Tokyo: Rabbit Police and Her Evil Partner

Chapter 461 Guests
Yuan Yuzi blushed with embarrassment and retorted loudly that everyone wet the bed when they were little, so why bring it up?
“I never wet the bed when I was a child,” Fushimi Shika shrugged. “You can ask Sakura when you go back. I bet she never wet the bed when she was a child either… It seems like you’re the only one in your family who ever wet the bed.”

"..."

Genji's face flushed red. She adopted the demeanor of a captain and severely criticized Fushimi Shika, condemning him for making fun of the captain's private matters during the investigation. She demanded that he apologize to the captain and forbade him from mentioning the matter to anyone again.

Once Captain Tamako gained power, Fushimi Shika had no choice but to bow his head, sincerely admitting his mistakes and claiming that he had deeply reflected on his actions. He then changed the subject, bringing the conversation back on track:
“None of that matters. What matters is that this little girl is an eyewitness; she saw the hypnotist.”

Suppressing her embarrassment and indignation, Minamoto nods in agreement as she returns to her work mode. She's been very concerned about the identity of that mysterious 'guest' ever been during Nishino Touna's account.
Clearly, that guy was the one who started it all.

She gave Fushimi Shika a look, and he understood immediately. The two of them approached Nishino Touna from the left and right at the same time.

Genjima put on a friendly smile, while Fushimi Shika kept a cold face. This was a common interrogation technique taught at the police academy, known in Japan as "good cop and bad cop," which can be understood as one playing the good cop and the other the bad cop, taking turns to break down the suspect's defenses.

This is already a very lenient interrogation method; at least it hasn't escalated to physical conflict, and there's a "good cop" playing the good cop as a buffer. It's much better than a major memory recovery technique.

"Touna, do you remember what that guest looked like?" Minamoto Tamako asked.

“Well… she looks like a customer,” Nishino Touna said.

"What is the guest's name?"

"Just call him a guest..."

Minamoto Tamako could tell that Nishino Touna didn't want to talk about it. She gently asked Nishino Touna if she had any concerns, or if she had been threatened by someone.

Nishino Touna didn't say anything. She turned around, faced the corner of the wall, and shut herself off.

After asking around for a long time, Minamoto no Tamako still couldn't get any answers. She had no choice but to turn around and look at Fushimi.

Fushimi Shika knew it was time to get to work, so he immediately snapped and yelled, "Temminayaru! You brat, are you looking down on the police? Huh?"

Nishino Touna was startled. She turned around and saw Fushimi Shika, whose upper body was hidden in the shadows, slowly raising his right hand, shaking the fruit knife in his hand, and even sticking out his tongue to lick the blade... looking just like a perverted killer.

Nishino Touna almost burst into tears, and Minamoto Tamako quickly rushed over to protect her, making Fushimi Shika step back slightly, and reassured her, "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, I'm here! I won't let him do anything to you..."

"That's hard to say!" Fushimi Shika interjected from behind, "If you don't tell the truth, the police could make you sit on the tiger bench and force-feed chili water!"

Gen Tamako turned around and glared fiercely at Fushimi Shika. No matter how you look at it, this kind of threat was a bit too much. Nishino Touna was just a twelve-year-old girl. She only needed to pretend to be a silly villain in a tokusatsu drama and scare her a little. There was no need to threaten to use torture.

Nishino Touna pursed her lips, trembling, and became even more unwilling to speak.

Seeing this, Genji was completely at a loss and decided to give up the interrogation and take Nishino Touna away for treatment first.

Fushimi Shika didn't intend to dawdle any longer. He used a little trick and lied, "If you tell the truth, I'll take you to see your brother... He's actually not dead yet."

Nishino Touna finally spoke: "You just said he's dead."

Fushimi Shika said in a serious tone, "I was just kidding. It's because you've been struggling so much that it's really too much trouble."

Nishino Touna retorted, "Then how can I be sure you're not lying again? If you let me call my brother, I'll believe you... I just saw her with a small cell phone."

Fushimi Shika thought to himself, "How come this guy is so cunning? He doesn't look that old, but he's even more shrewd than Minamoto Tamako!"

If it were a drug dealer, Fushimi Shika would have taken action immediately. But Nishino Touna was a little girl and a victim. He had no way to use his skills, and even his clever words couldn't make the stone bloom. He could only give up and ask Minamoto Tamako to call for help.

"Fine, you can just stay here." Fushimi Shika pouted.

