Part One
What doesn't kill you
Makes you wish you were dead
Got a hole in my soul growing deeper and deeper
And I can't take
One more moment of this silence
The loneliness is haunting me
And the weight of the world's getting harder to hold up.
- Bring Me the Horizon
Creaking of the giant fans infiltrates every particle of chilly air along with the scent of rain, and he hears the others breathing, heavy, strained, scared. As much as it has been in the past, it's no comfort to feel them standing over him.
I stare at him, too, trying to understand how little he looks, unable to see his horror-stricken eyes behind bangs of shaggy black, but I remember the fear that penetrated his heart, and how it felt to know everyone heard its sluggish beat, that they'd hear the exact moment it stopped.
The child stares down into the shallow puddle of freezing water he's dropped into, and a murky reflection of his face gapes back, too distorted to reveal the expression of shock and horror that must be there, but it looks invariably young—much too young—childish, naïve, and small.
No one is thinking of him, the naïve child huddled on the ground, shuddering with anguish and rage. No one cares what a coward he is or how much of his world was simply destroyed only moments ago. There's little consolation in that either. Every word Near and Light say feels distant, as if he's only half awake; he hears them, he understands, and at the same time, he doesn't quite hear them, and he really doesn't understand.
How could this happen? How could he have been so wrong?
Because he is stupid, that child. Looking down on him, I can't stop thinking about how pathetic he looks, swimming in his adult suit, eyes glazed with the reverberating effects of having truth shatter against the beliefs and hopes inside him, clutching a giant pistol in a little, pale hand.
Light…why?
Why put everyone through such pain? Why lie about it all for so long? Why keep pushing and forcing everyone to go through the horrors of this investigation? Why betray us all?
I don't understand any better than the child with the gun.And everyone who died… Not just the criminals, but the good people too, and the innocent, the bystanders, the people whose only crime had been to get in Light's way… What about them?
What about me?
A shot rings out. In a blur of gold and blue, the pen flies into the air, twirling end over end. Crimson blood splatters. Each drop is like poison.Gun trembling in that tiny hand, hate and anger fills the normally gentle eyes I once knew so well, everything cheerful and optimistic suddenly overshadowed by an unfamiliar desire to kill.
Staring, shocked, at the child, Aizawa whispers his name.Tears pour down the soft face, and his chest heaves like he's going to suffocate.
"Matsuda, you idiot!" Light screams. "Who do you think you're shooting at? Don't screw with me!"
Bitterly, the child's voice echoes through the warehouse. "What was it all for then? What about your dad? What the hell did he die for?"
Light's answer seems far away, but he understands it in the same blank, not-really-comprehensive way he's understood everything else. Soichiro was a fool. He died for nothing. Light justifies it with the idea that he was trying to do something good. Soichiro died for that."I know you understand, so kill the others!" he orders. "Shoot them!"
He does understand. He understands that Light got Soichiro killed and barely cares—just another sheep to be disposed of in the name of his own glorious cause.Voice choked with emotions, the child grates out, "You led your own father to his death, and now he's gone—you call him a fool?"
The next four shots bang out in a succession, the trigger so easy to pull, like flicking a switch off and on again. Light flops back on the ground, writhing. The child storms forward, drowning in his suit, each step heavy, and at the same time, almost impossible to grasp, as if he's possessed, holding the gun out, steady now, ready for the final shot. Furious, he cries, "I'll kill him. I'll kill him! He has to die!"
Clutching the gun in both hands, the child in the man's suit stands over Light and takes aim. That bullet aches to plow a hole through Light's skull. Panicked, red eyes roll and stare up at him, disbelieving and afraid, but I don't feel even a fleck of compassion in my heaving chest, and the trigger is so easy to pull.
Panting, I jerked upright in bed, and with the angry sting of tears, I still remembered the gunshots and the sight of his body flopping back on the concrete. Everything about that day still existed, vividly, inside my mind, from the creaking turn of the giant fan, to the pain in my heart, like somebody dug a trench through my chest. But the gunshot, that was what woke me up every night.
After a moment of clenching the cool sheets and staring across the room at the sliver of light spilling between my blinds and the wall, I finally took a shuddering breath and ran my fingers through my hair, and then stared down at my hands. Even though they looked clean, they felt greasy and dirty. I ventured a tentative look at the clock. Already four-thirty in the morning. I was supposed to be up for work in less than two hours, but after tossing and turning all night, trying to shut off my mind, I wasn't sure I'd gotten any sleep at all.
Finally, I climbed out of bed to stumble to the bathroom, cursing and tripping over the puddle of clothes I'd left on the floor earlier, feeling stupid and clumsy.
In the bathroom, I ran my hands under boiling water until they hurt, and even then I could almost see the crimson of Light's blood running down the drain, so I squeezed soap out into my palm and scrubbed, keeping my hands under the water until I thought they'd burn. When I pulled them out again, they were red and throbbing, but at least I knew they were clean.
With a sigh, I leaned against the counter. Heavy hair fell around my face, and I knew I needed a trim. The rest of me was like it had always been—a reasonably lean physique maintained by a mediocre workout routine, a typical height, but a cute face my mother had always insisted was perfect for modeling.
What I didn't recognize was my eyes. Normally maple brown, I felt now that they had turned gray as steel, and my brows never lifted very high from them, a constant reminder of the misery slowly taking over inside of me.
Part of me couldn't believe I was even capable of shooting Kira. Not just because it wasn't like me to be so angry or violent, but also because, after spending years on the task force, I'd come to accept that I'd always be a below average detective. Most of the time it had felt like maintaining a positive attitude and boosting morale had been my only contribution. Even then, the others had never seemed to appreciate it that much.
But Light…the gunshots…his blood… All of it swirled in my mind like dirty laundry in a broken washing machine until I didn't know if I could stand to have that dream even one more time, and yet that vivid memory haunted me to no end.
I'd tried everything from drinking too much to taking over-the-counter sleeping pills to try to make it stop, but every night, I felt Light's death slowly chipping me apart. Dark circles under my eyes and pasty-looking skin were beginning to make themselves a permanent part of my appearance, transforming an otherwise handsome face into just another thing ruined by Kira.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I found my way back to bed and lay down, exhausted and dreading sleep. Any time I closed my eyes, the gunshot found me. In real life, I knew it hadn't hit anything—Aizawa and the others stopped me—but in the dream…
Don't think about it, that's what Mogi kept telling me. I had tried hard to forget it, making my mind as empty as possible and keeping it that way, but pretending I hadn't shot Light was as good as pretending Light had never been Kira in the first place. That was reality, and I had to live with it.
It felt like just a second later the shot was echoing through my memories again, startling me out of restless sleep, but bright light streamed through the windows.
