Just inches from the councilor's chest, the stationmaster's dagger was suddenly caught on the umbrella handle. The umbrella then pressed down and twisted, forcing the stationmaster to release the dagger in pain. Before he could regain his balance and turn around, Akihara's umbrella handle was already pressing down on his neck.

He groaned in pain and staggered backward. The Nagano Prefecture police immediately reacted and restrained the struggling station chief. The assistant, who had been stunned by the turn of events, finally came to his senses and hurriedly pushed the congressman away from the man whose expression was gradually turning crazed and desperate.

Akihara Kazumitsu stepped aside to let the onlookers gather around. He looked down at his newly bought umbrella with a hint of heartache. This transparent umbrella had borne an impact it shouldn't have had to; several ribs were broken, hanging pitifully from the canopy. The umbrella hadn't even served ten hours before it tragically died.

"What? The murderer is actually the station chief?"

"That's outrageous!" The onlookers murmured among themselves.

"This guy is the one who went too far!" the stationmaster, who had been pinned to the ground, roared. "Yoshino killed my son! He framed my son for bribery, and my son, having nowhere else to turn, committed suicide!"

"So you took the opportunity to put a note in the secretary's pocket, lured her out in the middle of the night, and then murdered her?" Morofushi Takaaki calmly looked at the man struggling on the ground.

"It must have been a conspiracy with the station attendant to get her to put it there," Akihara added to himself. When he saw the councilor's secretary pull out the note, he recalled who might have had the opportunity to put a note in her pocket after she entered the station, and concluded it was the station attendant maintaining order.

“That woman too! She never spoke up before. She knew perfectly well that my son, who used to be her colleague, was innocent! But she did it to protect herself… This is the retribution she deserves! It's all to clear my son's name!”

“It’s certainly hard to stay rational when someone close to you dies, and people tend to blame others for the loss,” Morofushi Takaaki commented. “But even if what you say is true, the secretary was at most a bystander, not a perpetrator, and still doesn’t deserve to die.”

Akihara Kazuhiro: (Staring—) Is this some kind of flag?

The station attendant, who had somehow emerged from the crowd, looked distressed: "No matter what, you have no right to take someone's life. This is absolutely not the outcome your son would want! He can't possibly be happy, absolutely not!"

After hearing these words, the stationmaster began to cry, kneel, and repent.

The station clerk turned to Morofushi Takaaki and said, "I'm sorry, officer, please arrest me too... The stationmaster asked me to put the note in the secretary's pocket, I didn't know..." She sobbed. "But no matter what, I'm an accomplice..."

“‘Ignorance is no excuse’ means that if someone offends someone without prior knowledge, they shouldn’t be blamed,” Zhu Fu Gaoming comforted him. “You didn’t know the stationmaster’s scheme, so this matter has nothing to do with you.”

Seeing the case resolved satisfactorily, Akihara yawned. It was a bit of a shame that this case didn't have a lengthy deductive process to showcase his skills, which was a shame for Nagano Komeito. But there's always next time; as the saying goes, "Where there's life, there's hope," there will definitely be opportunities to meet again. Oh dear, when did he catch Morofushi Takaaki's habit of quoting classical texts in every sentence… Lost in thought, he yawned and turned to go back inside.

“Please wait a moment, Mr. Akihara.” Morofushi Takaaki called out to him from behind. After Akihara turned around, he continued, “This time, thanks to you, otherwise the number of casualties would have increased even more.”

"Not at all, it's what a concerned citizen should do." Akihara laughed it off, thinking to himself that if he were really a good person, there wouldn't have been any casualties in the first place.

"My name is Morofushi Takaaki, and I'm a police inspector from Nagano Prefecture." Morofushi Takaaki smiled and handed over a business card, which Akihara quickly accepted. "You can contact me if you have any questions in the future."

"Thank you, thank you. Um, hello, my name is Akihara Kazumitsu, I'm a student at Shizuoka University. Sorry, I don't have any business cards with me..." Akihara patted every pocket on his body, then looked up at Morofushi Takaaki with a regretful expression.

