012. Thirty years old, with no car, no house, and no savings on the road.

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When an unfamiliar voice called her name, Naruko Shirakane unconsciously slowed her pace.

Following the sound, she spotted a man in a suit standing beside a cherry tree.

He was not weathered, but neither could he be called particularly young—perhaps somewhere in his twenties. Tall and straight-backed, dressed with practical neatness, he had a face rendered numb and unfeeling by the ravages of work and social obligations. His cold, wary gaze surveyed his surroundings like that of a detached observer. His expression was languid and weary, touched with a hint of reluctance, as though he had only come because someone had asked him to.

Naruko noticed his posture, as well as the calluses and scars on his palms. She also noticed the antique bicycle beneath the cherry tree, dripping with the ostentatious symbolism of office politics, and guessed that he was most likely an operative from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

Taking into account her parents’ work at the intelligence bureau, as well as her uncle, who had recently begun to irritate her somewhat...

I see. Since he is a relatively young colleague, they asked him to stop me from continuing my detective work?

Naruko analyzed the situation and began considering her countermeasures.

As she studied the TMPD operative, she keenly picked out several details.

His suit had been cleaned so many times that its color had begun to fade unevenly. His leather shoes had been worn for years, and their creases could no longer be concealed even with polish.

Clearly, he did not have a girlfriend.

And the fact that, after finishing his work at the TMPD, he still had to accept an additional assignment from a colleague...

That proved he was desperately short of money.

Indeed, his financial situation could only be described as dire.

He did not possess an especially strong sense of pride, responsibility, or justice as a police officer... Saying that he had no sense of justice would be too categorical, but at the very least, he lacked the resolve to go through fire and water for the sake of upholding the law.

Clearly, he valued his own survival more highly than his identity as a police officer.

In other words...

I can make use of this. I can turn him to my side—or, more accurately, win him over.

...

“Nice to meet you, Miss Shirakane... My name is Toru Anritsu.”

The corporate drone approached, carrying an almost tangible wave of exhaustion that swept over the radiant young high school student.

Under the oppressive presence of such an elite wage slave, Naruko involuntarily took a step backward, and all the calculations she had just made were thrown into disarray.

“Hello...” Naruko still maintained her composure on the surface, but the way her voice grew lighter and slower betrayed her inner turmoil.

Toru Anritsu regarded the high school student who, unaware of her own limitations, was attempting to challenge major criminal cases as an amateur detective. Then he got straight to the point.

“I’m Captain Todo’s subordinate. I heard that you’ve been investigating cases the TMPD has temporarily set aside, so Captain Todo asked me to persuade you to stop. This sort of thing is dangerous. Consider it a favor to the adults and give up this game of playing detective.”

Although Naruko was unquestionably a prominent figure at school, her exceptional grades and outstanding looks allowed her to seize the initiative with ease in any situation.

But there was ultimately an unbridgeable gulf between a high school student and an office worker.

Anritsu merely adopted the ordinary tone of a senior speaking to a junior, yet Naruko still felt a considerable pressure.

Still, if it had been that easy to make Naruko obediently fall in line, Ryotaro Todo would never have been troubled enough to neglect his own work, let alone ask Anritsu for help.

The silver-gray-haired girl wavered for only a moment before collecting herself. Then she strode toward Anritsu with an aura no less imposing than that of a seasoned business executive.

The two approached each other like Western gunslingers facing off beneath the setting sun.

The weapons in their hands, however, could not have been more different.

Naruko pulled a bulging wallet from the pocket of her school uniform jacket.

Anritsu had nothing in his hands but the empty promise Todo had made on behalf of Naruko’s parents.

“Mr. Anritsu, Ryotaro must have asked you to help in my parents’ name, correct?” Naruko forced herself to remain calm. After all, she was posturing before a genuine special police officer; the slightest slip could lead to the worst possible outcome.

Anritsu was fundamentally different from Todo and from her parents.

Family members could not bring themselves to subject their younger relatives to merciless sarcasm and criticism.

But Anritsu was a stranger. That meant he could very well address Naruko in a strictly professional tone and give her the sort of harsh lecture a police officer was entitled to deliver.

No matter how gifted Naruko might be, she was still only a high school student.