A heavy-handed knock jolted me out of the lingering hold of sleep, and I looked toward the living room, dry-eyed and holding my breath as I groped around for my cell phone, lost in the bedding some place. I remembered, then, that I hadn't charged it last night. It must have died, my alarm with it.
With the next knock, a stern voice called, "Matsuda! Open this damn door!"
I sat up stiffly. Aizawa?
"I'll break it down! You know I've always wanted to do that!"
Cussing to myself, I scrambled out of bed and rushed to unlock the front door.
Aizawa charged in, chocolate eyes lit with ferocity, characteristic mix of annoyance and seriousness already wrinkling his forehead and curling his lips as he scanned the apartment and then glared right at me.
Between his six-foot build and his salty demeanor, he was off-putting to nearly everyone, but in my case, it definitely didn't help that he was my captain. In fact, it made getting my head ripped off regularly just another part of my life.
"What are you doing?" he demanded before I could even stammer out a greeting. "You should have been at the station three hours ago, Corporal!"
Feeling my cheeks glow, I tried to find something to focus on besides his angry face. He'd cut his hair recently; for a while, he'd looked a little like a q-tip, but now his jet black hair was professionally short again. His goatee though, was getting thick. "Sorry…"
"We tried calling. You didn't pick up."
"Yeah." I worked my fingers through my tangled hair. "I guess my phone died."
Incredulously, he arched an eyebrow. "You let your phone die?"
"I guess so."
Shaking his head like he barely knew what to make of that, he growled, "And what? You can't get your ass to work without it? I thought you died."
"No." I forced a smile, sick to know how fake it must look. "I'm fine. Just overslept."
Aizawa stared at me a few moments, stern expression slowly giving into concern. "Look, kid…"
Kid? Since when? Sure, I was almost ten years younger than him, but at thirty-one I wasn't a kid. He'd never called me that before in his life.
"If you need more time off, take it."
Didn't that sound nice? Crawl into bed, order nothing but pizza, and just hide for another month. Or two.
No, that sounded terrible. What would I do with myself if I spent even one more day sitting around here beating myself up for Light's death?
"I'm fine," I insisted with a smile. "Besides, you're not the chief yet; I can't take time off just because you said to."
Aizawa's bushy eyebrows gathered together in sudden confusion. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Again, I hesitated. "Ide and Mogi said you're next in line to be chief… Didn't you know that?"
"Nobody told me," he grumbled dryly, like he wasn't surprised, and then got back on topic. "Two weeks off isn't all that much, especially not after such a long case."
The Kira investigation went on for years, it stretched us all thin, and it ended with the death of a coworker—a friend. Even two months off wouldn't be enough to help me cope, so why bother?
Besides, Aizwa, Ide, and Mogi all went back to work like they were ready to deal, and I would not be the wimp who had to request more time.
"I'll think about it," I told him, just to get him off my back. "Anyway, see you at the station."
Aizawa checked his watch. "If you hurry it up, you can just catch a ride with me."
"Oh… No, that's all right. You don't have to."
"I'm going to," he answered in his commanding 'I'm Aizawa and I do what I want' tone. "Hey." His footsteps drew closer to me. "You sure you're okay?"
I whipped around, growling, "I already told you I'm fine. What language do I have to say it in?"
His eyes widened with shock, mouth even dropping open
"Sorry," I murmured immediately, sure he'd tear me a new one.
Instead, Aizawa sighed, "All right, Matsuda. Just…do what you want." And then he stood back and scanned my apartment with a disapproving air.
Reluctantly, I looked too, realizing for the first time what a mess it was. I didn't have a single clean towel in my linen closet, but dirty laundry overflowed from the basket in the corner. Unpaid bills piled on the coffee table, dirty dishes cluttered the counters, and open cabinets revealed that I was almost completely out of food, but empty beer bottles seemed to have invaded every available space. Come to think of it, I wasn't even sure I had gas in my car to drive myself to work.
Embarrassed, I glanced at Aizawa. In the past, neatness had been one of the few qualities I'd taken pride in—what girlfriend hadn't told me it was rare to find a guy who cared about keeping everything in its own place—but now it looked like I didn't care at all how my apartment looked, and he wouldn't have missed that. Snapping at him for expressing concern couldn't have helped.
Letting him give me a ride, though, might make him feel better. Aizawa believed deeply in his personal power to help others, and if he thought I was depressed, he'd be amped up about fixing it.
"Okay," I said suddenly. "I guess it doesn't make sense for me to drive."
At that, his expression lightened some, but he growled, "So move it. This is cutting into my lunch break."
As we cruised through the mid afternoon traffic, sometimes running the lights to get by, I glanced down at my rumpled suit. It had a coffee stain, which I'd tried to hide under my tie, but it really needed to be ironed. My hair was still wet from my shower, and my stomach roared.
Aizawa muttered as he drove, and occasionally shouted obscenities. Tokyo traffic usually annoyed him, and he'd always been impatient, but since the Kira case ended, he'd gotten worse.
Then again, what hadn't gotten worse?
Whenever we stopped at a light, I'd notice him looking at me from the corner of his eye, so I pulled my jacket around myself, trying to hide the wrinkles and the coffee stain.
"You didn't eat," he said suddenly.
"There wasn't any time."
"It looks like there wasn't any food, Matsuda."
"I haven't been to the store in a while, I guess." I leaned against my fist and closed my eyes, feeling dead tired.
"Did your maid go on vacation too?"
Quietly, I told myself I should never have let him in. I should have ignored him, rolled over, and gone back to sleep.
"Well?"
Surprised, I turned to him. "What do you want me to say to that?"
"Why don't you explain what's wrong with you?"
"Nothing. I don't—"
"Look." Unexpectedly, he whipped out of the traffic to park outside a small breakfast café, killing the engine and turning in his seat to face me. "It's only been a month. If you're depressed about Light, you should say so."
I wrinkled my nose at the idea. "Depressed? I'm not depressed."
"Sleeping late, missing work, letting your place go to hell…" He shook his head and lowered his voice, speaking with more reluctance. "We've all noticed you're not yourself."
I tried to laugh, "Yeah, but I'm not depressed."
What did I have to be depressed about? I shot him, sure. I shot him point blank. I tried to kill him, really. He was a friend—I thought—I cared about him at least, and I thought he cared about me. Still, depressed was such a strong word.
At length, Aizawa muttered, "It's not every day you gun down a friend."
I felt the recoil of the gun and heard the boom again as it fired; I closed my eyes and saw the splash of red like paint on a black canvas.
Aizawa touched my shoulder, and I jumped. "You need to pull it together."
"Can we not talk about it? Please?"
"Matsuda, you can't just pretend everything is normal."
