[Childhood Years - Special].
Ichijō Mirai was sitting on the ground, thinking calmly.
In the middle of his thoughts, the top right corner of his field of vision was lit up with distinct buffs, namely.
[April: Congratulations, you can try to crawl and perceive objects, but please don't try to understand the geometric space, orientation, height, etc. You are just a child, and your values in all aspects are decreasing significantly. When appropriate, you may babbled loudly to remind your parents where you have rolled to in a closed manner.]
[Hunger: Last time I ate or last time I ate, apparently your unreliable parents forgot about you again, come on, cry out loud.]
[Depression: Wow, you've fallen into a depressed state again, according to full statistics, you've been playing the special for six months, with a depressed state of less than 30 for six months, and an all-time high of 60 when you unlocked the special, so please don't get any more depressed, the adults will be worried.]
These are all debuffs, the only buff is one.
[Special Attention: For some obvious and not-so-wonderful reason, your parents are very worried about you, pay extra attention to you, and have a very high probability of not condemning you for being inexplicably lost from the cradle again, and retrieve you from all corners. Of course, cases are sometimes as unreasonable as children, and in following their parental duty to show parental love to you, they are also following their police duty to show police love to the public...].
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
The hands on the clock in the living room wobbled to nine o'clock, and with a crisp click, an alarm sounded from the depths of the house, ringing for less than half a second before being cut off.
Then there was a scrambling to get up and the sound of something falling to the ground and being picked up, and a human voice saying, "Wait, it's nine o'clock!"
It was a male voice, the owner of the voice was young and sounded annoyed, "Damn, I've been watching too long,"
"Mirai, Mirai where are you?"
With the sound of footsteps, a young man of less than thirty came into the living room, but in just a few seconds, his voice changed dramatically, if he had just been talking to himself in a normal male voice, then now it was as if he was calling out to 'Mimi', soft and soft, and he was not even aware of it, the more he called out the softer his voice became, like he was coaxing a child.
But he was indeed coaxing a child.
While screaming, the young man while making a bottle of milk powder, began to roam around the house patrolling up, he first went to the baby room, no surprise to find that the baby room should be locked again empty, and went to the living room, in the empty living room to listen to a few seconds of their own soft strange sound echo, rubbing his arm to the bathroom.
He circled the house two or three times before he found Ichijō Mirai in the shadows of the corner of the balcony.
His steps and shouts stopped, and he thought for a few seconds in obvious urgency, then realized that the gap in the railing was too small for a child to fall through, so he breathed a sigh of relief and went over to him gently, "What's wrong, Mirai, are you hungry?"
"I'm sorry, Dad found a clue when he was going through the cases, so he didn't pay attention to the time..."
Ichijō Mirai turned his head and looked over at Mr. Ichijō, who was rambling quietly.
Ichijō-san crouched down to eye level with the child, and as his words unconsciously spilled out like water, he immediately shut up and stopped babbling, and then he stretched out his arms and asked, "Can I hold you?"
"It's too windy to stay out too long. You might catch a cold."
Any parent with experience in childcare would have laughed at this scene with utter bemusement, and even the few who didn't would have laughed in disbelief because they were wondering, 'How can you ask a four-month-old for his opinion? Seriously? This kind of guy shouldn't cause any trouble, just hire someone experienced to take care of the baby, maybe that will improve the survival rate'.
But this kind of behavior, which seems unimaginable to others, is exactly how Mr. Ichijō and Ichijō Mirai get along.
[Rule #1: A good parent should respect the child and ask the child's opinion beforehand when you want to do hugs, kisses, bonding activities, etc.]
Ichijō Mirai looked at Mr. Ichijō for a few seconds before opening his arms wanly.
As he was eagerly picked up by Mr. Ichijō, the system prompt popped up automatically as usual due to the physical contact:
['Mr. Ichijō': Obviously, this is your father.]
Below that, in small print, was the following.
[Since the player locked his name as 'Ichijō Mirai', as the father, the original surname has been lost, and is now Ichijō.
...Yes, he has your last name...]
Ichijō Mirai didn't even glance at this reminder a thousand times, and after two seconds of flashing, it faded away.
Mr. Ichijō was oblivious to this, and based on his experience, after carrying Ichijō Mirai to the sofa, he consciously took three or four steps back, took out the bottle, and softened his voice once again, "Are you hungry, do you want to drink now?"
[Rule #2: Qualified parents should value their children and make sure that they are in full view of their children at all times... that is to say, please stay away from them for a while... thank you.]
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
He was a bit tempted to quit the game, but considering that even if he quit a hundred times he'd still be faced with it as long as he intended to play, he took the bottle and drank it by himself, just as he had done before.
Ichijō-san crouched down in front of the sofa, one hand holding down the edge of the sofa and the other hanging down the side of his leg, vaguely protecting Ichijō Mirai, and after observing to make sure that his four-month-old looked as depressed as ever and that there was nothing else out of the ordinary about him, he had the good sense to ask for a favor and asked to be excused: "Put it down on the table after you finish it, and then wash it later when mom's shift is over, I'll be going back to my study, is that okay? Can I go back to the study now?"
