"Did you get any sleep at all? I've seen you refill that mug multiple times now, and it's only ten."
Kaneki's head jerks up, startled by Hide's voice, spilling coffee on his white shirt from the mug he was holding in his hand.
He clears his throat and replies, "Uh, yeah, I went home late yesterday," staring at the mess he had just made.
"Had a little too much fun, perhaps?" smirks Hide, placing his feet up on his desk and leaning back in his chair to squint his eyes at his colleague.
Kaneki grumbles, "I was on the case," setting the mug down on the desk before removing his reading glasses and massaging his nose bridge. His cheeks are flushed red as he recalls his unexpectedly passionate experience with a certain woman. He wasn't about to admit to his partner that this mysterious woman of his was keeping him up at night, the reason he couldn't sleep at all.
He shakes his head and stands up to retrieve a clean shirt from his bag. He always has one on hand in case of need. He begins to unbutton his stained shirt.
A few people were at the office today; the majority were out in the field, and Akira had ordered Kaneki and Hide to stay inside in their shared office room and wrap up their late reports. Being action-oriented men, they had initially opposed the notion, but her glare made them shrink and return to their seats.
Watching the white-haired agent as he stood shirtless in the middle of the room, Hide jests, "Dude, just change at the restroom. No one wants to see you naked."
Kaneki turns away from his partner to grab the clean shirt, grumbling, "And whose fault is it that my shirt is now ruined?"
"Oh, come on! Don't blame the innocent for your own clumsine - holy fuck, Kaneki!" gasps Hide, startling him once again.
The fact that the man had cuss alone was alarming enough, but he could also hear the genuine shock in his voice.
The white-haired male turns around with a frown on his face. "What? What is it this time?"
"What the hell happened to your back?"
"My back?" repeats Kaneki.
Hide nods. "You have scratches all over it. And not some I-bumped-into-the-wall kind of scratches, it looks like a large feral cat used you as a scratching post."
Kaneki freezes for a second before his face flushes red and he quickly dons his shirt on.
"Uh, well," he stammers out. He truly had no idea how to justify the marks on his back, so he went on the offensive. "I-it's nothing! Just some kind of, you know! Well..."
Hide's expression gradually changed from one of astonishment to one of giddiness, his mouth opening into a broad grin reminiscent of a child's face on Christmas. "Did you...by any chance, get laid?"
Kaneki mumbles something incomprehensible while refusing to look at him, and the blond man's smile just becomes wider. "I can't believe it, you're no longer a virgin!"
Kaneki glares angrily at him. "Lower down your voice, Hide!"
The said man smiles smugly, "Ah, so you did get laid! Who was it, tell me? Who did you sleep with?"
Kaneki scowls, sitting back on his chair. "You don't need to know that," he discloses, flipping through a document he had on his desk, before sighing in discontent and setting it back on the desk. "I hate this, why did Akira-san force us to stay inside? I wanted to go with the others to help with the questioning."
Hide chortles, "I guess it has something to do with the fact that we haven't been doing much paperwork lately. You can always tell me about your mysterious woman if you're so bored."
"Knock it off already. Why do you even need to know?"
"It's not often that the great Kaneki-or Sasaki-or whatever they call you, gets flustered over a woman," Hide enthuses, with a hint of cynicism in his voice. "She must be a special person."
Kaneki's visage changes to one of contemplation for a brief while as he visualizes the short-haired woman's face, her soulful two eyes, and her oh-so-alluring lips. Only after three encounters did he realize that she was a truly remarkable woman who made his heart race faster than he ever imagined it would.
After a long pause, Hide remarks, "Take that ridiculous expression off your face. You look horrendously mushy."
Kaneki gives him a death stare. "Who are you calling mushy, Hide?"
"You, of course. Now are you going to answer my questions or what?"
Kaneki groans in frustration, yielding to his best friend's persistence. Hide is someone Kaneki might choose to confide in about his problems. They'd known one other since they were children and had been through everything together.
