Pokémon Detective Case Files.

However, this does not detract from the practicality of the hole rope; as a sturdy steel cable that can provide tension, it is useful enough.

"Alright, the next target is the top of the clock tower!"

Azure recalled its Archaeopteryx into its Poké Ball and reached out from the treetop to signal. The Dove, which had been blocking the camera's view, took flight and soared higher above Azure.

During the flight, Ditto's ever-changing form shifted again in the air. As if a flash of purple light had appeared, the tiny Beandove transformed into the vulture Natasha, its pink talons grabbing the backpack on Azure's back and pulling her into the sky.

Ditto's "Transform" ability is powerful, but it's not without its flaws. Without a nearby reference point, even if it can transform into the desired Pokémon, it can't use their moves and abilities. Therefore, like Archaeorya, Ditto can't use the "Fly" move to take its trainer into the sky, although it can easily pull Azure into the air.

"okay."

The girl gave a soft shout and, while continuing to activate the rope through the hole, jumped off the tree branch.

The rope tightened rapidly, and Azure and Ditto swung across a horizontal distance of more than ten meters, successfully climbing to the outer wall of the school clock tower. The girl continued to climb upwards, gripping the wide-open clock tower railing, and flipped over to enter, finally reaching her destination.

The school's clock tower has been upgraded to an electric bell system, but because it makes a deafening noise when classes end, it is usually unattended. The classrooms under the clock tower are only used as an auditorium when the preschool holds rare assemblies.

"Isn't this bell a bit too big for a preschool?"

Looking at the huge hanging clock in front of her, which was clearly decorated in the shape of a bronze bell with a copper-green patina, the female detective was puzzled. She reached out to check the feel of the metal on the surface of the clock.

And the next second—

"Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang..."

get out of class is over.

The electric bell-ringing mechanism inside the bell started working violently, causing the bell to sway from side to side and produce a deafening sound.

Why build a skyscraper specifically for a bell? This question, which had flashed through Bilan's mind while rock climbing, was instantly answered—

That's because the bell is too loud!

A perfectly good alarm clock is enough to ruin a sleeper's wonderful mood for the whole day, but what bursts into the girl's eyes is the ringing of a huge bell that is hundreds of times louder than an ordinary alarm clock and whose sound can be heard throughout the entire campus.

The moment the bell rang, Ditto was instantly forced back into its original form from Vulture's form, turning into a trembling pool of purple slime.

Azure covered her ears in anguish and curled up in a dusty corner of the clock tower. However, as the bells continued to ring, the deafening sound seemed to subside considerably.

Huh? Is it because your ears have gotten used to this loud noise?

No, Azure, who had regained some energy, immediately rejected her own idea.

Opening his eyes, he saw very familiar yellow and blue feathers; Archaeopteryx was using its wings to protect the trainer's ears. Besides it, Eevee and Ditto hadn't retreated back into their Poké Balls either; they were perched on Azure's head, trying to shield their owner from the sound waves with their own bodies.

In Azure's perception, the ringing sound seemed to last for an eternity. The deafening noise made the acting detective dazed, leaving him unable to pay attention to anything else around him.

That's why she missed the purple streak that drifted past the playing children in the distance.

Chapter 203 The Haunted Clock Tower

Since becoming a detective's assistant, Azure has undertaken countless secret activities in order to gather intelligence, requiring her to lower herself, convince herself with sophistry, and ignore the pain of her conscience before she could make up her mind to carry them out.

Just as Pokémon battles inevitably result in injuries to one's partner, and one is not worthy of being a trainer if one does not acknowledge this, one is not worthy of being a detective if one is unwilling to step into the gray area because of protecting one's reputation.

Eavesdropping, peeping, taking photos without permission, stalking, illegal intrusion, illegal evidence collection... Before stopping a crime, you must first break the rules yourself; before solving a mystery, you must first break the precepts; before upholding the law, you must first ignore the law. These seemingly contradictory self-deceptions are the real required courses for detectives.

Even so, the act of spying on preschool children with binoculars still makes this girl, whom Professor Oak has identified as "bold and meticulous," feel sad.

Perched on the windowsill of the clock tower, the surrogate detective was currently engaging in a 100% pure act of voyeurism—

Not only did he suspiciously use binoculars to aim at preschool children who were playing freely, but he also covered most of his face with a hood and stuffed large amounts of medical cotton into earplugs, one in each ear. He was no different from a paranoid stalker and was a very suspicious person.

