Yo, another chapter this quickly? Yes.

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Mandatory Disclaimer: You get the drill by this point. I don't own either series or Twitter.

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8/9/20XX - Evening

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"How far would I go to save someone else's life?"

That's a question I'm sure everyone on the planet has asked themselves at one point or another, and I honestly feel like it was one that a person needed to ask themselves at least once in their lives. It was a simple, yet extremely important question dealing with one's personal morality: do you care about your fellow man enough to risk life and limb for some stranger on the street for essentially nothing in return?

Ask around and I'm sure most people would say some marginally different variation of the same answer: 'yes, of course, I would' or 'no, let them die for all I care'. If not and the person says 'I don't know' and/or 'I'd need to think about it first', then congratulations! You found yourself a person with a little bit of self-awareness and/or logic in their brain!

Call me whatever label you want to put on someone like me for saying something like this, but the fact is that most people who answer with a clear, definite answer to a question like that are commenting on a one-hundred percent, hypothetical situation and have never actually held someone else's life in their hands. They don't know how it truly feels to save an another person and they definitely don't know what it feels like to not be able to do so. So much went into answering that question that the fact I was even still sane after all the times I've had to make that decision was truly mind-boggling.

Earlier yesterday, when Puppet spoke to the ten that I had accidentally roped into all this detective business, she had mentioned that our purpose was to heal people. Tobe even mentioned that it was one of the driving forces for him to join me and the SSDA (Scarlet Sleuth Detective Agency). I honestly wished that she hadn't done that then.

It was never our job to heal people. The word 'job', I believe, implied that it was something we had to do when that was never actually the case. We didn't have to do anything. It was just like that piece of litter on the floor a few feet in front of you. Yeah, it's a nice sentiment for you to pick it up and throw it into the trash, but what happens when that same piece of trash ends up in a landfill instead of recycled, or ends up in the ocean and kills off local wildlife? Sure, a comparison like that was a fallacy by nature as literal trash and a human life couldn't compare to one another, but it just illustrated my point beautifully.

When doing a job like mine – going into people's memories, getting them to open the very inner sanctums of it to me, and healing and allowing them the opportunity to get past whatever misunderstanding they made for themselves – one needed to keep in mind that this wasn't like a video game where failure was never an option and success was the only decent one. In some cases, I've found that the only decent option was to fail and allow what was going to happen, to happen. It was most definitely a bitter pill to swallow most cases something like that happened, but it was something that was occasionally necessary and I've long since learned to live with the fact. Failing to heal a perp would most definitely lead to hardship for said person, but that hardship could also lead to personal growth. In the end, nothing was certain and a bad thing could come from something that was originally good, and a good thing could come from something that was bad. That was a lesson that I learned – albeit indirectly through another lesson of hers – from a certain sensei of mine.

Now, I only bring this up because of the predicament I found myself in with Sagami's case - a case in which I had to make the decision of: 'is the sacrifice I'm about to make really worth it in the end?' It was essentially a case where I had past experience dealing with the perp (which are usually never fun, by the way) and also one in which, even before my stumbling onto her scene, I had zero interest in helping said perp with anything. After finding out, I found still myself reluctant to invoke myself with her. It was safe to say that I didn't like her or presence at all. Actually, I loathed her for everything that she was and represented, but that was beyond the point I'm trying to make - that point being, that despite my prior feelings towards her, I still gave her a chance. Not because of any goodwill towards humanity on my part of course, but because I had learned from personal experience that, with cases dealing with people that I didn't want anything to do with, one should save casting any judgements toward aforementioned person and remain objective towards them until the door to the locked-away section of their memory was reached. After all, a good detective always waited until the very last minute to make a decision on a case. So, after saying all of that, what was my judgment in Sagami's case?

Huh? I would've thought that the answer to that question would've been fairly obvious. I thought that the best way to help her would be to have her open up and heal her troubled mind, and was well worth any sacrifice, save giving my own life. Even if it was one of… that nature.

Whelp… At the very least, it wasn't an actual relationship with her that I was agreeing to.

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I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as I sat under the ever-judging, amber gaze of the woman sitting directly across from me, a piece of paper containing today's report being held level to her… um, bountiful chest in her gloved hand. She looked beautiful as always with her long, platinum-blonde hair falling messily on the perfect, pale skin of her bare shoulders, yet still somehow managed to sit on them on them in a contradicting dignified manner. The fact that her long, shapely legs were crossed over one another in a way that made their usual covering slide off in the most eye-catching fashion possible didn't make her look any less appealing, unfortunately.

