Helloooooo everyone after half a year! Life's been extremely busy for me (my sister got married, thesis project got approved, school related trip to Cuernavaca, then my sister's new niece was born) so I apologise for the delay! I'm just glad I finally have a little bit of time to upload this newest chapter. It was a lot of fun writing the newest characters' dialogue and their testimony. However…I advise you all to pay attention to a few things since they'll definitely come up in later chapters.
Replies:
LadyAgnimitra: I plan on making an Inuyasha POV chapter, but I also plan to keep it vague to frustrate you!
Compucles: I would actually have to disagree on many fronts; many Western companies already force their employees to work overtime (and uncompensated too). Many Western companies have also gotten away with much, much worse than simply forcing their employees into uncompensated overtime, but the difference is that there's a stronger tradition of protest in the West…as well as the fact that there's not much social precedent for "company identity:" ie, that the company is your life and you should dedicate every single second to it. A lot of people from Canada to Argentina to Spain to Turkey would laugh if asked if they consider the company that employs them as part of their identity. Not so much in Japan, where it's pretty socially ingrained in a good chunk of the workforce.
Workplace death will also be touched upon here but that's for another chapter.
Fan-made products are popular everywhere where there's a fandom for, well, anything. Fans like to participate in showing their enthusiasm, and that includes making artwork, books, crafts, even cds and toys. Fans put a price on their merch precisely as a form of quality assurance, but also because their time and labour deserves to be compensated like another other creator. I bought a ton of fan related merch at Pixelatl and I'm very happy with it. Compensating creators for their time and effort actually also works as free publicity for official stuff. Everyone comes away happy, so everyone wins!
Celestial Cat: Sango, while absolutely needing to lighten up, also has pretty valid reasons for being a judgy pissy person, though! Especially with the next chapters…
As always, my special, special, SPECIAL gratitude to sassybratt9791 for her amazing editing and for just being an absolute peach :3
Thankfully, Higurashi-san was able to find the contact information for her daughter and son-in-law's newspaper club colleagues, and all three were available to be interviewed the next morning. Miroku spied them waiting in the lobby and talking quietly to each other.
"Is it okay for us to let them do that? What if they're like…involved in the case or something like that," Oda muttered as he peeked through the plastic blinds covering their view to the lobby.
"Well, we won't know unless we dig," Awara replied.
Sango, ever the consummate professional, greeted them with a bow and nary a thread out of place on her freshly ironed uniform. "Good morning. I'm Inspector Tachibana, and I'm in charge of this investigation. Thank you all for coming down to the precinct on such short notice."
The woman of the trio shook her head. "We dropped everything and came her as fast as we could the moment we heard that something happened to Kagome-chan."
"Yeah, what gives?" The tallest of the group, a tanned, confident looking young man with an athlete's body and incredibly blue eyes (most likely the result of contact lenses) spoke up rather brashly. "It's already Tuesday, and the first 48 hours are supposed to be the most critical in a missing persons' search, right? So what're you doing wasting your time on us when you could be out there looking for her?"
"Kōga-kun!" The woman, also in possession of curiously exotic features (in her case, hazel eyes and dyed dark orange hair), elbowed her companion sharply, hissing out a warning.
Sango bowed, apologetic in the face of such criticism. "We're truly sorry. We're trying to cover as many bases as possible and work as fast as we can to locate Higurashi-san, But we have to be as thorough as possible with our information instead of jumping to conclusions with bits and pieces instead of the full picture. We can assure you that we have officers out canvassing the streets as we speak."
The trio exchanged looks; the tall man seemed very skeptical, the woman and the second man (whose medium brown hair also attracted a fair amount of stares) very worried.
"Tch. Let's just get this over with," Kōga scoffed.
"Please follow me this way. We need to be able to interview you all at once so we can collect your testimonies as quickly as we can. That way, we can progress further with the investigation," Sango said, directing them to separate interrogation booths that had been set aside for their use.
Miroku, who'd been watching closely from the window (along with the others, resulting in a very squished eavesdropping session), peeled himself away to start delegating. "Okay everyone, we need to get ourselves in position. Kuwatani, you're coming with me and Sango; Hachi, you take care of Takeda and Kai; Awara, you and Amamiya will take the last booth."
"Haha, that's a funny joke, Ishida-san!" Kuwatani laughed right in his face. "Tachibana-san already assigned us our places, remember?"
Damn. I totally forgot that, he thought. "Of course I did! I was just testing to see if you remembered." He didn't particularly like being laughed at that way, even if Kuwatani was cute.
"Whatever you say, Captain," Oda snickered as he filed out of the room with the rest of the team.
