After watching his grandpa leave, Shun fed his Pokémon dinner inside the bar, then walked out of the Sailors' Bar and headed for Keiko's massage shop.
He hadn't forgotten that there was still Keiko's situation to deal with. He had to make sure Keiko hadn't known anything and posed no threat to him before he could really relax.
He could protect himself, sure—but what about the kids at the orphanage, those defenseless children with no way to fight back against a grown adult? If there was any danger, he had to strangle it in the cradle.
On this trip to the massage shop, he'd come fully prepared. Even if he couldn't beat Keiko, he was confident he could escape and run back to ask Grandpa for help.
He'd carved Reiji's parting advice into his heart.
"The prettier a woman is, the better she is at lying."
That was what Reiji had told him.
Ahem. Reiji himself was a bit helpless about that. He hadn't come up with that line either. It was from the mother of Zhang Wuji in some ancient wuxia TV drama he'd watched as a kid. He'd felt the line was spot-on and had quoted it a lot in his last life when he used to jump people and steal their wallets, so he'd ended up telling Shun too.
If Shun turned out bad one day, that definitely wasn't because he taught him. That would be Shun's "natural talent," not Reiji's loose tongue.
…
At Keiko's massage shop, Shun pushed the door open and walked in, only to see Keiko spacing out behind the front counter.
"Keiko-nee, Keiko-nee, I brought Poliwhirl for a massage."
Seeing her absentminded, Shun waved his hand in front of her face. At the same time, he tightened his grip on Poliwhirl's Poké Ball.
If Keiko suddenly lashed out at him, he'd immediately send out Poliwhirl to attack.
"Huh? Shun? You haven't come by in ages. What have you been busy with lately?"
Keiko snapped out of her daze. Shun standing there in front of her gave her a good scare, and she patted her chest to calm herself down.
"I've been training my Pokémon. I came to the Pokémon Center for treatment today, so I figured I'd drop by and say hi."
Shun was startled by her yelp and instinctively took two steps back.
But he quickly calmed down. Lying without blushing or panicking came naturally now. After following Reiji around for so long, he was very used to lying.
Ahem. Not that Reiji had taught him to lie. They were law-abiding citizens, okay? Why would they need to lie?
"Keiko-nee, help massage my Poliwhirl."
Shun released Poliwhirl and had it lie down on the massage bed. Keiko rolled up her sleeves and walked over.
"Okay, okay. Meowth, time to work. How many Pokémon are we doing today, Shun?" Keiko asked with a smile as she started the massage.
"Just Poliwhirl today."
Shun kept smiling as well, then suddenly let out a soft "oh?" of curiosity. "Keiko-nee, how come I don't see Ren-nii around?"
"Ah, Ren? The club said he was sent out on a business trip. I don't know how long he'll be gone."
Keiko sighed lightly, a trace of loss crossing her face. The club had told her Ren was going on a one-month trip, and she hadn't seen him in ten days.
"A business trip, huh…"
Shun muttered under his breath and stared hard at Keiko's expression. Aside from that bit of sadness, he didn't see any hint that she knew Ren had gone missing or died—no collapse, no grief. He also didn't see any fear at him walking in alive and well.
Either Keiko was putting on an act, or she really had no idea what had happened to Ren. The club had actually hidden Ren's death from her. Maybe the club itself didn't know he was dead, or maybe they wanted to quietly investigate how he'd died.
But ten days had passed and they still had nothing. They probably weren't going to get anything at this point.
Only Ren's group of three and their targets knew what had happened that night. How were you supposed to investigate that?
As for the sailors and captain of that ship, they knew Reiji and Shun existed but had never really seen their faces. All they knew was that Reiji had a Poliwhirl.
Whether the club could even track down that luxury cruise was questionable, never mind tracing the trouble back to them.
Judging from Keiko's expression, she really didn't look like someone who knew Ren had hunted him. That let Shun relax. He didn't need to kill Keiko. And he really didn't want to.
He kept chatting with her all the way through the massage, but never picked up anything suspicious in her behavior. When the massage was over, he recalled Poliwhirl, said goodbye, and left Keiko's shop.
Outside, he sent out Pelipper and had it carry him up onto the rooftop. Then he pulled out a pair of binoculars and continued to keep watch on Keiko.
