"Well, what do you think? Any thoughts?"
The man who was seated in front of her put his chin on top of his hands and began drumming his fingers lazily against the table. His arms were outstretched on the table to support his head as he marveled at the photo in front of him.
He responds mockingly, puckering his lips, "Ahhh, I informed you last time, we don't do that type of stuff here, missy."
She laughs cynically. "You think I'd believe you? I know what goes on behind closed doors, and I'm giving you an offer you can't turn down. I'm even willing to increase the offer from ten to fourteen," she smiles, placing another picture on the table with an additional four women on it.
The man snickers, "I find you hilarious. But with all due res-fucking-pect, you are a deluded woman. As opposed to what you appear to believe, this is a club, not a whorehouse."
She smiles at him before reaching into the folder she had set down on the table and pulling out a photo to lay on top of the others. "Fueguchi Ryouko, I heard that you guys lost her due to...tragic circumstances," she continues, emphasizing the latter words.
The man stares incredulously at the photo, his lips twitching before hurriedly masking his face with his eyes closed and lips extended in a cryptic smile. "In my entire life, I have never seen that woman."
"You sure about that, little boy?" She only smiles more and pulls out another photo from her folder, throwing it against the table. "This is her inside of this very club two days prior to her death, wearing the same uniform."
The man, Furuta, clasps his hands together on top of the table while keeping his weird smile plastered on his face.
She takes another photo and overlays it with the others. "And this is Fueguchi Hinami, her sole child, a few days after she made her escape."
His eyes bore into the picture before his left eye—the one with a beauty mark—twitches, and she cracks a pleasant smile. "I know exactly where she is, and I can get her to you before it's too late, but if you can't make up your mind this instant, then you can bid farewell to your little organization if she decides to go to the authorities,"
He pauses to reflect for a moment, tapping a finger against his chin before speaking up again, scornfully, "Give me a basis first to trust in your words."
She bends over the table, pushing her face closer to Furuta's, and disregarding his words, adds, "After losing two of your lovely ladies, you have a scarcity of young and submissive women. I have fourteen to offer you for the price of ten, ages thirteen to twenty-seven."
He presses his lips firmly together, running a finger over his fake mustache. "You're correct, I can't pass up that offer, but I would need to first meet them in person."
"That can be arranged."
"Would you like to be a part of the goods?" he jokes as his eyes wander over her body, and she has to stop herself from shuddering in distaste.
"Unfortunately not, Mister Clown," she drawls, smirking. "I'm merely their agent. Besides, I don't like being at the bottom. I'm not the kind of wimp and submissive woman who will lick your ass hole."
"With that body of yours, you'd still be a relatively new member of our small group," he grins, staring at her with half-lidded eyes.
"All I have to offer are those women. They are wonderful, gorgeous women who will make you a small fortune," she tells him, lips pursing into a thin line.
The man then shrugs, yawning in boredom. "Then it's settled," he states firmly, extending a hand towards her. "Send them two nights from now. We're holding a small sale with frequent customers and we'll see how they perform."
She takes his gloved hand in hers and shakes it. "That suits me just fine."
She begins gathering the pictures and placing them in her folder. She nods at him firmly and gets up from her seat to exit the suffocating room. The man was drilling a hole in her skull the entire time by gazing into the back of her head.
"Oh, and miss?"
The woman stops walking and turns around to look directly at the unsettling man, who was unnervingly seated in his seat, appearing to have a complete control over everything around him.
"Don't leave us hanging because doing so would end very badly for you," he drawls, picking his teeth with his pinky finger.
She takes note of his slasher smile, and returns it. "I would never consider it."
"You sure about that, little girl?" he chuckles, mocking her words from earlier while watching her as she leaves the room.
"Oh, my goodness," the hazel-haired woman gasps out, gaping at the photo of the crime scene. "This is terrible and disturbing."
"So you were acquainted with that woman?" asks Hide.
"Yeah—I mean, no, not exactly," responds Yoriko, her eyes still glued to the pictures. " I only knew her daughter, who was formerly my best friend in high school. She'd told me her mother had died, but I never imagined she'd been killed."
