I enjoyed the messages I received on Tumblr especially the ones where I was suggested that the how should I call him the Bastard yeah that will be his name. That he should have used some lube. Well yeah he could have, it would have been very nice of him to do so but since he was raping Gino I really don't see why he'd even do that so yeah it's good you all felt the pain. I'm evil like that what can I say...

- Chapter 10 -

Kougami

~ Day 3 ~

No one saw who attacked Risa yesterday; all they knew was that she had left after her shift was over. Apparently it was right after she had finished interrogating Izaya so when she called Akane it probably wasn't too long after she hung up that she had been brutally attacked from behind and what is worst, no one knew she had been lying on the ground for who knows exactly how long until we found her and called for emergency aid.

After all I had told Akane, how she shouldn't have to worry about not being good enough and that she could rely on Risa to help guide her through this came to absolute nothing… It all came crashing back into my face.

Losing Risa was a major blow for this investigation, there's no denying that. I'm not sure if her partner is going to continue supporting us. After what happened I wouldn't blame her if she suddenly pulled out but for Akane's sake I hope she doesn't. This case is already a tough one as it is, it's definitely not a case for a single inspector to take on. It's too wild and unpredictable, as long we don't have a solid profile we'll just keep going round in circles.

Seeing Risa like that yesterday, it made me sick down to my stomach and this morning when I stopped by to visit how she was doing before heading down to Shion's lab to start the memory scoop. I barely recognized her lying on that bed. She had an I.V stuck in her arm and tubes in her nose and her mouth. Somehow she just didn't look human with all those things sticking inside her and the monitors constantly beeping with her head bandaged up, not to mention how pale she seemed too. It was like looking at an empty shell.

From what Akane had managed to get from the doctor, because of the extent of Risa's head injury. He felt that it was best to induce her into a coma until the inflammation and swelling to her brain reduces and to give her brain a chance to heal at its own pace.

Honestly I don't like the idea of doctors playing with people's brains like it's no big deal. Normally when someone falls into a coma, doctors try everything to wake that person up but then they turn around and say that this person must be placed into a coma for them to heal. It's fucking ridiculous, I fucking hate it.

Anyway… I was thankful to Akane for inquiring the information about Risa's condition for me, the doctor never would have told me a thing because of my status so I really appreciated it but this bastard is really starting to get on my last nerves.

First this bastard attacks Gino, kidnaps him from his own home and brought him to god knows where to be brutally tortured I'm certain of it and now he attacks Risa.

I know it's that damn sick son of bitch that attacked her. I know it's him and that's something that's be troubling me since last night. It can't have been just a fucking coincidence that he went after her like that.

If it's true that he's been stalking Gino for a long time like we think he has then he knows who Risa is and what her position in the MWPSB is too.

He could have attacked Akane since she is Gino's partner, she's the only inspector for our division so eliminating Akane would prevent us from doing our job and yet he attacked Risa instead.

The only reason that I can think of for having attacked Risa is that he only wants division one in his sick and twisted game. Risa was a threat to his fun so he got her out of the way. Maybe it is best that division two completely backs down from this case otherwise the same thing will happen to inspector Shisui if she remains on this investigation.

It can't be that Risa was on to something because we have shit. We have nothing unless… Unless he didn't mean for us to find the blood paintings in the museum so soon and then have Izaya interrogated within the first two days in the investigation. If so then maybe he feels heated, the answer that we need is closer than what we think.

With division two we were able to speed up our search and thanks to them it allowed Akane and I to get Saiga's thoughts about this fucker. If we would have been on our own, going all the way over there would have been impossible, we would have lost too much time, time that we just don't have.

Maybe keeping division two into the loop wouldn't be such a bad idea. To make that bastard believe that division two has backed out so he'll have all of his attention and focus directly onto division one and not them allowing us to make our move without him even noticing before it's too late. Yeah that might work if we play our cards right.

"Alright Shinya. The memory scoop was a success; I was able to get a clear facial scoop of them all." Shion states after a few minutes of silence while she continued typing.

Finally…

I knew it would have taken some time to do everything but I honestly didn't think the memory scoop would have taken this long. Just processing each faces from my memory took a large amount of time but I didn't think it would have taken just as long to digitize the pictures so hearing that it was a success is rather comforting and that I didn't waste a whole day for nothing.

"How many faces do we have?" I ask as I do a quick stretch with my arms over my head.

Shion switches computer screen by rolling on her chair, quickly hitting the keyboard making a bunch of pictures appear on the screen.

"I removed the duplicates and the women. In total we now have forty-three faces to go by." She states. "Is there one in particular Shinya that stroke you as a possibility?"

"Yeah him. Professor Mako Fukushima." I answer as I point him out. He'd be the logical choice too; he fits the age group professor Saiga gave us.

"What makes you think it's this guy?" Shion asks.

"He thought Biology back when we were in high school but Gino and I never got him as our teacher. Right after Gino's mother died, he entered the picture all of a sudden." I explain.

It wasn't after I started the memory scoop and reached that part of my memories that he hit me as odd. The first time I ever saw him interact with Gino was during his mother's funeral.

He spoke to Gino but I don't know what he was saying other that Gino never spoke to him back and only had a lost expression during the whole ceremony. Afterwards he's often in my memories, always talking to Gino and I never really noticed before either and what I find odd is that Gino never told me anything about it.

"His profile says that he still teaches there." Shion states as she quickly goes through his information. "I'll send the information to Akane." She adds as I start walking away.

"Are we still going to get Izaya to look at the pictures to see if he can identify anyone as the person who gave him the paintings?" She asks and I stop at the entrance.

