Chapter 60. Planning a... Date? (2/2)
Wait. Wait a damn minute here. Social skills? Don’t I actually have the ultimate weapon I can make use of? A girl who owed me a debt of gratitude who could easily use her social skills to get me a way into the library. She could potentially even get me the keys. To which, I could make a copy of. I could then get into the library at any hour.
No… that wouldn’t work out… it would require a good amount of time to pull that off. There just wasn’t enough time in one day to do that and go on a date at the same time. If there were two of me it might be possible, but there aren’t. I wasn’t willing to entrust such a matter to someone else either.
Hmm… then what? There has to be a way. Ah. That’s right, I completely forgot. Even if you don’t have a key… you can always pick your way in.
It’d been a while since I’ve done it so I’d completely forgotten about that option. There was a time in my past life where I became interested in learning how to pick locks, so I’d practiced quite a bit. I’d never actually used it to break into a place though, so it wasn’t an option that came to mind naturally.
There were only a few libraries I frequented in my past life, they were all at the university. There were three libraries in total. Two of them were unsuitable for being picked as the risk of being caught was quite high both while picking and staying inside to read. However, there was one that was suitable where the risk was rather low. There weren’t enough security cameras inside it to keep an eye on everything there so there were blind spots.
Man, I really am a terrible boyfriend… I’d be getting my girlfriend involved in a crime for a date.
Now that I think about it though… did I even need to pick the door for this library? If I recalled correctly, it had a turn knob on the inside. This made things even easier. I wouldn’t need to worry about leaving behind any traces of tampering like this.
“Hey, are you against the idea of crime?”
“Huh? Did you forget who I am?” She smiled widely as if she had an immediate understanding of my intentions. I really had forgotten though because of how things had been between us recently.
“Should you really be looking so excited right now?”
“Isn’t it a rather thrilling idea? How can I not be excited? It’s sure to get one’s heart thumping.”
“It sort of feels like at some point I stopped planning a date and started planning a robbery, only, without the actual robbing.”
“Hehehe. This sort of thing suits me just fine. It’s in my skill set after all.”
“Do you have a good tool for opening a turn knob from the other side? If you don’t, we’ll need to make one or buy one.”
“Oh, you don’t need to pick this one?”
“No, luckily I know a library that uses a turn knob on the other side of the door. We can avoid leaving behind any signs of tampering with the lock if we use this one.”
“That’s perfect. I have the perfect tools for the job.” Her smile right now was definitely not one a normal high school girl would have when planning a date with her boyfriend.
“Uh… by any chance, do you have a way to deal with the security cameras when we’re entering?” Such a thing wasn’t my area of expertise after all, but I thought she might have an idea.
“Oh, you can leave the entire process of getting in to me. I won’t forgive you if you take away my fun.”
It seemed she even meant the lock. Even if I hadn’t been able to pick it myself, it looks like it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d probably be rusty anyway. It’d be a better idea to leave it to her since she’s so confident.
It turned out the solution to all of my problems had been right in front of my eyes the entire time. Forget all the previous ideas I’d gone through, I had a girlfriend with such a unique background and I’d completely overlooked her as part of my calculations. I really was becoming more useless because of her.
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Relying on someone else and sharing the responsibility for a task with them… was another thing I wasn’t very used to. I often did everything alone after all. Having someone you could rely on was pretty nice.
“I’ll be relying on you for that then.” I felt the urge to say that for some reason.
When she heard my words her expression changed a bit and she blinked a few times. “Did you just say that you’re… relying on me?”
“Yeah. Is that weird?”
“Yeah, are you feeling sick? You’ve never said that before. You always try to do everything on your own and never rely on me.”
“Should I not rely on you then?”
“No, please do rely on me more. It would make me happy if you do that.”
“I see. Then… I’ll try to do so more often in the future… relying on my girlfriend, that is.”
“You’re really sure you’re not feeling sick?” Still casting doubts on my health, she asked as such.
“I’m sure. Leave me alone.” I shouldn’t have said I’d rely on her after all.
“Should we go to a hospital first just to make sure?”
“I’m seriously fine! Could you stop making me regret saying that I’d rely on you?”
“Alright, if you say so~” She had an unbearably stupid smile on her face when she said that. She couldn’t stop smiling to herself and giggling.
“Haaaaah. Well, since we’ve got our plan, why don’t we head out to the arcade now?”
“Yeah, sure, let’s go.”
I entered the bathroom for a moment and took the chance to fix up my hair and put in my contacts, the usual disguise. When I exited I was met by my girlfriend, wide-eyed with her jaw slightly ajar.
“What? Do I look that weird?” She’d never actually seen me when I was like this after all.
“No, I’m just surprised that a small change in your hair and the addition of colored contacts makes such a big difference in your appearance. I might not have immediately singled you out in a crowd if we walked past each other despite being your girlfriend. Though if I paid close enough attention, I think my suspicions would be raised enough to question whether it was you.”
“Well, you would have eventually seen me like this anyway. Sorry, I lied to you before about work. At the time, I still didn’t want you to recognize me at work if you came by. You should already know about the arrangement with the Owner and how she is after that phone call, so you should get why.”
“Yeah, I understand. But it still doesn’t feel good being lied to by my boyfriend though. Why do this for our date though?”
“Safety precautions.”
“You mean you’re afraid of being seen with me by people we know?”
“The number of guys interested in you is no joke after all.”
“Haaaaah. It’s such a nuisance.”
“At the very least, when we’re at the library alone together, I won’t need it.”
“Oh! That’s true. Isn’t the library, like, actually a much better place than I thought?”
“...” When she gave it such high praise for such a stupid reason, I didn’t know how to respond. If you’re going to a library, please at least go for the reading environment.
“Let’s go.” Interpreting my silence as the signal to leave she picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulders. When I saw how heavy it looked I raised a brow.
“What are you carrying around in that thing?”
“Oh, you’ll see, don’t worry. It’s just a few little things we’ll need for our date, that’s all.”
“I see.” It seemed while I wasn’t watching her while in the bathroom she’d prepared these things.
“Here, let me at least carry it. I wouldn’t want you to bring it around all day. It looks heavy.”
“Oh, that’s right. I was so excited about breaking into the library I forgot we won’t need it right away. You’re right that it’s pretty heavy though, I wouldn’t want you to expend all your energy because of it either. We can probably just make a stop here to pick it up on our way to the library after the book store.”
Hearing her explanation I thought it over and realized it would work out since we’d be passing by her place on the way to the university after the book store.
The only problem would be the added travel time. Oh, another problem with the date I’d planned suddenly popped into my mind. I’d completely forgotten the fact that we’d be using the bus. Ugh… I don’t have a car, I forgot. Well, I did have a bike though. But… I’d rather not expend so much energy biking everywhere.
With such a thought in mind, I readjusted my plans a bit in my head.
“We’ll need to change up the date slightly. It only just occurred to me that transportation would be a pain with the order of the places for our date. Instead of the original arcade I initially had in mind, we’ll go to the one at the mall. We’ll go to the bookstore right after that. Then we’ll take the bus back here and pick up your bag. After that we can head to the restaurant I mentioned, it’s near the university. From there we can walk to the library. If we do it like that, travel time is minimized and we don’t have to carry your bag around for too long.”
Man, there really were a lot more things you had to consider for a date than I originally thought. Figuring out where to go, what you’d do, how to commit a crime without getting caught, preparing the tools for said crime, the order of events, and then transportation to get there. Who knew planning a date would be this complicated?