I nodded, then proceeded to grind coffee beans. It was an obvious attempt at making the case that we were a café.
Detective Kumano jerked his chin, at which Detective Yasui put on a serious face and straightened his necktie before heading over to the counter seats where Touka-chan and Kaburagi-san were sitting. He was blatantly self-conscious of the super pretty lady and super cute schoolgirl. I determined that Kaburagi-san would be more than capable of handling him on her own.
The actual problem was the big one. How am I going to convince him to leave? If I answered his questions with innocuous answers, would he be satisfied and leave?
I couldn’t tell if he was convinced by Kaburagi-san’s explanation or if he decided to put it off till later, but Detective Kumano didn’t pursue his line of questioning regarding the students. Instead, he planted his elbows on the counter and leaned forward slightly. “We are currently searching for people related to the Super Water Sphere Incident. Namely, Time Lady, Burning Girl, and Freezing Knight.”
As this rugged-looking Detective Kumano listed out loud what sounded like character names from an American comic, he showed me three photos that depicted a group of people in black outfits. Although he was completely serious, I still couldn’t help but to find the situation slightly funny. Guess reality’s gotten just a little bit more interesting, it seems.
“Please take your time to think about it. Have you seen any of these three individuals, or heard anything about them at all?”
“............” I spent several seconds pretending to rack my mind, then shook my head. Then I turned back to pour the ground up coffee beans into the syphon and poured hot water in.
“What about them? Are they regulars here?” pressed Detective Kumano without taking his eyes off of me for even a second. Well, it was true that their genders, heights, and numbers were a perfect match. Although he did not seem like someone impulsive enough to draw a conclusion based on that alone, I suppose it was only normal for him to do at least a little prodding.
Behind Detective Kumano was the scene of Detective Yasui leering while reaching out an arm around Kaburagi-san’s shoulder, only to be slapped away. You think you are worthy of casually touching Her Ducal Highness? Know your place, peon. So what is this, is Detective Kumano playing “good cop” and Detective Yasui playing “bad cop”?
Shaking someone up by repeatedly switching between “good” and “evil” was a tactic that I had heard about very often. Upon seeing me narrow my eyes, Detective Kumano softened his tone, “There’s no need to cover up for them. We will keep your secret and, if there is a need to, we’ll also protect you.”
Oho, there’s his first leading question. Is he thinking that I may be an ordinary civilian who’s being threatened by the mysterious esper organization? But too bad for him, we’ve already read through his memo and know that he’s just asking around indiscriminately.
“......The two girls are regulars.” I briefly and partially replied in the affirmative. It would seem unnatural if I was to deny any of them being regulars. Kaburagi-san’s words earlier sounded very much like something that a regular would say, and it only seemed natural to include Touka-chan, considering how close to Kaburagi-san she was acting.
In contrast, Shouta-kun’s flashy appearance made him seem like exactly the kind of person who would randomly get curious and wander into a shady-looking store like this. I was planning on presenting him as a first-time chance customer.
“Any reason why you have a CLOSED sign hanging on the door?”
“......The more curious customers like it that way.”
In actual fact, many of the customers who came in despite of the CLOSED sign turned out to be quite interesting people. Though admittedly, a lot of them did so in a drunken state, which made them proportionally annoying as well.
That said, this detective sure is poking deeper than I’d expected. Though I guess it could be said that this was only natural, given our suspicious store with its suspicious customers. Would I be able to fully dodge all of his questions?
Just when I was about to put the two cups of dripped coffee onto plates, Ig descended from my head and grabbed the ear of one of the cups. Then she dragged it along while making her way toward the edge of the counter, where Kaburagi-san was sitting. Helping me out is great and all, but don’t you go chucking that at Kaburagi-san, all right?
As I watched on in apprehension, Ig approached not Kaburagi-san, but Detective Yasui instead. Then she used her tail to slap the cuff of his suit to draw his attention.
But that’s Kaburagi-san’s cup...... sigh, what was I expecting from an animal. You are fired as a waitress, young lady.
“Chi chi chi!”
“Hey there, what’s this? Are you giving it to me? What a smart little monkey you are! Good job, good—”
Seemingly moved by the little animal’s cuteness, Detective Yasui reached out a hand to pet Ig. But at that exact moment, Ig used every once of her strength to chuck the cup of coffee at his suit!
Oi, monkey! What have you done?! Oh wait, Detective Yasui’s wearing perfume! Oh my god, Ig, did you really have to express your hatred of perfume at this very moment?!
“Chi chi chi!”
