DISCLAIMER: SKIP BEAT! and its associated characters are the creations of Yoshiki Nakamura. This author claims no ownership of Skip Beat or any of its characters. All other rights reserved.
Foreword: This was originally going to be a thousand-word one shot, but ended up a lot longer. The word prompt was "sharp." It was vaguely inspired by a brief discussion of Bladerunner on the Discord.
Thanks to ncisduckie for helping me name this story!
More Than Human
The mist was rising again. Ren Tsuruga, detective, dodged a sudden downpour from a downspout above and turned his collar against the damp, hastening to the precinct for the nightly rap sheet. All across Neo Tokyo the hazard lights came on, red lights mounted on skyscrapers diffusing into the fog to form a red haze. The red gilded the periphery of his vision, a heartbeat pulsing out a warning more or less ignored by everyone on the streets below.
He knew he was going to be busy. Nights like this were always busy. Something about the fog always brought out the animal in people, made them feral. More willing to draw blood. Inevitably, there would be beatings and gang fights. Dead men would be found bludgeoned, missing fingers. Sometimes a person would come crawling out of a cheap sleep capsule missing a kidney, or an eye, not knowing how or when they'd gotten there. A dead whore or two would be found by dawn, and a score or more pleasure droids would be found disassembled. The city ate the bodies of the vulnerable and spat out their bones on nights like this. It didn't matter where they came from, the night treated them all with equal menace. He supposed he should've been used to it; after five years as a cop, nothing surprised him anymore. He could almost smell the scent of blood pouring into the gutters, see it shining red-black under the cold LED lights that passed for street lighting these days. It all mixed with the miasma of sweat and despair and sewage that never left the surface streets.
"Evening, Boss," he said. Lory Takarada, Chief Commissioner for the city of Neo Tokyo, had his feet up on his desk as he smoked that evening's cigar. Lory was unusual among the city's civil servants. Many of his ilk enjoyed aeries on Chiyoda Hill, the government outpost. Few were willing to walk or work the surface streets of their city, choosing instead to live in a sanitized haven. It was easy to believe everything was alright there. But Lory insisted on taking a hands-on approach to his policing. Consequently, he'd chosen to put his office right in the center of Neo Tokyo's cesspit.
"Filthy habit," Ren said, nodding at the cigar.
"Life's short, son," the Chief said. "Got a doozy for you tonight."
'Doozy,' Ren thought. Their code for 'watch what you say, someone could be listening.' He took a surreptitious glance up at the camera dome that sat like a silent sentinel in the corner and then met Lory's eyes. The older man nodded, almost imperceptibly.
"New case?"
"New case."
Lory motioned towards Ruto, who'd entered the room with a thick file. "Missing skinsuit. Top-of-the-line model."
Ren grunted. "How long since it's gone missing?"
"About a month and a half, maybe?"
"Search and retrieve job?"
"Search and terminate. For the Fuwas."
Ren whistled. The Fuwas were one of the richest Neo Tokyo conglomerate families, rising out of the twenty-first century as the owners of several high-end properties and maneuvering that fortune into a highly diversified corporate empire that sold everything from plush toys to hovercars.
Lory tossed the folder to Ren, who caught it with one hand. He flipped the file open and found a large picture of a girl with bleached-looking hair and light-colored eyes. "It belongs to Sho Fuwa," Lory said. "Pleasure model, orange hair, amber eyes. Full skin-suit. Memory implants. A prototype running an advanced AI. Top secret project running out of one of their black-box labs. So advanced they don't even have a plan to sell it yet—it's too expensive to make the way it is."
"LoveMe Model Prototype X001 'Kyoko,'" Ren read from the file. Of course its name would have to be Kyoko. Ren took another look at the girl—no, droid—in the picture, an uneasy feeling rising up in his gut. IT looked too real. There was too much soul in the eyes that looked out at him from that picture, too much wistfulness that called out to him from the curved mouth. She had the look of a captured bird, delicate and lovely and—
"Don't get attached," Lory said, and Ren shut the file with a snap. Lory knew the whole story, of course. How Ren had joined the police force years ago, haunted after having seen a childhood playmate abducted mere feet or so from him. Another girl named 'Kyoko.' "I know how you get. It's not her, Ren. Not a damsel in distress. It's a droid." But there was something unreadable in Lory's eyes.
"Best damn skinjob I've ever seen in my life."
"Yeah, amazing what you can do with unlimited resources." Lory stubbed out the remains of the cigar. "The orders for this one come from up above, Ren. My hands are tied. But you're the only one I'm willing to trust on this."
Ren gave him a long, hard look. Lory didn't flinch under his gaze. You and I both know something strange is going on here, Ren, Lory seemed to say.
