CHAPTER 6: A Troubling Discovery

Almost two months have passed since Toukairin and Naomi started dating each other. They were deeply in love with each other like teenagers who are in love for the first time. Toukairin was a man reborn and everyone at Bokuto could see the difference from the wreck he used to be in late August. Since late October, Toukairin started working again as a special instructor at Bokuto and sometimes as an extra man to the Investigations Division. The other police officers were happy to see him back to his former self from the year before. All people at Bokuto were moving on with their lives, slowly but surely.

It was the last day of school before the Christmas vacation starts for all the children. The pre-school kids were doing some little paper craft for Christmas during that afternoon. Meanwhile, Naomi was so excited at the prospect of soon spending a 2-week long break full of romantic activities with Toukairin that she was lost in her thoughts and blushed for a few minutes.

"Naomi-sensei..."

"Yes, Rika?" Naomi asked as she pulled herself out of her thoughts.

"Can you help me with the glue stick, please?"

"Sure, I'll show you." Naomi replied before showing Rika how to use the glue stick. "You take the little piece of paper with one hand, you hold the stick with the other hand, then move the stick under the paper like this, and you put the little paper on the bigger paper here."

Rika imitated what Naomi just did.

"See, it was easy. Just remember where you put the glue."

"Thank you, Naomi-sensei." the little girl replied.

Suddenly, a loud noise was heard outside the school followed by successive noises before everything became silent. Naomi dashed to the window to have a look and she saw a car flipped upside down in front of the school. 'That car must have flipped over, but what about the driver?' she thought. Instinctively, she decided to provide help to get the driver out of the car and told the children: "Stay here, children. Naomi-sensei will be back."

In a matter of seconds, she was already on the scene. The driver was in a very bad position, the driver's door was torn and Naomi saw smoke coming out of the car.

"Sir! Sir, are you alright?"

"The door is stuck, I can't move out!" The driver replied.

"Let me try to pull the door. I'll get you out of there."

Suddenly, a fire started raging in the engine area and an explosion was imminent.

"Hurry! Get me out there, please! HURRY!"

"It's not moving! Come on... MOVE, DAMN IT!" Naomi said as she was trying to pull the door.

"It's no use. Run for safety, Miss, please!" the driver said in despair.

Around the corner, Toukairin was walking towards the school to meet Naomi. He was coming in a little earlier to make sure he would pick her up at the end of the day. As he turned on his right, he couldn't believe what he was watching from distance.

"I'm not leaving you behind, sir! I'll get you out!" Naomi told the driver. "COME ON, MOVE! DAMN IIIIIITT!"

As she uttered the last 2 words, Naomi pulled down the torn door with an amazing strength. Immediately, she pulled the driver out.

"Run! It's going to blow!"

Naomi and the driver had time to run a few yards away before the car exploded. The force of the explosion knocked Naomi to the ground instantly as Toukairin was watching in horror.

"NAOMI!"

Toukairin immediately rushed to her aid and carried her immediately to the school's nurse office.


In the nurse's office, the nurse cleansed the small wound on her Naomi's left arm and put some bandages while Toukairin applied an icepack on a bruise on Naomi's leg.

"Naomi, you should be lucky that you only had a small cut and a bruise after that explosion. I will go give Mrs. Nakamura an update on your injuries. You should take a rest what's left of the day. Of course, you can still go say goodbye to the children leaving on vacation." the nurse said before she left the room and closed the door behind.

"Naomi... What were you thinking? That was completely insane what you did out there! You could have been killed and I don't know what I would have done if I lost you! And what about the children in your class? They need you!" Toukairin was really angry.

Naomi remained silent for a moment before she replied: "I'm sorry... I don't know why, but I was not thinking at all. It was if my own instinct told me I had to help that man and that I had everything I needed to pull him out to safety. Still, I ended up getting everyone worried." Naomi's tears were gathering in her eyes.

Toukairin calmed himself down at the sight of Naomi's tears.

"I'm sorry... It's just that I lost Natsumi half a year ago and I don't want to lose you. So please, don't pull out reckless stunts like that, okay?"

"Oh... Shouji!" Naomi cried on his chest before he soothed her.

"Hey... it's alright as long as you're safe."

"Thanks, Shouji. You're always sweet."

Then someone knocked at the door. A police officer from the local district came in looking for Naomi.

"Well, I must say it was a close one. Thanks to your quick and instinctive reaction, the driver will spend Christmas with only a few cuts and bruises. Apparently, the man was just driving too fast. Then he missed the turn and lost control of his vehicle. The car flipped over quite a few times before it stopped in front of the school. Miss Tsukihara... if you don't mind, I would like to ask you just a few questions in private to fill out a few blanks about what happened." the officer said.

Naomi looked at Toukairin who nodded his head to tell her it was okay.

While Naomi and the police officer continued their conversation further away. Toukairin was still thinking about what he witnessed. 'Why do I keep thinking about this? How did she do that? I would have needed a tool to get that door open. There's definitely something really strange about this girl... Who is she really?' he thought.

