"Could it have been that balloon man?"
The policewoman looked at the others,
asking what they thought.
Everyone wore a thoughtful expression.
Come to think of it...
The policewoman had a point...
The more they considered it...
The more plausible it seemed.
First of all, the balloon man really was tall.
To a child who couldn't see clearly, his swaying from side to side...
might have looked like the movements of something enormous.
So what the child had seen was a huge shadow.
That explanation wasn't unreasonable.
And then...
The balloon man had a face.
With simple features.
The child said the shadow had glared at her menacingly...
Maybe the balloon man's face had just happened to be turned toward the child.
The wind might have distorted his features a little.
To the child, that could have looked like a fierce expression.
"Could that be it?"
The policewoman looked at everyone.
"Doesn't it seem likely?"
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that her guess was right.
What the child had seen...
was the balloon man.
"...Mm."
One of the officers nodded.
The policewoman made a lot of sense.
"Good thing you noticed the balloon man outside the shop."
The officer praised the policewoman.
Her powers of observation deserved commendation.
The policewoman smiled smugly.
Hehe.
She really was impressive.
Actually, she was a little surprised herself.
Even in the rush of responding to an emergency, she'd noticed the balloon man as he flashed past...
and connected him to the shadow the child had described...
Mm.
Just as she'd thought.
She was still young.
There wasn't much of a generation gap between her and the child.
"Anna."
The child's mom looked at her. "Was the thing you saw back then