Even if she likely didn't know anything, that didn't rule out the possibility of an act. If she was pretending, he'd definitely spot some slipups during surveillance.
And if she was pretending, then for the orphanage kids' safety, he'd have no choice but to kill her. He couldn't allow anyone with plans against the orphanage to live.
In the end, he watched all night. From Keiko closing up shop, to heading home, to lights-out and sleep, she didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He stuck it out all the way into the second half of the night.
The next day, he brought another Pokémon for a massage and saw Keiko again, leaning on the counter with her chin in her hands, spacing out. She was probably thinking about Ren.
After she finished massaging Breloom, Shun once again monitored her until late at night and still found nothing strange.
It wasn't until the night of the third day that two special guests walked into Keiko's shop: Officer Jenny and a senior instructor from the Electric-type Club—Taro.
"Miss Keiko, you can call me Taro. I'm the owner of the Electric-type Club."
Taro introduced himself as he entered the shop with Officer Jenny. Keiko had seen him a few times at the club, but they'd never spoken before.
"Hello, Officer Jenny. Did something happen to Ren?"
Keiko knew who Taro was—Ren's boss at the club, that was about it. She also knew Officer Jenny, and the fact that this now involved her gave Keiko a bad feeling.
"Miss Keiko, please cooperate and answer a few questions for me. When was the last time you saw Ren, and what did he say?"
Officer Jenny took out a notebook, ready to record Keiko's statement.
"It was more than ten days ago at night. Ren told me not to wait for him, said I should close up and go home by myself. I haven't seen him since…"
Keiko had no idea why Officer Jenny was asking this, but that bad feeling in her chest just kept getting stronger, like something awful was about to be said.
"And after that?" Officer Jenny continued.
"That's it. When he left, those were the only things he said." Keiko shook her head, then quickly asked, "Officer Jenny, what happened to Ren?"
"Miss Keiko, Ren went missing ten days ago."
Seeing that Keiko genuinely didn't know, Officer Jenny finally told her Ren's current status.
"But the club said…"
Keiko turned to Taro. When she'd gone to the club to look for Ren, they'd told her he'd gone on a business trip.
"Miss Keiko, besides Ren, two other club employees are also missing. Because the club needs to cooperate with Officer Jenny's investigation, they temporarily kept the full truth from you. On behalf of the club, I'd like to apologize…"
Seeing Keiko on the verge of tears, Taro bowed slightly and let out a quiet sigh. He was helpless, too. The guy had practically been ready for a promotion to coach, and then vanished right before the assessment. They couldn't even find him to test him…
"Then… Ren, he…"
Keiko's voice shook. She was terrified of hearing something awful. Her knees gave out, and she almost fell.
Officer Jenny stepped forward quickly and caught her just in time.
"Miss Keiko, we confirmed that Ren was last seen on a luxury cruise. This is a photo a tourist snapped."
Officer Jenny took out the last picture of Ren, which they'd gotten from the ship's captain.
"It was a cruise the club booked for them. Two days after they boarded, contact was lost."
Taro glanced at the photo and immediately chimed in, nailing down the narrative that the three of them had gone on a business trip and disappeared while traveling.
The club wasn't trying to throw the blame onto itself for nothing. It had its own reasons. Either way, they'd lost three people. That was trouble no amount of spin could erase.
"What about after that? What happened in the end?"
Keiko stared at Ren's final photo—just a side profile—and tears quietly fell from her eyes, landing right on his face.
"That cruise was attacked by pirates. According to the captain, things were chaotic at the time. Ren most likely ran into the pirates…"
Officer Jenny didn't continue. The situation was already obvious. The three of them had almost certainly encountered pirates and been killed.
As for why the captain helped Reiji and Shun hide their presence on the ship—why he kept quiet about them when talking to Officer Jenny—that was simple enough.
Ren's group's valuables were still in the captain's hands. That was his hush money.
As long as the captain kept his mouth shut, the sailors would be easy to deal with.
If the captain handed over those belongings, it would open up a whole string of questions. Who were those two? Why had Ren been chasing them? Why had they come aboard the ship? What was their objective?
To avoid that kind of headache, the captain said nothing about the two of them. Still, the club wanted answers. They wanted to know how their people had died. When they paid the right price, the captain eventually talked—just not to Officer Jenny.
