Ichijō Mirai's attention was diverted.
Morofushi Hiromitsu clearly sensed that as he arrived at his destination, the attention that seemed to be like, 'Oh, a new day, a new beginning, good morning everyone, why don't we pick an unlucky person at random to play a prank on! The attention on Date Wataru didn't disappear, it shifted.
It shifted to him.
He: "..."
Subtly, compared to the nervousness he felt when he realized that Ichijō Mirai's attention was on Date Wataru, now, Morofushi Hiromitsu was actually more relaxed.
The reason was simple: Date Wataru didn't have a lot of experience with smirking pranks, and was likely to run into all sorts of snags as he fought his way through the levels, but he and Matsuda Jinpei had plenty of experience with victimization, and had gradually developed their instincts to get through the levels, so they didn't need to worry about being pranked too much if Ichijō Mirai's target was them.
On second thought, Morofushi Hiromitsu added another victim with plenty of experience: Furuya Rei.
Furuya Rei, who was having fun.
He's been playing this level a lot, and he's probably experienced enough to get a perfect score with his eyes closed.
However, it didn't take long for Morofushi Hiromitsu to relax, but he tensed up again, and gathered his thoughts back to the point where he began to wait with a sense of urgency.
Because when he stopped in front of the sushi restaurant, Ichijō Mirai was still in a state of 'bad luck has shifted, let's start picking out the second unlucky person', relaxed and laid-back, with a little bit of eagerness to try and explore Morofushi Hiromitsu.
But the moment he stepped into the sushi restaurant, his demeanor changed, and that sense of relaxation was shaken off, leaving him with an unnoticeable sense of fatigue.
Even his pace slowed down half a beat.
It's strange.
Morofushi Hiromitsu looked at Ichijō Mirai and realized that he was moving his shoulders as if he was slowly recovering from a strenuous workout, even though he hadn't practiced today, they hadn't done anything strenuous, and they hadn't been over-exerting themselves.
As he did so, he lazily glanced sideways out of the store.
He wasn't casually glancing at his surroundings, his eyes were pointed in a precise direction.
Morofushi Hiromitsu followed him, and saw a dense crowd of people, nothing special at first glance, and nothing that needed special attention on closer inspection, as if they were all normal people, not police officers or criminals in disguise.
After more than ten seconds of careful looking, he barely noticed one point that he could pay attention to: a child of about five or six years old.
In the middle of the crowd, a child was walking hand in hand with an adult, a lively gathering that might have been fun for the adult, but for the small child, who could only see a large portion of the adult's legs, it was obviously a bit uninteresting.
Her brows were pitifully downcast, her face upturned in confusion, and a faint trace of sleepiness.
Her guardian, belatedly realizing this, picked her up so that she could look around her above the crowd, and the bewilderment dissipated into excitement, and she began to look around curiously, and within a few seconds, her bright eyes looked out in the direction of Morofushi Hiromitsu.
In the next moment, her eyes widened in surprise, and she hurriedly said something to the adult, who looked over at her with a somewhat surprised expression, then hesitated, looked at the sushi restaurant's sign, and hesitantly walked over.
Morofushi Hiromitsu was stunned.
The moment he saw the young girl, he was stunned for the simple reason that she resembled someone he remembered.
So much so that even though he knew she was dead, he subconsciously remembered her name when he saw her: Yuri.
She was Morofushi Hiromitsu's childhood friend.
She died in the hospital due to an emergency, without even seeing her father for the last time, and her last moments with him were characterized by a devastating fight and the angry words, "I hate my father, and I don't want to come home anymore".
After that, her father, who was either mentally ill from the start, or was provoked by his daughter's death, became paranoid and crazy, convinced that her daughter wasn't dead, but was just angry with him and didn't want to see him, or that she was being hidden, and broke into Morofushi's house at night, killing her parents with a knife, and humming a song to coax his daughter to come out. and then softly coaxed his daughter to come out with a song.
