Mirror Mirror (self-insert #9)

Chapter 8

Since neither of us particularly cared enough to check on him, we sat back and watched the others race off to the bathroom. After a moments hesitation Lin plugged in the wire of the camera in the bathroom, revealing a pale Hirota.

"He saw something." The answer came to me a second later. "A decapitated head in the bathtub. Not that he'll admit it, though. Talk about serious denial."

Lin grunted in agreement.

Naru dropped by not too long after, and something in his eyes made me pause. "Where are you going after this?"

"I thought I'd have a chat with Hirota-san."

Uh oh. I took back what I said earlier—maybe I should at least make an effort to ensure that no blood was spilled. "I'll come with you, then."

"Do what you want."

I followed after him, doing my best to keep up with his long strides. He entered the kitchen without hesitation, and just over his shoulder I saw Hirota flinch. "Now can you tell me what happened in there?"

Hirota paused for a beat. "What are you talking about?"

"What exactly happened when you reached the shower room?" Naru elaborated.

"Nothing happened at all."

"But aren't you trembling all over?" Hirota pursed his lips. "You saw something in there."

"There was a cockroach in there. I can't stand the sight of them."

"But that's not the case, right? You must've seen something extraordinary. Otherwise you wouldn't be so tight lipped about this."

I did not see anything at all." Hirota stated.

Naru studied him, and it was in that exact moment that I knew Hirota had messed up. "I see. So that's the trick that you guys love to use."

"What?"

"If you suspect that I am a murderer and wish to investigate further, I have no objections. You are welcome to do anything you want, but I am only here because I accepted Midori's request—to investigate the incident that had happened here before. You must have seem something that could help out the investigation tremendously, hence you are covering it up, isn't that right?" He didn't give Hirota a chance to respond. "A person that blames others based on simple conjectures, who doesn't mind manipulating people in predicament for their own agenda. Doing things with a closed-minded mentality and covering up evidence that doesn't benefit you. Those are your organization's modus operandi, right?"

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?!"

Bou-san, Mai, and Masako had peeked in when I wasn't looking, and they looked just about as concerned as I felt.

"Isn't that the truth?" Naru was actually scowling now, his dark eyes blazing. "It's not even far fetched to say that your organization would use despicable methods just to close and investigation. Japan's judiciary sure is talented. If you are telling me that you would stoop as low as to frame someone in order to save your own pride, you are free to do whatever you want. In fact, I don't even care if you belittle others."

Hirota's hands clenched into fists. "Are you trying to taunt me?"

Naru arched a flippant eyebrow. "So, you could still feel anger after being shamed. If you have so much self-respect, then please present yourself accordingly. Thanks to Japan's outstanding investigation team, I had to come down to this country personally just to find my brother's whereabouts." He snapped. "All the relevant paperwork had been submitted. But the end result? He was found a year after he died. Needless to say, without my help, I doubt they would've been able to find him in the first place. After spending a countless amount of time and effort to find the corpse, it wad already mummified to the point to the point that it was impossible to identify. Not only that, they found identify the cause of death. Not even a post-mortem examination was deemed possible. If I had only started searching right after I handed in the paperwork, I'm sure that a post-mortem would've still been possible!"