After becoming a chaotic daughter

"what is this?"

Lying on the window sill, Gogol stretched out his hand and poked the small plastic box in front of him. Inside the box lay a wriggling red worm, which looked a bit like a caterpillar or other soft-bodied insect, with a body with long fingers. It was a lump, but there were no small dots that looked like tentacles under the body. Instead, it seemed that another layer of flesh had been folded, making it difficult to distinguish the front from the back, the head from the tail, and the tail from top to bottom.

It was ugly and disgusting, but Gogol opened his golden eyes wide, staring at the "worm" in the box without turning around.

"I picked it up on the way back from school... I don't know what kind of bug it is." Stepping on the small bench, Nanako answered him, holding a small paper stick made of paper in her hand, and gently poked the little bug in the box. The worm was poked and turned over, twisted and twisted, and it seemed that it was very difficult to move for a long time before finally lying on the bottom of the box again.

"What does it eat?" Gogol asked again, and before Nanako could answer, he reached out and plucked a half-withered and yellowed leaf from a potted green plant on the window sill.The leaf was almost bigger than the worm. Gogol tried to rub the still green half of the leaf towards the worm's head, and saw that the little worm didn't show any sign of eating the leaf, instead, it followed the leaf surface, It squirmed very slowly, trying to climb up little by little.

"Wow—that's disgusting!" He exclaimed exaggeratedly, and let go of the leaves. The half-yellow and half-green leaves fell into the box, and the little bugs that had just climbed up fell back to the bottom of the box again, trapped In a small space, not as big as a palm, wriggling in vain.

He looked at the slowly spinning worms in the box, and the smile on his face deepened a bit. He turned his head, looked at Nanako with a pair of golden eyes with weird pupils, and asked in a relaxed tone: "Shall we give the lid to you?" Is it covered?"

Nanako stared at the "worm" in the box for a while, and found that it didn't seem to be able to eat the leaf that Gogol broke off.

This worm looks a bit like a silkworm, but it is red and has a lot of wrinkles on the surface, so it looks particularly ugly, making Nanako not sure if it is a silkworm.If it's silkworms, it seems that they have to eat mulberry leaves. Nanako is not sure about the specifics. After all, she only saw others raising silkworms when she was in elementary school, and she had never raised silkworms herself.

But where did the detective agency get Mulberry leaves?

She scratched her little head, thought for a while, then climbed off the small bench, pulled off a leaf from all the green plants in the detective agency, and tried to feed it with Gogol, but The little bug didn't care at all, just crawled around in the plastic box full of leaves.

[...It seems to be even more disgusting. 】

Nanako looked at the red worms crawling around on the green, thinking silently in her heart.

"It doesn't look like the kind of insect that eats leaves." Gogol said with a serious expression on his face. His Japanese has been very good, and even his accent has faded a lot, but the intonation and some wording are still ambiguous. It seems a bit strange, but occasionally when being questioned by those clients who come to the detective agency, they can still answer the questions.

He suggested solemnly, "How about we try that instead?"

Nanako looked in the direction he was pointing.

Then I saw a pot of cactus placed on the windowsill.

It is the pot of cactus that Luanbu waters every day when he has nothing to do. The last one was watered to death half a month ago. The sister of the clerk bought a new one to replace it the next day. What replaced the original round fan cactus is a spherical cactus, round and round, with green fleshy stems covered with fine and dense thorns, which looks a bit hairy.

She looked down at the insects crawling around on a pile of green leaves in the box, and at the pot of cactus on the window sill, which was still alive and not showing signs of being watered to death by chaotic steps. After thinking about it, she felt that this If the cactus must die, it seems better to feed the small bugs she picked up for dinner than to be drowned by random steps.

The cactus couldn't pick the leaves, so Nanako picked up the small plastic box and tried to dump the bugs into the cactus' pot.The cactus was a little far away from her, and she couldn't reach it with her short hands, so Gogol took the plastic box for her, rustled it together with the previous pile of leaves, and poured it all into the pot of the cactus .

The leaves fluttered and fell on the windowsill, but the little red bugs fell steadily into the flower pot.Gogol stretched out his hand to pick up the fallen green leaves, and looked at the scene in the flower pot.

The little worm fell on the dirt, turned over very slowly, squirmed aimlessly in the flower pot for a while, and soon hit the bottom of the cactus ball.The round cactus ball occupied almost three-quarters of the flower pot, and after wriggling for a while, the little bug stopped in front of the cactus ball, stood up a bit, which was about a part of its head, and then It hangs down towards the cactus ball, almost lying on the thorny fleshy stem.

Soon, where the little bug was wriggling, the fleshy stem of the cactus ball was dented.

The first time she saw a worm eating a cactus, Nanako felt that her knowledge had grown a little bit in a strange place. She watched the worm "eat" the cactus intently, and then heard Gogol suddenly say:

"It has something in its belly."

Nanako: "Huh?"

She didn't understand what Gogol meant, but Gogol didn't speak any more, and came back from the tea room next door with a bottle of soda in his hands.

"Nanako, hurry up and do your homework—"

"Oh……"

Before finishing today's homework, Nanako had to temporarily give up observing the bugs, climbed off the small bench, dragged her small schoolbag, and went to the infirmary to do homework with Gogol.