If Azur Lane from a year ago saw herself like this now, she would probably immediately pull out her phone and call the police without batting an eye. She wouldn't even have the interest to fight him herself; her feeling would probably be something like, "Getting involved with this hopeless guy is already a loss..."

I'm sorry to say, but being a detective is actually an incurable profession. Compared to reasoning and seeing through things, spying and eavesdropping are the most basic things.

"Phew! We found the client, little boy. Is that little girl sitting next to him Sachiko?"

After searching for a while, the sharp-eyed Azure spotted her target.

She was a young girl whose appearance was ordinary among her peers. Her overly long bangs obscured her face, and she wore a pendant that looked like a talisman around her neck. She seemed somewhat dull-witted. Among a large group of children running around and playing wildly, she found a small stool somewhere and sat blankly in the corner of the playground, lost in thought.

The client looked at the playing children with a hint of longing, but after some hesitation, finally decided to go and keep the little girl company. Occasionally, the boy would strike up a conversation with the girl, who resembled Sachiko, and the girl would respond normally. Although Azure couldn't see their expressions, judging from the girl's improved posture, she seemed quite happy.

According to the young client, Sachiko's situation in class was not good, and she was ostracized by her classmates. However, based on Azure's short-term observation, the so-called ostracism was not serious, at least there was no intentional bullying or provocation. If ignoring each other among classmates is considered as passive-aggressive behavior, then it is a bit of an overreaction.

Of course, what adults consider indifference may be a severe form of abuse to children, no less than a catastrophe. Whether or not bullying exists ultimately depends on the direct feelings of the person involved, and it is not for outsiders to judge.

In this sense, it is true that Sachiko was ostracized by her classmates because they considered her a liar.

During the half hour that Azure observed through the binoculars, no one other than the boy spoke to Sachiko.

Perhaps it was just bad luck, but during this time, the boy's supposed mysterious disappearance did not occur either. The little girl sat quietly in place, showing no signs of disappearing.

"In the end, the client didn't tell me how frequently or for how long Sachiko disappears at school. It seems we'll need some good luck to witness her disappearance during this hour of free time."

Bilan rubbed her slightly sore eyes and looked back at the playground with a gloomy mood.

Yes, the little girl is still in the same spot.

They neither moved nor went missing.

She was still sitting there in a daze, still chatting idly with the boy.

If Touko were to adapt this incident into a movie script, she would probably have the little girl disappear instantly at that moment, accompanied by chilling background music that sends shivers down your spine.

But movies are movies, and reality is reality.

There is no causal relationship between the blue voyeurism and the little girl's movements, so it is unlikely that the extremely rare phenomenon of "the blink of an eye coinciding with the moment the girl disappears" would occur.

It's almost impossible; if it were to happen, it could only be described as a miraculous coincidence.

The reality is that—until the children were about to finish their activities on the playground and the teachers began urging them to return to the school building—no miracle or coincidence occurred.

Well, it's about time.

Seeing the teacher begin directing the children back to their classrooms, the acting detective immediately placed the binoculars on the windowsill and consciously walked to the far corner of the clock tower.

As Bilan expected, the moment she stood still, the huge bell behind her, which looked like a bronze bell, began to ring loudly once again—it was the school bell.

This time, however, the girl was much more composed. Long before the bell rang, she covered her head with her hands, plugged her ears which were stuffed with cotton through her hood, and held the backpack containing three Poké Balls tightly to her chest.

The sound of the bells was still terrifying, but at least this time it was somewhat tolerable.

While covering her ears, Bilan looked again at the telescope mounted on the window.

The girl followed the crowd obediently and at a leisurely pace, showing no signs of disappearing. The young client, however, seemed to sense something was amiss, frequently glancing towards the tolling clock tower.

No, it wasn't just a premonition; it had reached the point where he was staring intently... Ah, he started trying to wave.

Perhaps the boy had already guessed that the detective he had asked the night before would come to school today, so he made a point of checking the corners of the school where it would be easy to hide.

When using a telescope, the concave lens in front of the telescope will inevitably reflect light. If this is witnessed by someone with ulterior motives, it is indeed possible to deduce the presence of a spy.

It's really embarrassing to be seen through by a child. But after all, that was the original client, who knew they would take investigative action, so it can't really be considered a mistake.

