Murder and Mission Completed
The drawn-out alarm was extremely piercing. Before the passengers on the cruise ship could even react to what was happening, the first mate had already sent people to check every deck of the ship to find the locations where the smoke detectors had been triggered.
Inside the banquet hall, Fujiwara Taro's eldest son, Fujiwara Haruto, immediately stepped forward to maintain order after the unexpected incident. He calmed the guests down using the microphone that was still on the stage, and then dialed his father's number.
Unfortunately, no one answered Fujiwara Taro's phone. With no other option, he dialed his younger brother Fujiwara Takenao's number. After a long ringing, the call finally went through.
Fujiwara Haruto didn't give the other person a chance to react. He lowered his voice and gave the oppressive feeling of a superior issuing a command. He finished recounting what had happened in the banquet hall in a few words, and then told Fujiwara Haruto to go find Fujiwara Taro.
“...Listen carefully, I can’t get through to Father on the phone, and I can’t leave right now. Go to Father’s room immediately.”
Fujiwara Haruto had very mixed feelings about his younger brother, who was more than ten years younger than him. His position as heir was already a foregone conclusion, and his young brother posed no threat to him.
However, years of training as an heir and following in his father's footsteps made his personality and behavior very similar to Fujiwara Taro's. The only difference was that Fujiwara Haruto's relationship with Fujiwara Takenao wasn't like that of brothers or a father raising a son; rather, it resembled a superior treating a subordinate.
After a falling out with his father, Fujiwara Taro, Fujiwara Takenao returned to his room and began to drown his sorrows in alcohol from the liquor cabinet. He was completely unaware of what was happening downstairs until he received this phone call.
Fujiwara Takenao was reeking of alcohol and his mind was a bit foggy. He was stunned for a few seconds before reacting. He grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair, put it on, and quickly ran towards Fujiwara Taro's room.
Meanwhile, the first mate's men had located the bathroom that triggered the smoke detector and extinguished the source of the farce—the already burning trash can.
Upon hearing his subordinates report that the fire in the bathroom trash can had been extinguished, the first mate breathed a sigh of relief and immediately relayed the news to Fujiwara Haruto, who was maintaining order in the banquet hall.
Just as Fujiwara Haruto finished speaking and hung up, his younger brother Fujiwara Takenao called. Before the usually calm and taciturn older brother could even speak, he heard a loud, boisterous voice like a firecracker.
"...Father...heart disease...stolen..."
As Fujiwara Haruto listened, his brows furrowed more and more, and his expression became serious and sharp. He instructed, "Find a doctor to examine Father first, and I will handle the rest."
After hanging up the phone, Fujiwara Haruto looked up at the anxious banquet hall, turned to his secretary and gestured before walking to a corner to call the first mate and request to view the surveillance footage.
Tsurumi Kawakami, who was mingling among the guests in the banquet hall, noticed Fujiwara Haruto's actions. He glanced nervously at the entrance a few times and secretly sent a text message to Amuro Tooru to explain.
Meanwhile, the cruise ship that had departed from Tokyo Bay was nearing its dock, and a team of police officers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department were on standby at the shore. Just moments before, the Metropolitan Police Department had received an anonymous call reporting a murder at a banquet held by Fujiwara Pharmaceuticals at sea that evening.
After receiving the call, the Metropolitan Police Department immediately verified the information and found that a cruise ship had indeed set sail in Tokyo Bay that evening, and many figures from the pharmaceutical industry were on board. After confirming this information, the Metropolitan Police Department then tried to contact the cruise ship, but for some reason, they couldn't reach it; the signal seemed to be blocked.
On the lower deck of the cruise ship, a thick stench of blood filled the air, much to the surprise of Amuro Tooru, who stumbled upon the murder scene. He had originally intended to borrow a crew member's computer to check the contents of a USB drive, but unexpectedly, as he passed by this room, he saw someone disposing of a body through the half-open door.
After subduing the man, tying his hands and feet, and stuffing his mouth with a towel, Amuro Tooru looked at the blood splattered on the walls and ceiling of the room with a headache. After hesitating for a few seconds, he stepped forward, took out his cell phone from the man's pocket, and made an anonymous call to the Metropolitan Police Department.
After hanging up, Amuro deleted the call log and shoved the phone back into the man's pocket. Ignoring the man's desperate struggles and attempts to speak, he chopped him unconscious with a karate chop, then found the laptop in the room and plugged in a USB drive.
Just then, Amuro Tooru's phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and looked down at it; it was a text message from Tsurumi Kawaru.
Amuro Tooru glanced at the phone and put it back in his pocket. The contents of the USB drive needed to be compressed, but his laptop didn't have compression software installed, and downloading it temporarily would take time.
The blond, dark-skinned youth stared at the computer screen, which emitted a faint glow, for a while. He then opened his browser, logged into a secret website, copied the data from his USB drive, and sent it to an email address.
After finishing the cleanup and making sure no one would discover his tampering, Amuro Tooru pulled out the USB drive and got up to leave.
At this moment, the cruise ship entered Tokyo Bay. As soon as it docked, a team of police officers from the investigation team, who had been waiting for a long time, showed their identification and boarded the cruise ship.
In the banquet hall, Tsurumi Kawaru glanced at the crowd heading towards the door, then turned and left through the other side of the corridor, using the silhouettes of several waiters as cover. He followed the signs to the second floor of the cruise ship and met Amuro Tooru in a blind spot of the surveillance cameras.
