32 Chapter 32
◎A dark shadow stands at the bedside at midnight◎
Chapter 32 [A Dark Shadow Standing at the Bedside at Midnight]
No matter how ignorant of the ways of the world, he would not do such a thing as sending a message in the middle of the night, especially to a woman he had only met once.
Actually, there was no need for Jinpei Matsuda to text Sayuri Myojo. It would have been more reasonable for Sayuri Myojo to thank him in return, perhaps by texting him.
The girl clicked on the email icon and saw a short line of text: "Don't let me see you in a bombing again."
There are no cumbersome Japanese greetings, nor are there any complicated sentence structures. It is just a simple, straightforward sentence that perfectly matches Jinpei Matsuda's personality.
No normal person would want to be involved in a bombing, but this wasn't a choice she had...
She frowned and thought for a long time. Finally, she chose "." between sending a message to ask for the other party's advice and accepting it.
How would the other party react when they receive a reply letter containing only a period?
Agatsuma Sayuri said she would ignore the other person until he reflected on sending messages to "strangers" late at night. Even if the person was someone he had helped!
My wife, Sayuri, was confused by this, so she instinctively clicked on a new message on her phone and saw the following:
"Sayuri, where have you been? Why did you change your phone number? Your grandfather wants to see you. You must be at the ancestral home before 8 a.m. tomorrow."
The message came from an unfamiliar number, and it was full of accusations and commands.
The girl looked at the sender. Hmm, this one wasn't from Jinpei Matsuda. Compared to Jinpei Matsuda's bluntness, this rude message was obviously even more annoying.
If it weren't for the hiragana characters "Sayuri" at the beginning, my wife Sayuri would have thought it was a wrong message.
Because her phone was set to not answer unknown calls, my wife Sayuri hadn't received any calls from this number. But the message wasn't among those filtered out, so it appeared before her eyes.
The words "Don't answer the call" reminded my wife, Sayuri, that perhaps this number had called before. She opened her call log and carefully checked the "Blocking Harassment" section.
As expected, the same number made over a hundred calls. Today was the worst, with dozens of calls in a single day, almost the total number of calls before.
This plot is too similar to the scenes in the previous life where families forced their daughters to marry their daughters all their lives, and when they came of age, they had to arrange a family marriage and marry a stranger they had never met.
It's strange that the other person, despite all the calls, only thought of sending a single message today. If before, they'd called and then just let it go, like they'd given up, then today's sudden barrage of calls and messages demanding I go somewhere seemed like they had nothing to do but to be forced to do what they wanted.
But my wife Sayuri remembers that when she traveled through time, she only had a piece of paper with her name on it, sewn on the corner of her clothes with thread, just like how you write your name on your sportswear in school days. She had no other documents, money, or cell phone.
In order to find her identity, the police who helped her with her documents also checked the recent missing persons report records.
The result? Looking at how hard my wife, Sayuri, worked part-time to make a living, and how she was finally able to improve her living conditions, you can understand that the result was nothing.
If the real person, Agatsuma Sayuri, had a "home", then why didn't her family report the case?
If you can find the mobile phone number she applied for, why didn’t you come to see her earlier?
Aren’t you afraid that she will die outside?
Oops, this is becoming more and more like a forced marriage.
The girl stared at the phone screen for a while, then pressed the power button hard and the phone went off.
"Who cares?" she said with disdain, and went to wash up and go to bed.
From now until she wakes up, it is one of the few times of the day when she is not wearing makeup. In order to maintain the condition of her skin, this is a very necessary "beauty sleep".
My wife, Sayuri, had indeed verbally put the matter aside, but she was clearly still thinking about it. As a direct result, she spent the entire night dreaming about romantic dramas like the true and false daughter, a modern Cinderella, family feuds, and family marriages where love comes first, then the scumbag cheats.
This is probably what it means when you think about something during the day, you dream about it at night①.
When she woke up, she was a little confused about what day it was. The thick curtains were drawn in the room, not letting in any light. Unable to open her eyes, she reached for her phone by her pillow.
Squinting my eyes to look at the slightly dazzling screen, the number 4:05 looks particularly abrupt when the screen is locked.
I woke up after only four hours of sleep...
No wonder it’s so dark. It’s not entirely due to the curtains. The sun hasn’t even come out yet.
She yawned again, put down her phone, and prepared to sleep in. The light from the phone screen did not go out immediately, but shone on her bedside.
A blurry black figure slowly moved from the door towards my wife Sayuri. Now it was at the head of her bed, standing there silently.
The phone was put down, and the direction of the light shifted, shining on the black shadow, revealing a terrifying human face.
My wife, Sayuri, had already closed her eyes, but then, sensing something was amiss, she opened them. Aided by the dim light, their gazes met.
The girl's confused eyes suddenly widened, and she was so frightened that she bounced back a distance.