There were many details that Morofushi Hiromitsu thought he had blurred and forgotten with the passage of time, but now, as the events suddenly surfaced in his memory, he realized that he had not forgotten them at all, but had instead swallowed them repeatedly and bloodily into red pearls of pain, which surfaced at the moment of the ebbing of the tide, reflecting their warmth and luster.
His face paled a few points, watched the small child and adults holding hands walked over, but a steep weight on the shoulders, the whole person startled up, in case of surprise was taken by the shoulders of the people forced to the side of the side of a few steps, to make way for the doorway position.
"What's wrong?"
Ichijō Mirai's eyes were also looking at the adult and the child who were approaching, he met the eyes of the child who wanted to look but didn't want to be noticed, so he quietly poked his eyes over and then immediately avoided them for a second, and said in a flat tone without looking at Morofushi Hiromitsu, "Pay attention to your expression, Morofushi-kun, it'll be noticed by other people."
His voice was so low, so far below normal volume, that it almost dissolved into the clamor of the crowd, and Morofushi Hiromitsu wouldn't have been able to hear it if it weren't for the close proximity of each other.
The pair of adults and the child could not hear them, and they both behaved in a similar manner, looking as if they wanted to look but could not do so openly, walking towards each other with their faces facing forward, but with their eyes shifted and glanced at each other in the same way, and their pace slowed down.
Even the slow pace was moving forward, and they passed by.
Morofushi Hiromitsu watched their backs as they reached the front desk, and then looked over at Ichijō Mirai, noticing that because of his seriousness, his red eyes were a little lighter in color than usual, resembling pale red glazed beads.
He no longer looked at the pair of adults and children, nor at Morofushi Hiromitsu, and his eyes moved outside again, this time not fixated, but rather looking around as if searching for companionship, and only after a few moments did he pause and look in one direction.
"Did I just look strange?" Morofushi Hiromitsu adjusted his breathing and followed Ichijō Mirai's line of sight once more, this time catching the point first and waving his hand, "Here, Matsuda."
This time, Ichijō Mirai looked in the direction of Matsuda Jinpei and the others, who had parked their car and were walking over.
"It's okay, it's not very strange, it's just that it's a bit obvious with me," Ichijō Mirai replied in a low voice, and then suddenly raised it to a volume that was a bit louder than normal, and his tone was a bit depressed, as if he were complaining, "Geez, don't think about those weird stories from last night, we're Literature majors, and the stories from the nightly meeting are only at the entry level, and now it's just about hearing the stories of Hanako, and seeing children get scared. Now we're just listening to Hanako's stories and getting scared when we see kids, what are we going to do in the future when we're studying those weird masterpieces?"
Like a big-headed college student comforting a timid classmate, he said gently and without concern: "Don't be afraid, Hiromitsu."
...Huh?
Before even realizing what Ichijō Mirai was doing, Morofushi Hiromitsu automatically spoke up, like a timid college student being impatiently comforted by his classmates, "But that Hanako-san's weird story from yesterday was really scary, and this kind of weird story that can be passed down from person to person is more terrifying than a lot of famously creepy and weird fictional writings, isn't it?"
In the middle of his sentence, he reacted and asked Ichijō Mirai with a look: What's so unusual?
Suddenly saying something that doesn't fit their status, and explaining to the others that his expression just now was abnormal, is clearly signaling that there is something abnormal, isn't it?
Could it be that the couple of adults and children just now noticed his expression?
Their sudden approach was so sudden that it was only natural that they noticed.
"If you're scared, why don't you just look at my eyes?" Ichijō Mirai said, "My eyes are a rare shade of red, the same color as the eyes of that police officer who was on TV a while back, so don't they look reassuring?"
His eyes dropped a little, and he looked at Morofushi Hiromitsu, who was standing with his shoulders held in a good-naturedly tilted position, and responded without moving, "Well, there is something unusual.
Responding, but responding to the information that Morofushi Hiromitsu had already determined, it was like taking time out of his busy schedule to make a perfunctory response.
Morofushi Hiromitsu:"..."