"I'm not. It's just that I'm not depressed." I unbuckled my seatbelt. "Are we eating here, or did you pull over just to lecture me?"
I knew he hated to have his best efforts rebuffed—he expected people to listen the first time and not ask questions—but he wasn't stupid enough to push me either, so we went into the café and had a really quiet lunch before continuing on our way to the police station.
During the drive, even though I didn't feel like talking, I tried to make conversation to distract him from the road rage. "I can't believe nobody told you they want to make you the chief. How does that work anyway?"
"I don't know," he muttered.
"Well, did you miss an email or something? Or did they really just not say anything?"
"I really don't know."
From his tone, I could tell he wasn't interested in talking about it, and that probably meant he was still worried about me. Normally, if something worried him, he obsessed about it, and it was very hard to get him to think about anything else.
The way he talked, Mogi and Ide might be worried too, and I didn't like that. I'd thought I was keeping it together fine, so what did they have to worry about? They all had their own lives and careers to handle. They were all trying to cope with the shock of how the Kira case had suddenly ended. They had more important things on their minds than my issues.
If I wasn't doing a good job keeping it together, I'd better try harder.
Aizawa
As we walked through the station hallway, I noticed the lights flickering and the floors needed to be buffed. Fingerprints marred the windows from when some kids had passed. I knew a lot of the janitorial staff had quit, and I'd heard we were having trouble finding replacements—nobody wanted to work for the NPA right now—and it made me feel like the whole force was dying.
Kira had been dead for thirty-three days, and people expected him to come back at any moment, but while we'd been on the task force, our original job of policing the city must have gotten twisted around. By the time we came back, the whole world resented us for even announcing that we'd killed Kira, and the silence made them uneasy.
On January twenty-eighth, a new world had been born. Fresh and blinking, lost and confused, not sure who to follow or who to trust. Crime rates were low, leaving us with nothing to do. Average citizens blamed us for his vanishing. Wearing my badge earned me nasty looks in public, and even the news and the talk show hosts insinuated that it was the NPA's fault Kira had gone into hiding.
Eventually, it would all blow over, and in a while the new world would be just like the old one—full of violence, hatred, and fear.
Might as well enjoy the peace.
Hard to do with Matsuda on the fritz. I'd gotten so used to him being the voice of optimism, I wasn't sure how to compensate for it, and I had no idea how to shake him out of the haze he'd apparently wandered into.
For the first few days after Light's death, he'd completely disappeared, not answering his phone or his door. I'd been wrapped up in an exhausting debriefing session during that time, so there hadn't been much I could do, but by the time I saw him at the funeral, he was already too messed up to intervene.
For being so careless, Matsuda had always been surprisingly meticulous about his environment, but if it was just the sloppy state of his apartment or the lack of food, I'd look the other way. The change in his attitude was what worried me.
Most of the time, he seemed tremendously far away, disinterested, and straight up spacey. I really only saw him at work—and a whole lot less than I had for the last six years—so that didn't help me understand his exact condition, but I couldn't miss the unrest in his disgustingly fake smile.
To be honest, I'd hoped he'd go back to his old self once he got involved with a new investigation, but even after all this time, Matsu looked like he was sleepwalking, and I didn't like the feeling of standing behind delicate, red tape, watching him drown.
So, yes, I'd flipped a little when he didn't show up at work this morning. At first, the three of us grumbled about what an idiot he was and went on with our work. After all, since Light's funeral, he'd gotten into the habit of being fifteen or twenty minutes late everywhere he went.
After a couple hours, I supposed everyone else forgot about him, but I couldn't stop watching his desk, feeling more and more anxious with every second he wasn't sitting there.
Three hours turned out to be more than enough for me. New, moody Matsuda freaked me out too much. Even snapping at me for asking whether or not he was all right felt extremely out of character, and it left me not knowing what to expect.
If angry Matsuda would go to the extreme of shooting Light Yagami, I didn't dare put anything past depressed Matsuda, and I'd even worried about what I would find if I busted down the door to his apartment.
Yet he'd just looked at me like he didn't understand why I was there.
All of that seemed silly now, walking next to him. Yeah, his hair was ragged, and his suit wasn't washed or pressed, and he looked tired and distant, but that didn't mean he was going to go kill himself.
When we stepped off the elevator, I saw Ide and Mogi standing down the hall, waiting. They saw us, and Ide swiped some black hair back from his forehead and fumbled through his green suit for cigarettes, apparently trying to look unconcerned, but Mogi stared hard at us as we walked their direction.
"Hey, Mogi. Ide," Matsuda greeted them listlessly.
Ide stopped in front of him, folding his arms. We'd known each other a long time, and I knew past his generally tough exterior he was good at understanding other people's feelings. His voice couldn't quite mask the concern I noticed in his narrow eyes. "You're sure late today."
Mogi towered over Matsuda, thick build making the kid look smaller and more delicate than ever, but he sounded twice as earnest as Ide when he asked, "You okay?"
Rubbing his face, tiredly, Matsuda nodded. "I better let the commish know I'm here." He stepped past them and continued on his way.
Higher ups had been hard to come by since the Kira case started. At the moment, we had no chief, and Commissioner Ken Oshima was handling daily supervisions around here, temporarily. I didn't know him well, but he'd been at my debriefing.
God, there had been a hell I didn't need. Not twenty-four hours after Light had died, they'd dragged me in here and held me for hours at a time, trying to get all the facts, they'd said. Day after day of relentless questioning until I'd thought I might break. In the end, I'd only gotten out of it because Ide managed to get a hold of Near, who'd set them straight on what they did and didn't need to know about Kira.
After that, I'd written up a bullshit report, unsure of how to even attempt to fill in the gaps of classified information, and they'd finally left me alone. But Oshima had been watching me ever since.
Anyway, so far, he'd been pretty tolerant of slacking off, but coming in fifteen minutes late and coming in three hours late were vastly different, and I didn't want to give him any reason to set his sights on Matsuda next.
"I better go check back in myself," I announced, following Matsuda. If nothing else, if Oshima decided to rip him a new one, I'd be there to intervene.
Fortunately, Oshima didn't have much to say. He was an older guy with graying hair and hard eyes, and I could tell Matsuda's idiotic story about letting his phone die and oversleeping did irritate him, but he brusquely told him not to let it happen again, and then called me forward to explain where I'd been for an hour and a half. In fact, he seemed more annoyed with my absence than he did with Matsuda's, and I got the feeling he viewed me as a more valuable officer.
Originally—a long time ago—I'd thought the same thing, but after some of the things I'd seen Matsuda do, including shooting a pen out of Light's hand, it aggravated me to think that anyone might look down on him for having a softer demeanor.
"I went to pick up Matsuda," I told him, daring him to say anything about it.
