The Gods Are Fighting Over Me - Chapter 14

Rei Furuya’s safe house.

The tearoom was filled with the fresh scent of green tea, and steam clung to the glass teacups, condensing into droplets. Rei Furuya was carrying two cups of tea when he stopped.

On the living room sofa, Lin Jianyue was engrossed in drawing on her tablet, the stylus scratching against the screen.

Kenji Hagiwara was sitting next to Lin Jianyue, carefully keeping a two-fist distance from her. He was holding himself back, giving her a comfortable amount of personal space, yet he couldn’t help but want to get closer.

A beautifully wrapped bouquet of pink roses sat on the sofa beside Kenji Hagiwara. At first, Rei Furuya thought he had bought them for Lin Jianyue, but then he watched as Kenji mercilessly snapped the stem of a perfectly bloomed rose.

Kenji Hagiwara held the rose he had broken from its base, turned it in his hand, and then squeezed it until it was crushed. His movements were slow, like a torturer.

For some reason, Rei Furuya read a sense of twisted resentment and jealousy in his actions.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Rei Furuya placed the teacups in front of them and then sat on the single armchair next to them.

He glanced at the ruined roses that Kenji Hagiwara had mutilated and got straight to the point. “You two can’t be in a public relationship.”

“Huh?” Kenji Hagiwara shot up straight, his hand clenching the rose. A drop of red oozed from a thorn prick on his finger.

His eyes were wide, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. He said in a wronged tone, “Zero, whose side are you on?”

Lin Jianyue glanced at Kenji Hagiwara, silently scolding him for hiding the truth.

Rei Furuya ignored him and looked at Lin Jianyue. “Gin knows about the Twitter account.”

Lin Jianyue’s hand, holding the teacup, trembled. The hot tea splashed onto her hand, but her fingertips were chillingly cold.

Lin Jianyue didn’t say anything. Kenji Hagiwara, on the other hand, frowned in thought, his expression confused. “Did Jianyue draw something sensitive and post it on Twitter?”

He hadn’t seen Lin Jianyue’s Twitter, or even found the account, but he could generally guess the truth behind it.

Rei Furuya nodded. “When the two worlds merged, Lin Jianyue’s Twitter account also appeared here. She drew a lot of the Organization’s members on it. Gin already knows about the account and is now looking for the owner.”

Kenji Hagiwara’s eyebrows furrowed, and a complex emotion, like a volcano erupting under a glacier, surged out. It was both scorching hot and bone-chillingly cold.

Someone as smart as Kenji Hagiwara could naturally guess why they had to separate.

Lin Jianyue had drawn more than one portrait of him on her Twitter account. It had to be a lot, enough to alert Gin.

It was good news. Every drawing showed her affection for him.

But…

Kenji Hagiwara’s eyes darkened.

He didn’t want to be separated from Lin Jianyue, and he certainly didn’t want her to be in danger.

On the other side, Lin Jianyue, who had just heard the bad news, didn’t say a word. She lowered her head and took a small sip of tea, but all she tasted was bitterness.

She should have realized this earlier.

But she was too busy.

In the first few days of meeting Kenji Hagiwara, she was overwhelmed by intense emotions and then suffocated by a mountain of drawing assignments. She liked being busy, but being busy also made her forget that she had once latched onto a hot topic and casually drew some of the Black Organization members. It wasn’t until two days ago that she suddenly remembered.

When she rushed home to delete her Twitter account, she found that it no longer existed. But she had assumed that the world fusion had simply destroyed her account.

Her hand tightened around the cup. Lin Jianyue lowered her head, her eyelids trembling.

Although they, the readers, always joked about the Black Organization being a “liquor factory with water in it,” they were a real, international crime syndicate.

The main characters were able to make the Black Organization look like a joke because of their main character’s halo and the long-running series that warped the plot. But who could deny the oppressive feeling the Organization and Gin gave off when they first appeared in the early series of Detective Conan?

Even in the later parts of the plot, when they were treated as a joke, the Organization still killed a lot of people, including spies and politicians from different countries.

An international crime syndicate that could get its hands on helicopters and submarines was not something she could deal with.

But luckily, Gin had no information on her.

Lin Jianyue took another sip of tea.

Maybe she should try to get closer to Conan as soon as possible.

Lin Jianyue had always planned on getting to know Conan. She had no intention of getting involved in the conflict between the Black Organization and the police. Even with her “God-mode” view, her knowledge of the Organization was only a drop in the ocean; it was likely less than Rei Furuya’s.

She was just an ordinary woman with no fighting skills or special training. How could she participate in the main plot? By using the few volumes of manga she had at home?

Those few books were less useful than an Oxford Dictionary. At least the dictionary had a track record of stopping bullets.

Lin Jianyue had to admit that she was approaching Conan with a purpose. She wanted to use him to meet the top people in the illustration industry who might be connected to him.

All the top talents in Tokyo would eventually have a connection to Conan, wouldn’t they?

She had planned to just let things happen naturally. She would be proactive, but not too intentional. She would take ten steps, and the other ninety would be up to fate.

But now, she might have to find a way to get closer to Conan as soon as possible.

She was probably a gambler.

She wouldn’t give up everything she had and run back to her home country just because of a one percent chance that Gin would find her.

