Mr. Mirai

The sound of Ichijō Mirai descending the stairs was silent, and Ishida Eiko was almost at the other end of the dessert store, so she didn't notice him, she pondered for a moment, "Talking about building a new amusement park, it's been a long time, and finally it's finished?"

"I remember that after the roller coaster accident where a kid fell off, there was already talk of closing the business and building a new one. I was still young at the time. Oh, you were just starting to remember things then, right? You probably don't remember the details."

Normal children don't usually remember much about things that don't concern them, but Suzuki Sonoko remembers, "I was really young, but I remember some of it."

Because the amusement park is not completely unrelated to her.

"Because I was the one who found the body."

She recalled for a few seconds, then stopped thinking rationally and explained briefly: "That haunted house is a replica of Snowstorm Manor. A friend of mine was very interested and wanted to go see it, so I went there to prepare for the scare, ahem, so I went there to check out the locations in advance to see where it was the scariest and least scary."

"Halfway through the remodeling, I suddenly heard gunshots," Suzuki Sonoko poked the cake in the glass case with her eyes, "and then I found a body on the first floor on the balcony..."

A child's nightmare.

Ishida Eiko was surprised: "You found a body?"

She looked Suzuki Sonoko, who was obviously a high school student, up and down, estimated how old the lively high school student was when she found the body, and unconsciously softened her tone of voice, "Are you okay now? Don't think too much."

And then, "Don't go to haunted houses and other scary places, it's..."

It's bad luck.

Halfway through the conversation, Ishida Eiko changed her mind and said, "Oh, if a body is considered unlucky, then a haunted house is not as unlucky as a dessert shop. A haunted house with only one corpse is not that bad."

The dessert store has witnessed two car accidents, not in the dessert store but in the neighborhood, but the dessert store has a murderer that the haunted house doesn't have.

The word 'bad luck', which had a hint of a secret grudge, changed the flavor of the word.

"Ah-ha-ha," She laughed dryly, and said, "It's scary."

'Scary places are scary', that's a load of crap.

Ishida Eiko quickly changed the subject again, "It's better not to go to an amusement park on a date."

Suzuki Sonoko nodded in agreement, "That's what I said at first, and tried to remember telling her how scary it was to find a body in a haunted house."

"And afterwards, the police said that since we heard the gunshots and found the body, the closest we got to the murderer was only about ten meters away, just passing by."

"It's scary, isn't it?"

It's horrible.

It's scary to find a corpse, but it's even scarier to realize that you've passed by the murderer without realizing it, and that you're going to turn into a corpse if something happens to you.

Suzuki Sonoko was terrified.

But, "When I was talking about passing by and being scared,"

She cleared her throat. "Then I saw the young Mr. Mirai in your store."

"He smiled at me, and I..."

Instantly, I wasn't scared.

Thinking about the 'haunted hoouse corpse' now, Suzuki Sonoko could only clearly recall the moment she saw Ichijō Mirai when she came to the conclusion of 'I passed the murderer', and instantly froze in her tracks.

That was the benefit of beauty, and pretending not to feel the warmth rising in her face, she stammered in her own inexplicably stilted voice, and inquired in a not-so-subtle manner, "Is that Mr. Mirai a relative of yours?"

"Is he mixed race? I don't think he looks like a Tokyo native. At first I thought he was Italian. He is very charming when he smiles, and his eyebrows and eyes are very deep!"

And, "He just came back from abroad, didn't he?" 

"His Japanese pronunciation and diction is so good, it's like he's speaking French."

Anyway, he's definitely not a Tokyo native who's been living in the neighborhood all his life, but has just recently moved here.

Otherwise, Suzuki Sonoko would have noticed.

Ishida Eiko: "..."

She's a little hesitant to say anything.

Suzuki Sonoko said that when she found the body when she was a child, she was a little bit sympathetic 'it's bad luck to find a body', but now she's even more sympathetic 'it's bad luck to be interested in someone you shouldn't be interested in'.

"Not from France, but from the United States." It was not normal to keep silent, so she could only say vaguely, "He came back recently."

She also asked, "You know his name is 'Mirai'?"

Suzuki Sonoko: "I have heard you call him by his name."

"I'm not the only one who knows it, I think a lot of people know it, right?" She acted like a detective when she reasoned, "Yesterday, I was talking about Mr. Mirai when my friend and I went to eat at a ramen restaurant, and even the waiter at the ramen restaurant knew about it!"

Ishida Eiko nodded, "Even the ramen shop... huh?"

Even the waitresses at the ramen shop know about Ichijō Mirai, huh?

"Huh," Suzuki Sonoko was a bit surprised by Ishida Eiko's surprised attitude, "Don't you know that Mr. Mirai is very visible?"

"Lately, even at my school, many of my classmates have been recommending the dessert store to each other, saying that the desserts are superb," she said politely, "It's only natural that the stores in the neighborhood know about it, isn't it?"

She thought for a moment, and then added, "The waiter at the ramen shop was also very handsome, and I think he was from overseas, too. He had blonde hair, but his accent was completely Tokyo."

"He was in charge of ordering for us, and when he heard us talking about Mr. Mirai, he confirmed it, saying that he didn't think not only the waitresses were talking about Mr. Mirai, but also the customers."

No, not just the students at school, but also the waitresses at the neighborhood store?!

Ishida Eiko: "..."

She urgently recalled how many times Ichijō Mirai had appeared at the store recently: not many, just a few moments to help out at the diner, and the total time spent at the store throughout the day added up to about an hour.

…How did this attract so much attention!

She laughed dryly, "Mirai doesn't show up much either."

"Rarely," Suzuki Sonoko corrected scrupulously, a little surprised, "That's what the mister waiter said, that it was a pity he hadn't met the handsome Mr. Mirai who appeared so infrequently in person."

"And..."

She looked at Ishida Eiko and lowered her voice. She felt the gaze urging her and said sheepishly, "Didn't there happen to be two car accidents in this area recently?"

"It's great that there are still people willing to live here at a time like this. I was worried that the number of customers would drop significantly recently. It seems that people don't care too much about some strange car accidents. It's great."

"Then I said that Mr. Mirai was a foreigner who had recently returned from abroad, so he probably wasn't too concerned."

Ishida Eiko didn't know if foreigners cared about the two recent car accidents, but she knew that Ichijō Mirai definitely didn't care.

It's a dangerous subject.

"Mirai doesn't pay much attention to that," Ishida Eiko changed the subject stiffly, "How about this one? It's good with bitter coffee, and it has crunchy beads inside, so it tastes great."

She spotted Ichijō Mirai, "Huh, Mirai?"