Jiang Xia's reason for stopping the "walk in the rain" wasn't that he disapproved of Mouri Ran going out for a stroll with a strange person.
It was because, earlier, when Mouri Ran had barged into a room, she had seen something she shouldn't have—Takahashi Ryoichi's bare back.
Takahashi Ryoichi was not actually as fat as he looked. He did not have an enormous beer belly.
Though Mouri Ran herself had been left dazed by three consecutive bare-back shocks and hadn't noticed that.
But Takahashi Ryoichi had a guilty conscience, and whether that beer belly was real mattered to his murder plan. So at the moment, he was staring intently at Mouri Ran, planning to silence her.
Although Mouri Ran was very skilled in a fight, she was especially timid. Faced with the frightening-looking Bandaged Man, her Combat Power would plummet, and something could easily go wrong.
And if Mouri Ran had agreed to go for a walk just now, Takahashi Ryoichi would definitely have taken the opportunity to attack her. Then Jiang Xia would have had to go out in the pouring rain to save her, which would have been troublesome.
So it was better to snuff out the danger in the bud from the start—if nobody went outside, then the Bandaged Man could squat out in the rain by himself.
At the entrance to the Villa.
Ikeda Chikako had originally wanted to go out for a walk as well, to ease the gloomy mood that came whenever she thought of Atsuko.
But she had barely reached the door when she heard Jiang Xia's string of warnings to Mouri Ran.
"..." Ikeda Chikako recalled the bugs and snakes in the woods. Looking down at her short skirt, she silently gave up on going out and returned to