Kaneki stands up immediately and sprints over to Yoriko, grabbing her by the shoulders and gazing into her eyes. "Yoriko-chan, please tell us more."
She gives him a startled look. "Why are you looking into her? She wasn't even living here when I met her. Rather, she had been away from Japan, for years."
"Was?"
Yoriko looks down at the photo of the woman on the document's first page. "Is or was, I honestly have no idea. She just vanished one day, and I haven't heard from her since. I'm not even sure if she's still alive or..."
"How did you meet her?" asks Hide.
"I was born here in Tokyo, but when I reached my teenage phase, my family sent me to live for a while in Barcelona so that I could study Spanish and other languages. I met her there when I participated in the exchange program in high school. At that time, Touka-chan was the only student in my class who spoke my language, so we really got along well," explains Yoriko, a sentimental smile on her face.
"For a rich heiress, I thought that she would reside with her father," comments Hide. "And, why Spain? She spoke French, which led me to believe she resided in France."
Yoriko stares at him in surprise. "What? Heiress? Touka-chan wasn't an heiress, not at all!"
The white-haired agent takes the file from her grasp and shows her the woman's name. "Look here, K. Hikari, Kirishima Arata's spouse, was her deceased mother. She also has a younger brother. The Kirishimas was once loaded. Didn't she tell you that?"
Yoriko furrows her eyebrows. "Her last name was Yomo, not Kirishima. And she used to live with her two guardians rather than her father."
The two agents stare at one other in astonishment under the woman's prying gaze.
She had either altered her last name for some reason or the Kirishimas weren't her biological parents. However, the second possibility had to be ruled out due to her eerie similarity to the murdered woman, and the fact that she shares the same hair color as the Kirishima father.
"Anything else you knew about her?" presses Kaneki.
"Well," starts Yoriko, "She and I had only been friends for three years. She told me she was originally from Tokyo, but she left and moved to Spain because she couldn't cope when her mother died. She also mentioned that she disliked talking about her other family and relatives, so I never inquired about them. But she once told me that she had a younger brother who lived in another country with several guardians."
"What happened the day she vanished? What happened that day?" insists the blond man.
Yoriko swallows as her shoulders abruptly slump and her eyes get sad. "Touka-chan... used to dream of being a biology teacher and having her own coffee shop. The best coffee I've ever tasted was even made by her," she laughs miserably. "Then, one time, she asked me to accompany her as she decided to apply at one of the local coffee shops close to our school. And well, she was eventually accepted...You guys are unaware of the fact that despite her gruff and tough demeanor, she is actually a shy, kind, and soft-hearted woman—just in a strange and frigid way. She works diligently by attending school in the morning and working from noon till midnight. And at that moment, I knew she would go far..."
Kaneki stares up at the hazel-haired girl with wonder, puzzled by her explanation. He has a hard time believing that his intriguing short-haired woman has a soft personality. As far as he could tell, she appeared to be more of a woman of action, but she appeared to have several layers that he had yet to peel off.
"When I once told Touka-chan that I could be her business partner, as I also intended to open my own bakery shop once we graduated from college, she was filled with genuine joy," continues Yoriko, staring at Hikari's file and fingering the picture of the smiling woman. "But one day, it was Saturday morning, and we didn't have classes, but she had a work. She was so busy, so we didn't get to spend any more time together, and I missed talking to her, so I texted her that I wanted to spend my rest day at the shop with her while working on our pending homework. She agreed and told me to just wait at the train station so that we could go together. I waited, but she never responded to my text and never showed up. I waited another hour before deciding to go to the shop alone, believing she was there and had simply forgotten to inform me, but I was mistaken. The manager was likewise perplexed as to why she wasn't at work, given she was unlikely to be late."
The woman's eyes have become sad and upset as she shuts the file and places it in one of the boxes before taking a long breath.
