“Um, do you really not remember? You taught me the Zu-zu dialect, didn’t you?”
I asked to confirm.
But as expected, Ugohonjo sensei was greatly surprised to hear this.
“Zu-zu dialect can be taught? I’ve been hearing it since I was born and it’s ingrained in my body, so teaching it would actually be difficult.”
“Huh?”
What does this mean? I felt like she taught me thoroughly and carefully from the beginning. I called her “sensei” because she was such a good teacher…
I felt an ominous sensation, as if something unpleasantly sticky had attached to my back, and left the interrogation room.
Afterward, at a nearby cafe, Koyomin, Naomi-san, and I began an emergency meeting.
After ordering coffee, Naomi-san immediately leaned over the round table with a grim expression. Rather than looking like police, she looked like a villain who might propose some smuggling deal.
“We could do this at headquarters, but you never know who might be listening.”
“My sympathies,” said Koyomin.
“Right… So, Kanako.”
Both of them immediately peered into my face.
“Are you sure she wasn’t lying? It’s not a mishearing or anything, right?”
“Don’t get my hopes up for nothing,” said Naomi-san with intense pressure. While calming her down, I slowly explained.
“It wasn’t a mishearing. I could hear the dialect properly too… That was her true feelings, without a doubt.”
“I-I see… But even so…”
Naomi-san had a happy yet troubled expression as she sank deep into her chair and looked up at the ceiling.
She seemed both joyful that someone close to her might not be the culprit, while also confused by the inexplicable events.
“That surveillance footage is like the main evidence, right?”
“Yeah, without that I could be more optimistic…”
As Naomi-san covered her face with her hands, I suggested we organize things one by one.
“First, isn’t there a possibility it was someone else? You know, like the tricks you often see in crime stories.”
“Like someone impersonated her,” I thought, but Koyomin shrugged her shoulders.
“Disguising as a detective right under the police’s nose? And then removing the disguise right after the escape to frame Ugohonjo… The difficulty level would be insane.”
Naomi-san, being a police officer herself, bitterly denied this.
“I dunno about that. In this case, we don’t know how many people from inside are involved…”
The conversation was going in circles… That’s when it happened.
Stomp stomp—
Several people in suits entered the store and immediately surrounded our table.
In the center was a familiar face—the skilled, powerful, and hairy Inspector Gori.
“Gori!? And what are you guys doing here too?”
The people with him seemed to be Naomi-san’s subordinates, and she looked surprised with wide eyes.
Inspector Gori, meanwhile, seemed to shrink his large body while looking extremely apologetic as he presented a warrant.
“Um, Inspector Terabayashi, you have been ordered to suspension.”
“Suspension?”
Naomi-san let out a ridiculous-sounding voice.
Inspector Gori and the other detectives seemed intimidated by her every move.
Koyomin and I peered at her face.
“What did you do to get suspended, Naomi-san?”
“Do you have any idea?”
Naomi-san said with a straight face:
“On the contrary, I have too many possibilities—I can’t tell which one it is.”
When she says it with such confidence, it troubles us too.
Since we knew all too well about her unrestrained behavior, honestly we thought it wouldn’t be strange if she got disciplined for something.
“You probably pushed the boundaries too far.”
Inspector Gori nodded at Koyomin’s words.
“That’s right. Surveillance, forceful interrogations, illegal seizure of evidence… and various other excessive behaviors have resulted in this suspension order.”
Inspector Gori was the humble type even when making arrests.
Naomi-san was not satisfied and took a sullen attitude.
“Tch… Why suspension at this timing? The higher-ups had been turning a blind eye!”
Inspector Gori was practically wringing his hands as he bowed his head, asking her to turn herself in.
“That may be so, but I was told to detain Terabayashi as quickly as possible—”
“Is that real?! It’s not fake, is it?!”
Naomi-san grabbed the inspector’s collar—not exactly the attitude of someone being arrested.
As Inspector Gori coughed and choked, another detective tried to calm things down.
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT LOCALIZERMEERKAT.GITHUB.IO
“Please calm down, Inspector Terabayashi. there’s no way we could make something like that. We’re not you, after all.
Hearing this, she immediately let go.
“Well, that’s true. Even in the vast Metropolitan Police, I’m about the only one who forges documents.”
