[Master K] The bad one next door

……

"'Why... am I doing this'?"

"..."

"Let's put it this way. Xiao Zhenya, do you know why human beings have no sharp minions and strong bodies, but eventually became the overlord of the earth?"

"Wisdom? Well, half of the answers are correct. But why are human beings, our humble ancestors, endowed with wisdom?"

"...Haha, can't you answer it? Of course, there are no gods in the world. Human beings have come to this day without relying on anyone, and they have trekked here step by step. Therefore, I have come to a conclusion—— —”

"Human beings have infinite possibilities."

"Ability people. Outsiders. Isn't the appearance of these people a sign of human evolution? They have powers that ordinary people can't imagine. If you want to describe it...well, they are just like the 'gods' imagined by human beings. "

"My purpose is just to want more people to become 'gods'. That's all."

"Just imagine the arrival of that new era, and you will be involuntarily excited, right? For this, some small sacrifices are necessary."

"... Evil person? Haha, in Xiao Zhenya's opinion, I may indeed be an evil person. But do you know? There is always only a thin line between good and evil. Maybe one day in the future, the evil person in your eyes will become a recorded person In the history books, a great man who is regarded as a milestone by future generations."

"Don't look at me that way. Just kidding."

"Anyway, for that day to come, I'm standing here—"

"—that's why you're standing here."

……

——I don’t know when, this memory was completely forgotten.

I don't remember the despair, sorrow, and hoarse throat after crying loudly at that time.

That memory rolled in the waves of my mind, gradually sank into the deep sea, and finally fell asleep in the deep sea, closing my eyes in the bottomless darkness.

human possibility.Just because of such an illusory reason, that person left forever.

never came back.

It's like dreaming.

When consciousness regained a little bit, the first thing I felt was the scorching red on the eyelids.When you are sleepy, the feeling of being glaring directly at the eyes is not good.Maki raised her arms to cover her face, and opened her eyes in a daze.

After his eyes adjusted to the light, what caught his eyes was the surgical lamp hanging directly above his head.

Maiya stared blankly at the bright light for a few seconds, then looked down at Hatta's coat covering her body, her stiff brain couldn't turn around for a moment.

--here is……

The cold touch of leaning on her back gradually brought her back to her senses.At this moment, a clear and clear voice that was familiar to the boy suddenly came from beside him: "Ah, Yazawa-chan! You're awake!"

Mami was taken aback, and turned her head away.Hirobe Shinichi was sitting on a chair beside him, holding an open book in his right hand, resting his chin in his left hand, staring at her with wide eyes in surprise.

"Eh, Hirobe-kun...?"

Hirobe closed the book with a "snap", and leaned closer with the chair: "How do you feel now? Is there anything uncomfortable?"

Although my head still ached from sleep, it was a trivial matter in this case.Maki shook her head: "It's okay, thank you."

Seeing her showing the same gentle smile as before, the silver-haired boy finally heaved a sigh of relief, and began to babble about how worried he was about her, and how his liver would burst from fright while she was sleeping, exaggeratedly Hearing the words, Mami burst out laughing.

While smoothing Hirobe, she also began to secretly look at the room she was in.

The room is not too big, and there are various miscellaneous boxes piled up around it. The surgical light above the head is the only light source, so it looks rather dim.It was only then that Maya realized that the place he was lying on was an operating table, and the wound from the previous battle with the blood man had been well bandaged, and there was a faint scent of cool medicine under the bandage.

——Speaking of which... what happened before?

Maya remembered that once they reached the second floor, they started tracking Hatta along the wreckage of the robot.On the way, they found a secret passage on the wall. When they were studying the secret passage, all the wreckage in front of them suddenly disappeared, and then...

Maki sat up straight suddenly, so shocked that Hirobe almost fell back with his chair.

"Suddenly, what is this all of a sudden!"

"Hirobe-kun!"

"……what?"

Mami turned her head and looked at him seriously: "Where is this place?"

Hirobe was stunned for two seconds, stabilized his body, supported his knees with one hand, and scratched his head helplessly: "Ah, this... Yazawa must have guessed it."

"This is the inside of the secret passage."

……

……

The atmosphere in the air suddenly became subtly awkward.

half an hour.

"Hey, ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!"

"Why are you so surprised - so you don't know at all?!!"

According to Hirobe, the secret passage leads to an open space, and Shinya passed out when she fell to the ground.