Upon seeing Tsurumi Kawaru, Amuro Tooru immediately pulled a small USB drive from his pocket. Looking at the young man in front of him, who had black hair, golden eyes, and was dressed in a suit like a young master, he handed him the USB drive: "Here you go. You can mingle with the other passengers on the cruise ship first, and then we'll meet at the usual place."
Tsurumi Kawakami's golden eyes lit up slightly. He took the USB drive and looked at it for a while before hiding it in the cuff of his suit jacket. He smoothed out the wrinkles and nodded seriously to Amuro Tooru: "Yes, I understand."
A smile flickered in Amuro Tooru's eyes as he patted Tsurumi Kawaru's arm, signaling him to prepare to leave.
Tsurumi River flowed inconspicuously from the corridor into the crowd of passengers preparing to disembark. Following the direction of the crowd, he arrived at the deck, where the people in front of him suddenly stopped, and a slightly noisy sound came from ahead.
He looked up and, taking advantage of his slight height, saw two policemen standing on either side of the front of the deck, where people were disembarking. They were talking to a lady in an elegant dress at the front.
Gossiping is human nature, and before long, Tsurumi Kawakuri heard two young men standing in front of him talking about what had happened at the front. He listened intently for a while before he could figure out what was going on.
Tsurumi Kawakami couldn't resist going up to them and asking, "Hey, has a murder happened?"
The two young men who were gossiping together were startled. They turned around and met Tsurumi Kawaru's curious gaze. After hesitating for a few seconds, they nodded, and then the three of them started gossiping together.
"I heard that the murderer lured people into the room and killed them when the alarm went off just now," one of the brown-haired boys said, still somewhat frightened.
"Maybe the alarm was set off by the murderer," speculated the black-haired boy who seemed to be on good terms with him.
Tsurumi Kawakami scratched his cheek, looking hesitant about whether to refute. He was somewhat surprised when he heard about the murder on the cruise ship, but when he learned that the murderer killed the person during the time the alarm sounded, he was not only surprised but also quite taken aback.
Before Tsurumi Nagare could make up his mind, he had already moved slowly with the crowd to the disembarkation point. Just as a policeman stepped forward, his phone suddenly rang. He paused, gave them a look, and walked to the side to answer the call.
At this moment, another policeman came over, asked them a few routine questions, wrote something down in his notebook, and then waved for them to disembark.
Tsurumi hesitated for a moment, noticing the serious expression on the face of the police officer who had answered the phone, before hanging up. He then gestured for his colleague to step aside and whispered, "No need for further questioning, the culprit has been caught..."
Tsurumi Kawakuri disembarked after hearing only this one sentence.
After disembarking from the cruise ship, Tsurumi Kawaru stood by the roadside and looked around for a few moments. He couldn't help but swallow hard as he watched the neon lights flashing in the night and smelled the aroma of spicy food wafting in the air.
But remembering what Amuro Tooru had said on the cruise ship, Tsurumi Kawaru patted his stomach and obediently went to their agreed-upon old place—a dilapidated old factory building.
Tsurumi Kawaru crouched in a blind spot behind the factory door, quietly waiting for Amuro to come through. After swatting away seven or eight mosquitoes, his legs were getting numb from crouching before he heard familiar footsteps.
Tsurumi Kawakami's eyes lit up, and he stood up abruptly. He moved his numb legs a few times and walked towards the factory gate.
As soon as Amuro Tooru entered, he met the gaze of Tsurumi Kawakami, who rushed towards him. He paused for a second, his expression dark as he stared at the short, bright-eyed black-haired boy, and said, half-jokingly and half-seriously, "You guessed it was me."
Tsurumi Kawakami's eyes crinkled as he smiled and nodded, saying, "Yes, Toru's footsteps are different from others."
Amuro's heart skipped a beat. He hadn't known that Tsurumi Kawakami possessed such an ability, so he smiled and tentatively asked, "You can't possibly remember everyone's footsteps, can you?"
Tsurumi Kawakami nodded honestly: "I remember everything."
The blond, dark-skinned youth paused for a moment, then curled his lips into a cryptic smile.
After completing their mission and finishing up, they took the USB drive back to Curaçao to hand it over. Tsurumi Kawaru, who was overjoyed after being treated to a late-night snack, stared sharply at Amuro Tooru.
Curaçao fiddled with the silver USB drive for a few moments, then suddenly asked, "Have you seen what's inside?"
Amuro Tooru paused for a moment, then shook his head without changing his expression and said, "Time is too tight."
After saying that, he frowned and looked at Curaçao with displeasure. "The mission could have been completed ahead of schedule, but the intelligence was wrong. The drug that Fujiwara Pharmaceutical launched at the press conference was not the one we were looking for. It took some effort to find another USB drive. In order to get away, Suz and I caused some trouble on the cruise ship, but we ended up running into a murder case and almost got caught by the police."
Amuro Tooru still can't figure out whether the mission information was manipulated by Curaçao or whether Fujiwara Pharmaceuticals' last-minute replacement led to the current situation.
If Amuro Tooru had overheard Fujiwara Taro and Fujiwara Takenao arguing before meeting Curaçao, and thus knew that Fujiwara Taro had temporarily replaced the drug with a powerful nitroglycerin pill because the drug development was incomplete, then he wouldn't have suspected Curaçao's problem.
But Curaçao's expression and her probing of him just now greatly increased Amuro Tooru's suspicion of her.
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