22｜Exclusive to Jinjiang·22

I was tricked.

The three members of the newly formed Soft Bread Cult were bickering incessantly, with Raikawa Yomi and Matsuda Jinpei even grabbing each other's faces and pulling hard. Hagiwara Kenji, covered in beads of sweat, smiled wryly and tried to stop the two children whose bodies were adults but whose minds were still in kindergarten.

In stark contrast to their warm and playful banter, far away in room 2013 of Beika Street, Morofushi Kagemitsu, who had been awake for a while, sat hunched over on the sofa, questioning his existence. His cheeks were flushed, and his left cheek was so swollen it looked like he had just had a wisdom tooth extracted at the hospital.

He held a bag of ice to his left cheek, while his right hand gripped the TV remote, repeatedly rewinding the images.

The television screen repeatedly played the surveillance footage from the night Lai Chuan arrived in the underworld.

To prepare for this day, Morofushi Kagemitsu specially collaborated with his colleagues from the Ministry of Public Security to create a fake document. He hid the fake document in a secret compartment of his wardrobe, intending to offer Raikawa Yomi an opportunity to steal it and then adapt to her reaction.

The woman with long, slightly wavy hair froze abruptly after opening the wardrobe door a crack. She released the handle, let her hand fall, and began to stare blankly.

Morofushi Kagemitsu couldn't understand what had happened during those few seconds of hesitation, or why she had suddenly changed her mind.

At the end of the scene, Lai Chuan Huang Quan is seen squatting in front of him, resting his chin on his hand, and kneading his face like dough for a full two minutes.

Morifushi Kagemitsu repeatedly examined the evidence of his mistreatment, falling into deep thought. He couldn't understand why this woman had come home with him just to humiliate his face?

Morobuchi Kagemitsu strongly suspected that he had been tricked.

But what Morofushi Kagemitsu didn't know was that he wasn't the only one who suspected he'd been tricked; Furuya Rei, who had specifically asked for a day off from the coffee shop, was also on the receiving end of the same suspicion.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to invite someone to dinner, Furuya Rei secretly placed a listening device in Yomi Laichuan's backpack. Before he could even start listening, he was called away by someone from the organization. Having finally resolved a mission that wasn't dangerous but was troublesome, Furuya Rei hurriedly went into the bathroom to adjust the equipment, only to find that the listening device was no longer receiving a signal.

"Has it already been destroyed?" Rei Furuya thought for a moment and dialed Yuya Kazami's number: "How's the thing I asked you to record going?"

“Mr. Furuya,” a familiar voice came through the Bluetooth headset, “We have compiled Yomi Yoru’s movements over the past four days and expect to be able to submit a standard report in another two or three days.”

"Okay, I have something to do, I'll hang up now."

In fact, the phone that the Metropolitan Police Department returned to Yomi Raikawa, besides having software that could copy and steal all her communications, also had a GPS tracker installed by Rei Furuya. He entrusted the task of monitoring Yomi Raikawa to Yuuya Kazami, asking him to record and organize her movements over the next seven days and send it to him.

After receiving the full report from Kazami Yuya, Furuya Rei used his tablet to sketch and draw on a map of Tokyo's streets, basically confirming Yomi Yorikawa's main area of ​​activity.

Dressed in casual clothes and with his baseball cap pulled low to cover the upper half of his face, Rei Furuya, wearing Bluetooth headphones, disguised himself as a jogger and ran through the alley where Yomi Laichuan often frequented.

He carefully examined his surroundings, but the more he looked, the more something seemed amiss—the road was currently under repair, and several intersections were cordoned off. However, Lai Chuan Huang Quan's movements indicated that she ignored the warning signs and crossed the alleyway that had been cordoned off.

Rei Furuya frowned; a bad feeling began to brew.

The further he walked, the more his heart sank.

It wasn't until a wall blocked all his way that Rei Furuya was completely certain of his guess. He looked down and saw a hole in the base of the wall, hidden by the green belt, big enough for a large dog to pass through.

Jianggu Ling: "..."

A gust of wind blew across the sky, the chilly winter wind swirling fallen leaves around Rei Furuya. Rei sneezed and turned off his phone screen—there was no need to continue tracking; the locator in his phone had definitely been discovered by Yomi Raikawa long ago.

Rei Furuya sighed, put his hands in his pockets, and turned to leave when he heard a rustling sound at the cave entrance. He turned his head and saw a large yellow dog peeking its head out of the cave. So the man and the dog stood silently facing each other across the wall.

Jianggu Ling: "..."

The big yellow dog panted heavily with its tongue lolling out, making "hahaha" sounds. After hesitating for a moment, it began to paw at the ground and start trying to burrow out.

Then it got stuck in my butt.

The big yellow dog struggled twice but couldn't break free. It looked up at Furuya Rei with a pitiful expression, barking as if pleading for help, its tail, stuck on the other side of the wall, wagging desperately.