Oshima's jowls quivered. "I have a hard time believing that was necessary, Captain."
Maybe it really hadn't been, but I hadn't known what else to do when his phone went directly to voicemail. Matsuda lived on his phone when he wasn't at work—even the fact that he'd let it die seemed like a warning sign to me.
I considered explaining that I'd been concerned for his safety, if only because the commissioner had the authority to suspend him a while longer. But in the end, that was a conversation I didn't want to have with someone I didn't quite trust.
Instead, I promised it wouldn't happen again, and then turned on my heel, gesturing for Matsuda to walk ahead of me and saying, sharper than I meant to, "Did you finish that assignment I gave you yesterday?"
From the way he looked at me, it seemed like he barely remembered I'd assigned him anything, and a sheepish, "Not yet, Captain," was all he had to say as we stepped out of Oshima's office.
Ever since the Kira case ended, every day felt just a little slower than the one that came before it, leading toward the most mind-numbingly boring day ever lived. The community safety and traffic bureaus still had things to do—domestic violence and traffic accidents—but our branch of the department no longer seemed necessary, and I was tempted to transfer just to get back on the street.
To make matters worse, Oshima hadn't been doing much delegating; supposedly, he was stretched too thin, just like everyone else, and so far I'd had to be pretty proactive just to find a job to do. It gave me an opportunity to finalize and edit the official report on the Kira investigation, as well as to keep working with Ide, Mogi, and Matsuda. All three of them seemed content to help me out, but once we had that filed, I might have to get a little more creative to keep from dying of boredom.
What really bothered me, though, was that as soon as we did get a new chief, that person would delegate, and I didn't know when I'd get to work with the three of them again.
It shouldn't matter, I kept telling myself. They were just coworkers. And still, undeniably, after all that time of being able to count on them, of knowing that even if it turned out we couldn't trust L I could trust my fellow detectives, being around them felt natural and safe even. I couldn't imagine not working with them, filing paper work and taking coffee breaks, chatting at the water cooler like everything was normal when it seemed like they were the only people in the world I still had anything in common with.
Even being chief might not fix that. In fact, being chief would mean more sitting at a desk than ever before, working alone on everything that came my way.
Just enjoy the peace, I reminded myself.
When it was nearly time to clock out, Mogi appeared to place a large stack of papers on my desk. "I finished my compilation for the Kira investigation."
"Thanks." I studied the form I was supposed to be filling out and tapped my pencil, and then I suddenly felt annoyed. The NPA didn't want to help with the Kira investigation, but of course they'd better make sure they had a record of it. Like they'd helped all along.
Being chief wouldn't keep things like that from happening either.
"See you later, Aizawa," Mogi said abruptly, and started to walk away, never one to waste words on pleasantries.
With a sigh, I set my forms aside and grabbed my jacket. "I might as well head out too. Gotta give Matsuda a ride home." Throughout the day, I'd watched Matsuda wander around the station looking lost or spending a lot of time staring off into space. It made me frown. Technically, I was supervising him—I could have snapped at him to pay attention, but I'd decided against it.
That really won't fly if I become chief.
Mogi and I walked in silence for a moment before he asked, "Did you find out what's going on with him?"
"I didn't realize I was supposed to," I answered, dryly.
"Not even in passing?"
"I don't know," I sighed, reluctant to express the concerns I'd been feeling for the last few weeks. "Obviously this whole thing with Light was harder for him than it was for us."
"He was close with Soichiro," Mogi mused.
There had been times I'd thought it was borderline inappropriate how close he was to Chief Yagami, going to his house with him, talking to him like they were friends, but I guessed Matsuda needed that, and the former chief had inspired that kind of affection in all of us, one way or another.
"Matsuda's a grown man," I decided. "None of us should waste time worrying about him."
Mogi only grunted.
I said the words, but there was a softness to Matsuda. In addition to the age gap between us, his youthful energy made him seem like a kid to me, and he had a gentleness I'd always thought would work against him in his career as a police officer. He was naïve and reckless. If I didn't watch his back, I wasn't sure anyone else would take it upon themselves.
"He should see someone," Mogi decided.
Startled, I looked up at him, but as usual, his plain-featured face revealed very little. "What, like a therapist?"
He nodded sagely.
Seeking help from a stranger for your personal problems… What a foreign concept in my mind. I could hardly believe people did it.
"After shooting Light like that," he went on, "who wouldn't be depressed?" He loosened his tie and cleared his throat, and then he hesitated, giving me the impression he wasn't sure how to proceed. "Ide and I…think you should talk to him about it."
"Why me?"
"He looks up to you."
"But not either of you?" They knew better—Matsuda looked up to all of us—and talking to him about something that delicate would require a lot more tact than I possessed.
"I just thought you could try it," he added after a moment of silence.
We had reached the main lobby of the building, where Ide and Matsuda stood at reception. They'd always been the chatty ones, even though Ide's dry remarks were an odd contrast to Matsuda's unstructured babble, and it was strange to see my old friend muttering, practically to himself, about what he'd had going on lately, drawing on his cigarette, filling in Matsuda's side of the conversation while casting him occasional sidelong glances like the silence bothered him.
Even at a distance, I could see the disturbed look on the kid's face, characterized by a vacant stare and a deep frown like a gash across his chin.
Mogi and I stopped, and I grumbled, "As far as I'm concerned, he just needs to deal with it."
Mogi's expression and voice didn't change, but he said, "Isn't that a little cold, Aizawa?"
Even though the words did make me feel somewhat guilty, I muttered, "Even if he looks up to me, it's not like I'm any kind of authority figure."
"They're talking about promoting you to chief of police," he said suddenly.
"So I heard."
"I guess if that happens, you will be responsible for Matsu."
"There must be other candidates."
He shrugged. "I would assume so."
Ide had noticed us and stared right at me, obviously expecting me to come and bail him out of an awkward situation. He even called, "You guys going home, or what?"
"What about you, Mogi?" I asked, moving forward again. "You'd make a good chief."
One raised eyebrow barely wrinkled his stoic look. "No. I'm thinking about leaving the NPA altogether."
Startled, I paused. "Where would you go?"
He shrugged. "I've got a couple ideas. Nothing is final yet."
We reached Ide and Matsuda, spent a few moments discussing our version of the boring day we'd just put in, and then made our way to the exit. Ide and Mogi went to their own vehicles, and Matsuda followed me to mine, maintaining his unnatural silence the whole way.
Of course, I wanted to help him, but I had no control over his decisions; I had my own career to think of.
All the same, when we got into the car, I found myself dwelling on what Mogi had suggested. It was common enough, I supposed, for people experiencing depression to seek professional help, and since Matsuda had outright denied being depressed earlier, it clearly hadn't crossed his mind to ask anyone for help. Even the blank way he'd stared at me when I showed up at his apartment seemed to indicate that he just wasn't thinking about anything like that.
