It's easy to become friends with a criminal.
All you have to do is knock on the door of the other person's heart, walk in with enthusiasm and cheerfulness, and the criminal will smile a big happy smile and take so much time to resign himself to his fate.
It's also easy to kill a criminal.
It's just a matter of moving your finger and pulling the trigger, kindly feeding him some drugs, enthusiastically boosting his simple wish to fly 15 meters in the air, and so on and so forth.
But it's not so easy to catch a criminal.
First, the criminal himself will protest, second, the criminal's possible black power will protest, and finally, the FBI will protest.
The arrest was made in the morning, the call came in the afternoon.
Akai Shūichi was in the interrogation room with Ichijō Mirai, the thirteenth criminal of the day, when the FBI brass called to question him.
Ichijō Mirai was quite polite, having already drawn the fifth doodle on the confession book, and nonchalantly responded to the criminal's various excuses with 'Oh, and then, but xx said you were xxx's criminal, and the club didn't invite me, so you were behind it?'
The criminal was calm at the beginning, saying 'You have no evidence, I won't speak until my lawyer comes', then he couldn't hold back, saying 'Who is xx? I don't know him, sir, please don't talk nonsense', then he was puzzled and shocked, saying 'You arrested more than a dozen people, each of them confessed to a criminal and bought himself out of the interrogation room and into prison in this continuous chain?', and finally he collapsed, saying 'Can you change the words?!'
It's not an interrogation, it's torture, but it's very Ichijō Mirai.
Akai Shūichi looked sideways at Ichijō Mirai's scribbles on the paper and the edge of the scribbles, 'What to eat tonight?', 'Can't the ceiling light in the interrogation room be changed? It makes the criminal's already sparse brown hair even sparser. The reflection of the bald head makes me want to laugh. I laugh so hard that I'm not sleepy anymore!', 'You're right, but a bald man running at such a high speed should enter the UK!' and so on.
He was silent for a few seconds before he spoke, "Our spree of catching criminals has attracted attention, I'm going out to answer the phone."
Without looking up, Ichijō Mirai absently scribbled out one rounded English word after another with a ballpoint pen and the drag marks at the end of the sentence, mocking the dozens of hairs that fall out of the bald man's head when he shakes it in agony, while casually replying, "Oh, bye."
And in line with the principle of "since you're here, you can open your mouth now", I interrogated the criminal, "You really didn't cricket me? But Peter swore to me that the club didn't invite me because you cricketed me behind my back and said a lot of bad things about me to the owner of the club."
Tortured bald criminal: "..."
"I've never even met the owner of the club!" He breaks down, "I told you that when I first confessed! The club is so secretive, we wear masks when we go to parties, we hardly recognize our fellow members, let alone the owner of the club, who never shows his face!"
"I told you from the beginning!"
"You're not listening to me!!!"
"Ah, don't get excited," Ichijō Mirai looked up at him, showing an expression of disdain for the jumping rat, "Yeah, yeah, this is the situation, I already know it,"
He lowered his head again, sketching the shape of the bald man's head, wondering whether he should have dinner with his colleague or sneak out to eat alone, while continuing to talk casually, "You really didn't cricket me? You can prove that your Peter said the club didn't invite me..."
He's said this hundreds of times in different phrases, from when the perp first enters the interrogation room, to when the perp breaks down, to when the perp gets excited and pulls his hair out.
Now listen again, the perp starts banging his head on the table.
It was so loud that Akai Shūichi, who was on the phone at the door, couldn't help but look back, slowed down by half a beat, and answered the other end of the line, "...No, we didn't lynch him."
Akai Shūichi, who was on the phone at the door, couldn't help but turn around and answer the other end of the phone a little late, "... No, we didn't use lynching."
"The FBI is prohibited from lynching, but criminals are not prohibited from lynching on their own initiative."
In the midst of the criminal's crashing and completely unneeded voice, he heard a bit of a voice on the other side of the phone, an older sounding man asking Akai Shūichi in an accented tone what he was doing lately, and why he had received several complaints about disturbances if he wasn't in charge of the 'Blonde Murderer' case.
Of course, 'nuisance' is a decent translation of the word 'nuisance'.
To put it bluntly: how did you get my best friend, who is of a different camp, but who gives me a large amount of dollars every month, serves me well, and is a spiritual friend of my half-brother and half-sister, to be so angry that he's actually filing a complaint on the screen?
Akai Shūichi's answer to this question, which is vaguely questioning and critical, is quite decent and honest: yes, they were working on the 'blonde murderer' case, but while looking for clues, one of the culprits passed by Ichijō Mirai, and because of a squinty-eyed look that seemed to be disdainful, he was taken into the interrogation room and asked if he had any grievances, and he could tell them straight away.
He didn't really say it too bluntly, but it was obvious: you can't pass by a dog without getting slapped, so you'd better put up with it, and anyway, there's nothing he can do about Ichijō Mirai but watch him pick up a dog from the east and another dog from the west, and there's no way for the dog's owner or you to do anything about it, or you wouldn't have just made a phone call.
So, let's just put up with it!
If you can't stand it for a while, you can't stand it for a while, and if you can't stand it for a while, you can't stand it for a while, and if you can't stand it for a while, you can't stand it for a while.
