It's boring to follow the investigation step by step.
It's like a normal human being walking down a blind alley, rigorously treading the narrow path like a tightrope.
Unfortunately, Ichijō Mirai has never been very good at walking on gravel paths to get to the final point, especially in a game.
As a player, he can jump, he can backflip, he can even lie down and roll around like a corpse, but he can't quite walk like a normal human being, one step at a time.
But the cell phone kept ringing.
On the screen was a freshly minted note: [Oni-Matsu].
Onidzuka Hachizo + Matsumoto Kiyonaga.
The note keeps changing: [Annoying Oni-Matsu].
[What a persistent guy.]
[Something with a keen sense of smell.]
[If you answer the phone, you'll be hunted down.]
[A scary phone call that kills people.]
[Will the black-haired Miss Sadako fall in love with the silver-haired furious cadre?]
[Why don't you tell Gin, 'I'm about to be exposed, and I'll probably be returned to the organization with a bad review'? I'm sure he'll take care of it for me.]
[He'll definitely help me get rid of this guy.]
[Why is there a word limit on notes?
[I'm sick of Inuo, I won't do it next time...] While editing a new note in between phone calls, Ichijō Mirai thought about it, deleted it, and retyped it again, [Next time, don't you dare ^^].
In the midst of Miss Sadako's desperate phone calls, he was not amusing himself, he was serious, and as if he were a police cadet, he took one step at a time and explored a few more streets to figure out the right route.
Really serious.
Only on the way to seriousness, he took the time to 'backflip' a little bit: Ichijō Mirai went looking for criminals.
Following Matsumoto Kiyonaga's clue that 'the robbers are afraid of you', he paid a visit to a few Inuo, greeted them cheerfully, and received an enthusiastic response from the Inuo.
They exclaimed in excitement at being able to help the great Messiah, blushed at the prospect, and wagged their tails as they went to make phone calls to some of their criminal friends to find out more about the robbers.
Some extremely enthusiastic criminals, and even enthusiastically denounce other criminals, and say some words of indignation that can not be withdrawn, revealing the ordinary desire not to be alone in bad luck.
Ichijō Mirai was often moved to sigh at the sight of such kind-hearted criminals, and on his way out, he would reach out and pat them on the collar, apologizing for spoiling their tie or bone.
The kindly criminals forgive him, of course.
Ignoring the front, ignoring the middle, ignoring the back, and after receiving thirteen generous forgiveness offers, Ichijō Mirai pieced together the correct location: Katsushika district.
Katsushika has a very low profile in the bustling city of Tokyo, not as marginal and old as Arakawa and not as isolated as Itabashi, but a very tolerant mix of both, and with its many factories, it's not a very pleasant place to live.
If you look around patiently, you'll find a lot of temporarily abandoned buildings.
For a short period of time, without making too much noise, causing complaints, or without anyone intruding on a whim, criminals can use these perfect hide-and-seek spots as a temporary stopover.
In other words, this is an area that is very convenient for kidnapping, killing, dismembering, dumping and wandering.
Katsushika is still a good neighborhood.
The good thing is that between it and Shibuya, there are nine other districts.
Nine districts.
Nine districts. Is that a lot? Of course not.
It's just that if Ichijō Mirai had gone through the Katsushika district by the book, he'd have had to put his nose to the ground and sniff car tracks for half a day to get to the spot through the mass of districts.
When he gets to the place, he'll start a vendetta.
He would have killed the robbers seven times on the spot, and killed each of the cute and cautious robbers with excellent business skills in a dozen different ways to have a good time.
Now that he doesn't have to, instead of having the pleasure of killing himself a dozen times, Ichijō Mirai sighs with regret and picks up the chain call, "Hello?"
He didn't really want to answer it.
If he answered the phone, something perceptive might ask a soulful question: 'Are you Satan'?
Then he'll be returned on the spot, kicked back to the organization with a one-star review.
The follow-up to [Police Academy Newcomer] and the beginning of [FBI Newcomer] don't match up.
The only way to make it work is to force the police or the organization to send him to the FBI.
"...It's like playing a kind of play," Ichijō Mirai said, "forcing someone to pretend to force me."
He shook his shoulders to get the goose bumps off his back and listened to the cell phone.
