Meanwhile, in the Phantom Thief Troupe's operations room, the three revived members sat in front of the computer, each holding a cup of coffee, silently listening to Tangze's clear voice coming through the speaker.
"Hagi, why are you making that face?"
Matsuda Jinpei, deeply moved by what he had heard, turned to share his thoughts on Tangze's speech with them, only to find Kenji Hagiwara staring blankly at the screenless computer in utter shock, the coffee he had raised to his lips forgotten.
Habitually turning toward Matsuda after being called, Kenji Hagiwara finally came back to himself. He quickly took a sip of the warm, bitter coffee, opened his mouth, but could not organize suitable words.
It was clear that Tangze's words had profoundly shaken this friend who had only recently joined the Phantom Thief Troupe.
"Because Hagiwara's impression of Tangze was rather complicated before this, right?" Hirotsugu Morofushi thought about it and said uncertainly, "After all, the timing of his appearance was rather awkward. The first thing Hagiwara saw was, well, this side of Tangze."
To Tangze, these police officers, who had been complete strangers before their revival and were merely Furuya Rei's friends, were different from the people he had personally chosen and invited into the Phantom Thief Troupe.
And for Kenji Hagiwara, the first Tangze he encountered was calculating, seasoned, ruthless, and always tying himself and the Phantom Thief Troupe together as though they rose and fell as one. Even with a detective's instincts, it took time for him to lower his guard and calmly accept that such a strange child had done so much thankless work for Furuya Rei and them purely out of goodwill.
Then, while he was still observing Tangze, hearing him deliver such an assessment had greatly impacted Kenji Hagiwara, who had not