“It’s alright, I’ll remember you,” Morofushi Takaaki joked. He glanced down at the broken umbrella in Akihara Kazumitsu’s hand and handed him his own black umbrella. “Consider it a small compensation from the police to the citizen who acted bravely. It’s getting late, you should go back and rest.”

Akihara felt ashamed; for a potential member of the Black Organization, it wasn't exactly a good thing for the police to say they were keeping an eye on him. He accepted the umbrella without hesitation, thanked them, said goodbye to Morofushi Takaaki, and went back to the waiting room to catch up on his sleep.

Good thing, I've added another tool to my list of intimidating demons and seduce Kagekō.

……

Matsuda Jinpei spent the entire night searching for the so-called young man in white, but to no avail. Although the day's intense work had left him nearly exhausted, he still mustered his strength and drove to the hospital to visit Hagiwara Kenji and the other team members. During their nighttime search and rescue operation, he received another call saying that several of the police officers who had been brought in were seriously injured, but fortunately, they were all out of danger after being rescued.

Although visiting hours had already passed, the hospital still gave Matsuda the green light and allowed him to visit. When he arrived at Hagiwara Kenji's ward, a nurse was changing Hagiwara's dressings. He was lying on the bed, yelling without any regard for his image, "Nurse, be gentle! Ouch, it hurts! It hurts!"

Matsuda Jinpei approached quietly, unusually so. He made a shushing gesture to the nurse changing the dressing, and then gently poked a wound on Hagiwara's back that was tightly wrapped in gauze with his other hand.

"Ouch!" Kenji Hagiwara cried out in pain. He was immediately scolded by the nurse: "Mr. Hagiwara, please keep your voice down. It's very late now, and there are patients in the next room who are already asleep."

Kenji Hagiwara nodded hastily, but the movement aggravated his wounds, causing him to gasp in pain. He turned his head with difficulty to Jinpei Matsuda and said, "Jinpei, I'm injured right now. How could you be so cruel?"

"Huh? You have the nerve to say that?" Matsuda Jinpei gritted his teeth. "Didn't you say you were wearing protective gear? Are you an idiot? Don't you even care about your life? And you're still laughing!" He poked her again, still not satisfied. The nurse pretended not to see it, tidied up, and pushed the dressing cart out.

"Hiss... I'm fine, calm down, calm down," Hagiwara chuckled sheepishly. "Where are the others? Has no one told me how the others are doing?"

"You're lucky, you're the least injured. You didn't even have a fracture, let alone a broken bone. The others weren't so lucky, but at least they're not in mortal danger..."

A brief silence fell over the ward, and then Matsuda saw Hagiwara frown, looking puzzled.

"what happened?"

“Logically, since I wasn’t wearing protective gear and was running at the back, I should have been the most seriously injured. At the time, I thought it would be difficult to even leave a whole corpse… Hey, Jinpei, don’t be angry. Although the others were ahead of me, they all survived, which is almost a miracle…” Hagiwara said thoughtfully. “Speaking of which, Jinpei, how is that young man I asked the doctor to inquire about?”

Matsuda Jinpei pulled up a chair and sat down next to the hospital bed.

"Couldn't find it."

"What do you mean by 'couldn't find it'?"

“It means exactly what it says. He wasn’t among all the wounded rescued, and there were no human tissue fragments left at the scene, as if he had never existed.” Matsuda looked at Hagiwara. “Could you be mistaken?”

"How could this be!" Hagiwara's face contorted with a mixture of excitement and pain. "Hiss... I pulled him along as we ran! When the explosion happened, I was still..." He paused, sounding guilty.

"How is it?" Matsuda stared at his face expressionlessly.

"Ahem, it's nothing. Anyway, everyone here should have seen it. How could such a big person just disappear into thin air?"

Matsuda Jinpei watched as the other man fell into deep thought, then saw a look of sudden realization appear on Hagiwara's face. "No, there's another possibility... Considering our miraculous survival... do you think what I saw might not have been human at all, but a yokai?"

Thinking the other party had some unique insights, Matsuda couldn't help but flick Hagiwara's forehead, saying irritably, "Alright, you can think about it yourself some more. I can't keep this from Chisato for long, so good luck to you."

"Wait! Jinpei! Good brother! Stop!"

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