Chapter 577: Chapter 396: Crime and Punishment
As soon as she finished speaking, a flash of a knife flickered before her eyes, followed by a whirlwind of vision. She saw her own body sitting on the sofa, a column of blood shooting from her neck towards the ceiling.
Careless...
Minamoto Tamako’s vision spun a few times before she was engulfed in darkness. Just before her consciousness faded, she vaguely heard the young Fushimi Roku sighing, "This is going to be troublesome to clean up..."
Damn it!
This guy even killed his girlfriend!!
When she opened her eyes again, Minamoto Tamako returned to the initial save point, the place where she first woke up—lying in a small bed, in the home of an unfamiliar woman. If she guessed correctly, this should be a single-parent family.
A warm little home for a mother and daughter.
Minamoto Tamako did not make an effort to play the role of ’daughter’. As soon as she woke up, she angrily pounded the bed frame.
Even though she knew she was dreaming, she was still very angry. This is just like when a girlfriend dreams of her boyfriend cheating; the anger lingers upon waking because she cares, so she’s angry.
I’ve got to get this guy caught!
Minamoto Tamako flipped up to sit, changed out of her pajamas, and dressed in a red and white school uniform, ready to leave and settle scores with Fushimi Roku.
Her mother in the bedroom heard the commotion of her daughter getting up and loudly asked, "Ajing, are you up?"
"Yes!" Minamoto Tamako changed into sneakers at the door and used the same excuse, "Yes, I’m off to school!"
"You haven’t had breakfast yet!" Her mother hurriedly got up, "It’s still early, eat before you go!"
"I’ll eat on the way!"
Having said that, Minamoto Tamako left the house hurriedly, heading to the police station to report a crime.
Back in 2015, the domestic network was already at 4G, and smartphones and apps were relatively mature, so theoretically, she could call the police directly, or find the address of a police station on a phone map... but the problem was, Minamoto Tamako was living in 1991 and didn’t know how to use a smartphone.
During this time, she followed Fushimi Roku and wandered around the city, similar to a country bumpkin in a Grand View Garden having her eyes opened—more shocking than her initial arrival in Tokyo. Although Tokyo people were abstract, they were at least within her cognitive range, while Jiang City’s landscape surpassed her understanding, so she had to stroll every time she went out.
Well, this doesn’t count as loafing around; she was understanding Fushimi-kun’s hometown.
Minamoto Tamako lingered for a while on the food street, where roadside stalls sold hot dry noodles, fried sauce noodles, tofu skin, glutinous rice wrapped fried dough sticks... all looked very tasty, but she bought nothing.
Previously, Minamoto Tamako tried buying it, yet it was tasteless, like chewing wax in her mouth, probably because the dream couldn’t replicate something she had never eaten.
What a pity.
Minamoto Tamako felt a bit envious, yet she had more important matters to address, ignoring her drooling at the sidewalk, she asked around for directions until she finally found the local police station.
Standing at the entrance, she looked up, thinking this was probably the East University patrol house, which seemed more impressive than Nakagawara Station front Patrol House with its own flagpole and automatic gate, is the Police Department of East University really this wealthy?
Minamoto Tamako peeked at the entrance, catching the attention of the officer on duty who asked her what was the matter.
"I want to report! Someone has been murdered! In unit 2 of building 11, apartment 1807 at Wanxxx City, the homeowner often handles corpses in the room!"
Minamoto Tamako decisively ratted out young Fushimi Roku.
Humph, letting the police arrest him counts as her arrest too! After all, it was her report; without her information, how else could Fushimi Roku be brought to justice?
Learning to leverage others is a required course for adults!
Minamoto Tamako felt good about herself; she already envisioned Fushimi Roku in shackles, painfully repenting, surely receiving the punishment he deserved. He would mend his ways, right?
But why, in the dream, did Fushimi-kun harbor such criminal thoughts...
Before Minamoto Tamako could think further, the officer took her small hand, leading her into the station to ask her name and how she knew about this.
At this point, Minamoto Tamako was dumbfounded; she couldn’t very well say she had just been killed, right? She might be taken for a lunatic and locked up!
"Uh, this... in any case, it’s true! You must send someone to investigate!" Minamoto Tamako could only repeatedly emphasize, trying to appeal emotionally.
The two on-duty officers exchanged glances. Although this was outlandish with potential false reporting, one of them opted to make a trip to see what was really going on;
The other was responsible for calming down young Tamako, guiding her to recount the events in detail... A little girl of seven or eight could scarcely report a false case without a reason, right?
No matter how the officers asked, Minamoto Tamako repeated the same sentence: ’Someone’s dead! The murderer is called Zhou Hao! Hurry up and catch him, or more will suffer!’
Half an hour later, the other officer called back, saying the apartment owner was a lawyer who had never seen this girl, and there was nothing unusual in the room, so he planned to return.
Minamoto Tamako hastily grabbed the phone, urging the officer to check the kitchen, only to hear a voice on the receiver that was stiff and mechanical, sounding like a dumb AI... Of course, she hadn’t seen a dumb AI, having only seen poorly dubbed robot imitations in movies.
"There must be something wrong with the refrigerator!"
"What is a refrigerator?"
"A refrigerator is a cooling icebox!"
"What is an icebox?"
"An icebox is a white metal box!"
"What color is white?"
"...Are you mocking me?"
"Sorry, cannot find the meaning of 「mocking」."
Hearing this, Minamoto Tamako glanced down at her phone, displaying the same expression as an old man in the subway.
What is going on?
When the officer returned, he spoke normally, knowing what a refrigerator was, what an icebox was, and what white was, he even explained the difference between a refrigerator and an icebox—one is vertical, the other horizontal.
Minamoto Tamako insisted this wasn’t important! What mattered was that the man was a murderer! He had to be caught!
The two officers exchanged glances once more; this time their eyes were different, their tone much gentler. They shifted the topic from the case to Minamoto Tamako’s family situation, asking who her parents were...
Having been a patrol officer herself, Minamoto Tamako knew what they were thinking, likely believing her to be a troublemaker child creating excuses to avoid school.
When she worked in the patrol house before, she encountered something similar, a second-grader who didn’t want to attend school, falsely claiming to be selling drugs, hoping the police sister would lock him up... As one might imagine, to a child, prison seemed better than school.
Failing one plan, Minamoto Tamako could only consider another.
She feigned a stomach ache to use the restroom and sneaked out of the police station while they were not watching.
"Damn it, where did it go wrong..."
Kicking small stones on the roadside, hands in pockets, with furrowed brows, Minamoto Tamako pondered deeply.
Why did the police sound robotic on the phone? Could it be that in this dream, when the police approached young Fushimi Roku, their intelligence dropped?
Minamoto Tamako felt this might be possible; otherwise, there’s no explanation as to why Fushimi Roku hadn’t been caught.
To test this speculation, she went to another police station to report. This time she followed the police to Fushimi Roku’s house.
Her luck was good; her inference was correct. In this dream, young Fushimi Roku was a special existence, and he could do whatever he pleased without consequence— even if the police came to his door and saw him dismembering in the kitchen, they would dismiss it as him butchering pork.
At the same time, her luck was equally bad; she barged in just as Fushimi Roku was dismembering, and unsurprisingly, she died once more, in front of the police no less.
...Damn it!!
...Not only did he kill his girlfriend, but he killed her so many times!!
In a daze, Minamoto Tamako’s awareness gathered, she reopened her eyes on the bed once more. Too lazy to recall just how many memories she had lost, she rose to change clothes, hurriedly leaving.
This time, she would rely on herself to personally capture Fushimi Roku!