"Fine. But whatever I tell you cannot leave this room, understood? If I hear about it from someone else, I'll rip your head off."
Hide looks at him in surprise, "Wow, this must be some important stuff if you're threatening me. Your one and true best friend."
"The thing is, if Akira-san or Arima-san find out, they'll be really disappointed, and I'm not sure I could keep this position," admits Kaneki.
"Did you engage in any illegal activity?" queries Hide.
"Not necessarily, but suppose there was information about our situation that I ought to have shared with them. Do you recall the time we were at Kanou's house?"
"Yeah," beams Hide. "I can't possibly forget that. You were left behind in handcuffs with your face painted red. And to think that you're Arima-san's favourite makes it more funny and hilarious."
"Yeah, well," continues Kaneki, choosing to ignore his partner's snide remark, "the woman who handcuffed me, the same one that we saw at the bar -"
"Woah, woah, wait, wait, wait," interjects the other man, "are you trying to say that you slept with that raving beauty who kicked asses?"
Kaneki bobs his head sheepishly. "I saw her at V nightclub when I was on duty."
Hide looks him over from head to toe for a few seconds before bursting out laughing and spitting out a globe of saliva. "You banged a stranger — who might also be a criminal - while you were supposed to be working on the case?"
Kaneki shifts in his seat and taps his foot repeatedly on the floor in a nervous manner. "I admit it's not the best course of action, but consider yourself in my circumstances! I had been at it for two weeks and nothing happened. I was bored out of my mind, until she came along. Hide, you should have seen her. She was a sight."
The man focuses his gaze on him before smiling perversely. "Was she good at least?"
"Well, it was certainly worthwhile," murmurs Kaneki. "She clearly has something to do with Kaiko's case because I have seen her three times in locations related to the matter."
"You think so?"
Kaneki nods. "I'm certain about it. She even told me that she was looking for information."
Hide lets out a heavy sigh as he reclines in his chair and gives the other man an expressionless face. "If that's the case, Akira-san would undoubtedly punch you to death if she knew you saw her again without having her taken into custody."
"But she didn't kill Kanou," objects Kaneki, raking his fingers through his hair. "The bullet was identical to the one we recovered in Mrs. Fueguchi's body, and it was obviously one of Kaiko's men who did it. I wouldn't be surprised if he were the one who sent someone to assassinate Kanou."
Hide nods, reaching for a file on his own desk and flipping through it. "Kaiko could frame that poor girl. Talk about wrong place and wrong time."
"How many other girls are we going to find until that bastard is behind bars?" Kaneki clenches his jaw in anger.
Hide trails his fingers down the page his eyes were skimming over. "Do you think that woman is one of his girls?"
Kaneki shakes his head. "No, I don't think so. She has money, and she doesn't need to work for him."
"It could be to keep up appearances. You know that he likes to dress them up fancily to hide their real jobs."
"That's true, but I am sure she isn't one of them. She was a virgin," he admits.
Hide's eyes widens, and he looks up from the file on his lap. "That woman, a virgin? You must be kidding."
"I was as surprised as you are," returns Kaneki. "That's why I'm saying that she doesn't work for him. She can't be one of his prostitutes."
"So she was a virgin and she has money, you say," ponders Hide, stroking his chin. "The possibility of her being a wealthy heiress reduces the population of Tokyo to less than 1%, therefore identifying her shouldn't be too challenging."
Kaneki raises his eyebrows. "What? Why?"
"Don't you want to know whose cherry you popped?"
"Well, yeah, but -"
Hide cuts him off, saying, "We should start checking into his wealthy associates if she is looking into Kaiko. She might even be able to assist us with the case and point us in the direction of that guy as she looks to be on level with us."
Kaneki takes a deep breath before leaning back on his chair and extending a hand towards his partner. "Point taken, give me one of the files."