Her decision to become a detective and investigate cases the TMPD had abandoned had been driven entirely by her admiration for police work, as well as the sense of justice instilled in her by growing up in a family of police officers.

In other words, her idols were the operatives of the TMPD—the representatives of this nation’s public security apparatus.

If she were ruthlessly scolded by a special police officer...

Naruko felt that she might not have the courage to continue pursuing her ideals.

She had to find a way to convince him here and now...

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Naruko’s hand trembled slightly around the wallet. She knew that what she was about to do could very well be judged as bribery.

But it no longer mattered. The man before her was someone willing to set aside justice, integrity, and even dignity to a certain extent for the sake of survival and entertainment.

Otherwise, he would never have come all the way here just to haggle with a high school student over money.

At such close range, Naruko could clearly see through Anritsu’s eyes into the silent, parched depths of his heart, like a dried-up well.

Anritsu also noticed Naruko’s expression and movements.

He was slightly surprised by the girl’s audacity, but he found it amusing. Thus, he showed her a measure of patience and answered her question candidly.

“What you said is correct.”

“But the payment for working overtime can’t simply be a meal, can it?”

“Of course not... You know, the income of an ordinary police officer isn’t particularly high. My rank and salary are higher than those of a regular officer, but even so, keeping up with Tokyo’s cost of living is somewhat difficult.”

“In other words...” Naruko stared tensely into Anritsu’s eyes. “If I pay you the same amount they would, would you abandon this assignment?”

Hearing the answer he had expected, Anritsu could not help laughing.

“Then you’ll have to offer me a price I can’t resist.”

“I’ll give you every bit of pocket money I’ve saved since elementary school.”

“Er... pocket money?” Since Naruko was something of a young heiress, Anritsu did not dare underestimate those words.

Naruko opened her wallet. Inside was a thick bundle of ten-thousand-yen notes, along with a bank card.

She hesitated for a moment, then prepared to hand everything over to Anritsu.

Unexpectedly, he reached out and pushed the wallet back toward her.

Only then did Naruko belatedly realize that...

They were standing at the school gates.

Given how conspicuous Naruko was, they had already attracted the attention of a great many students.

“Let’s discuss this somewhere else.”

“How about my detective agency?”

“Don’t tell me it’s a clubroom.”

“It’s an apartment I rented outside school with my pocket money and then renovated!”

...

Half an hour later.

The Starlight Detective Agency.

Seated on a luxurious sofa, Anritsu surveyed the independent apartment rented by a high school student a full nine years younger than himself.

Naturally, it had been remodeled in the Victorian style. All one needed was a detective’s outfit and a pipe, and one could cross one’s legs behind the desk and pretend to be Sherlock Holmes.

It was dusk, and everything inside the agency was bathed in a crimson glow.

The exquisite lamps shaped like imitation candleholders, the redwood desks and chairs adorned with relief work and painted designs, the wool carpet covered in elaborate and ornate patterns...

Every inch of the space exuded the coppery stench of money.

Deep shadows cast by the setting sun washed across Anritsu’s profile, lending extra severity to a face that seemed perpetually languid and exhausted.

Naruko waited nervously and cautiously for the special police officer’s reply—a man who had somewhat damaged the rose-colored filter through which she had viewed her childhood heroes.

Then, unable to bear the silence, she began speculating about what Anritsu was thinking.

...

In truth, Anritsu was not engaged in any profound deliberation or weighing of options.

His silence merely served to preserve his dignity as an adult.

Privately, he marveled at how lucky he had been that day.

Arriving late, delaying his assignment, skipping patrol—each of these errors alone would normally have been enough to force him to write a self-criticism until dawn. Yet today, all of them had happened at once...

Not only had his salary not been docked, he had somehow avoided being held accountable altogether.

What was more, through Todo, Anritsu had even managed to establish an indirect connection with the Shirakane family.

If the Hiiragi family represented the old guard within the S.T.F.—a family of onmyoji steeped in tradition—

then the Shirakanes, who wielded enormous influence in the field of security infrastructure and equipment, represented the rising powers of the S.T.F.

He never would have imagined that the dream he had once entertained two years ago in the agent dormitories of the Kyushu Branch...

would actually come true in Tokyo two years later.

Naruko Shirakane might not be a loli.

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But she was unquestionably rich.

Anritsu counted the bundle of ten-thousand-yen notes Naruko had given him.

