The remote streets of 2-chome, Setagaya-ku are more lively than ever. The timing of the bizarre attack at the Family Market supermarket caused an uproar in a nearby residential area, and the calm backwater was stirred up and unsettled.

The witches who lived close to them put on their clothes and opened the windows to look, and some witches got up and went to the door to watch the excitement.

The strange story made the witches nervous, they were stopped outside by the police cordon, and several witches wearing police uniforms and wide-brimmed hats with police badges maintained order at the scene.

They are all the lowest-ranking patrol witches, and the witches with slightly higher positions, such as the chief inspector and the chief inspector, have entered the supermarket blocked by the pale green barrier to investigate.

Strange stories of causing riots are not uncommon, and the witches are only a little worried, and they don't show any fear. Strange stories are handled by the "Strange Tales Prevention and Countermeasures Headquarters", a department under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo Witch Association, which recruits witches with excellent abilities and experience in dealing with strange stories and related incidents.

The profession of the Strange Witch is very special, it is easier to encounter danger than the police, and the pay is higher than that of ordinary white-collar witches. Of course, the income is still a little worse than that of a witch who works in a funeral home.

Forensic witches also earn a lot of money, but they are more difficult to recruit, and almost no witch is willing to do so

Compared to forensic doctors and funeral home staff, strange talk witches seem to be much more normal, and the number of witches who are willing to join the strange talk prevention and countermeasures headquarters is increasing every year.

Shizuru also intends to participate in the recruitment exam of the Strange Tale Prevention Countermeasures Headquarters and become a glorious Strange Tale Witch. The members of this department are also subordinate to the Japanese police, with an independent number, as long as they are admitted to the Japanese national civil service, there is a monthly allowance, as well as a year-end bonus, enjoy statutory holidays, and the department will issue gifts during the New Year's holidays.

The most important point is that the strange talk witch does not need to be on duty, only requires to be on call, obey orders when she needs to patrol and go out on a mission, and there is no time for the strange talk to haunt can be arranged freely.

Around the site of the accident, Ruiji also saw dozens of witches wearing police uniforms and wearing a golden armband on her left arm, with a silver cherry blossom pattern on the armband, and a staff and a gun underneath the pattern, which formed a cross.

The witch wearing the armband is a member of the Strange Tale Prevention and Countermeasures Headquarters, and in order to make it easier to remember, the folk witch has simplified this long string of names into the Strange Tale Club, and the members become members of the Strange Tale Club, which sounds like a club in a high school.

Although there are also strange talk clubs established by students in Japanese witch high schools, which are mainly based on studying and fighting strange stories, they are only a small joke compared to the real strange talk clubs.

At a glance, Ruiji saw Jing Liu, sitting in a makeshift safe area, holding a boxed lunch.

"How are you now?"

She walked through the crowd and trotted to Shizuru's side, repeatedly checking the injury, and found that the bleeding wound on Shizuru's body had healed, and after careful treatment by the Metropolitan Police Department's physician witch, she was now fine.

"I'm fine. Sister...... You have a very strange smell on you. ”

Jingliu narrowed his eyes, put down the half-eaten lunch in his hand, and sniffed around Ruiji's body like an animal, and the breath he exhaled made Ruiji's ears itch.

"It should smell of sweat. I'm ...... from Evs. The housekeeper came all the way, and just played arcade with her in a nearby game hall for a while, probably at that time. ”

"Not true. You have two kinds of smoke on you, and the perfume and fat smell left by more than two witches are not cheap goods sold in street stalls. Also, you drank beer, which is not local to Tokyo. Dinner was an Italian seafood gratin and mushroom soup. ”

"It's a shame that you're not a police dog."

Speechless, Riji must admit that she was right in her judgments. Smell is a subtle clue that is easy to ignore on one's own, but often becomes the key information for someone else's reasoning.

"The senior officials won't take you to Kabukicho to play witches, tell me, where did you go to fool around?"

"Would I believe it if I said that the two guys, the waiter and my wife, were both cannon witches, and I was the only one wandering outside alone, and I rushed to see you after receiving news from the police?"

"Really?"

Shizumi reveals the surprise that an adolescent girl should have.

"I'm your own sister, don't you believe it? Both of them are easily deceived by beauty and will 'abandon' my friend as a friend. Although I am a little angry, it is the characteristic of witches to follow their original desires, and there is nothing to blame. ”

Riki omits his trip to Floting, including meeting with the witch Snowy Owl, getting snowy owl coins, and meeting Omi, a member of the 'Night' custom shop, saying only that the two went to Kabukicho, a shinjuku chome.

