Fang Zheng set down his coffee and looked at Aoko Nakamori across from him.
They obviously couldn't have this conversation inside the Metropolitan Police Department, so Fang Zheng had brought Aoko Nakamori to a café near the department. There, Aoko Nakamori explained why she had come.
Simply put... Inspector Nakamori had shut himself away.
The reason was simple. Fang Zheng had provoked Inspector Nakamori into declaring that he would resign if he failed to catch Phantom Thief Kid this time. But Kid never showed up at all, leaving him deeply puzzled. His subordinates, however, had breathed a sigh of relief. They felt it was good that Phantom Thief Kid had not come; that meant the bet didn't count, and Inspector Nakamori wouldn't have to resign. Maybe Phantom Thief Kid had deliberately chosen not to come.
Of course, Inspector Nakamori's subordinates had said this while chatting in private. Inspector Nakamori happened to overhear them, and immediately shut himself away.
I'm a police officer, yet I need a thief's pity to keep my job?
What kind of goddamn police officer does that make me?!
So Inspector Nakamori had stayed home these past two days, shutting himself away. Aoko Nakamori couldn't stand seeing him like that, so she went to ask her father about it. Naturally, Inspector Nakamori would never tell his daughter something so humiliating, so he stubbornly refused to say anything. But Aoko Nakamori still found a way to learn the whole story from her father's subordinates—it hadn't been difficult. The scene where Fang Zheng had ripped into Inspector Nakamori had long since spread throughout the Metropolitan Police Department. From top to bottom, everyone knew about it.
Yet not one person had stepped forward to defend Inspector Nakamori. That alone showed that his behavior had long since made him unpopular within