The white-haired male pinches the bridge of his nose and hurls the file he was holding carelessly on top of the ones he had already read. "This was all for naught. Neither I nor the electronic database can locate anything, and I have no idea where to look for that woman."
"Calm down, everything would have been simple if you could have just gotten her name," says his partner, cracking his neck.
Kaneki frowns slightly. "Do you suppose I haven't given it a shot? She resisted giving any personal information."
Stretching his arms above his head, the blond man looks at the mountain of folders he has already combed through. "We could have overlooked a name, or perhaps we weren't looking closely enough. She might be concealed somewhere in those files, for all we know."
A fatigued Kaneki rubs his eyes. "She is the first woman in my life who has ever exhausted me this much," he murmurs to himself.
Hide chuckles, patting his best friend on the back. "So what do we do now?"
Kaneki pauses to consider. "We could dig into Kaiko's background, and perhaps one of his former acquaintances or associates could point us in the direction of both her and Kaiko."
"No, I don't think so," says Hide, while shaking his head in protest. "I don't think confronting him personally is the answer, moreover everyone in this office has read through his file at least twenty times."
"Do you have any better idea then?" asks Kaneki.
Hide beams. "As a matter of fact, I do. These files were printed from the internet database, which only contains information up to 2009 and only contains a small amount of data. Investigating prior 2009 cases is our only option."
Kaneki recoils with disdain." The ones in the archive room? Even though I'm a voracious reader myself, we'll never be able to finish reading them all."
"Not when we know what we're searching for. I doubt there are that many referring to rich heiresses," returns the other man.
Kaneki ponders for a while, praising his best friend in a low-key manner. Both Kaneki and Hide were men of action. He did, however, occasionally astound Kaneki with flashes of brilliance. Not that the white-haired agent would ever acknowledge it.
"That's actually very logical," he whispers to himself, standing up from his chair. "I'll take care of it."
"Yo, Kuroiwa. I have a favour to ask from you," greets Kaneki, his head peeking from the mentioned man's office.
Takeomi looks up from the screen of his computer. "What is it?"
"I need you to get us something from the archive room," starts Kaneki.
"You do realize that you have the authority to enter that room, don't you? The security won't ask you for a working ID."
"Well, I know that," the white-haired agent clears his throat, leaning against the door, "But since Akira-san assigned us to report duty, she will be aware if she sees me outside the office and that we are disobeying her directive. You just need to go to the archive room right away, please."
The other man is silent for a moment, prefering to stare at his computer before sighing in defeat. "Fine, I'll do it."
Kaneki smiles in triumph. "Thank you, and while you're at it, get Yoriko-chan and ask her to bring us all the cases involving the wealthiest people in Tokyo over the past twenty years."
"What's the use of those? Shouldn't you be working on Kaiko's case right now?" asks Takeomi, watching the white-haired man walk back to his office.
"Oh, it has everything to do with the case," shouts Kaneki with a smile.
"What do you think she needs from Kaiko?" Hide inquires, when he get back to their shared office.
"Beats me," answers Kaneki, "You're asking me about her motives when I don't even know who she is?"
His partner pauses to think before opening his mouth, "Fair argument, but perhaps there is something so evident that we are simply missing it."
Kaneki places another document inside the box he just went through. "You know, the person who should be insisting on finding her is me, not you, so why are you so determined to know who she is in the first place?"
Hide chuckles. "You're right. But then, why didn't you look for her name before? Is it because you enjoy the secrecy around your casual encounters? To have slept with an unidentified criminal must be great."
Kaneki grabs another file and covers his face with them as his face turns scarlet. "Stop talking, it has nothing to do with it. We don't even know if she's a criminal or not. Maybe she's some sort of vigilante or something."
"Like Batman?"
"Sure, why not?" shrugs Kaneki.
"However, I don't remember him engaging in sexual activity with a cop."
"Hide..."
"What?"
"Be quiet for a minute, please."
