I know I should be spending more time updating my Fire Emblem fics and DMMD, I really do. But goddamn, this idea would not let me alone. It hounded me everywhere and anywhere, to the point that, after even dreaming about it, I decided to just do something about it already and get it out of my head.
Many thanks to Sassybratt, whose tireless and precise editing, suggestions, and far superior knowledge of the English language helped shape this into a recognisable form and gave it legs to stand on.
"How terrible…"
Behind the glittering Tokyo façade lay backstreets hiding shabby neighbourhoods housing the lower-income families. Populated by small, grey apartments that towered three stories tall at most, the apartment complexes shared a narrow street with a canopy of telephone and electrical wires crisscrossing over the roadway. Several exhausted mopeds leaned against the sides of a few buildings, accompanied by trash bags left haphazardly in the street.
"Do you know who lives there?"
Posters advertising day-to-day services were plastered on telephone poles and concrete walls, but even among the run-down buildings, a few loving touches still remained; a potted flower perched precariously on the sill of an open window, and childishly-decorated wind chimes hung under the eaves, tinkling cheerfully whenever a breeze passed by.
"Wasn't it a couple?"
However, even in the poorer parts of town, the collection of anxious neighbors and police cars parked outside of a tiny, yellow apartment building was an unfamiliar sight. The officers, dressed in crisp, dark blue uniforms, stood guard by forming a loose chain around the apartment, doing their best to calm the murmurs of the crowd and keep them at bay.
"I hope no one was hurt!"
Two grade-school kids on their bikes slowed down to a stop and watched the scene from the safety of a streetlamp. Even people from neighbouring units—a pair of eyes peeking out from behind the curtains in the building across the street; a shopkeeper cautiously poking his head out of his store—were drawn to a scene so contrary to the street's usual peace.
"It was awful," an elderly woman said tearfully to a grizzled old officer who jotted down notes with a busted old pen that rattled with each movement. "The noise was so loud it woke me and my grandson. And then there was this terrible silence after."
"Could you describe the duration of the disturbance?" he asked gruffly.
"I...I can't recall much...maybe five, ten minutes."
"Why didn't you call us sooner?" he scolded, glaring down at her judgmentally.
The grandmother froze. Shame coloured her cheeks, and she began to wring her hands nervously. "Well...I…"
Just then, another squad car pulled up, interrupting the line of questioning. A man emerged from the passenger's side and pulled on his blue vest, rolling up the long, baggy sleeves of his shirt to just past his elbows.. The interrogating officer cursed under his breath, recognizing the detective with short, dark hair tied into a small tail, and unusual gold hoops dangling from each earlobe that garnered surprised gasps from some of the older women present. He carried himself with an easy confidence that deepened the policeman's scowl as he watched the newcomer walk over to them.
"Are you here for the local fair, or to do your job, Miroku?" the older man growled bluntly.
"No need to get upset, Hata-san," Miroku airily waved his colleague off. "It is my first assignment with this precinct, after all."
"Then act like it," Hata shot back.
Miroku ignored him and instead addressed the old woman. "What happened here, ma'am?" His voice wrapped around her like fine silk—delicately pleasing and soothing to touch.
The woman blushed the tiniest bit at that. "Oh, I just said to the officer here—I was taking a nap with my grandson, and we were woken up by the most horrible noise coming from the neighbours' unit."
He knitted his brows with concern, but nodded encouragingly. "Could you describe the noise?"
"Yes, an awful lot of screaming, and crashing, and things being thrown. I called the nearest kōban as soon as it ended."
"I'm afraid that I'll have to retake my colleague's original question here," Miroku smiled apologetically. Hata screwed his face into a sour expression. "But why not call during the incident? Did something prevent you from doing so?"
She slide her eyes away guiltily. "I-I was just so frightened...I stood rooted to the spot and couldn't do anything except try to comfort my grandson when he started crying...I'm so sorry."
"It's all right," Miroku reassured, resting a sympathetic hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. "You did the best that you could. And thanks to your call, we were able to arrive on time, madam…?"
"Taniguchi. We're the second unit on the second floor. The noise came from the fourth unit."
"Would it be possible for me to ask your grandson a few questions? Nothing too hard, I promise. Just enough to try and get a clearer picture of the situation."
"Oh, yes, of course...I-I'll go get him for you."
