Two days go by, and Eijun, Chris and Kanemaru have still made little progress in the missing person's case. They analyzed the footprints found at the scene, but they all came back as animals of some sort: possums, rabbits, deer. Just why are so many animals out in the middle of February? It's still nowhere close to the end of the winter season, shouldn't they be hibernating?
Even the analysis of Miyuki Kazuya's clothes and cell phone yielded no results. Kanemaru didn't find anything suspicious on them. Not even any small tears in the clothes or scratches on the phone case. It's like he just folded them up, left them there and disappeared. It's really strange.
Eijun is distracted from thoughts of work as he reaches Haruichi's house. Now it's time to pick up his tanuki… who he still hasn't named yet. He was supposed to come up with a name, wasn't he? But don't blame him. He's tried multiple names, but each time he's brought one up, the little tanuki has bitten him. The animal is a strange one indeed. It's almost as if he can understand anything he's saying. But no, that can't be it. There's no way animals can understand the intricacies of human speech. But maybe he should ask Kuramochi about that. He's a vet, he should know.
Entering the house, Haruichi shows him to where the tanuki is today. Picking up the tanuki from under Haruichi's coffee table (and why was the little guy always hiding under there? Was he afraid of the other animals? Eijun always sees a white husky around the house that looks at the tanuki a little grumpily when he leaves.), he has to drag him out from underneath. And dragging him out from underneath is a process alright. The little guy must be afraid of the other animals.
"Come on, the sooner you leave the table the sooner we can go home," Eijun whines as he tries to drag the tanuki out from under the table, only to feel the animal bite and scratch his hands.
Now that Eijun thinks about it, maybe the little guy just doesn't like being picked up. But he'll just have to accept it, he still has two hurt limbs after all.
Eventually though, Eijun is able to get him out from under the coffee table and holds him against his chest. And would you look at that, there's no blood on Eijun's arms today. Who knew that the little animal would turn out to be such a biter once he started feeling better?
"I really need to find another way of getting him out of here," Eijun mutters to himself as he is finally able to grab ahold of one of the animal's good legs and pulls him out from under the table. Before the animal runs off again though, Eijun is able to securely hold him against his chest.
This method probably isn't the best way of completing this task, but it works for now, which is all that matters.
As Eijun tries to stand up from his seated position on the ground, he hears the sound of a dog growling from behind him. Turning around, he sees that it's a large gray husky staring at him. No, staring at the tanuki in his arms.
Oh, Eijun's eyes grow wide. "You must be one of this little guy's friends!" Eijun says with a wide smile overtaking his face. It's great that the little guy is making friends with some of the other animals he's spending his days with. Eijun thought he was always under the table because he was scared of the other animals. "Don;t worry though, I'm not going to hurt him!"
At Eijun's statement though, both of the animals momentarily pause. Of course this man would think that.
"Oh Eijun, you're still here?" Haruichi asks as he walks back into the room and notices Eijun hasn't left yet.
"Yep, I'm just meeting one of this little guy's friends," Eijun answers him. When he says that though, the husky growls back.
"I wouldn't say those two are 'friends' exactly," Haruichi says. "Speaking of which, have you come up with a name for him yet?"
"A name?" Eijun hums. "I've come up with a couple, but he doesn;t seem to like any of them," Eijun slightly lifts the tanuki up higher to look at its face. "How would you feel about Spots?"
The tanuki only growls back menacingly.
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Mei honestly doesn't know what he is doing in this part of town. He has no business being over here. In fact, he's pretty sure he's never been to this part of town before. None of the buildings look familiar. This is some residential part of town he's never been to.
All he knows is that he had gotten into an argument with his roommates earlier, which isn't that uncommon, and he went outside for a walk to cool off. He tried calling his best friend, Miyuki, but the asshole hasn't answered any of his calls in what? Five days now?
And now he's in some part of town that he's never been to. But he's not lost, okay? He can get home easily… one he finds a place that he's familiar with. Give him a break though, there are far worse areas he could've gotten lost in.
He rounds another corner, still not recognizing anything familiar. That's when he hears-
"Hey! Can you stop trying to get out of my arms?! You still can't even walk right!"
