Chapter 16 The First Player
Haruto Nishimi went up to the second floor and opened the room that Toru Amuro had described as a "standard safe house" with familiarity. He expertly threw away the outermost quilt cover, pillowcase, and bed sheet, then fell asleep.
——The time for their transaction with the Hong Kong gang was set temporarily. The agreed time was five in the morning, but they were ready to go to the dock at four in the morning. It can be said that he did not sleep all night last night.
He looked at himself, who had just acted calm and composed in front of Fūya Rei and the others, but in fact he had a splitting headache and was extremely sleepy. He really didn't have the energy to deal with them anymore. He just wished he could find a place to sleep until the end of time.
It was already five in the afternoon when he woke up. Xi Haiqingdou sat up from the bed, rubbed his burning stomach, took out a tablet of Rebapate from his windbreaker pocket, chewed it and swallowed it without changing his expression.
[System, help me detect how many eavesdropping devices Danggu Ling has installed in this room.]
[Host, this is against our rules... You can't cheat. ]
[Do you really think there will be a difference between the results of my own investigation and yours? ]
Xi Haiqing Dou was speechless, [Anyway, the final result is the same, it is better to save some time. ]
How should I put it...this system is good in every way, except that there are some areas where it is really hard to adapt.
【……All right.】
The system symbolically struggled and then honestly detected in the room, [Host, there are four in total. One is in the gap between the head of the bed and the wall, one is behind the fourth book in the second row of the wall bookshelf, one is in the suitcase, and one is in the corner under the balcony.]
Xi Hai Qing Dou searched for all the eavesdropping devices one by one and fell silent.
[This guy, Rei Furuya... is too cruel. Where did he get so many eavesdropping devices? ]
The eavesdropping device that Furugaya Rei placed in the suitcase replaced the locator he originally placed inside. It looked exactly the same as the other one. Saikai Haruto looked at it for a long time but couldn't find anything wrong with its appearance. It was so real that it could be mistaken for a fake one.
After thinking about it, he considerately left one eavesdropping device back in the book and threw the remaining three into the trash can.
Before going downstairs, Xi Haiqing Dou paused and opened the next room - that was the room of his other alias "Mochizuki Kaoru".
Of course, to be more precise, not only this room, but the whole house belongs to "Mochizuki Kaoru".
His other pseudonym is "Mochizuki Kaoru". As a famous writer with many best-selling works, he has plenty of money and houses. He has at least three vacant houses in Yokohama. This one is one of the safe houses he prepared for himself. Sometimes he would even come here to close down and finish his manuscripts when he couldn't write them.
This house has not been occupied for two or three months, and there is a thin layer of dust inside.
Xihai Qingdou left the door a little ajar, walked to the balcony first, shook off the dust in the air, and then glanced at the water lilies and cactus on the balcony.
It is now late October, and the water lily in this room has passed its flowering period. Its branches and leaves have withered and look listless, and the clear water inside has long since turned turbid. The cactus next to it is in a slightly better condition, but it seems a little short of water, but it is still stubbornly blooming.
Xi Hai Qing Dou first poured out the water in the lotus bowl, then skillfully opened the drawer, took out paper and wiped the sprinkler bottle in the corner of the wall, filled half of the bottle with water, and walked slowly to the balcony with the bottle in hand.
He pretended not to notice the tiny dark shadow in the gap outside the door, then took out his cell phone and dialed Mochizuki Kaoru's number while changing the water for the lotus.
"Moshi Moshi, Xun-chan, did you miss me?" He called in a voice that was so intimate and a little sticky, pouring the water in the kettle slowly into the basin of lotus leaves.
On the other end of the phone, Mochizuki Kaoru paused and replied very coldly with two very short words: "...Who are you?"
Jun Du sighed in grievance: "Hey, how could this be, has Xunjiang forgotten me? It's really sad..."
"...It's so disgusting. I want to vomit." Mochizuki Kaoru complained in a flat tone.
At the same time, two voices rang out in Xi Haiqing Dou's mind:
“Tsk—”
The voices of "Mochizuki Kaoru" and "Yuen Chiaki" made the same sound, and they disliked each other:
"You can definitely communicate with yourself in your mind, but you insist on calling yourself, and use such a disgusting tone. It gives me goosebumps."
"Damn it, do you really despise yourself so much? It's interesting to hear you say that once in a while, right? That's just my personality."
"No, it's still unbearable... It's just that it's all 'me', which makes it feel even weirder."
"There's nothing I can do about it. You better be patient for the sake of your smooth debut. If it gets recorded in the comics, it'll be a steal!"
"But if no one sees us, it would look weird if we were talking to ourselves."
"It doesn't matter, at least there is an 'audience' watching outside the door."
The system in Xi Haiqing Dou's brain: "..."
So even if "Yuyuan Chiaki" and "Mochizuki Kaoru" have different personalities, aren't they still played by you alone? Not only do you have to play two characters outside, but now you have to use two personalities to chat with each other in your mind. Will using too many aliases cause the host to have schizophrenia?
Xi Haiqing Dou didn't even glance at the system - this is the joy of using a vest! Who can understand the joy of opening multiple accounts and chatting with yourself!
And he's not doing this because he's bored... Isn't he trying to use various methods to get "Mochizuki Kaoru" to appear in the comics? Regardless of success or failure, we should always try new methods.
It has failed in other plots before... Nishimi Haruto thinks it's because "Mochizuki Kaoru" settled in Yokohama and belonged to the Bunno studio. Bunno's manga updates much slower, and Mochizuki Kaoru... has not had a chance to "appear" yet. Not to mention him, the person who lives next door to him and has a name in Bunno's original work has not appeared yet.