There must be other options, though, ways to snap out of it if he tried. It might just depend on how deep the depression really ran.
"Hey," I said suddenly, and my voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the car. "How would you like to come over for dinner some time this week? We'd love to have you."
I'd never invited him anywhere before, and from the way he paused, I knew he was surprised. In a moment, he tried to smile as he said, "Oh… No, thanks. I'm fine."
Stopping at a traffic light, I couldn't help frowning at him. "You know, you're not supposed to refuse a dinner invitation that casually. You could at least make up some excuse."
"An excuse? What kind of excuse do you want me to make up?"
"Hell, I don't know." The light changed, and I kept driving. "Anything's better than thanks I'm fine."
In lieu of sheepish excuses, the silence resumed, and I felt foolish. At his level of disinterest, I should have known he'd decline the invitation, and, actually, I didn't know what difference it would make even if he'd accepted. Matsuda wasn't going to snap out of his funk simply because he came over to my place for dinner one night.
It did give me a better idea of just how bad he was doing, though. Matsuda loved being social, even to the point that he'd always had a way of making something as serious as investigating the Kira case feel like a hangout, trying to make friends with everyone when we were there just to work.
Strange, though. For being that way, he'd never talked much about his personal life, and over the six years of getting to know him, I'd gradually come to realize that he didn't have many friends or even much family.
Having no support system during an emotional crisis couldn't help, and that wasn't something I could fix for him.
Outside, a light drizzle of rain began, and I focused ferociously on the unnerving quiet between us. In the past, he'd always filled any silence with meaningless conversation—opinions on pop culture and celebrity gossip, or bragging about personal conquests, mostly—and I'd snort vague responses or mutter at him about anything I thought actually warranted a reply. Raving about actors and gloating about buying a new TV hadn't often been appropriate, considering the circumstances, but I missed it, I admitted to myself. In a strange way, I missed him.
"How's the bachelor life going?" I asked suddenly.
Bewildered, this time he stared at me. "Fine. Why?"
"Just wondering if maybe you met somebody." I knew better. His dating game had never been impressive either, and the one or two times he'd actually picked somebody up, it had been all he could talk about for days, his excitement sweeping him along like a river, until he got dumped, which tossed him over the edge into a somewhat sulky mood not so different from this one. The difference, though, was this time it was lingering, affecting every aspect of his life.
I added, "You've been distant lately," hoping he'd recognize it as an opportunity to be real with me.
Matsuda just said, "Oh," and then muttered, "Still single."
"Well, maybe you'll have better luck now that the case is over. You're not getting any younger—time to settle down." I flashed him a half-hearted grin I hoped seemed friendly, if not supportive.
Matsuda's eyebrows etched together like the smile just confused him.
"When's the last time you even went on a date?" I wondered, teasingly.
Gradually, he turned to the window again. "It's been a while, I guess."
Throwing discretion to the wind, I told him, "You'll have to try and move on at some point."
I'd thought I said it carefully—gently even—but Matsuda glared at me, and I knew I'd missed the mark. "You think I'm doing this on purpose?" he demanded, outraged.
"Of course not," I said quickly. "I'm just saying… Light wasn't even related to you."
Way to stay in character. I kicked myself. Way to be completely blunt and insensitive.
He had nothing to say, and I knew I'd only added to his turmoil.
This was exactly why I didn't think I should be the one to talk to him about anything delicate.
Trying to tone it down, I amended, "Touta, I'm just saying, if you're so upset it's going to affect your work, you'll have to do something about that."
As much as it had alarmed me on a personal level, I knew his coming in late and disheveled could turn into a real problem if he made a habit of it. No chief worth his salt would overlook this level of sloppiness, no matter the reason, and I thought, suddenly, that more important than convincing him to do something was to try and find a way to stress the gravity of the situation to him.
After all, just now, this job seemed to be all he had, and if Matsuda got fired, he'd utterly collapse into his depression.
"What do you think I should do?" he murmured.
That was what I wanted to hear, in a way, and at the same time, I had no idea what to tell him. Coming right out to say, go see a doctor felt like overstepping a serious boundary.
"I don't know," I admitted, finally. "Get yourself together, that's all I'm saying; find a girl. Get involved with something outside work. Whatever helps."
Giving a brief sigh, he suddenly brightened his tone and asked, "Heard anything about the promotion?"
Nothing annoyed me more than to have someone ask my opinion and then refuse to acknowledge it. If he didn't care what I thought, why ask in the first place. "No," I grumbled. "Nothing."
"Don't you wanna be the chief?"
"Sure. More work though. More time away from home."
"The pay's better," he reminded me with a ghost of his old sanguinity. "That might make up for it."
"Yeah," I agreed, not sure how to explain the way the possibility of promotion made me feel. More money sounded great, and so did calling more of the shots for a change. It would likely be less dangerous. By all accounts, it was a step in the right direction.
My guts twisted as I reluctantly thought back on my interrogation. After that, I'd assumed it would be years before I got any kind of promotion at all, so why in the world would they suddenly be thinking of making me chief?
Kira had left me feeling dog-tired, stretched, old, disillusioned with everything. Even if I wanted the promotion, I didn't know if I was up to it right now.
By the time we pulled up in front of Matsuda's apartment, the rain had started to pour, but he opened his car door without a thought to it.
"Borrow my umbrella," I offered.
"It's not that far. Thanks for the ride."
As he started to climb out, I snagged his arm, and he whipped around to stare at me, giving me the impression that he really wanted to get away from me right then, and I honestly couldn't blame him, but all the same, if nothing else, I needed him to understand my concerns, at least in part.
"Hey. Remember," I said sternly. "If they make me chief, and you come in almost four hours late on my watch…" I drew a short breath to keep from wincing as I grated out the cold words, "I'll take your badge."
Matsuda held my gaze a long moment, measuring whether I truly meant that or not, and, again, I thought it seemed like he didn't completely understand this crack he'd apparently fallen into.
"This isn't some job at a crappy fast food place, Corporal," I explained.
It didn't matter that he was depressed, I told myself. It didn't even matter that we were friends. In a way, it wasn't fair, but he was the only one who could figure out how to navigate through this in a professional and healthy way, and he needed to start working on that before anyone higher ranked than me noticed how badly he was failing.
Suddenly, Matsuda forced a grin. Amazing. It looked almost perfect—straight and white, lighting his face, turning back the clock to a month or two ago when he'd been okay—but his eyes looked darker than ever, and his voice fell flat as he agreed, "You got it, Captain."
With that, he jerked away and shut the car door in my face.
