I could feel the tingle of the autumn breeze on my cheeks as Josuke, Koichi, Okuyasu and I enjoyed ours after school snacks at the Deux Magots cafe. It's been three weeks since we've fought Kira, and it felt as if everything was going back to normal. Everyone was bundled up in winter coats except for Josuke. I wore a thick burgundy scarf tightly wrapped around my neck, matching my scarlet hair. The matcha milk tea warmed me from head to toe with each sip as I listened to my friends chat.

"I'm telling you guys," Okuyasu said while taking a sip of his milk tea. "That chick in my gym class likes me. She's always staring at me."

Koichi lets out a hefty sigh. "Okuyasu, just because a girl looks at you, it doesn't mean that she likes you."

"You don't have the right to say that!" Tears flowed out of Okuyasu's eyes as Josuke and I helplessly watched our friend have another one of his emotional breakdowns. "You don't know how it feels to be single!"

"Of course I do! I didn't have a girlfriend before highschool!" Koichi raised his voice in annoyance. This conversation has started to become a daily occurrence. "I wasn't always with Yukako, remember?"

"Okuyasu," The pompadour teen patted his friend's shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. "There's no need to push yourself when it comes to love. It should come naturally."

"You don't have the right to say that either!" He pointed at all three of us as if we were criminals in an investigation, starting with Koichi first. "You're all lovey-dovey with Yukako," His next target was Josuke. "You're always surrounded by girls who want to date you!" Then he went to me as I sipped my tea in silence. "You…do you have a boyfriend?"

"No. and I never have in the past." I placed my cup of tea down on the table. "I don't really think about that kind of stuff often."

"No one has ever asked you out?" Okuyasu questioned.

"No. I don't have any memories of anyone trying to hit on me." Josuke tilted his head and raised his right eyebrow.

"That can't be true. You're at the top of your class, you're pretty and you have a nice personality."

My cheeks tinted peach as I used my index finger to scratch the side of one of them. "Well I'm flattered but not a lot of people approach me in school like that."

"Well, have you ever had a crush?"

"Okuyasu, you might be getting a bit too personal Okuyasu," Josuke responded.

I blushed again and looked towards the ground. "Well, I wouldn't say he was a crush."

"What?!" Everyone yelled in unison.

Okuyasu was the first to break the silence. "When was this? Where did this happen? Did you confess? Is he a stand user?"

"Who is he?!" Josuke followed, asking me the real important question.

"Well, this is embarrassing. Yes, he is a stand user."

Okuyasu tilted his chair far back as steam came from his head. Josuke's eyes lit up as he grinned ear to ear. At this point, I could easily tell them, but I'm having too much fun going the long way.

The pompadour teen got closer to me and pointed at himself. "Kuro, you can tell me, right? We've been buddies since we were kids." The ruckus we were causing was enough to get everyone's eyes on us, making the situation even more awkward. Koichi just sat and watched as his two taller friends were almost losing their minds.

"You guys don't need to make an uproar. I'll tell you guys. But honestly, it's not a romantic crush, it's kind of a...admirer crush." The two boys quietly sat down and pushed their back up straight. I take a deep breath. "I had a crush on Jotaro Kujo."

"YOUR CRUSH WAS ON JOTARO?!" The three boys yelled in unison.

"Jeez guys, it's not the kind of crush you're thinking about." I tapped my feet nervously. "It's more like...admiration. During the Kira case, Jotaro wanted to talk to my mother at the hospital. She's always busy working late hours, and he wasn't able to get anyone from the hospital to answer his questions, so his next option was me. We ended up going to this cafe and he explained that he needed autopsies of anyone that was missing a hand when they died in any kind of accident, murder or not."

Jotaro sipped his coffee as we sat in silence. He fulfilled his goal in asking me various questions and I answered them to the best of my abilities. I never knew a grown man could be this stoic and socially awkward. I mean, I was extremely quiet before I met Josuke in elementary, but it wasn't this bad in terms of my ability to communicate with others.

