Ichijō Mirai: "This child..."
The clerk was looking around, she didn't see either her coworker who was restocking the store or her goddamned boss who might suddenly come out of nowhere and dock her pay, so she answered Ichijō Mirai: "My coworker said that there were five or six people in the van, basically all males, and they didn't look like they'd be easy to get along with, and there was just one little kid, and she thought it was weird so she paid extra attention to him."
"And then I said I was almost hit by a van, so we were even more impressed."
"Well," She said, stopping and stopping, looking very much like the incapable employee who was trying to ask her boss for a raise, vainly, "could you."
The employee looked at the clean cash register, then at Ichijō Mirai's right hand and knee that had touched the counter when he jumped over it, and finally at Ichijō Mirai's eyes that looked at the speaker intently at the sound of his voice, and swallowed his objection under those red eyes, "No, it's nothing..."
He's quite handsome and polite, and seems to be a warm and cheerful person, probably the kind of person who would warn a blind person on the road, then touch his elbow and guide him politely without moving his eyes.
Since he was a kind man, the clerk had no problem with it at all: mainly because she could already tell from the way Ichijō Mirai had tumbled into the register that there was nothing she could do about it even if this sunny-looking Mr. Nice Guy had just grabbed the cash and ran away.
"I'm going to get a paycheck for breaking into the register, so do you want me to replace the security cameras with normal ones for this period?" Ichijō Mirai said casually, continuing to look at the monitor, "OK, I got it."
Although it's not necessary to read the file and refresh it.
Probably because the residents of Japan are more concerned about privacy, there are two cameras outside the convenience store, but the coverage area of the surveillance is not too large, a considerable portion of the location of the convenience store, even across the street can not be photographed, and the information captured is not too much, but only indicate the direction of the robbers in the form of this street corner.
Compared to the previous lack of clues, being able to point out a correct road node was already great, and Ichijō Mirai glanced at it without any emotional ups and downs to confirm the direction, and then began to play the surveillance camera over and over again, watching it at various speeds.
One thing was certain: with the driver, there were five adult males in the car and one hostage.
In the uneven black and white of the light and dark, some of the hijackers in the car provided only a blur of black, and the only hijacker who showed his face was a triangular-eyed, fierce-looking robber who clutched a cigarette in his curled right hand, the back of which showed some faint scratches.
The quality of the surveillance video is poor, and Ichijō Mirai's ability to notice the dark shadows of what appear to be scratches is due to the fact that the van is almost entirely black, and the robber's face and hands are a larger shade of gray, contrasting with the surrounding blackness.
The whitest color is that of the child's face and hands, her short hair with no hairpins or ribbons, her hair hanging down the side of her cheeks, her jagged bangs falling above her eyes, not quite covering her furrowed brow and slightly panicked eyes.
Ichijō Mirai sent both the little hostage and the robbers' information to Onidzuka Hachizo, replacing the surveillance he had just tumbled into the cash register, "Thank you very much, bye."
He rolled out of the register and walked out while answering the phone that was vibrating, "Hello?"
The caller was Onidzuka Hachizo.
"Did you see my message? Why don't you answer me back, asshole!" Onidzuka Hachizo first condemned, then reported in a more urgent tone, "No parents have reported their children missing yet, it's the end of elementary school hours, many elementary school students may not go home first, but go out to play in groups, the parents of the child who was taken hostage probably haven't reacted yet."
"Administrator Matsumoto is already looking into it, and he asked me to ask you if you want to alert the police, or not?"
Spooking the police means that the police will take direct action, start a massive manhunt and investigation of the trail across Tokyo, and issue an emergency news release describing the identity of the robbers and the hostages.
This branch can be used to find the parents of the hostages in a very short period of time, and to a certain extent to find out if there is an inside story to the case, whether the robbers randomly robbed someone, hastily chose a rich-looking kid to rob them, or deliberately took revenge on the parents.
The downside is that the safety of the hostages is somewhat compromised.
Not to alarm the snake, that is, to continue quietly, before the robbers take the initiative to contact the police or parents, will not be too much action, so that the robbers to maintain emotional stability, so that the hostages will not be torn on the spot due to police action or excessive retaliation.
Generally speaking, the police will not hesitate to choose the latter.
But the discoverer and front-runner is Ichijō Mirai, whom Matsumoto Kiyonaga inquired about, and is not hesitating to delegate authority, allowing the police cadet to take command.
This...
