Chapter 69
Even if you destroy yourself, you have to hurt the enemy. This was Suspect An, an evil existence.
“Black coffee?” Furuya Rei thought for a moment, following her lead. “I have some good coffee beans. Do you need them?”
“I don’t know if it will be bitter enough to kill me, but Teacher An’an’s tolerance for coffee is very low,” he said, giving an example. “She even says ‘no’ to a latte.”
“Even with milk, espresso is still bitter,” An’an said, making a cross with her hands. “I have nothing to say to someone like you, whose veins flow with iced Americano.”
Furuya: “Mhm, so I’m used to black coffee. Will Teacher An’an be bringing black coffee tomorrow?”
Her: “I’m bringing a hot Americano.”
The taste of Chinese medicine, a poison to the taste buds.
The blond young man had a “spare me” expression, which only made the girl more determined to perish together with his sense of taste.
The director, the screenwriter, and the main actors, who had witnessed the entire thing, were speechless. “…”
Excuse me, is there only one cup in the world?
There were so many things to complain about that they couldn’t even start. The desire to gossip was so strong it made them want to scratch their heads.
An’an keenly sensed the active paparazzi-like atmosphere in the air. She looked up and scanned the room.
The Director: “Cough.”
The Screenwriter: “Cough.”
The Main Actors: “Cough.”
As if they had all collectively developed asthma, everyone coughed for a while and then picked up their water glasses to drink.
Oh, the water is so good. People should really drink more water. Even if there’s only one cup left in the world, you should still drink it.
“Director, I’ll go and revise the script now, but it will definitely take a few days,” the screenwriter said after finishing her water.
“Let’s focus on training the actors’ professional skills for the next few days. This case is too professional. It’s not something we can get by with a stunt double.”
Director Ochi was the type of director who really disliked actors using stunt doubles. Several of the main actors were long-term members of a shooting club. Everyone’s gaze focused on Fan An.
Her: “Hm? Want to practice?”
The last character Fan An had played had liked to kill with a borrowed knife and burn her enemies with a raging fire. It had been a while since she had filmed a shooting scene.
Director Ochi also knew this and was wondering if he should find a coach for Fan An for some emergency cramming.
“No need,” the dark-haired girl refused at once. “I have a very excellent mentor.”
…
In the shooting range, the girl first checked the gun, making sure there were no live rounds mixed in, and then held it with both hands.
Her back was very familiar to Furuya.
Police academy style marksmanship, he mouthed silently.
What he had seen and suspected before was woven into a fine net in the story of his resurrected friend, restoring the scenes he had missed.
I’ve been deceived so badly.
A little jealous. An’an’s most trusted person was not him.
He could have taught her too.
Bang, bang, bang!
An’an lowered her gun and tilted her head to look at the target.
A perfect ten. The “genius morning and evening 1+1 sharpshooter training plan” implemented in Nagano was still so authoritative today. As expected of her.
“Next, the human-shaped target,” the girl said with great interest. “Is it better to have a one-shot kill, or is it more interesting to break their hands and feet and then get a headshot? It’s really hard to choose.”
Director Ochi suddenly understood Director Yuko’s recommendation for Fan An: a heaven-sent villain, great, no need to say more.
He: I’ll say it again, what I emphasized on the day of signing the contract—promise me you won’t go to jail in the middle of filming! Promise me!
Furuya patted Director Ochi’s shoulder with understanding.
By the way, even if An’an promised, it wouldn’t count. The thickness of her dedicated police report at the Metropolitan Police Department was still increasing at a steady rate over time, a witness to the heartwarming years of its owner clocking in at the station on time.
Director Ochi: “The marksmanship is not a problem, but I require the actors to also know a little bit of knife work.”
The moment she saw the cutting board, the pork, and the boning knife, Fan An’s DNA was triggered.
Director Ochi: “Oh, oh, the knife skills are very proficient. Does Teacher An’an often cook at home? Eh, do you have to cut it so finely… wait a minute, tell me you’re not dismembering a body! You’re not!”
Teacher An’an does not cook at home. Her culinary interest is to rush out into the rain on a stormy night, wearing a black raincoat, carrying a bloody knife and a head-shaped garbage bag, to deal with a freshly slaughtered live chicken.
A very high-class hobby. It’s normal for normal people not to understand.
“I’ll have winter melon and lean pork soup for dinner tonight,” Furuya mused.
Director Ochi: After witnessing a gruesome dismemberment, your only thought is what to have for dinner?!
The residents of Beika Town are truly profound.
Marksmanship and knife skills, Teacher An’an won in both. No one in the room dared to question her villainous caliber.
Miss An: Do you want to continue competing?
What else is there to compete in? The thickness of her police report? Her connections at the Metropolitan Police Department?
The main actors shook their heads frantically. Stop, teacher, stop! This is a society ruled by law.
“Finally,” Director Ochi announced. “Before filming this movie, I require the actors to master the skill of escaping from handcuffs.”
The Main Actors: “Huh?”
An’an: “Eh?”
Wait a minute. This wasn’t in the contract.
Director Ochi could understand that the others couldn’t do it, but to see that Teacher An’an couldn’t either, the director was greatly shocked. “You don’t know how to pick handcuffs? Then how did you escape from the station?”
Suspect An: “…”
She calmly picked up the boning knife on the cutting board. “I don’t know. But it’s okay. I’ll know soon enough.”
