[Death] Acacia inkstone

4.

"The frequency of the murderer's crimes has reached the speed of a day since a few days ago." Takigawa picked up the steaming coffee on the table, took a sip, and looked elegant and beautiful: "And now there have been two dead. Police station Almost all of the police forces are deployed on this serial case, and Sakurai's medical examiner took a break in advance."

Toshiro frowned when he heard this, and stretched out his hand to signal Takikawa to hand him Kaoru Sakurai's file.

He scanned the address column: No. 37 Yuejian Road.

His heart couldn't help but tense, Dong Shirou faintly felt that Kaoru Sakurai must have had an accident.Before seeing her address, he thought maybe she just had some other urgent business to attend to.Although this reason is far-fetched, but companions who have been with each other for decades are in danger, which is something no one wants to convince themselves to believe.

"Her address is very close to the place where the murder occurred early this morning." Toshiro handed the file back to Takikawa Aoba:

"Since you can't spare the police force to deal with her affairs, you might as well leave it to me to take full responsibility." He stood up, staring fixedly at Takigawa Aoba, his green eyes as deep as a pool of water, but It was extremely cold.

"Then there will be Captain Lao Ri Tsunya." Takikawa Aoba spread his hands in the direction of the gate: "I'm busy with business, so I won't see you off."

<<

"Captain, I've been in this world for several years, why haven't you added anyone to the criminal investigation team?"

It was a very sunny day, when Kaoru Sakurai was pouring tea for Toshiro, the sunlight hit her hands, making her complexion a little fairer.

After eight years, she finally returned to Soul Soul Realm.

"There are enough people now." He took the tea, glanced at her, and remained calm.

"That is to say, I don't need to come back?" Sakurai Kaoru blinked playfully and asked him.

Dong Shilang frowned imperceptibly: "Then why are you back now?"

She chuckled and took out a card-like thing from her body to show him:

"Captain, you used to say that I'm no better than Hua Yuan, and that I'm not competent enough. I'm here to tell you that I've officially joined the Karakura Town Police Station."

She put on a triumphant smile at him: "Your subordinate who was ineffective in the past has now achieved something. Captain, shouldn't you be proud of me?"

Dongshiro stared at the thin work card held between her slender fingers and remained silent.

She still doesn't understand anything.not at all.

"Captain?" Sakurai Kaoru saw that he was silent, and he was still in a daze, so he couldn't help but waved his hand in front of his eyes.After shaking it a few times, I felt that my wrist was being held by something cold. When I looked carefully, it turned out that it was the captain's hand.

"Why are your hands so cold?" Sakurai Kaoru has always claimed that his hands are cold, and has long enjoyed putting his hands into the nape of other people's collars during severe cold periods. Unexpectedly, the captain's hands are colder than hers.

Dong Shilang took his hand back, with a somewhat unnatural expression.

Sakurai Kaoru didn't pay attention to her captain's expression at all. She stood there thinking for a while, then took off the pendant from her neck and handed it to him:

"This is carved out of obsidian. I got a small piece of obsidian by accident a few years ago, but it was too small, so I had to ask the craftsman to use it as a pendant."

Seeing that Toshiro didn't intend to accept it, Kaoru Sakurai simply took his hand, opened it, put the bright black stone pendant on it, and continued:

"The meaning of obsidian in this world is 'no more crying, happiness'."

"Captain, don't worry too much about team affairs, otherwise, how many girls will feel sorry for you. As for the meaning of 'no more crying', I think it can also be understood as wishing you to bring us a juban as soon as possible." The sister-in-law of the team is back, let those girls who yearn for you stop crying because they miss you day and night..."

"...Oh no, if this is the case, wouldn't they have to cry all day long?"

She obviously majored in forensic science but not law, so why did she become so eloquent after staying in this world for eight years?Toshiro felt that it was a prank from heaven that he met Kaoru Sakurai.

<<

A black gold obsidian earring lay quietly in his hand.

Dong Shilang looked at it, and that part of the past couldn't help appearing in his mind.

This earring was made by Sakurai Kaoru who asked a craftsman to use the rest of the pendant to polish it. At that time, the pendant she gave him half jokingly and half sincerely was given to him by Toshiro for several years. Properly placed in the body pocket.

After Toshiro came out of Takikawa Aoba's office, he went straight to the crime scene.After some careful searching, he found the earring pressed into the mud crack of the brick wall in the alley.

There is no doubt that this is the clue that Sakurai Kaoru specially left for him.

Moreover, it should be the only clue.

