"Oh, come on. It wasn't that scary."
"Says you!" Lindsey retorted, lifting his face up from where he had buried it in his palms. "I couldn't get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night for weeks after we watched Poltergeist; you, on the other hand, actually managed to fall asleep during parts of it because it was 'kinda boring'!"
"Seriously? It wasn't even that scary! The ghosts were appeased in the end and everything."
"Still! Those clown dolls haunt me to this very day."
"Lindsey, it's been over 16 years for you and 14 for me since we saw that movie."
"Those chipped paint faces... those soulless eyes filled with hatred... those evil, evil smiles promising a fate worse than death..."
I flicked his forehead. "Mate, we've already died once. It wasn't that bad."
He ignored me and carried on about how one day those clowns were going to come for him and drag him down into the depths of hell and eat his soul and then he'd turn into one of them and then he'd be forced to watch, helpless, as the same thing happened to everyone else while he was trapped in his creepy clown doll body. There were a lot of agonizingly detailed descriptions of how and what would happen. I rolled my eyes. What his mind came up with was a lot worse than what actually happened in the movie.
"You should quit your band and become a horror novelist," I advised him. "At the rate you're going, you could beat out Stephen King."
He shut up and thought back over his own words.
"Oh," Lindsey said weakly.
There was a beat of silence.
"NGAAAAHH! I can't get those horrifying images out of my head now! What have I done?!"
While I waited for him to finish freaking out, I observed our surroundings, looking at the rides and games and determining which one I would drag us to next if Lindsey didn't have a preference. Ooh, that roller coaster looked fun. And that one over there focused on flipping the riders upside down. Or, we could go play some games at the arcade while Lindsey recovered.
I turned around to ask Lindsey what he wanted to do, when I spotted a brightly coloured sign out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't the colours that caught my attention however - everything in this park was brightly coloured - but the glowing green words on it.
"Test your strength..." I murmured to myself. "Sounds like fun!"
"What sounds like fun?" Lindsey asked, eyeing me warily.
"That." I pointed and, grabbing his arm, dragged him towards the high striker.
"Step right up, step right up!" the operator called. "Test your strength with this wondrous contraption up here for only five euros! And if you're strong enough, you might win a prize from our large and varied selection here!"
"You wanna do that?" Lindsey questioned. "I'm pretty sure it's rigged."
"Might as well try, right?"
The operator spotted us and smiled at the boy beside me. "Here to win a stuffed doll for your girlfriend, young man?"
Lindsey looked confused. "Girlfriend?"
I blinked at the operator, and then at him.
"Oh," I said, realization dawning on me. "Oh. I think he means me."
"Wait, what?" Lindsey looked at the operator as well, then back at me. "Her?"
There was moment of silence.
"Ew," I said, wrinkling my nose in disgust. "Yeah, no."
"We're not involved romantically in any way," Lindsey assured the operator, making a twin face of disgust.
"Besides, if anybody's gonna be winning prizes it's gonna be me." I jabbed my thumb at my chest.
"Yeah, that's right," Lindsey agreed, holding out the required amount of cash. "Now give the girl the mallet."
I took the offered mallet from the stunned operator and hefted it a few times, testing its weight. I nodded.
"Right. Here I go."
I walked confidently towards the tower and brought the long-handled mallet high above my head.
Ready...
I breathed in.
...and swing!
I brought the mallet down.
There was a loud thud as the head of the mallet struck the painted red and white target; then the puck was flying up, up, up, and up, where it struck the bell with a loud clang. When it came back down, the dent in the bell became visible. Lindsey looked at the dent, then at the target, which was similarly damaged, and whistled appreciatively.
"Nice," he complimented. I did a little curtsy and bow before turning back to the operator.
"You might want to close your mouth," I commented. "I hear the mosquitoes are particularly nasty this time of the year."
The man snapped his mouth shut and walked over to the prize section in a daze. He asked which one I wanted. I examined the section for a moment before turning to Lindsey.
"Which one do you want? Call it thanks for paying for everything," I added before he could protest.
He looked like he still wanted to and I raised an eyebrow at him. Lindsey sighed.
"You're not going to take no for an answer, are you?" he grumbled, then pointed at dark green dinosaur on the right. I nodded.
"Alright, we'll take that one."
As I handed the doll to Lindsey, I commented, "Still in love with dinosaurs, I see."
He blushed and swatted at me.
We were back at the Cavallone estate and having dinner when my phone rang. Checking to see who it was, I smiled and answered.
"Suzuki Rin, reporting!" A cheerful voice greeted me from the other end of the line.
"Ah, Suzuki-san. What have you found?"
"You know that dude with the buzz-cut, Onohara something-or-other?"
"The one whose girlfriend suspects he's cheating on her?" I asked, flipping through a small orange notebook.
"Her suspicions are correct, Sawada-buchou! I got pictures~"
"Good job." I scribbled 'Evidence Obtained' on the case page. "Email them to me and print out a hard copy to file away. Thanks for your hard work."
"It was no trouble at all, buchou! I'm having a lot of fun doing this."
"I'm happy to hear that. Have you heard anything from Hashimoto-san?"
"Last I heard, she was still trying to figure out how to tail a high school student without losing him."
"Tell her to get tips from Terauchi-san. You can find him at the arcade trying to get a high score on the first-person shooter on most weekends."
"Will do, buchou! Oh, before I forget, Takamura Harumi has offered up her services. She says she's good at hacking into the school computers."
"Alright. I'm sure her skills will come in handy sometime. I'll talk to her when we get back to school. Is that all?"
"Yep, that's all."
"Goodbye then."
"Bye! Suzuki Rin, out!"
The call was ended and I turned back to my food.
"So," Dino said, failing to hide his curiosity, "would you mind if I asked you what that was all about?"
"Not at all." I swallowed one last spoonful of food before answering. "Somehow, I started something similar to a detective agency."
"Oh? How?"
"I'm still not too sure how, but I suspect it was because people kept coming to me for help and obviously I couldn't do it all by myself, so I had to ask friends to help me. Then someone got the idea that we were a group dedicated to helping others solve their problems, and now here I am." I chewed on a piece of pork and swallowed. "It's not a bad business though; we get paid in information, food, and favours."
"That sounds like fun," Dino said.
"I suppose it is," I agreed. "I particularly like my position as the head. When we get paid in secrets, I get to know all of it, while my... subordinates, I guess you could call them, only know what they need to know."
"Sounds like you hold a lot of people's secrets."
"Oh, I do, and it's great. Knowledge is power, after all."
how does one end chapters? this one knows not
glassSS: when i received the notification for your review, i just smiled at it for a full minute. thank you.
HikariNoTenshi-San: Ietsuna was the older brother of tokugawa tsunayoshi and child of tokugawa iemitsu, so that's where we get the name. it doesn't really matter what gender lindsey was in his past life. i think luca de luca is roughly translated to light of the light. probably not. i don't really have any plans for him. as of now, her hair is still impractically long and without tsuna there she keep it in a half-hearted braid.
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