For a moment, I watched him stalk up to the building, hunched in his coat, all the energy I'd always known him to have just gone. A little voice nagged at me that I'd better do something.
I heard it a lot, that voice. It drove me in all sorts of circumstances. It had driven me to become a criminal investigator, it had driven me through the academy, and it had earned me every promotion I'd ever gotten. It drove me to get involved with the Kira case, it drove me to form my own task force when I had to leave L's investigation, and it drove me to start cooperating with Near when I'd come to realize Light was Kira.
But, I recognized grimly, this wasn't my problem, and I didn't have much control over the situation. The only thing to my advantage was having a couple ranks and almost ten years on Matsuda, and I knew that just wasn't enough.
Matsuda
"Okay," I said with a deep sigh, as I watched Aizawa's tail lights vanish into the rain. "This is getting bad."
It just wasn't like Aizawa to get involved in other people's business; fake inviting me to dinner and asking awkward questions about my love life was bad enough, but to actually try and tell me what I should do with my personal life crossed a boundary he'd never stepped over before.
From the second I first laid eyes on him, I'd known he was a prickly guy—brusque, quiet, a subtle skepticism constantly ribbing his forehead—and, to many people in the department, he was intimidating. According to rumors, Hideki Ide was the only person in the whole department he'd actually liked.
But he was also Shuichi Aizawa. Even in the academy, I'd heard good things about him—impressive things. Nothing crazy or heroic like some of the rumors I'd heard about Chief Yagami, but for being just a corporal at the time, Aizawa had had a promising career, already full of valuable achievements.
Back then, I'd wanted nothing more than to be that way also. In a way, I'd always been a loser, but I'd also believed that if I could just surround myself with winners, it might rub off on me. With that in mind, I'd introduced myself to him and Ide, and they'd looked at me about the way everyone else on the force did. Like they had no idea what I was even doing there.
I never let it deter me, though. I'd really tried, pathetic as it was, to get Aizawa to like me even a little, but with every dumb thing I'd said and every stupid mistake I'd made throughout the Kira investigation, I'd only ever seemed to prove to him that I was just an idiot.
With Mogi and Ide, and even Light, I'd reached some level of genuine friendship. And it wasn't that I didn't think Aizawa and I were friends, I guess, it's just that, for years now, he'd brushed off every attempt I'd ever made at making things personal.
I didn't mind so much. I'd come to understand that he had a stringent code for keeping work and personal stuff separate, and, probably, the reason everyone thought Ide was the only person he actually liked in the department was just because they'd been in the academy together, before he'd even made that rule for himself.
Obviously, he cared. He wouldn't say anything if he didn't care. But if he was breaking his own rule now, that could mean he was more worried than he was letting on. It might even mean Mogi and Ide were pressuring him to say something to me.
I'm fine though, I told myself as I headed upstairs. It's just a slump.
Then again, I was normally so cheerful, maybe it just seemed really horrible any time I got a little down.
That has to be all it is. They just aren't used to seeing me this way.
My family had always been the same way. When my first girlfriend had dumped me, when I hadn't made the cut for martial arts club, when I'd failed my criminal justice course in the academy and had to start over, they'd hovered, trying to cheer me up, exchanging worried glances. Even as a kid, if I got beat up, or fell out with a buddy, or got too involved in pondering life's complexities, if I stopped laughing and smiling for even a second, my mother or one of my sisters was always quick to tell me they didn't like seeing me so unhappy. Dad always just grumbled, "Quit crying, Touta. Be a man, for God's sake."
I got it, though. By the time I was in my twenties, I finally understood that the people around me thought I was on the verge of emotional collapse any time I had an even slightly disappointing day. So I'd resolved to keep smiling—always—to see the bright side, to be optimistic in all circumstances. That was my nature anyway, so it wasn't so hard, grinning through my own pain.
When Sumi cheated on me, the guys got pretty worried…
Immediately, I shook that thought off. I couldn't think about Sumirei now—never—but especially not now. Everything I was going through was already bad enough without remembering the way she'd clenched and twisted my heart as she ripped it out of my chest.
But I did remember that, for once, I hadn't been able to keep smiling. I'd wandered, listlessly into headquarters, only to find the other four staring at me like I'd grown a second head. I'd muttered, "I'm fine. Sumi broke up with me. Whatever," and gotten to work, but the rest of the week, even though none of them asked me directly what had happened, they'd hovered. They'd whispered behind my back. They'd tried to engage me in small talk, even striking up conversations on insignificant topics they would have normally gotten annoyed with hearing about. It sucked. I'd tried to be normal for them, the way I always had been before, but Sumi…
Anyway. This is different, I thought as I entered my apartment. This isn't the same at all…
Sumi was out there. Sure, she broke my heart, but occasional visits to her Facebook page told me she was doing good. She was happy. She met somebody else, got married, had a couple kids.
Light, though… Light was dead, and I didn't know how to fake my old attitude. I didn't know if I could ever be that way again.
When I got to my apartment, I stripped off my wet jacket and shirt, leaving both, along with my tie, lying in a heap on the couch, and went to find a towel I couldn't remember using recently. As I dried my hair, I sauntered into the living room to flip the TV on just so I wouldn't feel alone.
Maybe Aizawa's right. Maybe I need a woman in my life.
I hadn't dated much since taking the Kira case on; after Sumi, I hadn't dated at all. That was more than two years ago, but now I felt so overwhelmed with my own emotions I didn't know if I could give another human being what they needed.
In the fridge, I found an old beer, and then went and slouched down on the couch, shoving aside some of the clutter consuming it, and vegged out for a while, watching the news.
Peace ruled everywhere. I didn't see a single report of danger or death, and in fact it seemed like the news anchors hardly had anything to talk about, so they filled the time with jokes and flirted with their female reporters, showing puff piece after puff piece. Once, they briefly mentioned Lord Kira and the fact that he hadn't done anything over the last four weeks. I wondered when they'd finally realize he was dead and not coming back at all.
That thought dragged me back to the image of Light lying there, writhing in a puddle of his own blood, cursing and hating us—his friends. It made me feel guilty and dirty.
Wincing, I focused harder on the puff pieces, thinking maybe I should switch over to something even more lighthearted.
Just as I picked up my remote, the female anchor received a piece of paper from off camera. She reviewed it a second and then looked at the audience again, voice grave, eyes sparkling with excitement.
"This just in: the pop star, Misa Amane has gone missing."
I almost dropped my beer. "Misa-Misa?"
"According to her manager, she hasn't been seen in several days." A photograph of the familiar smiling face of Misa-Misa popped up on the right hand side of the screen, blonde hair glowing, blue eyes bright. "If anyone has any information regarding Misa-Misa, please contact your local police, or call the number now appearing at the bottom of your screen.
