Suzuki Sonoko froze.
Still cowering pitifully under the table, her face was upturned, staring intently at Ichijō Mirai sitting on the edge of the window, seeing his uniform, which belonged to a human police officer, and a young human face.
Most importantly, those red eyes.
It was a fox.
A... a fox that had turned into a human, a demon, or a god.
There's not much difference between the gods and the demons in Neon mythology, many of them play with the style of human cruelty, the kind of creepy bedtime stories and scare tactics that slowly trickle down to every Neon child's earliest years.
By rights, Suzuki Sonoko should be terrified.
But the fox is laughing.
...And he's got a great smile.
Her heart was beating a little fast due to the constant high pressure, and now she was hallucinating the sound of her own heart beating, feeling the pressure of the blood flow in her head, and feeling a blankness in her mind.
"You're not talking," Ichijō Mirai stated the first fact, and then the second, "You're making a lot of noise."
Though he didn't say anything, he was already swept up in system alerts, both blue bar raising alerts and blue bar dropping alerts.
The drop alert only appeared at the beginning, while the boost alert, which popped up every second Suzuki Sonoko was looking at her, was a small boost, because...
Ichijō Mirai was speechless.
"Suzuki-sama," he sighed as he moved his folded legs, "you have an amazing eye."
Couldn't you use it for observing, not, not 'admiring beauty'?
Suzuki Sonoko understood.
When Ichijō Mirai was human, she was coaxed to soften her stiff throat and utter a word or two, but when Ichijō Mirai was clearly not, she summoned up some of the composure she would have used to deal with a robber, "You... you know my name," she said, timidly probing.
She timidly probed, a small face peeking out from the shadows under the table, her short brown hair warmed a bit by the sunlight, "You're the one Daddy asked to save me,"
There was a hesitant pause, Suzuki Sonoko's lips pursed up repeatedly, obviously organizing the right words, and it took about three or four seconds for the latter to be uttered, "Tamagotchi?"
"No," Ichijō Mirai jumped down from the window and smiled at her, "it's a fox that passes by for a snack, the kind that eats small children, straight up raw, one bite at a time."
He reached out, lifted Suzuki Sonoko out from under the desk, rather surprised at the system beeps, "I didn't realize that just like Morofushi-san said, your tastes are quite unique."
When facing Mr. Gentle Police Officer, she needs to be coaxed to jump her blue bar, but when facing a bad guy who looks bad, her blue bar increases, almost every five or six seconds.
Ichijō Mirai thought that a gentle police officer would be preferable.
"No," He thought, correcting himself, "according to Morofushi-san, it seems like you guys are the popular taste, and I'm more niche."
"...Your popular tastes are weird."
Suzuki Sonoko didn't understand anything else but taste.
She was held by Ichijō Mirai by the back of the neck clothing, like a ball of animal cubs hanging in the air, eyebrows pitifully shrugged down, "I don't taste good, and medicine is the same as bitter!"
"...Can you not eat me? I'm scared."
"My father makes offerings to many gods every year, I can ask him to make an offering to you!"
"Aren't you Tamamochi? Or are you the god Inari? My father worships Inari! Every year at New Year's he makes a big donation to the shrine, oooh!"
Ichijō Mirai jumped up to the window, taking Suzuki Sonoko with her as she swayed a few times on the thin strip of window ledge, and for a moment there was a slight tendency to fall.
At a height of four or five stories, with only the back of her collar clutched to her body, Suzuki Sonoko felt a sense of panic as if she had ridden a roller coaster to the highest point, and was watching the car dangle at the top, and then her heart was clutched to her chest.
The earth shook in her eyes, and the air in the sky seemed so thin that she could only hold her breath, so she subconsciously clutched Ichijō Mirai's bent knee in fear, "Wait, wait! I'm going to fall! Fox-sama, I'm human!"
The system alert dangled in Ichijō Mirai's eyes as he glanced down, responded, and smoothly scooped Suzuki Sonoko up in his arms, explaining, "Oh, it was easy to carry, but my center of gravity was unsteady, so I forgot to carry you,"
"Get ready, we're going to jump."
He inquired, "And why do you mention all the gods? Aren't the ones who eat children nameless little gods."
Either Tamamochi or Inari, they were all gods that Ichijō Mirai had heard of even if he didn't know much about the Neon gods, not the '8 million gods' that were just a bunch of people with no name recognition.
When Ichijō Mirai was asking the question, he was jumping downward, he only jumped one floor before stopping, hitting the glass window with his knee, and breaking through the window on the fourth floor.
There was the sound of glass shattering, followed by the sound of a human body hitting the ground and the sound of shards of glass crashing to the floor.
In the quiet of the factory, the sound was obvious.
Within seconds, the sound of rapid footsteps sounded downstairs.
"You must be a famous god," Suzuki Sonoko began in a matter-of-fact tone, quietly tilting her face up to look at Ichijō Mirai's, nodding in agreement with herself, and then whispering, "The glass was so loud, they probably heard it."
If she'd had furry ears, they would've been tucked up on her head by now.
But there was no need for furry ears, and her eyebrows were slightly downcast, and she looked extraordinarily wary and timid.
She was coy: "How full would you be if you ate them all?"
She was even more coy. "Why don't you eat them raw?"
"Barbecue, the food shrinks, braised soup takes too long, and you might get a snack beforehand...just eat it raw!"
Ichijō Mirai had been coy to, "..."