"Daddy gave his kid a special toy," Ren mused. The girl didn't look like a droid at all. There was something about the way she looked out at him from the picture that was disturbingly…human. "She…"
"It, Ren. It."
"It looks awfully real. Not 'real enough for a droid' real. Real."
"That was the point. Daddy got tired of his son dismantling pleasure droids by the dozen and complaining. Son didn't like how 'artificial' they felt. And real bodies are too hard to dispose of."
Ren's eyes met Lory's again. "Last I heard, that was still called 'murder,' old man."
"Allegedly, Ren, allegedly." Lory didn't need to say that the Fuwas had been implicated in any number of crimes—some of them disappearances, many of those being young women. Both of them knew it. Both of them also knew that the Fuwas had any number of politicians under their control—either through underhanded payments or blackmail. Or both. Somehow, no one ever found anything concrete. But anyone who knew anything about the Fuwas knew better than to leave their loved ones—particularly their young, attractive, female loved ones—within ten feet of that family or its retainers. Lory had wanted a green light to investigate them for human trafficking for years.
"So Daddy made a skinjob as close to real as possible. Feels real, but follows orders like a droid."
Lory merely nodded.
"That pervert."
"The Fuwas say the AI is compromised. They want it terminated before someone can reverse-engineer it. They want termination on-sight. They're claiming it's safer that way, too. Avoids triggering its bodyguard and self-defense protocols."
"Where the fuck are they developing this tech?" Ren asked. "There's nowhere in Neo Tokyo that can support this kind of shit and keep it secret. And the Fuwas aren't exactly known for producing cutting edge droids." Some droids looked very real indeed, but to develop a droid that had eyes as expressive as this one was one hell of an engineering feat. The Fuwas made a little bit of everything, but their droids were distinctly mid to low-level affairs made for mass production. Even if the Fuwas wanted to leapfrog into the high-end droid market, they would have left traces somewhere. Poached a few scientists from the universities, maybe. Ren made a note to look into their recent patent filings.
Lory looked at him appraisingly. "They're keeping the details close to the vest, but you're right. They developed it in Kyoto."
"Kyoto? Old Kyoto?"
"Temples and shit, son."
"I thought that place was a national park."
"It is, unless you happen to have your ancestral home located on two hundred acres of prime, virgin Arashimaya countryside."
Ren shook his head. These people… "So when did they give her to the boy?"
"Give it." Lory gave him a look. The one that said watch your mouth. "About six months ago, for his seventeenth birthday."
"I'm surprised she lasted that long."
"'It,' Ren, 'it.' And I'm surprised too. It doesn't have any of the normal droid markings," Lory said. "That's what makes it so hard to spot. No barcode on the nape. No UV tags on the eyes. Running off of real cloned wetware. Apparently there's even real gray matter in that skull."
"A wetware frame? So you're telling me if I shoot this droid, it's going to bleed."
"Hole in one."
"And you're telling me that they've somehow managed to build a gray matter processor?" Gray matter processing was the holy grail. No technology that he knew of yet existed to translate a digital mind onto a cloned wetware brain.
"They're keeping the details on her AI, frame, and processor confidential. Need-to-know, black box proprietary and all that. Cutting edge research, you know. Revolutionary tech."
Ren hmmphed. "So there isn't a good way to verify she's a droid?"
"Only after resectioning, but the Fuwas say it's quite clear once you've gotten past the organs."
"Do they know it's our policy to verify that the target is a droid before termination?"
"I'm fairly certain they don't care, Ren. They're going to insist on it anyway."
The look on Lory's face told Ren that Lory was thinking exactly what he was thinking. A brand-new wetware droid prototype that absolutely nobody had ever heard of before, and so real as to appear entirely human until you took that body apart? A gray-matter skull?
It didn't smell right.
It smelled like science fiction.
It smelled like a poorly disguised way to get the Neo Tokyo police to commit murder on behalf of the Fuwa clan.
…As if Ren would let that happen. He didn't know who this girl was or what she had done, but he was willing to bet money that the Fuwas couldn't find her using their normal methods. Some lackey had probably decided to get Neo Tokyo's police-only sniffer network on the case and made up this rigmarole of the girl being some advanced droid prototype to expedite her termination. He growled. There were occasional cases of real humans being killed after being mistaken for droids. It happened. But that was why Neo Tokyo police policy insisted on verifying that an entity was truly a droid before using force that could lead to grievous bodily harm. "That's comforting. Looks, walks, and talks just like a real human until you retire it and give it an autopsy. Let me guess: they want us to either destroy the body or deliver the remains to them immediately?"
