The Interrogation
“Let’s get down to business. Why exactly have you been moving between different lodgings?”
I picked up my fork and took a bite of a perfectly grilled sausage. The salty juices filled my mouth, and I savored the flavor before answering his question.
“When you go on a trip, you move around to different places to stay. There’s nothing particularly strange about that.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Right... that’s not technically wrong. Then let me change the question. What exactly were you doing inside those lodgings?”
“What does one do in a lodging? Is there anything to do besides rest? Or... are you curious about my private life?”
“I know for a fact you haven’t been staying in those rooms. Every time you come out, you’re out of breath, as if you’ve been somewhere else.”
“I could have been exercising inside.”
“An inspector with a sense of humor, I see. Do you really think someone who has undergone Stellar Adaptation would get winded from simple indoor exercise?”
Thump. Surprisingly, the words spoken by this stalking pervert were actually sound logic.
A regular inspector could make a marathon runner look like a joke, and since I’d been officially certified by Nova as having physical capabilities at Level 4.5, there was no way I’d be exhausted from mere indoor exercise!
“Actually, I don’t have a home. You could say I was looking for a place to live.”
“Then you should have looked for a real estate agent, not a lodging. If you didn’t have a home to begin with, you could have just gone to the laboratory.”
“Are you saying you want to see me go to the lab? Well, that’s a shame.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I was actually abandoned by Dr. Licht. Now, I’m just an ordinary young girl wandering the sectors without a home or a laboratory.”
“Hah, that’s the funniest joke I’ve heard yet.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
Why wasn’t that a compliment? Besides, Carlos’s expression was twisting like a shriveled pumpkin. I had answered his questions with all my heart, so why was he looking at me like that?
It’s truly terrifying, just terrifying.
They say the one who farts is the first to get angry, and that old saying is never wrong. It wasn’t enough for him to secretly follow me around; he started suspecting every little detail of my behavior, and now he’s reached the point of getting angry over trivialities.
What do they call this... right, workplace harassment! I am currently being harassed simply because I don’t meet the standards of this stalking pervert.
Oh my god. I’ve finally reached a truth that should never have been touched.
On such a sad day, I have to comfort myself. Just in time, the bartender began placing the cocktails I’d ordered onto the table one by one.
First, I picked up the most eye-catching green liquid, a Midori Sour, with both hands. I brought the glass to my lips and held the emerald liquid in my mouth, savoring it slowly.
It was sweet, cool, and refreshing. The intense lingering scent of the sausage juices in my mouth vanished in an instant.
I couldn’t hold back anymore. I lifted the glass and gulped it down.
“Who drinks like that?”
I replied after finishing the entire Midori Sour.
“I do.”
After finishing my sentence, I picked up another glass. This one was a Mojito. It was a cocktail quite similar to the Midori Sour in terms of color and taste.
I poured the Mojito down my throat without hesitation. Every sip stimulated my palate with its refreshing, sweet flavor. As I savored the faint taste of alcohol vibrating in my mouth, it wasn’t long before only ice remained in the glass.
“You aren’t planning on using being drunk as an excuse to avoid answering, are you?”
Carlos, who had been watching me intently, started meddling again.
“You said it yourself, Platoon Leader. Do you really think someone who has undergone Stellar Adaptation would get drunk from a few cocktails?”
Heh. Just as Carlos’s words had hit me head-on, he would never be able to refute this!
“It’s not ‘a few’.”
Oh, I guess it is.
“You sure talk a lot. Are you sulking because you’re the only one who can’t eat anything? It can’t be helped. I’ll show some generosity to you, Mr. Stalking Pervert.”
I pushed the remaining cocktails, sausage, steak, and chicken on the table toward Carlos.
“I don’t live by owing favors to my subordinates.”
“Are you not good with alcohol?”
Carlos’s brow furrowed slightly.
Unexpectedly, I got a reaction! Though his expression looked more annoyed than angry.
