She didn't have a reason why she didn't leave immediately. She didn't have a reason why she approached him when he arrived home from work that day. She didn't really know why she would confront him, evidence in hand, when he closed the fridge with a beer in his hand. Maybe she wanted to be proven wrong, or maybe she was probing him to see if he would prove her right. Nothing really made sense anymore.
She could say she was sick of running. And yes, she could say that in her head a million times. "She was sick of running and living this way"... and then she would wake up the next morning and do it all over again. But this time was different. She hadn't been physically running from anyone in quite a while, much to her satisfaction. But she had, however, been running away from the nagging voice in her head every time her beloved new life partner made a comment that sent a chill down her spine. Much too often she excused his words for harmless, jealous banter that identified a man with wounded pride and an unsuccessful life. But now... she couldn't run from it any longer. She had to know.
So she made up her mind. She waited on the edge of his bed in silence, organizing her thoughts and waiting for him to arrive home. After what felt like days, the familiar rattling of the slightly broken lock followed by the click of the door echoed through the air. He himself chose not to speak once he entered, instead heading straight to the fridge and clanking around a few bottles of beer before finding the exact one he wanted and cracking it open. She took the time he was drinking it to stand up and approach the man being hidden by the refrigerator door. Now she was here and now there was no turning back.
A simple "hey" escaped his lips and no more than a beat had passed before Sophie held her hands out to a handful of the news articles from his collection. He froze in awe with his eyes locked onto the small pieces of paper and Sophie could have sworn the battle had already been won.
Then again, this was Tohru Adachi she was dealing with.
"I didn't take you for the jealous or paranoid type," he sneered, pulling his smile into a sneaky grin. "I do have to say though that if you're suggesting I'm the one she's having an affair with, you have ab-so-lute-ly nothing to worry about. That was... the first victim of the serial killer." His sickeningly sweet expression could not mask the firmness in his eyes, annoyed that this subject would even come up at a time like this. He was cracking so easily.
She saw his poor attempt at feigning innocence and still refused to speak, instead placing the clippings down on the countertop next to his beer and pulling out a golden pin with the roman numeral "III" on it, slowly moving it from its hiding spot to the pile of paper and following his eyes as he glanced down to it and then back at her, becoming slightly irked at this silly game she seemed to be playing. "It was you," she choked out as she held back tears, "wasn't it?" As the words poured out of her mouth, she felt her heart drop into her stomach. It was one thing to think it, even to be convinced mentally... but saying it out loud made it real.
He forced out an overdramatic sigh in an attempt to make her seem like she was being unreasonable. He still had a chance to win this game before it even got started. "What are you talking about," he responded with his voice low and bored. A rhetorical question, of course, but one that Sophie would answer anyway.
"Those girls... they're dead. They're dead and you have their things..." Before he had arrived home, she attempted to prepare herself for this moment so she could keep a cool, level head, but instead she found herself grasping for words and swallowing the urge to burst into tears. "That's her pin, isn't it?"
Her words rang through his ears, causing his lip to curl ever so slightly at the reminder of his actions a few months prior. She was getting warmer, and he had to tread lightly if he didn't want to end up sleeping alone tonight. Carefully, he brought his left hand up to his head and brushed it through his hair, innocently closing his eyes. "Come on, Sophie," he started in his playful tone, "is this some kind of a riddle? You know I'm not good with those!" He reached his right hand out to her, grasping onto her arm just a little too tightly for comfort.
She yanked her arm away and kept her voice low as the tears started to fall, grasping tightly on the place he just had his hand. "You killed those girls... didn't you? You murdered them."
He turned his head to look at the wall next to him. A scowl began to burn onto his face. "Tch."
She took a deep breath and spoke low and slow, raising her voice as she went on, losing the control she tried so hard to keep. "You let me open up to you... You let me tell you about my family... and how they were murdered... and you comforted me about it. But you're just a murderer like those men and you lied to me!"