Lory glared at him, keeping his face studiously away from the camera. "Personal property is to be disposed of as directed by the owner, Ren, you know that."
"How do you even know you have the right body?"
"It's chipped. Behind the ear, apparently."
"Like a dog."
"Exactly the same. Apparently the Fuwa kid had it wearing a collar, too. But the chip isn't usable for tracking and you'd have to have her in custody before you can scan it in."
"Do we have biomarkers for the sniffers?"
"Some kitchen rags. They were developing its dexterity stats by making it cut vegetables."
"What the fuck?"
"Ever heard of katsuramuki? Real old-school. They were training it to cut daikons paper thin. It cut itself on the knife before it learned better."
"WHY?" Most people ate reconstituted proteins and amalgamated grains on a daily basis. Some had never even seen a real fucking vegetable, and here the Fuwas were amusing themselves with making something bleed while cutting actual daikon radishes.
"Who the fuck knows why? The Fuwa kid probably wanted a sex toy that could massage him or some shit and not complain."
Ren grunted.
"I hope they didn't give it pain receptors." Ren knew full-well that the 'droid' likely had the pain receptors she was born with. But whether it was a real person or not, he didn't like to see people—or even things that looked like people—in pain.
"Knowing the Fuwa boy, I'd be surprised if he didn't request extra. I've actually met the little bastard. That kid is fucked up."
"Sounds like it."
Lory breathed out a puff of fragrant cigar smoke. "Get going. Night is young. If the sniffers get her biomarkers right, you might even be back for seconds."
"Yeah." Ren took the file and turned to walk out of the office.
"Ren?"
He stopped and turned.
"I trust you to do the right thing," Lory said.
"I know," Ren said, and walked out.
Search and terminate would be search and rescue, tonight.
=.=.=.=.=.=
Ren was parked in the alleyway in his undercover hovercar, running silent and dark. The sniffers had caught the biomarker signature in a quiet residential ward of Neo Tokyo, pointing him to a small traditional restaurant called the Darumaya. It was the kind of place that made good, honest food and served the neighborhood regulars. The kind of place you'd go to when you were tired of the nondescript protein bar or grain mush, when you wanted something warm and real. A little bit of a splurge for most people, but not so expensive as to be prohibitive. It looked pretty popular. He'd been outside for the last hour, watching a succession of customers come in and out.
There had been no sign of the girl from where he sat, and yet the sniffers unquestionably placed her signature at the establishment.
He'd have to go in.
Normally, he'd have wanted to come in with a warrant to search the premises for the droid. An order to terminate was usually made when a droid was stolen and corrupted, or was otherwise performing in a way that could be potentially harmful to the humans around it. It simply made this order that much more unusual. An order to terminate on sight for a droid that was not obviously harmful was unheard of. Most people valued their property, and preferred restraint or decommissioning over a termination order. But he was glad she was hiding in a place with people in it. It gave him plausible deniability. He'd have to wait to do the termination evaluation. No one wanted bloody blown up bits in their dinner. It was a good way to incense the public and get the press to breathe down their necks.
Recon, then. He'd go in, determine whether or not she was actually there and then withdraw unless he found her and could assess the situation safely, termination or not. There was a tiny possibility that he and Lory were wrong and she was, indeed, a droid. He didn't doubt his ability to tell the difference between human and AI, but he was determined to assess the target objectively nonetheless—a thorough documentation of the assessment he'd made could only help their case later. Hesitantly, he made to leave the hovercar, putting his gun in its holder and ensuring it was well-secured but handy underneath his jacket.
=.=.=.=
"Irasshaimase!" said a cheerful voice.
Ren had pushed his way past the boldly patterned noren curtains and slid open the door to be greeted with the smell of good things—the scent of a cooking stew, the smell of oil sizzling. It was warm. It was dry. It surprised him.
Warmth was a luxury. Everything dry and soft was a luxury.
And luxuries were not to be found easily on Neo Tokyo's ground level.
He didn't really think it possible that he'd find a cozy room anywhere in this town, someplace clean, uncrowded but not empty. Someplace that wasn't exactly quiet but was filled with the quiet hum of civilized conversation between long-established friends.
He took a deep breath of the smells wafting from the kitchen and understood why there was so much traffic in and out of the place now. The restaurant smelled good. It smelled of warmth, and joy, and conviviality—the kind of place that felt older than it could truly be. It felt like old Tokyo. Mythical Tokyo. The kind of Tokyo you only saw in films, given the fact that the real old Tokyo had sunk into the ocean a century ago.
His stomach growled.
"Sir?" said the voice. He looked down at a lithe figure dressed in an old-timey kimono, holding a tray up against her. His eyes widened. "Will you be dining with us? Would you like to have a seat at the counter or at a table?" she asked.
