by creating a smokescreen so that the police won't be sure if the caller is 'Kujō Mirai' or not.
Definitely just too ashamed to even give his real name, after all, it's such a great replay that even the interviewee is in a trance and condemns it.
"I see, don't worry about it, he's a bit ashamed," Ichijō Mirai nods, "Did he ask you for the location of the safe house?"
Inuo shook his head, "No."
"I told him that there is a locator in the cell phone, but it can't pinpoint the exact location or altitude, only a rough location, and that there is no listening device when not on a call."
Ichijō Mirai hadn't tried to find out if there was a listening device on the phone, so he wasn't sure, but he thought there was a good chance that there was.
Ichijō Mirai nods, "I see."
He glances at the clock, "You guys go ahead, you won't need to call again when the morning news comes on."
"I visited one of the hosts, she sympathized with me after hearing my story and enthusiastically agreed to help me with the code words."
"What a kind person."