Miroku kept his inner sulking as well-hidden as he possibly could. He knew that teamwork was something he struggled with, and he truthfully didn't care for it much, so why did it feel so weird to be constantly reminded that he wasn't in charge? Why was he being all glum about it in the first place?
Ah, forget it. Just let Sango do the heavy lifting. Besides…it's not like you want to get too attached to them anyway.
After the interviews were done, the team reconvened in their "home base" (as Kuwatani affectionately called it) to review the video feeds from each one and add them to their investigation files. Unfortunately, they didn't have as much time to conduct the interviews as they would've liked considering precinct chief Shako ordering a report on the case, as well as an outline of the strategies they were going to use in their investigation, by the end of the day.
The first one they saw was of Hōjō Akitoshi.
"What are the odds that we get a group of people with nothing but weird colouring in here for questioning?" Awara remarked rather bluntly as Sango opened up the video file on the room's desktop. Oda glared at him as he fixed his dyed hair self-consciously.
"Oh, don't say it like that, that's not very nice…" Kai protested.
"What? You know it's true."
Takeda cleared his throat loudly as the video was put into fullscreen mode and Sango adjusted the volume. "Let's keep quiet, everyone."
Sango thanked him in her mind as usual.
The video jumped to life and then stopped immediately as it snagged on its loading time, prompting Sango to grumble under her breath. Then the video finally started playing, but, to everyone's annoyance, no one could hear anything even though Sango rechecked the volume, showing that it was at a supposedly acceptable level.
"Let me handle this," Oda said. He stepped up on the desktop's chair and fiddled with the speakers on the ceiling. The sound finally came to life, and Sango rewound the video right back to its start.
"Nice going, Mr. Tech Wizard!" Kuwatani smiled brightly at Oda, and the poor guy just turned cherry red and mumbled noncommittal assertions of humility as he returned to his seat.
Sango shushed them all as the video began to play. Ugh. They can really be irritating at times…
Hōjō looked like any other businessman, except for the fact that he was still young, pretty good-looking, and had brown instead of black hair. His grey suit was immaculately kept, if standard and boring, and the leather briefcase Sango saw before he parked it down next to his chair seemed to be of a rather high quality.
"Name?" Takeda's voice rang out from somewhere behind the camera. The booths had two feeds: one supervising the room from above, another focused on their subjects' faces. They were reviewing the latter.
"Hōjō Akitoshi," their subject replied.
"Occupation?"
"I manage a mid-sized pharmaceutical company. We cater mostly to the domestic market." As if by reflex, Hōjō withdrew a silver card case from within his suit jacket and produced a creamy white business card, presenting it with both hands and a slight bow of his head. Takeda's bemused hand emerged from the frame to take it in kind.
"And what is your relation to Higurashi Kagome?" came Miroku's voice.
Hōjō sighed. His carefully shaped brows knit together in obvious apprehension, and he clasped his hands almost pleadingly. "We go a long way back. Out of all the people outside her family, I think I'm one of those who's known her the longest."
Miroku spoke again. "So you were schoolmates?"
"From the middle of elementary school onwards. I didn't get closer to her until middle school though. I was in Class B, and she was in Class A with Masuda-san, Shimizu-san, and Okamoto-san. I tried to make time to visit their homeroom as much as I could because it was always nice to spend time with her."
Something about Hōjō's wistful tone and far-off gaze told Sango that his sentiments were anything but platonic. A surreptitious glance returned by Amamiya and Kai made it clear that they saw it too.
"She's always been nice to everyone, in fact. So kind and gentle. It's easy to make friends with her because of how caring she is over anyone's problems, and she always wants to help, no matter how difficult things can get. I remember this one time where a new girl's umbrella got stolen, and Higurashi-san wanted to give her her own umbrella. The new girl refused, so Higurashi-san personally walked her back home in the freezing rain, and then she caught a cold. I…I felt so impressed by such a simple gesture. She could have saved herself the trouble of getting sick, but she said it didn't matter as long as she got to lend a helping hand. And then I realised I wanted to do that too. I started bringing her medicine and soup to help her recover, and I ended up doing that a lot since she got sick so much in junior high. And now, well, here I am," Hōjō said with another sigh.
Quick scribbling filled the air as the team jotted down their observations.
Now it was Takeda's turn to speak up. "From what we've heard, Higurashi-san and your group were involved in a newspaper club that was…fairly controversial. Could you describe the start of that club?"
Hōjō scratched the back of his neck almost sheepishly, a rather juvenile gesture for someone of his bearing. "Oh, well—Higurashi-san certainly didn't look like it, but she had a real knack for running into tight situations. At first she just kept calling out these instances of bullying, but it really got started because the math teacher from Class C was giving out test results in exchange for money. She always had the hardest time with math," he laughed fondly. "And she found out because he was tutoring her in an after-school cram session, and he made her an offer. Instead of taking it, well, Higurashi-san gave him a really hard time about it. But the school didn't want to deal with it because of how bad it would make them look. So Higurashi-san spent an entire night mailing out an exposé she'd written after ranting to us about it and the school had to sack him the next day after parents complained."
