The FBI agent sniffs hard, and before he realizes it, he catches a glimpse of a dark figure leaping up onto the windowsill.
It was Akai Shūichi.
He rolled out of the window, disappeared for a brief moment, and then returned, "Below the slant is the fourth floor bathroom."
"Someone washed up in it not long ago and opened the window to let in some air, leaving only a slight odor of shower gel."
The last trace of shower gel took some time to dissipate.
The coworker is dumbfounded. "Wait, you."
You broke into someone's bathroom?!
Well, the FBI are professionals at trespassing, but it's a bit unusual to sneak in unannounced without even shouting 'FBI! Open up!'
"The family downstairs is," my colleague recalled urgently, breathing a sigh of relief, "It's a single man, luckily it's okay."
"It's Halloween, so he just got out of the shower, right?"
The smell of mint shower gel was overpowering upstairs and downstairs, and it was coming up.
Akai Shūichi didn't confirm or deny, he twisted his fingers that had just touched the window sill, lowered his cold eyes, and the deepening of his lower eyelids was briefly minimized visually, "Let's go to the third floor and check it out."
"And knock on the door on the fourth floor and ask if someone just took a shower."
It's not like we're waking up in the morning, so taking a shower in the middle of the day is kind of hard to see.
But it's not unheard of.
When the FBI came to the door, the occupant of the fourth floor looked puzzled, nodded his head in panic and admitted, "Taking a shower? Yes."
"Yes, just now."
"Why? Well, I have a cat, and she accidentally knocked over the coffee, and it poured all over me, and I was still a little sticky after I changed, so I had to take a shower."
"Did the bathroom smell like shower gel? ...Isn't it normal to smell shower gel in the bathroom?"
In the last half of the sentence, the tenant asked cautiously and blankly, and added uncertainly, "There wasn't much of an odor, was there?"
"I was working overtime, and I was in a hurry to do paperwork on the computer, so I didn't pay much attention."
"Opened the window for air?"
The tenant's tone became more certain, "No."
It didn't sound too suspicious.
So, as they left the fourth floor and descended to the third floor via the elevator, the colleague concluded, "Because I was in a hurry to work late, I didn't take a shower, but I just rinsed off the area where the coffee liquid had touched me, and used a little bit of shower gel because it was a little sticky."
"There wasn't a lot of body wash, so the odor wasn't irritating."
That makes sense!
"Besides, his facial expression tells me that he was genuinely flustered," he added, pointing to his face, "and not lying."
Regardless of its efficiency, the FBI has adapted to high-tech crime solving, and there's some psychology involved.
My colleague's analysis made sense, and the resident hadn't lied.
But Akai Shūichi didn't outright affirm or deny, saying only, "Basic criminal common sense doesn't apply to cunning criminals."
And even less so for capable criminals.
And sadly, the world is never short of capable people who break the law.
Akai Shūichi, for example, was able to achieve the 'cat in the coffee cup' thing without the residents realizing it.
...It's actually a bit overly suspicious and skeptical.
The wolf-tailed, white-haired guy he met downstairs was so dangerous that Akai Shūichi was already in a state of high tension.
As the elevator doors opened, he said, "No need to disguise the knocking excuse property, just come to the door in the name of the FBI."
Disguising a variety of excuses to lower a suspect's guard is useful, but not for smart guys.
It's easy to know that the FBI is on to you when you enter an apartment where the FBI is looking for you, and then you get a knock on the door from a 'property owner', a 'repairman', or a 'neighbor' who's just a little more vigilant.
The fact that you're going to show the FBI's laxity by going over there without a disguise is going to make the smart guys lower their guard.
"Oh, oh, okay," the same prior to a series of nodded in response, and then surprised, jerked back, "?"
What, isn't disguising your identity to visit and lowering the alarm of the person who opens the door a measure for suspects who need to be arrested? What's wrong with the third-floor resident?
He hadn't just left for a short while. What had happened?
With this confusion, he followed Akai Shūichi through two doors and stopped accurately in front of a door, becoming even more confused: "It's so accurate, it seems that he had inquired in advance."
Akai Shūichi knocked.
His expression was light, but he knocked sharply, as if he was impatient, "Hello, FBI, we're here to inquire about a case, please open the door and cooperate with the investigation."
Inside the door did not come the first time to move, after more than ten seconds to come a male response, "Hey, good good, hiss, I'll open!"
About half a minute later, a blonde male opened the door at a low angle.
He seemed to be walking with a limp due to a knee injury, but it didn't matter.
The moment the door opened, Akai Shūichi grabbed the blonde male, scooped him up and threw him to the ground with a short order, "Watch it."
Inside the door, there was silence, no sound of movement or gunfire.
Akai Shūichi pressed himself against the wall, pushed the door open with his foot, waited for a few seconds, then changed color, no longer concerned about the possible presence of the prisoner's gun, and rushed in.
His colleagues were scrambling to hold the blond man down.
The blonde man whimpered in pain, not struggling, but a little bit out of the misery of the tears touched like, take the initiative to report, "He seems to have gone!"
"Half an hour ago, he said 'I forgot to take something, you do not move here, good kneeling and wait for me for a moment, I will be back in a moment', and left!"
At that time, the blonde Inuo was kneeling on the floor of the study.
He was kneeling honestly, with his back to the door, and his forehead against the edge of the table when he heard the sound of the study door opening and closing, and the bathroom door opening and closing.
At first he was afraid to move because he suspected that Ichijō Mirai would be back in a minute or two at the most, and then he was even more afraid that Ichijō Mirai was already back, standing silently behind him, waiting for him to make a move, and then he would be finished off by a gunshot.
Until the FBI knocked on the door.
Colleague: "What?"
He heard that the blonde Inuo was under duress, and loosened his hold on the man, but before he could do so, he heard Akai Shūichi's voice coming from inside the room, "We can take Mr. Perpetrator back to the FBI now."
Akai Shūichi had spun around, stopping in front of the couch, indicating the clothes slung over it, and saying succinctly, "There's blood."
The couch clothing on a child's clothing, stained with a little blood, a glance, the colleague will face a slight change, decisively compact blonde Inuo, directly with a knee strangling the back of the neck of the other party, "OK."
"This room," Akai Shūichi raised his eyes, "smells of mint."
"It's the smell of shower gel."