CHAPTER 29: DEDUCTION

Ren had become wary when it felt as if things were going too well in recent weeks. The number of life-upheavals he experienced in such a short period of time introduced a new norm for him. He almost came to appreciate, and prefer, the times when minor inconveniences cropped up; like receiving the wrong food order or a delay in his daily schedule due to unforeseen circumstances. In his very wishful thinking, he wanted to believe that the smaller events added up to a large one, so the chances of the latter happening were lower. Of course, he was quite aware that this was not how statistics—or life in general—worked but it helped him stay positive and staying positive was the only thing holding him together on most days. It was the equivalent of one having a child or a pet and knowing that, as long as they made some sort of noise, they were probably not getting into the sort of trouble that would require a massive cleanup or a trip to the hospital. Or both.

And speaking of animals, who should appear before him at that moment but Kimiko Morizumi.

He had no idea how he managed to personally offend the universe to the extent that it retaliated by sending the physical embodiment of Ren's nightmares walking on two legs. At the very least, she had yet to notice his arrival at the courthouse. It was his hope that it would remain that way until he was out of sight. This hope was, predictably, in vain and he silently cursed the relatively nondescript week he had thus far. If only his alarm had failed to go off one morning, making him inexcusably late for work, or something alone those lines. But no, he had once again danced to the music for, apparently, far too long and the piper was demanding to be paid.

She was in the middle of talking with another Inquisitor whom he did not recognize until he was a bit closer. It was possible that the slight frown and wrinkle in the brow of Inquisitor Hiromune when their eyes met across the lobby was what tipped her off. That man always seemed to have the same reaction to him despite Ren knowing nothing as to what he could have possibly done to cause it. Upon turning and spotting him, Kimiko quickly wrapped up whatever conversation she was having and made her way over to where he stood.

Her dark hair swung behind her like a banner of doom and decay waving in the sweltering, fetid breeze of an apocalypse as she walked. He wondered if he had broken out into hives beneath his suit because an unbearable prickling began spreading across his skin as he watched her approach. The trademark smile he began associating with her was already on her face, slicing her lips wide open to bare the gleaming teeth behind. It was unfortunate that Yukihitio had left him an hour prior to collect some materials for the next case he would be assigned. In that moment, he certainly could have used the defensive barrier that man could put up in a matter of seconds with merely a cold stare.

"Ren!" she cried with an exuberance that sent a shudder through him. "It's always a pleasure to see you."

"Miss Morizumi." Verbal distancing was the only defense he had available to him then, and he clung to it in desperation.

"Are you busy right now? I was going to get something to drink from the cafe across the street if you'd like to come with me." She looked up at him with clasped hands and a tilted head in a show of feigned innocence.

Never in his life was he happier to have a legitimate refusal to an offer. The smile of relief was all but spread across his face. Instead, it remained just under the surface, fearing that it could be mistaken for friendliness.

"I have a briefing to attend in a few minutes."

His words came out steady and deliberate. Any faster and they would sound like an excuse. Any slower and he would sound unsure. He almost rejoiced when they had their intended effect and he watched Kimiko's mouth pull down into a disappointed frown. Of course, he had to act quickly before she could make a follow-up attack, so he excused himself with a nod and took full advantage of his longer legs to move as far away from her as efficiently as possible.

This pre-Extraction briefing was led by Judge Kuresaki and was, in his opinion, far too short for once. He almost wished for one to last several grueling hours like they sometimes did. Sitting there on the verge of being bored to tears while voices droned on around him about what to look for during his Extraction would have almost been like a small vacation compared to what happened when everyone was dismissed. Then again, the list of things that could have been worse was shockingly short.

Kimiko had waited for him.

She was perched on a dark leather bench across the lobby, right in his line of sight when he entered. He would not have been able to ignore her presence even if he tried. Beaming at him from where she sat, she held up a paper cup and beckoned for him to come closer. Ren did so with all the enthusiasm and fervor of a condemned man on his way to the gallows. Were Yukihito beside him, he would probably be reciting his last rites. Actually, if Yukihito were beside him, none of this would be happening.

Stopping two paces away from her, he noticed she had two cups; the other sat on the bench beside her. The one she was holding, she offered to him and he begrudgingly moved closer to accept it. Upon later reflection, he realized he had no reason to refrain from sniffing the contents of the cup out of politeness. Thankfully, she volunteered the answer to the question he had not yet asked while he gave the cup in his hand a blank stare.