He opened the cap of the soda bottle with a "Puff", and slumped into his office chair. He gulped down half a bottle of soda, and then hiccupped full of carbon dioxide with a "beep". After reading his comic book for a while, he stood up leisurely, took a small watering can from the cabinet, filled it with water, and then walked to the window sill with the watering can.

Watering flowers is a very interesting thing. Controlling the angle of the watering can, let the water flow at different speeds and heights, and sprinkle it from the spout full of holes like a lotus pod. This scene makes Luanbu very interesting.As for whether the watered plants got the right amount of water, that was beyond his concern.

But the general green plants would die in three to five days after he tossed them so much, and they always had to be replaced with new green plants, so he always only tossed the pot of cactus on the windowsill.Compared with other green plants, the vitality of cactus is still a little bit more tenacious, and it can persist for two months under his "watering".

Luanbu raised the watering can in his hand with nothing to do, and immediately he discovered a problem.

—Where's his cactus?

In the corner of the window sill, there was always a flower pot with cacti of various shapes, but now there was only one pot left, not even a little soil left.And at the bottom of the brick-red flowerpot, there is a slowly wriggling little bug whose color almost blends with the vase.

Ranbu: "..."

He looked around on the window sill, and found two leaves caught in the gap that had not been cleaned, and a small paper stick that fell on the window sill.He picked up the small paper stick, poked the worm at the bottom of the flowerpot, turned the whole worm over, and found an interesting thing.

This is a very "small" bug, and the surface of the body is covered with wrinkles, so it is difficult to find something without careful observation.But for Ranpo, who has outstanding observation skills, he discovered this matter almost at a glance.

The bug's body was folded, and it swallowed its own tail into its mouth.

Facing such a strange bug, Ranbu poked it again with a small paper stick, and finally couldn't help but spit out two words in disgust:

"...so ugly."

He really has never seen a uglier bug.

"Nanako——!!" He turned his head and shouted towards the infirmary, and after a while, a little carrot head with a pencil ran out of the infirmary.

Little Luobotou looked at him with his head up, and blinked his eyes slowly: "...?"

*******

The members of the detective agency, who were still alive or not, put down their work at the moment and went to the unoccupied desk in the office area, looking at the red bug crawling slowly in the biscuit box.

A worm that "ate" the whole cactus and even the soil, and then swallowed the [-]ml of medical disinfectant alcohol fed by Yosano, a stack of discarded documents fed by Kunikida, and the one fed in disorder Some snacks, after eating so many things, have not changed at all, still slowly wriggling in the box as before.

"...Maybe it can be used as a paper shredder." Facing such creatures beyond common sense, Kunikida quickly calmed down after showing his differences, and proposed that it is very suitable for the status of a conscientious and good member. "Compared to paper shredders, biological digestion will be more thorough. If confidential documents need to be destroyed, reasonable use can be considered. ... But the origin of this thing is unknown, and the safety needs to be confirmed first."

"I want to dissect it a little bit." Yu Xie Ye looked at the worm in the box thoughtfully, and at some point he held a scalpel in his hand, "Is this some kind of creature? Or a supernatural body?" ?”

"But then again, this... bug? Why did it appear in the detective agency?" The flower bag wrapped in a quilt huddled among a group of people, and raised a key question, "The monitoring of the detective agency is all Under my control, it is impossible for outsiders to sneak into the detective agency without leaving any traces and leave this bug behind."

The "foreigner" Nanako silently lowered her little head from the edge of the desk, wanting to go back to the infirmary to do homework, but she grabbed her back by the collar with her hand out in disorder, and carried her away from a group of adults. out.

"Nanako—"

Nanako who was picked up again: "..."

"On the way, I picked it up." With a small expressionless face, she replied without any fluctuations in her tone.

Kunikida: "...I picked it up on the road?"

Nanako nodded her head: "Yes."

That is the meaning of unknown origin, Kunikida suddenly became more suspicious of this strange bug, and was ready to destroy it on the spot at any time.

Xie Ye raised his slender and beautiful eyebrows slightly, and asked in a soft tone, "Where did you find it?"

Nanako thought for a while before replying slowly: "When school is over, at the seaside, almost to the detective agency..."

She is proficient in reading, writing, and listening in Japanese, but she still stumbles a bit when she speaks slowly. Short sentences.

Lumping her to the office chair, he hugged her and sat together, biting a pocky in his mouth, and took out an extra pocky from the box with his free hand, and fed it to the wriggling small bug.

"Then what?" he asked.

Nanako scratched her little head, thought for a while, and then continued: "... I saw a strange adult fishing, broke my hat, and dropped my phone."

"Then he ran away and picked up the worms." She said dryly, and then closed her mouth.

"Did that man say anything to you?" Yu Xie Ye asked after considering his words.

Nanako tried her best to recall, but she couldn't think of anything. After all, what the man said at the time were all weird. She only vaguely remembered "star" and "starch". If so, it probably means:

"He told me to be careful when I go out in the future."

Nanako "repeated" the man's words in a rigid manner.

Ranbu: "..."

With Xie Ye: "..."

Kunikida: "..."

Other members: "..."

Strange bugs and such are not important for the time being.

Perhaps they should deal with this "strange man" now.

——Everyone's thoughts reached a consensus at this moment.