[Important clues have been added: This is the culprit's revenge on 'Satan'.]
[Total number of people to be rescued: 156 (3 rescued, 136 dead, 20 to be rescued).]
[You are dead, the mission has failed, and is being automatically archived.]
Morofushi Hiromitsu walks amongst the crowds of people that flow through the streets at night.
He and Ichijō Mirai weren't walking side by side, so when he looked sideways, pedestrians would occasionally squeeze between them, blocking their view of each other.
As another pedestrian passed by, he realized that Ichijō Mirai's expression had changed; what had been a nonchalant, unselfconscious, happy expression had disappeared, replaced by a frown, and his footsteps stopped as he became frozen in the flow of the crowd.
Morofushi Hiromitsu heard him whispering to himself, "That's too much, it's not all my fault, I'm only one-half of it."
"What's wrong," His brow furrowed, then he paused, glancing around quickly without moving, "is there someone dangerous around?"
Ichijō Mirai now clearly had the attitude of one who had met a good opponent and had gotten serious.
Suddenly, is it because he's spotted a wanted man in the crowd?
...Or is it because, like at the ramen shop, they got a message from 'Satan' through a unique sense that only the two of them can receive? Some twin telepathy going on?
"Something's up," Ichijō Mirai said as he caught Morofushi Hiromitsu first and turned the direction towards the department store while calling the other students to catch them, "Hey, it's me."
He greeted them, his eyes still darting between the city's buildings and the night's demarcation line, and without looking back, he handed his cell phone to Morofushi Hiromitsu's ear.
So unexpectedly, Morofushi Hiromitsu's ears exploded with Matsuda Jinpei's voice, "Huh? It's me'? What an understatement, you asshole! You still remember me, huh?"
"Ku! Jō! Mi! Rai!"
Matsuda Jinpei was full of resentment, "You went out alone again!"
"Ah no, this one brought that Morofushi guy, I should praise you, right?"
"Don't run away when we meet again!"
Morofushi Hiromitsu went up in flames.
Even though he quickly turned his head away after reacting, he still took full damage from the first attack due to the stiffness of the phone call that he didn't even pick up on his own accord.
"I think it's this way," Ichijō Mirai said as if nothing had happened, "I'm sorry, Matsuda's mad at me and doesn't want to talk to me, so could you please tell him 'There's a fire at the Beika department store, more than a hundred people trapped, the fire's man-made, and there are five time bombs at the scene' for me, please..."
...Is this 'doesn't want to talk to you'?
You're just dodging damage because you're sure he's going to use a skill, aren't you!
Morofushi Hiromitsu was using his self-mediation skills when he listened to the first half of Ichijō Mirai's seriousness, but his expression quickly became serious when he listened to the second half.
Matsuda Jinpei on the other end of the line heard it without being told: "Hundreds of people trapped, time bombs?"
He didn't ask Ichijō Mirai how he knew that, and simply quit his specific rage-bombing state on the relaxation man, his voice suddenly calm, "Got it, I'll be there as soon as I find the bomb disposal kit."
The phone hung up.
Morofushi Hiromitsu held down Ichijō Mirai's hand as he tried to make another call, "I'll do it."
Ichijō Mirai will make the call, probably every time he talks about something, he's going to innocently get hit by his classmate's skill wave... There's no need for that, there's really no need for that.
Ichijō Mirai didn't have a problem with it, he didn't think he could get through it all at once the second time around, and his tone was casual, "OK, when you're done, call the instructor and tell him to tell Matsumoto Kiyonaga to please ask the police, firefighters, paramedics, the appropriate equipment, and the temporary regulations set up for fire emergencies to be in place in thirty minutes or else I'm afraid there'll be a large number of casualties, and we all don't want to see that happen, do we? "
"Okay," Morofushi Hiromitsu glanced over, not hesitating at Ichijō Mirai's euphemistic, but to his ears rather obvious, threat, "I'll make the announcement now."
By the time all the notifications had been made, they had already arrived at the place.
This time, they arrived early, and the numbers that popped up when Ichijō Mirai stepped into the building were very satisfying.
[Total number of people to be rescued: 156 (0 rescued, 0 dead, 156 to be rescued).]
He went straight to the time bomb on the fourth floor, first finding the exact location of the bomb and confirming that it was placed under the bathroom sink.
It was an ordinary time bomb, with no mercury device, and the fixtures weren't very strong. The red countdown on it had ten minutes left, so it could have been defused and thrown out of the window in the event of an emergency, but the department store wasn't in the middle of nowhere.
But the department store is not remote, the window is densely packed with buildings and people, only the upper floors can try to throw a few seconds left in the countdown, but also in the case of the evacuation of the crowd.
The time bomb on the fourth floor is the one you can't drop.
But it's the first to go off.
Ichijō Mirai thought for a few seconds, and instead of defusing the bomb to try to avoid the 1 in 50 chance, he called Morofushi Hiromitsu up on the intercom, "I have a very important mission for you, amazing Morofushi-san."
He said, "Please help this poor bomber get out of the fire,"
Anywhere.
Of course, it's not possible to say that, it's not convincing to say 'Don't worry, it's okay even if I die, I can go back and start over', and Morofushi Hiromitsu would never accept that.
So, what he said was: "It takes too much time to defuse the bomb. There are too many people trapped. We don't have enough time to rescue them. We can only send the bomb out to defuse it. Go and see if Matsuda and his team or the police bomb disposal experts have arrived. If they have, let them go to a remote place with few people to defuse it."
If not...
I'd rather go to a remote place with fewer people.
But in this case, the bomber will die.
