Harry met up with me at the school entrance as usual. My legs ached, due to having to jog to school, and Harry took notice.

“Why are you so worn out?” He asked, “And where’s your bike? I don’t think I saw it yesterday either...or even the day before that.”

“I, uh, kind of lost it,” I replied, “Back when I was out with Itra.”

“Oh? So you went out somewhere with her on the weekend?” Harry teased, “Are you sure I wasn’t getting the wrong idea earlier?”

“Y-You were!” I reasserted, “L-let’s just focus on the task at hand, okay? We still need to figure out what’s bothering Itra.”

“Fine, all right,” Harry backed off, with a wide smile, “But we’ll think about all that at lunch, I have someone I need to introduce you to then.”

“You’re introducing me to someone?” I questioned, “Who are you bringing me to?”

“His name is Neuire Moddes,” Harry answered, “the one who proved the group of murderers to be guilty.”

“Woah, he sounds like a bigshot,” I remarked, “what’s he like?”

“Hmm,” Harry stroked his chin, “he used to be really playful, but nowadays, he shuts himself away.”

“Is that because of the fame from that case?” I pondered, “Did it start getting to him?”

“No,” Harry corrected, “it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“How complicated?” I inquisioned, “Why does he shut himself away?”

“You know they set his house on fire with his father inside,” Harry answered, “he lost a lot last year.”

“Oh, that’s…” I trailed off, “I don’t know what to say to that…”

“There’s nothing to say,” Harry said, “I just think that enlisting his assistance would help our case.”

“What case? I just want to figure out why Itra’s been acting so weird.”

“Well we’re bringing him along, just in case,” Harry asserted, “his reputation might get some teachers to spill their stories.”

“We already asked all of them,” I pointed out, “What’s the point of asking again?”

“It matters who asks the questions, Illate,” Harry affirmed, “and Neuire has a pretty impressive image to most of the people here, almost as much as the old detective club.”

“What detective club?” I asked, “I never heard of one.”

“Well, it disbanded the year before the last,” Harry shared, “but there was this guy who could solve any case, and he was the son of some famous detective.”

“Wow, he sounds kind of cool, but what does he have to do with this? This isn’t a criminal case!” I argued with Harry.

“Yeah yeah, let’s just continue this talk at lunch,” Harry stopped our conversation, “the school entrance has been open for a while now, we can’t be late to class.”

With that, Harry and I walked into the building, and went separate ways to our lockers. We had been placed on opposite sides of the school, which felt a bit unfair, but that could have been a blessing in disguise. If we were placed next to each other, we’d be too distracted to notice the time, and we would arrive to class late.

Lunch came around slower for me, and my stomach growled at me with pain. I didn’t eat much for breakfast, so lunch appealed to my brain more than usual. Then, as I walked into the bustling cafeteria, I remembered that I would have to skip lunch to continue investigating the reason why Itra felt so down. Now, I had to choose between the pain in my chest and the pain in my abdomen. One screamed at me the loudest, my stomach, but the burden on my chest advanced at a stronger rate.

“Like I said, why am I being dragged into this!?” shrieked the shrill voice of my bully Gentrei, “I have to work on my story!”

“Come on now,” Harry soothed, “the story can wait, plus, your editor friend is gone today, right? Why can’t you just help us a little bit?”

“Because! I’m busy!” Gentrei screamed back, “Now don’t drag me into whatever nonsense you two are playing around in, I want no part of it!”

As they argued, with their lunch trays in hand, Harry and Gentrei slowly made their way towards our table, which sat a few feet away from the table Gentrei hung around. We ended up passing by each other a lot now, though maybe we always had been. Sometimes the presence of a person only becomes known after they make an impression.

“But aren’t you just a little bit curious?” Harry prodded, “Come on, help a friend out.”

“I’m not a friend!” Gentrei protested, but Harry continued to nag her.

Even I could tell that Harry acted incessantly with Gentrei, and I sympathized with her a bit. Though, I couldn’t tell why Harry wanted Gentrei to join us so badly, so I walked up behind to ask why.

“What’s going on?” I blurted, “why are you bothering Gentrei so much?”

“I just thought it would be more fun if we had more people with us,” Harry explained, “and I caught sight of Gentrei.”

“Just leave me alone! You two are nothing but trouble,” Gentrei opposed our presence, trying to slink away.

Sadly for her, Harry didn’t let her out of his sight, continuing with, “Come on! It’ll be fun!”

