Goro Fujita: "......"

Oops, it feels completely suppressed in this aspect of the conversation, what to do.

But he had so many questions to ask her, though she didn't seem to be in any hurry to clear his innocence, which made him, anxious and troubled, look like a fool...... However, those questions that are piling up more and more are not good to deal with. It was about keeping the townspeople and civilians safe, as the Shinsengumi had done, and how the reputation of the Shinsengumi's companions was properly preserved, because he would never want to see her looked at with strange or condemning eyes, and he would never believe that she would kill innocent people so casually.

Her swordsmanship is bright, courageous, and without shadows. Hasn't he, who had fought alongside her countless times before, know this best?

...... However, Fujita Goro never imagined that, as a police officer, he would have to persuade the doubter to agree to prove his innocence.

They are now sitting in a hidden corner of a tea house. Unexpectedly, the atmosphere between the two people was a little tense.

This teahouse is a bit more upscale, and even if they enter in Western clothes like the two of them, it doesn't seem very inconsistent. The waitress served them dessert and tea and then retreated silently. This corner happened to be behind a small screen, and the other guests in the teahouse were talking far away, as if they were coming from another world.

Goro Fujita cleared his throat, determined to break the awkward atmosphere by speaking first.

"Yukiba-kun," he said with an unusually serious attitude, "I think it's necessary to hear what you have to say about the Kujo family and the continuous killings at night. ”

And Qingyuan Xueye, who was sitting opposite him, was biting the tip of a string of bamboo sticks on the ball, and when he heard this, he raised his eyebrows slightly and blinked innocently.

Goro Fujita: Ah, I'm so tired. Before the conversation began, I already had a premonition that "today's conversation probably won't be too easy", is it my own delusion?

He stared at her with a bit of a headache, trying to neutralize the bad effect of her nonchalant performance on the atmosphere with his unusually serious attitude.

"If you have too many clues and don't know where to start, I can ask you questions. You just have to answer me. He continued, his face almost as straight as the former school director she remembered.

She couldn't help but smile and sigh.

"Ah~ah, Yijun, it's so serious~" She learned from Okita's iconic half-true and half-false little devil tone, and said with a smile and a long voice.

"It turns out that Yijun really didn't invite me out to catch up on the old days~ Is it just to ask me out just to handle the case~ Is there nothing to tell me except to talk to me about these things, so we can be regarded as reuniting after a long absence~? Ah, I'm so disappointed~"

The tail note and the plausible complaints represented by the series of wavy lines made the natural and serious Xiaoyi immediately take it seriously, revealing a look of embarrassment.

"I—I'm not trying to interrogate you rudely, but in order to apprehend the real murderer, I must get your testimony...... Because the night I was on patrol, that mysterious murderer also appeared on the streets to commit crimes, and you were the only person I found on the streets that night, so it was necessary to ......"

Before he could finish speaking, she interrupted him.

She sat opposite him, although she was wearing a long dress that looked very gorgeous even when she was walking on the road, but she seemed to be unaware of it, holding her head in her left hand and holding the half-eaten dumplings in her right hand, holding one end of the bamboo skewer in her mouth, slightly revealing a few white teeth, casually biting the bamboo skewer, tilting her head and looking at him across a table.

"Eh~" She dragged out the end again, looking lazy. For some reason, this attitude reminded Goro Fujita of her former boss, Soji Okita, the leader of the Ichiban group of the Shinsengumi. In my memory, whenever Okita is about to say something terrible, it is often like this.

Sure enough, the next moment she also threw out a sentence that poked people's lungs.

"So, Yijun came to me, not to give me a lot of cherry cakes, but to see if I was the real murderer, right~"

Goro Fujita: !!

His expression became extremely serious in an instant. He even subconsciously straightened his face, as if he was in a state of imminent battle—he himself was not aware of it—and his left hand unconsciously slid down to his waist and grasped the hilt of the saber there, as if holding the knife would make his mood firmer at the moment.

"Not really. He lowered his voice, looked directly into her bright, bottomless eyes with great seriousness, and said:

"I've come to you to prove your innocence. ”

"I don't believe you're a murderer. It doesn't matter if you're 'Kiyohara Yukiba' or 'Kujo Noriko', if you change your name, you're still you. ”

She tilted her head and bit the bamboo stick, and the relaxed smile that appeared slowly solidified on her face.

