In a crossover anime, do you believe that a machine spirit can defeat a fake human?

“Um…” Chen Yi raised his hand, intending to push her away.

"Chen Jun is still injured, be careful." Futaba Rio was a little annoyed; Kasumigaoka's sudden action had startled her.

"Oh...sorry." Kasumigaoka sat back down, looking obedient.

Why go back to school at night?

"Let me explain..." Rio Futaba sighed, briefly explaining the more important parts to Utaha Kasumigaoka.

"...So, your actions of returning to school at night inadvertently thwarted the terrorist organization's plot, right?" After hearing this, Kasumigaoka gradually calmed down. After all, no one was seriously injured, and the not-too-bad outcome calmed her down.

"Theoretically speaking, that's roughly it," Chen Yi said with some reservations.

"Then what do you think?" Rio Futaba looked at Chen Yi, understanding the meaning behind his words.

“I suspect that the security guard was actually after me.” Chen Yi recalled his first encounter with the Crab Legs organization, which was with that old man. His violent behavior towards the old man at the time might have made them target him.

“That security guard was hired even before you enrolled, so he probably wasn’t targeting you specifically,” Shuangye thought for a moment, then shook her head.

"That would be for the best." Chen Yi reasoned a little and increasingly felt that there was a high possibility that the Crab Leg Disciple was targeting him.

The total number of extreme groups that admire hypocrites is still very small, and they wouldn't deliberately plant a pawn in a school beforehand to retaliate against someone—under normal circumstances.

They all idolize hypocrites, and trying to understand their behavior from a rational perspective is quite foolish.

"Hello? Mom?... The preliminary sample test results are in?" Shuangye's phone rang. She answered the call and suddenly stood up.

"?" Chen Yi, who had been half-paralyzed, suddenly sprang up and stared at Rio Futaba's phone.

"Don't get too excited." Kasumigaoka reached out and pressed him back down.

"How did it go?" Chen Yi asked patiently after Shuangye hung up the phone.

“Mom said...this so-called ‘evil spirit’ is essentially a mutant of a pseudo-human.”

This completely confirmed my initial suspicions. "Hmm, and then?"

"Then there's... the principle of being subjectively invisible... originating from its skin, no, the microbiome attached to its skin. Specifically, it's a facultative mutualistic symbiotic system," Futaba explained.

Facultative mutualism, more precisely, is a post-mortem mutualistic symbiosis, in which the two provide assistance to each other while alive, and after one dies, the other can continue to live by utilizing the other's remains.

"I understand now," Chen Yi said, suddenly realizing.

"What do you understand?" Kasumigaoka was still pondering what symbiotic and mutually beneficial coexistence was when she heard Chen Yi's excited voice and came back to her senses.

"What makes the object invisible is not the fake human, but the bacteria on its body. After the fake human died, the bacteria used its corpse to prolong its life, which is why the authorities failed to discover its body. This is also the fundamental reason why the corpse decomposed at a rate far exceeding the average in the natural environment."

Chen Yi excitedly slapped his palm.

“False humans indeed cannot come out during the day, and evil spirits, as a type of false human, should also be like that.” Rio Futaba smiled with her lips pursed, her eyes revealing undisguised excitement.

"What if its skin were completely covered by bacteria? And not exposed to sunlight at all? Would that also achieve the effect of 'nighttime'?" Chen Yi took out his phone and scribbled notes in his notepad.

“So that’s the truth: ‘evil spirits’ can appear during the day.” Futaba nodded, making the final statement.

"I feel like your mother is going to publish another 'Nature' paper." Chen Yi was in a good mood and made a casual joke.

“Your name will also be on it, Mr. Most Important Sample Provider,” Rio Futaba replied.

Kasumigaoka blinked, feeling inexplicably out of place.

"I'm going back now. I'll come visit again tomorrow." Rio Futaba packed her things, looking eager to go through the materials and revise the articles she posted on the forum.

The ward fell silent again, leaving only Chen Yi and Kasumigaoka.

"Um... junior, I'm sorry about yesterday."

The silence in the ward wasn't oppressive, but this trivial matter kept tugging at Kasumigaoka's sensitive heart, making her somewhat restless.

what's up?

Chen Yi turned his gaze from the windowsill back to Kasumigaoka's face.

Her eyes darted away slightly, her expression was awkward, and she didn't know what to do with her hands.