"She certainly sounds very tenacious."
"She is. After that, Kitagawa-san approached her about taking over the newspaper club—she'd joined at the beginning of the semester but they hadn't done much except pieces on the upcoming school festival and things like that—and then they just started churning out hit after hit!"
Takeda, having stayed attentively quiet during Hōjō's testimony, was preceded by the sudden noise of his chair being adjusted. "Could you describe what other kinds of cases the newspaper club took on?"
Hōjō told them all about the student selling powerful opioids on campus, the football coach in a relationship with his star forward, the school banning their activities under threat of expulsion, and Higurashi's subsequent "freelancing" (as Hōjō quoted her) of other cases during and after school hours: the hired thugs intimidating a classmate's father's business, the freak crow whose negligent owner allowed it to escape its cage and attack children; the supposedly cursed noh mask brought over to her family shrine by a woman who turned out to be a serial killer known to the authorities; the devastating apartment fire that killed a child and put her little brother on life support for half a year, the Thunder Brothers' spree killings…he spoke almost to the point of fawning over his former schoolmate's exploits.
"Damn," Oda gasped as he wrote as fast as he could. "How much stuff did that chick stick her nose into?!"
Sango, irritated over Oda's incredibly rude vocabulary, turned around to glare at him. "Be quiet and listen."
"Sorry."
"Of course," Hōjō continued in the video, "I didn't join her and the others until after the Noh Mask Case; I was so worried, the way she was constantly putting herself at risk, and I thought that maybe being there for her could help keep her safe. Or, well, healthy enough to stop catching colds from the stress," he tried to joke.
A brief scuffle behind the camera muffled the audio. Brief mutters gave way to Takeda saying "it's alright, you go."
Ishida tried to hassle Kuranosuke-kun over his turn to speak? Really? Sango wanted to roll her eyes at yet another display of a blatant lack of professionalism from her least favourite detective.
"So would you say that Higurashi-san made a lot of enemies? Could you think of anyone that might still be holding a grudge against her and would want to hurt her?" At least Miroku's line of questioning was pertinent.
"Hmmm…not that I could really think of?" Hōjō exhaled lightly as his brow creased in thought. "Maybe some stragglers from the Birds of Paradise gang, but they're too weak to do much now except harass campers all the way out east…and that Yura woman just barely got out of jail. Huh. Now that I think about it, a lot of the people we investigated ended up dead!" he chuckled.
Oda, Awara, and Kuwatani burst into raucous laughter over Hōjō's unintentionally hilarious statement. Sango paused the video immediately and whirled on them furiously.
"This isn't high school," she warned in a low voice. "You want to take yourselves outside?"
"No, no, sorry Tachibana-san," the class clowns giggled.
Grandfather, I wish you were here to see all this 'valuable talent' on display, she fumed as the video resumed.
"What about her relationship with her now-husband? He used to go by Takahashi before, didn't he?" came Miroku's next question.
Suddenly, Hōjō's attentive and chirpy attitude turned…odd. The placid smile on his face looked strained. His posture became tighter. Withdrawn. The team watched carefully as they waited to hear his answer.
"Well…I haven't seen him in a while…but I don't think he's changed much since we last got together. He's…difficult."
"Difficult how?"
"I—I don't really know how to describe him…he's got…a bit of a temper. He clashed with Higurashi-san over a lot of things. They would bicker often because they couldn't see eye to eye over something, or because he was in a bad mood—which wasn't uncommon, really—and the rest of us would try to calm them both down."
"So you're saying Higurashi-san had a temper to match? She wouldn't back down if he challenged her?"
"I—I—t-that's not what I said—"
"No, no, it's understandable, Hōjō-san," Takeda's deep, soothing voice reassured. Sango wanted to strangle Miroku for his blunt tactlessness during the line of questioning. How could he be so careless, trying to corner a source like that? 'Valuable talent' my ass! "It's hard to immediately recall things from over six years ago. You were saying…?"
Hōjō seemed to breathe easier with Takeda's intervention. "I—Takahashi—I guess I should call him Higurashi now too, but it feels strange to do that. Well—Takahashi-san would find faults in pretty much anything we did and wanted to do. And it took all of us to adjust to each other, but…he…he's a good person, really. I don't think K–Higurashi-san would've chosen to associate with someone like him if she didn't see something good inside him. And he was a big help to us. He was the muscle of our group, basically." Hōjō paused for a long time. He swallowed before continuing. "Maybe it was hard to get along with him most days, but, in the end, Higurashi-san's decision paid off. And she helped him just as much as he helped us."