“No! I don’t want to associate with nutcases like you!” Gentrei rejected, “Just being with you guys lowers my intelligence!”

Ouch. There goes my pride as an intellectual. Not that I ever was one.

“If you’re so smart, doesn’t that mean you should come with us?” Harry reasoned, “We’ll never find out what’s been bothering Illate’s friend with our brains!”

“Ugh, you really don’t want to quit, huh,” Gentrei clicked her tongue, “fine! You’re not giving me any choice here.”

Is it just me, or did her expression change the second Harry dropped in a compliment?

“Thanks! You’re the best, Gentrei!” Harry celebrated, pressing his hands together over hers in praise.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“D-don’t touch me!” she recoiled, and quickly stood straight with composure, “Now what did you want to do?”

“We’re trying to figure out what’s bothering Illate’s friend by interviewing her teachers,” Harry answered, “but first, we have someone we need to collect.”

“Collect?” Gentrei raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

“We’re grabbing an old friend of mine,” Harry replied, “Illate, go and grab something to snack on. We need to eat fast.”

Following Harry’s advice, I quickly went through the lunch line to grab a small tray with the day’s entry of spaghetti. Unfortunately, they used marinara for its sauce, which put its taste down. Still, I had to slurp it all up quickly, or we wouldn’t have time to continue our objective.

“Are you done?” Harry looked over my empty plate, “Okay, that’s good, let’s go!”

Pulling me up by the wrist, Harry dragged me across the cafeteria, with Gentrei in tow. Despite her original stance against us, she followed without a problem. We had to weave our way through the scattered tables, before we could get to the corner of the large room.

There, a kid around our age sat. His eyes gazed unfocused at the huge crowd. He didn’t show any interest in them though. Instead, he just stared, without a single sparkle in his eye. It didn’t look like he ate anything either, he just sat with a black book cradled in his arms.

“Is he okay?” Gentrei asked, with an elevated tone of concern, “He doesn’t exactly look healthy…”

“He’s not,” Harry responded, before waving his hand in front of Neuire, “you awake there, buddy?”

Neuire didn’t even blink. No muscles twitched, he just kept staring dead forward. I noticed a few dark circles under his eyes, which probably meant that he didn’t sleep well.

“Are you sure he can help us?” I whispered to Harry, “He looks broken…”

“That’s because he is,” Harry answered, and turned back to Neuire, “you’ll hate me for this, but… Noi!”

At the call of that nickname Harry used, Neuire shuddered. He pulled his head up and finally set his empty gaze at Harry. A fright flew through him, but quelled after a bit. That nickname must have had a heavy impact on him.

“Oh, it’s you,” he muttered to Harry, “what do you want?”

“He’s so quiet,” Gentrei remarked softly, “why does he seem so fragile?”

“We need your help on something,” Harry pressed on, “I wrote down the details.”

Harry pulled out a small notepad from the inside of his uniform. I didn’t know Harry kept one, despite my time spent with him. The notepad had a simple design, with a metal spiral on the top and cardboard covers around the paper within. He actually had a lot of scribbles in there.

Neuire accepted the notebook and began reading through it.

“Okay,” he spoke, so quiet that a gentle wind could have carried his voice away, “let’s go press Mr. Pelt.”

“Gotcha!” Harry responded, and gestured for Neuire to get up, “let’s get going.”

Reluctantly, Neuire stood up, and lingered behind us. Gentrei lagged back a little, eyeing Neuire with furrowed brows. I wanted to go back there too, since Harry’s friend looked like he was about to fall apart, but I didn’t want to get too close to Gentrei. There could be no way to tell if Gentrei would explode on me, after all.

Instead of staying back with the both of them, I kind of glanced at them awkwardly. In my heart, I had a lot of doubt that this guy would be of any help for us. Though he did seem to catch on that Mr. Pelt acted suspiciously when we interviewed him.

“Mister Pelt?” Gentrei knocked on the door when we arrived, “Are you in?”

“I didn’t know Gentrei knocked,” I whispered to Harry, “isn’t this a huge revelation?”

“Members of the gentry are required to have proper manners,” Harry joked, causing us both to receive a glare from Gentrei.

“W-we’re sorry,” I stammered, before the voice of Mr. Pelt came from within the room.

“You may enter,” he voiced, “What do you need?”

Entering, I hid behind Harry. But instead of Harry speaking, Neuire stepped forward. All the fragility from earlier dissipated, and the image of a confident investigator took its place. His prim and proper stance prompted Mr. Pelt to straighten his back in front of him.