"Thank you for your cooperation, Taniguchi-san." Miroku beamed encouragingly as she retreated to fetch the boy. The smile then twisted into a light smirk as Miroku turned to face Hata. "You see, Hata-san? You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar."
A well-placed police baton that brained him on the back of the head promptly wiped the smug look off his face.
"Showing off on the job again, Ishida-san?"
Rather than getting upset, or even looking hurt, Miroku was positively delighted to see his stern, no-nonsense superior. "Sango-san!" he exclaimed rapturously. "Seeing your lovely face here brings me such joy—"
"That's Tachibana-san to you," Sango corrected swiftly. Though he overtook her by several centimetres, she exuded such an air of seriousness that her rank was apparent at first glance. "And you should act more professional! Showboating while you're on a case…not only does that make you look bad, it makes us all look worse by association."
Miroku placed a hand on his chest. "I meant no harm in it," he sighed with a dash of dramatism. "I'm just trying to say that Hata-san really ought to work on being a bit friendlier in his interrogations."
"Piss off," Hata grumbled under his breath.
"Anyways," Miroku raised his voice with a conspicuous side glance to Hata, "what brings you here? Not that I'm complaining, but it seems a bit odd for you to come down for small disturbances like this."
"I'm afraid it might not be small, really," Sango lamented. "We got a call from Mori-san. I don't have all the details, but from what I gather, it sounds serious."
"Speak of the devil," Hata remarked as a freckled-face officer quickly jogged over to them.
Mori held himself up on his knees to catch his breath before speaking. "Glad to see you here, Inspector," he addressed Sango. "I already called forensics. They should be here any second now. We'll need the plastic boots and gloves to process the scene."
Sango's face betrayed only the slightest amount of apprehension as she nodded in understanding. The situation sounded worse with every new piece of information. "Thank you, Mori-san. I hope the scene hasn't been contaminated, at least."
Hata shook his head. "It's been secure so far. Taniguchi-san confirmed that no one's tried to enter the unit."
"You sure?"
"Positive, Sango-chan."
Miroku raised his eyebrow at the endearment, but wisely kept his mouth shut before Sango decided to make good use of her baton again. Before they knew it, a clearly marked ALFS (Analytic Laboratory of Forensic Science) van wended its way up the narrow street, taking great care to let pedestrians move out of the way before stopping and discharging its human cargo. They all wore face masks, protective white biohazard suits, and started to unload what looked like bright blue plastic toolboxes. The crowd's hushed whispers turned into frenzied murmurs the moment they saw them.
"You all better start suiting up, too," Mori advised. "It's a mess in there."
Miroku immediately noticed two things upon entering the apartment: the first being how tiny and cramped it was—they had enough trouble trying to fit two people simultaneously through the genkan—and the second being that the main room of the apartment had been totally trashed.
Miroku and Sango watched quietly as the forensics team moved among the ruins of the apartment, photographing evidence, taking notes, carefully placing numbered markers next to the details of interest. A long, bloody smear on the floor had been taped off; a few handprints trailed alongside it, with one on the wall, another on the cord telephone that hung limply from its base, and a recently dried patch of blood closer to the genkan. The drawers in the kitchenette were all opened, as though someone had been looking for something in a hurry. A ceramic bowl of fruit, a strange sight considering the apparent poverty of the place, now lay in shards behind the kitchen island. A small overturned table had a broken leg. The sliding door to the bedroom had been left open, but aside from the rumpled sheets on the futon, it remained relatively undisturbed. The bathroom and washroom were the only untouched areas, so they were sealed off for the time being.
"Do you think it might have been a robbery?" Miroku whispered.
"Can't say for sure," Sango replied cautiously. "Until we get the owner of the place here, we don't know if something's missing. But robbery or not, someone was seriously hurt."
"Inspector!" an investigator called to Sango, her voice slightly muffled behind her face mask. "You need to take a look at this."
The plastic boots covering Sango's shoes made an odd, crinkling sound as she padded her way to the window. It had been apparent at first glance that the broken glass was another piece of the puzzle—someone had smashed it in order to open the latch on the inside—but stranger still were the flowerpots that now lay shattered on the street below.
"So this was the point of entry," Sango noted.
"The genkan showed no signs of being forced," the investigator confirmed. "But there's also no evidence to suggest that it was used as an exit, either."
