After becoming a chaotic daughter

Nanako learned the news that her father was going on a "blind date" from Osamu Dazai.

It was a very ordinary afternoon, Nanako was walking alone on the way to school with her schoolbag on her back.On a cloudy day in early winter, the sky was dark, the trees were withered, and there was a cold wind blowing across the river from time to time. The Tsurumi River, whose water level was getting lower in winter, was still gurgling towards the harbor at the mouth of the sea. , Nanako saw a mass of unknown humanoid objects going down the river.

The unknown human-shaped object hit a fishing net hanging in the middle of the river and stopped.

I don’t know who pulled up the fishing net on the river, across both banks of the river, regardless of whether it caught fish or shrimp, but it seems that it still caught a lot of garbage. Another unidentified human-shaped object that was thrown upside down in the river was hung on the fishing net of sundries such as iron cans and discarded metal parts. Only two standing legs can be seen on the water surface.

Nanako stopped in her tracks. She took small steps on the steps by the river bank, ran to the edge of the river below, stared at the humanoid object hanging on the fishing net for a long time, then looked left and right, and picked it up from the ground. A small stone was thrown into the river vigorously.

With a plop, the small stone fell into the river, and not far from the unknown human-shaped object, a splash of water splashed on the surface of the water.

"Dazai——" Nanako moved a little further away, trying to raise her voice, and shouted at the "unidentified humanoid object".

Soon, the guy who fell headfirst into the river moved his feet, and turned his submerged body in the river around very flexibly, from "head down" to "feet down", floating in the water. into the river.

"Yeah! Nanako~ Is school over?"

Dazai, who was soaking in the river with his head covered in waterweed, raised his hand to greet Nanako with a smile.

He quickly climbed to the bank from the river, scraped off the garbage and water plants on his body, and wrung out his wet coat.Drifting in the river again in winter, Nanako wanted to ask him "Isn't it cold", but before he could say a word, a gust of cold wind blew by, and Dazai immediately sneezed loudly, "Hah!" Then he sniffed and began to shiver.

"It's really really cold, the sky, the weather... Nanako..." Dazai folded his arms tremblingly, he was so cold that he couldn't speak well.

Nanako looked up at him, and corrected him sternly: "It's Nanako, not Nanako."

Dazai continued to tremble: "Okay, okay... Na, Nana, Nana Nako..."

Nanako: "..."

It can be seen that it is really cold.

"Are you going back?" Nanako asked him.

"No, no, no..." Dazai seemed to want to refuse, but it was probably because it was too cold to wear wet clothes in this cold weather, so he finally changed his mind shivering, "Still, back, back ... have a cup of... hot, hot tea..."

So Nanako climbed up the embankment with him, and then walked in the direction of the detective agency. When passing by a grocery store, Dazai, who was eloquent and eloquent, passed a "sweet talk" and easily passed the boss's aunt. I borrowed dry towels and old clothes, and within 5 minutes I came out of the store in a decent shape. When I said goodbye, I made an appointment with my aunt to return the clothes the next day.

"The next time you go into the water, you should bring an extra set of dry clothes and wrap it in a waterproof bag." Osamu Dazai learned the lesson from this time and summed up his new experience of entering the water.

Nanako often thinks that Dazai might have been a jellyfish in his previous life, otherwise she couldn't find any reasonable reason to explain Dazai's infinite love for "drifting in the river".

Thinking of Kunikida who might be jumping in anger again at the club, Nanako urged Dazai kindly: "Go back to work."

"Work?" Dazai's tone was bright and hearty, as if he wasn't the one who almost froze to death 5 minutes ago, "Of course, I've been doing a good job—what else is there to do in the detective agency right now? Could it be more serious than this? I've been working hard for it with my life on the line! I don't even have time to find a beautiful woman to die in love!"

"...?" Nanako tilted her head, not knowing what he was talking about.

Immediately afterwards, she heard Dazai say:

"After all, it is not an easy task to choose a suitable dating place for Mr. Ranpo and his blind date."

【…】

Nanako stopped in her tracks.

With her schoolbag on her back, she looked up at Dazai's innocent questioning face, then looked down at her little leather shoes, then looked up at Dazai with a calm expression, and finally, with a small face on her face, she put her expressionless face His eyes turned to the road ahead.

[? ? ? ! ! ? ! %#&()&%...￥]

Nanako's inner pupils trembled, and even typed out a string of garbled characters.

Dazai bent down, stretched out a hand and waved in front of Nanako: "もしもし...? Nanako?"

Like a computer that suddenly crashed, Nanako stood blankly in the middle of the street, facing Dazai's hand waving back and forth in front of her eyes without even shaking her pupils.

*******

Dad is on a blind date now and wants to find her a mother.

Knowing this from Dazai, Nanako finally figured it out. What she said to Yosano "whether you want a mother" meant neither "your father has a relationship" nor "your father hasn't had a relationship yet." Object, hurry up and urge him", not even "I want to be your godmother", but that Dad is preparing to find a mother for her, and even has a preliminary contact candidate.

Nanako wanted to ask her father a little bit, but Ranpo didn't tell her about it, and Nanako didn't know if she should ask. When she returned to the detective agency with Dazai, Ranpo was eating in the kitchen. Red Bean Rice Cake Soup.

The sweet smell of red beans wafted out of the kitchen door and permeated the corridor. As soon as the elevator door opened, Nanako smelled the warm and sweet aroma of red bean rice cake soup.

She carried her schoolbag and went straight into the kitchen. Tanizaki, who was standing in front of the kitchen counter, saw her, reached out and took another empty bowl, and scooped a bowl of red bean and rice cake soup for her.Nanako took the bowl, said "thank you" honestly, then took the bowl to the dining table, sat on the chair next to Ranpo, took a spoon, and started eating rice cakes.

