“Hey! What’re you doing!? Don’t just remove a girl’s glasses without saying anything!”
Noda reached, but was careful not to grasp so she didn’t knock them out of his hands. Her confusion and loss of orientation shot up in her output, which told him this was going to be a problem.
“Just how blind are you?”
“Shut up!”
Eiichi handed back the glasses and Noda quickly replaced them on the bridge of her nose.
“I hate not wearing my glasses...” she muttered.
“Because you can’t see?”
“Yeah...and...because I don’t like how I look without them...”
It wasn’t that she didn’t like how she looked without them, it was that she couldn’t see herself unless a mirror was nearly touching her nose.
“Will you be able to take pictures without them?”
“I’m severely near-sighted, so I should be okay if I’m looking through the lens.”
“Well, I suppose it’s fine if you wear them most of the time. I just hope our school bags don’t make us stand out...” he eyed his, which was slung over his shoulder like a messenger bag, not something he really did.
Noda’s was slung across her chest, the strap sitting right between her breasts, much to his distraction. He had to admit, she was a gorgeous girl without the nerd getup. Sure, she might have come off as kind of cute before, but there was so much going on overtop of that it wasn’t hard to miss the image underneath.
Eiichi lowered his face under the bill of his cap. “But there’s going to be a problem if she gets too close...you may have to lose them at some point...”
Noda pondered this a moment. “I think I can live with that. I’ll just have to cling to your arm, which will make it more convincing.”
This from the girl who got edgy over him helping her over a wall. Him and his damned ideas...
“There’s still a problem,” he stared. “It’s going to look like one weird date if I look like this!” he lifted the sides of his peacoat.
Noda eyed him a moment, and then reached up, removing the cap off his head. She stashed it in her tote bag.
“There, show the world that bright face of yours.”
He grumbled, “Exactly not what I had in mind...”
“Our clothes are different, that’s what matters. Actually...” Noda tapped her chin and gave him a once-over. “You look pretty dashing in that. I never took you to be so fashionable.”
“It’s not really for that, this was my grandfather’s on my mother’s side,” he said, placing his hands in the pockets. “He was a sailor and a fisherman.”
Noda gazed, her eyes sparkling. “Eiichi...that’s really sweet...”
Her output began bubbling up again and he was just waiting for someone to catch them standing around.
“Okay, let’s get going. Two people conversing in a bathroom hall is just strange.”
“Right.”
They made their way back over to the school, hoping they wouldn’t be too late after their conversation. Just as the gates came in view, students were stepping out.
Eiichi noticed how strange this scenario seemed for both of them. In his mind, he thought they looked like two ordinary people coming home from work or on their day off, reminiscing on their high school years together. As odd as it felt, he figured this must be what they were aiming for. He supposed it was true – if you look the part, you feel and act the part.
They found a parked car to stand by that was far enough away. Noda leaned against it while Eiichi stood before her, the two of them looking like they were conversing. Noda had her camera on her hip and at the ready, and occasionally lifted it up to scan the entrance path. When she finally spotted Reiko and her friends, she pointed them out. They had stopped in the courtyard to talk for a short time, but with some coaxing from Reiko, she and a friend split off from the group, leaving the others to talk.
They were headed in Noda and Eiichi’s direction, toward the market area, with other groups of the school behind. To avoid coming too close to any of them, they began walking.
They moved quickly and attempted to blend by finding a shop window to look into. Eiichi used his peripheral vision to look to his right. A few students were on the sidewalk, headed in their direction, Reiko and her friend among them.
“Noda, this would be about that time...”
Without a word, Noda removed her glasses and tucked them into her satchel. Right after, Eiichi felt her arm glide underneath his, and her figure pressing up close. She was trying to hide her face, although he was the more likely one for someone to pick out. Her clinging to him was, of course, because she couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel her nervousness skyrocketing, much to her own surprise.
She was starting to regret her idea. It was a sad affair, that this was likely her first time doing this with a guy, and it was fake, not to mention it was with someone like him. That didn’t seem to bother her though. To her, it was all for the girl in trouble.
He, on the other hand, was managing some difficulties of his own, trying to keep his heart rate down. He’d never done this before either, both the arm-holding thing and the disguise. That perfume she was wearing was intoxicating! Was that really necessary!?
“Tell me if you can see them...” muttered the unfamiliar girl on his arm.
“Shh...They’ll come by any moment. They might be moving fast, so try not to trip. Keep your voice low, unless you want to talk about something unrelated.”
“Fat chance, what’ll we talk about?”
“Anything you want. Just make it convincing. Here they come...”
Reiko’s ashen output passed behind them, next to the excitable output of her friend. They were actually talking a lot for how depressed she was. Her loud friend must have been making attempts to keep her mind on other things. Noda and Eiichi didn’t have to do anything.
When they got far enough away, Eiichi turned his head for a peek.
He gave Noda a little tug with his arm. “Alright, let’s go.”
Her voice quivered. “Okay...”
They started off and began tailing. The pace was slow enough. Eiichi made sure to keep a good enough distance that he could tell roughly how well the two people ahead of them were faring.
Noda’s arm trembled in his and her wide eyes stared fearfully ahead. “If you run me into a pole, I will murder you...”
“I’m right here, that’s not gonna’ happen...” Then he slowed down. “There’s a stop light up ahead.”
“Got it...”
