"Uhm, Satō-san? I think, it's—"
"I'm pretty sure it's this way."
"But Satō-san—"
"We just need to turn here and then – huh?" Surprised, Satō stared at another dead-end for the fifth time in a row. "Maybe, it's a little farther than I expected?"
"No, I mean, perhaps, we should turn back?" Takagi suggested, his voice increasingly lowering into barely audible mumbles, "I saw a sign a little a while ago and I fear we've been walking in the wrong direction—"
"Of course not, Takagi!" Satō retorted, taking his doubts for the meekness in him that he still needed to knock out. She turned on her heels and tried the nearest hallway. It had to have the exit. She was confident it had been around here. . .
"Huh?" her brows shot up at the sight of another dead-end. The floor split into two seperate hallways, and Satō glanced at both, left and then right before she concluded, "Right is the way of justice, isn't it? Well then, let's go, Takagi!"
"I don't think it applies here!" he called after her, and like always, it fell on deaf ears as the dark-haired woman already tackled the next corridor.
Takagi sighed and followed despite his urge to swat this strange sense of direction guiding her out of her head and pull her toward the complete opposite direction, because, we were walking down the wrong way, for heaven sake!
"Hurry or I'll leave you behind!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"I can't anymore!" Reika gritted out, winded and tired, suffering from side stitches. She didn't even dare glance back for fear she'd stumble over own two feet and fall flat on the ground.
"Just around this corner!" Itsuki said, between breaths, carrying the little girl under his arm like a sack of potato, and with another little push of energy they rounded the corner. . .
"See? Didn't I say it was around here?"
It was more of Satō's happiness at her accomplishment than pride to point further out in front of them, and lo and behold, the yellow door of the fire exit was right ahead of them. Takagi still could barely believe it, and he still grappled with the notion whether it was pure luck or some questionable display of fate that took pity on his desperation to get out of here.
"Yes, I guess. . ." Takagi mumbled, still staring at the door Satō was attempting to wedge open by pure force. Could it be locked? "Perhaps, we should try to find the entrance—?"
"And walk all the way back?" Satō challenged with a furrow of her brows, her hand was already grasping her gun from its holster, clicking off the safety, and shooting at the squared glass framing the door, the butt of her gun hitting against the broken glass hard enough to brittle the shards into a hole, wide enough to fit her hand inside, and Takagi was ready to let her know that it was unlikely for the door to have a lock at the other side of the door when – Chink! – it actually had.
"You were saying?" Satō said, raising a brow at him as she pushed the door open, and it was at this point, Takagi decided that Miwako Satō had either unbelievable luck, or gave brith to strange miracles wherever she went. . .
His lips twitched into a smile. "My bad."
Satō grinned back, and he opened her mouth to speak when something caught the corner of her eyes, and she froze for a moment before she grabbed her colleague by his collar, pulling him close enough to elicit a blush from him, and he plucked his lips automatically and yet he met nothing but the stale air. She whipped past him, charging forward to grab the man by his arm, and threw him over her shoulder, and at the ground, with nothing other than brute strength and the momentum of her body.
The man's grip on the girl loosened, enough for her to free herself, and it was at this point Satō's hand dived into her breast pocket, holding her ID up high as she charged the man for kidnapping. He only spluttered in pain and disbelief.
"Are you okay, Haibara-san?" Takagi asked, finally getting his bearings together, and glancing over the petite girl for any visible injuries. She glanced at him, and the shifted her gaze at Itsuki, her lips twitching as she gave him a pointed stare as though to say, Serves you right.
He snorted under the weight of the police officer, "Must be my punishment for involving you."
"Is that a confession?" Satō asked, getting out her handcuffs. "Anything you'll say will be used against you in court. Although, you do have the right to remain silent."
"You know. . ." he started, eyeing the handcuffs warily before he glanced at Ai. "This is the part, you tell her I'm not your kidnapper."
"Oh, you're not?" Ai said, raising a disbelieving brow, before she snorted, considering all that happened, he surely could be described as one. "Take him away, officers. He's a lolicon."
"What?" Itsuki couldn't believe his own ears, and the pressure on his back applied under officer's Satō's ignited wrath.
"Joking." Ai said, redirecting her sharp gaze at the end of the corridor, empty without a soul besides five of them. "But if there's anyone you need to arrest it's those two women—"
"Who?" Satō asked, furrowing her brows, as her gaze caught Takagi helping the other woman up to her feet, having collapsed out of fatigue, and beneath her Itsuki cried from the pressure.
