"Oh, he did?" Felix's eyes brightened up.
Ravella looked surprised and took out her notepad to write everything down.
"On the first day of the training, he did… leave for many hours. When I saw him next morning, he was very injured."
Jin said with a frown.
"However, there is no way Kiernan would've gone to Irio just to kill someone and come back.
"That makes no sense. He is a good kid, not some kind of twisted murderer!"
"Calm down." Felix raised his hand to silence him. "Do you know how he left? Walking or with a car?"
"With bus," Jin said. "We traveled by bus, and the driver happened to be an Irio citizen, so he gave a ride to Kiernan."
"I see. Do you know his name by any chance?" Felix asked.
"Yes, it should be… Bob Green."
Ravella wrote it down.
"Thanks for your time." Felix shook his hand and headed towards the door.
"There is no way Kiernan did anything you're suspicious of him doing." Jin said. "He's a very nice kid."
"We're just following some leads. Kiernan is not guilty of anything yet." Felix then waved his hand and left with Ravella.
When they reached their car, Felix took out his phone and checked for Bob Green's location.
"He should still be in Irio. His bus is scheduled to leave in a couple of hours." Felix sat in the driver's seat, changed gears, and with a roaring engine, left Karuza High's grounds.
After half an hour, and after crossing the entire city of Irio, he turned the wheel and parked in the bus yard where the other buses were already lined up, ready for departure.
Felix and Ravella left their car, and after asking a couple of bus drivers for Bob's location, they soon found him in front of the bus yard with a cigarette between his lips.
"Are you Bob Green?" Felix asked.
"Who's asking?" Bob asked and dropped the cigarette to the ground before stamping it out.
"My name's Felix, and this is my partner, Ravella." Felix showed his detective badge. "We have a few questions."
"A-alright." Bob fearfully said. "I only hit him once in a bar fight. Did that bastard actually call the World Detective Association on me? That's bullshit; it was just a bar fight!"
"But wait…" Bob narrowed his eyes. "Don't you guys have, like, serial killers to catch? Why are you wasting your time on small fries like me?"
"You're mistaken." Felix said. "I am not here for you. I just have a few questions about a person you might've given a ride to."
"Ah…" Bob breathed a sigh of relief. "What's up?"
"You took a group of Karuza High students to Tiamut's training village, correct?"
"Ah, yes." Bob nodded with a smile. "Amazing stuff they did at nationals, right? My coworkers and I cheered them on from home with beer and barbeque, good times!"
"You then gave a ride to an individual called Kiernan Hunter, right?" Felix asked. "You took him to Tiamut's training village, and then you gave him a ride somewhere else, correct?"
"That's correct." Bob nodded. "I gotta admit, I didn't think he was such a powerhouse. When I saw him on television, I thought he was a completely different person. Damn, puberty is crazy, right?"
"Where did you take him?" Felix asked. "Did you take him back to Irio?"
"Why would he want to go to Tiamut and then straight back to Irio? That makes no sense." Bob laughed. "Are you really part of the World Detective Association? I thought you guys were smart as hell!"
"Please answer my question." Felix started to get annoyed. "Where did you take him?"
"Tiamut's Fighting Octagon!" Bob said with a smile. "He wanted to check it out, and I don't blame him. When I first came to Tiamut, I also went to check it out."
"Tiamut's Fighting Octagon, what's that?" Felix frowned.
"It's famous around New Rakuya." Bob said. "It's basically training school. It was founded about eight years ago, and I heard Johan Yeager himself learned to fight there.
"It has become very big in these eight years. It's apparently this country's best training place. So, Kiernan most likely went there to sightsee. It's common for tourists to visit."
"Do you have its phone number?" Felix asked.
"Use the internet." Bob said. "You have a phone, yes? Anyway, I must get ready to leave. I have to take a couple dozen passengers to Raimei!"
"Thank you for your time." Ravella said with a sweet smile, and after Bob left, she chuckled. "I guess Kiernan is cleared from suspicions. Visiting that place also explains his injuries."
"Why are you so happy about that?" Felix's eyebrow twitched.
"Well…" Ravella twirled her hair. "I would've hated for someone with such tasty blood to be a criminal."
"I can't deal with you right now." Felix rubbed his forehead, found the phone number from the internet, and immediately dialed the number.
"Wait here while I make the call!"
"Alright!" Ravella giggled and started daydreaming about Kiernan.
Felix walked a little further away, and then the phone call connected.
"Hello, is this Tiamut's Fighting Octagon?"
"Yes, who is this?" A voice answered on the other side of the phone.
"My name's Felix, and I am part of the World Detective Association. You can check my badge number on their website—948727518."
The person on the other side of the phone checked it out and then said, "Well, how may I help you?"
"I need to check someone that visited there a couple of weeks ago—the name should be Kiernan Hunter."
The person typed on the keyboard and sounded like he was munching on a snack at the same time.
"Yeah, he was here." The person replied. "He paid for ten hours of time in the octagon."
"Do you have a way to check whether he was there for all those ten hours?" Felix asked.
"Listen, sir, we have thousands of visitors every week; we don't care whether he was here for exactly ten hours or not."
"Alright, thank you…" Felix ended the phone call and walked to Ravella.
"Well?" Ravella smiled.
"He paid for ten hours." Felix sighed. "I thought it really was him. My first suspicions about Kiernan came when I found out that the victim actually refereed one of his matches."
"Yes, but he has refereed thousands of kids this year alone." Ravella said. "It doesn't mean anything. Everything that we've found has cleared him from his suspicions.
"Unless you think that the murder was very calculated, and Kiernan paid for ten hours of time at the octagon to have an alibi for the murder he was about to commit.
"The murder was very messy and done barehanded. It was far from calculated. Irio has a darker side with underground gangs roaming around the victim's neighborhood.
"One of those underground kids must've broken into his home, and robbery gone wrong, ending up in murder."
"I suppose so." Felix scratched his head. "I really thought my instincts were right on this, but I suppose not."
"It's alright!" Ravella linked arms with him. "Let's just leave it to the police to figure out. We've been summoned by the association for the annual meeting, after all."
"Yeah, I just wanted to solve this before leaving, but I guess we've run out of time." Felix wryly smiled. "Let's return home then. You've done well, if we ignore today's incident!"