33 Exclusive to Jinjiang

◎宰: The boomerang swung right at his own head.◎

35

"Huh?"

Dazai Osamu raised his head, looked at Kawakami Wakana, then at Fyodor, and couldn't help but blink.

"Aren't you hungry? Why is no one responding?"

"Especially you, 'Demon'-kun, this is food from your homeland. Don't you have any interest at all?"

“No need,” Fyodor said with a forced smile. “I’m not that interested in food, especially food I’m not sure about. You should enjoy this good stuff yourself.”

Dazai Osamu nodded and pushed the red soup with strawberries floating on it toward Kawakami Wakana: "Would you like some, Wakana-chan?"

Kawakami Ruoyi: "..."

She glanced at Fyodor, intentionally or unintentionally.

It seemed like there was some bug in his favorability rating, which kept increasing and decreasing by one.

Could it be...

Kawakami Wakai, feigning interest, raised her hand and gestured towards the strawberry soup.

The killing intent level begins to rise.

She withdrew her hand.

The killing intent level has been restored.

She tried reaching out again, and sure enough, the killing intent level increased once more.

"..."

Feda... in some ways she's actually quite cute.

"Pfft—"

Kawakami Wakana couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Noticing that Dazai Osamu and Fyodor were both looking at her, Wakana realized that this was definitely not the time to laugh.

So she immediately said loudly, "I'm not drinking it either. I don't want anything sweet so late at night."

"..."

"Alright." Dazai Osamu sighed, made an exaggerated expression of disappointment, picked up the bowl of red soup, gulped it down in one go, and after finishing, he even picked up a strawberry and licked it with relish.

Kawakami Ruoyi: "..."

I don't know if it was just her imagination.

She always felt that the way Fei Jia looked at Dazai Osamu now was as if he was eating aged herring cans instead of strawberry borscht.

“Dazai,” Fyodor’s voice was strained, “you didn’t come here just to disgust me by eating these awful dishes in front of me, did you?”

"Oh?" Dazai Osamu paused in his strawberry-eating motion upon hearing this. He swallowed the food in his mouth and then smiled with amusement.

"As expected of the 'Demon Man'."

"How about we play a game?"

“A game?” Fyodor seemed intrigued. “What makes you so sure I’ll agree?”

As if she had become an outsider, Kawakami Wakana obediently looked at this and that from time to time.

This Dazai Osamu...

As a member of the Armed Detective Agency, how could he go so far as to use that videotape as a bet?

But right now, she can't think of anything else that would directly interest her.

Until Dazai Osamu slowly opened his mouth—

"If I win, the detective agency will have control over what to do with that videotape. But if you win, I'll tell you a secret about Wakana-chan, how about that?"

Kawakami Wakai:? ? ?

no? ?

How did I get involved with her?

Then she heard Fyodor nod: "Okay, deal."

"...?"

Kawakami Wakana couldn't help but point to herself.

She's still here?

“I said,” she could no longer remain silent, “shouldn’t you have asked for my opinion first on something like this?”

No sooner had she finished speaking than Ruoyi noticed that Fyodor's murderous intent had increased by 1.

"What, do you really have some secret that no one knows?"

"..." Kawakami Wakai fell silent instantly.

Her superpowers don't seem threatening, but... it's probably better for Fedia to think of herself as an ordinary person.

"Well then, if Wakai-chan has no objections, let's begin the game." Dazai Osamu smiled slightly, pulled out two bottles of mineral water from somewhere, and placed them heavily on the floor.

Both bottles of mineral water were wrapped in thick bandages. Judging from the color of the bottle caps, they were from a brand that could be bought at any supermarket or convenience store.

"The rules are simple. One of these two bottles of mineral water is just regular mineral water, while the other has been laced with a lethal dose of wasabi. You win the game if you drink the regular mineral water."

“Wait a minute,” Fyodor interrupted Dazai Osamu’s rule, “I can’t be sure if you remember which bottle of mineral water was tampered with, or if there were any marks on the problematic bottle that only you could notice.”

Before Kawakami Wakana could react, Dazai Osamu had already grabbed her arm. "Wakana-chan, you can choose which bottle I want to drink for me."

"...?"

In fact, Fyodor was somewhat surprised that Dazai Osamu would suggest such a simple game.

After all, based on his understanding of this person, the games he would propose should be no less dangerous than Lucia's Roulette, which could even involve risking one's life.

And these two bottles of mineral water...

He only needed to observe the bottle and, at most, refer to Dazai Osamu's reaction to easily arrive at the answer.

Could it be...

Was Dazai Osamu testing his feelings for Kawakami Wakai?

Fyodor found it somewhat amusing.

Putting aside the fact that he doesn't even like this mischievous cat, when did he become, in Dazai Osamu's eyes, a "love-struck" person who would give up his goals for a woman he likes?

