hotmtlnovel Chapter 45 Nighttime Cleaning
Chapter 45 Nighttime Cleaning
When Shinichi Izumi pushed open the door, panting, the clock on the wall already pointed to 8:30.
"I'm back……"
Shinichi's voice was soft, carrying an undisguised weariness.
"Hey, Shinichi! You're finally back."
Hearing the noise, Nobuko Izumi, the mother, immediately poked her head out of the kitchen, her face full of worry.
"Why are you so late? I called you but you didn't answer. Did something happen at school?"
The father, Izumi Kazuyuki, who was sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper, also put down the newspaper and scrutinized his son.
"Even though you're a high school student, if you're not going home for dinner, you should at least call home. Your mom reheated the food again and again."
"Shinichi? What's wrong? You look so pale?" Nobuko Izumi noticed her son's unusual appearance and quickly came over to touch his forehead.
Shinichi instinctively took a half step back, dodging his mother's hand. That action not only stunned Nobuko, but also froze Shinichi himself.
"Ah...no, it's nothing." Shinichi lowered his head, afraid that someone would notice something was amiss.
"On the way back... I ran into a few friends, chatted for a while, and didn't notice the time."
"Friend? Which friend? Is it Rimi?" The mother's gossip radar went off instantly, and her tone softened slightly.
"No...no, it's just a few...new friends."
Shinichi gave a vague answer, changed his shoes, and went into the dining room. Looking at the table laden with delicious food, he had no appetite whatsoever.
Shinichi hurriedly shoveled down a couple of mouthfuls of rice, not even touching his favorite saury, before putting down his chopsticks. "I'm going back to my room to rest now. Don't call me tonight."
After saying that, he rushed up the stairs as if fleeing.
Nobuko Izumi looked at her son's closed bedroom door and put down her soup spoon with a hint of disappointment: "This child... why has he been acting so strange lately? He was never like this before."
"Alright, stop worrying about it."
Izumi Ichiyuki picked up the newspaper again, sighed, and spoke with the comforting tone of someone who had been through it all.
"You know, Shinichi is already a sophomore in high school. Boys at that age always have things they don't want to tell their parents. Give him some space, he'll be fine in a while."
"Is that so...?" Nobuko was still a little worried, but she finally nodded. "I hope it's just puberty."
Second floor, bedroom.
"puff."
The door was locked from the inside. Shinichi leaned against the back of the door and slid down into a long, empty seat, as if all his strength had been drained away.
Almost at the same instant, his previously lifeless right hand suddenly began to twitch violently.
A large eye suddenly opened, then a mouth opened and a gasping sound was heard.
"Finally... I'm back."
Mickey's voice carried a rare hint of weariness. It even extended two tentacles and mimicked a human wiping sweat from its "forehead," which was not actually sweaty.
"What just happened was a near-death experience. Shinichi, please try to avoid contact with those two humans in the future, especially the white-haired man."
Shinichi slumped helplessly to the floor, tossing the black metal card onto the table: "Do you think I wanted this? They came looking for me!"
"Now that you're awake, we need to talk." Shinichi got up and sat in the computer chair.
"You were asleep just now, so you didn't hear a lot of things."
For the next ten minutes, Shinichi recounted every word, every expression, and even every subtle movement of Arima Kishou in great detail.
After hearing the retelling, Mickey fell into a long silence. Its big eyes darted around in the air, clearly engaged in intense logical calculations.
"Brainwave identification... is theoretically feasible."
Mickey jumped onto the computer desk, and several tentacles instantly split into dozens of tiny fingers, which began to frantically type on the keyboard.
"If humans really master this technology, it will be a catastrophe for us parasitic organisms."
The cursor on the screen was flashing rapidly.
"GOC... Global Occult Alliance..."
Windows on the screen switched rapidly: search engines, dark web nodes, public databases of various governments…
As a parasitic organism with exceptional learning and data processing abilities, Mickey thrives in the online world. It attempts to salvage even the smallest fragment of information about this mysterious organization from the vast ocean of the internet.
However, the result puzzled it, or rather, it puzzled "him".
Ten minutes later, Mickey stopped operating.
"Can't find it?" Shinichi asked nervously.
