The party was held in a remote area, and the drive was half a day long.
Not long after getting on the bus, Ichijō Mirai logged into the game with his bracelet, claiming to be carsick.
Before logging in, he glanced sideways at Suzuki Sonoko, who was sitting on his side and nodding repeatedly.
After logging in, he looked down at Suzuki Sonoko, who was lying in his arms.
Suzuki Sonoko's head was buried, her short, shaggy brown hair was pressed against Ichijō Mirai's chest, and between her brown hair, the tips of her white ears were poking out and twitching slightly.
She's burying her head in her ears.
Matsuda Jinpei was on fire, "You're the one who should be drinking bitter melon juice!"
"As long as you're around, as many people as there are in your neighborhood will need as many cups of bitter melon juice as there are people in your neighborhood who need it to sterilize the fire, right? If you go any further, the number of cups of bitter melon juice you need will even multiply by two or three," he said logically, though he was angry, "Why don't you drink a few more cups in advance to stop the anger for a while?"
"Although you are bitter, but everyone is relieved!"
The logic is very clear.
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
He reacted: Oh, I just owed a little before going offline.
And a little sad: You can't step into the same river twice, the Ichijō Mirai of the past is not the Ichijō Mirai of the present, and Matsuda Jinpei's comment was directed at the Ichijō Mirai before he went offline, not the one who went online.
As an innocent player who just logged into the game, he got caught in the crossfire.
"You're out of line," The saddened innocent lashed out, "attacking me personally for no reason."
It was so righteous that Matsuda Jinpei reacted for a few seconds, wondering if he'd done something wrong, before realizing that he'd just hit back.
Ichijō Mirai had already lowered his head to look at Suzuki Sonoko again.
He skillfully and naturally pulled Suzuki Sonoko out of her hair, running his eyes through her short brown hair, landing on her green eyes, and sweeping her soft, babyish, slightly pouting cheeks.
While looking at her, he recalled Suzuki Sonoko's appearance in reality, and compared them one by one, and realized that when he subjectively thought that 'they were the same person', he could vaguely recognize a bit of high school student Suzuki Sonoko's face from that of the young Suzuki Sonoko.
However, in high school, Suzuki Sonoko's face has opened up, and instead of a baby fat face, she has a girlish, slender jawline.
In high school, she looked like a sunflower in full bloom, happy and carefree, and seemed to be a young girl who, even in the face of danger, would only be shocked and trembling at first, and then would be nervous and chattering.
Until then, Ichijō Mirai had no idea that Ichijō Mirai, a hostage who needed to make herself talk, was the same person as Suzuki Sonoko, who was a talkative and cheerful person...
If it wasn't for the appearance of the keyword 'Kudō', and the obvious overlap of features such as 'short brown hair', 'green eyes', and 'Suzuki Sonoko is about the same age as the hostage according to the time frame', it would have taken him a long time to realize it.
He could have avoided this at the first meeting by asking the hostage her name.
If the hostage didn't answer, then he could have tried a combination of gentle reassurance and threats, or he could have simply asked the hostage in front of the police station, and then returned to the file afterward, and Ichijō Mirai would have gotten that information.
Ichijō Mirai's reason for not asking...
The reason why Ichijō Mirai didn't ask was the same as 'the hostages were taken by robbers disguised as police', but in the end, it was because Ichijō Mirai was really a little bit perfunctory when it came to the rescue missions, and didn't study each level patiently like he did with the offensive missions, just going through the process in a perfunctory manner.
If the tasks weren't so difficult, he could actually complete them by walking through the process, such as the cross-country running task, which only required rote memorization.
The aftermath of this is that a keen eye can detect Ichijō Mirai's lack of attitude, but at least it's a pass.
Difficult missions, like this one hostage quest, would require Ichijō Mirai to spend more time back in the archives trying to get it right over and over again.
"Ugh," Ichijō Mirai sighs, a bit unhappy with life's difficulties, "the pain of not being in the right field."
In the place of rescue professional police officers, probably three or four times to pass perfectly, to be stuck in the murder mission is also stuck, how will be the opposite of him.
That's the torture of not being in the same field.
Suzuki Sonoko could relate to some of that torture.
She held her breath, meeting Ichijō Mirai's gaze, blinking, blinking, blinking, and her face turned red, and redder and redder.
I'm holding it in.
Morofushi Hiromitsu sensed it, he first looked at Ichijō Mirai who was gazing at Suzuki Sonoko seriously with a pensive expression, and then at Suzuki Sonoko who was unconsciously holding her breath to the point of oxygen deprivation, and inquired in a loud voice: "What's wrong?"