He froze.
It was her. In the flesh. There could be no doubt. Her hair was shorter, tied into two pigtails that framed her face, but it was a shade of orange, just as he'd seen in the photograph on file. She was smiling as she pointed him to a table, grabbing him a menu and water even before he'd settled. "May I get you anything else to drink?"
"No," Ren said, taking a sip of his water. "This will be fine."
Silently he watched the girl as she wiped down tables, listening to her banter happily with the customers. "Kyoko-chan!" said an old man in the corner, "An order of gyoza to go, please."
"Oh, for Haruka-chan, Hiro-san?"
"Yes," said the old man, smiling. "You're so good to remember her name."
"Oh of course I do, Hiro-san. Haruka-chan is a friend of mine," the girl replied.
"She certainly is," the man replied. "She hasn't stopped talking about you since she was last here!"
The old man noticed Ren looking over at them. "Kyoko-chan's been a great addition to the Darumaya," he said. "Takes good care of us all. My granddaughter loves her. Even Taisho says he can't do without her now."
The girl was humming as she added a garnish of green onions to a dish of chilled tofu and brought it out to another customer with an elegant flourish.
If she's a droid, then this is one hell of an advanced behavioral programming job, Ren mused to himself. He was watching her carefully. There were certainly droids that had sophisticated call and response service modules—he'd often seen waitress-type droids do jobs as adequately as their human counterparts. But most service modules didn't go so far as to charm children or old men. Ren supposed it made sense for a specialized pleasure model to have such a service module, but there was no reason for any subroutine to go as far as to have the model actively engage in this manner. From the sound of it, she'd been here at least long enough to settle in. To make friends. Droids did not make friends. Nor did droids seek employment from people who had not bought them.
"Sir?" he heard a voice asking. "May I bring you something to eat?"
And then he was face-to-face with her, unexpectedly looking into eyes that were more gold than amber. Eyes that triggered a strange spark of warmth in him.
"I…well, perhaps just some edamame," he said.
"Certainly," she said, gracefully bowing. "But—"
She stopped herself in mid-sentence, looking just the slightest bit guilty.
Hmm, thought Ren. Definitely not a synthetic expression there. What was she going to say? "'But'?" he said out loud.
"Oh no, nothing. I'm sorry. Very sorry," she said, bowing again in apology. She was blushing. Did FuwaCorp seriously believe they'd convince people that they'd made a droid who could blush?
He heard Hiro-san laughing behind him. "You almost got Kyoko-chan's lecture, Stranger-kun," the old man was saying.
"Kyoko-chan's…lecture?"
"Yes. She doesn't believe you should skip meals. You haven't eaten yet, have you? We all heard that stomach growl."
"Well, no…" Ren was abashed. How had he managed to find the one place in all of Neo Tokyo where people would comment on his stomach growling?
"Trust me. You should eat. Get the omurice and have her put a good-luck charm on it for you. You won't regret it."
=.=.=.=.=
Two hours later, Ren was sitting back in the hovercar. He'd been persuaded by the old man's gregariousness and Kyoko's quiet cheerfulness into having the omurice, which she'd happily decorated with a charming ketchup "Good luck!" once it arrived at his table. He'd eaten all of it—he hadn't thought he would, but it was unexpectedly good. It had a nostalgic taste that reminded him of summers long ago and far away from Neo Tokyo.
He'd intended on objectively observing her and determining whether there was any possibility she was an AI. And he'd come to a definitive conclusion. There was no way the girl was a droid. It would've been obvious, somehow, if she were. There was always some tell, some failure to cross that uncanny valley between man and machine. He'd heard her express opinions that were distinctly quirky—very un-droid-like—one unfortunate regular was even subjected to an (adorable) lecture about the dangers of living on reconstituted food products alone! He had seen her eat and drink that evening, even observed her going to use the restroom. Droids were usually not designed to consume food, though occasionally models were designed to simulate its consumption by masticating it, holding it in a storage unit, and then voiding it afterwards. But none of those models used wetware components, at least not internally. And they were considered curiosities—what owner wanted an eating droid? It would be a waste of food. And even if Kyoko was running the most advanced AI in the world, there was no indication she was in an artificial body. People had been trying to make machines in their image for centuries, so what was it about FuwaCorp's technology that succeeded now? And if she truly was a groundbreaking new model, why were they so anxious to terminate her?
The file had to have been a lie. All of it had to have been a lie, an attempt to terminate the girl before she could talk. And now he was compromised on a personal level, because he'd be the liar if he didn't admit he wanted to protect the girl from anyone that would harm her. He supposed it was inevitable, really. A girl like that, so earnest and kind, so hardworking, so inherently decent—the idea of a girl like that in the clutches of Sho Fuwa was enough to make him clench his first and punch a hole into some wall or other.
