Chapter 7: The Second Attempt


Saehara Takeshi yawned as he waited for the scan to print out. It was already this late at night, and the Osaka Police Department still wanted them to look at a stupid identity card.

He was inside the Superintendent General's office because Dark had called him and instructed him to await the incoming documents. Well, at least he didn't have it as bad as his superior, Takeshi thought. Dark was the one who had to investigate whatever was coming, and he was coming back after having already ended his shift. Takeshi's shift, on the other hand, was just about over…

His drooping eyes took in what was being faxed over. There was a face… quite an angry face, he noted, but it was a girl. More interested now that he saw that it was a young member of the opposite sex, he tilted his head to get a better look.

That hair color was an unusual shade of auburn… Where had he seen it before?

When the whole picture was finally visible, he gasped. Wasn't this—? But it couldn't—! How come the boss's girlfriend was—?

He tried pulling the paper out faster, wrinkling the edges a bit. It sure was taking its leisure time printing; centimeter by single centimeter.

He finally saw the first name. Riku.

Okay. Well, Riku was a common name. What was this case about, again? He hadn't been listening very closely to what Dark was saying; he was too groggy to really comprehend more than the physical instructions to go wait in the office.

The paper eventually finished printing and Takeshi snatched the paper up, holding it up to the light as if it would make it clearer.

It was a scan of an ID card, but it wasn't a Japanese one. There were English words on it, but the girl on the picture surely wasn't Caucasian. She had shorter hair, but the color was undoubtedly the same, and her eyes, although angry in this picture, were the same as that woman's.

Takeshi gasped. Riku Harada? What had she done? Why was the Osaka Department telling them to investigate her?

His stomach dropped. And the boss had finally found a nice girl, too… If she left him, or the other way around, Dark would undoubtedly be in a grumpy attitude and would wreak havoc for the next year. Not to mention that if he was single, there was no point in anyone getting a girlfriend because they would all flock to the Superintendent General.

Before he could sulk about the current predicament anymore, the door opened and Dark came in, wearing a nice dress shirt and pants. Takeshi took one look at him and knew that he had been on a date, probably with the girl whose ID he now held in his hand.

Dark saw Takeshi and made his way over to the coat-hanger. On the way, he nodded to the paper in his hands. "Evening, Saehara. What've we got tonight?"

Takeshi's throat seemed unbearable dry. "Uh, that is, an ID…" To hand over or not to hand over… The stakes were high. He was holding onto the paper that would tell him whether he would get laid or not in the coming year.

Dark finished hanging up his coat and strolled over to his subordinate. He tried to look at what was on the paper, but Takeshi was holding it so that all Dark saw was white. He held out his hand, expecting Takeshi to hand it over.

When he didn't, Dark raised an eyebrow, and went to grab the paper himself. A brief struggle ensued, in which Takeshi tried to keep his grip on the paper while trying not to rip it at the same time. Dark won.

His eyes perused the paper once, his eyes widening. Takeshi was keeping watch on his reaction.

"Sir, if I may ask. What is this case about?"

"It's a missing person case, Takeshi."


Risa Harada was in higher spirits, which was saying a lot. For the past six months she had been worrying endlessly, unable to keep up her studies in the fashion industry. She had left school temporarily to find her sister's whereabouts, an action that her parents disapproved of and thought futile and reckless, but Risa was determined.

She was currently sitting on a train up to Tokyo, in which she would be able to speak to the Police Department there in hopes of finding a lead on her sister. However, since it was still night, she would have to wait until morning, something she wasn't very keen on. She wanted to find her sister now.

And elbow knocked into hers to her right. She pursed her lips and looked over at her blonde companion.

"Do you mind?" she asked irritably.

"What?" Krad Hikari responded innocently.

"Can you please stop being," Risa jerked her elbow onto the armrest more firmly, "an armrest nazi?"

"I'm not a nazi," he said indignantly. "We are sharing this armrest, like all civilized people should."

"Please keep on your side of the armrest then." Risa huffed and turned her head to look out the dark window.

Krad looked affronted. Women and their issues with space!

The Director General had decided to go to Tokyo as well, though he refused Risa's notion that he was following her. He was simply going to visit an old friend again… and this case was indeed intriguing.

At least, the woman next to him who was so adamant about finding the missing person was intriguing.

Krad settled more comfortably into his seat, inadvertently bumping his elbow into his companion's again.

As she grumbled, he chuckled to himself. Very intriguing indeed.


Riku awoke early the next day, knowing that she was wanted at the Police Department. As she staggered into the bathroom and fumbled for the light switch in her early morning daze, she remembered the late-night call that Dark had made to her. He had told her to come into the office early the next morning because he wanted to tell her something.