Speaking of said cover, I was currently trying my hardest to keep my eyes pointed at it as it was at her mid-section, and looking up would lead to me getting unnerved by those eyes of hers and looking down would lead to an unnerving gaze of another kind that I'd also rather not deal with. The covering I was referring to, by the way, was a vibrantly deep blue dress, silk dress that went down all the way to her ankles and had a single black stripe wrapping with solid-gold lettering being placed over it, all of which together reading: 'M-I-R-R-O-R', right around her belt line. Despite the length of the dress, however, it still revealed quite a bit of skin as it lacked, from what I could see, any noticeable shoulder straps, back coverage for right up until her hips and to top it all off, there was a purposeful opening in her dress when she stood up that revealed the majority of her right leg. Ah, damn… Thinking about it is making me want to look down more and more… Ugh! Brain, would you stop it already?! I get it! You wanna see more! I understand! I truly do, but this is a matter of self-preservation! Quit being an idiot!

"Hachiman…" I couldn't help but curse under my breath as I heard her usual, refined drawl carry my given name out of her mouth to my ears. I would've thought the sound to be beautiful if it wasn't for the fact that she only ever said my name when she was frustrated with how I was doing things. "How many times must I remind you to not go on these philosophical rants in your reports to me?" She placed the report in question down onto her lap before continuing, "You unnecessarily adding all this filler is a waste of both our times, you know?"

"Ah, r-right," I stutter back in reply as I reach up and scratch at the skin of my cheek sheepishly. Yep. She's definitely pissed at me. Seriously, what's with me and writing things that make older women angry with me? Is this some sort of backward ass, natural talent given to me at birth? If it is, then I guess I should start looking into what it'd take for me to become a writer for the celebrity tabloids. I bet I'd take to it well, despite me despising everything about the business.

Being unable to stand the weight that the woman's gaze was forced onto me, I shifted my gaze away from anywhere near her and towards the rest of the space around us, deciding that it was in my best interest to focus on it instead.

If I had to describe the room that the of us were sitting in, I'd say that it looked a lot like the stage of a slightly more fancy version of the standard high school auditoriums I see in movies. Floors made up of long, lighter-grained hardwood boards; deep-blue, billowing velvet drapes coming down from the ceiling acting as a barrier between where the woman and I were and where all the people in the audience sat; and aggressively bright stage lighting being the only light source, which effectively obscured some parts of the area from view with complete darkness – something that I was grateful for as doing so gave me the ability to not see the things that would be visible if this dimension's master was actually present and the entire stage was visible. Right, smack dab in the middle of all that was the woman and me, sitting down on a pair of matching armchairs the same color and material as the separator to my left. To my right, there was darkness and the most standard office desk one would ever see in their life.

This place, it was called the Velvet Room by me and its inhabitants. Apparently, it was supposed to be a direct representation of how I saw my own life, or the visualization of my sub-conscious, or some other symbolic jargon like that. I really wasn't paying attention the day this information was all explained to me. I was sort of busy having a near panic attack after suddenly waking up in a place that was completely alien to me.

Here, within the Velvet Room, I did a lot of things such as: evaluate the personas I brought into custody for power levels; fuse together and break apart those same personas to make even stronger ones; and speak directly to my two biggest benefactors, a nasally-voiced man in a suit who currently wasn't present named Igor and his assistant sitting across from me – a girl that was aptly named—

"Darling…" the sound of said woman calling out to me with the usual nickname stripped me from the solace that was my own reverie, making me very quickly take notice of how close she had suddenly gotten, "…you do know that ignoring me like that isn't going to do you any good, right~?"

Still looking away as actually looking at her dead on right now would give me a very good view of something that my eyes would never escape thanks to the laws of phys-tits, I once again replied to a question of hers with an incidental stutter, "Y-Yeah, I'm just thinking, is all. I know better than to think it's possible to ignore you, Monroe."

"Then, why are you looking off to the side like that?" Suddenly, the sides of my chin were grasped and pulled to look out directly in front of me, where a pair of amber eyes met my own, though I had to admit that my eyes wanted to be a lot more concerned with the view of the bare canyon that said woman bending over to look me in the eye afforded me. "My eyes are over here, you know?"