Ichijō Mirai had already looked up to see Matsuda Jinpei and the others, he absently let go of Morofushi Hiromitsu and turned towards the box, "Why so slow, let's go, make it quick."
"Wait," Morofushi Hiromitsu said in a hurry, "the box is in,"
He was about to say where he had booked the box when he realized that Ichijō Mirai was heading in the direction of the box, and paused for a moment.
Matsuda Jinpei came up behind him, bumped his elbow suspiciously, and inquired in code, "Second seat?"
Translation: The great, merciful, and wise Savior finally had the good sense to let Date Wataru go and start picking the second unlucky person, which was none other than Morofushi Hiromitsu?
This is something that can't be said outright and needs to be asked under the radar, but if it is said out loud, the broad-minded Savior is going to open up his sky-high grudge book and start holding a grudge...
Morofushi Hiromitsu nodded rather wordlessly, his eyes were still on Ichijō Mirai's body, but he didn't go after him right away, instead, he slowed down his pace and warned in a low voice, "He's noticed something unusual here, so pay attention to your disguise and don't reveal our identity as police cadets."
The others didn't stop, didn't even slow down a beat, as if they hadn't heard Morofushi Hiromitsu at all, but only nodded their heads imperceptibly or gave a look to indicate that they were aware of what was going on.
It was only when they walked into the box as if nothing had happened and closed the door that they asked, "What's wrong?"
"Is there a criminal?"
"Probably a criminal who watches the news..."
"Ahem, there's no need for that," Matsuda Jinpei interjected in a very low voice, "Even people who don't usually read the news, as long as they're not a savage living in the mountains and forests, would have a hard time not paying attention to the news on the...uh,"
He was serious, "Savior, the one who's so good that he puts everyone's mind at ease, right?"
It's true, there are two ways to be reassured.
One is to reassure the uninformed with fame and power, and the other is to reassure people by making their hearts feel as if they're dead...
"Did you hear what we just said?" Morofushi Hiromitsu judged the matter from the information analyzed by his classmates, "Then draw a circle with the distance between us as a radius, and it's most likely that the criminal is in the vicinity of the circle."
Otherwise, Ichijō Mirai wouldn't have made a point of explaining that 'Morofushi Hiromitsu's face was just reminiscent of a weird story' and 'I'm not a police officer on the news, I'm a student of literature with zero force value'.
Ichijō Mirai: "Uh-huh."
Upon entering the room, he walked straight to the center of the small low table and sat down, then turned around and tapped on the wall behind him, opening a small square window through the seemingly intact wall.
Inside the window was the kitchen.
One of the cooks was near the window and was startled to see that the delivery window was open.
"Good evening, Mr. Inoue. Please hurry up with our meal," Ichijō Mirai said in an urgent voice, "Our president just died violently, but we've worked two months of shifts and only got off work for an hour, and we desperately need to eat out to soothe our broken hearts before we can kill people indiscriminately in the streets in anger, but our bosses have told us that if we don't get back in half an hour, they'll take three months off our salaries as a gift to the president. Mr. President as a gift, so please, whether we will kill people indiscriminately on the street depends on the speed of your food!"
"Oh yes, a pair of chopsticks please, in the fourth column of the third row of cabinets on your left, please."
He closed the window, sat down again, and looked back at his classmates who stayed in the doorway, "What did you guys just say?"
Students: "..."
...What were you saying?!
Is this a new kind of forced meal?
You don't have to threaten to kill someone in the street to get a meal!
But it's very Ichijō Mirai.
They didn't understand and were shocked.
"I remember," no one said anything, and Ichijō Mirai recalled himself, "Uh-huh, there are criminals, so eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat."
He smiled, "I'll show you the goodies Morofushi-san hid."
The students again: "..."
"Oh, there's still a third one, and the lucky student is still Morofushi," Matsuda Jinpei immediately sat down, "Told you so."
If he had known that Morofushi Hiromitsu would be the unlucky one, he wouldn't have taken such a small step back.