Director Ochi: Hontou ni sumimasen!
“I know I’m asking for the impossible, but this scene is really cool,” Director Ochi gesticulated wildly.
“A light snap of the fingers, and the handcuffs break with a sound, clattering to the ground, like a silent mockery—when the audience sees this on the big screen, they will definitely go crazy.”
An’an: Do you really think Dazai won’t charge you a copyright fee?
The Armed Detective Agency’s salary is much lower than the Port Mafia’s. To earn money to buy king crab, this man will stop at nothing.
Director Ochi was very insistent on filming this scene. If reality allowed, he would even have invited Dazai from Yokohama to teach on the spot.
“There are shooting clubs and cooking schools in the world, but which institution teaches people how to pick handcuffs?”
The main actors complained, “Even the legendary Hawaii detective training school where you can learn anything—”
Wait a minute.
One by one, their gazes focused on the blond young man whose profession was a detective, their eyes filled with anticipation, doubt, and “please say you’ve never been to Hawaii and have never been to a detective cram school!”
Furuya: People’s eyes can speak, and An’an’s eyes are especially eloquent.
What a long and difficult sentence.
“I can,” Furuya said honestly.
A Public Security police officer from the professional group, an undercover agent who had been lurking in a multinational criminal organization for many years. How could he not have mastered the skill of picking handcuffs?
As mentioned before, Director Ochi was a director who disliked actors using stunt doubles.
From this, it can be seen that his attitude towards props was also to use real ones if possible. If you’re going to pick a lock, pick a real police-issue handcuff. Don’t use sex toy handcuffs to make up the numbers.
“With my connections, of course I got the real thing,” Director Ochi said, signaling the props team to bring the item over.
“Heavy, cold, with a metallic luster. The moment you put them on, you immediately feel like a suspect. It’s not something a fake can compare to,” the director said, as if showing off.
An’an: Director Kawamura did the same thing. The result was a real gun with real bullets. He almost spent the second half of his life pursuing his ultimate art in jail.
She’s been in the industry for so long. Can’t she just meet a normal director?
Matsuzaka, Kawamura, Yuko, Ochi: This is what they call birds of a feather flocking together. (Might Guy’s confident thumbs-up smile.jpg)
“I have a question,” An’an asked calmly. “It shouldn’t be that everyone has to learn how to escape from handcuffs, right? This kind of cool scene is usually only arranged for one person.”
Repetition leads to aesthetic fatigue.
“Yes,” Director Ochi nodded. “The screenwriter and I discussed it. We only plan to give this coolest scene to one actor.”
The girl quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
She was the villain, a limited character who only appeared for one round in the series. The opportunity to show off must be left to the main characters.
“Teacher An’an, don’t let the screenwriter and me down!” Director Ochi said, gripping the dark-haired girl’s hand tightly.
Her: Why?!
Is this reasonable?
“It’s very reasonable,” Director Ochi explained. “How could a villain use police-issue handcuffs to cuff someone? Of course, she’s the one being cuffed.”
“Even if the main characters are mistakenly arrested by the police, they can’t escape by picking their own handcuffs. It doesn’t fit their righteous identity,” he said, as if it were a matter of course.
“Only the villain is unrestrained. When everyone thinks she has been caught, she quietly escapes from her handcuffs and deals a heavy blow to the main characters. A cruel flower of blood explodes on the screen. So beautiful!”
Director Ochi: “Did Teacher An’an not listen carefully to Mr. Amuro’s explanation of the case before? In the original case, the culprit successfully escaped from his handcuffs once.”
An’an: So the culprit is my ex-boyfriend after all?
Damn it! Was this man born to be my nemesis?
An’an wasn’t unwilling to act. Who doesn’t like a cool plot? Playing the main characters in the palm of her hand is the romance of a villain.
…She just didn’t want to be taught by her ex-boyfriend.
Teaching, of course, has to be hand-in-hand. Whether it was cuffing her or cuffing him, the scene was too R-rated.
The moment An’an was alone with her ex-boyfriend, the atmosphere between them would become very strange. It was the same last night. They had inexplicably gotten close again, as if they were under a spell.
She had to firmly and resolutely refuse today.
An’an felt that the probability of success was very high, because the teaching would definitely have to be done on the set. Director Ochi wouldn’t allow her to take the police-issue handcuffs away, and her ex-boyfriend probably couldn’t just pull out a pair of handcuffs from his pocket… right?
Furuya: (smile.jpg)
In front of so many people, she just had to find a decent reason to refuse, and then privately find someone else—like her respected Mentor Scotch—to learn how to pick locks.
Returning as a king after mastering the skill, the emperor of the set once again descends upon the world. Isn’t that even cooler?!
An’an made up her mind. She opened her mouth to speak.
The blond Public Security officer, who had his back to everyone and was only facing the girl, suddenly opened his hand.
He showed her the clear tooth mark on his palm and waved it at An’an.
Director Ochi (puzzled): “Mr. Amuro?”
“It’s nothing!”
The one who answered the director was the dark-haired girl. She quickly grabbed Furuya’s hand and covered his palm.
“I can’t wait to learn from Mr. Amuro.”
Under her placating smile was An’an’s resentful scratching of his palm. Furuya caught the mischievous fingers in his palm and squeezed them, holding back a laugh.
“I told you it wouldn’t disappear overnight,” he whispered to the girl. “You didn’t believe me.”