Travelling Frog – Chapter 12 – Back to everyday life (II)

After recording the voice message in the last ten seconds and uploading it, Gin didn’t notice the line next to the voice message that said “CV: Kurosawa Gin”. He just felt like he had completed a difficult task and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Next time” he grabbed the rabbit’s ears and tapped its forehead twice: “Give me at least an hour’s notice before recording, and prepare the script for me – using normal language, understand?”

“Understood!” The rabbit nodded vigorously, looking very smart.

But soon it was back to acting stupid, scratching its ear and asking in confusion: “What kind of language is normal?”

“…”

Gin was genuinely frozen.

Emmm…… He who was a true villain template, how could he explain to this system that wasn’t even human what kind of language was considered normal?

Although the system looked stupid, it was still somewhat clever.

Gin thought for a long time, reflecting on his psychological bottom line over and over again, and finally came up with: “As long as it has nothing to do with love.”

“That’s simple. We’re not an otome game, let alone a romance game. There won’t be any romantic content.”

The rabbit promised without hesitation, speaking confidently and convincingly, which made Gin, who had not been beaten by life enough, believe in its words and not discuss it further. Instead, he picked up the bucket and mop and headed back to the bathroom.

As soon as he closed the bathroom door, the rabbit immediately fell into deep thought – which words were unrelated to love?

Gin was not sure what his confused system was thinking. He simply cleaned the upstairs and downstairs of the house, which already looked spacious due to the lack of furniture. Now, without the visual illusion of the filling of dust, the house looked even emptier, and even his slightly heavy footsteps could cause an echo.

“Kid, tomorrow go to the supermarket and buy more things, your room is so empty, how can I rest assured?” The rabbit sat on the coffee table and suddenly switched to its “respectable elder” personality module, advising him to take good care of himself.

This was still a “smart rabbit”.

Gin laid down on the sofa with his legs crossed, one hand holding his phone, and opened a new puzzle game recommended by the forum.

The rabbit hopped over and nestled in his shoulder, its bright eyes staring at the screen, watching him play.

It was a text-based puzzle game, not too difficult, but with a high cost of trial and error and a low tolerance for mistakes. A single mistake means starting over.

What was worse was that the game had no save function.

Gin had to start over three times in half an hour, either dying during the “interrogation” stage or getting stuck just before the solution was revealed. His fingers were becoming increasingly impatient with each tap on the screen.

If there was a save function, it wouldn’t be a problem; he could just pick up where he left off.

But there was no save function, which meant he had to start over every time he died, repeating the parts he had already solved, unable to skip them because it would affect the synthesis of subsequent clues so he might not even be able to get to the point where he failed before.

How should he evaluate this? The game was good, but the planner should be taken to the hospital along with their computer.

“Rubbish planner!” Gin and the rabbit cursed in unison.

He exited the game, deleted it, and threw his phone aside trying to calm down.

As he sat up, he glanced out the window and saw a boy walking towards him from the distance, his face bruised and battered, his body covered in injuries, limping like a zombie from “Plants vs. Zombies.”

However, the boy only looked heavily injured; in reality, they were all surface wounds that would heal with some medicinal oil in a couple of days. Of course, he would suffer a bit during the process; sometimes surface wounds were more painful than internal injuries.

Gin looked at him for a few seconds before looking away, not surprised to see someone like him in Namimori.

Here, anything could happen.

Outside the window, Tsunayoshi, who was walking back slowly, noticed someone watching him and turned his neck with difficulty to look at the place where the gaze was coming from but just saw a window with warm yellow light.

Namimori was large, and Tsunayoshi activities were mostly confined to his home and school, rarely coming to this side of town. Only recently, when Reborn asked him to find Kyoya for combat training, had he come here more frequently.

But in his memory, that house seemed to be unoccupied.

Had the owner returned? Or was the house rented out?

Tsunayoshi stared absentmindedly at the window as he walked, accidentally taking larger steps and pulling on the wound on his leg. It hurt so much that he couldn’t help but inhale sharply through his teeth while grimacing.

Clutching his leg with a pained expression, he couldn’t help but mutter: “Senior hit too hard ……even though he’s clearly addicted to games and doesn’t want to train me, he insists that true strength only comes from real combat, and makes me go to sensei’s place every day to get beaten up…”

Here, he exaggeratedly let out a long sigh and said: “Games have ruined me…”

Under the streetlamp: “Tsunayoshi figure was desolate and lonely.

The next morning, Gin was awakened by a bunny using its long ears to fan him. As soon as he opened his eyes, he was grabbed by a clothespin on the back of his neck and hung in front of the air conditioning unit.

“Hey hey hey! Didn’t you ask me to be your alarm clock?! How can you be so two-faced?!” The bunny shrunk its front paws and helplessly kicked its back legs, which made its fur stand up and look like a hedgehog doll from afar.

Ignoring it, Gin went straight into the bathroom to wash up. Ten minutes later, he came out slowly after changing out of his wrinkled pajamas.

“I’m going out to buy something. Stay home and don’t run around.”

Putting on a shirt and pants, he wore the gold-framed glasses he used as a disguise on his nose bridge, checked the time on his phone that had been charging all night and put on his Bluetooth headset before walking out.

