“Looks like a scam!”
The first words out of my mouth gave away my unvarnished thoughts on the matter.
My nefarious scheme had been to lurk in the shadows and slyly manipulate the Pretty Boy Detective Club, but at this rate that kind of Trojan Horse-type plan was looking less and less tenable.
Although it wasn’t like I intended to oppose every decision the leader made.
Honestly, though, “Congratulations”?!
“Tell no one of your plans”?!
Every single line was suspicious!
Thankfully, the delinquent reinforced my frank assessment by noting cynically, “The way it’s written is pretty fishy─it’s an invitation, sure, but I feel like it’s welcoming us to the highway to hell.”
On top of that, the invitation had come inside a counterfeit bill─which if you ask me adds up to a double helping of dubious, with an extra side of suspicious.
In any case, the fact that an invitation was sandwiched inside this bill left no room for doubt that the hundred thousand yen (and the million yen) were counterfeit─and no sooner had that thought crossed my mind than the child genius set about pulling apart the other bills, one after another.
His hands moved so dexterously that you could be forgiven for thinking this was his day job─although in truth, this first-year middle school student’s real job wasn’t even studying, it was running a foundation.
Of course, invitations fluttered down from inside the other bills as well (even if there didn’t seem to be space enough inside them)─as if we were watching a magic trick.
I was curious to see if he would tear them all open, but he stopped at the sixth one, and, with the six invitations lined up on the table, returned to his post behind Sotoin.
Six invitations…
Since they all said, “Do not bring guests and tell no one of your plans,” each must be valid for only one person, which must mean six invitations were enough for six people, right?
Wait a minute, six people?
That just happened to be the same number of people in the art room!
Wonder why he stopped there...
“So they’re open every Sunday, are they? Lads, I take it you’re all free this coming Sunday?”
“I’m free.”
“Free as a bird.”
“My schedule is clear.”
For real?
Leaving aside the delinquent, Mr. Bare-Legs was an ace member of the track team and Sakiguchi was president of the student council. I highly doubted they could free up their schedules that easily.
It was weird that a group of boys their age could even hang out like this after school in the first place─when I thought about it like that, I realized that even without getting involved in this case, the club itself was like a candle in the wind.
Maybe I didn’t need to worry so much about having brought them a nasty case─the club was bound for extinction before long anyway, regardless of what I did to help or harm.
Still, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep very well if the group went under because of me.
“And what about you, young Dojima? You didn’t answer. Do you have plans?”
“Um… Let me think….”
I pulled out my lily-white, unsullied student planner and pretended to check my schedule. What kind of cheap trick was I playing? Now that I’d quit sneaking up to the roof after school to stargaze, I never had any plans to speak of.
After making this pretentious show, I could very well have lied to them─for instance, if I said I always went to the mountains to escape the heat on the weekends (never mind that it was almost winter), that would have gotten me out of going to the casino with them.
But if I did that, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve my supreme goal of keeping an eye on them─which meant it was time to humbly and honestly admit that my calendar was completely empty.
“Hmm, it looks as if I can manage to free up some time. My schedule is full for the next three years straight, but I believe I can make an exception and clear my plans this Sunday night.”
It was impossible.
My brain utterly rejected humility and honesty.
On top of that, I was lousy at lying─what middle school student has plans all the way through graduation?
What do I do if pretentiousness turns out to be my only strong suit?
“You can? I’m delighted to hear that.” The smiling Sotoin accepted my lie without a fuss─perhaps this generosity of spirit was the secret to his mysterious popularity. “Excellent! Well then, it’s settled. Let’s all meet on Sunday night and proceed together to the address below─um, how do you read these characters?”
The leader couldn’t read the name of the venue.
Perhaps that was inevitable since he was only in fifth grade─but, he was planning to accept the invitation without even being able to read it?
He was way too reckless.
“It says, ‘Gymnasium #2, Kamikazari Middle School,’ Mr. President,” the vice president said, coming to his aid.