"I sat down and waited at the shop in the hopes that she would show up soon, but she didn't return any of my texts or calls. I headed out to find her and rushed all the way to her house to find out what was happening. I reasoned that she might have been late because she may have been having a serious talk with her guardians, but..." she trails off, and starts fidgeting with her fingers.
The two men did nothing but stare at her. They didn't know how to approach or console her, so all they could do was listen. She must have suffered a great deal from the memories, and she must have valued and treasured her friendship with Touka that much.
"The front door was left unlocked and nobody came to answer when I knocked on it. Everything was the same when I went in; nothing had changed other than the fact that she and her guardians had vanished. It seemed as though they simply departed the house without a second thought."
"And that was the last time you'd ever seen her?" asks Kaneki in a quiet voice.
"Yes," Yoriko nods slowly, running her hand through her hair. "I haven't seen her since... Are you going to tell me why you're hunting for her?"
The two men exchange glances before the blond nods to his companion, and Kaneki sighs heavily before turning to face the woman. "We believe that Kaiko is somehow connected to her mother's murder, her father's suicide, as well as her and the guardians' disappearance."
Yoriko raises an eyebrow. "How?"
"Hikari and Kaiko's victims died-well, killed in the same method, then it is possible," answers Hide.
"I don't understand how you came to that conclusion," adds Yoriko, picking up Hikari's document. "In this passage, it is stated that the crime scene had nothing connected to Kaiko, and her husband's death was determined to be a suicide. Secondly, this all happened years ago; why would you dig this out now?"
The white-haired male swallows the lump in his throat as he muses on how he would tell the woman that her friend was still alive and on the run.
"Yoriko-chan..." hesitates Kaneki. "I'm not sure how to tell you this, but your friend, Touka-chan, is still alive. She has been sighted by us within this city."
Yoriko takes a sharp gasp. "You mean... that she left Spain to come back to live here? But then, how do you know that the woman you are referring to and Touka-chan are the same person?"
"We don't know anything about that," adds Hide, "But all I know about her is that she has short and dark hair. I've only ever seen her once, and Kaneki has seen her a few times in locations where we were looking into Kaiko. We suspect it might have anything to do with her mother's murder because she seems to be monitoring him for some reason."
They could both see the anguish Kosaka was experiencing in her eyes and in the way she was tightening her hands. Her brows were creased, and her jaw was fixed firmly in place. She felt betrayed by her friend since she had believed that they would always be friends and that their commitments to stay close had been broken. Even though she was in the same city, she never went to speak to her or even let her know that she was at least still alive.
"If-if it has something to do with the case," starts Yoriko, her voice quavering, "then I should tell you a little bit about her."
That appears to have piqued their interest, as they sit still and stare at her with threatening intensity.
"After over a year of not hearing from her, I went home one day after school and found something in the mail. You remember how I said she was a shy girl who also detested pictures of her?"
The two nods, and Kosaka takes a deep breath before continuing, "Well, at that point, I knew she was still alive because I received a small package containing a single photo of her and me smiling together taken from her phone. There was a short message written by her at the back of the picture, saying she was very sorry, that she missed me every single day, and that she hoped we'd meet again one day to fulfill our dreams together."
"So, if she had the time to send you a picture, it means that she hadn't been taken by anyone that day," comments Hide. "If you ask me, I believe she was on the run from someone when she abruptly decided to abandon everything behind."
"Despite her frigid demeanor, Touka-chan was the kindest girl I'd ever met," mutters Yoriko more to herself. "I find it hard to believe that she was associated with some criminals, let alone sought out the most dangerous one we know about."
"She's not all that she seems to be," replies Kaneki. "She's certainly not the same girl you knew back then."
He hears Hide's taunting chuckle and gives him a blank stare, resulting in his best friend smirking smugly at him.
"Obviously, very different," drawls Hide, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back on his chair.
Yoriko seems to be saddened by the words, as she bites her bottom lip and looks away. She seemed to care profoundly for her best friend, despite the fact that she hadn't seen her since she was seventeen, and Kaneki thinks that the mysterious woman, Touka, certainly left a long-lasting influence on everyone she met in her life.
