Case 9: The Love Sage

“I solved it!”

After witnessing ten-odd cases, this sort of declaration coming from Yua’s lips was in no way new. I was quite used to it.

I just wasn’t expecting to hear it out of nowhere like that, so I raised my brow along with my gaze.

It was just another boring late afternoon with nothing substantial to occupy our time. As usual, we did nothing more than eat some snacks and do our homework. But these last few minutes Yua had been occupied with checking her phone for something before she uttered those words.

“Err,” I said. “Did I miss some new case?”

“Oh, it’s not a new case. I simply solved the mystery of why we were getting so few requests as of late.”

After helping out Inspector Mochizuki, it had been about an entire week now without even a single case coming our way.

I mostly attributed this to the fact that by now people surely ran out of troubles to solve.

Well, I was probably underestimating the sort of troubles teenagers could get into, but still.

“What’s the solution, then?” I prompted.

“It’s this!” she said, thrusting the phone at me. “Look at it!”

Looking at the screen, I widened my eyes.

What Yua showed me was a webpage—or rather, a social media profile. It was an account called Love Sage, its description stating it was meant to give teenagers love advice.

“You’re telling me this is the reason?” I asked, my face blank.

“Yes!” She was always cute when she grew excited like this. “We haven’t been getting any cases because students were using this service, instead!”

Was that really what one would call a service? Whatever.

I grinned. “Meaning, you’re jealous?”

“Wha… what does jealousy have to do with it?”

“Because you think people choose this over you, right?”

“Ugh.” Bullseye.

“Anyway,” I said. “What’s so special about this? How did you even find this account?”

She placed the phone on the table and glared at it as she spoke. “I’ve heard some whispers about something like this, but ignored them… Until today. I just so happened to try researching it on a whim, and I finally found it. You can imagine my utter shock,” she mumbled. “And that’s not all, Amari-kun. I now believe the one who operates this account is from our very school!”

“…Eh?” I said, my eyes widened again. “How on earth did you figure that out?”

Yua’s emotions were prone to change as frequently as the weather, so now that she had a chance to solve a riddle, her eyes were sparkling again.

“See, there’s actually a huge clue right in the very profile picture—” She tapped the screen, showing me a picture that looked like just some random background. “If you zoom in, you can just barely see it—but that building in the background is exactly our gymnasium.”

I frowned. “Hmm… I guess I can see it. But is that enough to say for sure?”

“That’s not all, obviously.” She took back the phone and scrolled a bit. “Look at this message from a couple of weeks ago—it speaks about a huge confession scene as evidence of the Love Sage’s success. And guess what? There has been such a confession in our school at that exact date.”

I rubbed my chin. “I… suppose so. Yeah, I seem to remember something like that.”

“There are other messages all indicating similar events that could have happened only at our school. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to narrow it down any further for the moment…”

“Wait, are you trying to find out the one behind the account?”

“Naturally! We need to take them down!” she announced, waving a fist.

I laughed. As a result, she glared at me, and I shrugged. “C’mon, Shiomi-san. Are you actually feeling threatened by this? You offer completely different services, right?”

She looked down sadly. “Yes, but… these are the services most people who come here want… the mystery-solving is just a bonus…”

Ah, she was worried about that. After all, she had a strict “no love advice” policy, unlike the one behind that account.

“Furthermore, I’d put the odds at about 60-40 that the one behind this account is a girl.”

“Hmm? Why’s that?”

“First of all, the name. Leaving the ‘Sage’ part aside, I don’t think a guy would use such a tacky nickname. And a guy like that is much more likely to present himself as some pickup expert or something, rather than a giver of love advice. That being said, they seem to be well-versed in the psychologies of both girls and boys, so I can’t say for sure. I’ll go with a girl for the time being.”

I nodded absently. “So this leaves us with what? Just a few hundred candidates or so?”

“Hmph. I’ll get those down to 20 within the day, trust me. On that note… it’s time to message them.”

“Message them? You mean the Love Sage?”

“Obviously! I’ll go to them with a fake case to carefully extract further information about them.” With a smile, she started tapping furiously on her phone. “Oh, right. Help me with this, Amari-kun.”

Really, me too? Bother.

A few minutes later, Yua was growing increasingly annoyed. “Why won’t they answer already?” she grumbled. “It’s after school hours!”

“…Err, people have this thing called a life, you know?”

She glared at me for this comment. A touchy spot, perhaps?

What did she do after school, anyway? Right, the poor girl probably had no friends… I should hang out with her sometime.

Yua rose from her seat, still clearly agitated. “Fine, let’s adjourn this meeting for today, then. Dismissed!”

She stormed outside; I could do nothing but watch that adorable gale from behind.

Later that evening, while I was lazing around and watching some funny cat videos on my phone, I received a message from her.

Look, Amari-kun! They finally responded!

She sent me a screenshot of her conversation with the Love Sage. In it, Yua was pretending to be a boy wanting to confess to a girl and asking for advice. Incidentally, her account name was “Ayu”, which I felt somewhat defeated the purpose of her pretending to be a boy, but whatever.

The response was a rather generic one (to match the generic question), so Yua was understandably vexed that she gained no new information, although she claimed this somehow strengthened her feeling that there was a girl behind the account.

What about yours? she asked me.

I sighed. I really didn’t feel like doing this, but I sent her a screenshot of my own attempt with the Love Sage as well.

Are you even trying? Yua complained a few moments later.

It was rather half-assed, admittedly, but what else could I do? This entire business was just one huge bother.

It wasn’t like I needed the services of the great Love Sage.

Why are you so utterly useless as an assistant? Despite those rather harsh words from Yua, I could imagine her pouting cutely while writing them, so it softened the blow. Fine, then! I’ll create three more accounts and try attacking in different ways!

I responded: You do realize that if you contact them again in such quick succession it’d just make it obvious it’s you again, right?

Grr.

Despite our (well, Yua’s) best efforts, however, there was no other progress made that night, or indeed for a while after that.

It must have frustrated her greatly, to have one mystery remain unsolved like this.