If someone else had said that, Officer Sato might have flown into a rage on the spot.
But now, the speaker was very likely Matsuda Jinpei's family... Compared to someone like that, she really was just a colleague who had worked with Matsuda Jinpei for seven days.
Sato Miwako lowered her head in frustration.
However, the curly-haired man in black had more to say. "So there's no need to resign—police officers are people too. They get angry, they feel killing intent; that's all perfectly normal. It's not just you. When anyone is enraged, thoughts like 'I'll kill him' will arise. That's a natural instinct of living creatures.
"What you need to do isn't deny this murderous version of yourself, but control your actions and not do the things you shouldn't."
Sato Miwako looked up in surprise. She clearly hadn't said anything, yet this younger version of Matsuda seemed to have seen through every thought in her mind.
...But there was no denying that those words were like an invisible hand, lifting the heavy burden from her heart.
After sitting there in a daze for quite a while, Sato Miwako suddenly smiled in relief.
She took a huge bite of her ice cream and said indistinctly, "You're rather like a friend of mine—the great detective named Jiang Xia. You must have heard of him."
The curly-haired man said, "...I've heard a little about him."
Once Officer Sato relaxed, she felt that the way she had agonized over those questions was a bit melodramatic. She wanted to move past the subject, and she happened to have plenty to say about Jiang Xia, so the female police officer immediately became much chattier.
"Jiang Xia's deductive ability is simply incredible. He's like a machine with an absurdly fast processing speed—as long as you gather