(MTL Translate) Fanfic Clamp Gakuen Tanteidan - Clamp School Detectives

Chapter 10: The trouble Detective Team

No matter what, on paper, Kanon was still a member of the Detective Team, and that's why she was always informed about any matters of the team. However, Kanon also made it clear that she would help with whatever she could, but she never wanted to be dragged into investigations, solving cases, and any related complications. Kanon's goal when she started living in this world was to enjoy and do whatever she wanted. So when she received information and a summons from the detective team via email about the Clamp School's Rijichou losing a highly confidential list containing private information of Clamp School's professors and students in her office, Kanon simply pretended to ask whether this list was printed on paper or stored on a floppy disk. If it was stored on a floppy disk, it would definitely have had identification features regarding its size and shape. Then she continued her writing work.

Recently, Kanon released a very popular detective series, but the series only came out once a month. Each story was unrelated to the others and featured constantly changing main characters. Following Agatha Christie's character design approach, Kanon also created three main detectives for the series: a charming gentleman, an old lady, and a mischievous girl. They would take turns being the main detective in each different stories, and Kanon planned for them to meet in the middle of the series. The first case was a heist of the century involving magic tricks, and while writing it, Kanon was sure that the 20 Faces thief would be quite surprised. In this world, there were many works about 20 Faces, but none had intertwined theft and murder like hers. Previous works only celebrated 20 Faces' exceptional thieving abilities and his elegant escape methods, without delving much into the characters' psychology or motives for committing crimes. Kanon combined all of that, allowing 20 Faces to encounter the old lady detective when he was suspected of being the culprit in a murder case while he was out stealing. The old lady detective solved the case, cleared 20 Faces' name, and by the end of the story, they met in real life. 20 Faces didn't think the old lady recognized him, but to his surprise, she only said one sentence, "My eyesight is poor, not my mind," which left him speechless. From then on, they became close friends. This ending created a wave for a new genre of detective stories in this world.

Kanon received a request to write a new detective story for the upcoming month, but she didn't want to. The more thrilling the story, the more it had to adhere to its own creative principles. After working on drafts for other projects, she turned to Seiji, who was quietly helping her organize materials in the library. She noticed him holding a literary magazine and murmuring to himself:

"Why does it have such a miraculous plot? This way of thinking is so clever. This lady deserves to be hailed as a master detective."

"Ano, senpai, have you finished organizing the documents?" Kanon asked.

Without a response, Kanon proceeded to rearrange the stack of books to return them when Seiji suddenly closed the magazine, his eyes rarely burning with such intensity, and looked at her with disbelief:

"Lady, how can you come up with such a marvelous crime?"

"Oh, that? It's all thanks to reading books, just reading books."

Since the incident at the Tokyo Tower, it seemed that cold-faced Seiji had completely changed. He no longer maintained just one expression on his face, but instead had more varied expressions. For example, now he would usually calmly read books, and if he found something interesting, he would be more focused than usual, but not to the extent of being overly excited. In the end, something had happened that Kanon couldn't understand, but she also didn't want to know.

She just felt that Seiji had previously been confined by a consciousness that dictated how he should act, as if people only had one path to follow, but it was blurry and unclear. Every day, the work repeated itself, turning people into mere machines sooner or later. However, if there was a clear goal, it would be like having a light at the end of the road. The goal would no longer be just a goal, but would become the meaning of that person's life. At that point, joy and excitement with life would allow a person to live more fully with themselves and the world around them, and their expression of emotions would be clearer and sharper. That was what Kanon sensed.

After rejecting many requests of the magazine to write another detective story, Nokoru suddenly appeared, holding a large, elegantly wrapped box with a beautiful bow.

"Kanon-chan, this is a gift that the Principal has prepared for the members of the Detective Team for finding her important documents."

Looking at his exaggerated expression, she understood how efficient the Detective Team worked. Following the original plot, it would have taken them the whole day to find the list, simply because they didn't think to ask Rijichou about any specific details regarding the missing object and relied solely on common knowledge. Therefore, Kanon wanted to quickly wrap up the case and be at peace. She only hinted at a few things for Nokoru, and within a few hours, he had found it. Truly, his mind was like one sought after by NASA.

Looking at the gift, Kanon didn't really want to accept it. She knew that if she did, it would be no different from indirectly accepting her membership in the detective team, making it harder to refuse other tasks in the future. Seeing Kanon's expression, Nokoru immediately smile and said,

"Don't worry, accepting a gift doesn't mean you're bound to the team."

Kanon opened her eyes wide in surprise, looking at Nokoru. Was he actually letting her off the hook? It was unbelievable! But in the next sentence, he revealed his true intentions:

"You just need to show a little interest in us, occasionally come to the council room for a while to have some cakes and tea."

"No way!" she exclaimed.

Although Akira's cakes and tea are truly irresistible, wouldn't frequenting there make her be seen as an official member?

"Don't be like that! Suoh also wants your autograph for your new detective story. Both Akira and I can't resist reading it multiple times."

And the image of begging and presenting a gift by the handsome club president to our poor-little-character Kanon caught the attention of the three fangirls.

Kanon couldn't hold back her tears when she saw them scream and run off to spread the news throughout the school. She truly, truly just wanted to become a normal one like them.