Chapter 2: About the Crushed Aluminum Can
Upon arriving at the convenience store, the two were bewildered to see it surrounded by police.
What happened? Has Angela come out yet?
Because it's very early, there aren't many people on the street.
The fact that the two people were heading straight for the convenience store seemed particularly unusual, especially since a case had occurred there.
A curly-haired young policeman stopped them.
Aside from the young man carrying a crushed succulent, the child following behind him attracted the officer's attention even more.
Matsuda Jinpei looked at the middle school-aged boy with white hair, a blindfold, and a greatsword on his back.
It should be a boy, right? And with that outfit, I haven't heard of any anime convention nearby.
Or is it... chuunibyou (middle school syndrome)? With your face covered so tightly, how can you even see where you're going?
He was also holding a potted plant, but the plant was limp and wilted, and looked a bit dead.
It was strange that the two of them were each holding a half-dead plant.
X looked at the police officer in the riot gear who had stopped them, slowly forming a question mark, and asked:
"What happened inside, officer? My friend seems to still be inside."
Inside a convenience store not long ago.
The blue-haired AI, Angela, looked at the shelf in front of her filled with drinks unique to this world, and then considered her supervisor's preferences.
No, for her, her supervisor's health was a higher priority than his taste.
At this moment, X, who had been completely arranged by Angela, was sitting obediently on a bench outside the store, lost in thought.
Like his fellow anomalies and employees, he is off work today.
Angela quickly selected her target.
After all, drinks aren't exactly necessities. Her ultimate goal was to get the supervisor to stay outside the facility a little longer, ideally to let him rest for a few days.
The woman with her hair tied in a side ponytail reached out to grab it, but bumped into another hand.
Coincidentally, there was another person who wanted this drink.
"Excuse me."
It was a voice tinged with apology.
The man was young, blond, and looked like he had just come of age, with a look of frustration on his face.
He hadn't expected it to be such a coincidence.
Angela's heart skipped a beat when she saw what the person looked like.
She knew him; he was one of the people who had once... stolen that person's attention.
That person has always been like that.
He was tolerant of both the young man in front of him and the young employees in the company.
This is completely different from how they treat themselves...
During the long wait after being abandoned by that person.
She saw it all clearly in a moment of surveillance footage.
They witnessed outsiders entering Lobotomy Corporation, which exists in an overlapping timeline.
She saw the person who, even in the final moments, never looked back at her.
Even though the person in the surveillance footage had a different head, Angela knew it was him.
He left her behind and went away alone.
Yet, they irrationally brought outsiders into their facilities.
"This young lady?"
The blond boy looked down at by Angela and felt a little awkward.
He sensed that the woman's attitude was not friendly.
Sinclair looked at the woman in front of him, who had an unconsciously stern face, and the more he looked, the more familiar she seemed.
In this world completely different from the city, his only acquaintance is Ms. Ryoshu, who is scattered among him.
I wonder if the rest of us, including Manager Dante, are still in this world.
In short, he shouldn't have this feeling of déjà vu.
He felt a little uneasy under the woman's gaze, as if he were being watched by the school's dean of students.
Was it his actions just now that upset her?
Sinclair gave a perfunctory bow and grabbed a bottle from the shelf.
With his eyes closed, he left a "sorry" and jogged away from Angela's sight.
Angela watched Sinclair's retreating figure.
After a while, he looked at the deformed can in his hand.
She thought it was time to leave.
The supervisor must be getting impatient by now.
Perhaps, going to a hot spring resort to relax is also a good idea, such as to Hokkaido or a place far away from Tokyo.
She grabbed another regular bottle, intending to take both drinks to the cashier to pay.
As I passed by the window, I found myself gazing out all day, intending to catch a glimpse of that person.
As a result, the bench was still there, but X, who should have been sitting on it, had disappeared.
Angela suddenly felt a surge of genuine anger.
Was she abandoned again?
No, calm down. He must have been distracted by something. He can't leave this world...
Yes, we can't live without it.
She walked towards the cashier, clutching the two dented jars.
X once said that in this world, if you don't want to attract attention, you have to follow the rules.
Once she finishes paying the bill, we can go see what X is up to.
The store suddenly became noisy.
The cashier, who was originally in charge of the cashier, ran towards the staff break room with a pale face.
The young man sitting at a small table in the corner eating oden looked at this unusual scene with puzzlement.
Soon, the store manager led the staff out of the break room; he was much calmer than the staff.
"We received a letter."
He raised his voice and showed the few people present a threatening letter pieced together from newspaper clippings.
I planted a bomb here.
"I have already reported it to the police. We cannot rule out the possibility that the letter was a prank."
The store manager subconsciously swallowed, as if swallowing his fear along with his saliva.
"But if the belief is true, then we are all suspects."
The young man who had been leisurely watching the play choked on an egg and nearly died.
He coughed awkwardly, and it took him a long time to spit out the half-egg.
He vowed never to eat eggs again, having almost been murdered by one. He thought bitterly, "If that had succeeded, I'd never be able to hold my head up high again."
The store manager stopped the customers who wanted to leave.
