Chapter 125: Mother and Sea (1/2)

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I didn’t want her to notice my tearful voice, so I couldn’t speak for a while.

Mother probably won’t be speaking with me. She is simply silent while stirring her glass.

After a few minutes of silence, a turururu sound rang.

It is the phone in mom’s room.

“Aah, so noisy. Even though I went through the trouble of leaving my smartphone behind. They even call me all the way here? What’s with this?”

Saying this, mother picked up the phone and just left it hanging.

She is originally a person that finds calls to be a pain, but it has gotten worse.

…No, maybe it was always like this when she was drinking alcohol.

Couldn’t it have been something important?

When she said she left her smartphone, there’s no doubt she meant leaving it at home.

I can see a tablet at the corner of the screen, so she must have deemed it enough to just have that. Because of the influence of my little sisters, mother was on the tablet side at a pretty fast stage.

“Where’s father?” (Hikaru)

“Can you please not talk about that idiot? He has been staying the whole time in the casino just because there’s a dealer with a bit of bust there. I can’t deal with him.”

Looks like father is the same as always.

The call connecting to mother was the worst of the worst, and I am feeling terrible here, but I can’t go cutting off the call here.

“…Mother, there’s something I want to ask… Something I have to ask.” (Hikaru)

“What’s the matter? I don’t know anything complicated, okay? Ask Celica about that stuff.”

“It isn’t anything complicated… Nanami…died, right? Uncle and auntie too… That…do people think I am still the culprit of that…?” (Hikaru)

Thinking about my number of viewers, I think I am still suspected to be.

However, there’s obviously the chance I am not.

For me who doesn’t open the messages…no, even if I were to open the messages, I don’t know the truth.

It is not like I can read the newspapers of Earth or watch TV.

My only connection with Earth are those messages that I don’t even know who was the one who sent them.

“Aah, that. It was crazy with you being called the culprit. Even completely unknown people would come complain to me, and Celica-chan accompanied me in order to do the procedures to move overseas, so that was a relief, but no matter the place in Japan, TV crew members and all other places would be following us and it was the worst!”

“That’s…my bad. Sorry.” (Hikaru)

“Well, we arrived in America, and no one knows of us now. Celica-chan gave me pocket money to play around, so I am feeling like I have joined the celebrities though~. Right right, I have bought a new car. Aston Martin. I was having a drive on the west coast, and it was the best. The evenings of Santa Barbara, the sun would dye everything bright red…”

Mother talks up a storm in a good mood.

In the end, she just wants to talk about herself as much as she can, and she is not the type to listen to others.

Even if that’s towards her son that was suddenly transferred to another world and she won’t be able to meet directly anymore.

That’s why, if I were to speak in between, she would just be displeased, and there’s low chance of her giving me the answer I want. Right now, I must ask her no matter what.

“Mother, I don’t have time. Please tell me at least if the culprit has been caught.” (Hikaru)

Thinking about it normally, the chances are low that he hasn’t been caught yet.

He had blood on him, and his fingerprints must have been left as well.

Of course, I must have been listed as a suspect too, but not investigating because of that…is not possible…I think.

If they were to investigate, I think they would immediately find the culprit. Or maybe it would be hard to arrest them unless they have more incriminating evidence?

Of course, if I were to open the box that is the message inbox, that information might be there somewhere.

But I have no way to confirm the verity of it.

If the whole world hates me and there’s someone who sends messages with lies just for the amusement of it, I would just be played like a fiddle by them.

Anyways, if it is Mother, she wouldn’t go out of her way to lie about it.

But the answer of Mother was something unexpected.

“Who knows. I don’t watch the news. In the first place, I have been on this ship almost right after you went off. At the very least, they haven’t caught them in that time, I think? Maybe they haven’t caught them yet?”

“I see… Thanks.” (Hikaru)

As I thought.

That reality made my heart grow heavy to a mysterious extent.

It is a shame, but that’s something I had factored in already.

It means that I have to live my whole life being treated as the killer.

More importantly, there’s something that bothered me.

“…Mother, you believe that I am not the killer?” (Hikaru)

If the culprit had escaped smoothly from the crime scene, it would be a situation where I am the only possible person you could think of.

Or more like, there’s no basis for it not being me. Anyways, the situation and the evidence was saying: Kurose Hikaru is the culprit.

Mother loves gossip, and I can imagine her making noise for amusement in a TV program or whatever about me killing my childhood friend and leaving to a parallel world. It is weird that she doesn’t believe that.

“At first, I thought you did it. But—”

Just before mom was about to say the reason…

*Don! Don! Don!*