Erase Herゾごホ

昔の恋 - old love

I am most definitely not a certified detective, nor am I any kind of law enforcement.

My fingers gently clacked against the keys of the older keyboard, the clicking sounds drowned out by the music I had playing in my ears.

I'm really nothing special, just a normal person with access to simple things like WiFi and social media.

My eyes skimmed the article I had sprawled across the screen of my computer, the words softly vibrating and fuzzing together as the aged piece of technology flickered ominously.

To put it more closely, I'm just someone with access to the computers in my schools library.

Ever since I had found myself under the watchful eye of one Shota Aizawa, the misadventures of Sparky and Smokey had become limited to texting during classes and phone calls from the bathroom.

On top of not being able to see my partner in crime as much as I used to, I couldn't be caught looking at anything concerning my mothers killer around Shota. Leading to my phone being wiped, the files on my computer being deleted, and everything Dabi and I had scraped up being burned. Shota has never been one to be nosy or poke into my personal belongings for his own curiosity, but one can never be too careful.

And given the way he looked at me when he found out I lied to him for the first time, I never want to see that kind of hurt in his eyes ever again.

So now all of my detective work had to be done in between periods at the school library, with very little input or help from Dabi.

So how should someone narrow down a murderer among a cult full of killers? Some may say it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. A very big and scary haystack.

What would Shota do?

I stopped scrolling down the page, staring at the words before me thoughtfully.

How would Shota go about tracking down someone as invisible as this?

"Almost all criminals are repeated offenders, because if they get away with something once, they believe they can do it again."

I tapped my the clicker of my mouse lightly, remembering Shota's lesson about how to find clues and evidence when there is believed to be none.

"There is no such thing as 'The Perfect Criminal', and that is because even the most careful of criminal leaves some kind of repetitive trail."

He would look for a pattern.

I quickly flipped through my many open tabs till reaching the news article covering my mothers death. I vaguely grazed through the words, picking out parts to read like her autopsy, the time of death, and where she had been when she died. It was all things I had already known, but there had to be something useful in it. I continued scrolling through the page until finally reaching the photo of her crime scene tagged at the bottom of the post. The hazy seeming photograph depicted a body covered by a white tarp, surrounded by many forensics and police offices, with the smallest crowd of onlookers behind them stuck behind some yellow tape. 

It had been a long time since I had looked at this photo, but it was one that I had already burned into my mind.

I tore my eyes away from the photo, ignoring the burning in my throat, and clicked onto the next tab I had open.

"Misuri Amada, 32, burned to death in her own home. It is with a heavy heart we report the untimely death of the beloved school teacher..."