"Well, great detective? Did you find any clues?"
Lorne returned to the dilapidated alley with Liv and her daughter.
"There are too many traces here, and they're all jumbled together. I haven't found anything useful." Klein shook his head.
Seeing the disappointment instantly settle over their faces, he asked, "Did Daisy have anything she often carried or kept close to her body? I can borrow a police dog with an exceptionally keen nose. It can follow someone's scent all the way to them."
"...No." Liv thought carefully, but in the end, she shook her head sorrowfully.
Tears once again spilled uncontrollably from the young Frye-ya's eyes.
Suddenly, as though she had remembered something, her eyes lit up. She hurriedly said, "Yes! There is something! Daisy's vocabulary notebook!"
"Vocabulary notebook?"
"I sent both Frye-ya and Daisy to the free evening school," Liv said hoarsely. "I can keep washing clothes forever. But they... they can't live like this forever."
This mother... is quite admirable. She even understands the importance of knowledge, Lorne reflected.
In this era, the ability to read alone put someone far ahead of countless others. The jobs available to them were entirely different from those open to the illiterate.
"Let me have a look. It should be useful," Klein said.
"The vocabulary notebook... is at home," Frye-ya said quietly.
"We can go back with you. Of course, if you'd prefer, we can wait here," Klein said.
"We trust you gentlemen. Please come with us."
Perhaps she wanted to save time and hurry back to washing the mountains of clothes, or perhaps Lorne and Klein had already shown enough kindness to earn their trust. In the end, Liv chose to take them home.
It was an apartment building that was clearly very run-down. As soon as he entered, Lorne was