"No one can leave before the police arrive."
A high school girl raised her voice:
"Are we really going to get blown up here?!"
"yes!"
The middle-aged man echoed.
"Besides, wouldn't it be the same if we waited outside?"
The middle-aged man's suggestion immediately caused an uproar among the people in the shop:
"Yeah! Why do we have to stay inside the store? We can wait for the police outside!"
Just as the store manager was about to be swept out of the building by the crowd, police sirens blared, and the police arrived.
As soon as Inspector Megure entered, he saw this chaotic scene. He and several officers struggled to rescue the poor shop manager and then comforted the people:
"The emergency response team is already on standby outside, so don't be afraid."
At that moment, several police officers leading bomb-sniffing dogs entered the store. Inspector Megure nodded to them and then said:
"Let's go outside first; they're in control of the store now."
Unlike the chaotic crowd, a young foreign woman holding a crushed aluminum can in one hand stood out.
She stood there blankly, as if at a loss, or perhaps struggling with something.
Inspector Megure approached the young woman with a puzzled look and asked in broken English:
"We can go outside now."
Angela looked genuinely confused at this point.
Was he speaking English? It sounded like English, but why was there no rolled "r" sound at all? She couldn't figure out what he was saying.
"I can speak Japanese."
Angela finished Inspector Megure's clumsy Japanese-English performance, feeling that her database was being polluted by his absurd Japanese-English.
"Your Japanese is really fluent."
Inspector Megure breathed a sigh of relief.
He tried everything he could, but the young lady still looked puzzled. Luckily, she could speak Japanese.
"Let's go outside first, it's not safe here."
Inspector Megure suggested to the young woman that he suspected she didn't yet understand her current situation.
Angela asked:
"Where do I pay the bill?"
Inspector Megure was stumped. There was a suspected bomb in the store, but the young woman was worried about where to pay the bill.
Are things really that bad abroad? Do they have to pay the bill first even if there's a bomb?
Inspector Megure was deeply shocked.
"Let's go outside first, the staff are also outside."
The two finally left the convenience store, and Angela looked at the crowd waiting outside.
The blond boy wasn't inside; he seemed quite frightened and had already run away.
She spotted her target: her supervisor and a cabbage that had appeared out of nowhere, talking to a police officer in heavy protective gear.
"Brother Matsuda!"
Inspector Megure summoned his junior officer, who had only recently joined the **dealing unit**. The curly-haired officer waved to the two men and walked over.
As he moved, X also noticed Angela. He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and followed Matsuda over.
The curly-haired police officer turned around suspiciously: "Why are you following me?"
X is waving at Angela, who has been brought out:
"She's the friend I was talking about."
"Officer, what happened? When can we leave?"
X asked the fat police officer in charge a question.
After all, they still had a hot potato to deal with.
Police officers also came out with bomb-sniffing dogs.
"Inspector, the bomb is planted at the bottom of the cash register."
"Inspector Megure, now that the bomb has been found, I'll go in first."
Matsuda called to his teammates, and together they went into the convenience store to prepare to defuse the bomb.
"Excuse me, sir, we cannot disclose any specific details of the case."
This seasoned police officer clearly knew what could and couldn't be said, he added:
"As for this lady, you can leave us your contact information and address and then you can leave."
Angela left him the address of the ground floor of Company L, along with their contact information.
Inspector Megure handed the note to his subordinate for record-keeping, so that he could ask for clues when the case was formally investigated.
He watched the three people walk away, feeling that something was off, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
Ultimately, I can only attribute it to my own discomfort with seeing young people doing cosplay.
At this moment, a junior police officer spoke up timidly:
"Inspector, did Miss Angela not pay?"
This is it!
He finally remembered what was wrong: he had forgotten about the two cans of drinks because he was distracted by the bomb!
Upon seeing her companion, the young woman forgot all about the incident and simply followed the two away.
"Fine," Inspector Megure said, pulling out his wallet.
It was my own fault for forgetting that Miss Angela was determined to pay the bill from the very beginning, even in a place where a bomb had been planted, she planned to pay the bill before leaving.
Inspector Megure walked over to the store manager and silently paid for the two drinks.
Meanwhile, the three people who inexplicably skipped out on their bill were in a secluded corner, gathered around a pot of what appeared to be a still-dead thorny bus.
"What exactly happened? Angela, is there any record of this in the intelligence department?"
X asked Lobotomy Corporation about its AI.
This was the first time Angela, as the executor of the script, had encountered such a situation. She had seen the thorny bus in countless script cycles, but never anything like this had ever happened.
"There has never been a record of such an incident since the company was founded."
Angela's voice remained calm as always, even though she didn't know what was going on.
The cabbage poked at the thorny bus petals.
Unlike the previous supple feel, the current thorny bus feels like a wilted flower, soft and thin.
"Manager, it looks like it's really going to die."
The boy's calm voice interrupted their conversation, and the cabbage gestured to X to indicate that the petals of the thorny bus were beginning to dry out.
"Angela, let's hurry! If the Thorn Bus really dies, who will make up for my energy shortage?"
A note from the author:
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