Chapter 377: What to Do When You Encounter Your Boss While Racing

Double Chapter

To Amuro Tooru, seeing a case solved by Vermouth—a card-carrying member of the Organization with a kill count that probably had its own zip code—appear in the office scrapbook was intolerable.

It felt like someone had dropped a small northern cockroach into his coffee. At a glance, you might not notice anything wrong. Color's the same, even blends in. But the essence? Completely unacceptable.

Jiangxia nodded along with Amuro Tooru's reaction, snipped out his own photo from the article, and tossed the rest of the newspaper into the trash—there was already one clipping without a photo, so adding this one would balance out the layout.

Amuro Tooru watched in silence. His employee was... maybe a little narcissistic. But it wasn't a big deal. And seeing the paper linked to Vermouth hit the bottom of the bin? That calmed him down. He exhaled quietly and left with his files.

Once he was gone, Jiangxia pasted the photo in, put away the scissors, glue, and the case collection binder, and found himself jobless once again.

He was just about to call Professor Agasa and pressure him into organizing more field trips for the kids when the bell above the door gave a crisp chime—someone had walked in.

For a moment, Jiangxia thought it might be Amuro Tooru again. Maybe he'd forgotten something. Or maybe he'd returned on purpose to see if Jiangxia had fished the Vermouth article out of the trash and glued it into the case binder after all.

...Jiangxia always felt that his boss was irrationally anxious whenever Vermouth was involved. As if he were worried that Jiangxia wouldn't be able to resist the allure of a charming older sister.

But the moment the door opened and the air shifted, Jiangxia realized it wasn't Amuro Tooru.

It was a woman he didn't recognize.

She was pale and thin, with a soft smile that didn't reach her tired eyes. Her makeup was carefully done, but the corners of her eyes were swollen. Her movements were awkward, like she'd suffered a leg injury—stiff joints and faint imbalance in her step.

Still, Jiangxia's gaze wasn't drawn to her injuries or her smile.

It was the killing intent around her that caught his attention.

It was high-grade.

Clean and faintly herbal, like the fresh scent that rises when you peel certain plants. He couldn't name the plant, but that wasn't important.

What mattered was that it didn't stink.

And it was potent.

After a moment of quiet appreciation, Jiangxia stood and went to pour her some tea.

...

Ten minutes later.

Okaya Noriko had filled out the intake form and quietly slid it back across the desk.

She didn't touch the tea. Instead, she clutched the handbag on her lap tightly and stared at her knees in silence.

Her posture was tense, defensive.

Jiangxia noted it in his peripheral vision but quickly looked away.

In his opinion, this kind of client reaction was pretty normal. Apart from the overly theatrical Hijikata, this was probably the first time a potential culprit had actively come to him.

He thought it was a good sign—meant his reputation had finally been normalized. The potential criminals were now bold enough to approach him as "witnesses" and try to string him along.

But then he looked more closely at the form and realized something didn't add up.

This woman—Okaya Noriko—hadn't come to commission a crime or frame someone.

She was just asking him to find a person.

The name: Kitagawa Tsuyoshi.

The names stirred a memory. Jiangxia slowly recalled the details.

—A few months ago, Okaya Noriko and her fiancé were out driving when a red sports car began tailgating them aggressively in a remote area.

The car honked constantly, riding their bumper.

After Noriko's fiancé pulled over to let it pass, the red sports car began swerving wildly in front of them, taunting them until Noriko's vehicle finally lost control and flipped over.

Her fiancé died at the scene. Noriko herself was seriously injured and hospitalized.

While she was recovering, the investigating officer mentioned that the driver of the red car likely wouldn't be held accountable.

That was when Noriko decided to stay quiet. She withheld the information she had and resolved to take revenge on her own terms.

After leaving the hospital, she used the license plate number she'd memorized to start tracking the driver through the traffic bureau.

That gave her a name—Kitagawa Tsuyoshi.

But no address.

Apparently, Kitagawa had moved recently and hadn't updated his information, so the lead went cold. Noriko tried to search on her own for a while, but got nowhere.

Finally, she decided to take the risk and hire a detective.

And now, here she was.

Maybe realizing that Jiangxia had been looking at the registration form for a little too long, Noriko hesitated, then added quietly, "I just want to know where Mr. Kitagawa is living now… nothing else."

Jiangxia: "…"

Of course.

