Chapter 279: In the end, Shima-san is the best

As we need a table, I brought in an old zataku(low)table(table) from the room that used to belong to my grandma, which is now a storage room, and the three of us are sitting around it.

（As expected, it’s a little rickety…） This table was originally my grandma’s wedding present, which means that it has already aged well.「Umm, Fumio-kun. We only need to teach you mathematics, right?」「Yes, I’ve got the rest pretty much figured out」 I nodded, and Masaki-chan took out what looked like some printouts from her bag.「I found the past exam papers of the university Fumio-kun is applying to on the website, so I printed them out」 I was a little happy to think that she had researched for me.

「First, let’s try this」 As I nodded, Tashiro-san put her hand on my shoulder and spoke up.「Confinement King’s academic ability! Let’s see how good you are!」「…Ah, yes」 Why did you say that like it was a battle? I thought so, but it’s not wrong. First of all, they want to know my level of academic ability and what kind of problems I’m not good at. That’s why I started to solve the past exam questions of the university I wanted to apply to, by myself. While I was solving the questions crisply, Tashiro-san stood and stared at me as if she is an examiner.Masaki-chan, on the other hand, is looking around the room curiously and letting out small mutterings of “Heh~…” and “Hoh~…”.I’m wondering what those “Heh~” and “Hoh~” mean, but for now, I’ll concentrate on the problem. Meanwhile, my mom brought us some tea and sweets, and she seemed to be relieved to see me earnestly working on my answer sheet. Masaki-chan and my mom exchanged a few words in a whisper, and chuckled at each other.About an hour later, with Masaki-chan’s voice saying, “Time up” and I put down my mechanical pencil. The grading result was good. Well, at least I passed the exam. “What’s up? It’s not worth teaching…” said Tashiro-san, a little dissatisfied. Masaki-chan followed up with, “Fumio-kun is usually in the top rank in tests”.「Well, let’s review what is wrong!」「Yes, let’s start from the beginning!」 With that, Masaki-chan and Tashiro-san sat down on either side of me, sandwiching me between them.It’s quite unusual for me to feel nervous being sandwiched between them, but being outside “the room” makes me a little nervous. From there, the three of us worked on the wrong questions… well, to be precise, Masaki-chan taught me most of them. Masaki-chan’s way of teaching is very detailed and easy to understand, as expected from someone whose father is a school principal. On the other hand, Tashiro-san’s vocabulary was too unique for me to understand at all. I couldn’t help asking Masaki-chan many questions, and I could see Tashiro-san’s mood getting worse and worse.「Why can’t you understand this?」「Well, well. Fumio-kun, this is what she means」 Tashiro-san is annoyed. There are many times when Masaki-chan calms her down and explains the point, and Tashiro-san becomes blatantly frustrated.If I role as Confinement King, I would say, “Ui, what’s with that attitude? I’ll punish you!”, but that would definitely lead to an erotic turn. Since I’m studying outside “the room” today, I don’t want that to happen.（Well, she’s not very good at teaching others… Wait, didn’t Tashiro-san say that she would teach Shima-san?） When I asked her about it, Tashiro-san became more and more flustered, and her lips pouted.「…Well, Ui-chan was rejected because her level was too high. Apparently, Shima’s being taught by Shiratori now」 I see, so she escaped.「But wait… Shiratori-san is a junior, isn’t she?」「I don’t think it matters. Shima told me once. She said Shiratori always informs her of the score of each test, and she never misses a single mark」 I tilted my head.「What do you mean?」「It means she can score as she pleases. She’s been keeping a low profile, keeping her grades in the middle of the class, but I’m sure she can get perfect scores in all subjects if she has to. What’s wrong about her?」 (*Note: Is she Ayanokouji?)「Ha, haha…」 I let out a dry laugh.

