Chapter 24 – Training to be Junior Detectives

Third person POV

 Later, at lunch time, Akira and Hachi are at the agency's spacious, restaurant-style, breakroom eating their delicious lunch when Valentino came to eat lunch with them. The breakroom was not that busy, with most employees preferring to eat out for lunch than to bring their own lunches. 

 "Hello there," Valentino greeted. 

Akira and Hachi then looked at him. 

 "Oh, hey." 

 "Can I eat with you?" 

 "Sure, sure thing," Hachi responded while gesturing towards an empty seat opposite of him and Akira. 

Valentino then sat down on that seat, put his bento-style lunch box on the table, and unfolded its cloth covering and opened the lid, before grabbing his spoon and fork and begin eating up. His food for lunch is classical lasagna. 

Upon seeing that dish, Akira and Hachi were stunned. 

 "Is that lasagna?" 

 "Yes, it's one of my favorite dishes," replied Valentino, before turning to see their food for lunch. 

Akira and Hachi's lunches are fried Java rice, fried dumplings, corned beef, and some sliced vegetables. 

 "Is that Java rice?" he asked them. 

 "Yes, it's one of our favorite dishes, too," Akira responded while picking up a piece of cucumber with his wooden chopsticks, before shoving it into his mouth. 

 "He used margarine instead of butter for the color," Hachi added. 

 "I see."

 After that, Akira began to wonder about what would happen to Valentino's former coworker and manager back in Italy. So, he verbalized that thought to Valentino. So, he verbalized that thought to Valentino. 

 "Those two idiots?" replied Valentino. "I heard they got demoted after one of their coworkers exposed their wrongdoings to their department head, and they were sent to separate branches, one in the Swiss Alps, and one on the island of Sicily." 

 "Oh..." 

 "I guessed that's karma for them." Hachi laughed. 

 "And take note: those branches are well known for their strictness, so I think they will have a hard time." 

Because of those words, Akira felt as if it was painful. "Yeah, that's true." 

They then all resumed eating.

 Shortly thereafter, Valentino said to the two youngsters, "You two have training this 3 in the afternoon. Akira and Hachi are stunned to hear the word 'training'. 

 "Training?" "Yes, you two will be junior detectives before the end of summer." 

 "WHAT?! Before the end of this summer?" Akira responded to this. 

 "Yes, since you're so smart, me, Toshi-san, and the president of the agency decided to give you and Hachi training to be junior detectives." 

Since he watched many detective shows and movies and that he was too smart for his own good, Akira couldn't argue about that. 

 "Is that gonna be hard?" Hachi asked. 

 "Of course, yes, being a detective is hard work," Valentino responded with a logical explanation. "You must know how to solve cases, analyze them, and execute plans and figure things out." 

Hachi felt a bit overwhelmed by those aspects of a detective, but he was determined to take it as a part of his revenge quest. 

Akira, meanwhile, completely accepted that challenge as a part of his own revenge quest, too.

 So, at 3:21 p.m., they are now at the training facility of the agency. Toshi will be their mentor and instructor for their training. The first lesson of their training is pretty simple: to solve simulated cases both of the supernatural and the overworld. 

 "Now, solve these cases with these clues," Toshi said to them, before giving them pieces of notepad papers containing clues for those cases. 

With that Akira and Hachi began using them to solve the cases. 

This took over an hour, but they succeeded with good, logical conclusions. 

Toshi then checked their work, and it seems that Akira had more right answers than Hachi. 

But despite that, Hachi was determined, not to outsmart Akira, but to do better than that.

 Later, at 4:38 p.m., their next lesson is what to do when a person-of-interest is in a simulated area. Valentino will become that person as a part of the simulation. While Hachi don't know what to do in that situation, Akira do, and he succeeds to outsmart that person before Hachi did. But still, Hachi believes that he needs to train more if he wants to be in the same level as Akira. This lesson took over 44 minutes to complete. After that, they were allowed to go home, but were told to come to the training facility again tomorrow at 3 in the afternoon to do the same set of lessons again. But, a few days from now, there will be another type of training for junior detectives.