According to the wiki, Oishi technically smokes a fictional "Gaster" brand of cigarettes, which is an imitation of the actual Caster brand produced in Japan. Since I don't have to pander to copywrite laws, I just wrote in that he smokes the actual brand. Also, his name is apparently spelled the same as a brandname of Asian snacks, and resembles the adjective "delicious," hence the precinct joke of giving him those sweets.

Hard not to talk about this, since I actually live in a suburb of Minneapolis, but I wrote this prompt during the rioting and whatnot in Minneapolis/St. Paul over George Floyd's murder, and the officer that did it had just been arrested. As a white person who doesn't live in either of these cities directly, I don't really have the right to cast an opinion on what's going on right now, but I will say its…weird?… that international news is happening just a thirty-minute drive away. Like, not weird-weird, but just an odd feeling to know that historical stuff is happening in my metaphorical backyard. My field placement teacher, who lives in St. Paul and actually only lives a mile from all these events, evacuated to Eagan today.

And maybe writing about a character who's a police officer isn't the best thing right now, but I wanted to do something that, however briefly, showed us something good in the midst of all this bad. It's also pretty much canonical that Oishi don't give a fuck about his superiors and will absolutely do the right thing even if it costs him his job and life savings, given what he did for the gang in Festival Music.

June 25th, 2020

It was a running commentary amongst the officers of the Okinomiya PD that Oishi practically lived at his desk. And that desk was a testament to his personality: an ashtray overflowing with Caster cigarettes, innumerable files in neatly-labeled black binders, thick as textbooks, piled up on both sides of the clear space in which he did his work, a box of tissues, a fold-in false knife and a bulletproof vest in one of the drawers, along with a fair number of those prank candy and snack packages that the others gave him. Said desk was also backed by the glass-fronted shelves of their other reference materials, and near one of the weapons lockers.

No one knew where he kept his real materials, the things everyone knew he was working on to try and track down the Sonozaki family murderers. They could see him working on those files all the times, muttering with a cigarette in hand or stuck contemplatively in the corner of his mouth, searching, searching, for one loose thread, one snag, one clue that he could seize and could lead him back to the ones responsible for killing Oyassan, the dam foreman, and all the rest of the murders linked to Oyashiro-sama's curse.

But when joking rookies or concerned friends rifled through his desk, wondering about the files, they were never there.

Truth be told, when Oishi did find snags –and that wasn't often, and frequently little more than gut instincts on his part– he rarely wrote them down. Evidence, evidence, that was the hallmark of the police method, and when he spotted inconsistencies, well, that wasn't near enough to even try to effect a warrant, never mind an arrest, especially when he couldn't find those culprits. In that kidnapping with the minister's grandson, those men hadn't moved like common thugs, they'd moved like men with training and experience. When the younger Sonozaki twin had fallen for Satoshi Hojo, who was almost certainly a murderer, it would make more than a little sense for the Sonozaki family to pressure him into running away, lest his arrest tar their daughter's reputation.

But telling his superiors that the men he'd fought were suspiciously competent was irrelevant when the grandson was returned, the case was solved, and those men disappeared into the wind.

And he couldn't prove anything about Satoshi Hojo's disappearance, not without the key witness of Satoshi Hojo himself, or the ones that pressured him, and Oishi knew full well that no peon of the Sonozaki head would breathe a word to the police, unofficial or otherwise.

So he stagnated.

What was all the more frustrating for Oishi was how his instincts, honed and keen from years as a police officer, were all too often right, but the structure of his country's laws and simple circumstance kept him from pressing the issue. And unbeknownst to him, all too often he stumbled on the truth, but disregarded it due to his erroneous focus on the Sonozakis, or missed it just by a whisper due to the simple fact that he did not hold all the pieces of the puzzle.

Well should he be suspicious of the men who had kidnapped the minister's grandson, for they were members of a secret task force: just one that guarded the clinic from any interlopers trying to discover its secrets.

And too many times, in the hospital, when he questioned a survivor –sometimes Keiichi, sometimes Rena, sometimes Mion or Satoko– he would ask the wrong questions, ignorant and unaware of the secret research being done by Takano and the political ramifications thereof, and when he grasped some threads –Rena Ryugu's bloodied hat, the witness to Rika Furude's murder– the realization came too late, for her would arrive at the hospital with the only witness quiet and still, overcome by a suspiciously convenient heart failure.

But in one world, the last world, he learned the truth, and it was a relief, an unmitigated relief to let go of his hatred and realize that there was no need for it, to redirect his passion and his strength into protecting the citizens of Hinamizawa from a threat far worse than the curse, had they known it.

And little did Oishi know it, but that moment in which he thwarted the actions of Tokyo and the Yamainu was the fulfillment of a hundred worlds of stagnation, a moment when he cast aside his poorly-conceived notions of the Sonozakis and instead pushed forward and stopped the evil that, in so many other words, had destroyed the people and the village he had sworn to protect.

10.44 PM, USA Central Time