Conquering Villains and Capturing Targets Is Harder in Real Life than in Games

31: Not everything the villain does will come together logically!

Satoru's eyes widened. "You've been investigating something like this, Mika-chan?"

"Mn. Since I first found out about what happened to Shii-chan, I've been feeling like something was amiss, so I looked into it."

Madoka picked up the file and flipped through it. "And what you found is summarized in here?"

Mika nodded. "I included details of the "accident" as well as some notes on the break-in of Shii-chan's locker from her fanclub. I thought the two incidents may have been related. I haven't looked too deeply into that incident but from what I gathered, the results of the locker break-in was inconclusive since there were no witnesses present."

"Hmm, so that's what this was all about," remarked Shizuka nonchalantly.

Fuyuki turned to Shizuka with her eyebrows furrowed. "I can't say you seem worried or even surprised, Shii-chan."

Shizuka leaned back in her chair in an unaffected manner. "Well, it really doesn't come as a surprise to me. I mean I have been expecting an attack of some sort." She then stretched her arms out until she heard her joints crack. Ah, that sure hit the spot.

Madoka's eyes darkened dangerously while everyone else blinked in a confused manner.

"You've been expecting an attack, Shizuka-chan?"

"Yeah, someone was "kind" enough to send me a warning via text a while ago. The contents of the text went something like "People like you disgust me and deserve to be punished"?"

Mika gasped. "You received something like that and you didn't tell anyone?"

"Well, I thought about telling you guys at first but decided against it since I figured stuff like this would be happening a lot since I'm dating the school's idol. After that I didn't receive anymore texts since I blocked the number and so I just kind of forgot about it."

Madoka suddenly reached over and gripped Shizuka's wrist with a little more force than necessary. "Shizuka, be honest with me. Has anything else happened to you that we should know about?"

Shizuka thought for a moment. "No, I don't think so. Nothing worth mentioning anyways."

"Okay, so let me get this straight," began Satoru with his nose scrunched up. "Right after you and Madoka became official, you received an omnious text. Then, someone broke into your locker and left insect larvae gummies inside. Finally, you had a severe allergic reaction to a drink that was mysteriously sent to school."

"That sounds about right."

Mika pursed her lips. "What about what happened to you yesterday, Shii-chan? Weren't you hit by glass from a broken window?"

Shizuka glanced at the bandages still on her arms. "Nah, that really was an accident. I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Alright, if we exclude that, isn't the last incident too different from the previous ones?" Fuyuki pointed out after a pause. "I mean leaving scary things in someone's locker and trying to kill someone by deliberately triggering their allergies are on two entirely different levels. A lot of people are jealous of Shii-chan but I can't imagine that there's someone out there who hates her so much that they'd want to physically hurt her. "

"I don't want to imagine such a thing either but I had people carefully investigate this before I came to you guys. So while the chances of this being an accident exist, they are but exceedingly low."

Madoka pulled out a piece of paper from the file. "This is the information you compiled on the drinks, right?"

"Yes." Mika took the sheet of paper into her hands and held it up. On it was a photo of a store and some notes. "The drinks that came to 3-A last week came from a store called "Teasers" that opened up on the other side of town a little bit over six months ago."