Just as I was getting desperate, Lupe motioned to me from the kitchen. I wondered what she wanted to show me, and it was the empty cake plates. Err, we just saw these, and we even counted them.
“What about them?”
“Mm, it might not have anything to do with anything, but wasn’t there an extra piece of cake?”
“Was there?”
I was pretty sure I had bought just the right amount. Lupe and I had passed out the slices together, even—one per person.
“...So, it’s only a maybe, but...” Lupe seemed to be having trouble spitting it out, and she tugged on her skirt, fidgeting. “I might know where Chiba is.”
The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. I was supposedly the detective, but I, too, brazenly went back to the place I’d already returned to a zillion times, along with Lupe—the shed at Blue Cat Nocturne.
That’s where today’s criminal-slash-victim-slash-living dead was sitting on the floor, licking his sticky cake fingers.
“Oh shit!” When he realized he was caught, he whisked the cake behind his back.
The evening sun shining through the gaps in the rundown shed reflected off the red head any Carp fan would be proud of. His sad features made me think for a second that he was a living corpse, but then I thought, Wait, he was always like that, as my head straightened itself out.
Gunma had come back to life. It was a Kantō miracle.
“You...idiot!” I’m gonna wring your neck! I grabbed him. I was so pissed, I figured I would at least scream in his ear. “You stupid idiot! You should have just died! I was wishing you would! Ahhhhhgh!”
I’d had it with his bullshit and was so frustrated, but at the same time relieved, so I ended up crying some confusing tears. He really was a dipshit. So much so that I feel bad for the Carp. I was mortified that this was the only other person from my hometown in this world. He was my shame. My dark past in real time. But then...
“...What’s wrong with her?” He played dumb.
“She’s relieved, duh.” Even Lupe seemed to be having a bizarre misunderstanding.
Man, I was so pissed.
And then—
“What’s your excuse?!”
Chiba was turtle-tied again on the ground outside the shed, and I got back to grilling him.
When I really thought about everything that had happened so far, it was so not funny—I was mad. Why did I have to get freaked out and run around like crazy for this idiot? From beginning to end, it made zero sense.
Should I deactivate LevBi (my skill Level Bind)?
Should I just kill him?
“Uhhh....umm...” Chiba’s eyes got shifty. He looked at the brothel, then at me, then at Lupe, and bit his lip. “It’s true. I couldn’t control my sexual curiosity, and I stole the underwear. Because I love panties! I adore panties! Maybe I’m a pervert!”
“We know that! I’m asking about what happened after that. Why did you pretend to be dead? You weren’t actually, right?”
“Huh? I was just tripping, I guess you could say...”
“Tripping?”
Chiba blinked and licked his lips before replying. “O-Oh, no, I mean...playing dead was... It’s my newest skill that I acquired training in the demon forest. There’re bears in there, you know.”
“Bears, huh? You don’t say. Ugh, they’re like the strongest forest animal, aren’t they?” Not only demons, but bears, too? Ack. If I ever go into the woods again, I’ll wear a bell on my hip.
“I mean, Haru, you were saying to call the soldiers and have me executed. I was scared. I figured I would just die before you did that, was all.”
“Agh... Isn’t that pretty low?! Chiba, this is why I...geez.”
Lupe said, “Well, well,” to calm me down. “It was nothing, so why don’t we just be happy with that. We don’t have to worry about him dying or being killed anymore.”
How sweet of her to go so easy on him. Is her whole body made of sugar? I’d love to eat her up.
If you worry about every poor fool you meet, you’ll never last. How was she born so kind?
Seriously, what do I have to do to be a person like her...?
“The underwear have been returned, Chiba is fine, so we’re good, right?”
She rubbed my back, and I began to calm down a bit. Yeah. Everything turned out fine. Although some things still didn’t sit quite right with me.
“Mm, but wait a sec. The mystery isn’t even solved yet. Who was sneaking in and out through the secret entrance?”
Someone had left tracks after stepping in Chiba’s blood. I was pretty sure there was still a third party who hadn’t appeared yet.
“Huh? An entrance? No, th-that was...”