Hungry for any sign of trouble, the news anchors discussed the story a moment, and I studied the picture.
Since she'd been cleared as the second Kira, and Light was dead, and the notebook was safe, there hadn't been any point in arresting her, but she'd always been worried about stalkers. For all I knew, one of them kidnapped her.
What worried me more, though, was the last time I saw her, I accidentally let it slip that Light had been killed… Well, I hadn't really let it slip. She'd asked. I'd felt responsible. Someone had to tell her eventually. Not knowing how to lie to her about it, I'd just blurted it out, and only later had I realized just how indelicate all of that had been. When I'd left, she'd been crying.
Whipping out my phone, I dialed her number. Hopefully, she was recuperating somewhere and she'd answer if she got a call from someone she knew, but it went to voice mail, and I left a hurried message.
For the next ten minutes, I walked around and around my apartment, debating if I should go and look for her or not, throwing my shirt and jacket back on, and then taking the jacket off, on, and off again. At last, I decided it was better to call someone else than it was to panic all by myself.
I phoned Aizawa, and he answered promptly. "What is it, Matusda?"
His voice sounded serious and careful; he probably thought I'd freaked out or needed help.
I blurted out, "Turn on the news!"
"Matsuda, I just left your place. I'm not even home yet."
"Well, I'm watching the news, and—"
"Dammit, Matsuda, you better not tell me there's another Kira."
That was the thing we all dreaded—the worst thing possible—that there might be yet another notebook, or that Light had had another accomplice who'd bide his time and then appear when we least expected it.
"No, it's Misa—they say she's been missing for days!"
Aizawa waited for me to say more, and then gave a deep sigh. "You called to tell me some pop star disappeared?"
"Some pop star? Aizawa, it's Misa. Remember Misa?"
"Yeah, I remember Misa—she was always nothing but trouble."
I felt some of my anger coming back. "What are you saying? You think it isn't important?"
"No, I'm saying I don't know what you want me to do right now."
"Haven't you heard anything about this? You're supposed to be the next chief. Aren't there any leads?"
Frustration started filtering into his voice. "This is the first time I've heard about it."
"So this hasn't been reported to the NPA yet?"
"Not to me."
"Then—"
"Matsuda, listen. Just don't worry about it right now. If you want to help Misa, get yourself to bed so you can be at your best tomorrow."
"But I—"
"And for God's sake, Matsuda, don't do something stupid. Okay?"
I didn't know what he expected me to do that might be stupid, but it was obvious he wasn't interested in Misa's disappearance.
"Okay," I agreed tiredly.
"I'm gonna hold you to that. Now I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yeah, bye."
He hung up before I even said the word bye, and I held the phone a few extra seconds before turning it off and sliding it back into my pocket. I knew he was right, as much as I hated it; there was nothing I could do right now.
Ide
"Missing pop icon," I told Aizawa, struggling to find some balance between approval and gravitas. "You really are on your way to the top."
Broad nose wrinkled, he didn't even try to look pleased as he stared down at the assignment Commissioner Oshima had tossed onto his desk. "I don't like that it's Amane," he muttered so only I could hear.
"I think it makes sense," I told him. "You worked with her before—you have a good shot of actually finding her."
Still, he sighed, ever the pessimist.
"Shuichi," I half-scolded. "This is the biggest case to hit the department in God knows how long, and they chose you to run it. If that's not a sign that they honestly intend to promote you, I don't know what is."
"Why, though?" he wondered.
I studied him, not sure what to say. The Shuichi Aizawa I'd met twenty years ago in the academy wouldn't ask why; he'd chomp at the bit for this promotion, throw himself into the investigation head first, and obsess over it until he'd gotten it solved, and then he'd accept the new position with quiet dignity, as if he hadn't done anything special to get there.
Very severe cynicism had crept into him gradually over the years, but I'd noticed it had gotten much worse since we finished off the Kira case; it was probably normal, I guessed, that Light's betrayal had that adverse affect on him. Outside of that, though, I'd started to notice wrinkles on his forehead that didn't used to be there, and that, I thought, was something the higher-ups had done to him.
After the Kira case, he hadn't even received the full two weeks the rest of us had gotten. No, they had to push him and harass him right away, with no regard to protocol.
For those three days, I'd been here also, sometimes watching through the glass of the interrogation room as they picked at him like a common criminal, sometimes directly challenging Commissioner Oshima and Director Boko on what they were doing, always looking for an opportunity to help him.
On the third day of the debriefing, after more than thirteen hours of watching them all but torture my friend for information, he'd practically begged to see me alone, but they'd only let me go in long enough for us to smoke a cigarette together. While I'd been there, close to him, he'd whispered Near's number to me—he was the only one who'd had it at that point—and I'd realized he must be close to cracking after all. Stubbornness could only get one so far.
When I called Near not fifteen minutes later, he'd agreed to speak with the NPA director about the situation; Aizawa must have known he'd have a better shot at answering their questions without compromising information of a classified nature. It worked, I guessed, because by the time Eriko showed up, all but screaming about suing the NPA for the unlawful detainment of her husband, Director Boko had come back, all smiles, apologizing to her and saying they were going to let Aizawa go immediately.
Still, as the three of us had left the station, I'd told Aizawa, they want that information bad, Shuichi. They're not going to let it go just because they can't get it out of you.
I know, he'd huffed.
Since then, we'd been on guard. It was hard to accept that the officials who were supposed to be protecting us were willing to treat us that way, and scarier even to think about why they so adamantly wanted to uncover Kira's identity in the first place, but I knew Aizawa was stressed about it.
Suddenly being handed an important case like this and having a promotion dangled over his head did feel almost sinister.
"I've got your back," I told him. "Let's just find Amane so that you can be chief and start straightening this place out again."
The department had fallen far and hard from the tight way Soichiro Yagami had run it, and I knew that better than anyone since I'd spent a great deal of time watching protocol and work ethic gradually erode while the others worked with L. By the time I went to rejoin the task force, it really was strictly because I just missed Aizawa's good judgment, integrity, and veracity.
"Mogi should be good for a case like this," Aizawa decided, finally getting to his feet and beginning to lead the way across the office. "He knows Amane the best."
Evidently, Commissioner Oshima couldn't be bothered to select an entire team, but I didn't know if that was out of laziness or if it might be yet another way he was screwing with us.
"He's very thorough also," I agreed, matching his professional tone. "Who else do you want, Captain?"
Not answering, he gazed down the hall, eyes somewhat distant, and, as usual, I could tell exactly what he was thinking.
Moving a little closer to him, I murmured, "I think you'd better leave Matsuda out of it."
"So annoying," he grumbled. "Working on something like this would probably be good for him."
"Possibly," I agreed. "But if Amane turns up dead, the last thing he'll need is to be in the middle of it."