（Shiratori-san is scaring me…） When we finished reviewing my mistakes, Masaki-chan picked up the problem book and smiled at me.「Well, now that we know what Fumio-kun’s difficulties are, let’s focus on those areas in the problem book」 As she opened the problem book, Masaki-chan leaned closer to me. She’s showing me how to do it.「That’s why it needs to be substituted here…」 Yes, I’m grateful, but of course her breasts are hitting me all over the place, and it’s really hard to keep my concentration. But then, Tashiro-san was more and more out of the loop, and she had a wrinkle on her chin like a dried plum, and was groaning something.「U-Umm… Tashiro-san?」「…Confinement King, I’m sorry, but I need you to open “the door”」 Suddenly, she says something like that, and I tilt my head.「Wh-What?」「Just hurry up!」She glanced at me and Masaki-chan, then jumped into “the room”. Masaki-chan and I looked at each other.「…Did Ui-chan get sulky?」「Uh… yeah, I’ll follow up later」A while later, Tashiro-san came back from “the room”.「How about it? Confinement King, I’m sure you’ll want to learn from me!」 As she walked out of the door, Masaki-chan and I were bewildered. She is dressed in a white blouse with a wide opening at the chest and a tight black skirt. Her silver-rimmed glasses are pushed up with her fingertips, and she is carefully holding a telescopic instruction stick in her hand. Like a stereotypical female teacher. It was the kind of thing I’d see in an AV…「Ah… yeah」 I can almost guess what she was thinking. And then she said something that seemed to confirm that thought.「I’ve been wondering what I’m missing, and now I know. Something that First Favored Princess has that I don’t. It’s the teacher-ness!」 I think I understand why Shima-san is so overprotective of Tashiro-san. It’s more difficult to leave her alone afterwards.（When she was a freshman, I thought she was a perfect girl…） I don’t know if it was because of Shima-san’s support, or because there was so much distance between them that I never saw her clumsiness. But I’m sure she’s been clumsy since then.Even now, she looks as if she is about to say something like “My teaching ability is 53,000” or something like that in a battle manga. After thought that, I take out my phone, look through my address book, and tap the number I find.「Um… I’m sorry, but can you come over now?」 For the time being, I asked Shima-san to come and pick her up.

◇ ◇ ◇ In front of the whiteboard, Detective Inomoto and I reviewed the outline of the case. A dead cat had been thrown into the garden of Zenkichi Kobayashi’s house, and the murder of a policeman had led to the establishment of the investigation division. Of course, this case is much smaller than the kidnapping case of the track and field club. We are handling this case together with the recent murder of the receptionist of a real estate company, and have reported the case to the main office, but for the time being, the case will be handled only by the jurisdiction. A murder case. And the victim is a police officer. The investigators were very excited because the victim was one of their own.「The basic line is that a policeman found the murderer who was about to throw a dead cat into the house. So, he was killed impulsively, I guess」 I nodded.「Yes… I think it’s safe to say that this case is an extension of the grudge against Kobayashi-shi or his wife」 Of course. A case of throwing a dead cat into a garden would not have occurred without a grudge. On the whiteboard, there is a list of people who are currently being identified.The wife of Kobayashi-shi is a so-called “boxed-in” young lady. She went to a girls’ high school and then to a girls’ university, and after graduating she worked as a childcare worker at a local nursery school for about three years before marrying Kobayashi-shi, whom she met at a gym. From the interviews conducted with her, it seems that she was well-liked by the people around her as a very friendly person.（Although when I was in charge of her, I had the impression that she was very stressed and hysterical… well, that’s quite common） Kobayashi-shi, on the other hand, seems to have been a very playboy when he was a student, but after his marriage to his wife, he became a much calmer person. In fact, it seems that he has no contact with any of the women with whom he had a relationship during his school days. The more I interviewed him, the more I found that his reputation among people around him changed 180 degrees after his marriage.（Is it possible for a human being to change so easily?） However, if we think that the current situation is a love affair brought about by human relations before the marriage, that line seems to be the strongest. But–「The culprit is a man… I guess」 I nodded again at Senpai Inomoto’s statement. That’s right. If it was a love affair, the way the policeman was killed would be a problem. It is unlikely that a woman could break a neck with her strength.「Could it be that Kobayashi-shi cuckolded his girlfriend?」「Well, it’s not impossible, but if it goes that far, your imagination is going too far」 Senpai Inomoto shrugged his shoulders.

「As for Kobayashi-shi, I asked Kitora-san how he was doing at school… and I also asked his wife, Touko-san, and she said that he was not badly received. He’s well-behaved, a little stiff, but not bad-looking, so he’s popular with the students」 Kitora-san is Senpai Inomoto’s fiancée, a health teacher.「Isn’t it strange that someone who was a playboy in school is now a stiff? I didn’t think people could change that easily…」「Well, when I interviewed his wife, she told me that he changed his mind. His wife’s father, who was against the marriage, made him promise to do so」「No, that doesn’t mean…」「Of course, it’s a spurious story. But in fact, considering the low salary of a teacher, Kobayashi and his wife are living quite a rich life with the help of their father. Considering that, it wouldn’t be strange if they were a little more modest」「Oh, I see, so that’s how it is…」 Senpai Inomoto sniffed a little and let out an annoyed voice when I made a pretense of being convinced.「Either way, we’d better get this over with. The media is writing about it like a bunch of idiots, saying it’s the work of the devil. They’re writing all the articles they want with titles like ‘The town that was seen by the devil’ and saying that the devil must be up to something, just like the receptionist’s death」「The devil, huh…」 Regardless of the receptionist, the policeman was killed in a way that I don’t think was done by a human. It’s possible that it was the work of a demon noble opposed to Lili-sama. Perhaps I should ask it if she knows anything about it.