"What a hassle you are. Wouldn't it be simpler to just rip Fujino Terumi's skin right off?"
After Amamiya Rin hung up the phone, Tomie, sitting across from him, couldn't help but quip.
"Too reckless. Fujino Terumi's existence is very important. If simply peeling off her skin doesn't work, then I'd be the equivalent of personally triggering the end of the world."
Amamiya Rin shook his head.
He needed a more reliable approach—for instance, the Layered curse.
The Hanging Balloons claimed it had formed its link with Fujino Terumi at the moment of its birth, which meant Fujino Terumi was someone cursed this very year.
Amamiya Rin's line of thinking was this: by using the Layered curse, he could fix Fujino Terumi's skin in place at this year.
Using the concept of time, he would strip away the skin of her head together with the curse, splitting the post-curse Fujino Terumi and the pre-curse Fujino Terumi into two separate parts.
He would let the former perish together with The Hanging Balloons, then smear an ointment that promotes skin growth onto the skinless muscle, and in this way escape The Hanging Balloons' mechanism-kill.
Of course, all of this was merely Amamiya Rin's conjecture. Whether it could succeed—he would only know after he first made contact with the curse.
Not long after the meal, Amamiya Rin's phone rang.
The caller ID showed Kazumi Junya.
He brought Amamiya Rin a rare piece of good news for these recent days: Indou Ranko had already finished walking the procedure through for him. As long as he went to the Metropolitan Police Department to sign the formal documents, he could obtain the status of "Civilian Collaborator" with the Police History Compilation Office.
Amamiya Rin couldn't help but feel a lift in his spirits.
With this status, he could legitimately consult the Compilation Office's archives and search through them for records of all sorts of supernatural incidents—especially that lead on the Sandman.
As long as he obtained the Sandman's curse, the Long Dream would no longer be a threat!
An hour later, Amamiya Rin stood propped on two crutches before the tall main entrance of the Metropolitan Police Department's main building.
To be safe, he had switched to new crutches, lest his own crutches, once seen, give rise to some unnecessary associations.
He made a call to Kazumi Junya, and before long, Kazumi Junya came striding hurriedly out.
"Amamiya-kun."
Kazumi Junya called out a greeting to Amamiya Rin and led him into the elevator of the Metropolitan Police Department.
The elevator stopped at the fifth basement level, and the doors slid open without a sound.
Outside was a spacious but poorly lit corridor, its walls bare concrete, the air thick with a mingled smell of paper, dust, and mildew.
Clearly, the foot traffic here wasn't heavy; even the most basic decoration had been dispensed with.
Kazumi led Amamiya Rin toward a heavy metal door at the end of the corridor. There was no marking of any kind on the door, only a card reader. Kazumi swiped it with his chest badge, and the lock gave a soft "click."
The space behind the door was more open than he had imagined.
It didn't look like an office—more like a large archive vault.
Towering metal filing racks were lined up in neat rows, occupying more than half the area, crammed full of all kinds of folders and boxes. Only in the central area had a patch of open space been cleared for activity.
The layout of this open space was sharply divided.
The left-hand area looked casual, even slovenly—a rather comfortable-looking old leather sofa faced a television, the screen frozen on an image of the starting gates at a racetrack.
On the low table in front of the sofa lay an opened horse-racing newspaper, a few empty coffee cans, and a dust-covered ashtray.
Indou Ranko was all but sunk into the sofa, her hair carelessly gathered behind her head, holding the remote and ceaselessly flipping through channels, searching for a live broadcast of the next race.
The right-hand side was far more orderly.
Two desks placed side by side, each holding a computer; although the piled-up documents and books were many, they were roughly sorted and stacked.
Kogure Soichiro was frowning at a report, his thick fingers tapping the keyboard with a touch of clumsiness. Hearing the door open, he lifted his eyes, saw Amamiya Rin, gave a sullen nod by way of greeting, and quickly buried himself in his work again.
Apart from these, the entire space held no other superfluous furnishings, exuding a sense of pragmatism.
"Oh, you're here."
Indou Ranko's eyes didn't leave the television; she merely raised her hand.
"Sit wherever. Kazumi, give him the contract."
Amamiya Rin glanced around, walked over to an unoccupied folding chair near the sofa, sat down, and leaned his crutches off to the side.
"This is the agreement. Take a careful look."
Kazumi, for his part, picked up a document he had prepared in advance from his own desk and handed it to Amamiya Rin, his tone turning considerably more formal.
"The main terms include: your status is that of a Civilian Collaborator, not a member of the police establishment; you do not enjoy a police officer's authority, treatment, or protections. You must abide by the confidentiality regulations and must not divulge any information you come into contact with at the Compilation Office. Based on the value of the intelligence you provide or the nature of the assistance in operations, we will pay a corresponding investigation incentive fee, the specific amount determined by the case grade and your degree of contribution."
He paused, then continued.
"Correspondingly, as a collaborator, with Police Inspector Indou's approval, you may apply to consult the various archives in the archive room. This part isn't very strict—although they're of a confidential nature, those archives hold no confidential value."
Amamiya Rin took the document; the paper was thick, the terms clear.
He skimmed through it quickly, focusing in particular on the confidentiality clauses and the archive-consultation permissions.
After confirming everything was in order, Amamiya Rin picked up a pen and signed cleanly and decisively.
Kazumi took the contract and went off to file it.
Amamiya Rin, meanwhile, braced himself up with his crutches, his gaze turning toward those row upon row of filing racks that seemed to stretch out without end.
"Amamiya."
Curled up in the sofa, Indou Ranko suddenly spoke, her eyes still fixed on the horses that had begun to run across the television, her tone as if she were asking offhandedly.
"Last night, where were you?"
Amamiya Rin turned around, his expression unchanged.
"Last night? I went to visit a friend. Does Police Inspector Indou know her? Fujino Terumi—that idol star."
"Fujino Terumi?"
Indou Ranko finally pulled her gaze away from the television for a moment, arched an eyebrow, and a hint of surprise showed on her face.
"Heh, a big star. You actually know a celebrity like that?"
"We met by a stroke of chance."
Amamiya Rin smiled, his tone mild.
"Terumi is a person with a really fine character."
"...Miho..."
A suppressed mutter came from the right-hand desk.
Amamiya Rin turned his head to look, and saw that Kogure Soichiro had stopped his typing, his broad shoulders slumped, the rims of his eyes somewhat reddened, a dazed expression on his face as he stared at the computer screen.
"What's with him...?"
The corner of Amamiya Rin's eye twitched almost imperceptibly.
Watching the fragile emotion surface on that rugged face, it somehow felt out of place.
"Hearing you bring up idol stars poked at his sore spot again."
Indou Ranko withdrew her gaze and looked back at the television screen, a jaded laziness in her tone that came from having seen it all before.
"Don't mind him. Let him take his time to recover—he'll be fine after a while."
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Path of Elation in Warhammer 40K
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