"Ah, sorry." She smiled sheepishly, climbing onto her feet and pulling him along with her as she grabbed him by his arm.
"Nope, I'd like to hear more about this at the station. Haibara-san, would you mind accompanying me?"
"No, of course not." Ai said, her lips stretching into a smirk, gazing at the disguised officer calculatedly as though she devised the entire scheme. His gaze furrowed at her, disapprovingly. Ai gave him stringent look. "Do you have any complains?"
The usual smile on his face fell away at the sheer dread what else this little girl planned to pay him back. "For a little girl, you surprisingly hold grudges."
"So? I'm a little girl and I don't need to be reasonable." She retorted, crossing her arms, her gaze wandering toward the surprised look Satō and Takagi shared after conversing with the maroon haired, and she figured both of them figured Itsuki was an officer after all, as Takagi dived into his pocket to pull out his ID, and with clear evidences in front of them, they had to renounce his standing as a kidnapper, for the time being.
"Why didn't you say so?" Satō said, sighing as she frowned at him, even as the other only muttered that they wouldn't have believed him anyway, before he held his cuffed hands up.
"If you would be so kind?"
Sighing, Satō complied. "I still liked to hear about those women you mentioned before . . ."
"You really wanted to arrest someone today, didn't you?" Takagi mumbled under his breath, supporting the woman to take the first step to climb down the fire steps. "Since it couldn't be the culprit, you chose a stranger and now. . ."
"Did you say something Takagi?"
". . .Nothing."
Ai smiled, watching them from a distance. "He should speak up more."
"Of course, that's coming from you." Itsuki snorted, climbing down the stairs behind her.
"Quiet. I'm still not done with you," she glared at him, shutting hum up into silence, and she sighed as the cold wind wafted against her face. At last, it was over. It would be a long time before she could look at a stranger without suspecting any hidden agendas. A heist was one thing, a murder another, a combination of these two events wasn't up to her standards, neither was a bunch of crazy officers.
What did I do to deserve to deal with this?
Ai sighed and swiped her gaze over the rails, down below where the people crowded the area like colourful minuscule dots, and her ears were assaulted by the obnoxious loud cries of red flashing ambulances flooding to the scenes. She craned her neck to look at the waterfall splashing on the side of the building, engulfed in bright flames, and she wondered how she didn't notice the fire trucks in front of the building, barely visible as they were clouded by welling smoke. The gallery was a wreck, its windows somehow still intact the bared panes of glass, yet its layers of floors was sunken, barely keeping itself from collapsing, and for a moment Ai couldn't believe she got out of it without a single scratch.
"What happened?"
Her question was met with silence, and she turned around to inspect her surroundings, she noticed she stood alone.
Aoko didn't know what caused this. . .
Tragic, they called it.
For the next subsequent months, the news streamlined these tragic events in small instalments, updating the same news headline with tiny snippets of Intel News-Reporters would somehow steal from tight-lipped officers every hour for the next twenty-four hours of every week for the next ninety-something days. Tragic, they said.
"A tragic episode caused by unforeseen circumstances."
They radio droned from Aoko's bedside table. Perched on her lap sat a dictionary. Open paged on the letter T. Headlined TR – third letter – A. Tragic(adj.) – That which causes or characterises extreme distress or sorrow.
Her fingers clenched on top of the page. It wasn't enough. Not good enough. Not truthful enough. Not anything enough. Her finger wandered down the text, guiding her eyes underneath the caption, its second subtext outlined – A. Tragic(adj.) – Relating to tragedy in a literary work.
Literary work, she thought, thinking of books and narratives, fabricated lies written in pages upon pages on paper. Literary works. They were nothing but veils of lies and deceit coating the words and fooling the mind just like dexterous fingers and tricks deceived the eyes.
He was nothing but a bunch of lies.
Was it her loneliness?
She slumped on the ground without much thought – without much awareness of what was going on – she had heard the Bang! – she had felt the ghost of a pain stinging somewhere around her lower abdomen, and somehow someone must have pulled the carpet beneath her feet. (Maybe another cheap trick from Kaito?) Her knees buckled and her nose buried into the tiny tassels of its fabric, light-headed and suddenly so heavy, she could barely register her own thoughts, and yet a pair of blue eyes stared at her, wide-open, and in retrospect there was a certainty panic glinting inside the shades of blue, desperation perhaps, but at that time she could only recognise that glimmer on his face as though he was buckling under the pressure – as though he a breath away from giving away and bursting into tears just by the sheer —by the sheer what?
