Chapter 48: I bet he's not dead.
Matsuda Jinpei's aura is terrifying; most people would feel suppressed if they got too close to him.
But Morofushi Sora'aki acted as if he hadn't seen anything. He pushed Matsuda Jinpei aside a little, stood up, walked to the pocket of his pants that he had just hung up, and took out two candies.
This time, he had no intention of sharing. He tore one open and popped it into his mouth, the sweetness of the strawberry immediately filling his mouth.
"You recognize me, this face." Morofushi Sora'aki leaned against the bathroom door and said to Matsuda Jinpei, who had casually taken over the sofa.
Just like the standoff before, but this time the two switched places. Looking at Matsuda Jinpei, who was sitting comfortably with his legs crossed, Morofushi Sora'aki added another line to his mental grudge notebook.
Morofushi Sora'aki discovers that his counterpart in the other world is anything but lucky, or rather, his counterpart in the other world doesn't even exist, so there's no question of luck or unlucky. Therefore, to put it another way, it's that his friends and family in the other world are anything but lucky.
His thinking needs to lean towards the purpose of the system in making him do these tasks, so he should first organize the existing information.
After going through it in his mind, Morofushi Sora'aki spoke up, catching Matsuda Jinpei off guard: "Morofushi Hiromitsu's parents have passed away, and the murderer is Tomori Hajime."
Matsuda Jinpei: "...!"
Seeing Matsuda Jinpei's expression, Morofushi Sora'aki nodded to himself, completely ignoring the guy's presence. He picked up the blank notebook for hotel complaints and reports hanging at the door and wrote down the timeline in it.
There are only three worlds that can be used as a reference: his Home World, his Good Friends World, and this Beastified World.
In his Home World, his older brother had four important classmates: one was his childhood friend Furuya Rei, another pair of childhood friends were Matsuda Jinpei and Hagiwara Kenji, and another was Date Wataru, who was their class monitor.
In this respect, the Home World and the Beastified World appear to be the same.
Secondly, in both the Good Friends World and the Beastified World, the murderer of the Morofushi couple is Tomori Hajime, which is the same.
Given the situation of his brother... his good friend Morofushi Hiromitsu, if it weren't for Tomori Hajime turning his attention to him, Morofushi Hiromitsu might not have been able to discover Tomori Hajime.
Morofushi Hiromitsu wasn't the type to talk about his family situation. Since Matsuda Jinpei from the Beastified World knew about this, and even knew the culprit, it meant either he investigated it himself, or it was Tomori Hajime, whom they had captured together.
If the murderer had been caught beforehand, Jinpei-chan wouldn't have been the type to be curious about such things and naturally wouldn't have investigated. Therefore, the answer is the latter; they arrested Tomori Hajime together.
Right now, in the Good Friends World, everyone is still a high school student, and it's because of him that they became friends ahead of time. Without him, Morofushi Hiromitsu and Furuya Rei wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet Matsuda Jinpei and Hagiwara Kenji.
After analyzing just three worlds, Morofushi Sora'aki was already getting a headache. He took his anger out on Matsuda Jinpei, who was standing right in front of him: "Why do you all have the same face?"
Matsuda Jinpei: "...??"
Matsuda Jinpei was a little confused: "Who looks a lot like me?" He shouldn't be someone with a generic face, right?
Morofushi Sora'aki ignored him with puffed-up cheeks, and Matsuda Jinpei wasn't curious about a child's doodle, so they missed the chance to see the truth.
Morofushi Sora'aki organized the timelines of the three worlds and recorded their similarities and differences.
We must not attribute everything to coincidence, but rather consider what the system is trying to achieve.
"...Plot maintenance?"
What is maintenance? Why do we need maintenance?
In the beginning, the system's inexplicable self-introduction flooded Morofushi Sora'aki's mind again.
These worlds are connected to your world in some way.
The collapse of storylines in other worlds will also affect your world.
Morofushi Sora'aki had a flash of inspiration and picked up his phone to search—a major incident had recently occurred in the news: the Ferris wheel explosion, in which the names of the police officers who had died were also listed.
Morofushi Sora'aki ignored that annoying face and began to dissect the news, trying to ascertain the information he needed.
Matsuda Jinpei, who had seemed bored just moments before, came over, glanced at the timeline that Morofushi Sora'aki had recorded, then looked at the information Morofushi Sora'aki had searched on his phone, and smirked: "Hey."
"You just said that you only made me introduce myself because you didn't want me to call you 'Hey, you over there'—" Morofushi Sora'aki said without looking up. "Do you have Alzheimer's so early?"
"...You have a rather annoying mouth," Matsuda Jinpei commented before speaking in his captivatingly deep voice, "The person involved in the news is right in front of you. Are you sure you want to investigate the news without asking them directly?"
"Because I don't like you, I don't want to ask you." Morofushi Sora'aki retorted, his tone unchanged: "When did Hagiwara Kenji die?"
"Four years ago... wait, didn't you say you didn't want to ask me?"
"Why waste time when I can achieve higher efficiency?" Morofushi Sora'aki flipped the news on his desk to four years ago. He wasn't sure he could find what he wanted, but he had to confirm it.
Matsuda Jinpei squinted as he watched Morofushi Sora'aki find news about the bombing incident from four years ago on his phone. Back then, related news was constantly being broadcast on television, so even now, many traces can still be found.
The bombing four years ago not only cost the lives of police officers, but also resulted in the death of a bomber in a car accident during the arrest operation.
