Chapter 28
What seemed like hours, it was much shorter than the trio thought when they heard about Meiko's story. Sworn to secrecy, they managed to keep quiet about it. No one is to know any of this. Towa's phone vibrates to alert her that she got a message. She pulls it out of her pocket to see what it is.
"Towa, there's more about Neru Memori. Please come to my house immediately."
Uncle Inu.
Towa raised her one brow. "What's up, Towa?" Moroha asks her as she turns her head over her left shoulder while resting the back of her head onto her hands.
"Your father wants me to come over to your place. He found out more about the Neru Memori tree at the school." Towa answers in an obvious manner.
"But why though? Did our dads put the mission on hold? I feel that there's something missing here." Moroha narrows her brown eyes in suspicion.
Setsuna nods to agree. "Indeed. Maybe they're making us do this without realizing it."
They run as fast as they can to Moroha's house. So far they only see Inuyasha and Kagome's vehicles in the driveway. Moroha sniffs the area. "It's just my parents. I don't smell your parents." She informs her cousins. They enter rather cautiously. "Mom. Dad. I'm home, along with Towa and Setsuna." Moroha calls out to wherever her parents are located. After taking off their shoes.
"Don't move." Inuyasha suddenly said as he comes into the mudroom where the girls entered through. "What's going on, Dad?" Moroha asks him quietly.
Inuyasha gestures them to follow him into the basement. "Listen carefully, there's something wrong with the house. You are to stay here until it's safe for you to come out." He seriously said to the girls.
The trio obeyed Inuyasha's ordered and enter the basement. "Towa, do you have that picture from before?" Inuyasha asks his white-haired niece. Towa nods and shows Inuyasha the image.
"Good, now. I just want you to know that we've witnessed what Meiko told you earlier." Inuyasha speaks up.
"You mean, you eavesdropped on the conversation." Moroha points out to him. Inuyasha turns to her. "More like spying as well having a stakeout. We cannot be notice."
"So what does the image have to do with the conversation?" Towa asks him. Inuyasha nods, "Did you remember what the front article had on the page?"
The girls think back. That's when it hit them. "The tree from the remote location." Towa said to him. Inuyasha nods again. "It took me awhile, but I was able to find the same tree located near the prison where that escapee was from."
"Do you have an idea where this remote location is?" Setsuna asks him. Inuyasha pulls out the computer in the basement's office. "It's right here." He points towards the monitor so the girls can see it too. "It's an island." Moroha said first.
"This is no ordinary island, Moroha. "This one is to be removed from the map. That's why there's no signals to interact with them." Inuyasha explains to her.
"If that's true, then how is it in the papers? Wouldn't anyone know where to look?" Towa asks him.
"Even if it's in the paper, they don't really tell the exact location of the island." Inuyasha leans back a little. Towa realized something.
"Uncle Inuyasha, there's something else we want to know about." Towa said to him in a hoping tone.
Inuyasha turns the chair to see that Towa has a page of the journalist that she found out through Moroha's bracelet. "Do you know who this person is?"
Inuyasha looks closely to read the name. "Hiroshi Ginta." He turns his chair around and types in the name. The search doesn't take a second to reveal a few websites with the person's name on it. "Turns out that he was a brilliant writer for the local newspaper. One of his famous ones was the case being solved by a 4-year-old girl. The case of the Purifier."
Just reading made him leans back into his chair. "Does the school know about this?" He asks Moroha with a glance. Moroha shakes her head. "I'm just as shocked as you, Dad. I was going to ask him a few questions on why he wrote it in the first place."
"No. The fact is that any individual under the age of 18 is left to not to be named. I'm just glad that you weren't identified."
Setsuna comes to him on the other side of the chair. "Then who will ask Hiroshi Ginta? There has to be a reason behind all of this." Inuyasha nods. "That's true. The fact is that we cannot be noticed by any journalist or paparazzi. Any of them are too nosy to write down the slightest detail about us. I'm just curious how he was able to get the information about the case."
That made the girls groans in disappointment. "I guess we're at a dead end." Moroha comments as she sits down on the couch.
"Just leave the questions to me, Moroha. I'll be in my human disguise and tell him that I'm doing a subject at the university. They can't refuse that part." Inuyasha assures her. That made the girls smile.
The following morning, after Moroha left for school, Inuyasha gets into his car and heads off to the town's newspaper. It doesn't take him that long until he enters the company's parking lot. But before he gets out he puts on his own charm that he used for his previous task at school. Turning into a human, he made sure he had short hair that no one would recognize him, and he made sure that his red tie has the micro camera pin on along with a microphone under it.