I tapped my fingers on the table as I struggled to come up with an excuse to keep the conversation going. "Jotaro, my mom is the kind of person that asks a lot of questions. I don't think I would be able to ask her for pictures of the deceased because we are hunting down a killer no one in Morioh knows about. She doesn't even know what stands are or who I hang out with most of the day. I don't think she's ever met Koichi and Okuyasu."

Jotaro let out a loud sigh. "Good grief." He then pulls out his tan leather wallet and slides a business card to me. The card was covered with baby blue dolphins and starfish along with his name, degree, the college he goes to, and phone number. "I'm already starting to get a name for myself in my marine biology field. I'm nowhere close to being as well known as Dr. Izumi, but there's a chance that she might know my mentors."

I nod my head. "That makes sense. I'll also add in the fact that you're a relative to Josuke. She's known him and his mom since he was a kid, so hopefully, she will trust you a little bit more." I took a sip out of the smoothie Jotaro bought me. The similarities between Josuke and him in terms of looks are uncanny, but their personalities are total opposites. In times of high tension, Josuke is quicker to act with rage while Jotaro's calm nature can let us handle the situation by thinking it through. We wouldn't stand a chance of catching this killer if he wasn't here.

Jotaro pushed his chair out and got up as he adjusted his white cap. "I guess my work here is done. Call me back later when you get answers from your mom."

"Wait a minute Jotaro." I put my index finger up. "I have one more question for you"

The tall Japanese man let out another sigh and sat back down. "What is it?"

"Something's been bothering me ever since you got here. I know that you originally came to meet Josuke and explain the family situation at home, but why are you staying here and pursuing the role of a detective in this small town?" His eyes narrowed as I rested my elbows on the table and held my hands together. "My mother always said that every human being does something for a purpose. Whether it's greed, love, revenge, or as a survival instinct, regardless of the consequences. When you came to Morioh, life was simple and almost nothing out of the ordinary was happening until you came. Do you think that by coming here, you brought the problems we are facing now? I mean, if stand users attract one another, it wouldn't make sense that anyone else other than Josuke and I would be the only stand users in Morioh until now. We would've met the other stand users before you came. But once you came, it's as if everything in this town went out of sync. Stand users started appearing more often. A killer is out there and before no one even knew that there was a serial killer to begin with. Who are you really and why else did you come to Morioh?"

Jotaro's eyes narrowed down on me even more, making him even more intimidating than he already was. I realized I crossed a line of questions that made me look suspicious. I immediately bowed my head. "Ah! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make myself seem like the bad guy after all the things you've done for Josuke and me since you came. And you were nice enough to buy me lunch."

"No, it's ok. It's understandable. It's good to know that at least one of you kids think things through and question those around you." An unexpected slight smile came from who I thought was an emotionless man.

Josuke's nephew explained how a man named Dio has been haunting the Joestar bloodline for generations, and how even though he killed Dio years ago in Egypt, he's somehow still causing trouble for them. "Even though a century has passed, Dio's curse is still out there. Once I knew that Joseph Joestar had an unknown son in Morioh, I had no choice but to come and make sure everything was going to be ok. I knew that coming here would mean that even more Joestars would be at the same place at the same time, causing more trouble, but it was a risk I was willing to take to protest him"

Jotaro seems less like an emotionless older relative of Josuke and more like a lonely hero. The way he walks, it's as if he believes that carrying the world on his back is a task only he can do. With the deaths of his friends in the past, the way he looks at everyone seems like he's scared himself.

The young man stood up from the iron chair he sat in and rubbed my scarlet scalp. "You're a smart girl. I'm sorry that I had to get you into this mess." What's this feeling in my chest? People called me smart in the past, but it never made me feel like this. A man whose courage came from the hellish adventure he came from. And his determination to go into a similar situation to protect a family member he's never met. And he thinks that I'm smart? That's…SO COOL!"

My cheeks started to heat as I attempted to hide the glee on my face with my hands. "That's ok! Stand users need to stick together right? I'll make sure that my friends are safe!" I sped through my words while stuttering along the way. This is so embarrassing. "Well, I'll see you later!"