A little part of her was excited, another anxious. What could he possibly want to tell her that he couldn't tell her over the phone—or when they had been eating dinner, for that matter?

She made her way to her closet and pulled on jeans and a striped shirt. She brushed her hair briefly, then decided on a pony tail to keep it out of her eyes. Once set, she grabbed her bag and light jacket and made her way out of her apartment and towards the subway station.

She could have taken a taxi, she mused; it might have been faster. But as she breathed in the early morning chill, she smiled. Looking at the people around her, and how she now belonged here, made her absolutely jubilant.

To her surprise, she bumped into Freedert, Elliot, and Kyle, with Mio fuming beside them. They were just outside the subway station.

"I can't believe all of you went to help prepare Riku and Dark's date, and I wasn't even invited!" Mio was complaining to the longer-haired blonde.

Freedert tried to placate the young woman. "Mio, you were busy manning the boutique. We couldn't just pull you away from your job; you're the manager."

Elliot noticed Riku first.

"Good morning, Riku," he greeted amiably.

She smiled and greeted him back. "What are you guys doing here?"

"Mio called Freedert earlier about wanting to meet over breakfast before the boutique opened, and Freedert let slip about your date last night. As you can see, Mio is not too happy," Kyle explained, gesturing towards the bickering women.

The two blondes finally noticed the extra company, and rounded on the auburn-haired victim.

"How did it go?" Freedert asked.

"I can't believe you called Freedert and not me!" Mio wailed.

Trying to appease her distraught employer—they were attracting looks from the morning commuters—Riku replied, "Mio, I knew you were busy at the boutique, it was a Sunday! And I didn't know she'd bring along Towa and Emiko!"

"Hey now, don't push the blame onto me, Riku!" Freedert cried out. "You needed all the help you could get—speaking of which, how was your date?"

As the blush settled onto Riku's cheeks, both blondes' grins widened. Forgotten were their animosities, and together they rounded on Riku.

"Did… it… happen?" Mio whispered conspiratorially. Freedert gasped excitedly and jumped up and down on the spot.

"N-no, nothing happened!" Riku spluttered. "Stop jumping to conclusions! It was a nice night, that's all. He was called back into the office."

Freedert frowned. "How could he let that ruin your date? He was off duty!"

Riku waved her off. "It doesn't matter, I'm going to his office now; he called later last night that he wanted me to come in."

"Oooh," Mio waggled her fingers. "He wants to see wittle Riku again after their hot and steamy night together."

"Mio!" Riku cried in exasperation. She couldn't win against these women. Shaking her head, she made her way past the group.

"Well, I'm heading over there now. Have a good breakfast!" Riku waved at them and hurried up the steps. She had wasted a lot of time talking to them.

As she waited behind the yellow line for one of the trains to take her closer to the Police Department, she hummed silently to herself. She hadn't eaten breakfast yet; perhaps she should phone Dark and ask him if he wanted her to pick up anything for the both of them?

That sounded like a good idea. But as she was unzipping her bag to pull out her cellphone, a rough shove from behind her sent her tottering forward, on the verge of falling onto the tracks.

Heart beating wildly, she whipped her head around to see who had rudely pushed her, but before she could see anyone she was shoved further by someone's hard shoulder, and she felt herself falling.

Her hip landed painfully on one side of the tracks, her hands scraping against the rough floor. There was a large gasp from above as people murmured about what had just happened, then a scream from farther along the platform as some women saw that she had fallen.

The women were illuminated, their eyes clearly reflecting their shock…

Realization dawning, she whipped her head around to see the train coming, and her head spun.

Just a few minutes ago she had been trying to get away from Mio's dirty insinuations, Freedert's pestering… why was she at the bottom of the subway tracks? She stood up quickly and tried to grab hold of the edge of the platform, but the tops of her fingers could barely grasp it. She jumped and felt her palms grip the side, but then felt herself falling again. The train was still speeding toward her…

Finally some people from the platform got over their shock and went to help her up, but their sweaty hands weren't enough to pull her completely up, and as she looked to her left towards the oncoming train, she knew she wasn't going to make it, not half-dangling here.

She kicked her legs, and felt open space below her.

Well, duh.

Struggling to get the people's hands off her, she shouted, "Let go!"

Panicking, they did, and she dropped to the floor again. Quickly rolling into the space beneath the platform that served as a shelter for any who fell, she felt the whiz of the train pass by, its breaks echoing loudly through her ears.

