In a Different World with a Smartphone (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter SS1

I’m not a pyromaniac! 

It was end of a certain year. A friend was moving, and I’d gone along to help out. Long ago, the friend had moved from the countryside into Sendai. It turned out that the apartments we rented were close by, so we hung out a lot. 
It was a weekday, so I was the only one who went to help. Back then we were still students, so we had no money to pay for professional movers. All we could do was handle it ourselves, but naturally that took a lot of time. In the end, it grew dark before we finished, so I decided to head home for the day. 
It was only a thirty minute walk back to my apartment. Just as I was about to head off, my friend asked me a question. 
“Will you take this? I just bought a new one.” He held out a red canister, half-filled with kerosene. 
The winters in Sendai could get pretty cold, and the oil for kerosene lamps got pretty expensive as a result. If a student wasn’t careful they could end up with a massive hole in their wallet. 
I gratefully accepted it, having no reason not to, and began my journey home. 
However as I walked down the road, I began to regret taking it. Our apartments were located atop separate hills, meaning you always had to climb a hill to get to the other one. Walking up the steep road with a canister weighing more than ten kilograms was really tiring, which got me sweating despite it being a winter’s night. 
The road I was travelling down was a back street, so few cars used it, if any. I came across a single street light, standing all alone, almost apologetically. I was exhausted, so I put the canister down under the street light, then sat on top of it to take a rest. 
A car was coming toward me from the opposite direction. I wasn’t really paying it any mind, just staring up at the night’s sky, but it came to a halt in front of me. I wondered what was going on and looked over to see it was a police car. Two policemen exited the car, then called out to me. 
“Good evening.” 

“Oh, yes, good evening...” 
“Do you live around here?” 
“Oh, yes. I do.” 
“Are you on your way home?” 
“Umm, yes, I’m on the way back from a friend’s house.” I smiled as much as possible as they grilled me. What on earth is going on, I wondered, my head full of question marks. 
“Are you a student?” 
“That’s right...” 
“Well, you see, there have been a lot of fires around here recently. We have reason to believe they may have been arson attacks. That’s why we’re on patrol.” 
The moment I realized what was going on, the policeman shifted their attention to the item by my feet. Yes, the red canister. 
“Ah?!” How did this happen? What in the world had led me to getting mistaken for a pyromaniac, and subjected to police questioning? I frantically tried to convey that it was all a misunderstanding. Thanks to my efforts (well, probably thanks, I didn’t really know), they let me go. After looking at my student card and checking my full name and address, anyway. 
Moral of the story: be extra careful when walking around in the dead of night holding a canister.