[Hostage's current blue bar [46%], status [fearful], auto-recovery stopped.]
[Blue bar dropping, current [43%], status [fearful].]
[Blue bar rising, current [48%], status [Euphoria], auto-recovery restored.]
[Blue bar dropping, current [46%], status [Awe].]
[Blue bar has risen, current [50%], status [Euphoria], incentivized, auto-recovery rate increased by 0.5%, 1% of blue bar restored every minute and a half...]
Ichijō Mirai: "?"
He pressed his forehead falsely against the glass and typed a question mark, which was typed at the rising and falling blue bar, as well as at the 'Fox!' It's also a question mark against the rising and falling blue bar.
Why 'Fox' again?
Because it's very similar.
Suzuki Sonoko's eyes were much rounder than usual, even the ends of her eyes were rounded and shorter, like a rabbit's short tail, and she stared intently out the window at Ichijō Mirai.
She didn't see how Ichijō Mirai appeared with her own eyes, but the moment she met those curved red eyes, a scene rolled vividly in her mind.
'The tips of the black fluffy ears rise out of the glass window first, just a little bit, a wisp of smart hair, followed by the roots of the ears that have thickened up, the black hair, then the red eyes that are a little narrow because they are curved up, and after that, the lower half of the face'.
Just like in the cartoon where the fox appears, it's a bit cunning, but also cute and intelligent.
As for the reason why it's a fox...
Perhaps because of the many stories about foxes I heard today, Suzuki Sonoko's instinctive reaction the moment she looked into the eyes and saw those bright red eyes was: 'Fox! .
And a little bit of fear.
However, due to the objective value of her face, she overcame her fear and stared at Ichijō Mirai's darker red pupils, crawling out from under the desk, "Are you here to save me?"
"Fox, Police Brother."
The rephrasing was obvious.
Suzuki Sonoko wanted to look away, but her eyes followed her heart with sincerity, looking at Ichijō Mirai without blinking.
Foxes are scary, and police uniforms are also a bit intimidating to Suzuki Sonoko, but Ichijō Mirai's smile is sunny, like a handsome neighboring brother.
He picks up Suzuki Sonoko, who fell down in the rain, and without caring about her dirty clothes, patiently wipes the stains off her cheeks, treats the bruises on her body, and then takes her by the hand and takes her home, like the first love of a neighborly brother.
Mostly, he's handsome.
When he smiled, his eyebrows were raised, his eyes were relaxed and stretched out, and the lines of his eyes, which were a bit harsh, were also eased, and his whole face was full of the openness of the spirit, with a bit of the youth's unique recklessness, but because he seemed to be intentionally controlling his expression, he had some of the adult's forbearance, and he was much gentler.
There was a striking sense of contradiction.
Suzuki Sonoko didn't know how to describe the itch that moved her heart, but she felt that the dark-haired, red-eyed, earless, fox-like police officer outside the window made her feel like an arrow.
Cupid's arrow.
She stood up, holding the desk, her heart still racing from the panic she had been feeling, and carefully said to Mr. Fox, "You're here to save me."
The first time, it was a question with some panic, and the second time, it was a statement with apprehension.
[...The hostage is motivated to increase its auto-recovery rate to 1% of its blue bar every minute.]
[Current blue bar [51%].]
The system alert pops up, Ichijō Mirai casually glances at it, reaches out and pushes the window open, smiles and jumps in, walks over to Suzuki Sonoko and crouches down on one knee in front of her at eye level, "Yes, I'm here to save you."
"Ms. Hostage," He held up his hand, opening it and shaking out the omamori, "is this yours?"
"I picked up the omamori, sensed something was wrong, learned from the convenience store clerk that a strange car had rushed by not long ago, assumed a child had been kidnapped, and followed the trail."
The red omamori hangs from the white fingertips, and the gold knot is wrapped around the fingers a few times, and there are slight binding marks on the fingers, not red marks, but marks where the flesh of the fingers has been squeezed.
Behind the finger is Ichijō Mirai's clean smile.
[Blue bar rising, current blue bar [55%].]
Suzuki Sonoko stared at the omamori hanging in front of her eyes for a few seconds, and unconsciously raised her eyes to look at the finger, and then to Ichijō Mirai's smiling face.