She wasn't sure what was happening up above. She had barely escaped being flattened by the monstrous machine next her, which appeared to her to have stopped abruptly and unnaturally. Riku deduced that the conductor had no doubt seen her and tried to stop—but of course, couldn't stop fast enough… and lucky for her, she had found this nice hole to roll into to avoid being run over.

Some screams and crying were heard above, as a gaggle of voices were talking and shouting. Finally some authority-like voices were yelling instructions, telling everyone to stand back.

Well, Riku's innards weren't splayed everywhere, so they would have to know that she hadn't been hit. But what if they thought that she had been smashed between the tracks and the train's wheels? That didn't make a very pretty image…

She decided to shout out her location. "Help! Down here!"

She heard heavy footsteps up above her, as voiced tried to discern where she was.

"I'm in a hole here, stuck beside the train!"

She heard voices tell her to remain where she was—which she thought was oddly funny, because where else could she go?

Then she heard the screeching sound of wheels moving along the track slowly, slowly, and it occurred to Riku that she had never realized how long a subway train really was.

Then she saw it, the tracks which she had hit her hip on, and fresh air. She climbed out of the whole hesitantly, watching the retreating train warily. Voices above her moved her gaze to the workers in blue, their gloved hands reaching out to her.

Not really knowing what she was doing, her head was still dazed, she took their hands and they hauled her up, their strength more than the feeble attempts of the people before. When she was seated completely on the platform, she saw a group of medics rushing toward her, holding boxes of what she assumed were first-aid kits. They asked her questions, where she was hurt, and she vaguely remembered gesturing towards her hip and hands, where they stuck a cool patch on her hip and bandaged her hands.

She didn't know how much time had passed, only that there were still a lot of people around her, and that the crowd was still watching from afar—the same crowd as before or just a walking horde, she didn't know; this was a subway station in Tokyo, after all, and many people had places to be. However, she soon registered the distraught faces of Mio and Freedert, and she saw that her friends had come.

"Oh my god, what happened?" Freedert cried.

"Are you okay, Riku?" Mio had her arms around her.

Elliot and Kyle were standing behind them as well, their faces anxious.

"We heard something happening across the street; people rushing in and out of the subway station," Elliot explained. "We never imagined that someone had fallen onto the tracks!"

"We came as soon as we heard," Mio said breathlessly, hugging Riku closer to her. "We didn't know whether or not it was you, but…" She leaned in closer to Riku's ear, and whispered. "But I had a hunch."

It was determined that Riku's fall had been an accident; she had been jostled by the crowd of morning commuters and fell onto the tracks. Mio insisted on going with her to the Police Department, to inform Dark about what had happened. Freedert, Elliot, and Kyle agreed to open Mio's Boutique for her.

As Mio led Riku to a taxi instead, she murmured under her breath, "I told you Riku… Accidents don't just happen."


Risa could not deny it. She was in love.

The beautiful skin, eyes like amethyst jewels, hair as vibrant and luscious as her own (which was a good thing, since Risa liked to brush her own hair)…

For a moment she forgot her mission, until her troublesome companion broke her wonderful trance.

"Dark! Long time no see," Krad announced jovially as he strode inside the room in front of Risa.

Risa thought he was rude; he didn't even stop to open the door for her.

The mauve-haired beauty had been in deep conversation with another officer, and looked up upon the blonde's loud outburst. His face showed his surprise.

"Krad, what are you doing here?" Dark got up off his chair and walked around his table to greet his friend.

Risa noted how nicely he wore his uniform. Clean, unwrinkled, crisp. He looked like a man with power. Very nice.

"Oh, I didn't tell you I was stopping by to help you with this case?" Krad's innocent question did not fool anyone.

"You told me a relative of the missing person would be coming by," Dark responded. His gaze landed on Risa, who turned a bright shade of pink.

While Risa was busy internally debating what she should say to make a good impression, Dark took in her features. There was no doubt about it, this woman was related to Riku. They had the same chins, and their eyes were shaped similarly. The hair colors were different, of course, and their noses not exactly identical, but the resemblance was there.

Dark didn't know what to feel. He had finally found a woman who liked him for him, and whom he liked as a person. This family from her past… would she take her away from him? (Unbeknownst to him, Risa's last wish would be to distance herself from Dark.)

"Miss?" Dark addressed the chocolate-haired woman.

"Risa," she said. "Risa Harada."

Harada. So the copy of the ID on his desk was indeed of Riku. Riku Harada.

Dark gestured to the chairs in front of his desk.

"Please, sit down. Krad, tell me more about this case."

And for the next half hour, Risa explained her situation. Dark listened with rapt attention, growing more somber with each passing minute. Riku's amnesia was still a mystery, but there was no doubt about the dangerous waters she had been treading in. It was a miracle that she was still alive and well.