"Who is it?" she demanded sharply, her eyes unconsciously glancing at her phone. She had been so frightened that the other person had retreated, and her phone was still by the bed. Now she had no tools to call the police.
"Ms. Sayuri, the ancestral home is far away, so the master sent me to pick you up." The man spoke in an old voice, neither slow nor fast, and his pronunciation was a little difficult to understand, like some dialect or an ancient saying.
"Who are you? How did you get into my room?"
The visitor paused, then unexpectedly answered my wife Sayuri's question: "Don't you remember again, Miss Sayuri? I am the 32nd generation housekeeper of my wife's family, my wife Kazuyuki."
She bowed slightly, then continued her topic without further ado: "Please follow me, Miss Sayuri, we don't have much time."
My wife, Sayuri, hadn't originally planned to visit the so-called ancestral home. She had already dismissed the message as spam. Who knew someone would show up at the door before dawn?
Since they could go directly to her house now, why didn't anyone report the case to her before?
Could it be that he has been monitoring her all the time?
…
When this speculation came up, my wife Sayuri was stunned, and a bad thought suddenly occurred to her mind: "If someone has been monitoring me, then what is their attitude towards Koyasu Ryo? Are they investigating him?"
It’s okay for other people, but Koyasu Ryo’s identity was created specifically for my wife Sayuri. Even Koyasu Ryo’s job was found overnight.
In this regard, the background of Rei Furuya's fake identity, "Amuro Toru," is much more detailed, showing the benefits of working part-time to gather intelligence. Investigating Amuro Toru only reveals that he only works at each job for a short period of time before moving on to the next.
If asked, just explain it by saying, "As a detective, you need to experience the differences between different jobs." Traveling extensively to gain experience in order to become a good detective is a perfectly reasonable reason.
And the fact that she went to Beika Town specifically to investigate Miyano Akemi's file and made friends with several junior high school students, could it be that she was also noticed?
Unaware that she was being followed, Sayuri's concern for others and her need to explain her actions overshadowed her concern for her own safety. It wasn't until the old voice returned, reminding her, "Please follow me," that she finally realized what was happening.
"I haven't even washed or put on makeup yet, how am I going to go out and meet people like this?"
The lights in the room were not on and the man was hidden in the darkness, but my wife Sayuri could feel that he was looking her up and down.
"No need to dress up, Miss Sayuri. We are already prepared, Miss Sayuri just need to follow me."
My wife, Sayuri, timidly crawled forward two steps and retrieved her cell phone. She wanted to call the police immediately, but she heard the other party say, "The master has already hosted a banquet for the police who rescued you. Miss Sayuri, there is no need to notify them."
Why?
Do you mean that not only her, but even the policeman who rescued her during the day was taken to the so-called ancestral home?
Think about it, for such a big case today, the number of police officers on the scene is not a small number.
At this moment, my wife Sayuri was no longer concerned about her own safety. Her main concern was who was so confident as to hire so many police officers at once?
It's fine that the original owner's family had a housekeeper, and a female one at that, but since they specifically separated them out, there must be a male butler as well. What kind of aristocratic family is this to have thirty-two generations of female housekeepers?
Anyway, the other party had no intention of taking her phone away. If things got bad, she could call the police then.
After some internal reflection, my wife Sayuri felt this was a great opportunity to broaden her horizons. She didn't know the original owner's past experiences, so she could use the excuse of amnesia to ask the people in the so-called ancestral house, thereby accumulating material to enrich her work.
"Please wait a moment. I have an appointment today..."
Now that she has changed her mind and wants to visit the ancestral home, the appointment with Zi Anliang will have to be rescheduled.
"Does Miss Sayuri need to go to the other party's house to explain the reason for the date change?"
"That's not necessary. I can just talk to him on the phone."
"Understood. Then we will continue with the planned route."
My wife Sayuri just wanted to test whether the other party really didn't mind her using her cell phone.
Dressed in pajamas and sporting a tousled hairstyle, my wife, Sayuri, was ushered into a car. She couldn't name the car, or even recognize the logo. She only knew it looked beautiful, with a premium interior, spacious seats, and a stylish design.
When a car looks good, has comfortable materials, and has a license plate of 888, then its price cannot be cheap.
The fact that they were able to send such a powerful car to pick her up seemed to indicate that my wife's family didn't seem to care about the original owner as my wife Sayuri had imagined.
This makes the behavior of ignoring her for the past year seem even more strange.
【Author’s words】
① The earliest known idiom can be traced back to the Warring States Period, when Shenzi wrote in his "Shenzi·Yiwen" that "those who have nothing to do during the day will not dream at night." This idiom later evolved into the current expression, and is also recorded in "Liezi·Zhou Muwang" as "daytime dreams and nighttime dreams." Modern scholars such as Guo Moruo and Li Weiding have cited this idiom in their works, and Liang Qichao also used it in an extended sense in his "Biography of the Three Heroes Who Founded Italy." — Entry from Baidu Encyclopedia
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