Gen Tamako took out her flip phone, hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to call the police station or Dr. Miyazaki... If she called the police station, they would probably send staff from a welfare agency to pick her up, just like Hira Sakurako had been treated before, which gave her a strange sense of desolation.

After much deliberation, she finally decided to call Dr. Miyazaki.

Although the outpatient consultation was expensive, Ms. Miyazaki's professional competence was beyond doubt, and it was worth the price. She spent the money to comfort the victims' families, not to enjoy the ill-gotten gains, and she felt no guilt when swiping her card.

Miyazaki Yuko agreed, and the two sides arranged a time and place. With nothing to do, Minamoto Tamako and Fushimi Shika could only wait at Nishino's house.

Nishino Touna rolled over and buried her head in the blanket, looking very scared; Minamoto Tamako leaned over to comfort her, telling her not to be nervous.

Fushimi, being a kind-hearted member, couldn't bear to see the little girl suffer, so he chose to leave the basement, go upstairs to reply to the drug dealer's message, and then wander around the yard looking for the "zombie's" corpse and the crossbow bolt that Nishino Touna had shot.

The yard was overgrown with weeds, which were about knee-high. He bent down, parted the weeds, and searched back and forth for a long time, but found nothing and didn't smell anything strange.

The only evidence that Nishino Touna fired a crossbow bolt is probably the broken glass in the lower right corner of the front yard window.

Following the angle of the broken glass, Fushimi Shika reconstructed the events in his mind. If Nishino Touna had been lying on the windowsill and fired a crossbow bolt into the yard, it would most likely have hit an adult's testicles—if she had raised the crossbow, the window glass wouldn't have been broken in just a small piece.

In other words, from this angle, it's impossible to hit an adult's head.

Did Nishino Touna shoot a child in the head?

Fushimi Shika estimated the child's height and found it to be just right. If it were a teenager standing about a meter away from the window, he would be shot in the head by a crossbow.

Bad situation.

Fushimi Shika felt this hypothesis was a bit too far-fetched. To confirm it further, he followed the trajectory of the crossbow bolt, parted the grass, walked to the wooden fence, squatted down, and examined it carefully. He found a small hole in the wooden board with dark red stains on it.

He reached out and touched it, confirming that the stains were blood.

It seems that Nishino Touna really hit a person or animal, but the crossbow bolt and the body are missing, which means that someone disposed of the body and the murder weapon afterward.

Fushimi Shika figured the body probably wouldn't have been transported too far. If it were him, he'd likely just bury it in the backyard and use it as fertilizer for the plants. He went around to the backyard again, searching for signs of digging.

Persistence pays off, and he made an unexpected discovery—instead of finding the burial site, he found a burnt-out area.

In a corner of the backyard near the fence, there was a pile of black, gelatinous substance that looked like asphalt. It was probably the residue from burning something like plastic.

Fushimi Shika put on gloves and searched for a while, finding some small parts. He spread them in his palm, rubbed off the ash and black glue on the surface, and could vaguely make out that they were a copper metal shaft, a small metal strip, and a metal pulley.

What the hell is this?
Fushimi Shika searched his memory, comparing everyday items with these parts one by one. Before he could figure it out, he heard the sound of car brakes coming from the front yard. He looked up from the bushes and glanced over the fence, just in time to see Miyazaki Yuuko getting out of the car.

He recalled his unpleasant hypnotic experience from last time, lowered his head again, pretended not to see Miyazaki Yuko, and continued to study the parts in his hands.

Hmm, it looks so familiar...

Fushimi Shika pinched a part between his fingers, held it up to the sunlight, squinted at it, and pondered for a long time before finally remembering what it was.

The metal shaft should be the core of the magnetic tape. Some professional reel-type magnetic tapes are equipped with metal guide posts and pulleys, which are metal strips and metal pulleys, respectively.

These small parts are all made of copper, which has a higher ignition point than plastic, which is why they survived.

Fushimi Shika dumped the metal scraps into a plastic bag, considering it evidence. If he wasn't mistaken, the zombie howls Nishino Touna heard were likely a recording.

Another possibility is that the 'guest' played a hypnotic tape, causing the Nishino siblings to experience various visual and auditory hallucinations.

After a busy day, he had made some progress. Fushimi Shika patted his bottom, stood up, and planned to go back to the basement to meet up with Genji Tamako.