Not wanting to even contemplate what she could be implying with a statement like that, I just marched on ahead valiantly, looking off to the side once more, this time with just my eyes only, "Yeah, yeah, whatever…"

Sigh. Why must there be so many women in my life seeking to make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin? Oh lord, what did I do to deserve a fate like this — and, before you say anything, I didn't mean that seriously Job! Do not actually answer!

Without even seeing him, I knew that my initial persona was slowly shutting his mouth from within the sea of souls inside my head.

"So, by the way…" Hearing her speak, I turned my attention, and just my attention – there was no way in hell that I was gonna turn my eyes back to her – back onto her, "…what exactly is your plan to handle that Sagami girl's case? I noticed that you failed to mention that in your report."

Feeling a bead of sweat run down my forehead in response to that statement, I gulped in response to the question, doing so in literally the slowest and loudest way possible, despite my intent to do nothing like that. "Um…"

[…Sleep Soundly…]

"So, onii-chan…" Speaking of females that made me uncomfortable, the only one that I was comfortable with doing so, my little sister Komachi, called out to me as I sat in the usual silent reverie that I deployed whilst she and me, or in this specific instance, as all our family – my parents had managed to procure themselves one more day off from work for my birthday somehow, though I highly suspected that they took the extra free day for their sakes and not my own (not that I minded) – ate together.

Glancing up from the plate of curry over rice that my mother had made for the family while I was upstairs, giving my daily report to Monroe and looking to my right where Komachi is sitting, I give my little sister a questioning look, deciding to not say anything as there was food in my mouth and parents presence. Oh, and speaking of parents, they did the same as I did. My mother seemed curious about what she was gonna say and my father jealous that the first person she decided to speak to was me and not him. Ha! Better luck next time, you daughter-con of a dad!

"I was on Twitter earlier today and I found a photo of someone that you might find interesting~!" The moment I heard the way she was talking that I was in trouble. I don't know for what exactly, but I felt like that was going to be revealed to me soon enough. "The person who posted it online goes to your school, I'm pretty sure."

"Do I know her?" Swallowing my food, I asked that, trying my hardest to hide the slight tremble that in my voice.

"Oh, yes, I'm more than sure that you know her." Okay, something's most definitely wrong here! Komachi-chan is acting all scary and I have zero ideas as to what caused her to do so. Just then, I noticed that my little sister's right hand was covering something on the table. It being multiple sizes bigger than it, I could immediately tell that it was her recently-acquired smartphone. "Here, I even have it pulled up right now." She raised her right hand up so that it was level with the ball of her shoulder and brought her phone with it, the screen of which facing my direction. "Now, my only question is … how come I've only ever heard of her now?"

My breathing immediately hitched when I saw the photo being displayed on her screen and I suddenly felt like dying a little. There, in full HD clarity, was me standing next to one Sagami Minami, a sheepish expression on my face as I looked away from my newly-acquired 'girlfriend' as she pressed her lips against my cheek. Over it, I read the words: 'Giving my new boyfriend a late birthday present~! 3 #GrtstGFEver.'

A million questions ran through my head before I realized something. Oh! So, that's what she meant when she said she had a way to broadcast to the school the news of our newly-formed 'relationship'. Huh… I guess I probably should've seen that coming—

Just then, I felt my phone suddenly vibrate in my pocket and that made me realize three things. First of all, my parents were both looking at us with looks of confusion on their face as the phone was angled in a way they themselves couldn't see it. Secondly, Sagami was in the same classroom as me and a lot of other people I know. She is extremely popular within the confines of Sobu High in general, especially after I bitched her out up on the roof, that meant that there was a high likelihood that most everyone in our class with a Twitter account saw the post. Thirdly and finally, the last of course not being the least, my phone still hadn't stopped vibrating and the rapid-fire nature of the vibrations meant that there was no way it was a phone call. What was being sent to my phone were texts… All of which being sent to me in rapid succession of one another. Now, there were only a couple people in the world that fit the criteria of being able to blow up my phone in response to a post like that, which were knowing my number, having enough interest in social media to see the post, and also having close enough ties with Sagami to know her Twitter account. Unfortunately, that meant it could be either Isshiki or Yuigahama… Dammit.

See, now this is why I hated working out of the Inverse so much. Also, I want to die. Like, right now. Very, very badly.

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Chapter End