"Hey, Yoriko-chan," the white-haired agent calls out, suddenly remembering something. "What about the people she lived with? You mentioned that she had two guardians. Can you tell us anything about them? Maybe it'll help us."
"Sure," she bobs her head. "I didn't see them very often when I visited their house, but she said that they were also working on a coffee shop—a different one than Touka-chan had worked on, and I remember the older woman being quiet and reserved yet friendly, and the older man being courteous and fun. And Touka-chan adored both of them."
"What was their names?" inquires Hide.
"Irimi and Koma...was it? I don't really remember their full names," mutters Yoriko more to herself than to them. "They were close family friends, she told me."
Kaneki furrows his eyebrows; a lot of things are starting to make sense. If the two guardians were family friends, they were undoubtedly notified soon after Hikari died unexpectedly, and they responded quickly to take her children out of Tokyo. On the flip side, the father's willingness to spend such a long time apart from his kids would indicate that the two siblings were in grave danger. It didn't, however, explain why he would take his own life.
"Yoriko-chan, you really are a blessing," Kaneki tells her with a big smile. "You've brought us great enlightenment."
She sighs, obviously exhausted from their conversation. "I only hope you people are right and that the person you saw was her. The Touka-chan I know is not a horrible person. Whatever she is doing right now, there must be a valid justification for that."
Kaneki honestly believed that something was devouring the dark-haired woman's mind and sanity after he felt her cry on his shoulder the other night. That woman had motives close to her heart, and if she was willing to put her life on the line to go after someone as dangerous as Kaiko, that meant that she probably had nothing to lose at this point.
"We'll try our best," replies Kaneki somberly, a determined look on his face.
She smiles widely at him. "Thank-"
"Kosaka, you've been here for ages," interjects Kuroiwa's voice, who was suddenly entering the office. "So, what's the deal with -"
When Takeomi notices Yoriko's teary eyes and her unsteady frame, his eyes widen and he interrupts himself. Under the shocked looks of Kaneki and Hide, he moves in front of her in just two steps, grasping her shoulders and gazing into her eyes.
"Are you okay, Yoriko? What happened?" he asks, slightly panicky, before looking at the other occupants of the room. "What happened?"
Before the two perplexed agents had a chance to respond, Yoriko shakes her head and murmurs, "It was nothing... We were just talking about something that brought back old memories, it's nothing bad."
She smiles up at him reassuringly, and his gaze instantly softens, as they stare into each other's eyes. It was a few seconds before a cough brings them out of their daze, as they had completely forgotten that an uncomfortable Kaneki and a smug Hide were also in the room with them.
"Saiko-chan would have had a field day if she had seen the little exchange we just witnessed," comments the blond man. "If that wasn't unbearably mushy, I don't know what it was."
Kuroiwa was just staring at him with a blank face while the woman blushed to the roots of her hair.
The expressionless man clears his throat and straightens up, letting go of the hazel-haired woman. "You all better go back to work, before Akira-san catches you slacking off." And with that, he walks out.
"You shouldn't tease him so much," reprimands Yoriko. "Leave the poor man alone."
"Come on," whines Hide. "It's all in good fun."
She simply shakes her head, a slight smile on her lips, and the two agents are relieved to see her back to herself. "Good luck with the investigation, and feel free to contact me at any time if you need further information regarding Touka-chan."
"We'll do," replies Hide, smiling at her with gratitude before she makes her way out of the office.
"Oh, and Yoriko-chan?" Kaneki calls back, and she comes to a halt, turning her head around and raising an eyebrow at him. "Do you think I could borrow that picture to verify that it's really her?"
Yoriko nods before her eyes turn serious. "I'll give it to you, but I expect you to take care of it. It's the only memento I have of her."
The white-haired agent gives a sincere smile. "Will do."
She smiles and departs the room, and Kaneki returns to his screen, deep in contemplation. When he thought he had unraveled the mystery of that heiress, Yoriko dropped a series of bombs on them, further complicating matters.