In this game where two people have to choose one, he gains a dominant position as long as he chooses first. But for some reason, thinking about Dazai Osamu's purpose, Fyodor suddenly didn't want to choose anymore. He just stared at Kawakami Wakana with great interest, wanting to see how she would choose.

All I saw was—

The kitten was also intently watching the two bottles of water. Sometimes it shook the bottles, sometimes it examined them from all angles. Unfortunately, both bottles were so tightly bound by Dazai Osamu's hands that he couldn't tell which one was the problem just by looking at them.

Fyodor looked at her like that, waiting to see what the kitten would choose.

She was simply choosing to either take a chance and pick one randomly, or hand over control to him, completely unaware that this would only lead to a more unfavorable outcome for her.

But unexpectedly—

“Dazai-san,” Kawakami Wakana said, picking up one of the bottles, “I’ll choose this one, and I can drink it for you. But I have a request.”

"Requirements?" Dazai Osamu repeated the words Wakana had uttered.

"Yes. That means I'll drink both bottles of water."

"—After all, it would be one thing if I chose the problematic bottle, but if it was the normal bottle and Feda drank the wasabi water..."

"He's probably going to see Dr. Blackjack again."

Fyodor: "..."

So, in the kitten's eyes, what kind of frail and weak image does he appear to be? The type who could faint from just eating a little wasabi?

But this was indeed an outcome that Fedor had not anticipated.

But Kawakami Wakana had already unscrewed the bottle cap and, without even glancing at it, gulped it down.

The moment she took her first sip, her body shuddered as if she had been electrocuted, and her face flushed.

hot!

So spicy!!

This was Kawakami Wakai's only thought at that moment.

Fortunately, she was the type to go to a ramen shop with her classmates after school and order a bowl of insanely spicy ramen, so she didn't think she'd end up in the ICU because of a bottle of wasabi. Besides, she'd already lost. If Dazai Osamu were someone who accepted his losses, her supernatural abilities might be exposed immediately. Compared to that, a bottle of wasabi water didn't seem like much.

So, Ruoyi, with tears streaming down her face from the spiciness, gulped down half a bottle of water. Then, she picked up the second bottle to unscrew the cap.

But at that moment, Fyodor grabbed his hand.

“Dazai,” Fyodor stared at Dazai Osamu and said calmly, “bullying a little girl, that’s not like you.”

He glanced at the bottle in Ruoyi's hand—

"Both bottles of water contain wasabi, right?"

Kawakami Wakai: Huh?

What? What is that?

Are there problems with both water sources?

So what exactly did she do just now?

"You came here not to play any games with me, but to see what I would choose, right?"

"After all, you had already anticipated this outcome."

Kawakami Ruoyi: "..."

She suddenly had a strange feeling.

—It seems like I've become part of the game between these two highly intelligent characters.

But Fyodor simply turned on the tap silently and poured her a glass of cold water.

Ruoyi had just drunk half a bottle of wasabi water, and now her mouth and nose felt extremely sour. She gulped down the water and felt a little better, but when she thought of Dazai Osamu's infuriating behavior, she couldn't help but burst into tears and curse while taking advantage of the aftereffects of the wasabi.

"Dazai Osamu, you—"

She thought for a moment: "Sukabrie!!"

It's all because of that Dazai Osamu guy! If he had taught her Russian properly, she wouldn't have made such a fool of herself in front of Fedia. So now Kawakami Wakai believes she has the right to use this word to curse Dazai Osamu.

It's just, "Your mom's belly button is protruding." It's not that offensive. She even used that phrase when she was in kindergarten and argued with a boy.

Unexpectedly, this silenced both scriptwriting teams.

Osamu Dazai: "..."

Fyodor: "..."

An incredibly awkward atmosphere instantly filled the room.

For the first time, Dazai Osamu learned what it meant to "lift a rock only to drop it on one's own foot."

very good.

He was the one who taught Kawakami Wakana that word. At the time, he was just watching for fun. But he never expected that the boomerang would one day come back to haunt him.

“You—” He looked up and couldn’t help but glance at Fyodor, “Didn’t you tell her what that sentence really meant?”

“…?” Kawakami Wakana, who had been muttering “Sukabul” to Dazai Osamu, paused for a moment.

“Doesn’t that mean ‘your mother’s belly button is protruding’? Fei Jia told me that.”

"Oh right!" she continued angrily, "I haven't even settled the score with you for this yet! Next time you like a foreign girl, watch out, I'll teach you the same thing!"

"—Also, Fedia's mother's belly button definitely isn't protruding!"

Osamu Dazai: "...?"

[Author's Note]

I'm having writer's block, I just finished writing it.

Because Calvin didn't have a mini-theatre today, sob sob.

I'll write two tomorrow!