Bungou Stray Dogs x OC ~ Alter Ego

Chapter 11

"Thank you so much, Father."

Biting the inside of her cheek, to prevent a euphoric victory cry from escaping her, Yui was about to say goodbye to her interlocutor in a voice as calm as possible.

But, before she could do anything, her father's voice interrupted her.

"Before we end this call, I have something to clear up with you, my daughter," he said in a deep voice. "At about ten o'clock last night, until at least two o'clock this morning, I saw that you had called your own business number with your personal phone... Why?"

Unperturbed, speaking in a clear voice, Yui answered what she had planned to say.

"Really? You know I am not particularly good with technology, especially with my eyes, so I must have done all this without realizing it, father, at bedtime... The call must have cut itself off after a while... or maybe Aiko noticed it and ended the call herself, I cannot think of any other explanation," she finished in a worried tone, genuinely concerned.

At least that is what she was implying, because, in reality, she was not the least bit concerned. According to her father's directives, her schedule was extremely strict: go to bed at ten o'clock at night, get up at six o'clock in the morning when she did not have an urgent appointment.

Therefore, if she had been unwise enough to start the call in the middle of the night, just before leaving for the agency, there would have been no excuse for her to answer her own phone at one o'clock in the morning, when she was supposed to be asleep. Especially knowing she was not asleep at the time.

So, she had taken care to start the call the night before, so as not to attract attention, and to pass this off as a simple mishandling due to the tiredness that had set in. Her father knew that she did not excel in the field of technology, except for the essential basics, so the excuse was perfectly credible.

She knew on top of that that her father was not determined enough to go as far as to ask Aiko, to find out if she had anything to do with the story, especially with such a minor matter. Her father 'trusted' her to a certain extent, and he could not suspect in the least what his daughter had actually done during the time the call had taken.

Not when he considered his only heiress to be a perfectly malleable pawn, entirely devoted to the family cause.

"Okay," her father said after a few seconds of silence. "When you come back, you'll have to take more classes on the subject, so that this kind of thing doesn't happen again."

"Very well, Father. I am sorry I worried you."

She knew that it was not for herself that her father had been worried, but for what that phone call could potentially hide. Yui had given him a valid excuse, so she did not have much more to brood about.

She had to be content with her small victory. She had gotten permission to take a short day off, as she had hoped, after showing her father that she had made satisfactory progress in her work.

Just one day, of course. For Yuuto Uemura, an entire day without doing anything was already a luxury in itself, granted to those who really deserved it. In two years, it was the first time Yui had asked for something like that, so her father had been lenient with her.

She had to succeed in her next objective during this one day, because she would not get a second chance. She just had to hope that the detectives had managed to decipher her riddle, which was more of a test than anything else.

If they could not decipher this letter all the way, it meant they were not as good as they thought. And, thus, entrusting them with such a delicate task was not an excellent idea, and she would have to restart her research from the beginning to find a substitute for this promising agency.