Ch.35Pursuit! (2)

#035

Rooftop of Intermediate Detention Facility, Building 2.

The two of them sat near the ventilation shaft on the rooftop, pressed closely together in a spot hidden from the watchtower’s view.

Dexter was using the excuse of supervising Jesse’s cleaning to sneak in some flirting.

“Ugh, it’s hot. Can’t you move away a bit?”

“No.”

They were bickering like a new couple—Dexter persistently trying to stick close like they’d just started dating, and Jesse, who enjoyed Dexter’s closeness but found it too hot to be stuck together.

Just then, Dexter’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He immediately pulled it out to check, and his eyes widened.

-That’s it, I can’t take it anymore.

It was a message from Himena.

Having no idea what she couldn’t take anymore, Dexter briefly moved away from Jesse to reply.

>What’s going on?

-Those women. I went through the trouble of planting a tracker, but the agents from headquarters and the police failed to arrest them.

>Wait, how did that happen?

-They said they tracked them to inside the house, but when they entered, no one was there. That doesn’t make any sense!

It was certainly a bit strange, but Dexter remembered that Himena was essentially under disciplinary probation.

Thinking he needed to calm Himena down before she did something rash, Dexter sent another reply.

>That’s odd, but it’s not a reason for you to rush out there yourself.

After Dexter’s brutally factual response, Himena didn’t reply for a while.

She seemed to have remembered her current probationary status.

Dexter felt relieved, having worried she might dash off to confront her superior.

“Geez.”

“Who is it?”

Jesse, still pressed against him, asked, and Dexter replied smoothly without hesitation.

“Oh, someone I knew before coming to this prison.”

“Hmm, really?”

As Dexter put his phone back in his pocket, Jesse rested a broom on her shoulder and asked:

“Is it a woman?”

“Yeah, it is. Why?”

“Nothing, never mind.”

Seeing her start to say something but then stop, Dexter looked at Jesse with half-lidded eyes.

“You’re not…”

“Huh?”

“Could it be what they call… ‘jealousy’?”

At Dexter’s mischievous expression, Jesse dropped the broom and frantically waved her hands in disgust.

“N-no! What are you talking about!”

“You are jealous.”

“I’m not!”

“Why not? It’s natural to be jealous when the guy you like is chatting with another woman. Why deny it?”

“I said I’m not!”

As Dexter kept teasing, Jesse raised her fist again.

Judging by how her fist trembled, she was restraining herself from actually swinging it.

Seeing Jesse’s quivering fist, Dexter immediately wiped the smile off his face and approached her.

‘I promised not to tease her, but here I am doing it again.’

But her reactions were too amusing to resist.

Still, since he’d broken his promise not to tease her, Dexter embraced Jesse and started patting her back.

“Okay, it’s not jealousy. It’s natural to be curious, right?”

“W-what are you doing? Suddenly hugging me.”

“I think I teased you too much.”

“I-I’m fine, so could you please let go now.”

Jesse, who had been in his arms, gently pushed Dexter away.

Noticing her reddening ears, Dexter held back what he was about to say and asked something else instead.

“Has there been any talk about parole?”

“Parole? No, I haven’t thought about it yet… probably won’t come up until next year or so.”

Jesse became downcast, hanging her head as she spoke.

“…It’s not like I’ll get out easily anyway.”

“But if you keep behaving well like now, the parole board might look favorably on you.”

“You think so…?”

Jesse looked up slightly at Dexter with a sad smile.

Dexter felt bad for bringing up parole and making her gloomy.

From the beginning, Jesse never had the premise of getting out early.

That’s why she hadn’t hesitated to act crazy to protect herself—something Dexter hadn’t fully realized.

“Dexter. You know why I’m here, right…?”

“Your charge? Yeah, I know.”

He knew well that some crimes were hard to wash away, but he didn’t think it was something Jesse should be so pessimistic about.

“But that’s different from parole. It’s about showing your willingness to do better from now on.”

“…Do you really think so?”

“Yeah. Why not? Just do well from now on.”

“Really, are you actually a prison guard? Aren’t you more like one of us?”

“Hey now, how dare you question Dexter Hughes, a correctional officer working in a private prison upholding the liberal democracy of the United States.”

Dexter said with his hands on his hips, looking at Jesse.

“It’ll work out. Don’t worry too much.”

Dexter patted Jesse’s head as he spoke.

“…You really like patting people’s heads, don’t you?”

“Why, don’t you like it?”

“It’s not that I don’t like it, but you always do it.”

“Well, not many people pat adults on the head. I’m patting you because you did well.”

Dexter lowered his hand from her head and rubbed her shoulder.

“To cheer you up, you know.”

“…Okay.”

“Yeah, go ahead and curse all you want. Punch someone in the jaw.”

“No thanks.”

-Thwack.

Jesse hit Dexter’s arm once as she spoke.

* * *

“I’m telling you, it’s absolutely ridiculous!”

-Bang!

Himena, dressed in civilian clothes, slammed her beer mug down as she spoke.

“I did everything! Everything! It was practically spoon-feeding them!”

“Oh my, please calm down.”

Dexter sat across from Himena, looking flustered.

After finishing his shift without incident, Dexter had called Himena, who sounded ready to storm into her superior’s office. He’d brought her to a sports bar near OSA headquarters.

Though they were at a sports bar, he wasn’t planning to get drunk watching football—just to have a cool beer in a somewhat noisy place while talking and comforting her.

Himena had downed a glass of beer in one go, and Dexter had noticed something off about her state but hadn’t thought much of it—something he now regretted.

“You reeeally can’t hold your liquor.”