After I finished the call and waited for him to pack up and go downstairs, it was almost 6:30 in the afternoon.
When he walked up the stairs, he saw that only Furuya Rei and Morobushi Kagemitsu were left in the living room below. One of them was sitting on one side of the sofa playing with his phone while the other was sitting on the other side with his eyes downcast cleaning his gun. They looked very different, and when they saw him coming down, they all looked up at him.
"You finally woke up. If you didn't wake up, Canada would have knocked on the door soon." Furiya Rei said with a half-smile.
"It's still intact, isn't it? As long as it doesn't wake me up, it's fine. I'm hungry."
Xi Haiqingdou stretched out his long legs and sat in the middle of the sofa, and asked righteously: "Is there anything to eat tonight?"
Zhu Fu Jingguang looked up and pointed at the several unopened buckets of instant noodles on the coffee table: "These are the instant noodles on top. There is another box of instant noodles in the kitchen."
"That's it? You guys aren't just eating instant noodles, are you?"
Xi Haiqingdou showed a suspicious look and shook his head, his disgust was evident in his words, "I won't eat this kind of garbage. It's even worse than a compressed biscuit."
"Then all that's left is compressed biscuits." Zhu Fu Jingguang said helplessly.
The remaining few of them don't know how to cook, and no one is free to step out and be the cook, so fast food like instant noodles is their first choice.
Asahina Kazuma wanted Morobushi Kagemitsu to help cook - he could only eat but not cook, but Zero refused. After all, it would be fine at other times, but if he cooked now, he would have to cook for everyone else, and he wasn't a real cook.
Xihai Qingdou looked at him gloomily, and actually stood up, found the compressed biscuits and poured them into the bowl, then picked up a bottle of water and poured it in to stir it, showing with his actions that "he would rather eat compressed biscuits than instant noodles."
[I can't survive a single day without takeout.] He complained to the system in his mind.
"What about Canada and vodka?" he asked.
"Canada is upstairs. He threw the two Takase guys into the utility room. I don't know what he's going to do with them. Didn't you see it when you came down?" Furiya Rei answered lazily.
"Really?" Xi Haiqing Dou blinked, "Oh, I didn't notice that."
"As for vodka, he just went out to make a phone call." Furuya Ling chuckled, "Although he didn't say it, you don't have to guess to know it's gin."
"Now that we know it's Takase who's behind this, what should we do next?"
He asked, looking at Saikai Haruto without missing a beat, with a calm expression and sharp eyes: "I remember that there shouldn't be any conflict of interest between us and the Takase Society, or is there another so-called 'secret' that is being kept from me?"
As if not noticing the sarcasm in his words, Xi Hai Qing Dou said in surprise: "How could that be? Bourbon, I have told you everything you want to know. How could there be any secrets hidden from you?"
He changed the subject lightly: "You have contacted Passetto, what did he say?"
——He didn’t “intentionally” “hide” from him, he just “accidentally” “said less” about some things, and as long as he didn’t ask, he wouldn’t tell him that information.
Furiya Rei knew this very well, but he did not dwell on this topic any further. Instead, he continued speaking: "Passetto said that this morning, the Takase Society and the GSS attacked the people on the way to the Minato-kuro side. The losses on the Minato-kuro side were severe, and at least three quarters of the supplies were lost."
"Those supplies" refer to the batch of arms they traded with the Hong Kong underworld.
"Together?" Xi Hai Qing Dou raised his eyebrows, "Did they get the news at the same time? They didn't fight? When did they attack?"
"It was before seven o'clock, and I don't know the exact time. There was no time."
Fūya Rei seemed to be recalling something, and said slowly, "According to what Passetto said, their purpose seemed very clear, which was to take the supplies from the Hong Kong gang. They didn't attack each other, but I don't know if they attacked each other after they left."
"We separated from them a little after 6:30," said Nishimi Haruto, "which means that not long after that, they encountered the precise attack of the Takase-kai and the GSS on their way back. The timing was really accurate... It's really tragic."
Xi Hai Qing Dou chuckled, with a genuine smile in his eyes, "Oh, let alone the Hong Kong gang, even I can't help but wonder if we have been informing them behind their backs."
"On the surface, the Hong Kong gang lost money and supplies in this deal, but we lost nothing and suddenly disappeared for no apparent reason. It really seems like we tore up the deal and messed things up. But you and I both know that the focus of our visit to Yokohama this time is not this deal, but to explore Yokohama's power. There is no need to have a bad relationship with the Hong Kong gang."
Furuya Rei said, "So what should we do next? Apart from other things, the Hong Kong underworld will not let this go so easily."
"So Bourbon, why do you think the news of this transaction leaked?"
Xi Haiqingdou picked up the bowl and gulped down the compressed biscuits soaked in water. His brows wrinkled unconsciously and he asked instead of answering, "This transaction can be said to be a success and a failure. Although it is their own problem that they could not keep the supplies, the timing was so coincidental that the enmity with the Hong Kong underworld can be said to be set in stone."
"No matter how you think about it, there is only one explanation, right?" Furiya Rei's eyes turned cold, as if ice had frozen in his gray-blue eyes. His voice was equally cold: "There is an undercover agent among the Hong Kong underworld, or among us."
"That's right." Nishikai Haruto put down the bowl, clapped his hands, and smiled brightly: "You must already have a doubtful candidate for Boben, right? Even if we go back from Yokohama now, it can be regarded as the mission accomplished. But it’s really uneasy to let a potential undercover agent exist around you. It’s better to deal with it as soon as possible, right?”
"Yes." Fūya Rei put on the same smile on his face and looked at Saikai Haruto, but there was no smile in his eyes. He said coldly: "Then, what if I say that the person I suspect is you, Jundu?"