Ichijō Mirai flicked Suzuki Sonoko's forehead, causing her to lean back in shock and sit back in bewilderment, "I was thinking that I'm not a professional Savior anymore, I actually have a shortcoming!"
Actually, no.
I wondered why 'Ichijō Mirai' had sent a delivery to Suzuki Sonoko.
Before, Ichijō Mirai thought it was strange because they didn't seem to have any points of convergence, but now that he's realized it, he understands a lot more.
He thought about it for a moment, "Hmm... So Suzuki Sonoko isn't that 'fiancée', is she? It seems that the probability has increased a bit.
If that's the case, why don't we just save her ourselves?
You can just command a police officer to rescue her remotely, and pass the level regardless of the blue bar at the end.
Ichijō Mirai is more afraid of trouble than of not getting through the game perfectly, of ruining the image of the great Savior, of making obsessive collectors uncomfortable, and so on and so forth.
Ichijō Mirai was more afraid of emotional trouble that he had never encountered before and had no experience in dealing with.
Thinking about it, he lowered his eyes and poked Suzuki Sonoko's forehead again, seeing her cover her forehead in surprise again with rounded eyes, and casually yawning, "Why do you look surprised that I'm the bad guy? What's wrong with bullying a child, haven't you seen it before? Let you see it today."
From 80 year olds to 2-3 year olds, players can bully anyone!
Suzuki Sonoko: "..."
Covering her forehead, she tilted her face up to see Ichijō Mirai, her eyes rounded once, then half-mooned once, and so on, without saying anything, like a little cotton flower that could be bullied.
The little cotton's eyes were switched on and off by the knot in Ichijō Mirai's throat that rolled up and down when he spoke, and his face was red.
"Ahem," Morofushi Hiromitsu coughed lowly, and to tell the truth, "she's probably not looking at you because you're 'bullying the kids',"
Though flicking a child's forehead in bad taste does qualify as bullying.
"But," He was tempted to sigh, "bullying kids is not very kid-friendly."
And then he added a heartfelt, "Bullying an adult will also attract the adult's hate value."
Finally, he added in his heart, "Right, Matsuda-san?"
Matsuda Jinpei didn't hear the voice of naming, but he had the self-awareness of being in the right place, and laughed quietly as he continued to be ignored, "If you give out hatred, you will also receive bitter gourd juice from the kind-hearted Mirai-san."
"The police station is approaching," Furuya Rei, who was driving, reminded Matsuda Jinpei in passing, "Don't yell."
He said sincerely, "You're too subtle with your cursing, if you're brazen, you'll just take it as a compliment and think you're praising yourself, I don't need to look in the rearview mirror, I can guess the guy must be smiling at you right now."
It really didn't need a rearview mirror, but when he was talking, Furuya Rei could hear Ichijō Mirai's laugh, which was not a laugh, but only a little bit of an airy laugh.
"No, don't slander Matsuda-san, he was just praising me, and called me 'kind Mirai-san', that's good, but you don't need to say that, everyone knows I'm kind," Ichijō Mirai looked out the window, "It's time to go to the police station."
"Bye bye then."
He held out his hand, winked at Matsuda Jinpei, and with a final gesture of gratitude from himself as the complimented to the complimenter, he shot back into gear without hesitation.
"Boom!"
＊
Suzuki Sonoko crouched under the table.
She heard a subtle sound, like the movement of a small animal.
It was coming from outside the window, getting closer and closer.
It ended abruptly outside the window.
Suzuki Sonoko's heart lifted, and she looked down, staring nervously at the corner, like a poor human in a horror movie who is hiding from a ghost, not daring to look out the window at the first sound, silently cheering herself up for four or five seconds before she cautiously lifted her eyes and looked over.
She saw a pair of red eyes.
A young man with bright red eyes and a black wolf's tail sat by the half-open window and smiled at her from above.
They said in unison: "Fox!"
...Eh?
Suzuki Sonoko blinked.
'Red Eyes' smiled at her, "Good guess."
"As a reward," he said without skipping a beat, like a red-eyed demon wagging a peach heart tail, "would you like to be eaten raw by a fox, or barbecued and made into soup?"
"I'm a good-hearted 'fox' who doesn't hold grudges."
Ichijō Mirai bites down on the words she's heard so many times and smiles, "I'll say yes."
"You can even say your last words, isn't that great?"
Morofushi Hiromitsu said that Ichijō Mirai could be his true nature.
Ichijō Mirai thought he was right.