missing bike

When Tokyo ran for the 2020 Olympics, the presenters emphasized that Japan was the safest country in the world -- that lost wallets were returned untouched.  One of my classmates got her bike "stolen" about a month ago, only to have it found on a random hill a month later.  The police called her the other day so she could pick it up.  The missing-bike incident reminded me of my own:

It was the summer before the last.  When I couldn't find my bike at our apartment building parking lot, I asked my mother if she had used it.  She said no.  The creepy part was that my bike was super old (unlike my friend's brand new one).  There were tons of new good looking bicycles in our parking area so I thought a stranger who was secretly in love with me had decided to take my bike.  Detective M (my mother)'s guess was that since my bike was from another area (it said so on the sticker), a group of Chinese men had come to steal it, thinking it would less likely be tracked down.  My mother made a big deal out of "the case" and asked the caretaker of the building to be careful about the bikes.  She also ended up making my father call the management company.

While the detective took a shower though, my father and I had a calm conversation, and he told me about an embarrassing incident: a few weeks before, he went to the station on his bike, went to work, came back, got on his bike, dropped by Matsuya to have a hamburg steak, and walked back home.  The next morning when his bike was missing, he told the caretaker that his bike had been stolen.  That was exactly when he remembered he had left it at Matsuya the night before.

So I tried to recall again about the last time I used my bike (which was about a week before).  I had gone to sell a bag of old clothes: I had gone up a long slope, walked 15 minutes under the burning sun, arrived at the store sweating like a hippo in heat, and got only 380 yen, which was more of a shock than a disappointment.  Of course I didn't forget to pick up my bike because otherwise, I would've had to use that 380yen to buy a train ticket.  So I tried to recall if I went anywhere after selling the clothes, and finally remembered that I had gone to the supermarket to buy some bread my mother had asked for.

Since it was around midnight, my father came with me to the supermarket to pick up my bike.  He half hoped the bike had really disappeared because he didn't think he could endure the embarrassement.  But my bike was surely there, alone under the moonlight.  What were we going to tell the caretaker?

Scenario1: just leave the bike where he would notice and have him call us the next morning (and I would keep acting like a victim)
Scenario2: I will say I found it at the supermarket -- that someone must have decided to ride my bike there and left it (and I would never say that was, in fact, me)
Scenario3: just apologize.

I took scenario3, but it wasn't that embarrassing after all.  The caretaker, in fact, didn't seem to be all that interested in my bike.

So anyway, "stolen" bikes do get found in Japan, one way or the other.