He was still subject to the terminate order, though now that he'd made a bona fide evaluation, he had a reason not to do that termination on-sight. Policy would support him if the cameras showed him detaining and securing the girl for further evaluation instead of blowing her brains out.
He knew it wasn't smart. He knew should've turned around and walked away as soon as he identified her and then waited for the restaurant to close to secure her and get her to a safehouse. He had spent many hours in similar stakeouts in the hovercar, and a meal replacement bar was plenty good enough for him as a supper. Instead he'd sat and eaten and watched her out of the corner of his eye, because he couldn't help himself.
That dinner would cost him. There were a few worst-case scenarios. For one, the Fuwas could claim he'd look like he was abetting the escape of one of their assets if he failed to bring her in. But even if he thought she truly was a droid, he'd still be following policy by bringing her in for additional checks. She wasn't malfunctioning, and she didn't look like she was an imminent danger to anyone.
Now that he'd found her, it was only a matter of time until the Fuwas found her, too. He'd formulated a plan while he waited for the restaurant to close. Lory had told him to 'do the right thing,' and doing the right thing meant making sure this girl wasn't thrown out like a toy. He was going to have to scare her, make her think she truly was being taken into custody. The Fuwas needed to think that he was just a particularly fastidious cop covering his ass against an accidental termination. It needed to look real for Neo Tokyo's surveillance cameras, and he knew at least two of Neo Tokyo's streetcams covered this alleyway. That didn't mean those were the only two cams watching. He intended to make the initial contact in the Darumaya's kitchen—he supposed that it was possible the owners had cameras in there, too. And then after that, he needed to get her out of there, get her someplace safe until the Neo Tokyo police could verify her status and find a way to make sure the Fuwas didn't recapture her. It was unfortunate, but her terror would likely need to be real. Last thing he wanted was a streetcam recording him as he offered the target sanctuary over termination. But he intended to get to the bottom of the situation one way or another. His conscience wouldn't allow him to do anything less.
He looked at his watch. 11pm. The Darumaya was closed for the evening now. Showtime. He knew that the back door would open the easiest. He was prepared to use the universal skeleton magkey that Neo Tokyo police had, so he prepped it along with his gun as he prepared to infiltrate the building.
Exiting the car, he made his way closer to the door, sticking to the alley walls and melting in with the shadows. The fog would help conceal his presence. The less the cams saw, the better. Step by step, he closed in on the Darumaya, breathing in the scent of rot and garbage from the restaurant's dumpster overtop the native stench of Neo Tokyo.
And then…
Light.
He cursed silently.
The girl opened the back door, blithely carrying out two garbage bags of that evening's refuse to place them into the dumpster. She was humming again, entirely oblivious to the night. With the light behind her, she almost looked like an angel in her bright pink waitress's kimono. He almost envied her, wondering what it was that kept her so cheerful when all she was doing was taking out the trash.
He hated having to do this, but knowing that the cameras were likely catching his every move, he had no choice.
He moved forward quickly, stepping in front of her and blocking egress out of the alleyway. "Neo Tokyo Police," he said. He held his gun to her temple. "Surrender and prepare for termination."
It broke his heart to see her face crumple into a mask of deep, undisguised terror. "Please," she said, "Please…!"
The distress in those golden eyes was too much, but Ren redoubled his grip on the gun. "On your knees."
She complied so quickly he wondered what the Fuwas would do if they were shown this footage and challenged on their assertion that the 'droid' would engage in a 'bodyguard' or 'defense' routine.
"Get on the ground, face down. Keep your hands on your head," he said.
She planted herself on the dirty alleyway, sobbing. "Please," she said, "Please don't do this…I'm not sure what they've told you…but whatever it is, I didn't do it…I…swear…I only ran away—I didn't hurt anyone! I didn't steal anything…I didn't even take any food! Please, sir…what did I do?"
"Keep your hands on your head," he repeated.
She was babbling in distress and fear and confusion, and her next words chilled him to the bone. "…it hurt so much…he hurts me so much and he would have killed me…I didn't want him to do those things to me anymore…"
But he had to keep going. "I am here under a termination order for Model X001 'Kyoko.' Verify your identity, please."
She was choking on her own tears, unable to wipe because she'd put her hands behind her head just as he'd told her to. "I don't understand," she said. "M-m-m-model?"
It was killing him to keep the charade up. "You are 'Kyoko,' aren't you?" he asked.
"What?"
"You're a droid. Property of the Fuwa Corporation. New prototype for the Love Me X-series."