I waved goodbye to the man that pushed me over with a wave of emotions. For the rest of the day, it felt like my soul had been lifted up from the reality of life. I had no clue words could have stand abilities.

"I don't think anyone I know has a chance when compared to Jotaro." Okuyasu said.

I nervously waved my hands back and forth. "It's not that kind of love! He wasn't even a crush! I just thought what he said to me was sweet. But I could never date someone like him. He's almost twice my age, and he has a really scary face. His height makes him extremely intimidating as well-"

"JOTARO?!" Koichi yelled and pointed towards me. I slowly turned around to see the same man I was talking negatively about towering above me. Well shit. "I thought you left for America." I covered my face with my arms in embarrassment, praying that he didn't hear too much of what I said.

"I did," Jotaro said as he sat on a cheer near the table next to us. "My grandfather was able to return home safely. I, however, still have a little bit of work left to do."

"Again?" Josuke questioned in annoyance. "But we found the bow and arrow, not to mention that Kira has been dead for almost a month."

"This is something completely different." Jotaro pulled out twenty pictures, which all of us looked at in disgust.

Each picture was an autopsy of the bodies of the human body of the deceased with most of their hearts missing. The outsides of each person showed no signs of surgery scars. In the patients where the hearts were still there, the position of the heart was closer to the rib cage or lower down. A few of the pictures had the organs mixed up in a 'human stew'.

"How could a stand even do this?" Okuyasu said in disgust. "It doesn't make sense."

"Well, Kira had a perverted hand fetish, I wouldn't be surprised if he was working with someone that had an organ fetish," Josuke added.

"I was unable to contact Dr. Izumi during the Yoshikage Kira investigation, so I had to sneak into the hospital myself. I found nothing that was of use in the documents, but I found these pictures. I tried to connect them to the investigation, but it didn't make sense. Kira had no connection or motive to pull out the hearts of others around him, or even the ability to harvest these organs. I decided to focus on it later after the investigation and everything calmed down."

Koichi leaned back and tilted his head to the side. "After all this, there's still a killer in Morioh, huh."

I could feel Josuke's eyes on me as I scanned the pictures inch by inch. Somethings weird about all these photos, but what? "Kuro, I-"

"Be quiet for a moment Josuke," I ordered. I grabbed a red pen from my school bag and pointed at where the heart should've been in the pictures. The group leaned in. "Do you see these small lines?"

"well yeah, what about them?" Okuyasu questioned.

I used my red pen and circled the lines. "These tubes connect to the heart. Blood moves through the heart in these tubes. But it doesn't look like someone just ripped their heart out. There would've been tissue torn and the arteries would've been scared. However, this looks like a clean-cut job. The ends of the arteries that used to connect to the heart are nicely cut, as if someone used a pair of scissors while doing this. The same goes for the other pictures, excluding the really messed up ones. Do you see where I'm going with this Okuyasu?"

"...No."

"It means that whoever did this knew what they were doing and were careful when they were doing it," Jotaro added. "Either that or they wanted the hearts in good condition."

"Yeah!" Josuke pumped his fist into the air. "That's our Kuroko for ya!"

I scratch the side of my cheek in embarrassment. "It's nothing really. I just saw something similar in the pictures, that's all."

"Not just that, but look," Jotaro's finger pointed directly at a small centimeter wide hole in one of the backs of the many victims. All of us knew what this meant.

Another bow and arrow is located in Morioh.

Okuyasu facepalmed himself in frustration. "How could there be ANOTHER bow and arrow in Morioh?! Is there a factory making these?!"

Jotaro picked up the photos and placed him back in his pocket. "For now, try to travel in pairs. We don't want anything similar to what happened before in terms of casualties. Bye." He quietly walked off without anything else to say. Such a strange man.

The four of us stand users waited for Yukako to pick Koichi up for his date at the library. Okuyasu said that he had a doctor's appointment close by, so Josuke and I strolled through the rural area of Morioh to drop me off. The fall breeze punctured my cheeks, causing me to tighten the scarf around my neck. The trees that were once filled with green had gone barren, with red and yellow leaves scattered across the road. It's hard to believe that something else is going on in this peaceful town.