Her body's instincts kicked in, and she subconsciously reached out and took hold of the omamori, touching her fingertips to Ichijō Mirai's, "Thank you, thank you."
Wait, there's more to the situation now than just a simple case of omamori being lost and returned by a good samaritan, but!
Just as Suzuki Sonoko realized that she had said something a bit dumb and wanted to retract it immediately, Ichijō Mirai moved.
He loosened the knot of the omamori, not paying much attention to Suzuki Sonoko's gray hands that had touched the ground and the corners, and wrapped the omamori around her fingers and wrist with a flat expression, "Dropped the omamori on purpose, didn't you? Very clever."
"Uh-huh!" Suzuki Sonoko nodded heavily, her eyes staring at her hand and curling her fingers in some embarrassment at the sight of the gray marks on her fingers, "I also lost my necklace, my hairbrush..."
And the hairband.
Except for the hairband, which she'd lost during the kidnapping, she'd smuggled all her jewelry out of the car whenever she'd had the chance.
The robbers drove her all the way, she smoked cigarettes, and Suzuki Sonoko threw everything she had in her head.
But when she did, she was a bit hopeless.
Most of her jewelry wasn't the well-known luxury brands, and the brand markings were so small that most people would just pick them up and think they were children's jewelry that had been accidentally thrown away.
"Really?" Ichijō Mirai thought that with the strength of the Japanese police, they probably wouldn't have found those trinkets, but was still quite pleasant, "There's an effort to save yourself, and you're still a little kid, it's amazing that you were able to leave a clue in front of so many robbers."
He picked up Suzuki Sonoko and turned around with her over the window, lowering his voice, "Shall we go?"
"The police haven't arrived yet, I was afraid that after the news broadcast, the robbers would probably take the hostages... so I came here first, luckily you're okay."
"Did they give you a hard time?"
He was trying to get the hostage to talk.
Suzuki Sonoko then whispered about the seriousness with which she had lied to fool the robbers, while tightening her hand around Ichijō Mirai's neck after she had climbed out of the window, trying not to look down at the heights below, "So, that, we're just going to climb down from the fifth floor?"
One slip, and you'd be dead.
But Ichijō Mirai's heartbeat was steady.
Because of her position, when she was lying in Ichijō Mirai's arms, Suzuki Sonoko could feel his steady, strong heartbeat, and she could even feel, as if by illusion, the warmth of the back of her neck under her arm, which was beating with her heart, and the sense of her presence was obvious.
"Nothing will happen," Ichijō Mirai said, "even if you fall, I'll protect you."
"Shhh, that's the robber's room down there."
On the fourth floor, he paused, pressed his knee against the window, scooted slightly to push it open, and sat on the edge.
There were voices coming from the room on the third floor, two male voices, interspersed with the sound of cell phone key presses, and after the key presses stopped, so did the voices of the robbers communicating.
So a voice from the phone came out clearly: "Hello."
It sounded like a young man's voice, around 30 years old, and his tone was gentle, sounding like a gentleman.
At the sound of the voice, Ichijō Mirai felt Suzuki Sonoko's grip on his neck tighten again.
Assuming that the person on the other end of the line was a relative of the hostage, he patted Suzuki Sonoko's back silently, like smoothing hair, from the back of her neck to the halfway point of her back, all the while lowering his eyes to watch her face so the robbers wouldn't hear her choking on the spot.
Suzuki Sonoko's expression was a little strained, her eyes rounded and she looked nervous, but she didn't have much of the aggravation that she instinctively felt when she heard her parents' voices in the midst of danger.
She strained her ears to listen to the sound.
The robber smiled coldly, "How are you, Mr. Mochidzuki, right?"
Obviously not good, the gentleman on the other side of the phone paused, tone serious, not moving to pick up the nonsense, "You are?"
"Your daughter is in my hands," the robber explains, "the police are with you now, right? Or have they tapped your home phone lines and your cell phone to monitor our conversations in real time?"
He laughed.
The gentleman also immediately reacted to the kidnapping of his daughter's robbers called him, his tone more serious, no longer the beginning of the gentle, "My daughter's situation now?"
"She has not been in good health since she was a child, she is allergic to dust, when she is shocked and exposed to dust for a long time, she is prone to fainting and unconsciousness, and will even go into shock if it lasts for too long, may I ask if you have investigated this information when you investigated my daughter beforehand? Have you prepared allergy medication?"