Three hundred thousand yen in total—but this was merely the cash she kept on hand for everyday expenses.

The bank card placed on top of the bills represented savings of nearly four million yen...

And that was simply the leftover change Naruko had after setting up this detective agency.

What Naruko wanted was not merely for Anritsu to abandon Todo’s assignment.

She had promised that, from then on, she would hand over most of her monthly allowance to Anritsu as payment, hiring this bona fide TMPD special police officer to serve as a consultant at her detective agency.

Anritsu, who had complained to his colleagues more than once that “capitalism is truly evil,” had now been thoroughly defeated by the financial offensive of a capitalist heiress.

He still remembered himself three years earlier, fresh out of university: a passionate young man who could stand tall before a podium, raise his fist, and shout slogans such as, “Ignore power! Ignore the sugar-coated bullets! Stay true to your convictions and uphold justice!”

Three years after graduation, Anritsu had become a dispirited corporate drone slumped in an office chair, counting down the days until payday.

He had even been swiftly routed by a high school girl’s monetary offensive...

It was truly pathetic.

But considering that Anritsu was twenty-five, and would turn twenty-six in another two weeks, the transformation in his outlook was actually understandable.

Once a man passed the age of twenty-five, ordinary rounding meant he was already on his way to thirty.

As he walked the road toward thirty, Anritsu had no car, no house, no savings, and no girlfriend.

His parents, living far away in the countryside, urged him to get married every few days.

At the very least, they wanted updates on his romantic life.

Whenever his phone lit up with a familiar number, Anritsu would answer in deep misery, then use every possible scheme and evasive tactic to brush aside the subjects of marriage and children.

During his first year at the Kyushu Branch, Anritsu had encountered many opportunities that could have helped him “advance.”

But at the time, his sense of justice had not yet withered. Clinging to the belief that “as long as I work passionately, apply myself, and show up diligently, I’ll surely be valued,” he turned down invitations to all kinds of banquets. Every day, he was either working overtime or on his way to work overtime.

Even when he was not working overtime, he was engaged in grueling physical training, honing his combat skills, or studying cognitive science.

Unfortunately, reality dealt him a crushing blow.

Even after working a full sixty hours of overtime in a single month, Anritsu’s salary did not change in the slightest. To make matters worse, when his one-year internship ended, he had nearly been transferred from the intelligence bureau to the transportation ministry.

By his second year, Anritsu had learned his lesson and began trying to become more tactful and worldly.

Unfortunately, the newcomer’s grace period had already passed. The seasoned operators who, like him, had been exiled to the frontier had already figured out what kind of person he was, and they began excluding him from their little circles of their own accord.

Since the office-politics route was closed to him, Anritsu could only try the leadership route.

But the leadership route required more than social savvy. It also required family connections and influential acquaintances...

And so the once-fiery young champion of justice was beaten down by reality until he took the shape of an ordinary corporate drone, living from one day to the next.

Now, having been tossed about by fate and returned to Tokyo, he had encountered another stroke of good fortune...

Anritsu looked at the banknotes and bank card before him, then rose to his feet as though casting aside the last scraps of his dignity.

...

“Miss Shirakane... President Shirakane!”

The corporate drone, poised to enter the realm of “approaching thirty,” declared loudly and without the slightest hint of shame:

“I look forward to working with you!”

The young president, nine years younger than the corporate drone, smiled in relief.

“Thank goodness it was you, Mr. Anritsu. Normally, none of those other operatives would have agreed to this, would they?”

“Actually...” Anritsu considered his words. “Miss Shirakane, if you privately invited any operative at the TMPD, they would all gladly agree to join your detective agency.”

After all, she was the heiress of the Shirakane Group.

And the remuneration was higher than a section chief’s salary.

Besides, Naruko generally conducted her “detective work” during club activities, so it would not interfere with TMPD duties most of the time. Nor could one call the consultant position particularly demanding...

There might not be another part-time job in existence with more generous terms.

Though, to be precise, the Shirakane Group was effectively an ally of the TMPD. In practical terms, Anritsu had merely changed locations for his overtime work.

Upon hearing his answer, Naruko only said with tremendous ease:

“That’s not the same, Mr. Anritsu... I might choose only you.”

“Because... you aren’t standing on the side of ‘justice.’”

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