Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes.

Chapter 22, Section 22: Bargaining

"Teacher Jiao Tan? Hmm."

Upon hearing Heisei Ryu's question, Kurosaki Chimei frowned and looked at him strangely.

"Has the information been lost?" Ping Shenglong's gaze narrowed slightly.

“Ah, no, rather,” Kurosaki opened the leather notebook, flipping through pages pasted with yellowed photos, old newspapers, and worm-like handwriting, before stopping at a certain spot, “this is the most detailed ghost story I’ve ever heard of, bar none.”

Ping Shenglong carefully examined his notes. He said that this was the one he understood the most deeply, but there were very few words written on it, and it was not covered with clippings and photos like the other pages.

Just as he was about to lean closer for a better look, Kurosaki slammed his notebook shut, interrupting Heisei Ryu's observation.

Kurosaki pressed his notebook, his eyes sparkling with excitement: "Before that, let's talk about the reward, Officer Taira."

"Fifty thousand. You just need to tell me what you know, it's very easy."

It wasn't a lot of money, but it was paid by Ping Shenglong personally, so it couldn't be reimbursed.

“No, money is a good thing, but I have another request.” Kurosaki licked his lips. “I need to know what happened, not some perfunctory, formulaic answer, but the details, the details!”

“You’re not part of the system, don’t go looking for trouble.” Ping Shenglong shook his head directly.

"Heh heh, I know your rules, but you're from the First Investigation Division, right? The rule of the First Investigation Division is that any means that are beneficial to solving a case can be used." Kurosaki grinned, revealing white teeth that didn't match his appearance.

Ping Shenglong stared at him in surprise. He seemed to have heard these words before, and even agreed with them.

"Eighty thousand." Ping Shenglong raised the price.

"Twenty thousand!" Kurosaki's smile vanished, replaced by gritted teeth.

"100,000".

"Ten thousand!"

"One hundred and fifty thousand."

"Free! How about free? Just tell me what case happened and the details, and I'll act as your consultant for free. I can assure you that no one knows more about the origins, prototypes, and development of the ghost stories about Mr. Jiao Tan than I do. I even visited many predecessors from the Showa era for this, and now, most of them are either suffering from dementia or have already turned to ashes. No matter how powerful your Tianjin AI is, you can't just ask dead people, can you?"

Kurosaki slammed his hand on the table and stood up, his tone full of confidence.

It would be even better if you could ignore his pained expression.

My money! My money!

"Do you know about the Tianjin System?" Ping Shenglong suddenly asked about a seemingly unrelated topic.

Kurosaki paused for a moment: "I know, it's not a secret. Your Metropolitan Police Department mentioned it many years ago. The increase in the crime-solving rate and the solving of old cases in recent years are mostly thanks to that AI."

"What I enjoy most is gathering information. I know far more than you can imagine. For example, you are the head of the First Investigation Division, Tatsumi Heimori, from the once-famous Heimori family—"

"That's enough." Ping Shenglong's eyes narrowed slightly as he raised his hand to interrupt him. "I agree to your conditions. As long as the information you provide is valid, you will receive 150,000. But you know what to do regarding the case."

"I understand, I won't say anything unless someone points a gun at me." Kurosaki quickly gave an OK sign. Taira no Ryu took out his tablet and opened a photo sent to him by forensic pathologist Otani.

Those were black handprints left on the shoulders of the three corpses, along with analysis.

"A serious case has occurred at Komagome Academy. What you see now are the common features of the victims: black handprints remain on their shoulders. Upon examination, no skin tissue characteristics were found. Moreover, the survivors all mentioned this in their testimonies." Taira no Ryu paused, glancing at Kurosaki Chimei, whose lazy demeanor had been completely transformed into one of intense seriousness and focus. Surprisingly, his disheveled appearance exuded a certain handsomeness.

Kurosaki Chimei bit the pen cap and nodded repeatedly: "You mentioned Mr. Charcoal, right? No wonder. Then the place where they died must be that school building that I heard has been abandoned."

"Yes, between 8 pm and 9 pm."

"First of all, the fact that you came to me means that you couldn't find any traces of human intervention at the scene, making it difficult to reconstruct the scene using scientific methods."

Kurosaki Chimei stood up and paced back and forth in the cramped space, muttering incantations.

“The school building is abandoned, there are no surveillance cameras, and it was after school, so there were no external witnesses. Therefore, the only evidence we can rely on is the eyewitness testimony of the survivors. Among the survivors, there is a high probability that there are people who could have killed him but did not.”

"If the killer is a single person who is committing indiscriminate killing, it doesn't make sense unless the survivors all share common characteristics. If he is not killing indiscriminately but is doing so out of revenge, then the victims will have common traits."

"You have the Tianjin system, so you must have investigated this. You can't say you didn't find anything, but you certainly didn't find much either."

"Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that the killer is just that confident, or perhaps simply a psychopath who acts on impulse, but that possibility is secondary. If I'm not mistaken, if you can't get any progress from me, you'll investigate in that direction, so in your mind, the possibility of a ghost story-based murder is higher than that of a psychopath, right?"

Kurosaki, excited, bit off the cap of his pen, spat it out, and stared at Heisei Ryu.

“I don’t believe a psychopath could be so meticulous and leave no trace.” Taira no Ryu swiped the image on the tablet to the left, revealing a picture of Inoue Yuka strangling herself. “This is one of the victims; he strangled himself to death.”

Kurosaki quickly leaned over to take a closer look, gesturing with his hands as he tried to recreate Inoue's movements.

"Crack!"

Kurosaki suddenly tightened his grip on his neck with his right hand, the veins on his hand bulging as he exerted great force. Kurosaki's eyes widened, and he made a struggling sound. His left hand struggled desperately, trying to pull his right hand away, and like Inoue, his fingernails tore several bloody marks on his arm.

Ping Shenglong didn't stop him, and just watched quietly.

Until Kurosaki's face turned from red to purple, he lay motionless on the ground with a thud.

The room fell into an eerie silence.

Half a minute later, Kurosaki suddenly sprang up from the tatami mat as if he had risen from the dead. With blood still lingering, he touched the purplish-red crescent mark on his throat and stared blankly at Taira no Ryu with a silly grin.

"He won't die! As long as he doesn't strangle himself in an instant, strangling him like that will only cause him to slowly lose strength, suffocate, and fall into a coma. Besides, how could a high school student have such willpower! Judging from his appearance, he's a delinquent. If he had this kind of willpower, why would he be a delinquent? He could have gotten into the University of Tokyo."

"So it can only be due to external force, but the forensic doctor must have conducted a thorough examination to conclude that the deceased could only have died by his own hand."

"The Real Ghost Stories"

The cold sweat from earlier had left his greasy bangs sticking to his forehead. Kurosaki grinned with a bright, terrifying smile, his hoarse voice like the grinding of rusty gears.

"I finally found it."

(End of this chapter)