Were there many murder cases in this city?
Lin had only been here twice, and two murder cases had already occurred. Yet, based on the information Lin had checked, the city's public security was excellent.
He didn't get involved. The police response was faster than Prometheus's speed in eating ice cream. They didn't need to get busy.
Lin and Prometheus stood aside with Rin, watching the police cars arrive like a gust of wind and set up the police line.
"Did... something happen?" Rin looked at the arriving police with some fear.
"..." Lin didn't speak, watching the disappointed people leaving, looking at them one by one.
Rin sister was taking so long to arrive, which gave him a premonition.
[Lin, this is the on-site surveillance footage]
While Lin was still contemplating, Prometheus connected directly to the system in his helmet and transmitted a video.
Lin glanced at her. Seeing her calmly eating her ice cream bite by bite, he opened the video.
"..."
A middle-aged man's corpse lay on the ground. His chest was brutally split open. The wound looked like it had been diagonally cleaved with a blunt cleaver. His internal organs were clearly visible, and his face was distorted in agony before death.
A long, pink-haired girl, holding a long blade, walked under the camera, looked up in panic when she saw the monitor, then was seen by a passerby, and immediately turned and fled out of the frame.
Lin silently finished the video. He compared the clear pink-haired girl in the footage with Ling's appearance and their consistent pink hair, then turned his attention to Prometheus.
[I cannot access the Moth of the Flame's database, so I cannot check the data for Rin sister, but based on visual comparison, the probability of them being sisters exceeds 90%.] Prometheus's eyes flashed with a faint red light. She hacked the surveillance to search for the location of Ling's sister, but she only appeared in the first shot. Then, Ling's sister vanished as if she had evaporated from the amusement park.
"The murderer is not her," Lin said flatly.
Hearing Lin mumbling, Ling turned her head: "Brother Lin, what did you say?"
"No... wait for us here."
Lin instructed Prometheus to push him to another isolated spot. Then, Prometheus said to Lin: "Lin, I have calculated the location of Ling's sister. Do you need to go there?"
Since the surveillance couldn't find her, they could inversely deduce the general location of Ling's sister based on the distribution of surveillance and the police encirclement. This was not difficult for Prometheus.
"No need. Go catch this person and take them to the police station. Don't worry about the rest."
Lin used his eye-controlled system to highlight a person in the crowd in the surveillance footage.
"Is this the murderer?"
"Mhm. The murder weapon is in his pocket."
"Okay."
Prometheus looked at the person's movements and appearance and nodded at Lin's judgment.
The wound on the victim's chest did not match the long blade the girl was holding, which was suspected to be the murder weapon. Furthermore, the victim's fatal wound would have caused instant death, making it impossible for him to crawl under the camera. The beginning of the surveillance footage showed the corpse rolling under the camera. An ordinary person wouldn't expose themselves like that. Therefore, it was likely a frame-up.
As for the murderer, finding them wasn't hard. Sifting through the multi-camera footage and then finding the most suspicious person only took a few dozen seconds.
This wasn't the Middle Ages. With technology, the difficulty in catching a murderer wasn't in identifying them, but in catching them before they escaped.
"Do we need to clarify to the police that Rin sister is not the murderer?"
"...No."
"Why?"
"..."
Lin replayed the surveillance footage of the long pink-haired girl's subtle movements and her grip on the blade, saying nothing.
He only said that Rin sister was not the murderer.
...
Half a day passed in a flash.
" Rin!"
The long pink-haired girl embraced her sister, whose eyes were filled with tears, and hurriedly comforted her as soon as she was released from the police station.
"Sister, you scared me to death."
"It's okay. The police officer caught the wrong person. The real murderer has been found."
As she spoke, the girl's mouth twitched. Her eyes flashed with self-mockery.
So, she could really smile while saying such hypocritical words to Ling.
"That's great... Oh, right, this is Brother Lin. Brother Lin has been looking after me all day while you were in trouble." Rin wiped her tears and smiled through her tears. She took her sister's hand and walked up to the helmeted man who had been silent in the background.
"Brother Lin...?"
Wheelchair, helmet... What was going on with this person?
The girl paused for a moment when she saw the man's attire.
Lin sat in his wheelchair, his gaze from inside the helmet resting on the blade in the girl's hand.
A model sword.
"Brother Lin, this is my sister. Her name is Sakura." Rin happily introduced the long pink-haired girl to Lin.
"Hello. Thank you for taking care of Ling today. I'm truly sorry for causing you so much trouble when I brought her out to play and such a big thing happened." Sakura bowed slightly to Lin apologetically. The fact that a disabled person had helped look after Rin made him worthy of thanks. "If you haven't had dinner yet, would you like to come to my house? I'd like to treat you."
"...What is the blade in your hand?" Lin asked after a long silence.
"I have been training in swordsmanship since I was a child, so I carry a model sword with me. Maybe that's what made the police officers misunderstand." Sakura ran her finger over the model blade's edge, leaving no mark on her slender finger.
Lin glanced at Rin, who was still expecting him to say something, and slowly nodded.
"I haven't eaten yet. Let's go to your place."
"Prometheus should come too!" Rin cheered.
"Prometheus?" Sakura didn't understand why there were so many names she didn't know after just half a day.
"She's Brother Lin's little sister. She's very cute, but a bit cold," Ling explained, then looked around. "Huh? Where's Prometheus?"
"I'm here."
Prometheus walked out from a dark little corner, responding expressionlessly.
Sakura felt a sudden chill when she saw her walk out.
It was an inexplicable feeling, similar to seeing something out of sync.
Was it a delusion? She felt that the girl's movements were full of non-human strangeness.
Suppressing the ill feeling, Sakura figured it was due to a day of anxiety. She smiled gently: "Then let's go together."
...
[Someone cleared her of suspicion. I cannot trace that person's identity. The blade seems to have been switched before she was apprehended.]
"..."
[Lin, do we need to apprehend her?]
"No. You wouldn't win against her."
Lin shook his head.
"Let's wait a bit before we do anything else."