4/11

Inaba Local Precinct

.

Ryotaro Dojima didn't like kids.

That said, he knew the problem was his own damn fault. He wasn't a very sociable guy at the best of times, and he never really tried fixing that; even speaking with his own daughter tended to be an awkward, stilted affair at the best of times. In the past, it never mattered too much; so long as you kept your head down and did your job well, nobody really cared if you kept to yourself.

So it was a mystery to him why he'd been sent to pick the girl up from the hospital.

"Adachi, we don't have all day," he snapped while leaning against the car.

"Sorry, Dojima-san. She's just a little... unsteady, still," he chuckled while holding the girl's hand. She seemed more than a little lost, stumbling through her steps as she tried to follow Adachi's gentle direction as if she couldn't see her own feet.

The doctors said there hadn't been anything wrong with her physically, at least as far as they could tell -somehow, all three of their X-ray machines had broken down simultaneously, so they weren't able to get viable scans of her head- but a concussion seemed unlikely, they said. If she had any mental irregularities, they were probably trauma based.

"Careful, there. Don't hurt yourself now," Adachi said gently, helping her into the back seat. Dojima checked the mirror; though a little bedraggled, she at least seemed better than how she'd been last night.

She was probably a bit under eighteen. Fairly tall, with long pale hair and blue eyes- possibly a foreigner? From out of town at least. More bizarre was the anachronistic grey robe she'd been found in; a patternless grey kimono. As it seemed, she hadn't changed while they were at the hospital, and Dojima had to wonder again why she'd been wearing it to begin with.

Or, hell, how she got tangled up in a TV antenna in the first place.

"Took you long enough," Dojima muttered as Adachi climbed into the passenger's seat. He started up the engine as his partner just chuckled nervously. Adachi did that a lot.

"Sorry, Dojima-san."

Adachi did that a lot too.

"They were pretty insistent that she get some sleep, so I had to promise to let her rest down at the station. Even then, I think they were kinda leery about letting someone with amnesia go into an interrogation."

Dojima would have rolled his eyes if he weren't driving. Victims having unclear memories of their assault wasn't uncommon- having no memories, on the other hand, was just bullshit. He didn't doubt that she was stressed from the entire debacle, but it was in his nature to doubt people. She was probably hiding something.

"Are you comfortable back there?" Adachi asked their 'guest'. She didn't really react, and Adachi's dopey smile wavered a little. Dojima kept his eyes on the road.

"So, what should we call you? Do you remember your name yet?" the young detective asked. The girl in the back blinked a little, but still didn't respond.

"I guess not, then..." he trailed off.

"Shut up, Adachi."

"Sorry, Dojima-san."

The car was quiet for a while. The girl was staring out the window, but Dojima had to wonder if she actually saw anything. The glazed look in her eyes seemed more than just a mask.

Wait. He sighed as he remembered something and glanced over at his partner. "The glasses," he muttered.

"Hm? Sorry, Dojima-san?" Adachi said cluelessly.

"Don't be an idiot, Adachi. I told you to pick them up."

"Oh- right, I almost forgot. Hehe, sorry-" he said, pulling a plastic bag from his pocket. A pair of glasses sat inside, simple black under-rims with a fashionable gray band on the arm. Even if they hadn't been found at the scene, they matched well enough that their owner was obvious.

The girl stared at the bag for a second like it was an alien object. Then, slowly and deliberately, she took it from Adachi's hand and just held it, staring.

"They're yours, aren't they?" he asked, smiling. "Sorry to make you walk around without your glasses all that time. It's a good thing Dojima-san was here, eh?"

Dojima sighed again.

.

4/11 - Midnight

.

Inaba was a tiny town and aside from the occasional biker gang incident, it didn't have a whole lot of crime to its name. Petty theft, the odd drunken fight or martial dispute gone awry, an occasional drug dealer from one of the bigger cities passing through; when all was said and done, there wasn't a whole lot of action to be found out in the country.

Naturally, that meant that they didn't have much in the way of a police department. There were only a handful of detectives aside from him, and even then they could mostly be found milling around the precinct rather than doing anything of use. Sometimes Ryotaro wondered if he was the only one interested in doing any actual work.

"So you don't remember anything about how you got to Inaba?"

The girl hesitated, then shook her head again. She still hadn't said a word and barely responded to what they said, but at least she'd picked at a sweet bun Adachi had bought along the way.

"No ID, no contacts and no memory, eh?" officer Sasaki muttered from the other side of the room, sipping his coffee. "That's rough, Dojima, I get it. But my personal opinion is to give this a rest. Remember who's the victim here."

"Hm," Dojima said, closing his eyes briefly. He'd wanted to interrogate her in isolation, but the chief nixed that idea. Interrogating a traumatized victim just out of the hospital wasn't kosher, but if you moved it to a slightly more public space and called it a chat, it became more laudable. Never mind that they still had no idea what to do with her if they couldn't find her guardians.

"Look, Dojima-san," Sasaki said, looking at his watch. "It's getting late. Why don't you get going home, and I'll set her up in one of the holding rooms for the night. You both need rest."

Part of Ryotaro wanted to say no.

This entire affair felt strange. A girl appears out of nowhere on a television antenna, uninjured and without memory, somehow. Something about it just stunk, and his instincts wouldn't let him just drop it.

Sasaki chuckled. "I can tell what you're thinking, but I wouldn't worry. I don't think this near weird enough to displace the Yamano and Namatame scandal."

"They won't hear about it at all if you all keep your traps shut," Dojima groused. Small town media could be vicious, and Inaba was no exception; he'd had more than one scuffle with an overenthusiastic reporter in the past. Unfortunately, few of his colleagues kept such a hardline stance.

He shook his head. "But I guess you're right... thanks for covering me. Apologize to Adachi for me for making him cover the paperwork, would you?" he muttered, standing up. He nodded at the girl briefly before he left.

"Get some sleep. We'll talk again tomorrow."

"...Mayumi Yamano."

She wasn't looking at that them, even when they turned back to her. She was just staring at her hands, chewing a bit of a sweet bun.

"Mayumi... Yamano."

Dojima looked at Sasaki.

"Well that's... something," the officer chuckled awkwardly.