"DAMN IT... DAMN IT... DAMN IT!" Ren was lost in his thoughts, and from time to time, a curse word would escape his mouth into the open. He was like that all the way through the hallway.
This morning was a disaster to him. He was now under investigation for blackmail and theft that he didn't do. 'She's a wicked one, huh?'
But more than the anger he felt, there was a sense of grudging admiration for the plan as a whole.
'She was able to come up with a plan like this in such a short amount of time and put me at the center of everything while slipping away from it herself. It was a devilish plan, I'll give her that.'
Ren slowed down as he got close to the classroom, and after a little hesitation, he walked past the room and headed straight for the exit. What led to this decision were two major factors. The biggest one was that he was on the brink of exhaustion—his energy was down to 6/40 now, since he had used Eyes of Desire two more times and dropped into the red zone. This was also part of the reason Ren left the principal's office early.
The second reason for Ren leaving was the problem he was facing right now: it seemed that the principal and the detectives weren't the only ones who knew. He remembered his morning encounter with Takeshi and Ritsu, the way they looked at him and ignored him, especially Takeshi.
'hhhh, he's definitely planning to bite me when he gets the chance, so my best move is not to encounter them yet.'
Ren walked through the streets on the way back home—a route that was usually full of students heading home under the yellow sky, but now he was the only student heading in the opposite direction.
Ren left the school, leaving all the exciting interactions for later when he was in better shape and had a plan to solve this problem. But before that, there was something else bothering Ren, so he thought about the System and asked:
'What does the 70% corruption in the partner profile mean?'
As usual, the System answered immediately:
[THE PERCENTAGE SHOWN IN THE PARTNER PROFILE REPRESENTS THE BASE POTENTIAL OF HOW CORRUPTIBLE THAT INDIVIDUAL IS. THE HIGHER THE PERCENTAGE, THE EASIER IT IS TO FULLY CORRUPT THEM.]
The answer Ren got from the System matched what he had already suspected, but there was something more to look into.
'Saying that they're easier to corrupt means there are aspects where they're already corrupted, and that's what makes them easier to corrupt. Oh, I see now. So that's why...'
'The percentage wasn't only for the success rate, but also the danger rate.'
Ren's mind drifted again into his thoughts. He was always like this—an overthinker. But that trait had also helped him through a lot of things and times, mostly because he always kept his thoughts to himself.
After fighting through the exhaustion and bone-deep pain, he reached the house and went inside. He didn't even think about a shower, food, or anything else; he just needed rest.
'Good, now I feel scammed. I wouldn't have used Eyes of Desire this much if I knew I'd end up like this. Sure, it felt unstoppable gathering all the information I needed, but getting my energy back is not an easy task, it seems.'
Ren had slept through the previous night completely exhausted and only regained one point of energy. That was a terrible recovery rate. If he burned five points every time he used the skill, it meant needing five full days of rest just to bounce back. That was entirely unfair.
Ren fell onto the bed face-up, staring at the ceiling—a sight he rarely saw during broad daylight.
"What to do now?"
Ren stayed in that position for a long time, thinking about what his next move should be, and whether there was a way out. Then, after nearly forty minutes, Ren finally smiled—a slight, tired smile. He covered his face as his eyes grew heavy and slowly closed. Exactly one hour after arriving home, he fell fast asleep, still facing the ceiling.
An hour earlier, in the principal's office at XXX School building:
Akihiko was supposed to look into an embezzlement and blackmail case alongside Eiko, which was why he had been forced to wake up really early this morning. Despite the age difference, his partner was the lead on this case, and he simply had to follow her lead.
'Things are usually like this most of the time, but this case is different. It seems like Eiko was triggered, and that's affecting her performance in an obvious way. Who was the damn ass who gave her this case, knowing how Eiko feels about this kind of stuff?' New chapters come out on novelping.com first.
With no way of knowing, Akihiko closed his notebook and watched Eiko and Principal Daigo talking, finalizing things before they left.
'This was energy-consuming, but this case is kind of weird in a way.'
Akihiko leaned back into the sofa and looked up as he thought over the conversation—or rather, the unofficial interrogation and Ren's jarring shift in words.
'That kid gave me conflicting feelings. There was some change that happened in the way he talked and acted between the beginning and the end of the session, as if he was a completely different person. Not only that...'
Akihiko always prided himself on having a very sharp instinct when it came to people's body language and a special way of cornering them. But he was a lazy guy most of the time, preferring easy cases that took less time to solve over massive investigations—which was ultimately what kept him as a second-rate detective.
'There were several weird things happening during the session. Like, at the beginning, he was acting just like a normal person would if an accusation of this size was pointed at them, but....'
Akihiko couldn't quite put it into words, but he definitely felt something strange about Ren—specifically two moments when Ren went completely still, and right after each time, the way he talked changed, along with his demeanor, almost as if he had just figured something out.
Akihiko didn't believe Ren was as blindly guilty as Eiko did, but what he had observed made him even more suspicious now.
'Ren's side of the story was interesting. If we look at it from the perspective that Ren is innocent, it definitely gives a good reason why Aoi reported him and tried to pin everything on him. Meanwhile, in Aoi's story, there is no viable motive for Ren doing this—he doesn't have a criminal record nor does he have a bad reputation. But who knows? There's no guarantee he isn't lying, too.'
Akihiko was intrigued from his own perspective. There had to be some truth to it, because Akihiko believed that the story was simply too good to have been made up completely from scratch right on the spot during his moment of shock—to the point that he'd had to be called out of it just to wake up.
Akihiko looked at Eiko one last time before deciding to take this case seriously.
'Ah, lucky you, kid. I'll look into your story to find the truth that lies there, whether you're guilty or innocent.'
"Since Aoi has her detective, I'll be yours."