Hiko finally picked out males under thirty with proper facial features from the documents and re-edited a new file.
He temporarily kept it as a reserve of suspicious candidates.
Among them, those with more refined features were male actors and idols, while the staff looked too ordinary.
To be safe, Hiko also randomly searched and verified the people in the files.
The results were not significantly different from the information in the documents.
The detective named Hasegawa was quite efficient.
After Hiko finished verifying, he checked the time: 11:19 a.m.
Wednesday.
Because he had stayed up late the previous night organizing documents and verifying information, when Hiko arrived at the classroom, there were already quite a few people inside.
He saw Ai napping with her head on her desk. Hiko noticed she looked very sleepy, so he didn't disturb her. He walked back to his seat, pulled out his chair, and sat down.
He habitually reached into his desk, intending to take out a book to read.
But instead, his hand touched a box inside the desk.
'I didn't put a box in there.' Hiko felt puzzled and took the box out.
The bottom felt warm and heavy, not like an empty box.
He pulled it out and saw it appeared to be a bento.
'Did someone mistakenly put a bento here for me?' Hiko looked around in confusion but didn't see anyone staring at him.
He took out a pen and poked Ai's cheek with the tip.
"What are you doing?" Ai woke up and looked at Hiko, full of confusion.
"After you arrived this morning, did anyone come to my seat?" Hiko asked directly, getting straight to the point.
"I didn't see anyone go to your seat while I was awake." Ai tilted her head and asked him, "Did something happen?"
"Nothing, it's just that someone put something in my desk. Do you know who it was?" Hiko rephrased his question.
"I don't know either, since I was asleep. If you hadn't woken me, I'd still be sleeping." Ai replied after thinking for a while.
This was a lie.
Hiko felt Ai knew who put the box in his desk but wasn't saying, and he didn't know why.
At this moment, Ai also showed curiosity, suddenly perking up and no longer lying on the desk. "What is it?"
"It should be a bento." Hiko took out the box but did not open it.
"That's so nice, someone sent you a bento," Ai said with an envious expression. "I wish someone would send me one too."
'Sure enough, she knows who put it there.' Hiko subconsciously analyzed her words.
She had said "someone sent a bento", not "someone put it in the wrong place" or "sent it to the wrong person." He couldn't remember having any friends who would send him a bento.
Would a stranger really send one?
'Could it be her?'
"Could it be that someone put it in the wrong place?" Hiko asked, trying to confirm his guess.
"If no one comes by lunchtime, then you'll know whether it was put in the wrong place or not. If it was, someone would definitely come to retrieve it." Ai replied calmly.
Her words still couldn't be deciphered.
"Then let's wait until noon," Hiko said resignedly.
Time flew by, and lunchtime arrived.
"No one has come to ask for your bento box," Ai said as she took out her own lunch and a thermos of hot water from her backpack.
"Yes, no one came." Hiko looked at Ai, searching for a flaw in her expression.
"Why don't you open it and see what's inside?" Ai urged him.
"But that wouldn't be good. Maybe the person is on their way," Hiko said, though his hands didn't stop. He opened the lid of the bento box anyway, because he couldn't shake the feeling that Ai was behind this.
Inside were rice, fried chicken pieces, ketchup, and a few green vegetables.
"That's so nice. You just said yesterday you wanted fried chicken, and today someone sent you a bento." Ai clasped her hands together with an envious expression.
Looking at Ai's seemingly genuine envy, Hiko felt suspicious. He decided to test her and said loudly, "If this isn't a bento you made, then I won't eat it. I'll just apologize to the person who made it and throw it away."
At that moment, all the students still in the classroom turned to look at Hiko and Ai's seats.
Ai opened her mouth to speak but, feeling the attention of her classmates on them, immediately grew conflicted.
She quickly wrote in her notebook, tore off the slip of paper, folded it, and tossed it to Hiko. Then she turned away, pouting angrily.
Hiko, bewildered by her sudden anger, picked up the note and unfolded it.
It read:
(I made the bento this morning! You must accept it! Don't throw it away!)
(Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot… Idiot! Idiot! This is a bento made to apologize for yesterday! Idiot, idiot… Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot…)
Aside from the first sentence, the entire page was filled with "idiot," with a single hidden line inside. Because it was written in Japanese, Hiko had to read through so many characters before he spotted it.
'It was her after all.'
Hiko opened the chopsticks inside the box and prepared to eat.
"Wait a moment, it's cold now. It'll taste better if you pour this over it." Ai stopped him. She opened her thermos and handed him the cup.
Hiko took it and poured the contents over the rice. Milky white hot soup streamed out, soaking the rice and making the bento steam.
After pouring the soup, he handed the bottle back to Ai.
She opened her own bento and poured soup over it.
But her lunch was completely different from his.
Her box had hot dogs cut like octopuses, a small piece of meat, and some green vegetables, but not the same kind as his. To an outsider, it would have been impossible to tell both bentos were made by the same person.
Ai had written "idiot" so many times simply because she'd been exposed.
What made her even more embarrassed was that not only had she been exposed, she had been exposed in front of the whole class.
"I won't make you bento anymore!" Ai said resentfully.
'Oh, this…' Hiko felt a pang of regret. If he'd known, he wouldn't have forced her to admit it. Now it was ruined.
She had gone to the trouble of making him a bento once, and it had ended like this.
And she said she would never make him one again… it was too painful.
"Ai, don't…" Hiko pleaded helplessly. "I was wrong, please don't be like this!"
"Hmph!" Ai ignored him, staring at the plain rice in front of her. She hesitated for a moment, then picked some up with her chopsticks and put it into her mouth.
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