Mei looks across the street where the yelling is coming from. He sees a man holding a… dog? No, at second glance that's a tanuki. One that's trying to get out of the man's arms. On a third glance, that tanuki looks oddly familiar. No, very familiar.
Is that… Miyuki?
Mei realizes that it's been a couple days since he's heard from his friend. And he vaguely remembers Miyuki's roommate calling him a couple days ago and asking if he saw him. Mei thought it was strange at the time. But now watching a man wrestling with a tanuki in his arms he has a sinking suspicion that his friend has been kidnapped.
Well, Mei can't stand by and just let this happen… even if he occasionally likes to watch Miyuki suffer.
"Hey! You!" Mei calls out to the man as he walks across the middle of the street, crosswalks be damned.
The man momentarily stills and he looks over as Mei approaches him. "Yes? Can I help you?" He asks.
Mei momentarily stills, realizing he hasn't thought this far ahead. Shaking his head, Mei points at the animal in the man's arms. "Where'd you get that?" He asks.
The animal in the man's arms jerks at the sound of Mei's voice. From the looks of it, the tanuki is trying to get out of the man's hold.
"What do you mean? Are you talking about this little guy?" The man asks, slightly raising the animal in his arms up. "I found him injured in the woods a couple days ago."
A couple days ago… the statement runs through Mei's head a couple times. Didn't Nabe say the last time he saw Miyuki was a couple days ago? Now that he's getting a better look at the animal… Mei knows for a fact that the animal is his missing friend.
He's known Miyuki since middle school, and has seen him in his tanuki form hundreds of times. He might not be able to tell the difference between other tanuki's, but Miyuki… Mei knows what he looks like. Now he just has to get him back.
"That's… That's mine!" Mei shouts out.
The man obviously has no idea what Mei is talking about, as his eyes grow wide and a look of confusion crosses his face. "Huh?... What are you talking about?"
"That tanuki you're holding," Mei says as he continues to point and takes a couple steps closer to the man. "He's mine, I … lost him after he… ran away."
"What are you talking about?" the man says as he takes a step back and puts a tighter hold around the animal in his arms. The animal must feel something, for it lets out a very undignified squeak. "I found him hurt in the woods a couple days ago! He's not 'yours.' He's a wild animal."
He's injured? No wonder no one's seen him the past couple days, this man probably found him and isn't letting him go! Mei quickly thinks of a response and fires back. "Like I said, he ran away. He does that a lot." Unthinking, Mei reaches an arm out to touch the animal when it is knocked away.
"Now you're just making stuff up," the man says. "If he's yours, why is it taking you so long to come around and look for him? You must be so~ concerned."
Mei doesn't have time to argue with him. As soon as he touches the tanuki again it jerks and causes the man's arms to loosen. He watches in disbelief as it escapes from the man's grasp and falls to the ground.
Before any of them think through their actions, both Mei and Eijun launch after the tanuki, trying to catch him before he has the opportunity to run away. This results in a small scuffle on the ground between the three of them, with the two humans causing most of them damage, after a few moments though, the dust metaphorically settles and the three find themselves with Mei's foot pressed against Eijun's cheek, Eijun's hands wrapped around the tanuki's waist, and the tanuki's mouth biting onto Mei's hand.
The tanuki doesn't let go of Mei's hand.
"What do you mean he;s your pet? He's biting you! That obviously means he doesn't like you!" Eijun yells as he tries to pull the tanuki back into his arms.
"No! He;s biting me because he likes me! What would you know about him, you've only had him a couple days!" Mei shouts back.
It's then that the three hear a car pull up along the side of the road they were on.
"Hey Bakajun, are you okay over there?" A voice asks from the car window.
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Begrudgingly Mei lets them go, he knows a fight when he's lost one. For all Miyuki's said that he's been picking fights with people since middle school, he's not stupid. These two guys are supposedly police officers, (not that Mei believes them) he doesn't want to get into any actual trouble.
But Mei does stay back a couple minutes to see where this guy lives. The entire time he is wondering what happened to Miyuki to have the dude being held in this stranger's arms.
In his tanuki form no less!
Something very… wrong… was going on, and Mei knew he had to do something about it. He should probably start back with Miyuki's roommate.