“Kamikazari Middle School? Why, I believe I’ve heard that name before. Hmm, must’ve been involved in some past case. Heh, I sense a vague connection,” Sotoin muttered, seemingly lost in thought.
If all you did was look at his face, you might mistake him for a famous detective chasing down the solution to a case, but in reality the familiarity of the name had nothing to do with a past case.
Kamikazari is a middle school near Yubiwa Academy─the connection wasn’t vague, it was concrete as could be.
In fact, it’s so close by you can see it from the roof of our own school (with my eyesight, anyway).
…But being neighbors didn’t mean we were friends─to the contrary, the two schools traditionally clashed.
Kamikazari was our rival.
Come to think of it, Sotoin and I nearly had a nasty run-in with some Kamikazari students the other day in the course of our detective work─but the president appeared to have forgotten all about that.
I guess he only remembers beautiful things.
Setting aside the question of the leader’s brain (and setting aside the question of whether something so important should be set aside), the school name written on the invitation didn’t strike me as overwhelmingly unnatural.
A minute earlier I’d gotten carried away and thought to myself that every single line of it was suspicious, but actually, the one reading “Gymnasium #2, Kamikazari Middle School” gave the whole invitation a certain plausibility.
Which is to say, I’d heard about this.
I’d heard rumors to the effect that there was gambling at the school on a nightly basis, and that girls should never under any circumstances go anywhere near it because it was extremely dangerous─which was unsettling, even if the “on a nightly basis” part was an embellishment.
The rumor was as seemingly unreliable as the one about a Pretty Boy Detective Club operating at our own school, but considering that the Pretty Boy Detective Club actually existed, it wouldn’t be that strange if the casino existed as well.
Even so, what was I supposed to make of the proviso about girls never under any circumstances going anywhere near it…?
“What are you worried about? Right now, you’re not a girl, you’re a pretty boy,” the delinquent spat out coldly, before adding, “Anyway, you’ll be with us, so I doubt anything crazy will happen.”
Apparently, he was incapable of being considerate without pretending to be nasty first.
“Yeah! We’ll be there with you, so you don’t need to worry about a thing, Doji,” Mr. Bare-Legs added blithely.
Come to think of it, he was the one who should be fearing for his safety, not me─a guy who gets kidnapped at a rate of once every four years ought to think twice before going into dangerous parts of town.
“In any case,” the councilman pronounced, “it may be counterfeit, and more than half of it may be ripped to pieces, but we really must go so you can return the money to your Mr. Businessman.”
Right, that’s what this was all about to begin with─we weren’t going on an undercover mission to investigate overly-high-quality counterfeit money, we were following through on my request to find a missing person.
I think the reason Sakiguchi looked so gloomy must’ve been that, in his capacity as student council president, he of course knew more about those disturbing rumors than I did, and therefore had a better sense of the very real threats we might face in our visit to Kamikazari Middle.
Or maybe, despite the fact that he’d announced his availability so quickly, he actually had a date with his fiancée scheduled for Sunday night─in which case, you could say we had just saved an innocent girl from the clutches of a pervert.
I felt like I’d just accomplished something positive, even though I hadn’t done a thing.
“Considering the relationship between Yubiwa Academy and Kamikazari Middle, we certainly can’t go in our uniforms─though it does say to come in ‘casual dress.’”
“What does casual dress mean again? Like, ordinary clothes? The only ordinary clothes I own are shorts…” said the boy whose school uniform also consists of shorts, displaying no common sense whatsoever. He probably didn’t even want to wear shoes─but the problem wasn’t the definition of shorts, it was the definition of casual dress.
Of course, casual dress means ordinary clothes, like what you’d wear around the house, but if we genuinely showed up looking like slobs, we’d be dying of embarrassment.
“It’s what some call somewhat formal dress,” I explained.
“I see, somewhat formal,” Sotoin responded with a nod.
A somewhat worrisome nod.