Shinjuku's Kabukicho is a legal area, while Floting is an extrajudicial area, and the nature of the two is fundamentally different. Shizuru worries about the big and small things at home, and has to worry about her studies, part-time jobs, and shrine affairs, and Ruiji thinks that she should consciously retreat and let her worry as much as possible.

Flotin's affairs can be concealed, which is conducive to concentrating the risk on himself.

This time she lied calmly, her ears were not red, and Shizuru did not suspect that her words were adulterated. There was no doubt, but not a complete belief either.

"That was to go to a nightclub together?"

"Right...... I'll admit, we went to a nice shop in Ni-chome, had a few sips of wine, enjoyed a cabaret performance, and had a pretty good time. ”

She followed her sister's words and slowly shifted the conversation in another direction.

"Sister."

"In!"

Suddenly, hearing Shizuru shout to herself in a serious tone, Ruiji was frightened and straightened her waist, like a Showa military witch named by her boss.

"It's time for you to find a girlfriend too."

Repeating the old story of Shizuru and persuading in the tone of an elder, this kind of thing has often happened before. Her identity is a younger sister, but she has a sense of immediacy of an elderly mother.

However, is it too early to persuade to find a partner?

"I just want to make money and study now, and finding a partner will only affect how quickly I can draw my staff. You also know the conditions of our family, we have no money and no power, and we can't even afford a house and a car. Now to find a witch to marry, I first have to take out the money to buy a new empty island, and I can't do it for the time being with my financial strength. ”

"That's all for later, and it's not now that you should go to the witch to marry right away."

"After you get married, you have to think about the offspring, and it costs tens of millions of yen to train a witch, and if you want to take the elite route, it will be tens of millions, and it feels like a big head when you think about it."

In the witch world line, fear of marriage and childbearing is also common. Witches with slightly worse economic conditions will postpone the age of marriage as much as possible, after all, the youth period is as long as a hundred years, and it is not uncommon for witches in their teens to marry witches in their early twenties, and everyone is equally young in appearance.

The focus shifts from Shizuryu's injury to the topic of love and marriage, and the two sisters argue endlessly, which is stopped by Yamazaki, the passing inspection minister.

"Two young ladies, stop for a moment. I need to ask Miss Sakuma Shizuru about some things, but I'll talk about family matters until I get back, is that okay? ”

Yamazaki looked tired, like a hard-pressed social animal who hadn't slept well for months.

In fact, the police witch is also a kind of social animal, and the intensity of work is amazing, and it is normal to be tired.

"I'm sorry."

Shizuru casually took a few bites of the lunch box and found that it had become cold and hard.

"Officer Yamazaki, what do you want to ask?"

Yamazaki glanced at Ruiji next to him, with a complicated expression.

"My subordinates found several bodies in the underground warehouse of the supermarket, all witches who had been reported missing, aged between 18 and 20 years old. You work at this supermarket and help get rid of strange stories, do you find anything unusual? ”

The police officer showed them several photos of several missing and dead witches wearing the uniforms of other schools, with no intersection with each other and no common denominator, if it was a witch who did it, it could have been a random homicide.

"Nothing out of the ordinary. The foreman of the supermarket entrusted me to work on the second floor according to the owner's wishes, and the underground warehouse did not belong to the designated place and could not be entered at will, and I had never been there. ”

"Are there any suspicious witches wandering around the neighborhood or in the supermarket?"

"Suspicious witch...... It seems that there is one to see. Dressed in a black hooded jacket and trousers, with a mask and glasses on her face, she wanders around the neighborhood every night, as if looking for a target. I didn't talk to her, but the last time I was carrying something by her, I knocked her down, and I noticed her accent, which is a very standard Tokyo accent. ”

"Please use [Sketch Magic] to draw her appearance, we need this clue very much, thank you."

"Okay."

Shizuru put down the box of discounted bento boxes that tasted like chewing wax and held the fountain pen handed by Inspector Yamazaki. The pen is made of a special magic material, E43 steel, and the blood of a green-skinned shark from the bottom of Bermuda, as well as a small magic circuit that infuses the pen with magic to construct a spell and use sketch magic to allow witnesses to quickly draw a portrait of the suspect based on what they see.