Helplessness?
No, that didn't fit.
Not that he didn't seem helpless – stuck in a state of confusion that captured that moment when you know you need to act without knowing which steps to take. That moment, you desire nothing but the ability to freeze time and stop every ounce of blood flowing through each torn tissue, getting everything under control before. . .before. . .Before what?
The afterthought carried a bitter taste on her tongue she still couldn't get rid of – it had been days (she wished, months) since that horrible moment and yet desired to wedge it somewhere in the corner of her life that belonged to a distant past – a time light years away – and somehow completely forgotten, not only by her but everyone else.
She pinched her eyes shut and forced it back open when his face flashed into her mind again.
If only she could forget. . .
Has she grown bored with the familiar cold and stillness that her house now is?
Kaito tightened his grip on Aoko, as he ran as fast as his leg could get him, and whilst he was incredibly slower than usual, with his careful attention to her injury and the addition of her weight, the influx of adrenaline was enough to make up in speed, or so he'd like to think. He truly didn't know what would have happened if that person managed to land a luck shot on him as well. . .
Another gun fire, booming across the halls and echoing inside his ears, and Kaito turned right, ran the corridor down, down, down, and down the following stairs, jumping two at a time, and almost slipping at the third. . .wait, slipping? He gritted his teeth at the trail of blood smearing across the floor.
Like this there's no-way she would make it!
Either way. . .
This might have been karma. Or the hubris of her own character that finally showed this late into the game. Her gluttonous punishment, perhaps. A punishment of sorts for having attempted to overcome her insecurities by pressuring others with vows and promise for nothing other than a piece of mind – for nothing other than granting her own wish for blindly trusting in others – to hold on, relentlessly, stubbornly, selfishly.
She slipped in and out of consciousness, the minutes – hours? – stripped past in seconds, in each brief fluttering of her lids, and yet the sight was unmistakable.
Before her – blurry in shape, and yet she recognised that blob of brown hair, like the colour of the earth and the eyes so blue it matched the summer sky, that glimmer on his face, without a hat and yet that monocle, those gloves hands, grazing her cheek, the strip of white blazer that momentarily caught her gaze as she shifted her in his arms. . .
This couldn't be.
This can't be. . .
. . .as she stood face to face with this one visage that she had come to love and associate with Kaito. . .
Her fingers had fisted on his shirt, pink, red, blue, her vision blurred, the colours smudged, and yet she saw the darkened sky, the lightening small stars, and perhaps she must be dreaming, her mind amiss and still lying shocked on the she first fell, nose buried deep into the carpet, and yet her fingers fisted on the fabric, strenuously, and yet felt between her fingers, or was this sensation felt subconsciously in dreams?
His eyes caught off guard, without a poker face, or was this another form of a concealed face? She didn't know, still grappling with the fine line of reality and illusion – could this have been another trick? An optical illusion?
. . .covered in white, hat on the floor and mouth agape. . .
Kaito's heart clenched at the state of her expression as her eyes shook in their sockets and her shoulders trembled. And that's when he realised that she could plainly see his hair and blue eyes despite his monocle. He was hit with his own momentum of shock when he heard Jii-chan chiding him in his head to be careful, and he wondered when exactly his plan started to fall apart in tatters.
His lips twitched, shifted, mouthed words – or a spell? – of things she couldn't read nor see. His image faded in front of her eyes into tiny white pixels, zigzagged achromatic lines before they darkened into black, and her mind took off - to sleep perhaps, into a strangely limbo where she was constantly revisiting, revising the this fictionalised – or real? – narrative form of her memory. . .
"I can explain," a bare whisper. . .
Aoko flipped through the dictionary perched on her lap, pages upon pages. Guile. Guild. Guil—
Ah, there it was.
Item C. Letter G. Headlined GU – third letter I – Guilt (n.) — The fact of having committed a specified or implied offence or crime).
She knew wouldn't get a louder confession than that.
Tragic, they called it.
"A tragic episode caused by unforeseen circumstances."
Caught between two sheets since she first woke up on an unrelentingly uncomfortable bed, Aoko could only attach it under the subheading of literary work, and any other methods to create fabrications of lies and deceit to fool the mind just like dexterous fingers and that tricks deceived the eyes.
But not anymore.
She has had enough.
She was already gone.