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Cop Craft Volume 4 Chapter 3 Part 2

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“Translator: ClefRunner”

“Editor: Weasalopes”

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Watching police dramas and reading police novels, the “reality” of scientific investigations and procedures was overly dramatized, and the seriousness and textbook handling of cases was particularly noticeable. Matoba always thought to himself how they “didn’t do things that seriously all the time”, while laughing bitterly, but that Hernandez guy behaved like one of those Super Detectives straight out of those dramas.

However, reality was completely different. Stories like the one about Matoba finding the dead homeless guy while patrolling were common, and most of his coworkers had experienced similar situations countless times before.

The real world was all like that, full of mediocrity, and irresponsibility, and immorality that was usually left out of any official documents. Just like how hundreds of grotesque and disgusting bugs would come out crawling from underneath the rocks on the side of the river when someone tipped them over. But since writing about those things on a personal blog or a facebook profile would mean big trouble, no one talked about them. But everybody was like that.

Of course precisely because of that carelessness, some major incidents would happen from time to time and well— only the major, severe incidents were the ones left behind in history, being passed down vaguely from person to person, attracting all sorts of conspiracy theorists.

Most of those subjects surrounded by whispers of an organized conspiracy theory were in reality just the result of a huge blunder on someone’s part during an investigation that resulted in an organized cover up attempt. There was an annoyingly large amount of cases like that.

Of course, within that huge mess some true conspiracies were hiding as well. Which was precisely why it was all so bothersome.

But leaving all that aside, Matoba still felt something he could not describe when it came to Hernandez’s overzealous attitude.

Matoba finished eating the cheeseburger and everything else, and walked towards his own car in the parking lot, but this time he was interrupted by a call from the head officer of the Goranbitha County Police Department.

「We got them」
「What?」
「We got the two fugitive smugglers. Two of them. They were staying in a motel on the outskirts of Imu Bérbe. One of our novices got a lead on their whereabouts」
「Imu Bérbe? Ah…」
「Ah, there’s no way you’d know where that is. It’s a pretty removed small rural town」

He did not know indeed.

District names inside San Teresa City were easy to remember as they were all in English, but further away rural places in Cariaena Island retained a lot of their original names in Farbani or even older languages. Just like how the further west into the United States a place is, the more likely it is to retain its original Native American name. In contrast to names like New York or Virginia, there were places named Chiricahua, or Nutrioso, with strange pronunciations that Matoba’s ear wasn’t used to (well, it’s not like he knew the origin of those words for a fact, but he definitely thought they sounded strange).

Cariaena Island was a miniature version of that. Even the place they had visited the previous day, Goranbitha, was an example of that. It meant “wide swamp” in Farbanian, with “Goran” being “wide” and “Bitha” being “swamp”.

On that note, Tilarna’s frequently used phrase “The cannibal demons from Obitha” was also an example of that, with “Obitha”, properly separated as “O bitha”, considering the prefix “O” also served as an equivalent to English’s definite article “The”. So basically a place named “The swamp” implied that she was referring to a well known place, the swampiest of swamps, probably.

The much more difficult origin of the name Imu Bérbe was a complete mystery to Matoba. He couldn’t even imagine where it would come from.

「Imu Bérbe has always been outside of our jurisdiction so it was never considered as a possibility for our investigation. We haven’t arrested them yet. They’re heading north down Road 23, but… we’re not sure we will be able to catch up to them. Their appearance and clothes are also vague, and we don’t even know what car they’re driving. I just wanted to let you know the rough state of affairs」
「Thanks for that, but wait a second. I was sure that they had to be on foot?」
「That’s right. It takes about three days to get to Imu Bérbe on foot. We don’t know if they stole a car somewhere along the way, but we haven’t received any theft reports so far」
「Have you told this to anyone else?」
「Just to the CBP」
「To Hernandez?」
「That’s right」
「Hm…」
Everything was coming together quite nicely. Matoba finished the conversation, hung up the phone, got in his car and started driving, but not towards the HQ downtown, but rather towards Seven Miles.

~o~O~o~

The road was empty, so it only took about twenty minutes for Cecil to get to Matoba’s (and by default Tilarna’s as well) house in New Compton.

Matoba’s house was formerly a warehouse that had been remodeled and adapted for living. The first floor was the garage, and the second floor consisted of the main living spaces. Tilarna’s room was adapted from an empty space left on the first floor that Cecil herself had helped with before. But even without all of that happening, this was a house that she knew very well. A house that she probably knew better than Tilarna herself.

The shutter of the garage was closed. There was a makeshift mailbox and doorbell right next to the garage shutter, so Cecil got out of the car and rang the bell.

No response.

She did it again. And once again there was no response.