"Well?" Risa asked, impatient to get started. "We can find her, right? She was on her way to Tokyo. I don't know if she went anywhere after here, but this is the only clue we have."

Dark chose his words carefully, so as not to startle the young woman.

"I know where Riku is." He kept his expression level, and watched the brunette intently.

It took a moment for both Krad and Risa to register his words. Their reactions were simultaneous.

"Huh?"

"You do?!"

Dark addressed Krad first. "You've met, well, you've seen her."

He waited until the light bulb turned on in the blonde's head.

"You mean she was the girl you took out to dinner at old man Miyamoto's?" he exclaimed incredulously.

Dark nodded.

Risa watched the exchange curiously. "You two have seen Riku?"

"I spent the last month with her," Dark told her.

Risa processed this information slowly. So her twin had met this handsome man already… and she had spent the last month with him. She wasn't sure what to feel; jealous or relieved.

Relieved, of course. She was looking for her missing sister! This was supposed to be great news!

But she was still single at twenty-four…

"Where is she now?" Risa asked.

Dark's eyes alighted on the wall clock behind them.

"She should have gotten here thirty minutes ago." He frowned, pulling out his cell phone. He called her, but got her voicemail instead.

"I'm not sure where she is right now, but you should know something about—"

The door slammed open and Mio stumbled in, panting heavily and dragging an also-winded Riku behind her.

"Dark!"

"Mio!"

"Riku!"

Before anyone could move, Risa had jumped out of her seat and rushed to her twin sister.

Riku, completely out of breath from Mio's frantic rush to get to Dark's office on the 23rd floor that she had refused to wait for the elevators and opted for the stairs, was taken by surprise when a woman with long hair jumped her and knocked the remaining breath out of her.

When she could finally breath, however, she smelled fresh rosewater and was reminded of a very pink room, decorated smartly with plush bears on almost every surface…

Ribbons and frills, tears and ice cream, long brown hair all over the bathroom floor because Risa liked to brush her hair multiple times every day…

Risa.

"Risa?"

The woman hugging her only held on more tightly, and Riku realized that her shoulder was wet. When Risa sniffed, Riku knew that her sister was crying.

She hesitantly raised her arms to wrap around Risa, and soon Riku found herself crying as well, because she knew how long it had been since she had seen her twin and because she remembered their childhood, remembered their parents, remembered their love, remembered… other loves…

Slowly, Riku pulled away from Risa, and looked at her. Risa took some time to wipe the tears from her eyes, and thanked Mio gratefully when the blonde offered them tissues.

"What are you doing here?" Riku asked, cleaning off her own face.

Risa inhaled sharply, disbelief marring her features. "What-what am I doing here?! I'm looking for you, Riku! Do you know how worried we were? You go off on some mystery chase, not telling anyone where you're going, then leave me this cryptic message that I might not have ever gotten if I hadn't looked into your room—"

"But you would have looked in my room, because you're always borrowing my things."

Riku didn't notice the significance of the silence after her statement until she looked around and saw all the stunned faces around her.

Risa broke down into fresh tears again.

"Yes—yes—you're right, of course I would have looked in your room!"

As Mio helped Risa calm down again, Krad handed Riku the white envelope that she had apparently left Risa. She read the letter, but none of it made any sense to her. When had she written it? Who had she written about? Why had she come all the way back to her hometown in Japan to search for something?

"I don't understand." Riku looked at Dark for assistance, but he was only staring at her evenly in return.

"What do you mean you don't understand?" Risa asked, throwing away her used tissue. "You're the one that wrote it! Tell me right now why you are here and not at home, and why you haven't contacted anybody about your whereabouts!"

Riku could only look perplexed. This was her twin sister but… what else? "I'm sorry, I don't remember."

Risa's look of disbelief and anger was interrupted by Dark.

"Riku has amnesia."

Risa whipped her head around to look more closely at her twin.

"You don't… but you know who I am!"

Riku looked at her sister and knew that her facial features were familiar; she had grown up with this woman.

"I don't know how; when you hugged me, I smelled something familiar and I remembered…"

"But you don't know anything about the letter you wrote to your sister before you left?" Dark asked.

Riku shook her head.

"How did you get amnesia, Riku?" Risa looked around, hoping for answers.

"According to the doctors, they found me at the scene of a bad car accident."

Dark turned to address Takeshi, who had been standing quietly near the wall.

"Do we know who the driver was?"

