Tokyo: Rabbit Officer and Her Evil Partner

Minamoto Tamako couldn't just stand by, but she didn't know what to do. Now if she got close to Fushimi Roku, she would be killed, so she could only follow him around like a fool, voyeuristically watching Fujimura-kun's daily routine of mental illness.

To figure out what "Young Fushimi Roku" liked, she sneaked into his single apartment while he was at work, rummaging through his personal belongings... Unexpectedly, she ran into Fushimi Roku dragging a corpse home, and she had to hide in the bathroom to wait out the storm.

What to do, what to do, what to do?

What if he comes into the bathroom later to get a drain cleaner?

Minamoto Tamako was at her wits' end, constantly taking deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down.

Alright, Tamako, it's nothing serious, just losing a part of your memory...

The comfort had no effect; instead, Minamoto Tamako became even more panicked. She was afraid of losing herself in the second layer of the dream, with fragmented memories, ultimately becoming a walking corpse. Even the thought of it was terrifying.

No matter what, just run first!

Minamoto Tamako mustered up the courage, opened the bathroom door, and took the opportunity while young Fushimi Roku was chopping meat in the kitchen to tiptoe through the living room, intending to dash out through the front door.

As the doorknob got closer, Minamoto Tamako's heart leapt to her throat. She tiptoed and slowly reached for the doorknob, just about to open the door when a cold voice suddenly asked from behind:

"How did you get in?"

Minamoto Tamako felt like her blood vessels had frozen, her muscles stiffening from shock. She gulped and slowly turned around to look at young Fushimi Roku—a still unfamiliar face, somewhat handsome, since people from wealthy families generally have good genes.

"The... the door wasn't locked..." Minamoto Tamako said forcefully.

Every time she died, the dream would refresh, so this was the first time young Fushimi Roku had seen her.

Young Fushimi Roku was wearing a white shirt and an apron, holding a bone cleaver dripping with blood, his face expressionless as he spoke, sending chills into people's hearts.

"Sorry for this."

Fushimi Roku, holding the cleaver, stepped closer and closer, the oppressive aura from him making Minamoto Tamako unable to breathe. Only then did she realize that her previously cheap-looking partner actually harbored a terrifying monster inside.

"Wa-wait—"

Minamoto Tamako retreated in panic, backing against the door. In a moment of desperation, she shouted, "I-I'm here for a case!"

Upon hearing this, Fushimi Roku indeed paused his steps, showing a suspicious look, looking Tamako up and down, asking, "What case?"

There wasn't any case of course; she noticed Fushimi Roku's almost obsessive seriousness about work, so she decided to spin a yarn on a whim.

Once you've told a lie, you need countless other lies to cover it.

Considering that Fushimi Roku still held a knife, Minamoto Tamako had no choice but to start sweating profusely, blushing as she made up, "It's...It's a hit-and-run case..."

"Oh?" Fushimi Roku seemed intrigued, taking a handkerchief from his apron pocket to wipe the blood off the cleaver, pressing on, "Are you the victim's family member?"

"Yes, yes."

Minamoto Tamako wasn't good at lying. Fortunately, this wasn't the normal Fushimi Roku in front of her, but the "Fushimi Roku·Evil Personality" version, who wasn't thorough or perhaps simply didn't care if Minamoto Tamako was lying.

"Ah, I was just killing a chicken, making the place bloody, please forgive me." Fushimi Roku took off his apron, went to the bathroom to get a mop, cleaned up the bloodstains on the floor, switched to work mode in just a second, put on a suit jacket, and even brewed some tea for Minamoto Tamako, "Please sit down and tell me about it in detail."

Minamoto Tamako sat down beside the coffee table, picked up the teacup, took a sip, and calmed down a bit, at least she wasn't as frantic as before.

"It was...like this, the one who got hit was my brother..."

Minamoto Tamako paused, becoming more fluent as she spoke: "That day, we were arguing by the roadside, I was really mad at him over a small matter, so I pushed him a little. He fell onto the zebra crossing, and then suddenly a car ran a red light, ran him over..."

Fushimi Roku took out a black notebook, taking notes occasionally nodding, and asked in coordination, "And then? Did you call the police?"

"No, I was terrified at the time as the driver kept running over in front of me... I still feel unsettled thinking about it." Minamoto Tamako said holding the teacup.

"Unsettled?" Fushimi Roku frowned, "Did it happen a long time ago?"

Minamoto Tamako intended to say yes, but her mouth paused as she remembered her persona in the dream—she was now supposedly a seven or eight-year-old girl, with a stranger's face when looking in the mirror, thus it was impossible to have a brother who had a car accident ten years ago.

"My... my knowledge of Chinese is not good..." she could only continue to make it up.

"Chinese?" Fushimi Roku asked puzzled, "Are you a foreigner?"

"Sort of..." Minamoto Tamako deflected, "Ah, the tea you made is really good, what kind of tea is it?"

Fushimi Roku put down his pen, placed the notebook on the coffee table, crossed his legs, leaned one hand on the sofa, and examined Minamoto Tamako with a scrutinizing gaze, saying, "Little girl, you're not trying to fool me, are you?"

"No, no! There's really such a case!" Minamoto Tamako said seriously.

She wasn't lying, in the real world, ten years ago, there truly was such a case, except the victim wasn't her brother.

"I see..."

Fushimi Roku tapped the armrest with his fingers, suddenly changing the topic, "Actually, hiring me to litigate this case isn't a wise choice."

"Wh-why?" Minamoto Tamako felt a bit curious.

Fushimi Roku spoke leisurely, "The case I took before this was a real estate economic dispute case, the client was an entrepreneur with both money and connections in our city... Recently, house prices have kept rising, real estate development is under great pressure, everyone wants to cash in quickly, after all, a project means billions in profits; delaying just one day costs millions."

"The client has targets, the company has performance, and contractors have pressure. The construction site works in shifts day and night, just to improve construction efficiency."

"I won't even mention whether the building site cut corners, if it's a tofu-dreg project, or selling uncompleted apartments, I don't know any of these. I'm just an agent lawyer; I only know a company with a market value of over a hundred billion owed a farmer worker's wages."

"To be precise, they owed a group of migrant workers wages, but one of them was particularly ruthless, tying up the boss's son, which caused a murder case."

"After I took over, the real estate company claimed that it wasn't their business, that the construction pay should be settled by the contractor. So I went to the contractor, and they said unless the project was completed, the client wouldn't pay. Having taken this project, the contractor's cash flow was strained to the extreme, they could only wait for the real estate company to settle after the project was finished to pay the workers..."

"Don't you find it strange?"

"A general worker has a daily wage of two or three hundred yuan, carpenters, scaffolders, concrete workers, bricklayers have daily wages of three or four hundred, except for crane operators, few workers earn more than five hundred a day...I calculated that the contractor owed about 210,000 yuan in wages, and that kidnapper was owed about 30,000 yuan."

"When the company boss hired me to take this case, he took me out to a meal that cost exactly 30,000 yuan; one bottle of wine alone was 28,000."

Fushimi Roku opened his hands, asked, "Where did the money go?"

Minamoto Tamako couldn't answer, and Fushimi Roku didn't expect an eight-year-old child to answer. He answered his own question, "To find out, I kidnapped the entrepreneur, cutting his flesh piece by piece, asking where the money went..."

"Before that, a female client texting while driving hired me for a hit-and-run case. I also kidnapped her, smashing her body inch by inch with a hammer to ask why she was texting..."

Fushimi Roku leaned back on the sofa, sighed and said:

"There are simply too many people I want to kill that I can't count them all."