"Hey."
Kallen called out.
Mr. Pavaro did not move. The two men in black robes turned their eyes toward Kallen.
"Are you rehearsing a show? Or is this some new kind of game?"
Mr. Pavaro suddenly laughed.
"That just shows how little you've seen. This sort of game stopped being anything unusual in pastry shops ages ago."
"Tch, who goes to places like that? They're all older women."
"That's your youth showing again. Age is experience honed over time."
Kallen flicked off some ash, then deliberately leaned his head out to glance at the handcuffs on Pavaro's wrists.
"Debt collectors? Even loan-sharking gangs use handcuffs now?"
One of the black-robed men took out a police badge and held it in front of Kallen.
"We're police officers. We now suspect that you know and have dealings with the suspect."
"Uh..." Kallen immediately dropped his unfinished cigarette on the ground, raised his hands, and ducked his head. "This has nothing to do with me, really, nothing to do with me. I just thought the way you were dressed... Officer, sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to obstruct police business."
Keeping an apologetic smile on his face, Kallen slowly rolled up his window.
The black-robed man did not actually investigate Kallen. He had only wanted to scare him.
After all, clerics from a Whip of Order Squad were not so idle that they needed to investigate every ordinary person who happened to pass by.
The handcuffed Pavaro got into the vehicle, and the van drove away.
Sitting in his car, Kallen slowly let the panic fade from his face.
"Oh, thank you. Good thing you're a smoker."
Did those words mean he had known all along that Kallen was not an ordinary person?
That did not particularly surprise Kallen. Although his unusual method of