Thought for a few seconds, he added: "Mom just got the autopsy report back from the medical examiner, it is not suitable for children to see, you want to see the dossier if you come to me, okay?"
Mr. Ichijō's attitude towards a four-month-old child who couldn't even understand what an adult was saying, not to mention 'medical examiner', 'autopsy report', and 'dossier', was like treating a ten-year-old child who had already grasped the common sense of human society.
Not only Mr. Ichijō, but also Mrs. Ichijō, was the holder of this strange attitude.
Listening to the indistinct sounds of movement coming from the living room, Mrs. Ichijō looked up in the direction of the living room, and her brows, already knitted over the case, did not loosen after she looked up until a very soft slamming of the door came from the study next door, and only then did she look down once again, but this time at her cell phone.
The phone lay quietly on the desktop, and a minute had passed without any movement, indicating that Ichijō Mirai was not abnormal.
Mrs. Ichijō's brow relaxed for a few seconds, but then furrowed again as she looked at the case file again.
She was looking at an old case file from the past, and the backdating period was counting down, so if she didn't get to the bottom of it in half a month, and the culprit didn't leave Nihon honestly, he'd be able to come out of it with a clean slate, and a nice, calm, and collected smile on his face when he met the police.
For a police officer, that's unacceptable.
...Of course, preceded by various qualifiers, such as the police that fit the original meaning of the word 'police', such as the police that cares for the people, such as the good police...
None of this has anything to do with Mrs. Ichijō.
She wasn't a police force that met the child's good expectations, but rather, a gray police force.
The cell phone on the desktop vibrated a few times, indicating a new message, and Mrs. Ichijō lifted her black eyes to look at it.
The cell phone's screen, which had no password, showed the full text message, and the sender was a string of numbers: [5, 23, 1.]
Opposite is a new partner that Mrs. Ichijō has found recently, who belongs to the black forces.
Criminals on the run are often kept out of sight, in a pool of murky water, and as it happens, the black power is a fish in the murky water, and can often pinpoint the outsiders.
The '5' refers to the five months of cooperation, the '23' refers to the twenty-third cooperation, and the '1' means it's done.
As soon as she received the text message, Mrs. Ichijō realized that the man who had gotten away with murder due to a lack of evidence was already on his way to visit the number one tourist attraction in the Midway River.
She lowered her eyes, and a smile appeared on her lips.
Coldly, a voice came from the side, "The back of your head."
Almost subconsciously, Mrs. Ichijō's body moved, but just as her leg was about to strike the visitor, her reasoning, which had become more and more honed in recent days, overrode her instincts, and she came to a screeching halt, looking down at the table, "Mirai."
At some point, there was a child standing at the table, a four-month-old who should have been in a cradle, who wasn't even as tall as the table, who had to hold on to the table to keep from wobbling, who looked sickly and ready to puddle back and decide to go on a hunger strike for the rest of the day.
She paled.
Were there geniuses in the world?
Even if there was, there were no children who could walk and even talk in four months, much less children who could read and speak complex autopsy files in four months without having learned Japanese.
If there is, is it a genius?
No, it's a monster.
Ichijō Mirai didn't seem to notice Mrs. Ichijō's creepy expression, or rather, he did, and his mood rose.
He repeated patiently, expressionless and unaware: "The back of the head."
"It wasn't a knife wound in the chest that killed him, it was the back of his head."
As if to say, 'That's right, I not only understood the file, but also found clues that you didn't see.' Mrs. Ichijō's expression became more and more surprised and horrified.
Ichijō Mirai looked up at her, silently, watching every nuance of her expression, and after a moment's thought, he tugged at his mouth and gave a smile.
A stiff one, with only his mouth moving and his eyes devoid of mirth, more like a monster's poor imitation of a human smile than a human smile.
His quiet eyes were like blood, a pool of dead blood.
Finally, with this strange, creepy smile, Mrs. Ichijō couldn't hold back any longer and screamed, "Mirai!"
"Why are you standing up!!!"
She hugged Ichijō Mirai in shock, "Quickly, quickly, quickly crawl, stand up too quickly will grow up to be carsick and airsick!"
While grabbing Ichijō Mirai by the collar like a fish in a panic, she also showed a smile that she couldn't help but grit her teeth and tried to hold back, "Wow, Mirai can talk, that's great!"
She eventually couldn't hold it back and her smile twisted, "But why not 'mommy'!"
"Let's do it again, shall we?"
"Okay, now you just came in and saw mommy, mommy, me-"
"And then, you say...?"
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
He lay in Mrs. Ichijō's arms, in the arms of the police officer who had started out perfectly normal, but who had grown appropriately blind, appropriately ignorant, appropriately nonchalant, appropriately alarmed, and now even less normal than he was as he had become distinctly different from the other children's abnormality, and had fallen into a long, silent silence.
"What's the matter, is lying down uncomfortable?" Mrs. Ichijō asked, and after a moment's thought, she responded, "I just finished eating, and mom pinched your stomach?"
She flipped Ichijō Mirai over and smiled at him as if he were dead, "I'm sorry, mommy didn't mean to do that."
Trying to change the subject again, "Mirai can actually smile, that's awesome!"
"Come on~ I'm mommy~ You should say-"
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
Big holy Cow Cat.