(The correct things, straight things –

I have shown these to you.)

When Ginzō arrived at his daughter's hospital room, he didn't expect it to be empty. Aoko had always been asleep when he visited. He was certain she would be asleep today too.

Sighing, Ginzō sat down at his regular spot near the foot of her bed, choosing to wait for her to return. The nurses had informed him several weeks ago that Aoko had been awake for a while, once he had spotted his daughter, wheeled out of her room during the early morning hours when he had still spend his time gathering patients' testimonials. The sight left him in a daze for a minute in which he had asked himself whether it was really Aoko that he had seen, or simply someone that looked like her. But the more he stared, the more he realised it was indeed his daughter.

Aoko was well and alive, and whilst Ginzō was relieved, he also felt a little puzzled, yet despite that he had fought hard not to ask when his daughter had woken up – why she adamantly insisted for none of her progress to be shared with anyone, not even him, her father, even though he had every right to be updated as concerned and anxious as he was – as he had been – spending every waking hour sick with worry, nauseous at the inevitable thoughts of what if's that he quenched in cigarettes.

Instead, he had asked – "Will she be okay?" –knowing that anything else he would ask would be stamped out by the confidentiality act, and the lone thought that Aoko had wedged this law between them couldn't stop Ginzō from feeling betrayed when he had caught Aoko sleeping the morning after, and he had voiced a silent ("How could you?") that she couldn't hear, unassuming as she was, wrapped between the sheets, blind and deaf regarding the shattered trust that laid between the two of them.

"She's on the track to good health if she continues to do well," the nurse had said. Aoko had recovered most of her motor function. Hearing it, Ginzō had searched for his phone to inform Kaito, but when his fingers hovered over the call button, he had thought otherwise, remembering the hours the young man had spent with her, sitting through the silence, as though it was some form of punishment he needed to bear for what happened—

"Dad?"

Ginzō was startled out of his thoughts and when he glanced up at the door, the face of his daughter greeted him, puzzled.

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting you," Ginzō answered as he stood up, quite certain that this was the moment he had spent countless times preparing for, and he found himself already slipping into his surprised expression that he spent every morning practicing in front of the bathroom mirror, but as soon as the moment came it silently slithered away.

Instead of standing startled at the doorway as Ginzō had expected, Aoko slipped inside, struggling to walk on her crutches and Ginzō found himself at odds about what to do when she seated herself on the bed, looking at him with an expression he never thought he would see on his daughter's face.

"Have you heard anything?" Aoko asked, devoid of her usual cheeriness, and Ginzō was momentarily puzzled as he wondered whether she didn't notice. The charade she went such length to keep lay shattered on the floor, and yet she kept on treading on the shards. Ginzō couldn't help but wonder whether she didn't care that he knew – whether she didn't care that her father was bleeding on the same shards she carried, the same shards she had dropped carelessly on the floor.

Could it be he had been wrong to pretend not to notice? As much as Ginzō thought about it, he didn't know. He could only think about Kaito. The lingering glances he pinned on Aoko whenever her hand twitched. The rising and slumping of his shoulders when he thought she would wake and then realise she wouldn't, and that strange uncanny half-smile that Ginzō still didn't understand. The inspector could only wonder whether Kaito knew – whether Kaito had known what it was that laid buried deep inside Aoko's mind ever since she woke up on a night not too long ago, deciding to lie asleep for reasons he still didn't understand.

"Anything like?" Ginzō asked, skirting around the subject, nearing it enough to ponder but not enough to touch it with both of his hands to unravel it.

"Like anything that might have happened?"

"Did something happen, Aoko?" Ginzō asked, his brows furrowed when Aoko released a long breath, seemingly relieved at his puzzled expression, and as a father, Ginzō was growing more and more concerned and suspicious. "You couldn't be hiding something from me, could you?"

"I'm a seventeen-year-old girl, of course, I'm hiding something from you," Aoko answered as she placed her crutches against the wall, and Ginzō was certain he had never seen these walking aids inside this room before.

"But why did you come? You seriously startled me," Aoko mumbled as she looked at her father, openly switching topics and Ginzō pretended not to notice.

"That's what I actually wanted to ask you," he said, side-stepping her question. "Ever since I saw you hurt outside the gallery, I've been asking myself, why did you come? You told me you were going to stay at home."

"I changed my mind," Aoko said as though it explained everything, and even though it did— it still didn't. But Ginzō chose not to press the matter, her friend Keiko had already confessed to everything when Aoko was still cooped up inside the emergency room. Seemingly the both of them have been suspecting Kaito to be Kid too. . .

"From your answer, I see that your memory is still intact, so let me ask you," Ginzō started, knowing that this probably wasn't the greatest moment to ask, but from his experience as an inspector, he had learned that from sudden interrogation—the first reaction from unexpected questions gave the most truthful of responses, and so he said, "Before you passed out, the last person you spoke to, who was it?"