She was recoiling in horror. "I…I am not a droid," she said. "I…had a mother…I grew up…I had a friend…!"
He could see how frightened she was, how absolutely terrified, but Ren heard himself say, "Your file said you might have some false memory implants."
"NO! NO, I know I'm not a droid!" the girl wailed. "I am Kyoko Mogami, daughter of Saena Mogami, twenty years old…I grew up…I went to school…I read books…I had…I had a friend before they took me…" She was sobbing in terror on the ground. "Please, please sir…my mother is dead…but someone out there must remember who I am…I can prove it, I'm not a droid! Please don't…please don't terminate me…I can prove it, I swear…"
Enough. He had to stop this. She was breaking his heart, and he wasn't enough of an actor to keep this up indefinitely.
"We're taking you in for evaluation." He moved forward with restraining cuffs, activating them as they secured her wrists behind her back. "Get up," he said.
Moving closer to her ear, he whispered, "I know you're not a droid. I know you ran away. Play along, and trust me. You're safe now."
He could hear her gasp sharply, but her sobs only grew in volume. The timbre had changed slightly, he took it to mean that she was sobbing in relief. He hoped.
He still regretted having to manhandle her into the hovercar, making the arrest look rough. She didn't resist. He hoped it looked convincing enough for the streetcams.
=.=.=.=.=.=
Half an hour later, he had her in a safehouse of last resort: his apartment. He didn't dare take her to the precinct. With his luck, the Fuwas would intercept her and send her to one of their pet judges just to have her remanded back into their care.
He'd sent a communique to Lory asking where to take her, a coded message had come back: the houses were compromised, it would have to be his place. Lory had succeeded in wiping the sniffer trace, claiming a system glitch for maintenance, but apparently the Fuwas were on the move, looking for her on their own. Lory had it on good authority that they'd circumvented the civilian controls and had access to the city's systems. Ren's apartment was shielded from the city's surveillance tech, hidden from the camera grid and from the sniffer network. It was necessary for some of the work he and Lory did, particularly when they investigated their own department for wrongdoing. No other safehouse was going to be safer for her tonight than Ren's place.
The girl was silent all through the ride back to his apartment, her face drawn and pale. Ren had tried to reassure her, tell her it was going to be OK, that he was one of the good guys—and that he wasn't working alone. But she sat mutely behind him, even when he released her arms from the restraints. I can't expect her to trust me just like that, he thought. Was she relieved? He'd thought she was, but he also had no idea what kind of trauma she'd been through. With her arms freed, she sat limply in the rear seat of the hovercar, looking as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible. He was afraid she was thinking she'd exchanged one form of captivity for another, though he hoped to disabuse her of that notion sooner rather than later.
When they got to his place, he made sure to palm the door lock behind them, and her eyes had widened. "This place is a dead zone for the sniffers and the cams," he said. "I need to make sure the door is secured to prevent any leakage of traceable info."
She nodded, but still looked wary. "Let me show you around. It'll be a short tour, though," he said, smiling ruefully. The apartment was clean, but spartan and small. It was an efficiency model, featuring a single room for both his kitchen and his bed, and a simple shower in place of a bath. "I'm sorry you got dirty during the arrest," he told her. "If you'd like, you can use the shower. I have some clothes you can borrow. We can wash your kimono, maybe get you more clothes tomorrow."
She nodded again, and Ren's heart went out to her. She'd been so cheerful in the restaurant—that confrontation in the alleyway must've been incredibly traumatizing. He regretted being so rough with her, but didn't know how else he could've bought Lory time to bring in an inquiry as to her status. He wanted to talk to her, hear her story. But even he knew that as far as she knew, he might not be any better than Fuwa himself. He went to his closet and pulled out a large shirt and some drawstring shorts for her, along with a fresh towel. He knew they'd be comically large on her tiny frame, but they were clean, and comfortable, and better than nothing. He held them out and she took them, holding them to her chest. "Thank you…um…"
"Ren," he said, as warmly as he could. "Just Ren."
"Ren…kun," she whispered. She bowed and then closed the door, and he sat and waited while he heard the water running.
Twenty minutes later she walked out of the bathroom, dressed in the clothes he'd provided. Just as he'd suspected, the shirt hung almost to her knees. Without looking at him, she sat on the bed as if she were trying to muster up her courage and her determination to say something she didn't want to say. But her courage won out. "Ren…kun," she said, and the silence lengthened for a bit. "Will you—will you be using me this evening?"
Ren looked up in shock. She'd clearly been trying to hold herself steady, but she'd begun trembling, and he got an inkling of exactly what she meant when she said 'he' had hurt her. "No!" he said, shocked. "Kyoko-chan," he said, "Kyoko…look at me."