If it were another Grim Reaper, Dongshiro could completely locate it by feeling the spiritual pressure.But Kaoru Sakurai's physique is weaker than many other gods of death, and it is difficult for her to burst out a perceivable and stable spiritual pressure for a long time.It would be even more impossible if she was in a state of extreme fatigue.

In the police station before, the police officer surnamed Jiyong said that she had been working for a long time yesterday and it was late at night when she returned home.And it was already afternoon, that is to say, she should have not closed her eyes for at least 30 consecutive hours.

Involuntarily clenched the small things in his hand, Dong Shilang decided to search the area where the crime happened again.

5.

"Don't kill me now, I can go with you." Kaoru Sakurai raised his hands towards the man, trying to restrain his body from trembling involuntarily.

The man looked her up and down, with a strange look in his eyes on the mask: "Alright, just leave it to me as a hostage."

"But you should know that even this will only make you live one more day." He shook her face and said, "It's totally pointless for you to do this, and you will still have to die under my gun in the end."

Sakurai Kaoru showed a smile and approached him actively, a pair of high heels under his feet made a clear sound in the night: "I am only 26 years old this year, at least give me one more day to recall my short life."

The man looked at her with a pensive look. After a while, he also smiled and said, "Your mentality is really like a woman I once knew."

"Life and death are not something that I can control alone. It is right to enjoy life." She smiled, but the panic spread uncontrollably in her heart: "It's a pity that I don't have the chance to meet this like-minded lady. .”

The man put the gun back on his body, and at the same time said to her: "I can let you see her before she dies."

"Or, you can die together." He turned around and said, "Since you want to live another day so much, come with me."

"You did so many drills just to kill her?" Sakurai Kaoru followed behind him knowingly, and secretly removed an earring.

The man turned his head and took a look, making sure she was coming, then turned back: "Her name is Maria."

"Her father is Japanese, and her mother is from England." He took Sakurai Kaoru through the winding alleys, seemingly unaware of her behind him: "I never felt sorry for her, but she betrayed her." I."

Sakurai Kaoru walked against the wall, her fingernails brushing against the wall from time to time.

She pretended to be nonchalant: "So you hate her and think she is unforgivable?"

The man nods.

"But she, like you, takes death very seriously." He said coldly, his deep voice hitting Kaoru Sakurai's eardrums: "So I think, if she knows that her death involves many other She can probably taste the guilt."

Having said that, he smiled contemptuously, which seemed like a victor.

Sakurai Kaoru looked at his back with a dazed expression.

A deep prison suddenly appeared in her mind - she had dreamed of this scene thousands of times.She couldn't remember where it was.

Pain, loneliness, bitterness, and very shallow resentment.

She remembered what it was like to be in that prison in her dream.

She seems to be resenting someone.

But it felt so illusory and unrealistic, yet so realistic.

"The people you care about don't care about you, and even do things that hurt you." Sakurai Kaoru took a deep breath, she actually didn't know why she said these things, but was driven by a feeling, she actually felt that she seemed to be I can understand his mood: "That's not a good feeling."

The man stopped and turned around to look at her, with astonishment in his eyes, but the emotion was fleeting. After a few seconds, he chuckled, which sounded a bit like self-deprecating: "You have also experienced this. Taste it, it’s really not good.”

"Only by killing her can I get rid of this feeling." He returned to his normal state, turned around and continued to walk: "For the sake of the fact that we have tasted this feeling together, in return, I will let you die Just a little more crisply."

Sakurai Kaoru raised his eyes and glanced at the night sky: there were a few stars scattered in the pitch black.There is no moon and no wind.

This may be the last silent night of her life.

Maybe her life is really coming to an end, and together with her weird feeling of loss just now, it will be erased forever.

What she should do has been done, and the next thing is to be left to Shiro Dong.

No longer entangled in the issue of life and death, Kaoru Sakurai cleared these irrelevant thoughts from his mind and quickened his pace.

6.

After a careful search, Toshiro focused on a series of scratches a few centimeters away from where Kaoru Sakurai left the earrings.

The walls of the alleys are all of bricks, which have been old for many years, and there are spots and marks on them.But what Shiro Dong discovered was different from ordinary scratches.

The series of scratches are long and short, approximately arranged in a straight line.Apparently, it wasn't random, left inadvertently on the wall.The message that Sakurai Kaoru left him should be this without accident.

Dongshiro moved his gaze horizontally a few centimeters, and found a series of new scratches.

Because he was not sure which direction the next scratch would appear in, Dongshiro had to walk through the nearby alleys one by one.After two hours, he was able to completely record all the scratches on paper.

Some scratches are only a few centimeters apart, while others are tens of centimeters apart.Dong Shilang stared at a series of long and short lines, trying to find the key.