Aoko cocked one of her eyebrows at the strange question. "It was Kaito."

"Are you sure it was Kaito?"

"Who else would it have been? Kid?" Aoko asked, puzzled, but from the gleam in her eyes, Ginzō had an inkling she knew more than she let on.

"Well, only an investigation will show that," Ginzō replied, uncertain whether his daughter would truthfully share any knowledge she had once his colleagues showed up to record her testimony, regardless of whether the phantom thief may or may not have been Kaito – although, Ginzō worried that might be playing a factor. But he was certain that his daughter knew abetting criminals was a serious crime punishable by law.

After all, she wouldn't be covering for Kaito just because there was a slight chance that he could possibly be Kid. . . right?

Honestly Ginzō wasn't entirely sure, and the lack of confidence in his daughter unnerved him. He had raised her at the side of justice, enjoining good and forbidding evil, and yet her proximity with Kaito throughout these years might have tainted the slate of her character.

But even if that was the case, it still didn't make sense.

Had his daughter been in cahoots with her childhood friend, then for what reason had she been ignoring Kaito, as much as she had been ignoring him, her own father?

Ginzō didn't want to suspect his daughter but the more he thought about it, the less he had a choice.

("Do you really think a single person could have thought this far-ahead to establish their own innocence?")

As stealthily as the wind, the thought came to him again, haunting him even though Ginzō hated the implication more every second he spent thinking about it, because how on earth could a single individual have thought this far-ahead?

It was completely unreasonable—

("You have to take into account every possible scenario," Chaki-Keishi had said when Ginzō held the doorknob, ready to step out of his office, and contemplate his superior sudden proposal to switch him into the Secret Task Force. "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.")

Whilst Ginzō wasn't entirely sure whether Chaki-Keishi became a recent fan for the fictional Londoner detective, or was simply influenced by the Superintendent General Hakuba, who quoted Sherlock Holmes as much as he drank tea whenever he stopped by the office for a rare visit. The inspector couldn't help but wonder whether his superior had an inkling regarding why Ginzō had been sitting idly on his hands ever since he had realised that one of the victims had been none other than his daughter—shot on the night of the heist, near Kid's proximity, for no other reason than it was purely coincidental, even though she had firmly expressed to him before that she would stay at home, studying together with Keiko, who had volunteered to be her personal tutor for the day.

Ginzō wasn't entirely sure which to find more troubling, the fact that his daughter had put herself in danger trying to capture a phantom thief, or the realisation that his daughter easily left a myriad of half-truths in the wake of every conversation that they have shared. . .

("I changed my mind," Aoko had said, even though Keiko had admitted they had been planning to catch Kid ever since the heist had been announced on the news. . .)

And whilst it still stumped him that his daughter easily traded tales of lies instead of honest facts, it felt even more unnerving to think that Chaki-Keishi might have been considering the possibility that his daughter might have been an accomplice to Kid long before Ginzō had arrived at his office.

("I have reasons to believe your personal feelings are swaying your judgements.")

Ginzō pinched the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes. The stress of the situation was continuing to pile up and press against his trachea until he felt breathless from suffocation.

.

.

.

Across him, Aoko sat silently, staring out of the window, surrounded by nothing but her own thoughts. For a moment her father wondered what it was that she spent hours thinking about ever since she had woken up at the hospital — what it was that she had planned to uncover ever since Kid's notice had reached her ears from the news outlets — what it was that lured her away from the comforts of her home and brought her, here, half-alive and bleeding?

Just what was it that carried you into such madness, Aoko? Ginzō wanted to ask — wanted to receive the answer he had been yearning for ever since he laid his eyes on his daughter, strapped on a stretcher, carried off by the ambulance. But Ginzō knew – even if he were to ask that, his daughter would only sell him a handful of lies for the price of one truth, and as frustrating as it was, Ginzō had no choice but to swallow these questions into the abyss of his throat.

But even as frustrated and clueless as he was, Ginzō knew that it was his duty, as her parent, to set her straight before anyone else, regardless of her role in Kid's endeavour, regardless of whether Kid might have been Kaito or not, regardless of whether he was an officer first or not.

As her father, Ginzō needed to be her first line of contact, who rediverted her footpath whenever she parted from the path of justice and strayed into obscurity, and if it meant he needed to join the Secret Task Force to do so, then he would, as long as it meant she would live the rest of her life as an upright citizen, far away from criminal charges, court hearings and jail sentences.

For his daughter, Ginzō was prepared to do absolutely anything.

(Even if it meant, casting another family into hell. . .)

(Even if I'll make an enemy of the entire world –

Even if I must carry more anxiety and doubt –

I'll continue on to the future I painted.)