“You have a mission on the task board.”

Before the words had even finished, the door slammed shut, locking the bunny inside.

The bunny: “…”

It was very angry.

Although there were convenience stores in the town, there were no large supermarkets so Gin couldn’t buy the refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines he needed here. So he drove the car arranged by the system to the neighboring Mihua Building to purchase daily necessities under the watchful eyes of his enemy.

It was much more exciting than catching shrimp with Amuro Tooru. Gin even thought about showing off his face in front of the “Red and Black Trio,” but since he was going to cause trouble in the New World in six days, he didn’t think it was necessary.

Exciting, but not exciting enough.

He first ordered several electrical appliances in the electronics section, took out the list he had made last night, calculated the distance of the items in the area, and decided to buy food first in the food section.

He could cook, but it was a bit troublesome to do it himself, so it was better to buy fast food.

Canned goods, instant noodles, biscuits, instant pasta, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages…

Gin pushed the small shopping cart from south to north, almost buying all kinds of fast food products except for the durian-flavored canned fruit.

These foods were enough for him to eat for a month, so at least during the intervals between the four missions, he didn’t have to worry about food anymore.

Looking at the cart with a third of space left, Gin took out his list to see how many daily necessities he still had to buy. Walking around the corner, he was still looking at the list and accidentally bumped into someone without looking up in time.

Sorry,” Gin instinctively grabbed the list and tightened his grip on the cart. As he looked up, he suddenly froze in place.

It was Hideyoshi Akai?

Gin hesitated to speak, forcefully holding back the name that was about to come out of his mouth.

“Bang–“

A loud noise awakened both of them from their trance, and they turned to look in the direction of the sound – Akai had crushed a beer bottle in his hand.

The clear yellow liquid poured out from between his fingers, and the broken glass pieces fell to the ground. Akai opened his hand and smiled slightly at the stunned attendant who was frozen next to him: “Sorry, I’ll pay for the beer, please clean it up.”

“It’s, it’s okay.” Attendant blushed and hurriedly ran to get the cleaning tools.

Gin had originally intended to slip away while Akai and the waiter were talking, but as he lifted his foot, Akai grabbed the handlebar of the cart and pulled it towards him.

Caught off guard, Gin stumbled two steps forward and looked at him incredulously: “What do you want?”

Akai trembled when he spoke, but when he took a deep breath and suppressed the emotions in his chest, he released the handle and adjusted his glasses. He gave Gin a smile that was characteristic of him, but it still felt eerie to Gin.

“Sorry, you look a lot like…my ‘lover’ who passed away.” Akai said.

As he spoke, Akai suddenly paused as if he were choosing a suitable identity for someone. Gin looked at him strangely, feeling the urge to retort.

Fortunately, before he could lash out, Akai had already chosen an identity for him and spoke again: “You look a lot like my deceased ‘lover’.”

Gin: “…”

What nonsense was he talking about? Did he go crazy after the organization fell?

Using the same willpower he had used to deal with the organization’s infiltrators in the past, Gin suppressed his urge to swear and said mechanically: “Dead cannot come back to life. Please accept my condolences.”

After saying that, he turned his cart around to leave.

“Wait a minute.” Hideyoshi Akai hurriedly caught up and stood in front of the cart in three or two steps. This was completely his subconscious reaction. When he regained his senses and met Gin’s obviously displeased gaze, he also felt that he acted too abruptly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend just now, I…”

“It’s fine.” Gin coldly interrupted him: “If there’s nothing else, can I leave now?”

Hideyoshi Akai opened his mouth to say something, but couldn’t get past the hurdle in his heart. He moved aside somewhat dejectedly: “Of course.”

Gin nodded to him, pushing the small cart and quickly circling around the shelf before hurriedly walking out of the food area.

Watching him leave, a severe pain suddenly spread across the palm of Hideyoshi Akai hand, where the wound had already stopped bleeding but the alcohol had seeped in, causing a burning sensation that spread up his arm and made the old injury at the corner of his eye ache faintly.

The pain proved it wasn’t a hallucination or a dream.

Hideyoshi Akai clutched his wrist and inadvertently glanced down, seeing a lone packet of pork bone noodles that had fallen to the ground, which should have been dropped by Gin. He bent over, picked it up, and put it in his own cart.

“Gin, my beloved archenemy lover, long time no see.”

.

After walking for some time, Gin realized that Hideyoshi Akai didn’t follow him so he slowed down his pace.

But he wasn’t at ease because he knew that Hideyoshi Akai must have recognized him.

A person’s temperament was difficult to change, especially someone like Gin. Although he had died once, his body was still the same – thanks to the high-tech system – so it was even less likely for him to have any essential changes.

Who was Hideyoshi Akai? He was the FBI’s ace investigator, and he had been entangled with him for so many years. If he couldn’t recognize him after such a close encounter, he might as well retire.

But what if he recognized him?

His archenemy was Gin, what does that have to do with me, Kurosawa Gin?

Gin adjusted his glasses and turned slowly towards the household goods section.



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Brother Xiu: “arch-enemy lovers” classic return.jpg

 

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