-The Many Lifetimes of Detective Ring, Ch. 1
Common knowledge about the world is that things usually don't stop exsisting.
Usually.
Ring Suzune seemed to have trouble with things exsisting. For most of her life, things had inexplicably dissapeared form the world without a trace, pets, people, small peices of furniture, large peices of furniture, you get the idea.
As an example, when she was eight, Ring had a cat named Charles who just seemed to cease to exsist one day. Thinking he had run away, Ring asked he friends if they had seen him, but they insisted that she never had a cat and that she should go see a mental doctor. Charles, as far a Ring knew, certainly did exsist, but after that day, nobody ever mentioned him, as if he had been wiped completely form this plane of reality.
That was one thing, this is a whole other category of thing.
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Detective Ring Suzune woke up gloomily on an extra gloomy day on what was, litterally, the wrong side of the bed. She attempted to get out of bed gloomily, which only resulted in her smashing her face off of the wall. It goes without saying that this only made her even more gloomy. She momentarily contemplated giving up and going back to bed when she realized that she was starving and could, in fact, leave the bed through the other side. With a series of akward, yet gloomy movements, she found herself at her bedroom door. She decided that this would be her big acomplishment for the day and that she wouldn't try to do anything else, besides maybe eating something. She gloomily decended the stairs to her main room only to find that her entire kitchen had dissapeared.
In a corner of what would have been her kitchen stood a lone cabinet.
She stood there gawking for a minute or so before stepping on to the empty square of dirt that used to be a small, but useful kitchen, and began to think of Charles, and going back to bed. She stomped on the dirt a few times, then waved her arms through aproxemately where the walls used to be, then grumpily plopped down in the middle of the dirt square like a stubborn child. After her calm had returned, Ring remembered the cabinet. She gulped audibly and slowly turned her head to look at the furniture, careful not to make any sudden movements in case it would run away. She stared at it and it glared at her as if challenging her to come and open it up. She stood coutiously and crept toward it much like a frightened animal. She closed her eyes and took a deap breath steeling herself for whatever she might find in the dreaded cabinet. She hoped it would be food. Finally, she flung the door wide open with her best battle cry that must have woken the whole neibourhood, but still hesitated before opening an eye. The food was gone.
She slumped considerably and sighed. The cabinet must have been put there to mock her. To get the hopes up and then slap her in the face. Ring hoped whoever got her kitchen was freaking happy. The oven didn't even work.
"Jokes on you theif!" She pointed up to the sky, hoping that whoever stole her stuff was getting the message, "I only had some expired bread and dead flies in that cabinet! Hope you get food poisoning!"
"Shut up!" The sky replied. Startled, Ring jumped and fell over backwards on to the dirt, "Why are you yelling at the sky, anyway? And when are you going to get that hole in your wall replaced? You're bringing down my property value!" The sky was quite opinionated.
At this point, Ring was somewhat confused. She rolled her head towards the fence between her house and the naibour's to get a better veiw of who was talking to her, and, speak of the devil, "Gakupoop, you grumpy old bum! How have you been?" Ring asked as sarcastically as she could.
Gakupo was the grumpiest old man to be found in a 200 mile radius of their town, and quite seriously a nominee for the worst person to ever be born on the planet, and also, as it so happened, Ring's neibour, lucky girl.
"Don't even try to make conversation with me, young lady," He waved a finger at the girl on the ground, "And I'll pretend I didn't just hear you call me that." Ring rolled her eyes. She had lost her patience with this guy loooooooong ago, and she made a point of walking away every time he called her 'young lady', She was already twenty-two for pete's sake!
Ring dizzily stood up and dusted the dirt off her pyjamas. She began to walk back into her house, when the old man started blabbering again.
"We need to have a talk about you moving out. I'm sure you shorten my life every time you talk to me." Ring huffed and turned around again.
"We've talked about this, Gakupo. I'd love to move out. You don't even KNOW How much i'd love to move out, but I just can't afford it. Is THAT getting through your big head? If you can find me a millionaire who needs something detected and wants to hire a one-man, self-run detective agency, then yes, I will happily move out." Ring went to turn again but stopped and added; "Also, you could do us BOTH a favour and stop talking to me so I could stop 'shortening your life', as much as I'd love for you to get it over with," And with that she walked away.
"You get back here, young lady!" Oh no, She's so done here.