They both return to reading as Hide rocks with laughter. Only the noises of pages flipping and chairs squeaking as their occupants move can be heard in the small office.
After a few minutes of silence, Hide eventually speaks, "Maybe she knew one of the prostitutes hired by Kaiko. She may be some type of vengeful angel for those poor women."
Kaneki purses his lips in a thin line. "I wouldn't blame her. What type of horrible man kills innocent girls for wanting to leave that kind of life?"
"The devil himself. Killing ladies who were looking for a better life was not acceptable at all," adds the blond agent.
"This is so tiring," grumbles Kaneki under his breath.
Hide rolls his eyes. "Stop whining; you are the one responsible. We wouldn't have to do this if you had just arrested her," he tells him, and adding, "but then again, you wouldn't have lost your virginity either -"
"For Pete's sake," moans Kaneki, rubbing a palm against his forehead in frustration. "Why do you keep saying that? Are you trying to hide that you're virgin as well?"
"You wish," huffs Hide. "Did you find anything yet?"
"Nope. There was not one female with blue eyes who resembled her."
"Me neither," sighs the blond man. "Not alive anyway."
Kaneki perks up. "What do you mean?"
The other man lifts an eyebrow and continues, "There was this one woman with blue eyes who had been killed, but they never found out who did it; but that was more than fifteen years ago, and I doubt it's your mystery woman."
"Let me look at it, it could still help us," says Kaneki, extending his hand towards him.
"Sure."
Hide picks up one of the files he had been searching through and opens it to check that it is the correct one before tossing at the other man's direction, who easily catches it in his hands and opens it lazily.
His eyes skim the pages as he reads the case synopsis before turning to the next page. His jaw drops open in shock as soon as he sees the image of the woman, and he looks up at Hide.
"Holy shit, that's her."
"What?" exclaims Hide.
"This is exactly how she looks! Don't you recall seeing her before?"
"I wasn't exactly looking at her face," mutters Hide, receiving a glare from Kaneki at his perversion. "In any case, it's not possible. There are even photos of this woman's disfigured body from long ago! Not to mention that, although having the same haircut, their hair colours differ. In this image, the woman in the foreground has light-colored hair. While your woman has a black one."
Kaneki frowns as he glances down once more, his gaze fixed on the photos taken at the crime scene. If it weren't for the bloodied body lying on the ground at the foot of the sofa, the photographs would have depicted a pleasant and opulent living room. A woman with light hair lay on her back, mouth agape, eyes wide in horror. She had severe gashes on her thighs, and her white nightgown was blood-stained and pulled up to her legs. Kaneki discovers that the grey muck on her light hair was brain matter after reading the cause of death, which was listed in the document as a bullet to the head. He was able to see the bullet hole on her temple in the subsequent image, and he nearly gagged when he saw how much of her head had been destroyed by the bullet.
"Damn," he whispers, horrified. "I've witnessed some pretty messed up stuff on this job, but this one ranks right up there."
"Worse than that body split in half?"
"Definitely worse. At least the cut had been clean. This one here is messy and plain sadistic. There's other wounds on this woman's legs, and there's others shown in the pictures of the autopsy. The killer took his sweet time with her," he notes, reading the autopsy report.
"l haven't even looked at the rest. I closed it immediately when I saw the first picture," says Hide.
Kaneki gives him a pointed look. "You probably missed something important."
"Oh, come on," whines Hide as Kaneki avidly read the file. "You saw the images; she can't be it! It's only a coincidence since there are apparently seven people in the world that resemble you. It could be just due to chance -"
"There!" shouts Kaneki in triumph, getting up from his seat to shove the file in Hide's face. "Do you see this? It stated here that they discovered two children at the crime scene, and it was soon learnt that they were actually siblings; a 3-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. That would make this young girl around our age now! I bet you everything I have that it's definitely her!"
Hide grabs the document from his hands, reading it with a frown on his face. "You might actually be right... Damn, she left both her daughter and son behind."