The real question now is: should we give up our advantageous position atop the clock tower and continue observing Sachiko, who is inside the school building?

Azure decisively abandoned this idea.

Ultimately, the half-hour spying from the clock tower was nothing more than a gamble. It was simply a shallow attempt to take a shortcut before the real investigation began, fueled by the hope that "it would be great if I could witness the moment the criminal launched the attack."

Having spoken with Professor Oak, she had already determined the purpose of her trip.

What really needs to be investigated is not Sachiko herself, nor her family full of misunderstandings and tragedies, but the structure of this preschool.

Chapter 204 The Truth Behind the Final Kick

The preschool is small, with only four classes.

The school buildings mainly consist of two teaching buildings, one large and one small, which are like refrigerators crammed full by a housewife. Inside, children's classrooms, indoor activity rooms, dormitories for lunch breaks, a small canteen, a medical room, and teachers' offices are neatly and fully arranged. All the windows are equipped with fence-like safety railings to prevent children from falling while climbing.

In addition to the two teaching buildings, there is a playground connected to the play area, and a clock tower at the end of the playground that echoes the main building.

Putting aside the clock tower where Azur Lane was spying, the school's teaching area is designed to be extremely small, with all the equipment and facilities geared towards children. If an adult were to wander through it, they would really feel like they were in a parallel world.

Presumably for safety reasons, there is no designated area for free-roaming Pokémon on campus. Even friendly Pokémon like Sylveon and Sylveon are not allowed inside. Only teachers who specialize in teaching Pokémon knowledge are permitted to bring one or two Pokémon into the school during class hours.

"It doesn't look like there are any wild Pokémon hiding anywhere."

Behind the teaching building, Azure hid behind the shade of the trees, cleverly avoiding the gaze of passing teachers, while a thoughtful expression appeared on her face.

According to Professor Oak, the hypothesis linking mental illness to wormholes is highly improbable, for reasons similar to those previously proposed by Azur Lane.

Mental illness cannot affect others other than the patient. Sachiko's intermittent disappearances at school must have other reasons. Scientific theories also cannot support the existence of spacetime rifts that form naturally by chance. Perhaps one or two such wormhole wonders may appear in the vast universe of light-years and the microscopic world under a quantum microscope, but such randomness does not exist in reality that can be perceived by the naked eye.

Even if it exists, it could only be caused by Pokémon.

"Well... in a sense, the existence of some Pokémon is essentially a manifestation of supernatural concepts."

Last night, or rather, in the afternoon in the Kanto region, a leading authority in Pokémon research said this on the phone.

“Psychic Pokémon like Abra embody teleportation and telekinesis, while Ghost-type Pokémon, represented by Gastly, achieve possession and the ability to pass through walls; similarly, Togepi represents good luck, Unown embodies the unknown, Girafarig represents the bizarre, Spectrum embodies resentment, Coffin seals away ghosts, and Orpheus mimics UFOs... Pokémon fill the sky, the sea, and the earth like air, so there are no inexplicable things in the world, and all the unknowns seem to be answered by Pokémon.”

Some modern Pokémon scholars even believe that it is precisely because humans have fantasies about the unknown that Pokémon appear one after another. On the other hand, it is also because of the appearance of these Pokémon that the true supernatural fantasy has been dissolved. Miracles, ghosts, vengeful spirits, monsters, aliens, the unknown... they should have appeared more commonly in the world, but their place has been replaced by Pokémon that possess the same elements, so they have nowhere to exist in the real world and have turned into nothingness.

"Of course, these are just the conjectures of those scholars, and they are far from the truth of the world. Modern views hold that this theory is full of anthropocentric idealism, and evidence against it is constantly emerging. The most typical example is the ghosts that people often witness in Lavender Town, Kanto... However, even if the theory is flawed, the arguments they put forward are undeniable—if Pokémon are considered as part of nature, then more than 99% of the supernatural phenomena that humans see are caused by Pokémon after in-depth investigation."

The strange phenomena on this campus probably fall within that 99% range.

Setting aside situations outside of school and eliminating hypotheses such as time travel, the only real problem left to face is this:

How did Sachiko disappear so suddenly, leaving behind memories different from everyone else's?

