Tl Note: Correction in the last chapter. Shinichi didn’t say he would be waiting with Nobuhiko. Instead, he told him to wait with Shinji.
Nobuhiko wanted to say something clever, but he instead found himself saying something else.
“…Huh? What about you?”
Nobuhiko asked when he realized that that ‘two’ Shinichi was talking about referred to him and Shinji.
Shinichi showed Nobuhiko the female handbag and portable terminal he had on hand.
“I have to return these. For some reason, the owner isn’t coming to pick it up, and I’m the only one who seems to know who it belongs to, so…”
Shinichi turned around after saying that, and Nobuhiko began to panic.
He felt he had to say something, but he just couldn’t find the words. He looked at Shinichi in a way that a father shouldn’t, and as if rejecting that, Shinichi’s back went further and further away.
That’s why he really had nothing to say when that voice reached him.
“Dad… At times like these, you have to thoroughly crush the enemy,” Shinichi said.
“Huh?” Nobuhiko replied.
“Or else they’ll just come back again. You have to beat them hard enough so that they won’t ever think of attacking again.”
Shinichi spoke those words calmly, without the slightest hint of emotion.
Nobuhiko shivered at that.
After all, those words told exactly just what kind of place Shinichi had been at.
Shinichi was supposedly under the protection of the amaryllis, so Nobuhiko had taken his situation lightly, but it seems it might not have been so simple after all.
“…So that’s the kind of place you had to endure… Sorry.”
His son had to endure an environment so harsh he couldn’t possibly imagine it.
Until now he had only been looking at the parts of his son that hadn’t changed and completely ignored the parts that had.
Now that reality was giving him a wake up call, the shock was so great that his son had left before he could recover.
Well, he was only going to return the stolen items, though.
“…Haaa, why am I so useless?”
Nobuhiko shook his head as he sat on a nearby bench.
Because of him his son had to worry over him and say things he shouldn’t have had to say.
“I should have just thanked him for protecting us.”
Shinichi was already aware that he had gone too far.
That’s why he should have just thanked him.
So why couldn’t he say it right away?
“Uu aa?”
“Shinji, dad is really no good…”
“Aaii!”
The innocent laugh of his baby boy seemed to agree with him, but even then it seemed as if it was encouraging him somehow. Then again perhaps that was simply wishful thinking on his part.
It might have been because there were a lot of people who saw the whole incident unfold, but the crowd of people naturally opened up for the boy.
It would be great if he could calm down with that, but at most he just found it convenient.
It also reminded him of Moses parting the Red Sea, which helped take his dad off his mind.
Of course, the real reason he didn’t want to think too deeply about his dad’s gaze was to protect himself.
Maybe it was because ‘she’ knew that that she went out of her way to talk.
“How rude! My master went out of his way to purge the criminals for them and this is how they repay him!? The gall!”
The head of a small animal peeked out of the bag worn across Shinichi’s body as it laid bare its anger.
Of course, she spoke in the Falandia tongue and made sure that only he could hear it.
“It can’t be helped. This is usually a peaceful country, so there aren’t a lot of people who’ve been exposed to bloodshed.
If I’m not careful I could end up being sued for excessive self-defense. Unfortunately, I completely forgot that I’m in Japan.
I’m really sorry to Rinko-san. I just keep causing trouble for her.”
Before parting, she told Shinichi, “I really shouldn’t, but I’ll make it so that you won’t get in trouble from this.”
From the sound of things, she’s expecting to be questioned regarding the excessive use of force, so she’ll probably have to rely on her authority as a member of the countermeasure department to settle things.
He felt sorry for her, but he also didn’t think that he would be able to take the conversation into an amicable direction if he tried.
If anything he could easily imagine making things worse by saying something unnecessary.
But of course that wasn’t something that a creature from Falandia would understand.
“Haa? They’re calling that excessive?
Excessive is when your opponent is down on the ground and you cut off all of their limbs or are no longer resisting and are begging for their life but you still kill them anyway. Am I right?”
Well, Yeah. In Falandia, that is. Her master wryly smiled.
Falandia had a tolerant definition of self-defense since there was a much higher probability of being attacked there by something.
Unless there was a special reason, a criminal asking for his human rights to be recognized would only be laughed at.
If this same turn of events were to have occurred in Falandia, the crowd would have broken into applause.
It seems that no matter what Shinichi does his values simply inclined more toward Falandia than to Japan.
So much so that he actually found the air in this country he was born in to be uncomfortable.
“That aside, are the Earthlings really so fragile? I know that guy was just a petty thief, but…”
“I’m shocked too, actually. I’d just intended to knock him down a little, but somehow things ended up so serious.”
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