Chapter 16
“Grandma, if those people ever come back with an official order from the city, please let me know. My name’s Claire Kent, and I work at the Police Bureau over there.”
“Thank you, miss.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Ah, the little ones must’ve been scared.”
I pulled out a handful of homemade cat treats from my handbag and placed them into Grandma’s hand.
“You didn’t have to give me something like this.”
“It’s fine. Please just take them.”
I often gave these to other cat grandmas too, so I wanted her to feel no burden in accepting them.
Honestly, at first I used to avoid any old lady walking around with cats. After all, in the game there had been a criminal character known as Cat Grandma.
‘Though I never did understand what kind of crime a grandma who loves cats could commit.’
But in reality, in this city cat grandmas were as common as the cats themselves.
It made me feel guilty for having gone around suspecting kind old women of being criminals all this time.
“This is…”
Grandma muttered as she stared down at the pile of chicken jerky.
Ah, right. Of course she couldn’t feed just anything to the cats.
“This is made from chicken breast and good-quality anchovies. I prepared it myself. But if any of your little ones have sensitive stomachs, then—”
Suddenly, Grandma snapped her head up and looked straight at me. At that moment, a system notification appeared, covering her eyes.
[The ‘Natural Encounters Club’ is targeting you.]
Huh? What on earth was that supposed to mean?
Sometimes, even when I hadn’t done anything, a group’s affinity message would pop up. The change didn’t happen at the moment I did something, but at the moment the group found out about it.
Sometimes the message came late, like an afterthought. Other times, my affinity shifted because they misunderstood something completely unrelated to me.
So I’d find myself staring at these random messages, trying to deduce why the affinity had changed.
A hopeless deduction, really. In other words—a waste of time.
What concerned me more right now wasn’t the reason, but the group itself.
‘The Natural Encounters Club? Never heard of them before.’
By the way, wasn’t ‘Natural Encounters’ usually shorthand for people who want to pursue romance through natural meetings?
So why would people who wanted to avoid artificial effort and meet naturally form an organized group—that literally went against nature?
And why would such people be targeting me? That’s not very natural at all.
‘Well, I am pretty, after all.’
After saying goodbye to Grandma, I tossed my golden hair over my shoulder with a confident flick and strode proudly toward the taxi stand.
“Heh.”
I’d done a good deed. So please, let today’s bad deed go smoothly.
‘System, please allow me to live another day as a thief tomorrow.’
I wanted to keep living as a thief tomorrow. Which meant—I couldn’t afford to get caught today.
The moment I arrived, I sent up an uncharacteristic prayer to the system.
In front of the scene, crowds of citizens had gathered to gawk, while reporters swarmed like clouds to cover the story. As always.
‘But why do I feel so uneasy today?’
It was probably because of Hunt’s increasingly accurate profiling.
Right now I might look like nothing more than some clueless employee, but it wouldn’t do me any good to be noticed by him at the scene. I had to avoid Hunt at all costs.
I scanned the area around the scene.
‘Thankfully, I don’t see him… Wait, what?’
All at once, the reporters surged toward the police line at the front entrance, cameras flashing in bursts of light.
‘Is that Hunt?’
The crowd made it hard to see. I rose slightly onto tiptoes.
‘Pfft, not him after all.’
The man being bombarded with camera flashes and rapid-fire questions from reporters was Chase from the Central Bureau of Investigation.
“Agent, in your interview with the Eden Times you mentioned you’d be introducing a new method for arrests. Could you tell us what exactly that is?”
“Are you finally going to start using firearms?”
“That’s classified, so I can’t disclose it.”
If it had been Hunt, he would have cut them off with those words and left. But Chase, looking awkward, just stayed put.
‘He’s practically dripping with hints.’
As expected, the reporters kept peppering him with questions. Chase feigned discomfort for a while, then suddenly raised his voice:
“Anyway, the only thing I can reveal is this—”
With one hand, he swept back his glossy black hair, put on a solemn expression, and struck a pose in front of the cameras.
“The Thief Crow’s rampage ends today.”
Instantly, another barrage of flashes exploded.
‘Ugh, what a poser. Isn’t he the one full of vanity and a need to show off?’
Surrounded by reporters, Chase looked positively delighted.
Not that he was an idiot—he never leaked classified info to the press. He just toyed with journalists, dangling the possibility of a scoop while basking in the fame.
‘Like a fox.’
Thanks to that fox, both people and cameras were swarming the main entrance, making it impossible for me to get in that way. So I looped around toward the back.
‘Good, no Hunt here either. Perfect.’
I flashed my employee ID to the officer guarding the rear door, and the moment I slipped past the fence, a notification appeared.
[You’ve entered the crime scene. ‘Face Unrecognition’ effect has been activated.]
What the—! Why is that triggering now, of all times? Turn it off! Turn it off!
Right now I needed to be Claire Kent.
A stranger shows up at the scene? She claims she’s Claire Kent delivering equipment—but nobody recognizes her face?
That’s no different than shouting, “I’m the culprit!”
‘Disable Face Unrecognition.’
The effect switched off, the system message vanished—and I froze.
“Kent?”
Hunt was standing at the building’s entrance, eyes locked on me.
‘Seriously? Manners, sir! This is exactly when you’re supposed to pretend you didn’t see me. That’s what makes you a gentleman.’
Just like in games, where it’s courtesy not to attack someone mid-transformation, it’s common sense to look the other way when someone’s fiddling with their system window.
But NPC Hunt had no such courtesy. His gaze narrowed with suspicion, making matters worse.
“What brings you here?”
The sharpness in his eyes, the weight in his tone—none of it felt ordinary. But my best bet was to play it cool.
“Sergeant Smith left some equipment behind.”
At that, Hunt’s gaze flicked to the equipment bag.
‘Ah, wait a sec!’
If he personally took the bag from me and told me to leave, that’d be a huge problem.
‘I’ll have to throw him off balance.’
So I put on the act of a woman who’d just been dumped. Bowing my head as if embarrassed under his gaze, I pushed up the glasses sliding down my nose…
“Ah!”
Feigning nervousness, I let my glasses slip from my hands. How stupid must I have looked, fumbling as if I couldn’t quite catch them in time.
“Oh no, my glasses…”
Setting my bag down, I dropped onto the stone path of the garden. Pretending my eyesight was too poor, I groped around aimlessly at the ground, dragging out time.
‘You’re the chief investigator, right? You’re busy. Just go, please.’
Step. Step.
Finally—I heard footsteps coming down the building’s stone stairs.
‘Yes, just keep walking straight past me…’
But the approaching steps stopped right in front of me. I lifted my gaze just enough to see the tips of polished black shoes pointed directly at me.
‘What are you doing?’
Soon their owner leaned into my line of sight. Hunt had bent down toward me.
“Uh… ah… Captain?”
Between us, lying lonely in the grass, were my fallen glasses. Hunt picked them up.
The morning rain had left the grass damp, so the glasses were now speckled with moisture and dirt. Seeing that, Hunt reached into the inside pocket of his police jacket, then suddenly froze.
He must have intended to pull out a handkerchief and clean them for me. His ingrained manners made the gesture automatic—but then he must have remembered.
That Claire Kent had confessed to liking him.
A kindness that went beyond professional courtesy would no longer be manners—it would be poison.
As if he’d thought the same, Hunt’s hand emerged from his jacket empty.
“Here.”
He handed me the soiled glasses, then brushed past me without pause.
“Just deliver the equipment, and head straight home for the day.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