"It's a caramel mocha latte," her voice was an overly bright chirp that made him inwardly wince.

Grunting in acceptance—and a more than fair amount of loathing—he took a sip of the sickeningly sugary drink and fought back the grimace he knew was coming. This was the kind of minor inconvenience he would have preferred were it not for the major one that came with it, smiling as if the world were her oyster when he sat a more than respectable distance away from her on the bench. She obviously purchased him the drink with the intent to have him stick around for more than a brief moment, so he indulged her for the sake of his own morbid curiosity.

"Here on official business?" It was a weak opener, but he did not care enough to try harder.

"Something like that," came her expectedly vague answer.

So, he let her be vague. Far be it from him to try prying more information out of her. It would only serve to show her that he was interested, eager to know more about whatever it was she intentionally hid. He understood well enough how she operated after spending time around her so he made a conscious effort to avoid that trap. He let the intermittent murmurs, echoing footsteps and silence in the lobby do the talking for him and continued to take the tiniest sips of the godawful beverage in his hand.

If the term 'glutton for punishment' ever needed a spokesperson, he would be at the top of the recommendation list.

"How did the briefing with Kuresaki go?"

There was definitely something to be said for taking small sips. Had he drank a larger quantity, he was certain half of it would have been on his lap. Instead he was able to swallow the modest amount without choking on it. Damn her timing and damn him if she ever managed to swindle an emotional response out of him.

"Fairly generic," he offered after clearing his throat.

"The Extraction's in two days, isn't it?" She pressed further.

Ren eventually became aware of her game; she was showing off. She was showing off in an attempt to intimidate him with the sheer amount of information she already had about him. Information that most people would not be privy to unless they were directly involved in a case. Information she should definitely not have.

It was a power move, but he would not be cowed. The cloying sweetness of his drink barely registered as he quickly drained the contents of the cup.

Once he was finished, he cocked an eyebrow. "Will I be seeing you there?"

"Oh, goodness, no," she shook her head and made a failed attempt to appear bashful.

It was, indeed, a crying shame that the nearest waste bin was within throwing distance. Still, he got up and walked over to it, dropping the cup into the opening before turning towards Kimiko again in one smooth motion. Obligatory words of thanks were on his lips but remained trapped there when he notice that she had also gotten up and was standing right behind him. The prickling sensation returned with doubled intensity, making him want to strip down and scratch himself raw with little concern for who witnessed it.

And there was that smile again.

"I'll be seeing you again soon enough."

She daintily reached around him, her arm barely grazing against his sleeve, to place her own cup in the bin before turning on her heel and walking away, pausing only to toss another coy smile over her shoulder.

Ren wondered if he could make it to the restroom in time, or if he should throw caution, and appearances, to the wind and retch right into the trash.

Kyoko had done so much reading over the course of a few days that she began to see words on the insides of her eyelids when she tried to sleep and this day would be no exception. 'Tried' was the operative word, of course. For as cozy as the Hizuri guest room was, Kyoko wondered how exactly one could be so thoroughly haunted by someone who was still very much alive. There she was, enjoying the comforts of a home and the company of a family that belonged to someone else; someone who could never return to that home. Someone who deserved to be there far more than she did.

It was the worst feeling.

Though it seemed counterintuitive, she actually started wearing the watch Kuon had given her before they parted ways. The weight of it on her wrist was a constant reminder of him, but the sentiment behind it—that it would be his stand-in when he was unable to be by her side—was more of a comfort than a complication. She ran a hand over her sleeve, feeling the lump of the watch where it was hidden, buckled higher on her arm to keep it concealed. With, a sigh, she began to straighten up the folders she left laying open on the table around her.

Another day, another dead end. Another quiet ride back to the house she had no business staying in with the family she had no business inconveniencing.

Kuu prepared dinner that night as Julie was due to return from work long after they had already returned to the house. As an instructor working at the same Academy as her husband, she occasionally kept unconventional hours depending on her class schedule. This, as Kyoko learned, was why the she and Kuu rarely travelled to and from work together. This was also why Kuu had left her alone in his office not one day prior to enjoy a scant hour with his wife at lunchtime when the stars—and their calendars—aligned. To her, the depth of affection between the couple was obvious; a mostly pleasant thing to witness, save for the yearning it spurred within her.