He had managed to figure out that she was running away from something, and that something was probably related to Kaiko. So why would she return to her hometown, where he had a base of operations and where it would be tenfold easier for whoever she appeared to be escaping from to find her? And why exactly, as well as by whom, had her mother been murdered? And that wasn't even taking into account the fact that her father committed suicide as soon as his wife was snatched away from them and his businesses began losing money rather than making a profit.
The whole thing was giving the white-haired agent a headache, but he was determined to learn the crucial information if it would enable him to put the dangerous man in jail, and he was confident that she would somehow aid them in doing that.
"You know," starts the man next to him, "when you finally succeeded in getting involved with a woman, it had to be someone more complex than the cases we handle."
"Trust me, it's a lot for me to process as well," mutters Kaneki. "These files probably won't reveal any additional information, so we should gather everything and take it back to the archive room," he adds.
"Ugh," moans the other man, putting his forehead on his desk. "Can't we just leave them be for the time being? We can pick them up tomorrow since the day is nearly over."
Kaneki pats him on the back before getting up from his seat. "Do you really want Akira-san to find out that we didn't file our reports?"
That seems to persuade his partner, who jumps to life and rushes up from his chair, quickly picking up the few folders around him. "Absolutely not, let's get back to work."
Kaneki chuckles, shaking his head before organizing the files back into their respective boxes.
"We still need to discuss our findings with our squad leader," adds Hide. "We can't just go after that woman without first informing Akira-san; she is, after all, our superior."
"How about we tell her if we see Touka-chan again?" suggests Kaneki. "It's not worth worrying Akira-san about if she drops her involvement in this case."
"Good point," replies the other man. "Now let's finish this before she comes back."
At the end of the day, after the two had only just finished their reports and had landed on her desk, Mado still reprimanded them and delivered her infamous punch.
A certain woman approaches the shady club with her heels clicking on the pavement, shivering from the cold touching her bare legs. Her uncovered eye gleams slyly, and a broad smile spans her face.
She comes to a halt, leaning against a tree to grab her hair and put it into a lower bun, her bangs still falling on her left eye. She checks her gun at her side to ensure she has enough bullets in case she needs them. She adjusts the realistic silicone skin around her hands and arms so that no evidence is left behind, as she sighs to herself and casts her eyes heavenward. The sun was setting, and darkness would soon descend on Tokyo's streets. That's when the V would start to fill up.
When she heard about the prostitution going on at the nightclub, she became interested. Finding a battered and crying Hinami had been entirely by chance, and seeing the sadness in her eyes had only convinced her to put an end to it once and for all. The brown-haired girl gave her all the information she needed about the prostitution ring and the V nightclub being one of the bases used for the sex-trade where her late mother, Ryouko, used to work behind closed doors.
As the sun is setting and more and more people enter the club, she sits down under the shade of the tree, hidden from anyone who might pass through. She huffs in disgust as she sees numerous people in high positions passing through the entrance. Money could buy you anything, including young, attractive women. The majority of these men were married, older, and bald. They were probably bored and seeking some sort of adventure, even if it meant destroying the lives of numerous defenseless young women.
Or even break their sons' and daughters' trust and hearts.
Her lips extend into a full smirk when she notices that there are more guards outside than usual, evidence of the activities that will take place that night. It was the ideal opportunity to look for what she was looking for.
She eventually grabs a cigarette from a pack she always carried with her, lights it, and puts it between her lips for a long drag out of boredom. She isn't a chain smoker; in fact, she hates the cancer stick, but occasionally it makes her feel less anxious.
When her wrist watch finally strikes eleven o'clock, she pulls out the burner phone from her pocket and quickly dials the number that will assist her in her exploration. She only needs to hold the phone to her ear for a few seconds before someone picks it up.
"Hello, good evening. This is Tokyo's Federal Bureau of Investigation, how can I help you?"
"Hello," she replies in a low and husky tone to cover her natural voice. "I've got an intriguing lead for you regarding Kaiko..."