This girl…

Cecil sighed and went to the side alley. Some old beer bottle baskets were lining up against the outer wall of the building. She moved one of them, and underneath it, there was a single empty bottle. And taped to the bottom of the bottle there was a spare key.

So he still hid it there after all. Even though he had changed all locks when they broke up, he still had slacked off on some aspects.

Cecil used that key and opened the garage shutter. She raised it up to about the height of her waist, then crouched and went inside the garage.

「Tilarna?! Are you there?! I’m coming in, okay?!」

The sound of the automatic shutters was loud, so she had to raise her voice considerably. The garage was completely empty. It seemed like Kei wasn’t home. She remembered how her beloved Cooper S would sometimes be parked on that very space, and felt slightly sad.

「Tilarna? Are you here?」

She first took a peek into Tilarna’s room on the first floor. There was nobody there. Apparently she had managed to decorate her room with Farbanian carpets and bedding, which made her room a lot better.

「Tilarna? Hey…」

She went upstairs to the second floor.

Immediately, Kuroi came out to meet her. She was normally a carefree “my pace” cat, but this time, for some reason, she was looking considerably upset, clinging to Cecil’s legs.

「Oh, who’s a good girl? There there, were you feeling lonely? You poor thing」

She took Kuroi in her arms, opened the door and crossed the narrow hallway. The living room looked terrible. There were small objects and cooking utensils scattered all over. A chair had fallen sideways on the floor. There were also documents scattered chaotically, and ketchup had been smeared on top of them. The floor of the kitchen was covered in the contents of the fridge that had been smashed against it, and the strong pungent smell of garlic oil, yogurt and orange juice was particularly noticeable.

「Wha… what even happened here?! Did you do this?」
「Nya—ow!」

Kuroi aggressively shook her head while being held in Cecil’s arms. That was an extremely unusual gesture for a cat. The small black cat pointed to herself and then gestured an “X” character in the air with her front paws, while Cecil was looking at her incredulously.

「Are you… trying to say that you didn’t do it?」
「Nya!」

Kuroi raised her front paws and then, starting off with an arch, gestured a large “O” character.

「Eh… what? Wait. You are Kuroi, right? What in the world…?」

Cecil realized how creepy it felt to describe what she was witnessing, and without thinking about it, threw Kuroi in fear near the edge of the stove.

「Nya… Unya?!」

It was not a particularly kind treatment, but for an attentive cat it should have been possible to correct their posture while falling through the air, and manage a clean landing. However, Kuroi clumsily fell through the air without correcting her balance, in an extremely uncatlike gesture, falling back first into the floor and letting out a loud shriek.

「Ah… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. That was scary, wasn’t it? I didn’t want to hurt you」

Cecil was reaching her hands out to her, but then Kuroi raised her front paw calmly in front of herself and waved it from left to right several times. In an extremely humanlike gesture that almost said “I get it. Don’t worry about it”.

It was an odd way of saying it, but it almost felt like Kuroi was a completely different person. All of her movements reeked of humanity, almost as if she was feeling cornered— and on top of that, the movements of her eyes were fundamentally different from those of a regular cat.

She almost looked like a cartoon cat, with her overly dramatic and exaggerated attitude.

That’s right, she’s a cartoon.

Even though she was a regular cat, she would let out some philosophical sighs, and shake her head violently in confusion. Not even the best CGI animation from recent years would be able to create such a perfectly anthropomorphized cat.

What’s going on…?

Even though she was extremely confused, Cecil was still a scientist. She thought back to the contents of the mail she had received. There was something about souls changing places and other stuff. And now, she had a cat putting a bizarre pantomime in front of her. Besides, all sorts of Semanian magical phenomena were possible and frequently extended over San Teresa city and Tilarna herself.

She had to throw away her intuition and her expectations, and think thoroughly about this. If the problem wasn’t necessarily that something strange had happened to her spirit, then the next most logical conclusion had to be—

「Wait a second, are you Tilarna?」
「Nya!」

She’s probably saying that I’m right.

After knocking on the table with her front paws, the black cat cuddled up to Cecil

「Yeah, this behavior. That’s not how a normal cat behaves, so you truly are…」

Kuroi ignored Cecil who was still confused, and instead started walking directly towards the dining table. A smartphone was beneath it. If Cecil remembered correctly, it was Tilarna’s.

「Nya…」

Kuroi looked up at her once, and meowed at her as if saying “Okay, now watch carefully”. She then pressed the home button, and entered the security pin.

The phone unlocked.

「Eh?!」

She then pressed the notepad icon and started typing with her tiny front paws. Her gestures were awkward and slow, but despite that the text she was writing made perfect sense.

“thanks for coming cecil”

She wrote

“im tilarna i became like this because of some mildi from the confiscated items”

Okay, so it’s magic. I’m going to believe her then.

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