As expected, Kyoko's weak offer to help with dinner fell on purposely deaf ears. However, her secondary suggestion of setting the table was met with approval and mild appreciation. Julie arrived right when she had put the last plate in place and came to greet her, most likely after having a moment with her husband in the kitchen that Kyoko was grateful to have missed.

While Julie's cooking was passable—in Kyoko's opinion, at least, to say nothing of the rave reviews from her husband—it was clear that Kuu was the culinary superstar of the family. It took a concentrated effort to make sure she ate as slowly as she usually would and temper her praise for the meal. Julie, of course, needed no such modesty and exclaimed her gratitude between bites.

She jumped at the opportunity to wash the dishes and began clearing the plates from the table before Kuu could protest. Working in a restaurant definitely had its advantages as she managed to get everything piled into the sink in one efficient trip. After turning on the water, she began looking around for the soap, but found none. A delicate hand poked out to her right and pointed a finger towards what looked to be a nozzle made of the same material as the faucet and taps. Kyoko nearly jumped right out of her own skin, but somehow converted her shock into a startled shudder. Julie had appeared beside her without her noticing.

"Press the top of that," Julie instructed in a gentle voice.

She pushed on the top of the nozzle and watched a thick orange liquid squirt out onto the dishrag she held in her other hand.

"Thanks," she mumbled more to the dishes in the sink than the woman standing next to her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Julie look down at the sink as well. Suddenly self-conscious that she had left the water running and had yet to apply soap to a single dish, she reached for the closest plate and began to scrub.

"Would you mind if I dried them?" she heard Julie ask. "I know where everything goes, so it'll save you the confusion of trying to guess where it's all kept."

Kyoko just nodded and thanked her quietly before handing off the now clean plate. They worked together in relative quiet, other than the clink of dishes against each other and the creak of opening and closing cabinet doors.

"How did it go today?" Julie had leaned over to whisper her question as if they were conspiring in a plot.

"I'm not any closer to a breakthrough," Kyoko shrugged. "But I don't think I'm any further either so, there's that at least."

A soft laugh came from the older woman and Kyoko's lips twisted into a wry smile. There was something about Julie that put her at ease whenever she was in her presence. It made her feel equal parts comfortable and vulnerable.

"Well, just know this," Julie's voice took on a reassuring tone. "Kuu wouldn't have made the suggestion if he didn't think you were up to the task."

"It's either that or he's in it for the sadistic joy of watching me ram my head into a veritable wall," she winced at the heavy notes of cynicism she wove in there.

But Julie just laughed again.

Once the dishes were done, Kyoko excused herself and retired to her room early; something she made a habit of since the first night she stayed there. It seemed the courteous thing to do so that Kuu and his wife could have some time to themselves in the evenings without having to worry about the needs or entertainment of their guest. Well, that and there was the added benefit of avoiding any further awkward conversations with either of them.

It was a fairly masochistic choice considering that she essentially left herself alone with her thoughts in a strange house. For the most part, she kept the more dangerous ones at bay by reviewing the notes she had collected while looking through Kuu's project. Of course that often led to self-defeating thoughts of a whole other nature.

She sighed, looking down at the notepad resting in her lap as she sat on the floor of her room. This whole arrangement was absolutely ridiculous. Why did she ever agree to Kuu's challenge? She was not a researcher, nor was she formally educated in any sort of scientific discipline. There was no conceivable way she would be able to suss out whatever inconsistency lay within the multitudes of notations and recordings. Not unless—

Unless…

Unless!

Unless it was something that even a critical thinking layperson could also figure out. That must have been what Julie meant when they were in the kitchen together. If Kuu was just trying to get rid of her with an impossible task, he would have put forth the challenge when she first arrived. The fact that he waited until after they had their tête-à-tête in his office meant that he had reconsidered something. She found it hard to believe at first, but it was plausible that he truly had extended the offer because he guessed that she would be keen enough make the correct deduction.

So, she all but erased her original assumptions so that she could put new ones in their place. There was no need for her to put together a glossary of scientific terms that she did not recognize. She had to start simple. Start with the basics. She had to start over.

Tearing the pages out from the notepad in twos and threes, she intended to scrap them all. The sheets lay in a haphazard pile on the floor beside her and she frowned at them. It looked like the physical representation of a waste of her time. Her meticulous handwriting covered every page, with areas of interest highlighted with boxes and arrows and stars.