Ichijō Mirai was stunned: too much trust in him?
If it were any other police force, he would have been pleased that the police officer in question, despite his lack of operational skills, was experienced in requesting tactical guidance, and was skillful at jumping to his knees and hugging his thighs without hesitation.
But Matsumoto Kiyonaga, who is not a loser police officer, but a capable police officer with a very good sense of smell, was so authoritative that he could only have trusted Ichijō Mirai.
After only meeting him for a short time.
"Is that what Matsumoto Kiyonaga said," Ichijō Mirai said as he walked towards the direction where the robbers had left, his eyes scanning the area for any possible signs, his tone softening, "Sounds like he trusts me, so I'm pretty good at resuscitating people."
"I'm really reliable, I'm a superb Messiah," He sighed, "but trusting me so much, Matsumoto Kiyonaga wouldn't have thought I was really an angel the moment he opened his eyes from the loss of blood, would he?"
"That's right."
He found a button on the road.
It was a dark red horn button, the size of an adult's fingernail, and appeared to be a coat button.
"Let's scare the snakes," Ichijō Mirai spun the button and matched it to the hostage's clothing in the surveillance video, "don't worry about the hostage's safety, just assume she's dead, find out her parents as soon as possible, and pinpoint the location of the robbers."
And read out the location of the convenience store, "There is a surveillance video, captured a clip of the robber passing by with the victim's face on it, I highlighted that video when I left, you guys take it away as soon as possible to broadcast the news."
"Don't worry about personal safety, treat her like a dead victim."
He said it rather carelessly, not like a bloodhound on the trail of its prey, not like a police officer chasing a robber, but like, 'A glass of crème brûlée, please'.
Onidzuka Hachizo paused for a moment.
In the first few seconds, he was shocked by Ichijō Mirai's braggadocio, and in the last few seconds, he was shocked by Ichijō Mirai's tone of indifference that was in no way police, and in no way forced composure.
It took a few seconds for him to respond, "Yes, yes."
"Uh, the administrator says he has an idea of the group that took the hostages, and that some time ago, the police inadvertently detected some traces of them."
It was a group of about a dozen robbers.
There are many ways to make money, the most common being robbing gold stores and banks, as well as robbing pedestrians, blackmailing the rich, and holding their children hostage.
These crimes are like ripples on the surface of the water, they don't go away forever, and some time ago, they appeared on a large scale and on a trial basis.
It happened to be the time when police cadets were practicing disguising as criminals.
As the police had been pulling out some of their strength to deal with the cadets, they had relaxed their pursuit of the real criminals, and many criminals thought 'Tokyo is in chaos', and committed crimes, including street robberies and break-ins, at a high rate.
The police had to work very hard for a while, but fortunately, soon after the disguise drill was over, the crime rate in Tokyo was reduced to a minimum, probably because the police could concentrate on fighting criminals without having to deploy their manpower to deal with police cadets.
In the meantime, police on night patrols repeatedly came across unknown persons staking out an upscale residential neighborhood, and Matsumoto Kiyonaga suspected that the robbers in this operation were those persons.
As to why they struck so suddenly after being silent for some time...
"It seems that Tokyo criminals have a special way of communicating with each other, and at certain times, they've been working together to fight against something," Matsumoto Kiyonaga said as he took over the phone, "starting three years ago, and continuing up to the present."
"That contact had cooled down as the crisis went away, but for some reason, they've been contacting each other at a high frequency since a while ago," he said in a steady tone.
His tone was steady, and he sounded thoughtful, "During that time, the police interrogated a lot of criminals, and only from a few of them did they find out that they thought that Tokyo was about to be finished, so they were planning to do a job and leave, or contribute to the chaos by wagging their tails at a certain being."
'Wagging their tails' is the word.
"And so...but..."
Matsumoto Kiyonaga was still talking, "Since three days ago, just like some time ago, the criminals in Tokyo have begun to..."
"They are like the tide drawn by the moon, with a certain pattern of restlessness and impatience..."
"We're on the trail..."
Ichijō Mirai could no longer hear.
He was half crouching on the road, turning the button in his hand, as if he had suddenly realized that there was a very important clue on it, and lamented in a solemn tone, "So that's how it is."
"Right, right, why they have been restless in recent days, thinking that the police have no time to pay attention to low-level cases, they can fish in the water, and no major cases, so strange yo."
"Oops, I suddenly found a very important clue, so let's not talk about it, bye bye, Mr. Administrator!"