Rei Furuya, still with one leg raised as if about to leave, stood with his hands in his pockets, staring intently at the stupid dog that kept pleading for his help, a series of ellipses floating above his head. Suppressing the urge to twitch his lips, he knelt down in front of the big yellow dog and grasped its upper body.

Afraid of hurting the big yellow dog, Furuya Rei first carefully tugged at it twice, but couldn't budge it. He applied more force, but the dog remained stuck in the wall, unmoving. The dog, which he was holding, not only didn't bark, but its tail also stopped wagging. Furuya Rei could even see a hint of disdain in its drooping, deep black eyes.

Jianggu Ling:...?

He was actually looked down upon by a dog!?

Veins bulged on his forehead, Furuya Rei twitched his lips twice, planted one foot on the wall, and gripped the big yellow dog's body tightly: "This is your own choice."

After saying that, he used half his strength to pull outwards.

Despite being a carbon-based life form, the giant dog was stretched and deformed between the wall and Furuya Zero, resembling a dachshund made of rubber.

After a brief stalemate reminiscent of a tug-of-war, the large dog was pulled out of the wall by Rei Furuya with a "pop" sound, like a champagne bottle being popped. Due to inertia, Rei Furuya, holding the dog in both hands, stumbled back several steps in a panic before tripping over a piece of gravel and falling to the ground.

Rei Furuya hadn't looked this disheveled in a long time. He sat on the roadside covered in dust from construction, staring at a large dog that kept wiggling its rear end.

The big dog had a black rope tied around its neck, with the cell phone it had returned to Lai Chuan Huang Quan attached to it.

After a moment of silence, Rei Furuya stood up, dusted off his pants, and sighed, "I've been completely outmaneuvered."

In this way, Kazami Yu's efforts were all for naught, and the possible residences they had identified based on their movements over the past seven days were completely rendered useless.

Rei Furuya patted the big dog's head and bent down to take the phone off its neck: "Luckily it wasn't stolen." But even if it had been stolen, Yomi Raikawa probably wouldn't care.

Pressing the power button, the phone, with only 7% battery remaining, lit up its unlock screen. Below the semi-transparent nine-grid number keys was a lock screen background image that Lai Chuan Huang Quan had specially set before tying the phone to his dog.

On a white background with red lines, Lai Chuan Huang Quan wrote a few large, crooked characters as the lock screen cover:

--"idiot."

Next to the words is a funny face emoji with its tongue sticking out.

Jianggu Ling: "..."

Even seven years later, the man, still unable to withstand provocation, widened his eyes, veins bulging on his forehead. He was so enraged that he accidentally cracked his phone screen.

The instigator of the whole thing, Yomi Yoshimatsu, was holding a handful of three-colored dumplings in his left hand and a taiyaki in his right, eating so much that his cheeks were bulging out, and there were even a few bits of cocoa powder stuck to his lower lip.

The bustling Ginza shopping district was packed with people, and long queues formed outside popular restaurants.

Kenji Hagiwara raised his hand and glanced at the end of the line: "Looks like it'll be at least a while before it's our turn." He turned to the woman beside him, "Softie, why don't you find a place to sit for a bit?"

Lai Chuan Huang Quan swallowed the dumpling in his mouth: "But it's not good to make you stand in line all by yourself."

Kenji Hagiwara: "What does it matter? Don't underestimate the physical strength of active-duty SM police officers."

Lai Chuan Huang Quan frowned: "But don't you get bored queuing by yourself? At least I can keep you company and talk to you."

Kenji Hagiwara raised an eyebrow and bluntly exposed Yomi Laichuan: "But you've been eating the whole time since just now, you haven't had a chance to talk, and you haven't paid any attention to me at all."

Lai Chuan Huang Quan: "..."

Just as Kenji Hagiwara was saying those words, Yomi Raikawa raised her hand to bring the second dango to her mouth. She froze, slowly closing her lips that were wide open as she was about to bite into the mochi.

Cherry-red hues spread from her neck down to the tips of her ears, and Raikawa Yomi wished she could disappear into a hole. But she deliberately frowned, pouted, and turned her head to the side: "...Hmph!"

Unable to suppress a smile, Kenji Hagiwara suddenly realized that he really liked the way the soft-spoken girl looked when she was shy. The more she puffed out her cheeks and turned her head to one side, the more he wanted to tease her.

So cute, I want to cuddle it.

The blush on Lai Chuan Huang Quan's face deepened with Hagiwara Kenji's hearty laughter. Enraged and embarrassed, she stomped hard on Hagiwara Kenji's foot, baring her teeth and threatening, "Don't laugh! And don't tell that idiot curly-haired guy about this, understand!"

Kenji Hagiwara pursed his lips, suppressing a laugh, but his shoulders trembled uncontrollably. He raised his hand and pressed down on Yomi Laichuan's hair, shaking her head in circles twice, and couldn't help but chuckle, "Are you afraid that if Jinpei finds out, he'll keep making fun of you about this?"

