A few days had passed since the Chako incident. Kotoha cracked open the curtains of Corpo Mizuki Room 201 and checked outside. Cloudy sky. Temperature looked low. She shoved her smartphone into her slacks pocket and opened HakoBeru GO. Today's first job: Nakamachi Shopping District C Area. Reward: 500 yen. (Might as well go.) She stepped off the edge of the futon and headed for the door. Straddling saddle C-017, she flipped the electric assist switch. The motor hummed low. She'd started liking that sound lately. Couldn't say why. Maybe because it sounded like a startup signal. As she approached the shopping district entrance, Kotoha deliberately didn't look at the bulletin board—the way she always did. She kept her eyes straight ahead and pedaled faster. But. "Ah! Kotoha-chan!" A silver bob cut came flying out from in front of Flower Shop Tsubaki on the left side of the arcade. Tsurumi Yoshiko. She had a memo pad hanging from her neck and was walking briskly toward her. Her amber eyes were sparkling. Run. There's still time. Kotoha yanked the handlebars right. But she didn't escape. "Kotoha-san!" A baker's wife came out from the right side, waving her arm. "Perfect timing! It's about my husband—he's been coming home late lately…" "I don't do infidelity investigations." She answered immediately. The wife's face said *how did you know?* She didn't know—it was just the same pattern every time. An old man from the hardware store appeared from the left in an apron. "Kotoha-san! There's a cat that's been sitting in front of our entrance, and I don't know whose it is…" "I can't identify cats." "Coming from behind!" Yoshiko said it cheerfully. Kotoha turned to see the pharmacist from Midori Pharmacy walking briskly toward her, clutching a file of prescriptions to her chest. "Kotoha-san, the izakaya next door has their BGM way too loud every Thursday. Can you do something about that?" "That's not something I can—" Three directions. The arcade was five meters wide. No gap to slip through on a bike. Kotoha gripped the handlebars and stayed silent for a moment. (This again.) To be honest, this "encirclement" had been happening three days straight. Today was Thursday. Wednesday and Tuesday too—every time she passed through here on her first morning job, someone caught her. That poster was still up. No time to take it down. A negative loop. "I decline. I decline. It's not a case." She repeated it like an incantation while slowly pedaling forward. "Kotoha-chan, you're a famous detective, right?" Yoshiko followed in light Kansai dialect. "Just a little bit, yeah?" "Every time you say 'just a little bit,' it ends up taking forever." "Is that so?" "It is." As she tried to turn the corner at Vegetable Shop Maruta, a bike came from the opposite direction. Navy blue rear box. C-009. "Kotoha-san! I found you—been waiting!" Ash-brown hair tousled in the wind, bright green eyes looking straight at her. Both hands spread wide, blocking the path. A smile. Full-on smile. Kotoha tried to U-turn. But Yoshiko's voice came from behind. "Oh, she's trying to escape!" No escape route. Kotoha stopped pedaling. Souta in front. Yoshiko behind. Shopping district residents on both sides. Perfect encirclement. If they'd done this by accident, their coordination was seriously high. (Give up.) She had no choice but to give up. She had to accept that this had become her battlefield. --- "So I heard this from Cosmos's lady yesterday," Souta said, pushing his bike as they walked toward the edge of the shopping district. Yoshiko had already gone back to the flower shop, waving "thanks for this!" as she left. Still as carefree as ever. "There was a coat swap at the Cosmos dry cleaners. High-end coats." "I'm not doing it." "All the customer's brand coats got swapped for cheap ones. Three of them. She said the total damage was pretty significant." "I'm not doing it." Souta paused for a moment. "One of the victims apparently knows Genichirou from Sakura-do." Kotoha's feet stopped. …Stopped. She didn't want them to stop, but they did. The electric assist motor went quiet. Through a gap in the arcade roof, a sliver of gray sky was visible. (It's not related. It's not related. It's true I owe Genichirou something, but that's separate. I have deliveries. I have rewards. I'm a delivery person.) "…Information comes out easier in cases like this. That's all." She said it low and fast. Souta's face brightened immediately. "Let's go!" "Did I just say that?" "I could tell from the air." Don't read the air, Kotoha muttered internally. But her bike's handlebars were already pointing toward Cosmos. --- Cosmos Dry Cleaners—a small shop with a four-meter frontage in the middle of Nakamachi Shopping District—smelled of a unique mix of detergent and starch when she opened the glass door. The owner, Hashimoto Sayoko (61), was waiting with her arms crossed in front of the reception counter. Salt-and-pepper permed hair, thick glasses. Her expression was stern. Kotoha scanned the shop interior silently the moment she entered. Reception counter position. Security camera angle. One camera above the entrance. Its field of view covered the entrance and the area in front of the counter. The back of the counter—around the door where clothes were brought in—was a blind spot. Souta was already standing next to Sayoko, talking to her. "When did you notice the swap?" "Last Wednesday. A customer said 'this isn't mine,' and when I checked, all three were different items…" "All three were dropped off on different days, right?" "That's right. The oldest one was three weeks ago, the newest was last Monday." Kotoha listened to the conversation from the side while asking to see the reception log. Sayoko brought it out. Kotoha opened HakoBeru GO and started comparing Thursday's C Area delivery logs with the ledger. The reception staff were apparently just Sayoko and a