Chapter 17 now 08

Criminals return to the scene.As expected, it is.The predecessors' statement must have its basis, statistical or scientific basis. The lottery ticket brought by the end of the round, and the textbook disappearing from the room, neither of which was a big event, but it was enough to throw me into chaos. When I recovered, Kawasaki had already gone out.I am alone in the room.This is obviously my own room, but I feel uncomfortable and uneasy, like sitting on pins and needles. If at this moment, a woman holding a strange crystal ball appeared in the entrance and told me: "This room is cursed, so strange things always happen." Whether it is a magic pot or a spell, as long as the price is affordable, I will buy it if I fail.

I thought that if I continued to stay in the room in a daze, it would be impossible to get an answer, and it was three o'clock in the afternoon, and it was too early to go to bed. I started to care about the bookstore.Thinking of my own actions yesterday, I was terribly frightened.It was still bright outside, but not sunny, with a milky white sky overhead. What happened to that bookstore now?How many of our affairs have been found out?Hey, hey, you're not thinking about going back to the scene, are you? ——The other me in my heart advised myself in surprise.Return to the place where the crime was committed yesterday?Are you crazy?Moreover, the bookstore may have been crowded with uniformed police and criminal police, and it is impossible to enter the store.

But……. —I refute my claim.I was just outside the bookstore yesterday.As long as you pretend to be an ordinary customer and walk in, there will be no problem, right?If the police have cordoned off the scene, I'll just stand at a distance and look at the situation, and just ask, "What happened?" and that's it. What's more, what we did last night was at best an exaggerated theft. Even if I was interrogated by the police in the worst case, I just need to explain that I was dragged into the water by Kawasaki, and I didn't actually do anything, and I'll be fine. I was naive.Perhaps most of the perpetrators have this kind of naive mentality, so they will visit the scene again.

I was afraid that my determination would be shaken if I procrastinated, so I ran out of the room without changing clothes, and went straight to the bus stop. The gentle and continuous uphill is long enough to frustrate my willpower.The bus arrived just at this time, and I rushed forward as if fighting hard, and jumped into the bus. Maybe it was the time when high school students were leaving school, and the car was very crowded. I was surrounded by male students in uniform chatting about the new songs of the pop band, and I was shaking in the car for nearly 20 minutes. After I got off at the bus stop that was probably the closest to the bookstore, I wandered around for about five minutes and found the bookstore.There is a map next to the bus stop, and I used it to find the bookstore.

Contrary to my predictions, bookstores are open for business.There were neither police patrols nor a cordon off entry. I walked through the automatic door, and an indescribable sense of tension ran through my body, but there were no policemen lying in ambush inside the door. The store was quiet, the radio playing casually. I have a feeling of being played.No bookshelf fell down, no light tube broke, I couldn't help but wonder if Kawasaki and I really robbed this store? On the front is the cash register. There are several anti-theft round mirrors in the four corners of the store, but no surveillance video recorders.Was Kawasaki's figure reflected in these mirrors last night?I imagined.

Most of the products sold in the store are comics or magazines, and there is also a library section, but it is obviously not complete.I wandered around the store for about ten minutes, and then I was so bold as to strike up a conversation with the clerk, I must have been relieved by the peacefulness of the store.The clerk at the cash register was a girl with dyed brown hair, about the age of a high school student.Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she looked so easy to talk to. I walked to the cashier with a map of the prefecture that I didn't even want to buy. I didn't even have a car or a driver's license, so I chose this kind of thing anyway.I'm just so confused.

"Welcome." She raised her head and closed the book she was reading with a serious face, turning over the back to cover the cover.She checked out with familiar movements and put the map in the bag. "Excuse me……" "Huh?" A wary look appeared on her face, "What can I do?" The expression seemed to say that it is the etiquette that a guest should have after paying for the things and taking them back quickly. "Is this store open last night?" What I said was a completely unclear question. "Last night?" She squinted her eyes, looking at my nearby face as if looking at a distant object.

If this silence lasted for a few more seconds, I might not be able to resist confessing "I did it" on the spot. "I passed by here late last night and saw that the lights in your store were still on." What is this?What is this unbelievable lie!I was on the verge of crying, but I couldn't stop the first performance of my life. "Oh." She wrinkled her nose unhappily, "Ejiri really made trouble at night again." "Ejiri?" "Our clerk. Come to work this morning to have a look, the store is a bit messy." Ah, that might have been Kawasaki. —I would love to say that. "A bit messy?"