Takeda was clearly about to ask him just what he meant by that, but a timer in the video beeped, signalling that their time was up. Takeda, ever the gracious host, slid out of his chair and moved to escort their interviewee out. "I'm sorry we have to cut our session short, but thank you so much for taking the time to come and give us your valuable testimony, Hōjō-san."
"Oh, don't mention it. Anything to help Higurashi-san. Please, let us know when you've found her. We're all so worried…" Hōjō wiped a slight sheen of sweat off his brown and fiddled with the silver clasps on his briefcase.
"Of course. You can call or email us anytime you like if you have new information or want to ask us anything." Takeda gave him the precinct's contact card in turn. He was all polite smiles and bowing as he walked out of the interrogation booth with Hōjō, and the video stopped there.
As Sango readied the next video file, Oda commented obnoxiously "so like, was it just me, or did anyone else see that that guy clearly has some unresolved feelings over a married woman?"
"Oh my goodness! So I wasn't just imagining things!" Tsuyu exclaimed, to Sango's dismay.
"Now now everyone," Takeda said calmly, ever the helpful one. "Let's get ready for the next video."
Their second subject was a beautiful young woman with looks that, while not terribly extreme, certainly made her stand out: her dark orange hair and light eyes could have marked her as a foreigner, if not for the fact that her features were very distinctly Japanese.
"Oh my god!" Oda shrieked abruptly.
Sango, looking up from the computer, groaned audibly. "What is it now?" she griped.
Oda ignored her, fixated keenly on the woman displayed on the projection screen. "That's—that's Kitagawa! Kitagawa Ayame!"
"You're kidding me!" Kuwatani, unsurprisingly, seemed to know of Oda's geeky fixations. "That's amazing! You got to interview Kitagawa-san in the flesh!?"
Kai raised her arm tentatively, her tone hesitant. "Um, sorry, but…what?"
Oda and Kuwatani gaped. "She's only like, the most popular online news blogger. Duh!" the sandy-haired young man scoffed.
"She runs the Shōbu Shimbun!" Kuwatani added, gushing. "She does most of her broadcasts and pieces on her blog but she also has a twitter account for breaking news—getting lesser known stories out there is like, her motto. And her instagram is the cutest thing ever!"
Sango raised an eyebrow, skeptical, as she gave the woman—and her incredibly trendy outfit and accessories—a critical once over. She never really cared for online celebrities and influencers, but she had to admit, it felt weird to think that someone apparently so renowned was connected, even indirectly, to their case.
She pressed the play button and let the video start.
"My name is Kitagawa Ayame. I'm self-employed; I run an online news blog and related accounts. I've known Kagome-chan since our last year of junior high," Kitagawa said, tossing her long orange hair back.
"I didn't recognise her in that light. God, fluorescent lighting really does make everyone look worse," Kuwatani remarked flippantly. "But she's also not wearing makeup so—"
Sango shushed her again and grumbled some more.
Kitagawa at least didn't spend most of her time recounting her former clubmate's past with the same fawning, meandering pace as Hōjō; her words were quick and concise as she rattled off a (still rather impressively long) list of past scoops and cases.
But she was also far more forthcoming and honest with her approach to Higurashi's disappearance.
"You listen here," Kitagawa declared resolutely. Her tone was positively theatrical and camera ready as she stared down her interviewers. "Kagome-chan is one of my closest friends. Sure, maybe we drifted apart a little after school, but we still tried to make time for each other. And now I hear that you missed a crucial 48-hour window to find her? Kōga-kun is right. How do we know she's not seriously hurt, or trafficked, or–or worse?"
An uncomfortable silence signalled her interviewers' inability to reply. Kitagawa had a point—a big damn one. Sango cursed to herself. Yes, they were following protocol, they were being thorough, they were being methodical with every piece of evidence that crossed their paths…but perhaps that was also the problem. Her grandfather's order to keep the investigation on the down low for fear of stirring up anxiety over crime and safety with the Olympics so close certainly wasn't doing them any favours. Maybe if they—
No. Grandfather knows what he's doing. And his superiors know what they're doing. Calm down. This doesn't mean that the case is going nowhere, Sango scolded herself. How could she doubt Shako and the precinct like that?
"We're very sorry," came Kai's voice from the video. Sango could picture her executing a perfectly apologetic bow. "But please understand that we have to be as careful and thorough as possible when investigating a crime of this nature. So please," the rustling of cloth was heard, "bear with us a little longer."
Kitagawa didn't look convinced in the slightest. She just gave them a rather disappointed once over and sighed. "Just…can we just know if you have any leads? Any indication over a suspect? Anything?"
