Three Years Gone, and a Long-Awaited Reunion

"These two over here probably aren't the person Ayumi ran into..."

Seeing the faces beneath their hats, Miwako Sato looked slightly embarrassed.

No matter what, an elderly man past fifty and a middle school student were unlikely to be the people they were looking for...

According to Ayumi, the culprit she encountered should have been a man between twenty-five and thirty-five. His voice didn't match those of the two bystanders they had mistakenly detained, either.

"As for this side..." Miwako Sato looked toward Tooru Amuro, standing on the other side, and smiled apologetically. "I remember—you're Tangze's guardian, Mr. Amuro."

Tooru Amuro had been keeping his head lowered in silence, seemingly lost in thought. Only when she called him again did he reluctantly turn his head and give her a stern look.

"Sorry, sorry. This must have been a coincidence." Rarely seeing the handsome dark-skinned man with such a severe expression, Miwako Sato instinctively began apologizing.

How strange. Mr. Amuro was usually mild-mannered, obviously the sort of popular man well-liked by everyone. Yet when his face tightened and he said nothing, he unexpectedly gave off a powerful sense of pressure, reminding Miwako Sato of those difficult superiors at the Metropolitan Police Department.

Maybe people who were normally easygoing were the hardest to deal with when they got angry...

"...I understand you're doing your job." Lowering the brim of his cap, Tooru Amuro answered somewhat stiffly, "But today, I was secretly carrying out a surveillance assignment for a client. This will be difficult to explain to them."

This was the excuse he had prepared in advance. Though his detective agency was mainly a cover for Tangze's other identity, its primary functions being concealment and handling accounts, the detective identity was genuinely useful, so they did occasionally take ordinary cases.

That was the