The club learned that the three of them had gone out on an under-the-table job and ended up dying at sea.
"What about the bodies? His body? Even if he's gone, there should at least be a body…"
Clutching the photo, her face streaked with tears, Keiko begged Officer Jenny to bring Ren's body back.
"We couldn't find one."
Officer Jenny couldn't bear to look at Keiko and lowered her head slightly in apology.
"Miss Keiko, Ren went missing at sea because he accepted a business trip from the club. He was passionate and dedicated in his work, and his abilities and professionalism were widely recognized and praised by everyone at the club. He made many contributions to the company…"
"Ren was an exceptional employee, and an indispensable one. We don't want to lose someone like him either. But it's already been ten days, and we still haven't gotten any news of him. On behalf of the club, I'd like to apologize and offer my condolences…"
"Miss Keiko, please accept this compensation package. It's what Ren is owed for everything he gave the company. In his journal, you were the only family he had…"
"None of that matters if he's gone…"
Keiko let the photo slip from her powerless fingers and saw Taro set a cardboard box and a black plastic bag in front of her.
The box contained Ren's personal effects. The black plastic bag held the death benefits the club was paying out because he'd "died on a business trip."
She didn't even look at the money in the bag. Instead, she opened the box and saw the journal Taro had mentioned. The first page was a photo of her and Ren together. The pages after that were full of words, recording all their little moments from childhood to now.
Staring at the lines of text, her vision slowly blurred, as if a sheet of water had covered the page.
She stared blankly at these familiar yet suddenly distant objects, then clapped a hand over her mouth and broke down crying, tears falling in big drops onto the notebook.
Seeing this, Officer Jenny and Taro quietly stepped out of the shop, leaving Keiko alone inside to face her memories. There wasn't anything they could do here. She'd have to find her own way through it.
Out on the street, Taro parted ways with Officer Jenny, then silently lit a cigarette and began walking back toward the Electric-type Club.
He knew exactly how Ren had died. He knew Ren wasn't "missing." Ren was dead.
They also knew there had been two killers. But none of that mattered. The important thing now was to cooperate with Officer Jenny and settle this case once and for all—to fix its label as a pirate attack, not the work of some "third party," not a conspiracy, just a straightforward death in a pirate raid.
After all, three club employees had gone off the books to do private jobs and died outside. That was going to come back on the club, because its employees weren't allowed to take private work during their contract period. Even if they did, they could never admit it, or they'd owe penalties.
But the families of the dead wouldn't see it that way. So the club wasn't going to be polite about it either. It was going to use the cause of those three deaths to achieve what it wanted.
That was the same reason they hadn't passed along the captain's story to Officer Jenny.
The logic was simple. The details of how they died didn't matter. The killers—those small-fry nobodies—didn't matter. What mattered was the outcome, and whether it served the board's interests. Taro's family was one of the club's major shareholders.
They didn't care why Ren had gone off on his own, what his objective had been, why he'd died at sea, or who had killed him.
They didn't care at all. They cared about the club's reputation. They cared about whether the club could keep making money. They cared about whether this incident would hurt the club. They cared about whether handling it properly could restore the club's public image—or even raise it higher.
The answer was obvious. From today on, the way the club treated employees who died on the job would become one of its selling points, something that shaped how outsiders saw it.
Everything was moving exactly the way they'd planned. Employees who'd snuck out for private work had been rebranded as people who went on a business trip for the club. If pirates attacked, they'd condemn the pirates. If people died, those people became "excellent employees of the club" and "great trainers of the League."
They'd died. They'd bravely fought pirates and protected the lives of League citizens. They'd fallen on the front line against pirates. They were the League's promising young trainers—and the club's outstanding employees.
The club would forever remember the day they "set off on a business trip" and "gave their lives at sea." Their names would hang on the club's wall of honor, where their heroic deeds would be displayed for the world.
These three "heroes" came from the Electric-type Club. They were the club's exemplary employees…
All the world needed to know was that the heroes had come from here, and that they had given their lives in the fight against pirates.
The heroes were excellent employees of the club, and excellent trainers of the League…
That was all anyone needed to know. As long as everyone believed the heroes had died fighting pirates, nothing else mattered.
(End of chapter)
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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