"We're not really at liberty to discuss that at the moment, Kitagawa-san. We were hoping you could tell us more about any possible enemies, so to speak, of Higurashi-san, or if you can recall anyone who'd want to hurt her."
"I figured as much." Kitagawa produced a thick stack of folders from her (admittedly cute and trendy) bag and set them on the table with a loud thwack.
Amamiya's hands appeared from behind the camera frame as they opened a folder, and the team, thoroughly impressed, watched as they flipped through a series of print-outs and scans labelled with colour coded tabs. "W…what's all this…?"
"My notes from our newspaper club days. Mama Higurashi told me she already gave you Kagome-chan's stuff, so now, I'm giving you copies of mine. You'll find everything you need in there in case you'll forget what I'm telling you now."
"We assure you that we won't, but thank you all the same." Amamiya left the interrogation booth briefly to hand over the folders to Oda, who'd been stationed at the 'homebase' with Kuwatani to sync the video feeds to the room's computer, and then came back shortly.
"Anyways…" Kitagawa tapped her chin with a carefully shaped nail (coloured in a tasteful shade of forest green nail polish) as she thought. "Right now I can only think of two people who'd be in an immediate position to harm Kagome-chan: Igarashi Rei and Yajima Yura. Both were sentenced to jail after they attacked Kagome-chan and Inuyasha-san, both were let out after a few years, both live close to Higurashi shrine, and both are known to keep grudges. However…" Kitagawa narrowed her eyes. "That doesn't mean that they're the only ones with scores to settle."
"So it's just more than these two?"
"No, no. What I'm trying to say is that Igarashi and Yajima are the only people who I think are likely to want to pursue vengeance at the moment. The newspaper club made a lot of busts, that's for sure, but all the low-level yakuza and petty criminals that we hit seemingly want to keep their heads down these days. And the bigger fish are all the way out in Kyushu, and they're not going to waste their time coming to Tokyo over wanting to hurt a bunch of teenagers that caught them years ago. Then again…they're the only ones that I know of. And like I said, many still keep grudges."
"And you know this because…?"
"A good reporter makes sure to keep her enemies close and her sources closer. I'm not going to disclose their identities for their own safety unless it's of critical importance."
The staticky murmur of Kai and Amamiya whispering to each other was all they heard for a few seconds, clearly wondering over Kitagawa's sources, yet ultimately deciding not to pursue that line of questioning. "Thank you, Kitagawa-san. We just have one more question to ask before we finish up."
"Go ahead. That's what I'm here for."
An uncomfortable pause enveloped the pair before Kai, deciding to take the plunge, spoke up rather timidly. "How would you characterise Higurashi's relationship with her husband…?"
Kitagawa suddenly looked very tired. Exhaling, almost exhaustedly, she gazed off to the side with pursed lips, her painted nails gripping the sleeve of her green cardigan tightly. The team already really knew the answer…but seeing their subjects get worked up and anxious over a certain ill-tempered spouse was still rather disconcerting.
"The husband is always the first to be suspected, right?" Kitagawa's humourless remark nonetheless brought a bitter smile to her lips. "And he fits the mould too: bad background, terrible manners, antisocial behaviour…I won't lie, their relationship could get pretty rocky at times, too."
"Rocky how?"
"Well, let's just say their meet-cute wasn't all that cute; he practically attacked her the first time he saw her, and it was only thanks to Kaede-obaasan putting him in his place that he started to behave. But he would still take petty potshots at her, and then she would talk back because Kagome-chan was never one to let an insult go, and then they would just disagree all the time over anything and it would turn into fights. And it was pretty much the background noise of our daily lives."
"Hmm, between you and us, Kitagawa-san, that doesn't really sound like the foundation of a strong relationship," Kai ventured. She was testing the waters to see how far their interviewee would respond.
Kitagawa, surprisingly, leapt to the man's defense. "Oh, no—I mean, sure, Inuyasha-san can be a mean, obnoxious jerk, and Kagome-chan sometimes has her own issues with her temper, but they really do care for each other. They just had a particularly bad case of learning to control their emotions combined with 'can't spit it out.' It was suuuuuper frustrating in school because everyone could totally tell that they had it bad, and I had to do some pushing of my own to get them to admit it!"
"Awwwwww! That's so adorable!" Kai cooed.
"Tsuyu-san," Amamiya warned.
Oda and Awara giggled at the pair as they watched the video. Sango rolled her eyes but chose to stay mum, close to giving up on any shushing efforts.
"Of course," Kitagawa disclosed in a low, nervous voice, "I kinda also had my own reasons to do that. You see…" she swallowed. "I…I always had a…thing for Kōga-kun. But he only has eyes for Kagome-chan."