"So you still want to return to the present world?"

He remembered the scene when Kaoru Sakurai suddenly came back after staying in this world for eight years: He thought she was tired of human life and wanted to return to Soul Soul World.Unexpectedly, she just came back and told him that she would stay there.

"Yes." She smiled at him shallowly: "I have worked so hard for so long, and I can finally start working."

"You like this world so much?" His voice was low, as usual, without any ups and downs.

"There are always many novel things in this world," she said here, showing joyful emotions: "Did you know that people in this world can use horizontal lines and dots to convey messages..."

"Although I think this is far less convenient than Hell Butterfly," Sakurai Kaoru continued, "but this method is very hidden. Talking to Hell Butterfly in front of the enemy is obviously too stupid..."

Toshiro continued to look at the notebook in his hand, and it was difficult to draw a single dot clearly. Kaoru Sakurai should have replaced the dot with a dash.

This should be Morse code.

When Sakurai Kaoru first mentioned Morse code to him, Toshiro didn't pay much attention.

It wasn't until a few months later that he went on a mission in this world and occasionally saw her sitting alone by the window in a coffee shop, staring at a bunch of dots and horizontal lines with great interest, that he went to look up what Morse code was.

In the past two years, he has seen those symbols many times. Although he has never used them, he has memorized them by heart.

NEXTVIC TIMMARIA.

Dongshiro recalled the distance between each scratch, and converted the long distance into a separator, and inserted it between the corresponding letters:

NEXT, VICTIM, MARIA

In order to ensure that the key information can be conveyed, Sakurai Kaoru did not spend much time writing complete sentences, but these three words are concise enough.

Toshiro took out his mobile phone and called Takikawa Aoba.

<<

"Immediately search for all the people named Maria in Karakura Town." Takigawa Aoba sat in the office, wearing a black suit with a dark shirt, making him look even more heroic.

"Okay, Detective Takigawa." The police officer quietly retreated outside the door while answering the order.

Takigawa Aoba watched his subordinate leave expressionlessly, then turned his gaze back to the computer screen.His slender and beautiful fingers tapped nimbly on the keyboard, and he quickly called up Kaoru Sakurai's electronic file.

This Sakurai Kaoru really made him feel a little familiar, even though he had already seen her paper files, but there seemed to be a feeling driving him, telling him that he had better find out who she was.

Kaoru Sakurai graduated with a master's degree in forensic science and has two years of work experience.

Interview records and past job reviews are excellent.

But her records from a decade ago were blank: no information on attending high school, let alone junior high or elementary school.There is no family information either.

For such a person who seemed to appear out of nowhere ten years ago, Dongshiro demanded full authority to deal with her disappearance.

It turns out that she is also from the soul world.

And it should be Captain Hitsugaya's subordinate, so it makes sense for her to get his attention.

Takikawa Aoba closed her eyes, her long eyelashes cast a beautiful shadow on her face.Ten years ago...he was still in charge of the guards of Liuhun Street, so it was impossible for them to have an intersection.

Going back in time...he couldn't remember much.When he was in Maoling, he always had the halo of a young genius, and there were countless girls who tried to get close to him because they liked him and admired him.He never talked to them either, and he didn't even remember what any of them looked like.

Then why does he feel that Kaoru Sakurai is familiar?

"Captain Takikawa, all the information on the person named Maria has been collected." Police officer Yoshinaga held a thick stack of documents and reported to him standing straight at the door.

Takigawa Aoba withdrew his thoughts, hooked his hand at him and signaled him to bring all the materials.

The work efficiency of the police station is quite fast.Thinking so, Takikawa Aoba told Yoshinaga that he could go out.

The victims of the previous cases were all beautiful young women. He checked according to this standard, and quickly screened dozens of files to only three.

Maria Brody, American, 27 years old, single and unmarried.She came to Japan for the purpose of tourism, and the visa period is [-] days. She just arrived in Karaza Town not long ago, and she has already booked a flight to New York in ten days.

Maria Fitzgerald, British, 26 years old, married in Japan two years ago, her husband is Japanese.

Maria Miyano, English-Japanese mixed race, 29 years old, has been living in Japan for more than [-] years, because his father is Japanese, so he followed his father's surname Miyano.I signed a divorce agreement with my husband half a year ago.

Based on the circumstances of the case, the third woman is the most likely target of the suspect.And the suspect is likely to be her divorced husband.

But to be on the safe side, Takigawa Aoba still arranged for his subordinates to find all three of them and lurked around them to check the situation, only focusing on Maria Miyano.

. . .