“Mr. Pelt,” Neuire announced with a voice as clear as glass, and as loud as a drum, “I have a few questions regarding Mr. Hue.”

“Huh? Mister Hue? What does he have to do with this?” I whispered to Harry, “Why are we asking about him?”

“Shh,” Harry silenced me, “pay attention.”

“Mr. Hue? What about him?” questioned Mr. Pelt, “I haven’t noticed anything so suspicious.”

“The fact that you think we’re asking about him being suspicious proves that you think there’s something wrong with him,” Neuire pointed out with his strong voice, “Either that, or you think that we only ask about suspicious things.”

“Oh, uh, er,” Mr. Pelt’s eyes flew around the room, “well, that’s what I got from the way you guys were acting…”

“Sir, you’re not very good at hiding your nerves, are you?” Neuire pointed out, “You’re sweating like crazy, maybe you should just come clean?”

“J-just what are you implying?” Mr. Pelt squirmed, “I don’t know anything.”

On the side, Gentrei muttered, “Isn’t it a bad thing if a teacher doesn’t know anything? Heh, you need to know something to get a job at teaching.”

I agreed with Gentrei’s assessment, but I made sure not to veer my focus from their conversation.

“Mr. Pelt,” Neuire began, “I’d like to ask what you know about Mister Hue’s secret meetings with his students.”

“W-wha? You know about them?” Mr. Pelt’s mouth fell agape, “But how?”

“I didn’t,” Neuire answered, “I have a connection with the person who did.”

I tilted my head, and I noticed Harry pointing at himself while looking at my direction saying, “that’s me! That’s me!” in a hushed tone.

I ignored him, for the moment, continuing to watch Neuire do his work.

“Sir,” Neuire pressed onwards, “please, tell me what you know, I can guarantee your safety, if you’re being threatened.”

Mr. Pelt gulped loudly, before answering, “okay, he’s been…acting strange around students, so I tried to look into it…”

“And then?” Neuire pushed, “What happened?”

“He’s been…coercing some of his students to…” Mr. Pelt averted his gaze, “well, over the span of about a week, he offers them some little extra classes, but he slowly gains blackmail material…”

“Then he uses it to get the students to do things they don’t want?” Neuire finished, “Is that it? Why didn’t you tell anybody?”

“I-it’s because,” Mr. Pelt reasoned, “well, I wasn’t a clean guy myself back when I was young, and…well, we used to do things we weren’t supposed to back when we were young…”

“And he threatened to use that to blackmail you?” Neuire asked, “So you just kept quiet?”

“That’s right,” Mr. Pelt confirmed, “I’m sorry, I should have told somebody sooner…”

“You should have,” Neuire agreed, “but you told us now, so the rest is up to us.”

“Will you reveal my name to Mr. Hue in any way?” he asked, “please, I don’t want to lose my job, so…”

“Don’t worry, mister,” Neuire reassured, “I’m going to delete the things he has.”

“Really?” Mr. Pelt asked, “How will you do that?”

“Like this,” Neuire grabbed the sweat rag that Mr. Pelt had been using to wipe himself.

“Hey! What are you-”

Neuire slipped his hand into a hidden pocket and revealed a USB. He then handed it over to Harry, and turned to walk away.

“Neuire…” Mr. Pelt rumbled, “you’ll regret messing with us.”

“Maybe,” he replied, with his back turned, “but I’ll make sure you regret messing with innocent people too.”

My hands trembled.

I never knew Neuire could be so cool.

“Let’s go,” Neuire said, a little softer now, “we’ll need to submit this to the principal.”

“J-just like that?” I asked, “How did you…”

“I didn’t do anything, I just acted out how Harry wanted me to,” Neuire answered, “he already worked everything out on his notes.”

“Wha-” I turned to Harry, who grinned ear to ear, “how?”

“It all started when I peeked at that note you said that Itra left you,” Harry explained, “Hue said that Itra was a smart girl who never had to go in a meeting with him, but her note contradicted that.”

“Woah…” I muttered, “I never even caught that…but what about the rest?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Harry replied, “once we submit this, you should meet up with Itra after school. Aren’t you worried about what Mr. Hue might have been doing to her?”

“Y-you’re right!” I exclaimed, “I should see her right now!”

“W-woah!” Harry jumped back in surprise, as I bolted down the hall, “Watch your step…”

Gentrei remained silent, staring at both Harry and Neuire. Some sort of awe must have been struck within her, as she couldn’t take her eyes off them.