Awara whistled. "Wow. So our missing person is quite the man-eater."
Nope, I'm still in prime shushing territory, Sango thought as she hissed at her colleague.
"I mean, I can totally see why: Kagome-chan's honestly one of the sweetest, nicest people I know. If I were a guy or gay, I would've loved to have her as my girlfriend. And that's why Inuyasha-san was drawn to her, since he had such a terrible past and he was really in desperate need of someone who could show him some kindness and honesty." Kitagawa heaved a heavy, heavy sigh and put her forehead in her hands. "Except…he also has issues with his ex."
A low ooooooooh resonated throughout the team's room as the impression of the apparently angelic Higurashi Kagome having to compete romantically over a rude, foul-mouthed social deviant dawned upon them. Even Sango was stunned.
When was he going to tell us about this? Why didn't Higurashi-san's mother, or brother, or Hōjō-san tell us about this? Do their neighbours know? Their colleagues?
Amamiya hummed in deep concentration as she continued the line of questioning. "And why is this pertinent to the investigation?"
"Because it's still a huge wedge in their relationship and they haven't been able to resolve it. Kagome-chan would sometimes call me over it, needing advice, because apparently Inuyasha-san still keeps in touch with Kikyō and he doesn't see why that's a huge no-no."
Kikyō. Why do I get the feeling that we'll be seeing a lot of her? Sango's stomach sank with the thought.
The timer went off in the video. The team looked around the room, laughing nervously when they saw that practically everyone was at the edge of their seat, apparently gripped by this new development in the case. They watched attentively as Kitagawa was thanked by her interviewers and made to leave the interrogation booth.
"Look." Kitagawa whirled around to face Kai and Amamiya one last time before she left. "I know this doesn't sound good at all for Inuyasha-san. And believe me, I'm not ignorant about the statistics of husbands being involved in the disappearances of their wives…but please trust me when I say that I just know that he didn't do anything wrong."
Kai tried to reply "Yes, Kitagawa-san, but—"
"—And Kagome-chan is the one who inspired me to become a reporter in the first place. The way she pulled all-nighters just to get scoops out, the way she would throw herself into danger just so she could help others…she's been in plenty of sticky situations before, but we can't rescue her this time. Inuyasha can't bust in swinging like he used to do. So please…" the reporter's eyes gleamed with the appearance of tiny tears. "Please help my friends out."
Sango had the sense to stop the video at that moment and open up the next one. No need to dawdle on needless waterworks when they had a missing woman to find, and every second wasted was more time lost to finding her.
Still…Sango couldn't shake that feeling of unease as she wordlessly pressed play on the file showcasing the questioning of Minami Kōga.
His tanned, dewy skin and shiny black hair, pulled into a sleek ponytail, already marked him as very attractive, but his exotic blue eyes practically made him look like a fictional character. And his slouched posture was something straight out of a shōjō comic where the love interest was a bad boy type. Even though there were similarities that could be drawn between him and Higurashi Inuyasha, it was very clear from the get-go that Minami was a man who had time and resources that Higurashi didn't.
"They're real," he said tersely in the video. "People come up to me asking all the time if they're contacts, but I can assure you that I just happened to win a random genetic lottery." He pointed to his eyes as he caught his interviewers staring.
Sango and Awara were the ones who took on his slot. That certainly was an embarrassing moment…
"And since you must wanna know some level of backstory, people tried to bully me over them. Tried. People tend to not give you shit if you teach 'em the consequences of messin' with you."
Awara cleared his throat in the recording before trying to go back to the task at hand. "Uh, so, Minami-san…what do you do for a living?"
Minami leaned back in his chair. "I'm a professional runner. I mostly stick to cross-country but I'm also involved in track and field."
"Oh, so I take it you've heard of a little thing called the Olympics?" Awara attempted to joke.
"Yeah. I'm runnin' in them."
Oda and Kuwatani positively exploded as they watched Awara's failure to launch unfold on screen; even Takeda and Kai, normally very poised and reserved at work, couldn't help but try to stifle their snickering. Awara just slunk in his chair and griped about no-good disrespectful kids.
Thankfully, Sango took over for her colleague in the questioning. "Minami-san, as you are aware, we're investigating the break-in of the Higurashi's apartment and the subsequent disappearance of Higurashi Kagome. Since her mother informed us that you formed part of their rather unorthodox newspaper club, we were hoping you could tell us about any possible threats to the Higurashis or of anyone who would want to act against them."
"You're asking me for a pretty long list, officer!" Minami's laugh sounded more like a rough bark. "We were pretty damn nosy kids back then."
Like Hōjō and Kitagawa before him, Minami rattled off a record of cases the newspaper club had pursued before and after all its members joined. However, Minami also spoke of unofficial members that the team hadn't heard of before…as well as taking most of his time to bash their missing victim's husband.