"Some books fell off the shelves." "Did some crime happen?" I asked tremblingly, "Who committed the crime?" It means that person is you! ——If I was pointed at like a clichéd ghost story, I would definitely pass out on the spot. "Case? Ah, oh." She showed an expression as if she was laughing at someone, "Ejiri did it, probably. That person has no common sense at all." "No common sense?" "Just like there won't be a casino in school, Ejiri won't have common sense." "What's the meaning?" "You can't tell it." She said nonchalantly, "That guy Ejiri is terrible, he's on drugs or something."

"Drugs..." It must be a drug that has never appeared in my past life, "Oh, drugs. It is the kind that the pharmacy does not sell." "After closing, he seems to sometimes take drugs and then go crazy in the store alone." "real or fake?" "I heard." "Why would you hire such a person?" She lowered her voice and said, "Parents who spoil their children. That person is the son of the store manager, so he can do whatever he wants. It's terrible. Like me, he is often messed with by him. Fortunately, he didn't let him get his way."

"But you continue to work?" "Because no one else would hire me." I don't think there's anything particularly bad about her looking. "That..." I couldn't help but start to mind, "Is it okay that you told me so much?" "I've given up on myself, it doesn't matter." "Abandon yourself?" Then she stood up abruptly and went to the bookshelf by the wall.Did you find out that someone was stealing books?I froze and stood still, but she came back with a heavy dictionary in her arms. Could it be that she blamed us in her heart for stealing "Guangciyuan"—no, to be correct, she mistakenly mistook "Guangcilin" for "Guangciyuan" and stole it?I started to get scared, but she said nonchalantly, "Let me take a look..." She looked up the dictionary, and then she slowly raised her head. Give it all up and give yourself up." "That's it." The sound of closing the dictionary sounded. "So, actually, I don't care anymore. This kind of work, and people like Ejiri, don't care anymore." Her voice was devoid of emotion, and it sounded more like sincere words. While giving up on herself, she pointed to the cash register and said, "This is Ejiri. It makes people angry, right?" Next to the cash register was a clipping of a newspaper, which seemed to be a local newspaper. There were two people in the photo. Men, one is a middle-aged bearded man and the other is a young man. "The fat one is the store manager, and the one over here is Ejiri." "What kind of report is this?" "I heard that next year a large shopping center will be opened next to this national highway." "That's bad." I thought of my father's shoe store.Because a large mass merchandise store opened nearby, the business of the shoe store plummeted. "This is a special feature, reporting on some shops that launched an opposition movement. Ejiri thought he was a celebrity just because of this kind of news. It's really hopeless. Besides, this is a newspaper half a year ago." I couldn't take my eyes off the newspaper clipping, and the strange young man in the photo looked back at me.When I was told by the clerk, I also felt that this young man's eyes seemed to have an unusual brilliance of a drug addict. At this moment, she turned back the book she was reading just now.Perhaps subconsciously, my eyes also moved to the cover of the book, the title of which is "First Pregnancy and Childbirth". She must have noticed my gaze, she pursed her lips and said, "I went to the hospital yesterday, and they said it was three months." "Yeah." I responded in a wrong way. "Even if you look for a book, it doesn't say what to do when you don't want to give birth." She was very calm.Have you already panicked, or will you start panicking next? "How old is Ejiri?" I returned to the original topic. "Twenty-six or twenty-seven or so, I suppose." "What a troublesome heir." "Yeah. It's the end of the world." She seemed to be thinking of something else. "It's really all inexplicable." "Um, is that the other party—a classmate or something?" I decided to directly touch her troubles. "The other party? Oh, are you talking about my boyfriend? You really have a thick skin for asking such a thing. " I blushed, but she didn't look as upset as she said.Maybe because there are no other guests, they are idle and bored.As long as people are free, they will think about extra things. "Hey," she looked up at me, "If there is a child in the belly, is it also called 'mother and child suicide'?" "Uh..." I couldn't comprehend for a while, and frowned.Then, I started to feel very uncomfortable, "That's right." "I'm only sixteen. If I really want to say it, it should be called 'Zizi commits suicide'?" "That's rude?" In short, it's better to strike first.I still know what young people are most afraid of.So I went on and said, "That's really bad." They hate being laughed at for being "poor" more than they are poor or STDs or failing grades, and that's worse than death for them. "Is it bad?" "Having a child, I was so worried that I ran to commit suicide. It's really embarrassing. Think about it, when the child is sixteen years old, you are only thirty-two, aren't you? Don't you think this is cool?" I sincerely say. "Really?" I don't know if she was convinced, but she nodded ambiguously.So I left the bookstore. I was not calm enough to share the troubles of the girl I met for the first time, and I was overwhelmed with my own affairs.