Times have changed, the age of psychological profiling is over, and the combination of magic and technology can solve crimes more efficiently.

The silver pen quickly depicted on the drawing board a well-proportioned witch between the ages of 15-20 and the height of 165-168. She hides her face under a hood and mask, her eyes are pretty blonde, and her hair is gray and white.

The sketch magic drawing is very intuitive, and the effect is close to the photo, saving the police witch a lot of trouble. In the past, this magic had not been invented, and there were no surveillance cameras, so the police could only rely on the police to visit and investigate in the vicinity one by one, which was very inefficient, and the case could easily become an unsolved case.

The witch on the drawing paper is immediately listed as a suspect in the witch's death case, and Shizuru is asked for some details of the exorcism work, and the head of Inspector Yamazaki is reluctant to let her go.

"Leave me a contact information first, and when I find the suspect, I will ask you to come to the police station to identify him. Do you need me to drive you back? It's late at night and it may not be safe outside. Miss Shizuru, my magic hasn't recovered yet, so it's not suitable for overdrawing my magic again. ”

Shizuryu, who has never liked to trouble others, accepted the police's proposal this time, first wrote his contact information on a post-it note, and then got into the car of the inspection minister.

It is a combination car that can fly by land, sea and air, high-end cargo, and you don't have to worry about traffic jams on land, and it only takes about 10 minutes to fly from Setagaya to Shinjuku City, which is fast and stable.

Shizuru leans on Riji's shoulder and closes her eyes to recuperate, accidentally falling asleep on the way. The car door opened, and Reki picked them up and thanked the inspector for taking them home.

"Miss Officer, hard work."

"It doesn't matter. The last time Miss Shizuru went to the house in Okubo to exorcise evil spirits, Ms. Yamazaki was my older sister. I didn't go home because of work, and I met Ms. Shizuru for the first time. My sister is an ordinary person who doesn't know magic, and my magic power is also very average, so I have to find a professional to deal with these things. Miss Shizuru is very good at her work, and I appreciate her. ”

Then, Inspector Yamazaki looked down at his watch and saw that it was almost 11 o'clock.

"I still have some crime scene to do, so I'll be out of company first, and I'll see you later."

"Goodbye."

Riji magically closes the door to the shrine and carries Shizuru back to her room.

The classic princess hug was originally an action that tested the strength of the arm, the muscle density and strength strength of the witch and the body of the previous life are not the same, a witch with a magic power of 1000 can carry the car with her bare hands.

The girl's body is light and soft, like a thin feather that will fly away when the wind blows.

The door key is in Shizuliu's backpack, and Ruiji has no choice but to use [Finding Magic] to make the backpack open automatically, lock the item [Key], and write the words that represent it into the technique.

Normally, when she doesn't have a lot of money, Rydge will use this magic to find what she wants in a pile of things. This also avoids the need to find an item in the pile of clutter and get caught in a whirlpool of distraction.

Finally, use the movement magic to insert the key into the lock hole to open the door.

The convenience of magic is revealed, and Richy enjoys it.

"It's finally here."

Leaving the water city full of drunken gold and returning to the quaint and old shrine, Ruiji is once again surrounded by a sense of security. A black cat came out of the corner and rubbed at her feet.

"Welcome back......"

Mikazuki's expression was lazy, because she didn't have enough magic to stay human, and she turned into the decadent-looking cat again.

"Your sister's assigned chores have been done. So, when is the meal served? ”

After eating the food made by Shizuru in the morning, Mirizuki never forgot it.

"Jingliu is injured, and now people are very tired, how about some instant noodles if you want to eat? I still have it in my room, you can pick it. But - only two cups. ”

Reki put her sleeping sister on the bed, took off her shoes and socks and robes for her, and hung the witch hat on the coat rack. The quilt is folded into a square and placed next to the couch, so you can use it as long as you shake it off.

"Just kidding. I just want mana now, when are you going to make it up for me? ”

Mikazuki licked his paws.

"Right now, wait until I've set up the Static Stream."

The last step was to cover the quilt, and a small accident occurred in the process. In his sleep, Jingliu suddenly hugged Ruiji next to him, like an infinitely powerful Amazon forest snake, getting tighter and tighter.

"Don't leave my ......"

At the suggestion of a reader in Japan, I heard that the total cost of changing the "Strange Talk Prevention and Countermeasures Headquarters" is more flavorful. But the title doesn't seem to be changed, which is a bit subtle.

(End of chapter)