Gold eyes looked up at him.
"I promise you, so long as I live, that no one will ever harm you again," he said, surprised that he meant it. "And that includes me. So no. I will not 'use' you. Your body is yours, and while you're here, you are safe."
Her quiet resolve broke, and she began sobbing again. He hesitated for a split second, not knowing how to comfort her. He knew touching her would be problematic—if she had survived the kind of evil he thought she had, his uninvited touch would simply exacerbate her trauma. But he managed to offer her a clean handkerchief, which she took gratefully. "Would you like some tea?" he asked. She nodded.
Minutes later, he handed her a steaming cup of chamomile tea. "Hopefully this will help you get some sleep," he said. "We're in the safest place you could possibly find in the city tonight."
She nodded again, taking a sip of the tea.
"You can sleep on the bed. I'll sleep on the couch," he said.
"But…" Her eyes looked over at it. She could see that he wouldn't fit on the couch.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "Being this tall, you get used to sleeping on things that are too short. You're my guest. So you get the bed."
She looked like she was going to argue.
Ren sighed, crossed his arms, and shook his head at her. "You're not going to sleep on a couch when there's a perfectly comfortable bed for you."
He was gratified to see a small spark in her eye, an echo of the girl who'd lectured someone on the dangers of a diet made up solely of reconstituted powders. There she is, he thought.
"I'm going to take a shower now, too. I know you don't trust me yet, and I don't expect you to. But you should know that the Fuwas are looking for you. They have access to the sniffer network, and likely the cameras, too. You're not a prisoner here, but I'm asking you, sincerely—please don't leave. You're not safe out there."
"I…I understand," she said softly. "Thank you."
After his shower he found her asleep on the couch after all, her thin body curled into a tiny ball. "Kyoko-chan," he whispered. Asleep like this, she looked even more frail and delicate, and he couldn't help the surge of tenderness that rose up in him. He didn't know what kind of life she'd been leading since she'd escaped, but the affection the patrons of the Darumaya showed him that he'd taken her from a place she could call home. He regretted taking her away, but he also knew it was only a matter of time before she'd be found there.
He found the spare blanket and tucked it around her, and then headed to bed himself.
=.=.=.=
He woke up, alarmed, to a high, keening wail. He reached for his gun out of instinct, grabbing it from the corner of his bed where he kept it in case a vengeful syndicate ever managed to breach his apartment, rolled for cover between the bed and the wall and slapped on the lightswitch, not knowing what he'd find.
There was no one there except a broken girl, screaming in her sleep. Ren took deep breaths, calming himself after the adrenaline rush, watching as the girl on the couch tossed and turned and tried to escape from whatever was haunting her. "No…no, please…" she was muttering.
Ren crept over to her side. Instinctively, he put a hand on her shoulder. "Kyoko-chan," he said. She whimpered and he could see her eyes fluttering. "Kyoko-chan!" he said again, louder.
That woke her. She bolted upright and sprang back away from him like a cornered animal, and then he could see her again, curling herself up into a tiny ball and trying to be invisible. "You were having a nightmare," he said. "I'm sorry I had to wake you."
She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling quickly, but she uncoiled, slowly, as he moved back to give her room. He was going to say something pithy, something comforting, and then he saw it.
She'd thrown off the blanket during her nightmare, revealing a small, star shaped birthmark right above her left knee. There was only one other girl he knew that had a birthmark just like it, one that he'd seen as she was being carried off by a number of threatening looking goons in Kyoto's national forest years ago. A girl whose name was also Kyoko. He was staring at it, stunned. Moments later, he realized she was staring at him, dawning concern rising in her eyes. "Kyoko…chan," he said, his mouth suddenly dry.
"Ren-kun?" she asked.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked. He was heartsick. If she was who he thought she was…he didn't want to complete the thought. "Only if you want to. If you think it will help. You said that…he hurt you."
She was silent for a long, long time. "He likes to hurt people," she said quietly. "Sho Fuwa, that is." She wrapped herself back in the blanket.
"Kyoko-chan—"
"I'm not the only girl," she said quickly. "There's two more of us. Moko…and Chiori," she added. Her voice was trembling. "I was just…the one they were preparing the longest. You have to help them!" she cried, "The only reason I got away is because I knew the forest! But they're still there, Ren-kun—"
Two more, he thought. Two more women, captured. She was going to be an incredibly powerful witness.
"Tell me…how did you end up with the Fuwas to begin with, anyway?" He was half-afraid he already knew, and his eyes were searching her face for the traces of the little girl she'd been.