At the top of the pile was the profile information she had copied down for each of the research subjects; their ages, city and country of residence and the officially recorded details of their Awakenings. She saw a question she had written to herself in the left margin and the arrow pointing to Subject A's Awakening date.

"Mom told you about D.A.R.R. What was it again?" she read the question aloud.

Her brain must have been overwhelmed from absorbing so much information that day because Kyoko clearly remembered that conversation. It was from her last visit to the woman's office when she was given the excuse she needed to bow out of the Academy for good. It also had to do with her father.

The Dorell Area Reckoning Reconciliation came as a result of a devastating fire that obliterated the building housing the Dorell Academy's records of Augmenteds. Records that were, at that time, still kept in hard copy only and filed away in cabinets with no backups available anywhere else. As such, many Augmenteds, who did not have—or had yet to receive—the paperwork officially decIaring their date and time of Awakening, were all recorded as having an Awakening on the day prior to the fire. That date was always accompanied by an asterisk, when noted on official identifications and the like, and denoted as a D.A.R.R. Date.

It all happened more than twenty years before Kyoko was even born, but it was the event upon which her father had capitalized. Born and bred in Dorell as he was, the fire had occurred when he was in his early adolescence. Because the decision by the Academy was not made easily or quickly, the reconciliation caused a backlog of a few years worth of records. As such, he was able to use this hiccup in the Academy's operations to secure an Awakening declaration with the amended date. And the rest, as they say, was history.

The best way Kyoko could describe the sensation she was experiencing then would be an itch in the back of her mind. She reached out and scattered a few of the papers below the one she was reading until they were spread out around her. There was something she remembered about that subject in particular; something they mentioned about their Awakening that she hoped she wrote down when she came across it.

Near the bottom of the pile, she found it. Another margin note where she wrote that Subject A mentioned having his Awakening on the afternoon of the Spring Festival when he was thirteen. According to the official date stated by his Academy, his Awakening was in the Fall of his fifteenth year. She located her purse and fished a pen out of if so that she could rewrite that note in the margin of the first page, if only to give herself the satisfaction that she had tied up a loose end of which she was not previously aware.

Her eyes scanned down the rest of the page, stopping only to skim over the details of Subjects C and D. They were the pair who grew up next door to each other, albeit a few years apart in age. There were no margin notes for those two as their cases were fairly straightforward. Kyoko ran a finger over Subject D's information, the elder of the two who Awakened only a day before her friend. Her finger stopped over the location where her Awakening was recorded. She never noticed that it occurred in a completely different country from the subject's hometown. It had been some time since her last geography class, but she had the general notion that the country in question was considerably far away.

Sighing, she gathered the pages again and tapped them into an orderly stack before stuffing them into her purse. She would ask Kuu in the morning if he wanted her to have them shredded before disposing of them.

Kyoko made her way into the bathroom adjacent to her room to prepare for bed. She rolled up the cuff of her left sleeve to remove the watch from where it was buckled on her forearm and placed it on the counter. The crack along the face of the watch displayed a distorted reflection of her own face and the bright overhead light behind her.

As she often did when she either touched or looked at the watch, she thought of its owner, wondering how he was doing and if he was taking care of himself. Though she tried her hardest not to, she wondered if he thought about her as often as she did about him. She tried harder still to resist the urge to pick up the nearest phone and try calling him, if only to hear him answer before hanging up. She shook her head. Those were the sorts of treacherous thoughts that would put a lot of people in danger, not just herself.

Besides, she flippantly reasoned with herself as if it mattered, with the time difference between their respective locations, he would most likely be asleep already.

It was right about then that the itch in her brain returned with a vengeance that sent her scrambling out of the bathroom towards the purse she placed on the small table beside the bedroom door.

A loose end she had previously missed was bright red, ragged and flapping tauntingly in the breeze right in front of her.

And she had a pretty damned good idea as to where it should be tied.

DISCLAIMER: THIS CHAPTER WAS EDITED WHILE RUNNING ON 4 HOURS OF SLEEP. I should claim responsibility for any errors, but I'm absolving myself entirely... mostly so I can go take a nap. Hooray for naps!

I hope you're all taking care of yourselves and staying safe.

AUTHOR OUT