Ichijō Mirai listened, simply making a sound to indicate that he was listening.
In fact, as soon as Morofushi Hiromitsu had said the first words, he had pretty much figured out the whole thing: a tragic past, an essential buff for every criminal.
Criminals who are born bad are rare geniuses, and even rare geniuses will sometimes tell half-truths about their own past, fabricate their own tragic pasts, in order to draw pity and sympathy from other people, and take advantage of the fact that their minds are shaken to achieve their own goals, either physically or mentally.
I can't help it. Misery is cheesy, but it works.
Listening to it once or twice might bring pity, a dozen times might bring pity, but when listening to a hundred times of the same old, same old, same old, the human sympathy that floods the world would shrink, and that's why a lot of police and prison guards are, to some extent, colder than ordinary people, and that's true of Ichijō Mirai as well.
He listened lazily to Morofushi Hiromitsu's calm voice, "In the midst of the unpleasant, complex odor, I heard a strange singing voice, as if someone was pinching his throat and singing, pitched much like a nursery rhyme to coax a child,"
"He sang over and over again, repeating 'It's okay, come on out,'"
Both parents are dead. Who could be singing? The murderer, of course.
Why sing 'Come out' like a nursery rhyme? Probably because he knew there was a child in the house, but didn't see it, so he coaxed the child out of hiding.
That's a bit creepy.
But it's still very common: a criminal, on his way to becoming a criminal, has the look of a victim.
It is not the most desperate thing to have been hurt by others, but to have been hurt by a social framework that is not 100% in tune with the needs of all people, and to fight with the desperation of a few against a social framework that is hard to shake, and even harder to shake by natural disasters.
Morofushi Hiromitsu's tragic past is not one of powerlessness in which no one did anything wrong, but one in which the wrongdoer is clear, and that is fortunate in the midst of misfortune.
That kind of talk would probably get you beaten up, and in the blankness of Morofushi Hiromitsu's jerking to a halt, Ichijō Mirai only responded, "Well, you weren't tricked into going out, were you."
"No," Morofushi Hiromitsu adjusted his breathing, "but I looked out through a crack in the closet and saw a man with a knife, covered in blood,"
"He had his back to me, looking around, still singing the line 'Come out', and then called out a girl's name,"
"...The name of a girl I used to play with."
"Not long ago, she got sick and died."
"She died on a spring excursion, when she suddenly had a stomachache, and my father, who was the homeroom teacher, took her to the hospital immediately, but..."
"Then my brother came back," He said, "and after the man had been gone for I don't know how long, the closet door was suddenly pushed open and I looked over in horror and saw my brother."
"I was still young enough to have an adult guardian after the death of my parents, so I was soon adopted by relatives and came to Tokyo."
"I wanted to become a police officer because I wanted to catch my parents' murderers, every murderer, every criminal."
Morofushi Hiromitsu paused for a moment and let out a breath, "I'm done."
The quest hadn't been prompted to complete.
I guess we haven't reached a plot point yet.
...Why don't we ask again next time, maybe we'll get something new?
The first time Ichijō Mirai asked, Morofushi Hiromitsu said, 'My brother is a police officer, so I wants to become one too.'
The second time, Morofushi Hiromitsu said, 'My parents were murdered, and my brother became a police officer, so I wanted to become a police officer, too'.
Rationally speaking, it wasn't a lie, it was just an appropriate use of linguistic techniques, swallowing a section so that while he was clearly telling the truth, the other people's understanding of what he was saying was almost radically different from the truth.
Ichijō Mirai nodded, "I see."
He closed the bento box and raised his hand to the top.
Outside, Morofushi Hiromitsu stands up, pushes the window open again, reaches into the box, and sits down again.
As he lowered his hand, Ichijō Mirai waved his hand to disperse the blue handwriting that was about to hit his face.
The blue handwriting was something that I could tell from various details that Morofushi Hiromitsu was telling the truth, that he was in a bad mood, and that he was hiding something in his words, but the point where he was hiding it was between the words 'seeing the murderer' and 'seeing his brother', and that he probably observed the information about the murderer, but didn't say it out loud at that moment.
Ichijō Mirai pondered a little.
Based on the principle of 'what not to say seems to be cold and heartless, never mind, let's talk some nonsense', he slowly said, "I didn't realize that you actually had such a past,"
"No wonder you will hide,"
"How pitiful."
The atmosphere froze for a moment.
Morofushi Hiromitsu slowly raised his hand, covering his cheeks, he paused silently for ten seconds or so, and after holding back, he couldn't hold back and burst out laughing, "Mirai-san,"
"Ahem, Mirai-san," He let go of his hand and curled one leg up, mimicking Ichijō Mirai's careless sitting posture, his tone thick with amusement, 'If you don't feel sorry for me, there's no need to say something like, 'How pitiful'."
If that was a genuine remark, it was actually quite offensive.
The sympathy that one thinks is superior is no doubt like a low concentration of salt water to a wound. Some people can't feel it, while others are more sensitive and can clearly feel the pain of the salt water being poured on the wound.
And from Ichijō Mirai...
"Has anyone ever said to you, 'I see, I didn't realize you had such a past, no wonder you're hiding it'?" Morofushi Hiromitsu pondered, still with a smile in his tone, "Those words are fine, you can continue to use them next time."
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
You don't need to be taught this kind of words.
Just like at this point, he didn't even need to look at the blue hints that started to multiply in the air, he knew the general meaning of the hints: Morofushi Hiromitsu had the tragic experience of having both his parents die, so he thought that Ichijō Mirai was one of his kind.
And based on the words, if Morofushi Hiromitsu wasn't using a very high level of eerie skill, then he probably thought that Ichijō Mirai's empathy was a bit lower than normal.
So low that even when faced with a situation where a normal person would be able to say something comforting without thinking about it, he has to borrow from his memories the words of someone else who is facing his own tragedy.
...Empathy and eloquence are not linked at all!
"You've got a sense of humor," Ichijō Mirai said, "Your turn."
It's Morofushi Hiromitsu's turn to ask a question.
Morofushi Hiromitsu paused, tilting his head toward the incandescent light, his vision blurring into blinding white.
He was still smiling, "Mirai-san,"
"Do you trust us?"