female staff member named Mikami. "Does Mikami ever go outside? During reception hours?" "Ah, yeah. She goes to the back to bring in the finished laundry on Wednesday afternoons—around 2 PM, about fifteen minutes." Kotoha immediately returned her gaze to the ledger. Wednesday, 2 PM slot. Fifteen minutes when Mikami was outside. She checked the dates the three coats were dropped off. All Wednesday. (I see.) "Does the coin laundry next door have any regular customers? Ones who come often?" Sayoko thought for a moment, then answered that there was an older man who came every Wednesday, a Mr. Hotta, around forty. Souta tilted his head. "Can you check the coin laundry?" "The coin laundry management app is registration-based with public logs." She answered briefly and searched on her phone. She confirmed the name of the neighboring coin laundry and opened the management company's service page. Member usage records weren't public, but machine operating times were viewable from the admin page. She pulled three weeks of operating logs for the machine linked to IC card payment. Wednesday, 2 PM slot. All operating. Next, she checked against the dates the three coats were dropped off. All three days, the same machine was running at the same time. "…I've identified them. Took less than thirty minutes." Souta looked confused. "Identified what?" Kotoha explained as she was. "When Mikami goes outside on Wednesday at 2 PM, the reception is unmanned. In that window, if someone enters the blind spot behind the counter, they can swap out the clothes being held. All three coats were actually dropped off on Wednesday. The culprit is someone who's always there during that time. In other words—a regular at the coin laundry next door who always comes Wednesday around 2 PM. Hotta Kazuo, age 49." Sayoko's eyes went wide. "…How did you know that?" "The coin laundry machine operating logs match the dates in the reception ledger. All three cases. It's evidence we can present." Sayoko slowly uncrossed her arms. That's when the glass door opened. A middle-aged man came in. Late forties. Worn jacket, large laundry bag. Fresh from the coin laundry. Kotoha and Souta's eyes met. "[cold]…You're Hotta-san, right?" The man's face went rigid. --- It took thirty minutes to wrap up. Hotta denied it at first, but when Kotoha showed him a screenshot of the operating logs, he suddenly sank into a chair. The coats were stored elsewhere and all came back. When Sayoko said "I'm reporting this to the police," Hotta just nodded silently. Kotoha stood by the entrance the whole time. Outside, the air had gotten colder. "That was amazing," Souta said as they walked side by side. His voice was genuine. "You solved it because you were here. Seriously." Kotoha stopped for a moment at those words. (Because you were here.) There was something odd about that phrasing. Something she couldn't quite put into words. Her grandfather used to say: "True truth dwells in the cold eye that isn't swayed by emotion." In other words, reaching the truth was the power of "the one who possesses that eye." Not because someone else was there. But Souta's way of saying it was different. "…Wait a second." "Huh?" "You were the one who got Sayoko to tell us about Mikami's routine during information gathering. Without that, it would've taken twice as long to figure out." She was surprised at herself as the words came out. She hadn't known she was thinking that. Souta's face went blank. "…Are you complimenting me? Me?" "I'm just analyzing. Not complimenting." "No way, you were totally complimenting me!" "I wasn't." Souta's face got a little happier. Kotoha saw that clearly. She turned her gaze forward. (That's weird.) She still liked her grandfather's words. She still thought they were right. But—the way Souta said "because you were here" seemed to point at something else. Not the cold eye. The existence of "you." That wasn't about deduction. She couldn't quite organize that discrepancy yet. While she was turning it over in her mind, rain started falling. --- One drop. Then, suddenly, a downpour. Sudden rain. The worst timing—they'd just stepped outside the arcade. Kotoha noticed the rear box lid was slightly open and reached to close it. That's when something heavy fell on her shoulders. "Huh?" Souta's jacket. "You'll get soaked." "You'll get wet. I'm giving it back." "I used to be a gym trainer, so I don't catch colds. Built different." "That logic doesn't work." She was about to argue when Souta was already running into the rain. No protection, completely unbothered. Soaking wet, casually checking the navigation for the next job. Kotoha was speechless. (Why?) The jacket was still on her shoulders. Souta's body heat lingered faintly. A damp warmth seeped into her wet shoulder. She felt it for three seconds. Three seconds before she realized. Before she realized what she was feeling. A gaze shot over from under the arcade eaves. "Well, well, well," Yoshiko's voice. In front of the flower shop, standing with Sayoko and Sumiko from the vegetable shop. All three had the same smirk. "[whispers]You two look good together," "[whispers]Really, really," "[laughing]Kotoha-chan, your ears are red~!" They'd gotten the volume wrong. It echoed through the whole arcade. Kotoha ripped the jacket off and ran to shove it back at Souta. "I'm returning it." "Why, you'll get soaked—" "It's fine." "It's not fine at all!" Kotoha didn't say anything else. She just opened HakoBeru GO's navigation and started pedaling. Running through the rain in silence. Souta fell back a little. (Red ears? They're not red. It's just cold. The temperature dropped so the capillaries—) The more she reasoned it out, the hotter she felt, and she pushed harder on the pedals. The sound of rain hitting the arcade roof mixed with the sound of Souta's bike following behind. She didn't look back. But she knew he