The phone hung up, "click."
Ichijō Mirai: "?"
A few seconds later, another call came in sharply, and he answered it, "?"
"Did you just answer the phone?" Onidzuka Hachizo's voice came through, loud as always, but a little weak, "Hung up on too many calls that didn't go through, got carried away, ahem,"
"That's right! The administrator asked me to ask you!"
He inquired solemnly, "Are you planning to face those robbers alone?"
Huh?
Not 'are you Satan'?
He's got a keen sense of smell, and he said something about 'Satan', and something about training to disguise himself as a criminal...
It's not like a coincidence, it's not like a slip of the tongue, it's like an unobtrusive test.
But what made Onidzuka Hachizo ask questions about something small and insignificant?
Ichijō Mirai returned to his original starting point, took a map, drew a point at the edge of Shibuya district and a point at the center of Katsushika district, and connected the two points according to the route of the road, drawing a rough road map.
Instead of answering, he asked, "Is that the only question Matsumoto Kiyonaga asked you to forward?"
At the same time, he pondered the question: now that we're in first gear, should we sweep for clues, scanning all the cameras between the two districts to confirm the robber's departure route?
That way, in the deciding slot, Ichijō Mirai could just flip the police the surveillance of the robber's passing, pretending that he wasn't aiming for the exact spot, but rather, that he'd worked hard to follow the trail all the way to the end.
Here's the evidence.
That's the trouble with the police, you need evidence.
"Uh," Onidzuka Hachizo's voice began to sound hesitant and uncertain, "should that be the only problem?"
If he had been dealing with anyone else, he wouldn't have hesitated at the rhetorical question, wondering if he'd missed some order, but this was Ichijō Mirai, a reserve officer who was clearly better than most of the officers in service.
"The administrator said that you might be more comfortable going it alone, trusting only yourself, rather than in a group police operation. The police might be able to assist you in accomplishing things that you could do, but are so busy that it would take you longer to do them, but working with you for a long period of time might be a little uncomfortable for you, and would reduce your effectiveness."
"He only asked me to ask you if you were planning to act alone and take on the robbers by yourself, and said that if you admitted to it, he would ask you how the police were going to cooperate with you," He recalled, and as if he remembered something, "Wait a minute,"
"Well..."
"The administrator asked me if you lived in Ichijō's house or not, and said that if you were going to live there and didn't mind people coming into Ichijō's house, the police could re-clean and redecorate it according to how Ichijō's house looked in the file."
"Is that an inquiry?"
Japan is small, Tokyo is even smaller, Shibuya district and Katsushika district are just separated by a few more wards, actually the straight line distance is not too bad, just separated by half of Tokyo.
While he was on the phone, Ichijō Mirai picked up an unmarked car and drove it to Katsushika district.
He approached the destination factory where the criminals said, 'someone has been spotted in that abandoned factory recently', 'Yamai and his gang seem to be seen near that factory recently', and 'I was shopping and passing by and saw the lights on in that factory at night.'
Because it's not a residential area, there are not many people around the factory during the daytime, only empty streets.
Ichijō Mirai braked to a stop and glanced around the surrounding buildings a few times, searching for a more suitable place to stay and pass by briefly, while answering Onidzuka Hachizo, "Ah, it's not the inquiry I had in mind, but it's an inquiry nonetheless."
And then answering the inquiry that was still not very important, so irrelevant that it was almost a bit baffling, "No, I don't intend to stay."
But: 'you'?
While opening the car door and casually climbing a few times to take over a wild wall, Ichijō Mirai surmised that Matsumoto Kiyonaga seemed to think he was on good terms with his fellow police academy members.
So good that he's taken them under his wing and can take them to stay at Ichijō's house for a while at some point.
That's...
I can't believe this isn't a wrong assumption.
If necessary, Ichijō Mirai would really take his classmates to Ichijō's house at will.
However, it wasn't because he and his classmates were so close that they could invade each other's private domains, it was because he didn't consider Ichijō's house as his own private domain at all.
To him, Ichijō's house was no different from Inuo's house, but it was more troublesome and required cleaning, unlike Inuo's house, which could be moved into out of the box.