“You were forging them like it was normal… No wonder you got disciplined.”
I’m actually impressed she could maintain such an attitude.
Naomi-san seemed to resign herself as she scratched her head.
“Don’t make sense when you’re just Kanako. Fine, take me away. I’ll give them a piece of my mind, damn it!”
I take back what I said—she hadn’t resigned herself at all.
Cursing, Naomi-san was led away by the detectives.
Koyomin and I could only look at each other.
“Koyomin, what do you think?”
“What do I think…”
My sister put her hand to her chin, analyzing this turn of events.
“Naomi-san gets suspended at this timing. It can only mean someone’s scheme is in motion.”
“It feels like some kind of conspiracy by someone who doesn’t want us getting close to the truth, right?”
Honestly, even an idiot like me can tell—it’s obvious someone’s pulling strings behind the scenes. But…
“The person capable of such a feat is the culprit behind all this. Borrowing Naomi-san’s words, they’re the ‘mastermind,’ right?”
“The person who was working behind Hijikata-san… To execute such blatant power plays, they either have considerable authority or confidence their identity won’t be revealed. Either way, they’re extremely troublesome.”
“If we find them, we might be able to solve the police corruption and save Ugohonjo sensei.”
As we were having this conversation, Inspector Gori, who had remained here, called out to us.
“You two, can I have a word?”
“Ah, yes, of course.”
The inspector sat down with a serious expression. At least it wasn’t an atmosphere for casual conversation—he had a pressed, unrelaxed, stern look.
“If you’re the great detective and her assistant, you’ve probably noticed… This whole series of events, things around are quite suspicious.”
“Yes, we were just discussing that,” said Koyomin.
“As expected,” he muttered, scratching his neck.
“Inspector Terabayashi gets called out quite often… but having formal disciplinary action taken like this is the first time.”
“Meaning verbal warnings were frequent. And brushing them off with ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m reflecting on it’ was a daily occurrence.”
“I can just picture her picking her ears while listening.”
Inspector Gori could only smile wryly at our unrestrained opinions.
He continued the conversation with a bit of follow-up.
“She’s a good superior, you know. Selfish but caring. The police higher-ups value that aspect of the Inspector and her ability to take action, and this case had video evidence… Why now? That’s the opinion of us subordinates.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, and moreover, Ugohonjo is someone incapable of wrongdoing… It all smells fishy.”
Inspector Gori crossed his arms. His arm hair peeked out—if Kabemura-san saw this, her fantasies would run wild… Wait, this isn’t the time to be thinking about that.
I decided to ask the inspector about the circumstances when the order came down.
“Speaking of which, Inspector Gori. You said you were ordered to do this—was there anything that struck you as odd?”
Inspector Gori apologetically apologized to me.
“No, sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“Actually,” he prefaced, scratching his cheek.
“Maybe because I was tired, but my memory of that part is vague. When I came to, I was being handed a warrant to detain Inspector Terabayashi.”
So he followed orders without being able to argue back.
“If I had been listening properly from the start, this wouldn’t have happened…”
So that’s why he looked so apologetic… from the responsibility of not being able to stop it… Even though Naomi-san has been leading him around by the nose, he’s really such a Inspector Gori──this isn’t the time to be feeling warm and fuzzy!
“Memory?”
I ask back. I think Ugo-honjo-sensei said something similar too.
I don’t know what this coincidence means.
But I can’t shake the feeling that something strange is lurking behind the scenes… It’s rather unsettling.
“Sorry, this kind of thing rarely happens, but…”
He’s not lying, or rather, I know he was sleeping until just now, so it makes sense that his memory would be fuzzy.
“It’s pathetic for an adult to say this, but… please cooperate with this case. Please, I’m begging you like this. I’ll even pay a fee.”
A tough-looking man bowing his head to two high school girls. He draws strange looks from those around us, but he’s not the type of man to care about such things.
I let out a small laugh and glance at Koyomin. Even she, who usually has little expression, was wearing a faint smile like me.
“It’s fine. For the fee, just cover our coffee here.”
Koyomin can casually say cool things like that—as expected of my sister.
Though, well, I wouldn’t mind if she had left that line for me, the director of the detective agency, to say…
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