"The neighbours would have heard the door being slammed and someone running down the stairs, yes," Sango agreed. "So then the window is also the point of exit."
"Wait, how can you be so certain that the door might have been slammed if used as an exit?" Sango jumped slightly in place when Miroku's voice startled her from behind, grumbling when she saw the investigator trying to stifle a laugh from behind her hand.
Sango sighed, exasperated, and began to explain her line of reasoning. "None of the tenants who've been interviewed so far have stated that they've heard someone in the hallway, which I'm sure you've noticed has quite the acoustics...and that's not even taking into account the thin walls. Besides our entrance, the genkan looks untouched compared to this area, and the flowerpots have a plausible explanation: whoever broke in certainly had enough time to do so, since it's not really something that can be done in a hurry. However, something, or someone, surprised the perpetrator, who was spooked enough that they felt they had to leave fast. Hence, careful entry, hasty exit."
It was hard to argue against it. The evidence pointed to the small, jagged hole in the window that appeared as though it might have been punched out, close enough to the latch to place an arm in, but done in such a way that the damage to the rest of the window was minimal; most likely to reduce the noise the perpetrator would've made by shattering the entire pane.. Miroku spied the glass that lay under the window close to where they were standing.
"Astute as ever," he praised with genuine warmth. "We're lucky to have a mind like yours on the scene, Sango-san."
"Tachibana-san," Sango corrected automatically. She turned her attention to the rest of the forensics team. "How is everyone else doing so far?"
"We're going to start dusting for prints soon," another investigator replied immediately. "And we're also ready to start working on the blood."
Sango bit her lip in apprehension. The blood was undoubtedly the biggest part of the crime...and the biggest indicator of the scene having turned violent. But what kind of struggle happened? Who did the blood belong to? And where had the injured person gone? Until the samples they gathered from the scene could be processed, what exactly happened remained to be seen.
That, and the mystery behind who broke into the apartment in the first place—and why.
"Sango-san," Miroku alerted her, his voice suddenly low and tight. "I hear trouble."
'Trouble' was an understatement. Someone with an impressively loud voice, even with the way the apartment hallway managed to amplify noise, was swearing his way up the stairs, cursing out the officers who were trying to prevent him from entering the restricted area they had established. "Whaddaya mean 'restricted?' It's my house, dammit, and I deserve to know what the hell happened here. You all better get out of my damn way before I seriously hurt someone!"
As if on cue, the door to the entrance burst open with a loud bang, revealing a dirty, sweaty man, panting hard from having run up the stairs. His shockingly long black hair framed an expression of red-faced anger, and the entire room froze at his sudden appearance.
The stranger's eyes scanned over them critically. "Who the fuck are you all?" he demanded. His words were as sharp as his glare. Then, more apprehensively, "where's Kagome?"
And here comes the first cliffhanger, lol. I have to admit that I have a soft spot for cliffhangers in mysteries; something about the nature of the genre really makes them feel more urgent to me than in non crime/mystery stories.
A few notes:
Hata IS being unreasonably rude to Taniguchi, but that's part of his character: he's old, crotchety, and dislikes people making his job harder. By contrast, Sango is being too hard on Miroku, because "Sango-san" isn't being that rude since he's still using the honorific. Her insisting on Tachibana-san is her drawing a very clear, though ultimately unnecessary, line between them.
A genkan is an entrance in Japanese homes that marks the transition between outside and your personal space. it has a lower floor level than the rest of the home, and it's where (dirty) shoes worn outside are exchanged for indoor slippers or just going about barefoot/in socks.
Sassybratt made this remark in the editing stage about why having to distinguish between the bathroom and washroom, but we ultimately decided to have the explanation for it here in the author's notes: Japanese homes, even ostensibly "Western styled" ones, do not have their tub/shower in the same room as the toilet and sink. This is because the toilet is an unclean thing, and to have it in the same area as the place where you go to clean yourself is a no-no. The tub for relaxing in after washing off gets a whole room to itself, while the sink and toilet are placed in another one altogether, sometimes even with a partition to separate the sink from the toilet. This distinction stems from a culture that is very fastidious about cleanliness and is reinforced by Shinto and Buddhist taboos and permissions on what is clean and what is not; it's a sociocultural concept that will be revisited later.
Other than that, that's all for this chapter. I hope that readers enjoy this, and I look forward to chapter two!