Kaneki moves away from his side and sits back on his chair to type on his laptop. "Let's dig up what happened to her back then. What was that woman's name again?"
"Hold up, Kirishima... Hikari?" reads Hide.
"Kirishima Hikari," repeats Kaneki, typing the name and pressing enter. He mutters in frustration as the page loads with nothing shown, "Nothing about her is mentioned here, this article only contains all the information about her murder.
"Search for her online. She was a wealthy heiress back then, thus some media may have covered her passing," suggests Hide.
Kaneki checks up the deceased woman online as suggested by his partner. A few articles appeared, and he began reading them, one by one. The white-haired agent reads aloud, "K. Hikari, wife of Konzern's owner Kirishima Arata, was found dead at their residence. The injuries prompted the police to assume that it was a murder—okay, this is all the same basic stuff."
"Nothing about those little children's name on that piece? Why is it so hard?" Hide groans, "It's like the Kirishima sibling's existence had been deleted from every database!"
"Naturally, since they were too young, the authorities won't leave their names in the file or reveal it to the public. For privacy and safety matters," Kaneki reasons out.
Hide stands up and hurls the file to the floor in frustration. He pauses to glance at the screen from behind his partner before stooping to grab the mouse from Kaneki's grasp. "Wait, look at this. The Kirishima's company went bankrupt a few years ago, which explains why I'd never heard of them before."
"If her parents' company folded, why does that woman have so much money?" wonders Kaneki.
"Perhaps, she doesn't," argues Hide. "Just because someone is dressed elegantly does not imply that they are loaded with money."
"She didn't deny it when I questioned her about it," mumbles Kaneki.
"So, if the company goes bankrupt, what happens to the two siblings and their father?" Hide wonders aloud as he reads the article. "Holy moly, look at this." Hide moves his head from the screen, allowing Kaneki to take a look at what was written on it.
"He killed himself?" The other man quirk an eyebrow.
"Yeah," mumbles Hide. "He evidently did after losing both his wife and his money. After he committed himself, his mansion and other businesses were used to pay off his debts."
Something doesn't make sense to me," Kaneki tilts his head in confusion. "Why would he do such thing and leave his kids behind?"
"No idea," replies Hide. "There's still nothing about the Kirishima siblings in these articles. It's like they disappeared after both of their loved ones' death."
"At least I now know who her parents are, and her last name," adds Kaneki.
"So what do we do from here?" asks Hide.
"We keep looking, and maybe we'll -"
Behind them, someone calls out, "Here, gents."
When they turned around, they saw Yoriko standing at the door with a box on hand. "I still don't understand why you require so many files, but Takeomi notified me of your request, so I looked for more for you."
"We're truly grateful, Yoriko-chan! And that pertains to our case, but it's confidential. Since you're not an agent, we're unable to tell you," Kaneki smiles apologetically.
The hazel-haired woman pouts, muttering, "Tell it to the person who files all your cases," as she approaches them and places the box on the ground. "So, what exactly is going on here?"
"It's about a wo -" starts Hide, before stopping in his tracks when he notices the look Kaneki gave him, and he suddenly remembers his threat. "About Kaiko. Yeah, were looking into his rich associates."
The woman gives them a doubtful look, but nonetheless shrugs it off. "Okay then, agents. I'll leave you to it."
"Say hello to Takeomi on your way back, make the man happy," snickers Hide.
He can see the woman's cheeks redden, "Why would I do that?" she squeaks out.
"Sure you don't," mumbles Hide, sharing a knowing look with his partner.
"Whatever," she whispers back, walking back to the door. Disdainfully, she regarded the files that were dispersed across the office, knowing that she would have to rearrange them before re-putting them back on the racks in the archive room. A document that was open on the floor attracted her attention as she was about to leave the room. She squats down, grabbing it in her hands, and examines the image, her eyes widen in realisation.
"Oh my god, Touka...chan?"