He looked at the tissues used by the nurse to stop the small bleeding on Naomi's left arm and as he closed his gaze on the tissues, suddenly, a crazy idea came across Toukairin's mind. He put latex medical gloves on his hands, went quickly looking for a cup of tea before getting back to the nurse's office and waited for Naomi. When she came back, Toukairin immediately offered her the hot drink.

"Naomi, I brought you a cup of tea. It should make you feel better."

"Thanks! I really needed some." Naomi replied before sipping her tea.

"You know, Naomi... Perhaps you should spend the rest of the day at home after everything that happened today. We'll spend some quality time together when I finish work after tomorrow, okay?"

"Okey-dokey!"

Soon after, Mrs. Nakamura entered the nurse's office and asked for Naomi: "Ah Naomi... Sorry to interrupt, but I think it would be a good idea if you come back to class just to wish the children a Merry Christmas before they leave."

"Coming!" Naomi cheerfully replied.

Both women left, leaving Toukairin alone in the nurse's office. With his gloves still on, he picked up the tissues with Naomi's blood stains on them and he also picked up Naomi's cup of tea before putting them into separate Ziploc bags. He was planning to take the items for further analyses.

'Sorry for not telling you anything now, Naomi. But there's something I need to verify by myself.' Toukairin thought.


Toukairin arrived at Bokuto Police District station the following day with the items to be analyzed and he immediately looked for the only person he could trust for that matter, Kobayakawa Miyuki. He met her in the hallway outside the Traffic Department room.

"Hi, Miyuki."

"Hi, Shouji." Miyuki didn't take long to notice there was something wrong about Toukairin's expression. "What's wrong? Are you alright?"

"I need your help about something right now. You went under forensics training in Los Angeles, and you're also good in forensic blood and fingerprint analysis, right?"

"Yes, why?" Miyuki asked.

"I have something I want you to analyze for me and I can only trust you on this."

"Okay, sure! I'll just drop a few documents. Meet me at the lab in 10 minutes." Miyuki replied.

"Thanks, Miyuki."


Ten minutes later at the lab, Miyuki already put on her lab coat and looked at the items Toukairin brought her.

"I guess you remember Miss Ichinose Setsuka, our regular lab technician here." Miyuki said.

"Yes, of course."

"I asked her to come in order to make sure we get the procedure right with a second opinion instead of doing it all on my own. So, we have tissues with coagulated blood on them and an empty cup of tea here. My guess is that you want us to run analyses to get the blood type and identify the fingerprints, right?" Miyuki asked.

"That's right, Miyuki."

"To whom do they belong?"

"They are Naomi's." Toukairin's response brought a confused look on Miyuki's face for a second before he continued: "There is something I really want to check and I'm not sure what it is. I hope I will find some answers here."

"Okay. You can count on us." Miyuki finished as she and the other technician started to work on taking the blood samples and fingerprints for analysis.


"It should just take a few minutes for the computer to run through the database, we should have answers soon if we have a match." Miss Ichinose told Toukairin.

"I hope so... "

"Seriously, Shouji... What is going on?" Miyuki asked.

"It's about Naomi... There's something strange about her. It's almost as if I knew her since forever."

"I guess you usually feel that way when you love someone." Miyuki was trying to reassure Toukairin.

"It's not that. For some reason, I have the feeling that I've known her way before I met her almost 2 months ago. There are times when I see something really familiar with her. For instance, she hit Strike Man's throws twice in a row after we met for the 2nd time and Strike Man kept calling her Home Run Girl."

"It's probably just the uncanny resemblance with Natsumi and perhaps her hits were pure luck."

"And that's not all. At times, she showed a really big appetite and I mean a big one. And just yesterday, there was a car accident in front of her school. Immediately and out of instinct, she came out to the scene and pulled a man out of the wrecked car after bulling down the torn driver's door with her own physical strength; it was superhuman. She saved him in time before the car exploded, but she slightly got cut on the arm by debris in the explosion... that's how I got the bloodied tissues." Toukairin paused before he went on. "I might be getting crazy, but the ability to hit Strike Man's Balls of Justice, that really big appetite, that instinctive reaction on the accident scene, and especially that superhuman strength altogether... I can only think of one person in this world having all of that at once."

Miyuki was getting more perplexed by the minute. "Wait a minute, you're not thinking she..."

Finally, a beeping sound cut the conversation short; the search through the station's database ended. "Ah, we have one record matching with the fingerprints and the blood sample according to the search." Miyuki clicked on the lone matching result. "Her blood type is O... and the mystery woman's name is..." Once the attached picture and the entire profile showed up, both Toukairin and Miyuki dropped back in their chairs, completely stunned and their faces turned livid at the sight of the picture.

"What the... Are you sure you are alright?" Ichinose asked.

"My God! How...? This cannot be!" Miyuki exclaimed in stupor.

"She... She was there right at my side all this time!" Toukairin added.

The name shown on the record was none other than Tsujimoto Natsumi.


Notes: Finally, Natsumi looks to be alive and well. But how did she earn her new identity 6 months ago? How will she react to the news? Who made an attempt against her life 6 months ago? What will happen next? Stay tuned for more as everything will be fast-paced from now on!