Almost as soon as she sat down, Kunikida's roar came from the detective agency across the corridor. The roar almost knocked off the roof, followed by Dazai's very insincere sophistry.

Nanako didn't pay any attention to the movement over there, and concentrated on eating rice cakes.Ranbu didn't pay any attention to the movement over there, and concentrated on eating his bowl of red bean and rice cake soup with almost no rice cakes - it was full of red beans, which gave people a very "sweet and greasy" taste just visually. Feel.

Ranpo finished his portion of red bean rice cake soup first, and he was about to get up and throw the bowl into the sink when he heard Nanako, who was still chewing rice cakes, call him vaguely.

"Father." Chewing the sticky rice cake, Nanako's cheek bulged slightly, moving with the chewing movement, like a hamster.

"What?" Ranpo held an empty bowl, sat on a chair without moving his buttocks, and turned to look at Nanako.

Nanako didn't speak, she chewed the piece of rice cake in her mouth slowly, until she finally swallowed the rice cake in her stomach, she made a decision, she chose to ask Ranpo herself, what is the "blind date" that Dazai said thing.

Although she said she wanted to push the matter to Gogol, but Gogol was always doting on her. The day before yesterday she asked Gogol to ask her father if he had a girlfriend, but Gogol has not told her the answer until today. , Nanako thinks it is more reliable to ask by herself.

Nanako looked up at Ranbu and asked flatly, "Dad, are you on a blind date?"

There was a bang from the kitchen counter behind him, it was Tanizaki who didn't hold the spoon in his hand and smashed it into the pot.

Hearing Nanako's question, he paused for a while, put the empty bowl in his hand on the dining table, propped his head with one hand, and looked at Nanako sideways, always raising his eyebrows energetically It fell down and turned into a gentle arc.

He seemed a little lazy, as if he was talking about a very ordinary thing, and said to Nanako in a tone that seemed a little casual:

"Father will find you a mother."

Nanako lowered her little head, scratched her head, her eyes fell on the red bean rice cake soup in front of her, without blinking, as if she was thinking about Ranbu's answer, and after a few seconds, she raised her head again and asked Ranbu Step: "But a blind date is to find a wife, not a mother... Dad, don't you want a wife?"

Ranbu: "..."

He slapped Nanako's fluffy head with a slap.

"Children don't care so much about adults' affairs." Ranbu put on the airs of a guardian, and tried hard to face Nanako, but the effect was basically equivalent to nothing.Nanako wouldn't be afraid even of a stern-faced president, let alone an unreliable, idiot father.

Nanako also looked serious, with a stern face, and said to him: "But, you said you want to find a mother for me."

"Father will find you a good mother." Luanbu said, "So you don't have to worry about it.—Or, if you don't want a mother, then Dad won't look for it."

Nanako didn't answer Ranpo's topic of "Do you want a mother?" She just asked Ranpo again: "Then Dad, are you looking for a wife or a mother for me?"

"These two are the same." Ranpo replied, his thin eyebrows were furrowed, as if he was teaching Nanako to do homework, and his tone was serious and determined, "Father will find you a mother and marry her, so there is no what a difference."

【…】

It's not the same at all.

Nanako figured it out, her father wanted to find her a mother, not a wife for herself.

"Why do you want to find a mother for me?" Nanako asked him.

"Don't you want a mother?" Ranbu narrowed his long and narrow eyes, looked at Nanako, and turned the question around again.

Nanako thought about it for a while. She didn't really care about "whether she has a mother". She didn't want it very much, but she didn't feel repulsed, so she replied: "It's okay...it's okay if you don't have a mother. If a person gets married, then it’s okay to have a mother.”

Nanako doesn't care if she has a mother, but Ranpo still feels that it would be better for Nanako to have a "mother".Since Nanako doesn't reject it, and he thinks it's better, he chooses to find a "mother" for Nanako. In Ranpo's eyes, it is a logical thing.

So he said with certainty: "Then 'there is a mother'!"

Nanako was silent for a while, and she was also a little dizzy by the chaotic steps.She felt that this was wrong, but she was not good at talking, and those explanations were like knotted balls of wool, which made her not know where to start. The thread balls are even more messy.

She studied it very hard, and decided to pull out one by one, regardless of how to straighten out the whole "wool ball".

The most obvious, most important, and most "wrong" line is the first to be pulled out.

"Father." Nanako called Ranpo again.

Ranpo gave an "um", he knew that Nanako was trying her best to express herself clearly, so he also sat beside Nanako and waited for her to speak attentively.

Nanako said, "Last week, Dazai received another bomb from a sister."

Ranbu: "..."

This beginning made him feel a little bad.

Nanako continued: "Because Dazai lied to that sister's feelings."

Ranbu: "..."

Nanako continued: "So if you go on a blind date, Dad, you don't want to find a wife, but you just want to find a mother for me. This is also deceiving other people's feelings. The sister who is on a blind date with you will also send you bombs."

Ranbu: "..."

Finally finished speaking in an orderly manner, even citing real cases to increase the credibility and persuasiveness of these few sentences, Nanako felt that it was too difficult for her.

It was not easy, Nanako lowered her head and took a sip of the sweet soup, then raised her head to look at him, and rigorously added a concluding statement:

"Father, you don't disassemble the courier, but let me and Guoguoli dismantle it... I don't want to dismantle the bomb courier."

Ranbu: "..."

Edogawa Ranpo decided that in the future, all the couriers at home would be dismantled by Gogol.