But Morofushi Hiromitsu, who had taken on the responsibility of delivering the bombs, didn't say anything, and in just a few moments, his clothes were already dusty, and his hands and face not covered by a wet towel were also dusty, but without changing his expression, he casually tied the towel back on, and extended his hands out to receive the bombs with solemnity, and at the same time, asked the question, "Are there no other bombs in the vicinity?"
There were five bombs, and this was only the first.
"No, I'll call the others if I find any more," Ichijō Mirai's expression didn't change much either, neither did he act out the sadness of sending his companion to his death, nor was he surprised that his companion accepted it without objection, and his tone of voice didn't even fluctuate when he said, 'I might send the others to their deaths as well,' "I'll be going now."
All he said as he turned to go up the stairs was a barely caring, "Be careful on your way, and keep the bomb out of the way of the fire, it'll set off other bombs if it explodes in the building."
Morofushi Hiromitsu turned as well, carefully steadying the bomb down the stairs, returning a concerned, "Put a towel over it."
Time bombs were hard to find, and the sound of the flames burning everything muffled the beeping sound to such an extent that even Ichijō Mirai, with his acute hearing, could barely hear it at a distance of about a dozen meters.
He found a second bomb on the sixth floor.
The good news was that this one was also not equipped with a mercury equalizer, and the bad news was that it was counting down at about the same time as the first one, which was now over eight minutes.
"Well, it looks like the first bomb wasn't the only one that triggered the last series of explosions, they all went off at about the same time," Ichijō Mirai shrugged his shoulders and called Morofushi Hiromitsu on the intercom, "Hello, dear Morofushi-san, are you still in range of the intercom, please?"
A few seconds later, the intercom rang, and it was Furuya Rei's voice, "I'm on the second floor. Have you found the bomb? I'm on my way up!"
A few more seconds, and the intercom rings again, it's Morofushi Hiromitsu's voice, he sounds like he's running, and he's talking fast, "Yes, Matsuda said he could try to defuse the bomb in the last half-minute, and took the bomb with him, and now he's borrowed a motorcycle, and is rushing as far as he can to an isolated area while waiting for it to get close to the limit to try and defuse the bomb."
"What's the countdown to the second bomb?"
He said, "Matsuda had just left, so if the countdown was close, I could go up with the bomb right away."
The power of 'a bomb explodes when the countdown is up' and 'a bomb that fails to disarm explodes' are similar, while there is a difference between 'a bomb that fails to disarm explodes' and 'two bombs stacked on top of each other that fail to disarm explode', but the difference isn't so great that it's better than two bombs exploding in different places.
"I didn't want you to deliver the bombs," Ichijō Mirai said as he took the second bomb upstairs and continued searching for the others, "but I wanted to ask you if you'd come downstairs at this time of day, and if you'd run into any emergencies on the way down, such as a section of the road becoming impassable and you had to change routes, or an object collapsing in flames and almost hitting you," he said, like a final examiner.
He is like a teacher who draws the key points at the end of the semester, as if nothing had happened: "These are the key points, are to be examined, the next session also want the experience notes of the school bully."
"But judging from the speed at which you handed over the bombs, the probability is that there will be no emergencies, a smooth journey."
"You all don't need to come here," Ichijō Mirai said in a relaxed tone, "Now go and rescue people immediately, from your building, please search outwards in a circle around the entrance, memorize the location of each rescuable hostage, the location of non-rescuable hostages, the situation and the tools needed for rescue,"
He looked at the time, estimated a few seconds of time, "Well... this is also to be examined, give you five minutes, five minutes later I will go from one to another to ask you the last words of experience, please note that this is not a drill, it is a real test, please answer the questions seriously, you are to be an excellent case to let the next class of students refer to."
The third bomb is on the ninth floor.
Ichijō Mirai put the second and third bombs together and compared the countdowns. Realizing that the difference between the two countdowns was within ten seconds, he put down the bombs and resumed the search empty-handed.
The fourth bomb is on the 13th floor.
The 'excellent notes of the schoolmaster' were simple, they drew a line on the first floor of the mall, starting from the starting point, the stores on both sides were AB, and the positions were arranged in numbers.
In five minutes, they had rescued seven people.
With one minute to go in the countdown, Ichijō Mirai kindly dialed Matsuda Jinpei's number, and after a few seconds of waiting, the call was answered with the noise and wind of a motorcycle on the other end.
"Hello, dear Matsuda-san, I've come to inform you about the hell where my great Lord 'Satan' resides, in short, in short, between the fact that you're listening to me right now and you're probably already getting the urge to come over here and kill me right now, I'm going to make it short and sweet: cut the red wire."
He took a knife that had been brought up from the dining area on the fourth floor and dangled it above the red line of the fifth bomb, "I think red is the color of danger, so stop now and cut the red line, quick, I want to hear the explosion or the sound of you breathing a sigh of relief."
Matsuda Jinpei: "???"
What the hell... but damn, very Ichijō Mirai.
What's even worse is that he's so adept at this Ichijō Mirai-style situation that almost as soon as he hears the first sentence, he's already parked in a more isolated spot, and by the time he hears the last, he's already cut the red wire.
"Click."
The sound of the wire being cut traveled from one end of the phone to the other, and Ichijō Mirai, still looking at the fifth bomb, listened in silence.
The world seemed to be silent for a moment, then there was a deafening boom that cut off the cell phone call in an instant, "Boom!"
Ichijō Mirai's face remained unchanged as he cut the red wire of the fifth bomb at the sound of the explosion.
The brightly colored countdown on the screen froze.
"Boom!"