After a long internal struggle, the supervisor finally took a quiet deep breath, kept up his cheerful expression, and pretended he had not thought too much about it.
Of course, beneath the surface, his mood was the complete opposite of what he showed.
"I need to transfer out of here as soon as possible." Looking at the reflection of his capable subordinate on the screen, he sighed soundlessly. "Or find an excuse to transfer him away. But nothing can be abrupt—it has to happen naturally. I absolutely can't let him discover that I noticed anything..."
While a logistics staff member urgently brainstormed.
Elsewhere.
Calvados lay on the bed in his new room, staring at the brand-new, spotless ceiling. Only then did he realize: "That method feels awfully familiar. It's exactly like that swarm of moths on the haunted house window yesterday. Fine, this place has a high crime rate, but why do criminals always use the same tricks? It's like...
Like students taught from the same textbook.
As the thought crossed his mind, his heart suddenly skipped a beat. He remembered a rumor he had heard now and then but never taken seriously.
"Could it be like the rumors say? Some cases aren't accidents at all—someone is pulling strings behind the scenes?"
Calvados frowned and tried to put himself in the shoes of the mastermind, analyzing how those two cases could have been planned—and how they could have happened to cross his path.
But no matter how he thought it through, he could not find any clear line of reasoning. Last night's case had begun four years ago, while today's case, though more recent, had been a sudden incident caused by someone quitting crime. No matter how he looked at it, neither was the sort of case that could