Only a second of silence passed before Adachi lunged after Sophie, his suit jacket smacking into the beer bottle on the counter and sending it pummeling to the ground. He reached one hand to the back of her head and used it as leverage to press his other hand firmly against her mouth. "Will you be quiet?! You don't know anything!"
His calm, cocky demeanor shattered like the bottle as it hit the floor, revealing a devilish smirk and wide, senseless eyes that seemingly hungered for blood.
It was at this moment when she actually felt that this man was dangerous, and with his hand pressed right up to her mouth, smashing her lips into her face, she opened her mouth and bit down on the flesh of his fingers, sending him backwards just enough for her to break free.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and breathed deeply to give herself air to talk as the man shook off his bite wound. With his violent actions, her despair had morphed into anger, sending a whole new school of thoughts through her head. "You didn't even... personally do it, did you?! There was no blood, no DNA... they didn't even suspect you for a second. You couldn't even kill them yourself, could you?! You had someone else do it because you're a coward that gets off on causing other people pain!"
Anger rushed to his face and he lunged after her again, missing her as she dodged away from him in a last-ditch effort to make it to the door. As she grasped onto the handle, he wrapped his arms around her from behind and lifted her in the air, sending her into screaming hysterics. Dragging her into his room as she struggled to get free, he threw her down on his bed face first and used one hand to press her face into the fabric while the other pinned her hands behind her back. He let out an evil, mischievous laugh signaling that all his sanity was gone before he spoke. "All of you kids act like you're so smart and mature by saying things that make you seem more powerful than your superiors..." He pressed his hand into her head more, causing her to flinch in pain. "Frankly, it's disgusting... It's disrespectful. I'm going to make you... suffer... until you apologize."
He pulled her up by the shoulder and pinned hands and dragged her in front of the TV, wasting no time before he shattered all sense of reality as Sophie knew it and shoved her head straight into the screen, her hands wiggling around in his hands to break free and grasp on to something, anything structural.
He laughed maniacally again and exhaled dramatically. "Isn't this wonderful? All I have to do is... push you in a little further, and you'll end up just like those girls you were obsessing over. You just couldn't leave well enough alone cou-"
Adachi was interrupted mid-Villian-success speech when she used one of her dangling legs to collapse his knee just enough for her to reach her leg back and kick him away. His balance extremely thrown off, he was thrown backwards, landing straight onto the coffee table and shattering it underneath him.
As soon as she did not feel his hand's pressure on her head anymore, she pulled herself free from the TV screen with her hands on the bottom edge of the TV and regained her balance, turning around to catch the police office at an extreme disadvantage caught in the table.
Sophie started to run past him when he choked out a sinister laugh, stopping her in her tracks and turning her around in the doorway to the kitchen, hoping for any sense of personal redemption. An apology, an explanation, anything.
"Where are you going to go," he asked maliciously. "You have no one to run to. It's only a matter of time before you get picked off... just like your parents. You're gonna leave this protection... this *life* behind because of some skeletons in my closet?" When she didn't respond, he continued. "I'm sure you have some too. You don't get this far running away from a gang or a mafia without them."
Suddenly, the reality of the situation began to sink in and her face scrunched in confusion. He somehow had her almost... inside of the television? How was that even possible? What would have happened if he pushed her all the way in? Is that what really happened to those other girls? Was this all some sort of stupid dream?
"I can't..." the man muttered with serenity and pain dripping in his voice. "I can't change what I did... Please..." Silence. "I love you..."
Sophie shook her head and turned back around, ignoring the man's reaching hand towards her as she headed out the door.
Distraught at his failed attempt in wooing the girl, he furrowed his brows and yelled with every ounce of anger he could muster up. "You're going to die out there!" he shouted, making sure she could hear before she closed the door and continuing even when she was gone in a futile attempt to intimidate her, "I'm not going to be here when you come running-" he lowered his voice, choosing not to waste his breath on someone who couldn't hear his words anymore. "Oh man..."