"So," Josuke started. "I heard that you love it when someone rubs your head and compliments you." I pause for a moment and see a giant smirk on my tall pompadour friend. He then started to roughly pat my head while rubbing my scarlet hair as if I was a puppy. "Good girl. You're such a smart girl! You're so great!"

My eyebrows furrow in annoyance as I attempt to lift his hand off my head. Unfortunately, with his 180-centimeter muscular build overpowering my 165-centimeter fit body it was no use. "Stop that! I'm not a puppy!"

Josuke's movements slowed down as his head tilted back. He freed his hand from my head to cover his sneeze. "Josuke Higashikata, why aren't you wearing a jacket?"

"Oh shut up," He responded playfully. "The only jacket I have right now is a lame puffy blue one I wore in middle school. And there's no way I'm wearing that now."

"Why don't you buy a jacket with the 1.6 million yen you have?

"That's the thing. I sorta spent it all."

"How in the world did you spend 1.6 million yen already?!" I yelled. "Don't tell me you splurged it on snacks."

"No nothing like that! I bought a big-ticket item. It's coming on Saturday and I'm going to surprise you guys with it. Besides, I've been saving up any extra money I get from my mom to buy the newest Prince jacket next to the coffee shop we usually go to!"

I sometimes can't comprehend how his brain works under his slick hairstyle. Why didn't he buy the things he needed the most first? Are all guys like this? Or am I just getting old?

He sneezed again. I stopped walking and moved closer to my friend's chest, causing his cheeks to flush. "Kuro, what are you doing?"

"You need to bend down a bit Josuke, I'm not a giant like you."

He followed my orders. I wrapped the back of my hand on his neck. My hand moved around his forehead and cheek. He was slightly warm to the touch, nothing close to a fever. I removed my scarf and wrapped it around my friend's neck. "You can have this. I have a bunch of scarves at home, so losing one isn't a big deal. Besides, you need it more than I do."

He diverted his deep blue eyes from my golden orbs and rubbed the back of his neck. Once again, his cheeks turned red. "Thank you,"

"It's not a big deal, but your cheeks have been pink a lot lately. Are you already getting sick?"

"Yes! I think I am getting a bit sick!" He said in a panicky tone. "Yea. You're right, maybe I should've bundled up today."

"...Right." I'm not surprised that he's acting weird. Josuke has always been weird since the day I met him. There were times where he would go from goofy to overwhelmingly terrifying, especially when you talked negatively about his hair.

Josuke dropped me off at my house as we said our goodbyes in the Millionaire Village. Here a lot of the wealthier citizens of Morioh live. I was never interested in my family's income because as long as I have the necessities to live, I'm satisfied. The large two-story house was bought by my mother, Dr. Kaneko Izumi. She's well known throughout Japan for her discoveries in anesthetics, pharmaceutical engendering and has been a physician for ten years. Because of her successes in the medical field, she's almost never home. My dad left for most of my life because of the absent relationship they both had. I, however, still love and appreciate my mother.

Even though she's barely home, she's always been there for me when I need it the most, such as my school entrance exams and birthdays. I understand that because there is a high demand for her skill set, she's needed for almost every day of the week and I respect her hard-working idealism. It's because of her, that I want to help others as well as a doctor, so studying is sacred to me.

As I opened the front door to my home, I noticed that my mom's black work sneakers were already at the entrance. She must've gotten home early for once. Usually, when she is home, she's asleep before I get to talk to her.

I strolled into the kitchen to get a drink when I saw a plate of rice balls wrapped in plastic wrap with a sticky note on it.

Thank you for cleaning the kitchen this morning. I woke up late this morning and I didn't have enough time to clean up after myself. I bought these from the Owson nearby. There's salmon in all of them. Make sure to study!

I smiled softly. The sunsets as I studied math, biology, and English for a couple of hours as I ate my rice balls, bathed, and went to bed, waiting for tomorrow to come.