"My mother…my mother belonged to one of them," she said. "We used to live together in Arashimaya…but then one day she died and…they took me from there. One day—I was playing with my friend in the forest—and then they just took me. I was so young and frightened but they said I didn't have a choice…"
"Arashimaya," he echoed, remembering a summer when he'd gone camping in the national forest with his parents. They'd been alive back then, long before the car crash that left him an orphan.
"At first I thought Mother had made arrangements for me to live with the Fuwas," she said. "I thought they were going to train me as some kind of servitor. For years and years, they made me work as a servant. I thought maybe I'd be a cook or something at one of the resorts."
"But that's not what happened."
"No."
The tale that followed was one he'd seen himself in his own nightmares. She hadn't recognized him, but it was her. His own Kyoko. Kyoko, who had been snatched from the forest on the day her mother had died—killed by the Fuwa retainer who no longer wanted her. Who'd been raised and trained as a servant and a cook, kept untouched and unspoiled until it was time to put a collar on her and box her up like a toy for the Fuwa heir's seventeenth birthday.
"He…he likes to break people," she whispered at Ren. "That's why they didn't hurt me before. So that he could break me after."
"You don't have to tell me if it will bring back bad memories, Kyoko—"
She shuddered, her eyes going glassy. "I thought I was going to die," she said. "I still think that he—"
"No." Ren reached for her hand, gently, slowly, asking for permission with his eyes as he took it in his. "I won't let him."
"You don't know them," she said, "I'm scared. I only escaped because Darumaya's Taisho happened to be driving back from visiting family in Kyoto and found me on the road."
"You're so brave," Ren said.
"No. Just desperate. I knew Sho was going to do something…really bad…that night." She had turned pale. "He…showed me…what…" She was shaking uncontrollably. "I had to escape…I ran through the woods in the dark…I figured even if I fell off a cliff or something it would be better…"
She sobbed.
" Shhh, Kyoko-chan. I'm here." He squeezed her hand in his, reassuringly. "You have me. I've been looking for you for a long time."
She looked up in surprise. "Back then, you called me Corn," he said. "Because mom had just grilled some corn on the campfire and I gave you some when we met. We played together for a week."
She was looking at him like she'd seen a ghost. "You…are you…"
"Yes."
"Because…because you were camping…"
"My parents had taken me to the forest for vacation, and I saw you playing by the stream."
"You gave me your lucky stone…"
"And you dropped it." He got up and went to his nightstand, where a certain blue gem had been waiting for years. "I couldn't stop them…I felt so helpless. I'm sorry."
"You were just a kid, too."
"I never stopped looking for you," he said. "It's why I became a detective."
He knelt by her on the couch, taking her hand again. He placed the stone on her palm and gently closed her fingers over it. "And now I can give it back to you."
When he looked up again, she was weeping. "Thank you," she said. He didn't resist when she clutched at him, holding on as if she never wanted to let him go.
=.=.=.=.=
A month later…
"Did you know?" Ren asked. He was back in the station staring at Lory, who was looking almost smug as he lit another cigar. Kyoko had been living in his apartment for the past month, and he was frightened of how attached to her he'd gotten. He was helping her slowly recover, though the torture she'd been through was the kind some people never recovered from.
"Know what?"
"Who she really was."
Lory looked at him curiously. "You seem to think I have powers that no one could possibly have, Ren. But I'm glad you found her after all." Lory had been instrumental in establishing Kyoko's identity. By the time the Fuwas found out where they'd hidden her, it was too late. He and Ren had taken the file detailing 'LoveMe Prototype X001' to several subject matter experts who'd declared the specs impossible given the current state of the art. The Fuwas could not provide any evidence of the technology they'd claimed to develop, either.
Kyoko had been the linchpin to the investigation Lory had wanted to do for years. Her knowledge was invaluable, and it was clear why the Fuwas wanted her terminated so badly. She simply knew too much. They'd used Kyoko's testimony to establish probable cause for their authorization to raid the Fuwa estate, finding not just the two women Kyoko knew but also a number of others that she didn't.
Ren had not seen fit to tell her that they'd also found remains.
Sho Fuwa and his father had been indicted for human trafficking, murder, and a number of other charges, though they had yet to stand trial.
Whether justice would be served was yet unknown, though Ren took comfort in the fact that at least one predator was off the streets. For now.
"I'll see you for discovery with the attorneys," Ren said. He was grabbing his coat and heading home.
Kyoko was waiting.
=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=
Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Um. Yeah, so...Sorry for the rushed ending. This was originally going to be one of those thousand-word one-shots, but it ended up outgrowing the 2k limit I put on myself for those. I may revise it in the future to take care of the end bits, which definitely could use some expansion and revision. Let me know what you think.