She stalked back into her livingroom and plopped into her one armchair in the room she decided that she would give up on the day afetr all, and hope for a better one tomorrow. This would give her some time to let the fact that her entire kitchen is permanently gone to sink in. Less than twenty-five seconds of peace and quiet went by when there was a knock at the door. With an exasperated sight, Ring stood and made her way to the door while trying not to bump into every wall on the way, and failing. She swung the door open with a;
"Waddaya want,"
"Hello miss Suzune!" Oh crap.
"Hello miss Hatsune!" Ring slammed the door. She trudged back to her chair, and after a few minutes, she realized that Hatsune was not going to go away. She shifted herself so she could peer out the window. Yup, she could still see that teal pigtail that always meant a long, high-pitched conversation was on it's way. Miku also shifted her weight to look through the window and the two made eye contact. Hatsune waved.
Ring decided that she should go get the torture over with, there was no use in putting it off. Still, she was reluctant to get out of her chair, all she wanted was a day without disturbances like these, but Hatsune's staring was starting to disturb her, so she heaved herself up and trudged back to the door
"Hello miss suzune! Lovely day, isn't it?" It was starting to rain.
"Mmph," There was a pause.
"When do you think that you're going to get that hole in you wall fixed? Your house is going to get quite wet and filled with squirrels pretty soo-"
"Miku, why exactly are you here?" Miku Hatsune rarely ever visited anyone without some kind of buisness, since she was always cooped up in her office. This also meant that she didn't have very many friends, so she would take advantage of being outside her tiny office and talk your flipping ears off. Ring was often a victim of this since miku was her, well, only investor. Ring sometimes felt sorry for the woman, she was stunningly beautiful and not much older than herself, and she would probably be married by this point if she wasn't always stuck in ther office. The she would remember that this was annoying Miku she was talking about.
Hatsune hesitated before saying; "May I come in? I don't mean to intrude, but..." Normally Ring would refuse, but the look on Hatsune's face said someting was up, plus it was raining. She sidestepped to let Miku in and led her around the corner into the livingroom.
"Miss suzune," Hatsune gestured toward the armchair and Ring took a seat, "I heard about what happened, and I'm really sorry,"
'What happened'? What is she talking about? Does she mean the kitchen? Ring put the thought aside for the moment. Miku had a strange look an he face, like symathy and worry. A person could tell a lot about what miku was thinking from her face, especially Ring.
"But," Miku continued, "I'm afraid we can't give you any more money," She said the last part quickly, like she was afraid that Ring would freak out.
Freaking out was not something Ring was about to do. She slumped and let out a long dramatic sigh.
"I'm really sorry," Miku said quietly. Ring stood up and went into the closet where she kept ther wine. Ring hardly ever drank, she hated the taste, but sometimes the world could be a huge butt, so she liked to keep a stach just in case. She grabbed the coolest looking bottle from the shelSIXTY BUCKS FOR A BOTTLE OF WINE? Never mind, she grabbed the cheapest looking bottle from the shelf. Best to save the expencive ones for more dire times. She walked back out into the livingroom to find that Miku was still talking.
"You don't have to pay back all of the loans, but unfortunately you haven't had enough clients for this to still be a good investment." She looked really sad and genuinely sorry. Ring knew that she didn't have a lot of clients. Nobody went to detectives anymore, they all went to the police who did absoluetly nothing. All she needed was one big case to solve and the clients would be flooding in. In theory.
Ring began pouring a glass of wine for herself, "Want one?" She asked Miku while taking a sip.
"Oh, no thanks. Alcohol can shorten your life, plus I'm a depressed drunk, I like to stay away from it," Ring choked on the wine in her mouth.
"Oh," She made a mental not of that, not the depressed drunk part, the other part. Yet another reason not to drink, but what the hell. She finished off ther glass and poured herself another one.
Miku smiled sadly at her. Ring looked up and scoweled, did miku really think that she would take it so hard? It's not like she was in huge financial trouble, she had lots of money in fact.
"Whud'ya wan?" Geeze, did she always get drunk this easily?
Miku giggled half-heartedly, "You're taking this quite well,"
"Wh'eber, th'money iddin'd tha' big o' a deeaal," Ring mentally kicked herself for talking like that.
"I'm not talking about the money, I meant the... you know..." Ring gave her a drunken confused look. She certainly didn't know what what Miku was talking about and she absolutely wasn't in the mood for more bad news.
Miku's eyes widened in shock.
"You don't know, do you?"
-End of chapter 1