The robber's smooth flow of threats was interrupted just before he started, he: "Uh..."
"Yeah, allergic to dust?!"
Ichijō Mirai was still watching Suzuki Sonoko's expression, one hand ready to cover her mouth and nose at any moment to cut off the voice.
He realized that Suzuki Sonoko's cheeks, which had been tightly tensed, had suddenly stretched and relaxed again after the gentleman's serious question, 'How is my daughter's condition?
She took a small breath of relief in Ichijō Mirai's arms, then reacted by lifting up her flushed face and bright eyes again, and silently inquired, 'Shall we go?'
...the response was somewhat subtle.
Without realizing it, Ichijō Mirai casually pressed the back of Suzuki Sonoko's neck to calm her, winked at her, and then silently jumped down.
The sound of the robber and 'Mr. Mochidzuki' talking went from clear to faint, and the tugging and testing between the two parties faded away.
Ichijō Mirai didn't speak again until he hit the ground on the first floor, "Your last name is Mochidzuki?"
"After contacting your father, they will prove to your father as soon as possible that you are in their possession, by means that include, but are not limited to, making you talk to your father over the phone, sending out your special trinkets, cutting up portions of your body tissue..."
"They'll realize you're missing."
Suzuki Sonoko's expression doesn't change much, except to purse her lips and give a small nod of her head, quite literally listening intently and agreeing.
"So," Ichijō Mirai observed her reaction and smiled at her, "we're going to leave as soon as possible."
He picked up Suzuki Sonoko again, and, aiming for the dead end of the robbers' line of sight, took some time to get out of the factory's back door, and headed for the place where he had parked his car from afar.
After getting into the car, he asked, "In ten minutes at the most, the robbers will realize you're gone, but when it comes to your father, they'll pretend you're still there and continue to blackmail and threaten him."
"I brought my cell phone. Do you want to call your father?"
As he asked, Ichijō Mirai watched Suzuki Sonoko's blue bar, which had been auto-regenerating at 69%.
[69%] It's still a hair short of 70% of the upper limit of recovery, when the phone is connected, it should be almost full, the next blue bar can't be recovered automatically by time, it can only be pushed by him.
He handed over a cell phone.
Suzuki Sonoko's eyes lit up and she took the phone, "May I? Thank you, Niinii!"
Holding the phone again, she whispered hesitantly, "That, actually..."
"I, can I make a few more calls?"
Not far away, there's movement coming from the factory.
It's the noise of the robbers, they've realized that the window of the room is wide open, the hostage has disappeared, and there's no body on the first floor, so they reacted to the fact that someone sneaked in and took the hostage.
Ichijō Mirai turned his head and glanced backward, scanning the direction of the factory without changing his face, then scanning the location of the trunk, and estimating that the real officer in the trunk should still be alive, he retracted his gaze and helped Suzuki Sonoko in the passenger seat to fasten her seatbelt, "It's okay."
"Do you remember the brand of sleeping pills you always take? There was a bit of dust in the room just now, you might be allergic."
"If you don't remember, tell me the hospital you go to, or a hospital close to your home where your father can get there in time, and I'll forward the address to the police."
"...I'm not allergic to dust," Suzuki Sonoko clutched her omamori tightly and hesitated for half a second, "That, I-"
Just as she hesitated to explain to the handsome young officer who should be trusted for having led her away from the robbers' lair, that her last name is not 'Mochidzuki', the phone in her hand was answered.
"Hello."
It was the voice of 'Mr. Mochidzuki', or to put it another way, the voice of Kudō Yūsaku.
As the car started up, Suzuki Sonoko quietly looked at Ichijō Mirai, her eyes paused for a few seconds on the side of his face that was no longer smiling on purpose, but still had a little bit of a smile, and called out the real name for Kudō Yūsaku, "Uncle."
[Blue bar rising, currently [72%].]
Ichijō Mirai glanced sideways at the name, and his red eyes shifted slightly to meet Suzuki Sonoko, who was holding up the phone.
[Blue bar rising, currently [75%].]
On the other end of the line, a few seconds passed before Kudō Yūsaku slowly inquired, "'Mochidzuki'?"
He sounded relieved, "It seems that Officer 'Messiah' has received you."