Standing near the two girls as the traffic floated past was a little too troubling, him being the only one Reiko would be able to recognize. He planted Noda and himself at their backs and just hoped something didn’t spook their target and cause her to whip around on them. If anything did happen, they would see him, but Noda at least would be spared.
The crossing light turned on and they were moving again, Noda in full trust of her guide.
The train station was a straight shot through the market area, and it appeared that was where the two girls were headed.
It was much easier for them to blend in with the larger groups of people, but most had been students, so Noda was still worried, only recognizing the blurry colors of the school uniforms, probably fearing someone that knew her was there.
Eiichi made sure to get on the same car as their quarry, and found a place far away from them with as few students as possible.
Noda took out her cell phone and tapped on the screen, then presented it to Eiichi.
‘If anyhoo reconciles us, we serendipity will have to flow like we’re on a relationship!!!’
Auto-correct and bad eyesight aside, he got the message.
He took her phone and tapped on the screen while she stared straight ahead, like a literal blind date.
‘Oh well. If it happens, it happens. We can play it off, and then I’ll break up with you a week later.’
She raised the screen to where it was almos
t touching her nose.
Then he felt her hand grab his finger and pull back on it with ferocity. He had to hold in his whimpers.
“Haha! Oh, you’re so clever,” she faked.
The train stopped in a section of the city with more refined-looking homes, and they followed their quarry out of the station and into another market area.
Shops and cafés soon turned into houses that were double and triple the size of Eiichi’s. The numbers of people around them had gradually decreased and there were no students nearby, so this was when he backed their distance up a good thirty yards and told Noda she could put her glasses back on.
“It’s not going to be hard to lose them, but we need to keep our distance.”
The two Aki Guro students took them down a turn into a well-polished area. The road stretched out a distance and they waited for the girls to get far enough before they continued around the turn. They followed them to another turn down a smaller street, and eventually, to a large, white brick house with a broad driving pad and an electric gate.
The girls entered through a smaller gate next to this, on a pathway that led up to the front door.
Thankfully, there was a vehicle large enough for them to hide behind. A van of all things.
Eiichi muttered, “If we hang around here long enough, someone’s bound to notice how suspicious this looks.”
Noda snatched her camera from her hip.
“Get pictures of the house, the property number, the girl with her, and the family’s name plate, if you can.”
It was only a matter of seconds for her. Eiichi watched from behind while Noda leaned to the right of the van, her camera making a quick procession of electronic clicks and shutter sounds. He kept an eye out, and while Noda’s output had remained focused, he could feel himself getting edgy, just waiting to see someone peeking out a window or stepping outside. The camera noises didn’t help, he felt like they would never end.
“Okay, that’s good...” Noda muttered.
She leaned back behind the van and was about to look over the stills on her screen, but without thinking about what he was doing, Eiichi grabbed her hand and started walking. This caused Noda to nearly drop her camera, but she let it slip into her other hand and placed it on her hip again.
He kept her hand in his, to keep it convincing if anyone saw. Her output started burning up uncontrollably. He imagined her face was probably healthy shade of pink right now, despite her cold fingers.
She spoke to take her mind off it, “I got everything, even a clear image of her friend. She stayed outside to check her phone, which gave me a few good shots.”
“I would put her on a list for questioning. It wouldn’t be a good idea to approach them in their group, so we need to find a way to single each of them out.”
“Yeah, but they’re going to have questions for us.”
“We’ll just have to consider those beforehand and come up with answers, but we can’t hope that they’ll be willing to talk after that. There’s no telling, really.”
If anything, he could flaunt his abilities some and attempt a little manipulation. They both knew things that her friends wouldn’t suspect, and he knew things that not even Noda would suspect.
They were several feet from the street corner. He figured he’d let go of her hand once they were out of sight.
Noda’s output began cooling off, and Eiichi shifted his gaze to some of the finely decorated and designed homes.
“It would be nice if we had a car.”
“Yeah, I don’t suppose you know how to hot-wire one?”
She was smirking at him and he grinned in response. Then she lifted her cam to check the images.
“We still only know so much. All this work, and we only managed to find out where she lives,” Eiichi vented.
Noda spoke while still gazing at the screen. “Her family name is Morita. She lives in an upper-class suburb north of Aki Guro, that’s something.”
Eiichi now had her full name, Reiko Morita. He pondered whether he could create a convincing enough tale to tell Noda that he had heard of her somewhere before. It was so stupid that he couldn’t just tell her some of these things without her getting reasonably suspicious. Things were moving too slowly. They had managed to use up an entire day to get information they hadn’t been able to coax out of her, and other than that, this whole trip had been him watching Noda turn herself into eye candy.
“I would want to start with the girl that was with her.”
“I don’t know. That seems to be a very dedicated friend of hers there. I’d still question her, but she doesn’t seem like the type. She’s just looking out for her.”
In passing, he had picked up that girl’s output and didn’t notice any contradictory malicious or controlling emotions, but this was still not enough for him to come to any reasonable conclusions.
“Don’t believe everything you see, photo girl. If this person is smart, they’ll know to get close to her with her being none the wiser.”
Noda looked up from her camera for a moment. “You’re too paranoid.”
“Do you want to tail her too?”
“No, this has been tiring enough. Let’s go.”
Eiichi sighed. “Alright...”
Eiichi P.I., Vol. 1 Page 27