Takamori Masumi instinctively refuted Torimaru Naoko's words before she had the chance to think them over properly.
Once she had thought it through, she refuted them even more forcefully.
"Impossible! Stop trying to clear your name. Even I, the unlucky victim, can't be bothered to keep pursuing this. Why are you using such a terrifying way to whitewash yourself?"
Takamori Masumi could not accept that something so horrifying existed in the world. "Besides, haven't you read Jiang Xia's Case Solving Collection? He's so amazing—he successfully exposed even you, the real mastermind behind it all. If there had been someone else pulling the strings behind our case, he definitely would have found them too!"
Torimaru Naoko pressed her lips tightly together, unable to suppress the tremor in her heart. "But what if such a person really exists? Someone even Jiang Xia can't uncover and convict."
"..."
Takamori Masumi fell silent, her expression exceptionally ugly.
But after a moment of careful thought, she suddenly relaxed.
"So what if there is? If even a Detective as amazing as Jiang Xia can't find him, what are the two of us struggling for?"
Takamori Masumi felt the problem was huge, but once a problem became huge enough, it somehow stopped seeming so huge, because worrying would not help.
"Let's just pretend there's no such person and quietly live our own lives. What else can we do? Are you going to find him and demand to know why he wanted to hurt you?
"I'm not even upset about it, so what do you have to be upset about? Even if there really is such a person, someone like you who manipulated me into killing being manipulated by someone else can only be called getting what you deserved. By that logic, he even avenged me. He's my