"Kagome's friends—Eri-san, Yuka-san, and Ayumi-san—would sometimes help us out if we were rushed and stuff, but otherwise Kagome warned them away from our 'line of work,' so to speak, 'cause she was worried about putting more people in dangerous situations. But they were otherwise pretty supportive. Good friends. And it was fun to dunk on that dumbass Inuyasha together, but—"
"So I take it that you didn't exactly get along with Higurashi Inuyasha then," Sango asked cautiously.
Minami squinted suspiciously at her. He expelled a loud, forceful breath from his nose, and continued. "Look. Deep down—really deep down I'd say—he's an okay guy. There's a lot to respect about him. He's strong, he's street-smart, and his heart is usually in the right place. But," and here Minami made a long, frustrated groan, "he's just too much of a fucking idiot sometimes."
"Ouch." Kuwatani grimaced when she heard that.
Minami continued. "His anger issues are just such a drag to deal with, he can't let shit go, he'd get us into trouble sometimes because of that; he always has to have the last word, he clams up and doesn't share anything unless he's cornered, and he doesn't have a clue on how to interact normally with so many people 'cause his childhood was so stunted. Boo-fucking-hoo. We all have our own crap to deal with, but the moment someone wants to give him a hand, he bites 'em for even trying."
The longer Minami ranted, the louder his volume increased. Apparently, years and years of pent up frustrations were being unloaded, and it was hard for the team to keep up with their notes. Kai just gave up altogether.
"And you know what else? He's a damn coward. Dumbass thinks he can fool everyone with that tough guy act, being all high and mighty and thinking that showing off his fangs'll be enough to intimidate everyone, but deep down, he's scared shitless. And him being scared then means he's also too fucking indecisive, and that hurt Kagome. I'll say it: I consider him a friend, but I won't ever forgive him for hurting Kagome."
There was real anger there. A raw, exposed wound that was still being nursed years later, a grievance that was never addressed properly during their youth and was now being shared during an especially fraught time.
How much more would they hear about Higurashi Inuyasha's tumult with the woman he married?
"Could you please clarify your remarks? What do you mean that he hurt her?" Sango was secretly very proud of how calm and collected she sounded in the video.
"It's no secret that Inuyasha and Kagome fought. Fuck. It was pretty much a daily occurrence. Kagome though, she'd take the time to say sorry, patch things up, recognise when she was in the wrong. She showed real maturity and always tried to take the high road." Minami's fingers drummed the tabletop in a quick, almost anxious, rhythm. "But Inuyasha? Nah. Petty fucker took the low road. And getting him to apologise for anything was like pulling teeth."
"So you would say that Higurashi-san's relationship with his now wife was more positive than negative? Hard to believe that someone would decide to marry such a rude and uncaring boyfriend."
Minami's jaw clenched tightly, and he looked off to the side. His expression was guarded, yet vulnerable. He was clearly struggling to find the right words.
"Look," he sighed. "They really do care for each other. Inuyasha was always an idiot about showing his true feelings, but it was obvious that he'd fallen for her hard. How could he not? Kagome's one of the kindest, most caring people ever. Anybody would be lucky to be her husband."
The team remembered Kitagawa's words and glanced at each other.
"In the end, Inuyasha kind of managed to clean up his act well enough that Kagome noticed him. Reforming lost causes was always a thing with her, but even though that version of Inuyasha ain't too bad, he still had his own shit to keep working on. And man, do I mean shit. Especially with Kikyō."
There's that name again. Sango's stomach tightened.
"Kikyō? Who is that?" she heard herself say in the recording.
"Inuyasha's ex-girlfriend. They had a fling that ended pretty badly, but they were still hung up over each other and couldn't let it go. At first we figured that with her out of the picture, he'd have some closure and time to figure things out, but then she transferred to our school during our first year of high school, and from there it was this constant emotional roller coaster that meant more fighting, more of Inuyasha being a dense fucking dumbass, and Kagome pretending that she was fine when it was clear she wasn't."
"So this…Kikyō person remains a constant source of conflict even to this day?"
"You bet. Kagome preferred to vent with her girlfriends, but on the times we got to see each other, I'd keep reminding her that she's always welcome at my place if things go south." He dragged a hand down his cheek, exasperated. "After all the shit Inuyasha put her through…I still don't know what she sees in him."
There was a bitterness to his words that Sango wanted to prod a little further, ask him how a couples' drama over an old flame could possibly be related to a violent break-in of their apartment, but, unfortunately, the timer went off.
Sango sighed in the video. "Ahh…I apologise, Minami-san, but it seems our time is up."