He gets in the front doors of the building. So far, he's in the lobby seeing other paper talking among with other people. He comes up to one of them. "Excuse me, can you help on where I can find this man?" Inuyasha pulls out a picture of Hiroshi Ginta.
"Oh, he's in the conference room down that way. You should know, he wants to know every single thing about anyone who talks with him." The one worker warns him. Inuyasha nods. "Don't worry. I'll make he doesn't." He walks in the direction of the conference room. He comes to a door and peeks through the glass of the door to see a man in the middle of the room with various of topics. Inuyasha knocks on the door.
The door opens up to reveal Hiroshi Ginta. "Who are you? And how is it that you know me?" Ginta said with an unamused look. Inuyasha smiles. "I'm actually helping my daughter with a school project and she wants to know more about the article that you wrote for Purifier case a decade ago."
Ginta blinks his grey eyes a few times. "I'm sorry. I don't recall ever writing about the Purifier." He said to Inuyasha as he walks away in the room.
Inuyasha secretly smiles, 'Luckily, Moroha lend her charm to let me know if he's lying and from the looks of it, it's definitely working.' Inuyasha digs into the messenger bag and pulls out the article from Moroha that she took from the club.
"But why would your name be on the article, even if what you told me that you didn't wrote it?" Inuyasha sets the paper onto the table for Ginta to look at it. Ginta looks closely at the name of the write. 'Hiroshi Ginta.'
"You must be confused with another person. I'm not one who would barge in unnoticed and get as much information." Ginta fibs more than he should.
A knock gets their attention. "Hiroshi Ginta, what's taking so long. Haven't you picked which article that is supposed to be the most read?" Inuyasha and Ginta look to see a middle aged man with black hair and blue eyes.
"Oh, I didn't know we had a guest here. I'm Kinka Fumigumo." Kinka introduced himself. "I'm Toga Takahashi." Inuyasha gives Kinka his disguised name instead of his own.
"So what brings you here to my building? I don't usually have people coming in unannounced." Kinka asks him politely despite that he's upset.
"I'm trying to get why your writer here wrote the Purifier article a decade ago." Inuyasha gets to the point of his visit. Kinka sees the article on the table.
"Ah, the Purifier case was interesting for sure. It was thanks to a four-year-old girl who helped solve the case. It's too bad we didn't get to meet her. You know about the policy of underaged children to be left anonymous in the news paper unless the paper approves the request." Kinka said to him.
"But then why is my name on the article? I didn't write any of this. I wasn't that old back then. I just graduated from high school." Ginta asks Kinka in anger.
Kinka smiles, "The thing is Ginta, someone else was going to write the article, but you decided to step in and take the credit. Besides, whenever an article has any agents in the story, they are to be left anonymous due to privacy concerns. Do you remember that?"
Ginta doesn't seem to believe him. "Then prove it."
Kinka goes into the newspaper archives to see the news footage. After finding the date matching with the date in the newspaper, there's Ginta in the background writing. "You were right there and that was your big moment. You had to do to be noticed. Simple as that." Kinka informs the writer.
Ginta sighs, "Fine, I lied because I didn't want to be famous."
"Being famous? Why not?" Inuyasha asks him. Ginta slaps his hand onto the table. "That's the point, if you want to be famous, you have to spy on other famous people to get some attention. But that's not what I wanted."
"So you really didn't want to write the article. But you were forced to take a more famous writer's place to do the job." Inuyasha said to him serious. Ginta nods. "Who was supposed to do it even though that writer wasn't supposed to at all."
Ginta points towards Kinka. "I was down with the flu at that time, and I couldn't do a thing. I had to let him take over to get it on the front page." Kinka raised his hands in defense. Inuyasha can sense that the bracelet was glowing again, confirming that Kinka is lying as well.
"Anyway, I only came by to ask the reason why you wanted to write the article in the first place." Inuyasha said to the two.
"I wanted to know how the four-year-old girl was able to solve the mystery with her family. If she's around, I bet she'd amazing to have an interview with me." Kinka answers truthfully this time.
Knowing fully well that Moroha would never have an interview with these two, Inuyasha nods. "It's too bad who don't know what she might look like now since 10 years have passed. There's no telling who she really is. I'll take this article and leave the place." Inuyasha dismissed himself and goes home.