"No, we found it. But the information is too little, abnormally little."
Mickey pointed to a line of small print on the screen: "There is indeed a department with the abbreviation GOC in the list of UN agencies. But publicly available information shows that it is just a little-known office responsible for coordinating 'non-traditional security threats' and dealing with issues such as climate anomalies and geological disasters."
"Aside from appearing on the lists of natural disaster aid recipients in several Third World countries, there is absolutely no information about their staffing, organizational structure, or funding sources."
"There is no official website, no news reports, and even the so-called 'office location' is unclear."
"There are only two possibilities. First, they are fraudsters, using someone else's name to make a big deal out of nothing; second, they are a highly sophisticated and secretive shadow organization with the authority to erase online traces."
"Considering the terrifying sense of oppression emanating from that white-haired man... I lean towards the second one."
"Then... what's your opinion?" Shinichi swallowed hard, looking at the black business card on the table.
"Should we join? Or... run away?"
"Run away?" Mickey shook his head (swinging his wrist). "If they really have that kind of 'brainwave radar' that can detect my presence from thirty meters away, and even pinpoint your home address precisely, there's no point in running away. In this modern society full of surveillance, we have nowhere to hide."
"As for joining..."
Mickey's eyes became somewhat puzzled.
"I'm confused, Shinichi. According to my calculations, if they really are an organization targeting 'parasite hunting,' the most rational thing to do is to execute us on the spot, or capture you and dissect you for research. After all, a mutant with human consciousness is extremely valuable, whether as a sample or a threat."
"But they didn't. That man named Pei Qi even gave you a choice. This behavior is logically contradictory."
"Maybe...they really are good people?" Shinichi asked tentatively.
“‘Good person’ is a subjective term with no definitional value,” Mickey retorted coldly.
"I'm more inclined to think they're playing the long game. Or, we possess some kind of value that they need, but that you have to 'voluntarily' provide."
"The man said it was a 'private line' and there was no time limit for responding."
"This shows they're not in a hurry. Let's maintain the status quo and observe their next move. If this organization is indeed hunting parasites in this area, we'll see results very soon."
"After all, my life is tied to yours. Let's be prudent and not act rashly until we are absolutely certain of victory."
"In short, the current advice is: wait and see."
Mickey withdrew into Shinichi's palm, his voice gradually lowering.
"Don't reach out first, but don't immediately refuse either. Keep that business card safe; perhaps at some point in the future... it will come in handy for us..."
……
Far from the new family home, in an old office building neighborhood, this place may seem like an ordinary commercial office area, but a different atmosphere is surging in the shadows.
A black luxury sedan silently pulled up to the side of the road.
"arrive."
Pei Qi pushed open the car door and stepped onto the somewhat slippery mossy road surface.
He held a tactical terminal that resembled a tablet computer in his hand, and the 3D map displayed on the screen perfectly overlapped with the building in front of him.
Ahead was a three-story building with many of the exterior tiles peeling off. The curtains were tightly drawn, and not a single ray of light could see through.
On the outer wall are political posters by politician Takeshi Hirokawa, who campaigned for elections.
"Yes, this is it."
"Based on the intelligence provided by Sato and the comparison with the city-wide surveillance system of the GOC system, several high-risk targets identified as 'Parasyte' have been frequently entering and leaving the underground parking lot and back door of this building recently."
"Although it's not time for the final battle yet, since we're passing by, let's clean this up while we're at it. The few 'flies' hiding in this building will help ease the pressure on the Operations Department's full-scale sweep later."
Arima Kishou, standing behind him, remained expressionless, silently tightening his grip on his briefcase, his eyes already fixed on several blind spots in the building's entrance surveillance cameras.
"Arima, as you know, while I enjoy giving orders, I sometimes want to stretch my muscles. And also... test the power of this new weapon."
The voice just fell.
Under Arima Kishou's unwavering gaze, Pei Qi did not pull out a weapon from his pocket. Instead, he lightly reached out and grabbed at the void, which was the system's built-in [backpack].
"Buzz—"
The air twisted for a moment.
The next second, a briefcase that looked almost exactly like the one in Arima Kishou's hand, radiating a cold silver luster, appeared out of thin air in Pei Qi's hand.