The emotions that had just calmed down after a good cry were now on the verge of collapsing again. But Lin Jianyue was highly adaptable. She took a few deep breaths and kept telling herself to calm down, and she really did.

But the fear made her break out in a cold sweat.

Just then, a long, slender hand with a thin callus on the palm came into view. In his palm was a neatly folded handkerchief.

Lin Jianyue looked up, following the hand, and saw Kenji Hagiwara’s smiling face. He had a comforting smile, just like when they first met in her dream.

At that time, she had just gotten a slap from her father for standing up to him and was sleeping with tears on her face. He appeared in her dream out of nowhere. Kenji Hagiwara politely greeted her and handed her a folded handkerchief, quietly comforting her.

That memory overlapped with the present.

Lin Jianyue took the handkerchief, her emotions slowly sinking.

She couldn’t help but wish she could keep him paused in her dreams. Forever in her control, forever loyal, forever full of love.

But this current ambiguous state wasn’t so bad either. She could enjoy his affection and kindness without any restraint. She didn’t have to have any expectations of him as a boyfriend, didn’t have to worry about whether his loyalty and love would fade, and she would never… have to deal with the tug-of-war of reality.

Lin Jianyue didn’t plan on staying in Japan for long, and Kenji Hagiwara’s job as a police officer meant he could never move to another country.

She didn’t want to change her life plan for Kenji Hagiwara.

Kenji Hagiwara stared into Lin Jianyue’s eyes and, for the first time, hated his own sharp emotional perception.

He understood the emotions in her momentarily unfocused eyes: a heavy mix of farewell and guilt, a tug-of-war between acceptance and rejection.

No.

That’s not right.

I can’t let that happen.

He had finally made some progress. How could he let her have the idea of running away again?

“Lin, you don’t have to worry too much,” Rei Furuya said, cutting in. “Gin gave me the task of finding information about you.”

Rei Furuya took a sip of his tea and told them everything he knew. “The person who found your account was Chianti.”

He paused. “You should know who Chianti is.”

With a subjective bias against the Black Organization, he had a hard time not being biased after seeing Chianti so carelessly kill so many people. He commented, “That muscle-headed woman, who only knows how to shoot, didn’t even save the pictures. She just rushed to report it to Gin.”

“Luckily, your account was taken down before that, so Gin didn’t see anything. He could only listen to Chianti’s report.”

“But Chianti couldn’t provide any useful information. All she knew was that there was an illustrator who had drawn members of the Organization, and an account that always featured a man with a two-parted fringe. If you hadn’t used a female pronoun, she wouldn’t have even known if you were a man or a woman.”

There were way too many men with a two-parted fringe in Japan. It was like finding a needle in a haystack for Gin. And the account’s owner might not even be in Japan. Chianti couldn’t track an IP address. She could only guess that the account owner was an Asian person with black hair and a yellow complexion.

Gin was so mad that he almost shot Chianti, calling her an incompetent fool.

Rei Furuya looked at Lin Jianyue seriously. “So, for now, you’re safe.”

“Zero, that’s not fair,” Kenji Hagiwara immediately protested. “Then why won’t you let us be in a public relationship?”

“Just in case.”

“But I can protect her better if I’m with her, right?”

“No. What if Chianti sees you one day and suddenly remembers?”

“Oh, that’s so unfair,” Kenji Hagiwara whined, dragging out his words. He squeezed the rose stem even harder, deforming it. “Then why did you even have me pick her up?”

Rei Furuya said, “Chianti was sent to Singapore. And today, Matsuda is on duty, Rei is on a mission, and Class Rep is working a murder case. You were the only one free. It’s not like I can just give Lin an address and have her take a taxi here.”

Kenji Hagiwara was speechless. He lowered his head and slumped back into the sofa, the air pressure around him low enough to freeze water, as if he had just been pulled out of a moss-covered well.

“But I will arrange for a Public Security collaborator to follow her.” Rei Furuya added.

Kenji Hagiwara’s head shot up. The jealousy in his eyes was almost visible. He abruptly threw the rose into the trash can, as if he couldn’t bear to look at it, and turned to stare out the window.

“Don’t worry, this person will definitely not take advantage of the situation,” Rei Furuya said slowly. “Because I’ve arranged for it to be Matsuda.”

“Huh?” Kenji Hagiwara turned his head in shock.

“I convinced him to be a Public Security collaborator. His mission is to protect Lin Jianyue.” Rei Furuya lifted his teacup to hide the smile on his face. “This way, you can use Jinpei Matsuda’s identity as a childhood friend to appear next to her openly. But not too often. And you need to be mindful of your social distance in public.”

“Chianti is an idiot, but Gin isn’t. He might be able to figure out the relationship between the account owner and the man with the two-parted fringe, which is you. So it’s best to have someone else between you two so you don’t look so intimate.”

Kenji Hagiwara opened his mouth, but for a long time, no words came out.

This was so interesting.

Just two days ago, he was disgusted with himself for even thinking about being a homewrecker. And today, he was effortlessly becoming a homewrecker, and one who was stealing Jinpei Matsuda’s girl, no less.

This was really…

He looked down at the ruined rose in the trash can, then looked up at Lin Jianyue. He suddenly covered his face and let out a muffled laugh.

“Fine.” He revealed his eyes through his fingers, his purple eyes sparkling.

It was better than not seeing her at all.