I, Phantom Thief of Hearts, Pay Up!

"You designed this script. I think I more or less understand it now." Matsuda Jinpei tossed aside the documents in his hand and rubbed his brow. "Simply put, Tōru Adachi used to be a pretty outstanding person. He performed well throughout his student years, became a police officer after police academy training... and then got crushed by the truth of society?"

"That was more or less the idea." Hirotsugu Morofushi, sitting across from him, caught the papers he had tossed over. Looking at the heavily annotated documents, he did not look any more relaxed than Matsuda Jinpei. "Though I still don't understand why he gradually reached the point of killing people over trivial matters, I roughly understand what this script is trying to say."

"Whew. So overall, he was a guy who completely fell into depravity as his circumstances worsened." Matsuda Jinpei patted his forehead with a headache. "In other words, exactly the kind of person I really want to beat up."

Hirotsugu Morofushi, who had long heard why Matsuda Jinpei became a police officer, looked up and could not help shooting his friend a sympathetic glance.

Even setting aside the part of the character setting where he further lowered his moral bottom line after colluding with the organization, he was still the complete opposite of Matsuda Jinpei.

Matsuda Jinpei did not like rules, nor was he especially diligent or hardworking. He always carried a somewhat cynical air.

But when it came to the choices he made, he was never lacking in ambition, and he had never easily yielded to pressure from his surroundings.

If there was anywhere he could be said to match Tōru Adachi's character setting, perhaps his father, Jotaro Matsuda, barely counted.

Originally a boxer with a bright future, steadily climbing upward through life, he suffered a