"Don't worry about it. I don't think it's the last time we'll be seeing each other anyways." He stood up to his full height and bowed politely to the pair, quite the contrast with his crude vocabulary.
"I'll see you out." Awara, who'd stayed almost entirely silent after his embarrassing attempt at a joke, made the offer to Minami.
Their subject barely spared them a glance as he opened the door. "Look. You people seem nice and all, but don't think I haven't forgotten how lousy you're being at your jobs. Maybe our testimonies'll help. Maybe they won't. But, at the very least, we're hoping to see some actual results instead of wasting our time sitting down to talk. Kagome's been missing since Friday, and we still haven't heard from her or whoever did this to her. So you better start shapin' up quick!"
And with that he shut the door, leaving the officers silent and chastened. Sango stopped the video there. She still felt incredibly embarrassed over being scolded like that—by a civilian, no less—and yet his words had the weight of uncomfortable truth backing them.
As they started talking again (albeit nervously) and preparing their notes for Shako's report, Sango couldn't shake the feeling of dread that had been blanketing her since hearing Kitagawa's side of things.
Higurashi Kagome…just what happened to you?
NOOOOOTES TIIIIIME
The vast majority of Japanese people have dark brown to black hair, though there's a trend of dying hair among teens and young adults in their early twenties (or the occasional over thirty male celeb whose image is still sold as a bishōnen, or handsome youth with a rather gender neutral appeal). People active in the lolita, cosplay, and JPop/JDrama communities will recognise the range of blonde, caramel, ash, chestnut and orange hair seen on Japanese actors, cosplayers, and similar types of people. Hair dye is sold by brands like Gatsby, Palty, and Liese with rather creative colour names; a picture I saw for a line of Palty dyes was apparently dessert themed because they were all named things like "maple donut" and "sakura creamy." Some kids take the budget route and just dunk their hair in a bucket of peroxide to get a distinctly orange tinge that often has their roots showing through. It's…considered a trashy look. Tokyo Cheapo has an article by Grace Buchele Mineta discussing some dye brands and their effectiveness on white peoples' hair.
Most Japanese also have dark brown to medium brown eyes, but light-eyed Japanese people do exist. They're just incredibly rare. Light eyes, especially blue, are more common in non Yayoi-Jomon peoples like the indigenous Ainu. An example of a fictional (but with a real-life basis instead of operating under anime logic) blue-eyed Japanese (Ainu) person would be Asirpa from Golden Kamuy. Then again, genetics are weird and can produce any kind of result just because they can. Brown-eyed parents have produced green and blue-eyed babies many times before.
However.
We have to consider the idiom "the nail that stands up will be hammered down." It's a distillation and encapsulation of the brand of social behaviour impressed upon Japanese society: conformity means harmony and peace, so conformity is necessary, and anyone who doesn't conform will be put in their place as harshly as they need to be. And one of the ways this is most obvious to see in is in the clash over hair colour.
Kurokami (黒髪, or くろかみ) is considered the standard, and the ideal, in Japanese hair. Most famously in the 90s, there was a trend among teens and young adults to dye their hair to get light brown hair commonly known as chapatsu (茶髪), "tea colour." It was a huge scandal that triggered things like schools forcing students to come to class with black hair under threat of penalties and their grades suffering. Though there are people with naturally light brown hair, and sometimes parents try to push back against forcing their kids to have black hair, it's still common for some schools to demand that their students attend class with black hair, even if they have to (ironically enough) dye it black. Apparently this is also not unheard of in East Asia in general and in some South-Asian countries as part of a school's general dress code. University is when people experience more freedom and often experiment with their hair colour, fashion sense, and overall image, but that usually stops when the search for a job is on and they have to shed that freedom in order to be hired.
A rather depressing Tofugu article written by Aya Francisco titled "The Reason I Don't Want to Dye My Hair Black Again" shared twitter posts written by Japanese women who say they want to keep their hair dyed because the rebellious impression it comes with helps them to keep creepy men away from them. Their opinion is that a black-haired "ideal Japanese woman" will be looked down upon and disrespected because of projecting an image of quiet obedience and submissiveness. This also comes with the other side of dyed hair being seen as something pertaining to improper and childish (but not in a cute way) women.
The kanji forming Ayame's name, iris flower (菖蒲), can also be read as shōbu. That word has various other kanji, and they usually mean things like victory, defeat, and having a "warlike spirit." Shinbun (mostly known through its older spelling, shimbun), means (print) newspaper, so Ayame's blog can be heard as either "iris newspaper," or something like "victory newspaper." I also wanted Ayame to try and be clever and give her brand an alliterative name that plays on the fact that she doesn't distribute a daily print newspaper.
Because these notes have gotten too long, I'm just gonna cut them off here haha. Until next time!