As he listened, Ichijō Mirai moved his eyes over to Akai Shūichi and clarified, "I'm not at the point where I'd be slapped if I passed by a dog, but it was Mr. Criminal who first crickets me behind my back, blowing the club owner's whistle so that the club would ignore me."
He was the victim.
He sighs somberly as if he were the victim, "I'm being bullied."
Perpetrator: "..."
Didn't that completely miss the point?
He hit the table even harder and fell silent.
The person on the other end of the line was also silent.
A few seconds later, Akai Shūichi came back and sat down again, holding the hung-up phone, and without changing his expression, he looked down at the new snow-like strands of hair that Ichijō Mirai had added to his statement, and after a pause, he said, "Okay, the interrogation will continue."
Ichijō Mirai opened his mouth immediately, repeating the same bullshit that was etched into his DNA, "But Peter said you were cricketing me behind my back, and he said he heard you say that to the owner of the club."
The long ordeal was interrupted by the ringing of the phone amidst the violent banging of the table by the criminal.
This time it wasn't Akai Shūichi's cell phone, but Ichijō Mirai's new one.
He took it out, glanced at the unfamiliar caller on the screen, and answered it carelessly, "Hello, it's the repeater, please keep it short."
A gentlemanly sounding, but older voice came out of the phone, "Hello, Mr. Messiah."
Unlike the criminal who had broken down and kowtowed, this gentleman sounded well-bred, and even spoke in a somewhat different tone than normal, like a European aristocrat.
"Yes, I am well," Ichijō Mirai smiled, "briefly, sir."
"I hate 'are you there', 'so you are' crap."
The old gentleman paused for a few seconds before continuing, "I'm here about the big bust you've been making the last few days,"
Without further ado, and ignoring all embellishments, he asked bluntly, "What do you want, Mr. Messiah?"
This was a smart man, and Ichijō Mirai's smile widened and his tone cheered up as he stated the truth, "You bully me."
The phone went silent.
It was silent for nearly ten seconds before the old gentleman slowly inquired, "...What?"
"You bullied me," Ichijō Mirai repeated, explaining with respect for the old man, "I've heard about the reputation of the club, and a lot of famous criminals are part of the club, and those who join the club aren't necessarily very good criminals, but those who don't join the club are certainly not very good criminals."
"But you didn't invite me."
He repeated: "You're isolating, bullying me."
The phone went silent again.
This time the silence was longer, so long that it seemed as if the person on the other end had gone mute and was reinstalling his language system.
"Mr. Messiah," The old gentleman finally spoke, his tone and phrasing barely respectful, "the first principle of the club is to hunt with grace, each member of the club is a wolf-like hunter who hunts as if he were a breeze on the grass, silently sneaking up to the edge of his prey and delivering a fatal blow with his fangs."
"The second theme is the patience of a spider viper, the patience of a spider viper that waits for the right prey without eating, drinking or moving for days."
Huh.
Ichijō Mirai pondered for a few seconds, and curiously inquired, "Isn't that me?"
The phone went silent again.
The sound of the criminal crumbling and kowtowing stopped.
There was only a frozen silence in the interrogation room.
"What's the matter," Ichijō Mirai looked left at Akai Shūichi, who had averted his eyes, and right at the criminal, who looked up, and questioned the old gentleman with a straight face, "That's me you're describing!"
"So why did you isolate the bully?"
The phone was silent for a long time.
"You... lurk... patiently... race..."
The old gentleman stuttered, and after several attempts to speak, could only manage to get out a few key words, "..."
"Yes," Ichijō Mirai's tone was delighted, "I raced like the wind through New York, gave the FBI a run for its money, waited for you to call like a viper lying patiently in the bushes, never letting go of me until you realized that it was wrong to use a distinctive culture against me."
"Aren't those the right words to describe me? It should be me."
Gentleman: "..."
There are some people whose stupidity is endearing, and there are some people whose insanity causes their blood pressure to rise and they briefly lose the use of language.
He stopped, stopped, stopped, opened and closed his mouth, "...Okay."
"Okay, Mr. Messiah," he moved away from the phone and took a deep breath, "I'm so sorry that I inadvertently bullied... bullied you,"
"Please believe that it was not our intention."
Once the words were out of his mouth, the rest was better said, "I will send you an invitation to join the club, later."
"However, according to the rules, every reserve member needs to take a test when he receives the invitation and attends the orientation ceremony, it's a necessary procedure, so please forgive me."
Ichijō Mirai: "Okay."
He asked enthusiastically, "Is everyone from the club present at the orientation ceremony?"
He was as excited as if he was picking up vegetables at a market.
The old gentleman was silent again.
After a few seconds of silence, he replied reluctantly, "Most of the members will be there,"
"With the exception of a few members who are not in New York, or have not traveled lately...or have had the misfortune of being arrested and imprisoned, most of the club will attend."
"Oh," Ichijō Mirai responded, and after a moment's thought, he appeased the old gentleman decisively, "Don't worry, any criminals caught by the FBI in the last few days, I..."
"No one will be let go!"
"Don't worry, it's also my duty as a prospective newcomer to screen out the useless guys for the club, and you're the second organization that warmly invited me to join, so I treasure it."
The first is an organization.
Both the police academy and the FBI were reluctantly forced down by Ichijō Mirai.
After the organization, he was happy to be recognized by someone again, and he thought that the old gentleman must be happy as well.
The old gentleman said happily, "...Okay."