"Stop nagging, you're not allowed to say anything!"

"Okay, okay, I won't tell."

As for Matsuda Jinpei himself, he had been kicked out of the three-person line by Hagiwara Kenji ten minutes earlier. Now, clutching his nearly empty wallet, he was obediently waiting in line at the back of the bubble tea shop, his face grumpy.

Matsuda Jinpei: "You two are such a jerk."

He gritted his teeth so hard they clattered, and the black aura emanating from him caused those in front of him to silently make way for him. What should have been a half-hour queue was reduced to just twenty minutes before it was Matsuda Jinpei's turn.

Letting the enraged Matsuda Jinpei queue up might be a reasonable way to cut in line.

When Matsuda Jinpei returned with three cups of milk tea to find Hagiwara Kenji, Yomi Yorikawa was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's that little coward?" Matsuda Jinpei picked out a milk tea for himself, inserted a straw, and took a big gulp: "Tsk, so sweet."

Kenji Hagiwara: "Soft Bread said the administrator was looking for her, and then she disappeared in a flash."

He held a string of three-colored dumplings that Lai Chuan Huang Quan had stuffed into his hand, and the pink glutinous rice dumpling at the very top, which had been bitten, still bore Lai Chuan Huang Quan's tooth mark.

“But I’m curious,” Hagiwara said, “Jinpei, how come you’re back so soon? Wasn’t the line at that shop super long?”

Matsuda Jinpei took another sip of milk tea, frowned, and gave a disgusted look: "I don't know, all the people in front of me left one by one, so it was my turn."

Upon hearing this, Kenji Hagiwara frowned and forced back a laugh: "You really don't know why they left?"

"Hmm?" Matsuda Jinpei stirred the bottom of the cup a couple of times with the straw. "Maybe it's something urgent."

Kenji Hagiwara: "Pfft!"

Hey, the dark aura emanating from you hasn't completely dissipated yet. Do you really have no idea how terrifying you are when you're angry with yourself?

...

The silent, deserted emergency exit was filled with the smell of dust. Lai Chuan Huang Quan peered up and down through the gaps in the escalator, and after confirming that no one was around, he connected to the management bureau.

Her superior and administrator was still dressed in a white military uniform, just as she had seen when she first opened her eyes.

The man, whose appearance had remained forever at thirty, was stern and unsmiling. He put his hands behind his back and said, "Number 1107, do you still remember our rules?"

Lai Chuan Huang Quan: "I remember that our existence shouldn't be known by too many people. But having the indigenous people help is in accordance with the regulations, as long as the number is kept within a reasonable range. Besides, we can erase the memories of the assistants after the mission is completed."

The administrator frowned and said seriously, "Requesting memory erasure will affect your mission result score."

Lai Chuan Huang Quan shrugged helplessly: "As you know, I'm not very smart to begin with, and the skills I was randomly assigned are also terrible."

Upon hearing this, the administrator narrowed his eyes and stared intently at Lai Chuan Huang Quan through a virtual panel.

The oppressive feeling of being scrutinized by the homeroom teacher through the back window made Lai Chuan Huang Quan silently lower his head. After a long silence, the administrator coldly said, "That's why you're always stuck at B-level and can't be promoted."

Lai Chuan Huang Quan didn't speak. She touched her nose and didn't dare to look the administrator in the eye.

But then the administrator changed his tone and said helplessly, "Fine, do it your way. After so many failures, it's time to try something unconventional."

He rubbed his temples, overwhelmed by the tasks assigned to him by his employees: "Alright, I'm hanging up. Just be careful not to overdo it."

"Wait a minute!" Lai Chuan Huang Quan called out to the administrator in time: "There's something I wanted to ask you."

Administrator: "Hmm? What is it?"

Lai Chuan Huang Quan, abandoning her previous nonchalant attitude, straightened her back and said seriously, "I met a woman in this world who is also named Lai Chuan Huang Quan, and I can't see her face clearly."

After he finished speaking, a long silence followed. The administrator didn't move; he just stared intently at Lai Chuan Huang Quan, almost giving her the illusion that the signal was unstable and the communication with the Administration Bureau was stuck.

Time slipped away, and Lai Chuan Huang Quan couldn't bear the deathly silence. She raised her hand to scratch her face, feeling restless and uncomfortable under the administrator's gaze, as if ants were crawling all over her. After a long while, the administrator finally moved his slightly dry lips.

"It's not the time for you to know yet. Just pretend she doesn't exist and stay as far away from her as possible."

"Number 1107, whatever you do, don't get her involved in your mission."

[Author's Note]

Lai Chuan Huang Quan has some brains, but not many.

Hagiwara: Soft bread! Jinpei called us a stinky couple, oh my god! So happy~

Matsuda:? ? ?

-

21:31 Modify blocked words