"Oh...you mean that matter?" Chen Yi recalled for a moment, then took out his phone and unblocked Kasumigaoka from his blacklist.

"Girls should be more reserved..." Chen Yi lectured her earnestly, like an old man from somewhere.

"So, junior, you don't like it?" Kasumigaoka asked rhetorically.

"Does Junior like men?" she asked, pretending to be very scared.

"My sexual orientation is perfectly normal, okay?" Chen Yi replied irritably.

"Then why...?"

"That's why I said girls should be more reserved. We can only be friends at best. Sending me this is somewhat disrespectful to your own chastity," Chen Yi said righteously.

Chen Yi considered himself a person who could control himself and always maintained the proper distance in matters involving relationships between men and women, never overstepping the boundaries.

...Kluka doesn't count; she's not even human.

"Understood, junior." So, other strategies are still possible, right?

A sly glint flashed in those scarlet eyes.

"Would you like to try some of my baked cookies?" Kasumigaoka casually opened the beautifully packaged box on the table, picked out a cookie with her fingers, and offered it to Chen Yi's mouth.

"...I can do it myself." Has she not learned her lesson at all? Was my tone not harsh enough? Did I make her think that briefly crossing the line was acceptable?

With that thought in mind, I put the cookie in my mouth.

He paused for a moment while chewing, then swallowed the food as if nothing had happened.

"Why add salt?" he asked, looking at Kasumigaoka.

"Because I want to try making the Breton shortbread you made last time..."

"...I'll teach you when I have time."

Ah~ that's one of the reasons I like you, Chen Jun.

P.S.: I suddenly realized that laptop prices might go up in May or June, then drop in October, maximizing my losses. If I buy now, do you have any recommendations? Around 6-7k RMB. Thanks everyone!

The daily vote-getting session, meow! Recommendation votes, tips, monthly tickets, meow!

If not, please give the author a little pat to show your support, meow! Thank you, meow!

Department of Service: Chapter Fifty-One Transcript

"Chen Yi, we meet again." After lunch, two uninvited guests quietly arrived.

One was Inspector Suzuki, a seasoned cop he had met once before, and the other was a completely unfamiliar young man.

"This is Takahashi, a detective," Inspector Suzuki introduced briefly.

"A case of a fake attack occurred at Chiba Municipal Soubu High School last night. Our investigation found that you were at the scene. Could you please cooperate with us to make a statement?" Inspector Suzuki placed a box of snacks on the table in the ward, took out his small and exquisite notebook, and stared at Chen Yi with questioning eyes.

"They shouldn't be taking me back, right?" Chen Yi's heart skipped a beat as he realized that the person he killed last night seemed to be a human.

"The deceased was a crab-leg thug. Before we arrived, the officers from the Abnormal Threat and Security Division had already coordinated with the Criminal Investigation Division. It was a reasonable and legitimate act of self-defense." Officer Takahashi emphasized the word "reasonable."

"So please relax, young man. Just tell me what you know." He had a warm smile on his face, which made people feel relaxed without them even realizing it.

"Um, should I leave?" Kasumigaoka asked timidly from the side.

“Family members do not need to leave,” replied Inspector Suzuki, who had been standing to the side with no expression.

"Uh, not a family member..."

"...Then it would be best to avoid this, since some details may involve personal privacy." Officer Takahashi hesitated for a moment before replying.

"Oh, oh..." Then Kasumigaoka went out.

"..." Chen Yi looked at the closed door, then at the two police officers, and at Kroka standing in a conspicuous position, waiting for their questions.

"Then I'll begin my questions. What was your purpose in returning to school and entering the school?" Inspector Suzuki held his pen, waiting for Chen Yi to speak.

"I obtained a sample of a fake human and wanted to give it to a friend at the same school for testing, but I didn't have a way to preserve it in time, so I could only try to conduct preliminary testing at the school."

"A high school student? And he even brought the sample back to school for testing? Why don't you just say your friend is a leading figure in the field of biology?" The young police officer suddenly challenged, scoffing at Chen Yi's answer.

"Calm down, Takahashi. Don't make things difficult for the embassy," Inspector Suzuki whispered, his expression seemingly indifferent.

"So you're putting on an act for me, aren't you?" Chen Yi thought to himself with a cold laugh as he looked at the two policemen, one playing the good cop and the other the bad cop.