Aizawa nodded and suddenly waved the file in his hand at Matsuda's desk, which we happened to be passing. "He's not even here yet."
"He's only a few minutes late."
Brow furrowing, he shook his head in utter disapproval, and we continued on our way until we found Mogi.
He seemed to know already that Amane was missing, and despite his overall collected demeanor, I could tell it worried him. After serving a long time as her bodyguard, I had no doubt it was difficult for him to think of her potentially being in danger.
Maybe it would be best to keep him off the case as well, but Aizawa briefed him on what we knew already, and then set to trying to select one more investigator.
Mogi accepted that it wouldn't be Matsuda without question and then recommended Sergeant Karisa Yoko, saying he'd worked with her in the past and that her eye for detail was excellent.
Being one of the only women currently in our department, we had all heard of Yoko. Early in her career, she'd played a huge role in busting a drug ring, and since then, she'd been sort of a legend.
It didn't matter. Mogi's recommendation was more than enough to convince Aizawa, and he went to find her next while Mogi and I made our own preparations.
"You up for this, Sergeant?" I asked, slipping back into my overcoat.
He inclined his head in a slight nod.
"From what I heard, it might be one of the last cases you work."
"Aizawa told you," he said, not sounding surprised.
"I think it bothered him. I'm just curious to know where you'll go. The job's lost some of its luster, sure, but if you're bored now, I doubt being a regular civilian will be much better."
Fixing his serious gaze on me, he said simply, "I've been thinking about trying to join L."
Astonished, I stopped to stare at him. "Really?"
Mogi murmured, "Don't look so surprised, Ide," and suddenly walked away.
Thoughtfully, I watched him go, and I couldn't help being surprised. Mogi would probably do well working under L—he had in the past—and I understood if he was frustrated with the NPA in general, but I'd never been a fan of the original L, and I couldn't see that his successor was much better when it came to arrogance and eccentricity. In my mind, working for L had never been an option.
Aizawa returned shortly, speaking into his phone, probably with Eriko, and jerking his head for me to follow him. He'd slipped into his aviator sunglasses, and with his dark suit and long coat, he looked like a character from a cop drama, hardboiled and determined.
Sergeant Karisa Yoko followed him.
She was a beautiful woman with short black hair and ice blue eyes. Her pale complexion and solemn look gave her an otherworldly appearance, but she smiled at me, speaking in a cool voice. "Good morning, Lieutenant."
"Sergeant," I muttered, lighting a cigarette and still distracted by what Mogi had said. Plenty of officers had come and gone over my time on the force; some had even died. It wasn't especially sensible to get overly attached to any coworker, but the Kira investigation tied the four of us together with a strange bond of secrets and frightening memories. To think of any of the other three suddenly not being there felt inexplicably lonely.
We headed out to the cruisers together, and I half listened to Aizawa's conversation with Eriko. He seemed to be reassuring her even though, so far, this case didn't look dangerous, and I wondered if things were going all right between them.
When we'd reached the garage level, Mogi reappeared, Matsuda behind him, hurrying to keep up with Mogi's longer gait.
"Oh, hell," I muttered when I saw him. Unbelievably, he looked worse than yesterday with his hair a mess and his suit badly rumpled. At a distance, it was easier to tell how much weight he'd lost in one short month, looking something like a skeleton draped in a suit, and his skin even looked waxy.
"Aizawa!" he called, suddenly galloping toward us, and I heard Shuichi issue a nearly inaudible sigh. If anything was really stressing him out these days, I felt sure it must be Matsuda. For one thing, the kid had a tendency to blurt out whatever happened into his head, and we all worried he might accidentally leak information about Kira, especially if someone interrogated him the way they had Aizawa.
More importantly, though, we'd been lenient on his overly friendly behavior while on the task force, but here at the station, ranks and professionalism were paramount, and I knew Aizawa's position as Matsuda's superior was really conflicting with his concerns about his personal well-being.
"I'll talk to him," I offered automatically.
"No," Aizawa huffed, "I'd better do it," and then said to Eriko, "no, I don't think I'll be too late, but if you want to have dinner without me, that's fine."
By that time, Matsuda had reached us and started walking right beside Aizawa, impatiently waiting for him to get off the phone. Up close, the dark circles under his eyes looked worse than ever, and his expression revealed what could almost be described as panic. The moment Aizawa hung up, he jumped in with, "Mogi told me you're in charge of finding Misa!"
"That's right," Aizawa agreed, even voice especially soft compared to Matsuda's shouting.
"So what are we doing? I think we should split into groups.'
"I'll take that under advisement, Corporal," Aizawa said, barely glancing at him, "but you're staying here. You're not part of the investigation."
I winced a little at the harsh way he'd said it, and everyone fell silent; only the sounds of our footsteps bounced in the stark hall around us as we drew closer to the parking garage exit.
Matsuda scrambled to change his mind. "C'mon, you know I'm worried about her!"
"I do know that, but we don't need you."
Matsuda stared up at him, obviously hurt, and the rest of us faced straight ahead, pretending we couldn't hear them.
At last, Matsuda demanded, "What the hell am I supposed to do while the three of you go out looking for Misa? Just sit here?"
"How about you finish the assignment I gave you two days ago, Corporal?"
"Unbelievable!" Matsuda exploded. "A friend of mine is missing, and you want me to sit here and file papers!"
I gaped. It was completely unlike him, even with his poor filter, to show such blatant disrespect to a superior, let alone to turn so quickly to rage.
"Hey." I grabbed his arm suddenly, saying sternly, "That's the captain you're talking to."
Matsuda scowled at me, but it subdued him enough to shut him up, and Aizawa stopped to say, "Mogi, you and Yoko go to Misa's apartment. Ide, I'll meet you at the car." Beyond his sunglasses, his expression was almost impossible to make sense of, but I wanted to think he wouldn't completely unload on the kid over such mild insubordination.
Letting go of Matsuda, I hurried with the other two toward the garage. Just as I stepped through, I heard Aizawa saying, "You want the truth—here it is…"
Mogi and I exchanged glances, and I rolled my eyes before he led Yoko to their cruiser.
Waiting for Aizawa didn't take long; I got to finish my cigarette, and by then he was tromping toward me, fists in his pockets, frowning more obviously now.
"How'd he take it?" I wondered.
"Fine," Aizawa muttered as he climbed in on the passenger's side. "You drive."
"He's going to be mad at you forever," I pointed out, getting in also.
"That's the least of my concerns."
"Be real," I suggested, starting the car. "I know it matters to you."
"It matters," he agreed, shortly, "it's just the least of my concerns. Anyway, I just hope he doesn't do anything dumb."
I laughed under my breath. "Matsuda? Don't count on it."