"Hey, Hajime-Chan, you okay? Have you run out of hambu-huh, Hajime-Chan?"
Koneko set the box full of new juice glasses she had been carrying and looked around at the empty café. Then she spotted a piece of paper by the tills.
"Hajime's not here?"
"No, she isn't. " Koneko said to Master. "She's left a note saying she's with someone called Nice-kun…"
"It's fine, she's only around the corner." Koneko looked up to see Master staring at a tablet.
"Ahh, I forgot about that. But, I wonder who Nice-kun is? Do you suppose he'll come back with her?"
Master put the tablet away.
"We'll see. In the meantime, we should put these glasses away."
"No problem, Master-san!" The two of them began putting away the juice glasses, occasionally glancing towards the door. After they had unpacked one box, Hajime came back, with another person following close behind. Both of them were eating hamburgers, and Hajime was carrying a bag that seemed to have more.
The other person was a tall boy with messy brown hair and sparkling blue eyes. He was dressed casually, and had lime-green headphones slung nonchantly around his neck.
"Oh, are you Nice-kun?" Koneko waved the note at him. Nice looked at her, and shrugged.
"Yeah, I guess so. You're Koneko?"
"Err…yeah. How'd you know?"
"Hajime-Chan mentioned you. And you have a tail." Nice pointed, and Koneko blushed. She didn't normally pay attention to her tail. She glanced at Master, who was regarding Nice carefully.
Nice quickly noticed him, though, returning the stare with one of his own.
"Ah, you're the guy who owns this place. You don't look like a café owner."
"Then what do I look like?"
"Some kind of bouncer?" Nice said, appearing to seriously think about it.
"I could throw you out of here…" Master said. He sounded threatening, but Koneko knew full well that he didn't mean it.
"What do you do then?" Master asked, changing tack. Nice looked sheepish as he considered his answer.
"Well, I'm not doing anything at the moment…but I will be."
"Nice-kun wants to be a detective. I'm going to be his partner." Hajime proclaimed.
"Oh, really?" Master asked as he studied Nice, wondering if his memory was correct, or if this was really the boy who had been shot when helping Hajime escape.
"Yeah, you know, like Sherlock Holmes and Watson!" Nice scrutinised Master in return, his eyes unreadable. Then, he shrugged.
"Anyway, I was going to take Hajime-Chan to my office and stuff, but she figured you'd all freak out if we didn't come back soon…"
Master didn't think it would be appropriate to mention the tracker in Hajime's visor, especially if he was remembering things properly, so instead he nodded and said.
"Good to know you have more sense that your appearance would suggest. Do what you please."
Nice narrowed his eyes at the intended slight, then shrugged and grinned.
"Okay then, see you guys later. I think I'll be seeing a lot of you!" and just like that, they had gone again.
Master and Koneko stood there for a while, before Koneko hesitantly spoke up.
"You didn't seem very resistant to that. Hajime-Chan doesn't usually warm to people that quickly."
"But that's precisely why I let her go." Master said. Koneko looked at him, confused, and he felt the need to explain just a little more.
"If Hajime trusts him that much…he's probably OK. Much as I hate to admit it. Also, he knows Hajime."
"Eh, really? How?"
"Facultas."
"No way, that guy's from Facultas?!"
"One of the best students, actually…"
"So does that mean he knows? About what power she really has…?"
"Not the whole story." Master said. "But he met her. "
"And now he's here." Suddenly, Koneko went wide eyed, and smiled. "That means he came to find her! That's so romantic!Wow…"
"Don't let him know that we know, okay?"
"I know, I know." Koneko smiled happily as she went back to the glasses. Master rolled his eyes at her happiness, but couldn't help but smile too. This, in a way, was what he had given up his work at Facultas to do. He could make no great claims to being a 'good person'. If he was such a person, he would have walked away the moment the truth of what the researchers did was revealed to him. But no. It had taken Hajime- their Success Number 01- to accidentally meet the Facultas' number one student and try to escape, for the full extent of what they were doing to hit him. The things that they were doing to children, for crying out loud. So he wasn't a good person. But he wasn't a bad one, either. A bad person wouldn't have pleaded to take Hajime (and the last of the abandoned children) away to live a normal life. He was even sad to discover that the girl he ended up naming 'Koneko' was the only one left. If there had been others, they would have come with him too.
But in the end, it was just Hajime and Koneko he'd rescued. Two children who would have otherwise never got the chance to live a normal life. He might not have been a good person, but he felt he had done the right thing in leaving behind what some called a 'prestigious' or 'privileged' job. In any case, running a café was a lot better, and had been his dream for a while, but still. He had ended up doing the right thing.
So letting Hajime run around with Nice, being part of a detective or whatever it was they would be doing was a continuation of his having finally done the right thing. And he'd be damned if he was going to prevent himself from ever doing the right thing again.