The next morning, I'm finally discharged from the hospital and I'm able to get back to work as usual, however, when I got back to the police station, I saw Yumi and Remi talking to each other for a moment before noticing that I walk in.
"Well, I'd say that plan worked well"
Yumi had a smile on her face which worried me quite a bit, I couldn't help but feel as if she was plotting something.
"What plan?"
"The plan that I came up with and Remi helped me with"
I was a bit confused at first, but when Remi showed me an empty syringe, that's when I begin to be able to process what they were trying to do.
"I asked Remi to put the syringe in the tree where the body was, don't worry, all that you we're injected with was basically anesthesia in a syringe"
"Why would you inject me with that?"
"Simple, Marina would be worried about you and she'd call an ambulance, therefore, the arrow in you would be safely removed and you'd finally understand how Marina feels about you"
"How she feels about me?"
"Yeah, she has a crush on you, Valor"
I looked at them extremely confused for a moment.
What could Yumi mean by, 'Marina had a crush on me?'
"Um, what's a crush?"
Both Remi and Yumi looked at me, rather concerned as well.
"You don't know what crush is?!"
I could even hear the concern in Remi's voice as well.
"Wow, just hearing that makes me feel bad for her"
As I let out a sigh having to deal with them tease me, Marina soon comes in but she seems to be wearing something interesting.
"O-Oh h-hey Valor, it's nice to see you've been feeling better"
"Yeah, the doctor's said I should be fine, what's with the outfit though?"
"Oh, I was hoping if we could go to the cosplay cafe together"
Before I could even say no, Remi and Yumi said yes for me as I was forced to go to the cosplay cafe.
It doesn't take too long to get to the cosplay cafe, but as we look over at the maid cafe, there seems to be lots of police cars surrounding the place.
"Marina, we may have to go to the cosplay cafe another time, for now, we need to go and see what happened"
As we present our badges to the police and walk in to the maid cafe, I'm honestly not surprised when I see one of the workers dead.
"Marina, look around for evidence in the back room, I'll check this room"
As she nods and goes to check the back room, I go up to the body to investigate it, however, I wasn't expecting the body to still be warm.
In fact, the warmth hasn't left the victim's body yet.
"That's odd, if the person is dead their body should feel cold unless they died recently, just to verify though"
As I check for a pulse, I'm completely surprised to see that the person is alive.
"Marina, in here, this person is still alive!"
While I wait for Marina, I notice that there's tape on the victim's mouth and their hands are tied together.
As I put my gloves on, I delicately remove the tape and untie the ropes, just in time for Marina to come into the room.
"Marina, I'll get a sample of the blood, can you get medical help for the victim?"
Marina nods but before she's able to make it outside, an explosion seems to go off outside, I quickly get Marina down to the ground to ensure that she doesn't inhale the fumes as well.
Once the smoke clears, all I can feel is something crushing me while I'm on top of the victim and Marina, trying to keep them both safe.
"V-Valor, a-are you alright?!"
I can hardly respond, the weight is starting to become more than just crushing at this point.
As a detective, I made it my life's work to find killers so that people can live in peace, not having to live their lives in fear thinking that one day, someone might kill them.
It's also my life's work to protect people as well and I sure as hell am not about to let this be the first occasion where I can't save two living people.
"V-Valor, please, if you o-over exert yourself with all this weight on you-"
I manage to lift myself up with some of this rubble on me, it's actually lighter than I thought, but eventually it's gonna crush me.
"Go, now, take the victim and get to safety!"
"What about you?"
"I'll be fine, just go, I can't hold this up for long!"
She looks at me hesitantly as she nods, taking the victim with her as she runs away.
As the last bit of my strength is depleted, I soon collapse.
That burst of strength, it had to be adrenaline, there's no way I could've normally have lifted something up that heavily with so much ease.
I thought I'd be stuck in a state of limbo forever, but when I awaken from it, I'm surprised at first when I wake up in what seems to be a fancy room.
Where am I, what even is this place?
So many questions ran through my head as I tried to intake the whole situation.
I'm not being restrained at least thankfully when I checked.
As I get up, the place seems to be bigger than I thought.
Even exploring it seems rather difficult as well.
Thankfully during my exploration I found someone.
"Oh, your awake, thank goodness, the paramedics said you were fine, however, you were still taken to the hospital due to part of the rib cage being shattered, when they finished, they said it'd be best for you to be discharged and rest at your own place but since no one was around to take you home or to anyone's place, I offered to let you you stay at my place until you fully recovered"