Looking up someone's address just like that—wasn't that basically saying "I want to go to their house and kill them"?

Jiangxia muttered internally, but after glancing again at the clean, crisp killing intent radiating from Okaya Noriko, he swallowed the snark and nodded sympathetically. "I understand."

On the commission form, her reason was kept simple.

She claimed she'd met Kitagawa Tsuyoshi during a trip in early June, but had been too shy to exchange contact info. After coming home, she couldn't stop thinking about him, so now she wanted to track him down.

"This is him," Okaya Noriko said, reaching into her bag and pulling out a folded sheet of paper. "His portrait... and the license plate number."

Jiangxia looked down at the sketch: triangular eyes, sharp chin, inverted mouth—he twitched.

This didn't look like a "secret crush." It looked like a "vengeful spirit's hit list." There was definitely hatred baked into those pencil strokes.

But since she was a high-value client—and her killing intent smelled like artisanal hand soap—Jiangxia did his best to smile appreciatively. "Wow, very expressive style. Someone like this won't be hard to find. Leave it to me."

Seeing Jiangxia didn't question her motives, Okaya Noriko let out a subtle breath of relief, bowed quickly, and hurried out the door.

The bell jingled, the door shut, and the office returned to silence.

Jiangxia scooped up the paperwork, cleared the tea, rinsed the cup, locked the door, and left the detective agency.

He made his way toward a car rental place to pick out a suitable vehicle.

To most people, killing intent might be something to avoid. But to a spirit medium who raises ghosts?

It was currency.

And in this rich, murder-happy world, collecting it wasn't a burden—it was like an ongoing series of challenge levels in a particularly violent collection game.

He already had some stable sources: Gin and Vermouth provided solid, high-grade killing intent. Amuro Tooru would likely join the lineup eventually. But Jiangxia could only harvest a little of their surface-level intent—he couldn't touch the core without tipping things off.

What he needed was a fresh, full-course set of killing intent. Preferably delivered in one go.

And judging from the vibe, Okaya Noriko's plant-pulp-scented intent was top-tier. But to collect it all, he had to be strategic.

She clearly wanted revenge.

So, Jiangxia considered two options:

Option one—get Okaya Noriko arrested. Let her sit in prison for years until she let go of her rage, or get her a life sentence with no parole. Once she gave up on killing, her intent would fade and drift loose, ripe for harvesting…

Problem: she'd have to actually kill someone first to get arrested. And if she killed someone, the killing intent would be used up in the act. So that idea canceled itself out.

Option two—find Kitagawa Tsuyoshi first.

Given his habit of provoking strangers on the road, odds were good he'd try the same move again.

Jiangxia recalled that Kitagawa was currently living in Tokyo. With that in mind, he picked up the rental car and waited until evening to swing by the police station and offer his belated witness statement.

While waiting on the bench, Jiangxia sent a puppet out to search for Kitagawa's current address. There weren't many Kitagawa Tsuyoshis in Tokyo—just three. With the help of the client's incredibly biased sketch and basic age filtering, the match was easy to confirm.

That night, Jiangxia snuck out, piloting a puppet, and—after quietly siphoning electricity from a nearby house—installed a high-resolution camera outside Kitagawa's home.

Then came the waiting game.

Two or three days passed.

At noon on the third day, just as Jiangxia was napping, the ghosts monitoring the camera nudged him awake.

He sat up, brushing aside the magazine draped over his face, and looked at the monitor.

A red sports car was rolling out of the driveway.

Through the windshield, the camera captured the driver's face: sharp cheekbones, angular jaw, triangular eyes.

Kitagawa Tsuyoshi—the living key to unlocking the full bouquet of fresh, plant-pulp killing intent.

…

A winding mountain road near Tokyo.

Jiangxia maneuvered the freshly rented, freshly waxed car along the narrow curves.

The road was too long and twisty to use his puppet here—it'd burn through too much killing intent to maintain control at this range. And if he was going to be present anyway, he might as well drive himself.

Besides, it gave him a good excuse to break in the rental.

He pressed his fingers to the wheel, narrowed his eyes at the curves ahead, and waited for his opportunity.

*Goal #1: Top 200 fanfics published within the last 31 - 90 days by POWER STONES.

Progress: 55/60(approx) for 10 BONUS CHAPTERS

Goal #2: One BONUS CHAPTER per review for the first 10 REVIEWS.

Progress:3/10*