He lowered his head, looked at Suzuki Sonoko a few more times with a new gaze, and popped a hesitant question mark, "?"
Since she had just jumped off a building, Suzuki Sonoko was lying in Ichijō Mirai's arms like a sloth, with her legs and arms wrapped tightly around his neck and waist, allowing herself to form a position where she wouldn't be thrown off no matter what she encountered, even if she were to fall suddenly again.
To see her face, Ichijō Mirai had to pull her out.
Now that she's been pulled out, she appears to be a good-natured and harmless girl, like an angel, but in any case, not a demon who suggests in a harmless tone of voice, "Why don't you just eat her alive? In any case, she's not the devil who suggests 'Let's eat it raw!
Suzuki Sonoko tilted her face up, she could see Ichijō Mirai's surprise and winked, her green eyes reflecting a bit of a bright smile like sunlight on glass, "You won't eat them."
The reason: "You smell good!"
"They stink," she frowned, showing a bit of disgust, and then said happily, "I don't think you'll actually eat them, sure enough."
If I were going to eat them, Ichijō Mirai wouldn't have looked down in surprise at the sound of his voice, like he didn't realize that the soft little kid was the devil.
Suzuki Sonoko whispered, "Humans who eat Stinky's mouth will become Stinky."
Then she added, "You can't eat humans that don't stink, either. Blood tastes fishy."
"But you smell good."
"Your clothes smell good, your neck smells good, your mouth smells good!"
She nodded, "You haven't eaten anyone."
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
He respects a hostage who has a desire to live, who wags his tail with wet eyes.
But he doesn't want to respect the hostage who says "You must not have eaten anyone because your mouth smells good" when trying to save herself, and he wants to take her by the tail and throw her out the window to terrorize her on the spot.
...Too much of a beating, how about actually picking her up?
After a few seconds of seriously contemplating whether or not to immediately rip Suzuki Sonoko off and throw her out the window, Ichijō Mirai calmly said, "That's a good point, so don't say it again."
"Don't talk in the gourmet tone that you swallowed me in one bite and are evaluating my flavor... is this something a child can say... tsk... now you're being articulate..."
"The robbers are coming."
The robbers were coming from downstairs, or running upstairs to check out the room where the hostages were being held, and Ichijō Mirai could hear the sound of guns slamming into walls as they cautiously rounded corners in the corridor, as well as the slamming of doors from upstairs and the sound of hostages rushing to the intercom to report their disappearance.
He twirled the gun he had borrowed when he borrowed his uniform, and flicked Suzuki Sonoko on the forehead, asking, "Are you ready?"
There were many subtle sounds that normal humans could not pick up on, but the sound of a door slamming upstairs and heavy footsteps almost only a door away were obvious, and Suzuki Sonoko reclung to Ichijō Mirai again, pretending to be a sloth, her voice a little muffled, "What?"
As she spoke, warm spit poured into her shirt through the gap between the buttons, and Ichijō Mirai lifted her by the back of her collar, carrying her a bit farther away before saying, rightfully, "Getting ready to run away."
"Unfortunately, there was an accident during the escape of the hostages, and the robbers were keenly aware of our escape and tracked us down collectively, so what should we do? We can only run away."
He made a final decision: "Kill them all first, then run away."
*
"Boom, boom, boom, boom..."
The hard crash of the car on the mountain road continued, and the occupants of the car had to hold on to their seatbelts to keep from jumping around in their seats.
Suzuki Sonoko sits in the middle of the back row, having to hold on to Mouri Ran in an octopus-like embrace to keep her body steady, and over the bumps, like the needle of a compass, her head often swings to the side to look at Ichijō Mirai.
Ichijō Mirai was sitting by the window, his body relaxed, his eyes closed, ignoring the ups and downs of the car, looking as if he was resting his eyes in a smooth car.
It was obvious that the car was going up and down violently, but no matter how much it went up and down, he was sitting extraordinarily peacefully, with no instinctive reaction to being shaken, as if his body had reflexively adjusted itself while he was sleeping.
He was so peaceful that he seemed to be in a different world from the car.
Suzuki Sonoko struggled for a few more minutes to get used to the car that was about to shake her unconscious, when she suddenly exclaimed, "Wait, Mirai-san's not well!"
The kind of crunchy health that gives you a fever when you get wet in the snow.
So: "Mr. Mirai isn't sleeping because of motion sickness, he's shaken up, right?!"
The car was shaking so much that Suzuki Sonoko could barely focus, and after staring for a few seconds, she realized that Ichijō Mirai's brow was folded up between his eyebrows, and it looked like he was frowning, and his face didn't look good, like he was really uncomfortable to the point that he was passing out, and was even more alarmed, "Wait, he's not really passing out, is he?!"
She subconsciously tried to check her nose, and just as she let go of Mouri Ran, she stumbled due to the car's violent shaking, and her body lurched in Ichijō Mirai's direction.
Ichijō Mirai opened his eyes.
Without lifting his head, he smoothly supported Suzuki Sonoko, his eyes darted out of the car for a few seconds, surveying the mountain road where the vehicle was currently traveling, listening to the almost constant crashing sound, his hand unconsciously rubbing the back of his neck, frowning from the discomfort of the bumps, "It's so noisy."
The sound of the car was loud, and Ichijō Mirai's voice was lowered in a self-conscious manner to make him look guilty.
"...I told you it wasn't my fault, it was the car that was so noisy it made the child cry."
So no one refuted.