The back door was locked; it was likely that Nishino Touna had locked the door from the inside when she got home. Fushimi Shika didn't have the tools to pick the lock, so he went back to the front door. As he passed the cars outside the fence, he noticed that the windows were all covered with privacy film.

In 1990, Japan introduced the third-generation metal reflective film, also known as one-way privacy film. Within three years of its release, cars with privacy films were rarely seen on the road.

Furthermore, according to Japanese regulations, tinting is prohibited on the driver's and passenger's side windows, but any type of film is allowed on the rear windows—this car clearly violates the regulations, as both the driver's and passenger's side windows are tinted with dark film.

It's clear that Miyazaki Yuko doesn't want to be spied on. But Fushimi Shika is just that kind of shameless person. If the car windows are clear and he can see right through, he won't even glance at them; but if there's privacy film on, he'll look up and down to see if there's anything he doesn't want to see.

Of course, he wouldn't deliberately pry open someone's car door just to peek inside. That level of curiosity might at most make him take an extra step to walk around to the front window for a look—but if it meant taking an extra few steps, Fushimi Shika wouldn't bother with that.

Just that one extra glance led Fushimi Shika to discover something extraordinary.

Through the car's windshield, you can see a stretcher on the back seat. Considering that Miyazaki Yuko is a doctor and may need to carry patients when making house calls, it makes sense to put a stretcher on the back seat... But why is there a burlap sack on the stretcher?

Fushimi Shika went back to the rear window, shielded his eyes from the light with his hands, pressed his face against the glass, and noticed several hydraulic metal canisters on the floor behind the seat. They were labeled with English letters and were probably chemical gases similar to ether.

Is it really necessary to make such a big fuss to deal with a teenage girl?

Fushimi Shika was filled with doubts. She thought of the recording of Fujiwara Homare and Yoshikawa Rio's conversation, and then of Kazama Takusai's hypnosis recording. Both were from the same professional brand. She also thought of Miyazaki Yuuko's unusual skill level and her quirks that she had never shown... If they were all coincidences, there would be too many coincidences.

Fushimi Shika always thought the worst of people, and at this moment he was prepared for the worst. He gripped the fruit knife in his hand, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, slid off his leather shoes, and stepped barefoot lightly onto the entryway floor, silently approaching the basement entrance.

The floor door remained completely black.

He bent down and pressed his ear to the floor. It was unusually quiet below, and his heart sank. He immediately flipped over and jumped in, leaping over the stairs like a cat and landing steadily.

A pink flip phone was shining its flashlight, illuminating a corner of the basement.

Fushimi Shika glanced around and saw that Minamoto Tamako was still sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her small phone, still in the same position as when she was talking to Nishino Touna; while Nishino Touna was still curled up in the blankets, not moving at all, and did not come out.

He quickly turned around and finally found Miyazaki Yuuko, who was standing in the corner of the basement, tiptoeing, seemingly taking something from the shelf.

"Tamako?"

Fushimi Shika tried calling out softly, "Captain?"

Yuan Yuzi turned around and saw that he looked nervous, so she subconsciously asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." Fushimi Shika breathed a sigh of relief, but he remained vigilant. He reached out and grabbed Minamoto Tamako's arm, trying to lead her out of the basement: "Come with me for a moment."

Gen Tamako felt completely bewildered. She got up, wanting to hear what brilliant ideas Fushimi had to offer. Maybe the dim-witted teammate would have a flash of inspiration, giving the captain a breakthrough that would allow her to solve the case in one fell swoop...

Before she could move, her other hand was grabbed as well.

Minamoto no Tamako and Fushimi Shika both looked down at the same time, and saw Nishino Touna reach out a small hand from under the covers, grab her sleeve, and whisper, "Don't go... I have something very important to tell you..."

"what?"

Yuan Yuzi was taken aback. She had always been very curious, and what's more, Nishino Touna was an important witness. All the testimonies and statements were very important and could be the breakthrough for them to solve the case. They couldn't ignore them.

Nishino Touna waved, her eyes hidden under the blanket, reflecting the light from the flashlight.

Minamoto no Tamako bent down, and Fushimi Shika also turned her head to look. She saw Nishino Touna lean close to Minamoto no Tamako's ear and whisper:
"The woman behind you..."

"That's the guest."

Fushimi Shika was startled and turned around abruptly. He heard a crisp sound from the darkness, and the cell phone light suddenly went out as darkness enveloped him.

(End of this chapter)