Mir turned a blind eye to their undisguised contempt and waved down a cab.
“Well then, I’ll wait for you at the station.”
Of course the others weren’t going to let him ride off alone.
The three of them all crammed into the already-small car, and Aisha even grabbed the stunned Xia Ye along for good measure, leaving them packed in tight.
None of which had anything to do with Mir, sitting up front in the passenger seat.
“To Precinct 03.”
The driver shot a strange look at Aisha, crammed in with the other three, but chose to say nothing.
“Tch. A City Guard captain, and here she is bumming a ride back to the station.” Mir mimicked the contemptuous expression Aisha had just been giving him.
Aisha’s pretty face flushed slightly.
She didn’t answer him, pretending instead to admire the scenery out the window.
Just as Aisha had said, Locke Street wasn’t far from the station to begin with; the ride took less than five minutes.
After they arrived, Mir activated his skill: Haggling.
“Cut us some slack—look, several of us are cops.” Mir tried to haggle with the driver, but his voice was so loud it drew a few gawking onlookers over.
Aisha felt she couldn’t afford this kind of embarrassment.
She took out a hundred-Mila note and handed it over.
“Keep the change.”
Seeing that someone had paid, Mir gave up on haggling.
The five of them entered the station.
They’d just reached the lobby when they heard an angry female voice:
“I’ll say it one more time!
I am NOT joking!”
“What’s going on?” Aisha pushed open the door and led everyone into the office.
Inside, a blue-haired cat-eared girl was arguing about something with two officers who were barely holding back their laughter.
“Captain, this young lady says she was hunted by the Black Silhouette yesterday,” a chubby officer reported to Aisha.
“The Black Silhouette?” Aisha thought for a moment.
“You mean the Black Silhouette—that shadowy culprit from Detective Conan, over in the modern world?”
Aisha, who often read novels and manga, still had some impression of these things.
Carlo, the shut-in otaku, chimed in right on cue.
“Detective Conan?
That anime that teaches people several hundred different ways to commit murder?”
“Right, right.” The blue-haired girl looked earnestly at Aisha.
“Pfft—”
“You’re going too far! I’ve put up with you long enough!” Berti glared at the skinny officer who’d laughed out loud.
“My wife had a baby,” the skinny officer said, unfazed.
“You were obviously laughing at me—you haven’t stopped once!”
“Miss Berti, we’ve undergone rigorous training. No matter how funny it is, we do not laugh.” The skinny officer turned and glanced at the chubby one. You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
“Unless we can’t hold it in.”
Berti was starting to wonder whether coming here to report a crime had been a waste of time.
“You two go do your jobs; I’ll handle this.” Aisha, who had watched for a while from the side, shooed the two male officers away.
“Now then, could you tell me what happened?” she asked seriously.
This cat-eared girl seemed a little familiar?
Mir sprawled over the desk and leaned in close to Berti’s face, studying her carefully.
Berti recognized him first, though.
“Ah! You’re the director’s son who was fighting with our class rep this morning! How’d you turn into a girl?”
The hell?!
The idle Xia Ye and the other two were beyond shocked—could an airhead’s eye for faces really be that good?
Ah, so this was the cat-eared girl who’d been breaking up the fight this morning.
Mir’s impression of Berti stopped right there.
By the way, hadn’t they just mentioned the Black Silhouette?
“So could you please tell me what happened first?” The ignored Captain Aisha impatiently tapped her fingers.
Mir was pulled off to the side by Xia Ye, too.
“Yesterday I saw some weird thing kill someone! Right on Locke Street.”
!!!
“Could you describe what happened in detail?” Finally, some progress on the case!
Everyone besides Mir turned serious.
“Yesterday, when I was buying cat biscuits, I saw a woman walk into an alley in a daze. I didn’t sense anything wrong at the time, but when I went to cut through that alley to take a shortcut home, I saw that thing they call the Black Silhouette crouched next to the woman’s corpse, holding a bloodstained knife…” Berti swallowed nervously, still not over her fright.
“Then he chased me for several streets, all the way from Locke Street to the academy. In the end a little girl who looked human, maybe ten years old, saved me. That little one was really so cute—her eyes were just like a bunny’s. I’d love to see her one more time…” By the end, Berti’s expression had turned starry-eyed.
Oh, come on!
So it was that airhead girl from yesterday!
Mir finally realized the cat girl in front of him was the one he’d run into yesterday—he still had her candy on him, in fact.
“And then?” The others stared straight at the cat girl.
“And then what?” Berti didn’t understand what these people were getting at.
“The details!” Aisha rapped the desk to prompt her.
“Like who that girl was, what features the Black Silhouette had, that sort of thing.”
“How would I know who that girl was? I came to report a crime precisely because I want you to help me find out who she is!” Berti slapped the desk excitedly.
This cute-kid fanatic was terrifying!
Carlo gave Berti an approving look.
Aisha sighed, took a manga volume out of her desk drawer, flipped to a page, and held it up.
“Did the Black Silhouette look like this?”
Berti examined it carefully.
“Yes! Just like that, exactly the same!”
It really was the damn Black Silhouette?!
Aisha had the feeling she’d been played.
“Is there a race called the Black Silhouette?” Xia Ye asked, curious.
“Not that I’ve heard of.” Mir spread his hands.
“It could be someone using magic to turn into that, or it could be a Psi-Spirit Energy ability,” Sak said, chewing on a fingernail.
“But what’s his motive for killing?
A magic ritual?
Or is he just a plain psycho?”
“Dunno.
I wonder if we can apply to cancel this internship once we catch the culprit.” Mir only cared about whether he could keep slacking off.
“This time we’re acting on our own; it doesn’t count as field training,” Carlo said, dashing all their hopes.
The three of them suddenly felt a bit disheartened.
“Next let’s go investigate the people the victim was in contact with before she died.” Xia Ye, unusually, spoke up with a suggestion.
“If it’s a magic ritual, wouldn’t it be very dangerous?”
The three, who’d already lost all fighting spirit, looked at her in surprise.
“If it’s a dangerous magic ritual, wouldn’t a lot of innocent people be sacrificed?” was how she answered.
The girl was no saint—if she were, she’d never have massacred a village.
But even so, she hadn’t laid a hand on the village’s children.
Maybe it was hypocritical, but she wanted to stop this ritual.
They actually had no need to get involved in this at all.
But since it was the first request Xia Ye had made since coming to this world, Mir wasn’t going to refuse her.
“Mm.” Mir agreed to her unreasonable little demand and said solemnly, “Once we track down the culprit, let’s go home and get married.”
“…Go to hell.” Xia Ye apparently didn’t get the joke; her face flushed slightly.