Missing 〖Vocaloid〗

⒈ Getting started

I rang the bell. It made a pretty pleasant ringing sound, and shortly after, an adult lady opened the door. She had a kind smile. "Hello, you must be Fukase's friend, right?"

I hesitated because I'm an awkward piece of trash. "Um, yes, it's me, Piko. You must be Fukase's mother, right?"

She laughed in a mellow tone. "Oh, thanks you, but I'm actually his grandmother." The woman held out her hand for me to shake it.

"Dear, you look particularly young, miss." I said as politely as I possibly could, attempting not to embarrass me further, even though Fukase's grandmother was super cool about it.

"You can just call me Sachiko. Come in." Sachiko gently gestured behind her, to the inside of the house. I nodded before getting in and taking off my shoes.

"Fukase is preparing the basement right now. He should have heard the bell, so he's most likely coming upstairs now" Sachiko explained, and just in that moment, the door to, as I presumed, the basement opened and Fukase stepped into the entryway.

He looked really cheerful when he saw me. "Howdy, Piko!" he greeted and waved, a large smile printed on his face.

"Morning!" I cheered back.

"I'll get some drinks, and then we can already go downstairs. I prepared an empty basement room for our investigation!" Fukase told me proudly before he proceeded to run off, to the kitchen, as I found out after I followed him. The kitchen was huge, I even spotted fancy stuff like a thermomix immediately, but my classmate headed for the freezer.

"What would you like to drink, Piko?" He asked politely as he glanced over the massive amounts of different drinks that were stored in the freezer. To be honest, I didn't even know many of these.

"Oh, I'm fine with just some water" Yep, I'm the type of boring human being who always just drinks water. I haven't even tried drinks like coffee, let alone energy drinks yet. "Non-carbonated water, please" I added.

He nodded as he pulled two different bottles out of the freezer. One was still water, and the other was a coke that was meant for him, as I concluded. After that, the two of us went to the basement, while I awkwardly followed Fukase.

When I was told that we would be in a basement, I got a bit a bit concerned that we were gonna be stuck in some cold, wet, dirty, creepy hell, but to my delight, it was nothing like that. It was just like another floor, very tidy and not necessarily cold down there. In the basement, there were three different rooms.

"Well, I guess I should show you the whole house after we've at least settled down and started working, huh?"

"Yeah" I agreed. "But you've prepared an entire room just for our investigation?"

"Of course. I am really serious about my promise. I will definitely do my best to find your sister." Fukase looked at me with a genuinely honest and kind of stern expression, but then he smiled again. "Look, I even more sure it's locked, so that no one except for us can enter." Then, he got a key out of his pocket.

Hesitant, I accepted it and took a close look at the object. "Thank you." It had a small P written with sharpie on it, and, to be honest, it made me smile.

Fukase pointed at his neck. I hadn't noticed his choker with another key on it before. It looked just like mine, but you could see an F with you looked very closely. He had a proud and content smile on his pale face. "Too lazy to take off the choker. Do you wanna open the door to our office? It's the room in the middle."

"Sure." I stepped closer towards the door between the other two. The door to the room on the left was obviously Fukase's, I could tell on first glance. There was a objectively ugly sign with crudely scribbled handwriting saying "Fukase's hell. Don't enter. Like. It smells in there. Don't."

I tried to hide my very small smile I had, and instead glanced at the door to the left. Just like the one in which door I'm inserting my key in right now, it had nothing special at all. I supposed it was just a normal basement room, you know what I mean? A place where you just store stuff you don't need and let them rot alongside your whole childhood.

Anyway, before I could think about it any longer, I had already opened the door. To be honest, I was relieved that I didn't mess up this time, because I am usually way too stupid to open doors with keys, but it worked. What kind of human being am I even.

As the door opened, I got to see a room, that really resembled an office. It had a large desk with things that look like small notebooks stacked on top of it, and there was a corkboard at the opposite side of the room. It had such a professional vibe in general, looking more around the room made it obvious to me that Fukase is secretly a private detective or something.

"Wow... wow, that looks amazing!" I stumbled after I was at a loss of words for a moment.

"Ehe, thanks. I put a lot of effort into arranging this room to contain everything that we could possibly need in here." Fukase entered and sat down at the desk. He then gave me a look that told me to come in as well instead of just standing in the doorframe like an imbecile. But... did he really do all of that just for me... or?

"W-well." I stuttered as I walked in, with slightly shaky knees for... some reason.

I kind of expected our whole meeting to just be like when I give "private tutoring lessons" with elementary school kids to make some money so that I can buy my raw cookie dough. And those lessons are 20% percent homework, 10% explaining stuff 70% playing Mario Kart in my room. So, yeah, if I'm honest, I never thought Fukase would put so much effort into this. But it made me confident that he's dedicated about trying to find her, and that made me really happy.

I watched Fukase tear out a piece of paper and grabbing a pen that was laying on the desk. "So, tell me, who would you think are the prime suspects right now?"

Author's note

Sup everyone I'm writing a book I'm actually serious about for once oh boi
Can someone like literally poke me in the butt for me to finish chapters? Anyway, I got a big plot for this already in my head, at least roughly and I'm looking forward to writing it down! Bye for now! ^^