However... would the embassy exert pressure? Chen Yi kept this somewhat important clue in mind.

"Klukka, check if they have any weapons or arresting tools on them. I can't see their backs from this angle," Chen Yi called out to Klukka in his mind.

"No, Commander, they didn't even bring any hostage restraints," Kluge replied.

It's good that they weren't after me. Chen Yi relaxed a little.

"Testing the samples... Okay, now for the next question. You killed the spider-like dummy's corpse on the fourth floor, right? The bullet extracted from that dummy's corpse was 5.56 NATO, which is different from the caliber of the victim's pistol."

"It's me," Chen Yi admitted.

"Young and promising." Inspector Suzuki nodded, quickly taking notes in his notebook.

"Okay, now for a question about your innocence. Although the criminal investigation team concluded that it was self-defense, could you please provide some specific details? This part needs to be filed."

"The security guard attacked me first, and I fought back in self-defense." Chen Yi's words were brief and did not reveal any other useful information.

"This is the wound he shot me in. The hospital has the surgical records; they removed a .22 caliber bullet." Chen Yi pointed to a spot on his lower right abdomen.

“His body was half-eaten,” Officer Takahashi suddenly said.

"So we can't confirm how many shots you hit the other side. Could you tell us?"

“I only hit him once, and then he went down,” Chen Yi replied quickly.

"Completely unfazed by pressure... Anyone who didn't know better would think you'd committed a lot of crimes... You're a real talent for the police force." Takahashi suddenly laughed and praised him.

"Not playing the good cop/bad cop anymore?" Chen Yi blinked.

"What are you acting for? You little rascal. I said his corpse was half-eaten, but I didn't say which half it was."

"If you just give a random number, or simply say you missed, that's considered deceiving an officer, and that constitutes obstruction of justice."

"But you said you were shot... I should have told you the results of the police investigation. After hearing that only half of the body was left, you probably deduced that the lower half of the deceased was eaten away."

Tsk, I've been under pressure for so long, turns out they were just bluffing me.

"So, Officer Takahashi, what's the point of you bluffing me?" Chen Yi stared at Officer Takahashi, expressionless.

“I looked at your file before I came here. You’ve been attacked by fake people many times, so I wanted to test your character. Now it seems you’re quite a formidable kid. I’m telling you, you should apply to the police academy and become my colleague.” Officer Takahashi patted Chen Yi’s shoulder hard, making him wince in pain.

“Brother Takahashi, even if Chen is truly a promising anti-terrorism talent and genuinely intends to work as a police officer, there’s a high probability he’ll choose to join ‘Iron Blood’ after graduation,” Inspector Suzuki said with a hint of helplessness.

“Yeah, yeah…” Officer Takahashi scratched his head.

For the remainder of the time, the two officers did not disturb them further, exchanging a few pleasantries before leaving readily.

"How is it, Mr. Chen?" Kasumigaoka came in immediately after the two police officers left.

"It's nothing, just taking a statement. I guess Futaba's side will have to do it too," Chen Yi replied casually. He glanced at Kroos, who was resting with her eyes closed in the corner, waiting for her to speak.

'Those two officers didn't show a single hint of hostility until they left, not even a subconscious movement to reach for their weapons... Commander, from the official perspective, you're very likely innocent.' Kroos opened her eyes, dispelling Chen Yi's last concerns.

"Objectively speaking, I really didn't do anything wrong." Chen Yi shrugged.

However, since someone was killed, it's understandable that they would worry about being held accountable.

He killed someone...

Chen Yiping lay down, staring at the ceiling, emptying his mind.

To be honest... I didn't feel anything.

If I had to put it in perspective, killing a murderer and killing a fake person are similar in terms of sensory experience.

Moreover, from a more subjective perspective... when I killed the 'fake Kobayashi' at close range, it was already considered murder in my eyes.

“Self-defense, Commander. It was unavoidable. Don’t be soft-hearted,” Kroos’s voice rang out.

"I know." Chen Yi closed his eyes, feeling a little tired.

"The real person doesn't look as bizarre as the fake one, so it's just a little uncomfortable," he muttered to himself, as if trying to convince himself.

Who cares? I'm not really going to go around killing people anyway.

Service Department: Chapter Fifty-Two: Discharge from the Hospital! (Second Time)