"I assume you've gotten your first surveillance?" Ichijō Mirai asked. Ichijō Mirai inquired, "I've found the robbers' temporary base, so I'll be able to ask them about their routes and interrogate you on any other surveillance I can get my hands on."
He remembered something else, "Any luck with the hostages?"
No.
*
A factory that has been abandoned for a while always has a scent that the human nose can't stand, like the smell of rotten air.
Human beings live in groups, and in nature, the absence of human activity in a certain place is a sign of danger, and perhaps that's why Suzuki Sonoko's moods were fluctuating.
She was cowering in the corner of a small office, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin pressed down on her knees, her red eyes staring at the small piece of land in front of her, looking like a scared rabbit that had died on the spot and had stomped on its legs to play dead.
But his ears were still perked up.
Suzuki Sonoko had been listening to the movements around her, and heard the sounds of the robbers walking, impatient exchanges, lighter snaps, coughing and cursing, and so on.
The most frequent sound, of course, is the increasingly impatient communication.
The impatient exchanges began ten minutes ago, and she clearly remembers that they were signaled by a sharp cry of 'News! .
It seemed that the robbers had been exposed and were on the news.
This is not good for the hostages.
In addition to that, Suzuki Sonoko was faced with the fact that the robbers hadn't yet found out who she was, and didn't know that she was the second youngest daughter of the Suzuki Group.
In her favor, hiding her identity will cause the robbers to make a mistake and face the police with the wrong attitude, and they will probably be caught by the police in a careless manner.
That's not good either.
If the police are looking for her too strongly, the robbers who don't know her real identity may panic and decide that it's not a good idea to kill her and get away with it.
So, should she reveal her true identity to the robbers?
It seems yes, it seems no.
If they know they've kidnapped Suzuki's second daughter, will they treat her more carefully? Would they take her money and release her as if it were lukewarm water, and not use unfriendly methods such as cutting off fingers and sending them in the mail?
Or...
Once she realized that the 'middle-class kid' she had chosen at her own discretion, who seemed to be well-dressed but not so well-dressed as to be in the limelight, was actually a Suzuki kid, would the robbers be so afraid of the Suzuki group that they would immediately tear up the ticket and go their separate ways on the spot, pretending not to have robbed any of the meat tickets?
Various speculations flashed in her mind, Suzuki Sonoko took a deep breath and pinched her leg with her fingers to force herself to calm down, she advised herself.
You have to be calm, Sonoko, only by being calm will you be able to choose the most appropriate strategy, in a situation where one wrong step could lead to death, you can't make a wrong move by panicking, you have to be calm.
She kept pushing her fingers, and pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and the pain pierced through to her mind, causing the normal emotions of panic, fear, and aggression, which she could not control, to subside a little bit.
Instead of thinking 'why me', 'I should have let the driver pick me up from school' and other fantasies that would only add to the negative emotions, Suzuki Sonoko continued to take deep breaths, calming herself, her eyes flickering.
There were footsteps.
Footsteps in a hurry, with a hint of impatience.
The footsteps came from far away, and reached the door of the office, followed by the heavy sound of the door opening.
A middle-aged male who looked to be in his thirties walked in with a boxed lunch, his face was wide, with scribbled scruff on his chin, and his expression was quite impatient, he threw the boxed lunch on the floor when he handed it to him, "Hey, kid, dinner!"
The robber had no intention of hiding his face and didn't leave right away, instead he took a few cursory looks at Suzuki Sonoko from above, "Your parents haven't contacted us yet."
"What, do they want you to die?"
Suzuki Sonoko stayed cowering, maintaining a typical posture of a weak person trembling in fear.
As the robber spoke, her shoulders shook, which in turn caused a slight tremor throughout her body.
The robber saw her clutching the corner of her coat in fear, saw her bowing her head tightly and burying her face between her knees, and heard her trembling childish voice, "Uncle, uncle,"
"I... my dad is... a detective,"
"He was very good, many sisters praised him, and asked him to take many, many tens of millions of dollars in commissions."
"He, you... my dad must be after me, will definitely beat you bad guys and find me!"
She's scared, but she's acting like one.
Very funny.
The robber's eyes changed. "Detective?"
He reached up and zipped up his jacket, blocking the lower half of his face, "A detective who gets a lot of women's commissions?"