Himena had only had two 14-ounce (420ml) glasses of beer.

“…What? Are you judging me for not being able to drink?”

Looking at Himena with her glazed eyes, Dexter could tell she might cause trouble at any moment.

Thanks to this, he was answering obediently without any intention of teasing.

“No, just an observation. I suggested coming to a bar to help you relieve stress, but it seems to have had the opposite effect.”

“…I don’t want to be like this either, you know?”

Acknowledging she was behaving somewhat inappropriately, Himena took a sip of beer and carefully set it down.

“But how can I not be angry? I worked so hard investigating, only to be told to back off. And they couldn’t even catch those bastards…”

Tears welled up in Himena’s eyes as she complained.

Astonished, Dexter pulled out some tissues and handed them to her.

“Geez. Were you really that upset?”

“Mr. Hughes, you try being in my position. See how unfair it feels.”

As Himena carefully dabbed her eyes with the tissue, Dexter spoke with incomprehension.

“Didn’t I tell you before? It’s better to do less work. There’s no need to do things that can be delegated to others.”

“But still!”

Himena crumpled the tissue and threw it on the table.

“It makes absolutely no sense! How could they fail to catch them when they confirmed they were in the house?”

“How exactly did they confirm they were in the house?”

“They said they saw the two women enter the house. They didn’t see them leave.”

That was a rather one-dimensional confirmation method.

Himena’s lips protruded in frustration, unable to understand why they couldn’t be caught.

“So the agents and police just looked around and concluded the women weren’t there and left?”

“That’s what they said.”

As soon as he heard Himena’s words, a thought crossed Dexter’s mind.

“They didn’t use thermal cameras or equipment that could detect life forms inside?”

“…No. Why?”

As soon as Himena finished speaking, Dexter fell into deep thought.

Seeing Dexter silently staring at the table after her answer, Himena tilted her head in confusion.

“…I just had a thought.”

After organizing his thoughts somewhat, Dexter took a sip of beer and spoke.

“It’s really, really far-fetched.”

“What is it?”

Dexter lowered his voice to avoid being overheard, and Himena leaned in closer.

“What if those two women aren’t human?”

“Not human? What do you mean… Oh, you don’t mean…”

Himena seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Dexter.

“Aliens are the most likely possibility. And specifically, aliens we already know about.”

“Are you suggesting those two women are the professor and researcher who escaped from the Succubus planet?”

Himena waved her hands dismissively, as if it were absurd.

“That’s ridiculous. You told me yourself that people from the Succubus planet look like slimes.”

Indeed, Dexter had told Himena that people from the Succubus planet resembled slimes.

“But I also told you something else. That the Succubus planet has remarkable technology.”

“Surely you’re not suggesting those two transformed into women…?”

“Not transformation exactly, more like mimetic suits would be the right term.”

“Mimetic suits?”

When Himena asked about the unfamiliar term, Dexter took another sip of beer and tapped the table as he explained.

“They’re also called bio-suits. The people of Succubus have bodies that are obviously very inconvenient for mobility.”

Among the short proverbs of the Succubus planet is one that goes, “Like running.”

Since Succubus people move at a snail’s pace when running with their bare bodies, it means it’s all the same—pointless.

That’s how much Succubus people are restricted in their movement.

“So when Succubus people visit other planets or need to perform special tasks, they wear mimetic suits.”

Dexter continued, pointing out that Succubus people have difficulty protecting their bodies.

“Of course, they don’t just have human-like mimetic suits. In terms of Earth creatures, they also have multi-limbed suits resembling spiders or octopuses.”

“D-does that mean those women we saw…”

“Could be the professor and researcher from the Succubus planet. It’s not certain, but possible.”

“Ah, this is a bit…”

Seeing Himena’s bewildered expression, Dexter continued tapping the table and took another sip of beer.

Dexter was suggesting that the two people spending nights with single men were the professor and researcher who had escaped from the Succubus planet.

“W-why would they do such things…”

“I wouldn’t know. Maybe American men are that appealing.”

“Are the professor and researcher female?”

“Succubus people don’t really have genders, but I guess they’re closer to being asexual? I should ask about that later.”

Since Dexter wasn’t entirely sure about this aspect, he decided to ask Eliya about it later.

“Honestly, I feel a bit uneasy now, like I’ve sobered up.”

“Is it because when you hear ‘professor,’ you imagine a man in his 50s?”

“Yes, honestly, it’s hard to imagine a female professor doing something like that.”

“How could we understand those creatures?”

Of course, Dexter didn’t want to understand why they were doing what they were doing.

“Anyway, if our guess is correct, it’ll be hard to catch them. Mimetic suits, perception-inhibiting fabric… Has the car moved since then?”

“No. It’s probably still there.”

Dexter downed the last of his beer in one go and said:

“We have no choice. We’ll have to go back to that house.”

“But I’m still under disciplinary probation…”

Himena was confined to the office for investigating with a civilian without permission.

“Well, I’ll have to either grab your boss by the collar or do something else. We can’t let this slip away.”

Himena nodded vigorously at Dexter’s words.

“You’ll break your neck doing that. Anyway, we don’t have any other options. We need to find some evidence at least. But let’s go tomorrow, not today. I’ve had some drinks, so…”

He said this while looking at Himena’s flushed face.

“You’re right, since we’ve been drinking… Shall we meet tomorrow?”

“Let’s meet after I get off work. Try to bring equipment if you can.”

“I’m not sure if I can, but I’ll do my best!”

Agent Himena smiled brightly.

‘I hope this works out.’

Dexter thought, still tapping the table.