"At that time, I was quite frightened, and I was also very vigilant about the people and things around me—but according to that guy, you seemed to faint only because of exhaustion and nervous tension. You see, I also I have nothing to rely on, so I trusted him for a while, and now it seems that this decision is really correct."

"...Wait." Mami paused, "You said...'that guy'?"

"Ah, by the way, I haven't explained it to Yazawa-chan yet." Hirobe coughed dryly and looked serious, "That guy is the master of the secret passage."

"..."

If Mami was drinking water now, he would have sprayed Hirobe's face with a sip of water without any image.

"Eh?!"

"Well, actually it's quite reasonable when you think about it." Hirobe reached out and touched his chin, "After all, there are so many secret passages, it would be unreasonable if no one manages them. Besides, it was the wound that that guy bandaged for you." , who brought us to this room. Although it is strange to say that, he doesn't seem to have any ill intentions towards us."

Maki frowned slightly: "But...why?"

"Who knows."

Hirobe stretched and shrugged.

"Maybe he's a nice guy."

……

The two chatted for a while on the topic of "the master of the secret passage".When Maya recovered a little bit of energy, Hirobe seemed to suddenly remember, and said with the smile on his face.

"Speaking of which, Yazawa-chan. I now know why those wreckage disappeared."

Mami looked at him suspiciously: "What is it?"

"Does Yazawa-chan know? After I fell out of the secret passage, I saw a lot of robot wreckage in that open space, and the damage was exactly the same as that caused by Hatta." Seeing Mami's eyes widen with his words Big, Hirobe continued, "There are many handling robots moving these wrecks, putting them on a conveyor belt, and new robots are constantly being transported out from the other end of the conveyor belt."

Maya realized: "That is to say... was it recycled?"

"Ah.—Not only that, but there are even more shocking things." Hirobe stared at her seriously, "There are many revolving secret doors on the walls around the open space. There are always robot wreckage coming from the dark. The door falls, and then new robots will come out of the secret door. I have carefully looked at the wreckage of the robots that have just been recovered, and Hatta’s handwriting can’t be wrong.”

After Hirobe's voice fell, Mami remained silent for a while.

She looked down at Hatta's coat tightly clutched in her hands, and couldn't help biting her lower lip.

At that time, Hatta gave it to himself. Although he said awkwardly, "It's just to prevent you from getting naked, after all, the skirt is so short", but in fact it also implied the meaning of "must come back safely".

Indeed, it gave her the courage to keep going when she was exhausted to the extreme.

and--

"While I was sleeping soundly in bed, Misaki was also fighting...?"

"...Yazawa-chan? -Wait, wait, what are you doing?"

Before Hirobe could stop him in surprise, Mami jumped off the operating table neatly.She moved her sore ankle a little, wrapped her coat around her body, and looked up at Hirobe seriously.

"Hirobe-kun, I want to meet the master of the secret passage."

"what?"

"Although this place is safe for the time being, it's not a good idea to stay here for a long time." Maki replied, "I want to get out as soon as possible... Misaki is still waiting for me."

Hirobe stared at her fixedly for a few seconds, but he couldn't resist her overly persistent gaze.He breathed a sigh of relief, put away the book in his hand and stood up, with a helpless smile on his face.

"Really, since Yazawa-chan has said so, there is nothing I can do." He scratched his messy silver hair, and stretched out his hand to her with a smile, palm facing up, "Actually, I planned to bring It doesn't matter if you meet him earlier. Let's go."

"Ok!"

Maki took his hand, squeezed it lightly and then let go, her tense face finally relaxed.

The two walked towards the door one after the other.

"That, Hirobe-kun."

"Ok?"

"Thank you."

"...Hey, it's okay."

——I’m sure we’ll meet Misaki again soon.

Thinking of this, Mami couldn't help showing a relaxed smile in his eyes.

Maya, who was immersed in her own thoughts, naturally missed——

——the fleeting, expressionless face of the silver-haired boy when he turned to open the door.

After walking out of the room and through a gloomy corridor, Maki witnessed the scene Hirobe described with his own eyes.

What caught the eye was a spacious and bright open space, the ground was paved with white tiles, and round domes were neatly lined with revolving doors.The robots in the air are flying around, carrying all kinds of mechanical parts, and the conveyor belt on the ground is running non-stop, forming a strange landscape.

"It's like a sci-fi movie..."