“This is truly surprising. A 1st Platoon Leader who is so good with a gun can’t even handle a single glass of alcohol.”
I covered my mouth slightly with my hand and gave him a light, mocking smile with my eyes.
Carlos sighed deeply while watching me, and then he picked up the Kahlua Milk closest to him and swallowed it in one go, as if he were drinking beer.
What’s this? He told me not to gulp mine down, but he’s doing the exact same thing.
“So, the Platoon Leader likes milk the most out of everything a woman gives him. I’ll have to make a note of that and tell everyone.”
“Pfft...!”
Hey, my Kahlua Milk...! To drink it so confidently only to spit it right back out—that’s a level of rudeness I’ve never heard of.
“Speak! Properly! For once...!”
I don’t know what that stalking pervert was thinking, but he started getting angry at me again.
“Since you chose to drink the one with milk in it out of all the cocktails, doesn’t that mean you like milk the most?”
“Aren’t you adding unnecessary commentary?”
“Unnecessary commentary? I’m just describing the current situation as objectively as possible.”
“...Let’s move on to the next question.”
Carlos picked up a June Bug with slightly unfocused eyes. This time, instead of gulping it down, he savored it slowly. As a bonus, he started reaching for the chicken, steak, and sausage on the side without hesitation.
If this kept up, all my snacks would disappear, so I reached out without backing down.
“That day when Inspector Nera first encountered the Abyss. Thinking about it again, it’s strange.”
I, who had been gulping down a Peach Crush to wash away the taste of the spicy snacks, tilted my head slightly.
“The Abyss has appeared in the 1st Platoon’s sector several times, but that day’s Abyss was particularly strange. Unlike usual, its intelligence, strength, and even its combat instincts seemed significantly regressed.”
“Maybe it was starving for a few days while wandering around.”
“It’s not something to be thought of so simply. Such a powerful Cadaver also possesses intelligence. And it gets into a crisis in the outside environment? That’s nonsense.”
“So, what does the Platoon Leader think?”
“It’s highly likely that it was a sort of performance from the start. Even if Inspector Nera’s physical abilities are superior to other Enforcers, they aren’t on par with an Abyss. Furthermore, the Inspector’s movements were clumsy at the time. It would have been normal for Inspector Nera to have sustained serious injuries when encountering the Abyss.”
“That’s a truly amazing story.”
It was actually interesting to listen to, given how perfectly he was barking up the wrong tree. If he polished this a bit more, he might even become a successful novelist.
“But didn’t you say you would clear up my suspicions? Now it sounds like you’ve already concluded that I orchestrated everything.”
“Inspector Nera was the one who didn’t answer seriously first. And to be precise, I said I harbored suspicions, not that I would clear them up.”
He really is full of suspicion. Even when I tell him everything without a single lie, he won’t listen. This is why rigid people shouldn’t sit in positions of authority.
“It can’t be helped if that’s what the Platoon Leader thinks. But there’s a flaw in that logic. How would I even control a Cadaver in the first place?”
Objection!
“There is plenty of evidence. The Doctor controls people in a similar way, doesn’t he? Furthermore, the Abyss recently showed similar abilities on a much broader scale.”
What the Doctor did was control, but what I did was talk. My Cadaver friends just followed my persuasion of their own free will. As proof, they were all excited and moved even more energetically. To think he couldn’t grasp the difference between the two incidents—as expected, the 1st Platoon Leader was a man who could have been a successful novelist.
“Above all, didn’t Inspector Nera admit it herself when we first met? That you were ‘different from those dolls.’ The Doctor has the ability to control people, so there’s no way Inspector Nera, who said such things, wouldn’t have any abilities.”
Carlos finally brought up a statement that felt like an ancient relic.
I turned my gaze slightly and looked into the void, recalling the past.
Now that I thought about it, I had said something like that. I just said it to look a bit impressive... no, wait, actually, that wasn’t entirely wrong, was it?
The only dolls in the laboratory were the researchers, and comparing those guys to a beautiful girl like me was truly an insult.