“AGH! You goddamn monkey!”
“STAND DOWN, YASU!”
Hurriedly taking off the suit that had gotten a dark, wet stain from the coffee, Detective Yasui was about to swing it to chase Ig off when Detective Kumano sharply barked at him to stop. Ig took advantage of that opening to slip off the counter and disappear into the living area behind the bar.
With the tension in the air gone thanks to the prank performed by a little animal, the two detectives decided to pull out, firmly refusing the cleaning fee that I tried to press onto them (Detective Yasui tried to take it but got stopped by Detective Kumano).
With the appearance of the police seemingly having stimulated their sense of guilt, the two students also left soon after. I suppose they were not so bold as to set up their surveillance camera right after having encountered the police.
I drove to pick Baba up in the middle of her work, and called for an emergency meeting. We needed to discuss how we were going to handle these detectives who had showed up to mess things up just when we had gotten everything all set up for the traitor event.
After making sure that the door to Ama-no-Iwato was locked properly, we sat together around a table. Ig was engrossed with a nature program on TV and thus was going to stay put for a while.
Upon hearing the situation, Baba looked very interested. “Is this the ‘investigating with one’s own feet’ from TV? I too wished to see a real-life detective questioning with mine own eyes!”
“Please spare me, seriously. An elf-eared silver-haired loli baba with a branch in her hair would have seriously raised their suspicions. It would be troubling if they mark us and make it difficult for us to move. When I saw their police IDs, I almost stopped breathing, all right? This is seriously bad for my heart.”
“So Sago is bad with the police, it seems. You have your almighty telekinesis and your invincible barrier and yet you are still so faint of heart? Though admittedly, it never hurts to be extra careful,” said Baba while shrugging her shoulders. She was apparently under the misconception that my barrier was completely impervious to everything except the PSI drives. However, the truth was that poison gas works just fine against me, and I couldn’t maintain the barrier while sleeping and thus I was as susceptible to being assassinated in my sleep as anybody else. I was only human too.
After Baba, it was Kaburagi-san’s turn to raise her hand. “If I apply pressure to force those two specifically to stop their investigation right now, it would only cause the opposite effect. In preparation for the worst case scenario where the store is subjected to a search, I think we should revise the gimmick for entering the secret base.”
“Like how?”
“How about voice recognition?”
I see. So we’d have to say a password out loud to open the door that leads underground? “That’s it.”
“You sure? I had also thought up a few other options, such as an electronic keypad or using a remote controller—”
“‘Open sesame’ is definitely going to be a ton of fun.”
“......Fair enough.”
Kaburagi-san looked thoroughly convinced, and though Baba looked like she didn’t quite get it, she did not raise her voice in protest. I bet you’ll change your attitude as soon as the real thing gets installed. Baba’s world was supposedly very underdeveloped in regards to sub-culture, and there was bound to be a certain discrepancy between the culture of our world and hers. Consequently, she did not yet understand the charm of this trope. However, the other times when I showed her other similar tropes, her eyes lit up every time without fail, which convinced me that her sense of aesthetics was very similar to that of us Earthlings.
Next, I suggested my plan. It was something that I had thought up on the spot, but I was quite confident about it. “How about we pull either one or both of those detectives to our side?”
“You intend to increase the numbers of our set-up team yet again? I shall not object, but...... ahh, I see. You’re referring to an external cooperator, are you not?”
“We already have the top echelons of the police under our control, so you’re thinking to control the on-site personnel as well?”
“I see...... I see. You scheme to have someone who would betray the force, slipping us their investigative information and turning a blind eye to our activities. This is a brilliant plan.”
I nodded in affirmation. It was great that the girls caught on so quickly.
The way I saw it, particularly Detective Yasui seemed like he would be easy to convince. Enough money and he would flip to our side without hesitation (personal prejudice).
At the moment, we were using rather roundabout and time-consuming methods, such as me periodically sending telekinesis over to the Metropolitan Police Department to eavesdrop on them and spy on their info, and Kaburagi-san was pressuring the police upper echelons or misdirecting them or dealing with them for information. In comparison to that, things would be so much easier if we got ourselves a cooperator on the police side who would proactively bring us their information. Instead of “Don’t let them investigate Amaterasu” or “Make them look away from Amaterasu,” “Turn the person heading the investigation on Amaterasu into our ally” was the most sure-fire way to protect ourselves from being investigated.
As such, the meeting between the members of the set-up team ended with a unanimous vote on the suggestion to turn the detectives. It was decided that the traitor event was going to proceed parallel to the newly decided beguilement event.