Morofushi Sora'aki looked at the photo of the bomber that popped up on his phone, tapped his pen twice, leaving a mark on the text: "I know him."
Matsuda Jinpei's eyes sharpened instantly: "What?"
"I've seen him." Morofushi Sora'aki gave an address, which happened to be in the same block as where the bomber died.
This happened during a mission he had completed in the past. His mission was to defuse a bomb, but he didn't know where the bomb was. At that moment, he bumped into someone and picked up a detonator.
"He wasn't alone at the time; he had an accomplice with him." Morofushi Sora'aki turned his head to look at Matsuda Jinpei's eyes, which were no longer calm, and said, "I can't draw, but I still remember his face."
How about this deal?
"What transaction?"
"I'll trade the face of another bomber for the information you know." Sora'aki gripped his pen tightly, his face still expressionless. "What you just mentioned can all be found online, it's just a bit troublesome."
"I think this deal is very worthwhile."
"But I don't know if you're telling the truth or just making it up to fool me. Besides, we're just traveling together, how can you be sure you're accomplices?" As he said this, Matsuda Jinpei leaned against the wall next to Morofushi Sora'aki. "Alright, deal's done. What do you want to know?"
Noticing the slightly puzzled look in Morofushi Sora'aki's eyes, Matsuda Jinpei instinctively reached for a cigarette in his pocket, only to realize that he had changed clothes and his cigarettes were no longer nearby. After clicking his tongue, Matsuda Jinpei crossed his arms, tilted his head slightly back against the wall, and stopped looking directly into Morofushi Sora'aki's eyes.
"You should look in the mirror, you brat Morofushi." Matsuda Jinpei closed his eyes, but his aura became calmer, completely different from before: "I'm quite familiar with the look in your eyes when you heard about Hagi's death."
They were so familiar with each other that they saw each other every day when they looked in the mirror. Matsuda Jinpei tilted his head slightly and chuckled, "What's your relationship with Hagi? I've never heard him mention you."
"..." Morofushi Sora'aki was silent for two seconds: "A part of the deal?"
"No, it's just my personal curiosity." Matsuda Jinpei replied. "It's fine if you're not satisfied."
Morofushi Sora'aki unconsciously tapped the tip of his pen again, and after Matsuda Jinpei had no idea he would get an answer, he spoke up: "Friends."
"Really?" Matsuda Jinpei took a deep breath. "That guy really has a wide social circle. You two are seven or eight years apart in age? You weren't even a primary school student when he met you, were you?"
Morofushi Sora'aki is 17 years old, Matsuda Jinpei is 26 years old, and Hagiwara Kenji is the same age as him, who died at the age of 22. It is impossible that they met after the age of 22, so it is normal to make such a guess by pushing back.
"If you can't speak, you don't have to." Morofushi Sora'aki chewed up the strawberry-flavored hard candy in his mouth, then threw another one into his mouth, this time it was mint-flavored.
"I'm really sorry about that," Matsuda Jinpei replied lazily.
Morofushi Sora'aki didn't shy away from Matsuda Jinpei, organizing information along the timeline and asking him many questions.
"When you were in police academy, you had four important classmates: Morofushi Hiromitsu, Furuya Rei, Date Wataru, and Hagiwara Kenji?"
"...Where did you get your information from? Yes, that's how it is."
"You two arrested Tomori Hajime together, arrested criminals outside the school, and..." Morofushi Sora'aki recounted the cases his brother had mentioned to him.
"That's right, and then?" Matsuda Jinpei's tone became much lighter as he reminisced about his time at the police academy: "But you missed a few things. There was one time when we were racing, and that guy Hagi wrecked the car. Then we got a good scolding from the foreigners."
"Your police academy life is really rich." Morofushi Sora'aki remarked, then looked at the overlapping timelines he had compiled and was almost certain of his thoughts.
The system wasn't lying to him. [These worlds are connected to his; if the storylines of other worlds break down, his world will also be affected.]
However, his world will also affect these worlds.
—The parallel worlds influence each other. Rather than saying that the system is "maintaining the plot", it's better to expand the sentence to "maintaining the plot to become the future that Morofushi Sora'aki wants."
The system has no concept of good or evil; it acts solely for its own personal desires. The system cannot do this alone, so all of Morofushi Sora'aki's missions are aimed at achieving this.
Based on the current pattern, the normal plot should be that his parents die, Hagiwara Kenji dies at age 22, Matsuda Jinpei dies at age 26, and his brother also has an accident on that rooftop.
The parallel world is gradually deviated from its original path, turning the originally normal "plot" into something abnormal.
Let the more easily affected parallel world be affected first, and then affect the world he lives in.
The system said that his world is very fragile, so it cannot be directly intervened in; it can only be operated through the offset of another world.
The more parallel worlds he alters, the more "reasonable" the existence of his world becomes.
The power of a system lies in its ability to correct errors into correct ones.
Morofushi Sora'aki looked up at Matsuda Jinpei and said, "I'll tell you about a possibility. Would you be willing to try it?"
Matsuda Jinpei gave a lazy hum: "What possibility?"
Morofushi Sora'aki has not forgotten the purpose of the system sending him to this world, so, apart from Matsuda Jinpei's deviation, what about Hagiwara Kenji? So, can he take a gamble?
Moreover, he's always had a question: Is Little Stone really the original system?
"I bet Hagiwara Kenji isn't dead, do you believe me?" Morofushi Sora'aki said.