Chiba was clearly shaken. My intuition as a detective (not powers of deduction) had alarm bells ringing in my head. He was hiding something. There was definitely more to this. What should I do? Deactivate LeveBi after all? Voluntary questioning via violence?
“S-Sorry, that was...me!” Lupe suddenly stood up straight as a rod and confessed.
It was so unexpected that both Chiba and I yelped, “Huh?!”
“Uhh, I actually knew about that entrance before, sorry. I used to, right, come here to slack off during work. I’m really sorry. And then, uh, I wondered how Chiba was doing, so when we got back from shopping—no, sorry, before we went shopping, I peeked in on him.”
When she got to the part about how she’d found him collapsed, she fell silent. Like a humanoid robot who had abruptly finished its storefront demonstration, she froze with the floundering conversation in both hands, wondering which way to take it.
Her eyes alone moved quickly to look at Chiba. Having received that baton and being physically unable to move, Chiba turned just his eyes on me in the same way.
Huh? Me?
Since their through balls all landed at my feet, for some reason, I decided to think about it. “It was dim in there, and you thought he was only sleeping...?”
“Yes, exactly!” Lupe and Chiba exclaimed in harmony.
Having picked up some momentum, I continued my line of reasoning. “But later when you learned he was dead, you were worried you would be a suspect, so you didn’t say anything...?”
“Yes, that’s really what I thought, Haru!”
“Are you some kinda genius, Haru?”
Ugh, stop. I’m just making rough guesses. Did I seriously get it right? You gotta be kidding me.
Sheesh, though, it really sounded like some kind of joke. Or like, I thought maybe they’d go through the real solution later without me, but when they were cheering, calling me a genius and a great detective, I got so embarrassed I started squirming. It was like I was actually the other world’s number one detective. We’ll have to face off sometime, Holmes☆
“...I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, Haru.”
I told Lupe I wasn’t mad at her at all. I smiled and told her I wouldn’t hold a grudge against her for briefly thinking I was the culprit.
“But Haru, you made such a big deal out of the whole thing. It’s just panties.” Chiba was still tied up, but he teased me like a doofus as if he considered the whole incident over and done with.
My temples twitched.
“I even came to return them, but then you were going on about execution—that’s so overkill. You’re the one who made this so ridiculous. You should think about what you’ve done. Oh, and untie me.”
His babble was so infuriatingly infuriating that I couldn’t even make normal comebacks like, But whose fault was it in the first place, huh? or, Who the hell wants their panties back after you did God-knows-what to them?
Which made me remember: I didn’t care about the murder mystery. This was about how much I wanted to teach that fucking panty thief a lesson!
Deactivate Level Bind!
I unleashed my combat level. My skills Sword Fighting +150, Martial Arts +120, Speed +140, Accuracy +100, Dynamic Visual Acuity: Divine, Peripheral Vision: Cosmic, and Reaction Speed: Light activated. Immunity to Status Effects, Immunity to Attack Magic, and Instadeath Immunity activated. Fire, Ice, Wind, Earth, Thunder, and Summoning Magic—unlocked, all with the boost of Sage’s Wisdom. Dual Spell—activated. Skill Killer—activated. Double Blade, Bastard Sword, Charge Spear, Aegis—activated. Embody Armament Concept and Sermon to Eradicate Dead Souls—on standby.
Status List—activated.
I checked my level against Chiba’s. And snorted. “...If you have any last words, better say them now, Chiba.”
“C’mon, Haru, calm down. Chiba’s sorry for what he did. Right?” Lupe frantically put herself between us to stop me.
Oh yeah. I couldn’t act this way in front of her. Chill. You can’t snap. You decided you would live your life in this other world as a pacifist. I’m a normal girl. I’m super against violence.
“Hey, hey, what the heck? Are you all mad again? Violent girls have gone out of style! Not that your violence is anything but cute to me as the cheat-skilled protagonist, but enough is enough, yeah? Just untie me already! How do you even know how to tie someone up like this? Are you some kind of bondage freak?”
At the cafe I had been thinking that cheat skills were handy and great, and that I felt sort of bad for enjoying my not-at-all-ordinary life, and whatever, but that was a mistake.
In the end, today I used three skills:
Dig
Bind
Candle
Look what you made this JK do, other world!