Surprised to be brought into the conversation, Takeshi stuttered. "Uh—um, no. I vaguely recall receiving a case about a hit and run a few months ago, but that was deemed untraceable since the car was a stolen vehicle and there was no other person around the accident. The car was also totaled, seeing as it had fallen off a short cliff."

Mio gasped. As everyone looked at her, she grabbed Riku firmly by the shoulders and shook her vigorously.

"I knew accidents didn't just happen! Riku—this is the third time then!"

"What's the third time?" Dark asked sternly.

"Today—just now, Freedert, Elliot, Kyle and I met Riku at the subway station. Not too long after parting ways, Riku was pushed onto the tracks!"

Risa was about to ask a question, but was interrupted by Krad.

"Was the train coming?"

"Just about, I think. Fortunately Riku found shelter under the platform." Mio gave the auburn a serious look.

Despite his poker face, Dark was quite concerned. Riku's amnesia was caused by an apparent hit-and-run (the running being the driver), and she had been pushed onto the subway tracks earlier today, just as he received news that she was actually a missing person.

"Who pushed her?" he asked.

Mio shifted uncomfortably. "That's the thing—no one really saw who pushed her. The officials deemed it an accidental shove or something; the platform was pretty packed… but how is it that Riku fell today of all days? I don't think it was an accident, Dark!"

Takeshi spoke up from his corner. "If that's the third time, then what was the second time?"

"It wasn't actually anything serious," Riku said, looking around and trying to calm everyone down. They were treating her situation too seriously; everything was just a coincidence. "A flower pot fell from one of the outer windowsill gardens and just happened to land in front of me. I'm sure the sill was just unstable."

"Right in front of you, Riku!" Mio exclaimed. "And it would have hit you right on the noggin' if you hadn't dropped your keys right before it!"

"It sounds like someone is after her life," Krad mused from his seat.

"Gee, thanks for sounding so worried, Osaka Director General," Mio glared at the other blonde.

Krad raised his eyebrows. "I'm just saying, these sound like coincidences to me. Sure they share a commonality in endangering our dear little lady's life, but they sound like they could happen to anybody. Anyone could have been under that flower pot, and anyone could have been shoved off that platform. And perhaps the stolen car from the accident wasn't really stolen. Perhaps the driver was just really guilty about hitting a pedestrian that he ran away from the incident and reported the car to have been stolen."

The room was quiet as everyone contemplated Krad's words. The man had a point, and his logical reasoning could not really be argued with.

Dark turned to Takeshi. "Go find out when that driver reported his car as stolen. If it was before or after the accident."

Takeshi nodded and walked swiftly from the room.

"Well," Krad stood up from his seat and clapped his hands together. "It seems like Miss Risa's missing person case is solved. She has found her lovely twin sister and it would appear that no further investigation is necessary."

Mio and Dark spoke at the same time.

"Her life is obviously still in danger!"

"We still have to investigate the serial murderer that Riku was supposedly researching about when she came to Japan."

Krad looked from the spirited woman to the serious superintendent-general.

Not knowing what else to say, he simply said, "Okay."

"Miss Mio." Everyone looked to the long-haired brunette who had not spoken up for a while. "You said you were at the station with your friends."

The blonde nodded. "My sister Freedert and her boyfriend, Elliot, along with their good friend Kyle."

"Kyle… Kondou?"

Mio nodded again, surprised. "How did you kn—"

The door burst opened and Takeshi strode in quickly.

"The car had been reported stolen three days prior to the accident."

Risa looked from the brown-haired officer to her twin sister.

"Riku, Kyle was your boyfriend back in America."


I apologize for the large gap between updates! I fully expected myself to have completed this story before school started for me, but again I overestimated my abilities. (For a quick update, the last two weeks were my first few weeks of moving-in/college and it was great. :))

I would have written during the week, but I realized that I am writing-shy… meaning that I can't write when someone else is in the room. I just feel way too self-conscious.

But anyways, hope my mystery wasn't too obvious, ahaha. This is my first time writing … mystery/suspense? And I'm afraid my planning wasn't too good; I didn't even complete the whole story before uploading my chapters, and thus there might be some misinformation somewhere. I'll go back and check though. :) (If you find any inconsistencies, let me know!)

Good news! You will not have to wait long for the next two updates—that's right, this story will end at nine chapters because… that's how I originally planned it. I think.

Thanks for your reviews, they really boosted my self-esteem and made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! They were also really good gifts to receive during my week away from home (I'm dorming!), so thank you thank you for your feedback. :)

After "The Amnesiac" I'm planning on rewriting Aura first then Amusement (oh look, all A's!), so if any readers were interested in those… yay! Coming soon~

Cheerios!

Rika