"Really?" Hirobe shrugged, and walked forward with his hands in his pockets, "When I came here before, I never thought that this building would have such a place... Well, but now that we have reached this situation, everything It might happen."

Captured the details in his words, Maki couldn't help asking curiously: "Has Hirobe-kun been here before?"

"Well, yes. To investigate a murder case."

Hirobu-kun scratched his head, and he didn't seem to mind talking about his previous work: "It was about two years ago... At that time, I was in the second grade of middle school in my country, and I was just exposed to this kind of task of solving cases. The teacher said" As a Butei of the vehicle department, he must have the excellent quality of carrying his companions to run safely at any time', so I was sent to study with a senior from the detective department."

As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly stopped in his tracks and reached out to stop Mami behind him.Before Zhenya had time to express his doubts, he saw a scrapped robot fall heavily in front of them, and the fragments of its body flew around with a loud "bang".

The two stared at the "crackling" pile of scrap iron in front of them and fell silent for a moment.

"...Good, very dangerous."

The corners of Hirobe's eyes twitched: "Yes, yes, if it wasn't for getting used to being smashed all the way before, it would be impossible to react."

The two walked around the wreckage silently and continued to chat while walking.

Shinya was very interested in the "solved cases" that Hirobe said, so he asked:

"And then? Is there a dead person in the Qiuben Building?"

"No. But the deceased was an employee of Qiuben Building. The cause of death seems to be a car accident. In order to collect evidence, I went to Qiuben Building with that senior to understand the situation."

"Huh? Isn't that just an accident?"

"Well, it's logically so, but the family members don't want to believe the police's judgment, so they asked Butei for help." Hirobe tilted his head and recalled carefully for a while, "What does the name of the deceased seem to be... Namiko Sato or Sakura?" Is Namiko here? I don’t remember clearly, anyway, the final investigation result was an accident.”

"……yes."

Mami nodded silently and said nothing more.

She suddenly felt a little sympathetic to the family of Miss Namiko.

The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. The emotion of anticipation has reached the extreme, and once it breaks, it will be completely broken.Although I don't know why Miss Namiko's family insists that "Namiko's death was not an accident", but regardless of whether what they got is the truth-Miss Namiko will never come back.

……

After passing through the open space, there is another long corridor.This aisle looked more dilapidated than the one they had passed through before. There were cobwebs on the corners of the walls, and there were black traces of condensation on the light bulb above the head, which obviously had existed for some time.

Miya looked at the silver braid flicking behind Hirobe's head, and felt a cold uneasiness creep up in his heart inexplicably.So she couldn't help calling softly: "That's it, Hirobe-kun."

"Hey, what's the matter?"

"What kind of person is the owner here?"

"Hmm..." Hirobe-kun seemed to think about it for a while, "How should I put it...it's hard to describe?"

He seemed to be on the fence with this question, rubbed his chin and searched in his mind for a long time, and popped out some distressed tone words from time to time as he walked.When it was over, he finally concluded with dissatisfaction:

——"Well, from my point of view, it's probably... barely a mean, perverted old man?"

Maya, who has been holding her breath waiting for him to speak: "..."

"...Is this the answer you came up with after thinking hard for so long?"

"Well, Yazawa-chan doesn't have to worry too much." Hirobe waved his hand casually, turned his head, and met her blank expression with a smile, "But don't tell him what I said, or he might have a Feed us to the robot when you're angry—ah, here we go."

The two chatted nonsense for a long time before they reached the end of the aisle before they knew it.

In front of you is an iron door covered with red rust, which exudes a cold atmosphere, quite a sinister air of old things.Hirobe suppressed the brisk smile on his face, raised his hand and knocked on the door, shouted "Hello, we're coming in!", then stretched out his hand and turned the doorknob.

"Squeak-"

Accompanied by a piercing sound, the iron door was pushed open by Hirobe.

Behind the door is a darker room, but there is a bright light illuminating the dark world.Hirobe walked in first, and Maki followed behind him, over his shoulder, and cast an inquiring gaze into the room.

A man is sitting on a swivel chair with his back to the door, and many screens are suspended in front of him. Obviously this is the "light source" seen outside the house.Maki glanced curiously at the densely packed screens, and then one of the screens attracted all her attention.

——The hands and feet were cold in an instant.

On the screen is impressively——

Mami opened her eyes slightly, clenched her fists violently, and murmured tremblingly:

"Misaki...?"