When talking about how Pokémon can make a little girl disappear instantly, the first thing that comes to mind is the "Teleport" move, which can teleport people to different locations. And when it comes to making children have the illusion of traveling to parallel worlds, we can't help but mention superpower moves such as "Hypnosis".

Combining both factors, if we only consider the possibility of a crime, if this case had occurred in the Kanto region, people would undoubtedly have suspected psychic Pokémon like Kadabra or Hypnos.

However, this raises new questions—a kindergarten classroom is an extremely enclosed small space, and teachers are already supervising the children at all times, assuming that they will run around, and the students will also pay attention to each other's situation.

Even if a Pokémon only uses "Teleport" to flash through the classroom, it is very likely to be witnessed by the surrounding children and supervising teachers. How exactly did that Pokémon take the girl away so quietly?

Take what she observed this morning as an example. All the children in the class were playing on the playground, with at least two preschool teachers supervising them. There was even a little boy talking to Sachiko. Bilan simply couldn't imagine how the girl could disappear under such strict surveillance.

Furthermore, there is no possibility that the fairy could have kidnapped Sachiko while she was in the toilet, because in preschool, teachers organize boys and girls to go to the toilet in batches at fixed times... This is how preschool children go to the toilet, otherwise they would easily wet their pants because they have no sense of time.

Upon witnessing this scene, Azure felt as if she had been struck by "100,000 volts," recalling fragments of information from before she could remember with such shame.

Is it possible that the Pokémon clung to the underground parking garage and used "teleportation" to take the children on the surface with it?

Seeing the underground parking garage next to the campus entrance, the female detective's mind started racing again.

Although this location isn't in the heart of Castelia City, land is still incredibly valuable, and the design had to take land utilization into account. Therefore, the teachers' parking area is located underground on the playground. If the basement isn't sufficiently separated from the playground, that mischievous Pokémon could easily use the underground space to perform a teleportation trick.

"Yes, it's definitely necessary to investigate the underground as well," the girl thought to herself, having already thoroughly investigated the school's above-ground structure.

However, there were guards at the garage entrance, and the nearby playground offered an exceptionally wide view, making infiltration impossible. Even if one managed to sneak in, measuring the thickness of the barrier would be a problem. If only Gengar, capable of invisibility and wall-penetrating, were here, Ditto, which only "transforms" from memory, couldn't do such a thing.

However, relying solely on herself wasn't without a solution. Azure took two seconds to devise a strategy—

Just pretend to be a relative of the client when you go to school after school.

The phone's built-in GPS system can also display the altitude, and the conclusion can be drawn by subtracting the height of the space inside the basement.

So, using the slides and swings as cover, Azure crossed the playground again, entered the small auditorium inside the clock tower, went up the old and steep stairs, and climbed to the top of the clock tower.

"Speaking of which, this clock tower looks much older than the school, and the stairs are so high, it couldn't possibly be designed for children. Was it a building that existed before the school was built?"

Just as Azure was about to glide away on the Vulture, which Ditto had transformed into, before jumping off the clock tower, an idea flashed into her mind.

It was as if all the clues to solving the case were ready, and he was only half a step away from the truth.

Chapter 205 Between Intersections

As it approached four o'clock in the afternoon, parents began to gradually gather near the school gate.

There are also more vehicles and Pokémon riding them parked along the roadside, arranged in neat formations along the street, just like the armies that children randomly assemble in sandbox games.

Having just jumped from the school's clock tower, she changed into a more mature-looking outfit in a light blue dress at a nearby restaurant's restroom, and naturally mingled among them.

This time, she squeezed to the front of the crowd and tried to strike up a conversation with the security guard standing at the entrance of the preschool.

"It seems like there aren't many staff or teachers at this school. Considering the number of students, the underground parking garage under the playground should be quite small, with probably not many parking spaces, right?"

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the detective noticed that the security guard seemed rather bored, so she immediately posed a question.

It's unlikely that any security guard in the world would be so bored as to measure the depth of an underground parking garage, but since they had nothing better to do, instead of waiting with anxious parents for their children to get out of school, they might as well chat with the staff for a bit to gather information.

However, when faced with Bilan's question, the security guard shook his head with a very serious attitude—

"The garage here also serves as a refuge and security system for nearby residents, so it is designed to be very spacious and can accommodate dozens of private cars. When the garage was first built, many nearby residents would park their cars in the kindergarten at night, until the school revised its admission rules."