“...... Yijun. She called out to him suddenly.

Goro Fujita: ?

"I told you......" Her voice sounded a little fluttery, and it didn't seem real.

"Don't believe me...... I'm just a bad person. ”

Goro Fujita: ???

Looking at his question mark, but only he didn't show a guarded expression because of this, her eyes flickered slightly.

"You came to me today because you found something. She slowly loosened her teeth, put down the string of dumplings, and picked up the steaming teacup on the table instead.

"So, let's hear it. ”

Although it feels as if she has subtly turned from defense to offense and dominated the development of the situation, Fujita Goro did not interrogate her mercilessly as a police officer.

No, it would be better to say that he had come today as a "former friend and companion" to seek her clarification and cooperation, just as he had done countless days before.

He bowed slightly, and didn't say much like "Why are you asking questions now, when you should be answering my questions", but stated in a serious tone:

“...... I found out the records of the Kujo Dyei's former land bonds. The owner recorded on the old land voucher is not the current head of the Kujo family, Tadashi, but a man named 'Kujo Michikiyo'. ”

As he said this, he quietly observed the subtle changes in expression on her face. In this situation of sitting across the table facing each other, without the series of influences brought about by her being too close to him, his calmness and thoughtfulness of thought were among the best.

As soon as he came up, he bluntly said the biggest discovery he had made since the investigation in the past few days, and he also had a tentative mind - because she hadn't hinted at him before, and the Kujo family was worth studying. So what kind of secret did she know that would make such a gesture to him?

Of course, he remembered that she said to him, "I can't explain it all."

The wording of this sentence is inexplicably concerning.

Strictly speaking, there are two ways to interpret this sentence. One is "I don't want to explain all this to you" and the other is "I can't explain it to you because I'm limited in some way, even though I'd love to".

He preferred to believe that the meaning of the sentence was the latter for her. But this added a lot of trouble to him - of course, it was the easiest way to ask her directly, but when that didn't work, the facts he had investigated on his own were all isolated fragments, and he didn't know what method he should take to connect them together and become the truth of the whole fact.

Now he noticed that when he said the name "Kujo Michiyo", she did raise an eyebrow slightly.

...... So, this guy is really an important person, right?

He continued, "I interviewed some of the residents in the Kujo-tei neighborhood and the elderly people on the street at the time...... It was concluded that Kujo Michikiyo was most likely the illegitimate son of the Kujo family—in other words, although it was rude to speculate, I had reason to believe that his father was Tadashi-sama. ”

He raised his eyebrows again when he saw her, an expression he was familiar with, representing "Keep talking, I'm listening."

He felt relieved for some reason, and continued to calmly recount, "The current house of the Kujo Mansion was also purchased and built by him at the earliest. And according to the testimony of some people, Kujo Michikiyo did not look like an ordinary Chinese young master—not because of his illegitimate son or professed status as an adopted son, but because he behaved suspiciously, and as such an identity, he presided over the Kujou family's mansion in Edo, and the type and number of guests who came and went to the mansion every day were quite varied......"

As he pondered the sequence of events he had sorted out on his way here, he said:

"Although the use of words like 'guess' to express something sounds a bit unreliable...... However, I have the evidence and reason to believe that I am making a reasonable assumption. ”

"Kujo Michikiyo, do you want to get the status of officially entering the Kujou family, so you don't hesitate to use a lot of extraordinary means to do things for the Kujou family in Edo?"

His voice fell, and then he saw her across the table still holding her head, and a smile flashed in his eyes. Then she raised the teacup to the corner of her lips, and the soft, ruddy lips that had kissed him were half-hidden behind the rim of the cup, and she silently mouthed a few words at him.

She said: Yijun, you are so smart.

Goro Fujita: "......"

The author has something to say: March 6:

Exhaustion...

Tomorrow's update, please come back at this time~~

Recently, because the outline is a bit self-indulgent, there are too many lines and I feel that the order is confused, and I have to reorganize it.

In addition, whether to join the branch line of the Three Days Moon Sect, I'm also considering.

The national costume knife man feels that I don't have three days and moons in the world! Sure enough, the metaphysics of grain production or something is a lie!!

Therefore, I want to piao him more, will I say?