"Yeah that was the original plan so we'll stick with it for now." I answer before leaving to the empty hall, dragging my feet in search for Akane.

Hopefully Izaya will be able to pick out one if it turns out that the professor isn't our guy in the end and if not well going one by one is going to take a hell of a long time but we won't have any choice if it comes down to that.

I check my terminal to see what time it is, officially my shift ended an hour ago but the memory scoop took an eternity and I haven't heard anything from Akane when I was waiting for Shion to finish processing all the images so I hope she got something.

Day three is already almost over and I hate thinking about just how much time has passed since Gino's disappearance. I don't like knowing the fact that he's alone with a guy who's probably mentally deranged over the edge…

Stalkers, there are so many types of stalkers but the end result pretty much leads to the same conclusion. They are completely obsessed with the victim. For them the victim is pure perfection, they have no faults.

At first the stalker simply observes what the victim does, they don't talk to them or approach them, they just watch and then as times passes they start getting more confident as they start getting closer and closer to the point they dare try to interact with the said victim and that's when the problem starts.

The victim not wanting to be rude will give the stalker a smile or will enter his casual conversation. For the victim these actions are simply something normal, something a person does on a regular basis but for the stalker they take this as a sign of interest. They believe that their target loves them and will try to get closer to the point they end up in abducting the victim when they see they can't get them willingly and then hell breaks loose and we end up with a dead body on our hands.

Ignoring the possibility of Fukushima being the culprit right now, I'm not even sure if Gino was ever approached by this guy, maybe he has but he's so oblivious to other people's feelings when those said feelings are directed to him-.

"Hey Kou!"

Kagari's voice takes me out of my thoughts as I enter the lobby, taking a seat next to Akane.

"Find anything?" I ask.

"I think so. These files are unsolved but the kills were kind of brutal compared to the five other ones." She says as she shows me the files.

The first victim had his guts removed. By the autopsy report, he was still alive when he was cut open which led him to bleed to death but no substance were found in his body so that means the poor guy felt everything until the moment he died at the age of seventeen years old.

The second victim died two years after the first one at the age of nineteen, the guy had his wrists cut open and the cause of death was of a hemorrhagic shock due to the blood lost but the case was ruled as a possible suicide but just looking at this file, it was without a doubt an homicide.

The last victim was killed by getting his throat slashed open; cause of death was the same as the others. He was twenty-five years old, died six years after the second victim.

"I think they might be connected because of the cause of death. It was like the criminal was trying to find a way to extract the victim's blood out." Akane points out and yeah the cause of death does connect the murders but it's not the only thing that connects them to this case. However it's not something I'd expect Akane to have picked up.

"I'd say they are, look at the victim's date of birth. If they had lived these victims would be the same age as Gino and I." I state and my theory of a mentally deranged over the edge mad man is starting to be more and more accurate by the minute and that worries me, these deaths were not coincidental.

"Did you know any of them Kougami?" She asks, giving me an interrogative expression.

"Yeah. They were part of the gang that used to bully Gino back in high school." I reply as I close the files.

"Gino being bullied now that explains his complex-"

I shoot a glare towards Kagari and he quickly gets the messages but doesn't try to hide his amusement to the thought of Gino having been victim of bullying. That's Kagari for you, sometimes he fails to think before he speaks but that's not something I want him to throw into Gino's face later. Not ever.

"This man probably began killing by attacking people that caused Gino any harm in the past." I theorize but chances are that's exactly the case here, it's something stalkers that become extremely obsessive will react violently towards those who would cause their prey any kinds of harm so if this bastard went after all the ones that attacked Gino, then it means that there should be two more victims somewhere.

"He used them as a form of practice in order to discover what is signature would be and we did find out what it is. It's the paintings of his victims painted with their own blood so we should be able to find more blood paintings somewhere." I further explain before continuing. "When that was done he began experimenting with individuals similar to Gino, trying to perfect his technique but it wasn't just about technique."

Kagari scratches his head in irritation as he tries to figure out something on his own but is having some difficulties and hit a wall before turning his attention towards me. "Kou you make it sound like this guy was perfecting his method in order to drain blood but not kill."

"Yeah and if that's the case it means our situation just changed." I state before getting up after Kagari and Akane.

Akane picks up the files on the table before telling us that she was leaving for the day and walked away, without a doubt trying to hide her discomfort of the whole thing. Kagari leaves for his quarters and I wander around the CID floor lost in thoughts.

Tomorrow we'll go to my old high school and pick up Fukushima for interrogation and yet I don't feel like we'll be getting anywhere. Even though I want him to be our guy, I just have this damn feeling that it's not him.

I have to admit that I don't know much about the man but from the things that I do know, he was a respectable man. When he spoke, everyone listened and apparently he was an extremely devoted professor.

I wish Risa was conscious right now after all she was the one who had him as her Biology professor. Out of all of us she should have known him the best and from my memories she never had a single negative comment about the man.

With the new murder cases that we found that were left unsolved but shared obvious connections to this case, this bastard has been killing for nine years and that's not knowing if there were any other victims before that which at this point I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility.

Nine… He's been murdering people for the last nine fucking years and he's been getting away with every single one of them… So much for the Sybil system… You can be good to avoid street scanners but you can only avoid them just for so long. You can't avoid them forever and yet this guy has no problem getting by without raising a single alarm.

The infirmary is quiet, I guess the nurses must be in the process of shift change so I just make my way straight to Risa's room before I get turned away for whatever reason some nurses love to come up with because I'm an enforcer.

I'm greeted with the same image as this morning. Nothing has changed, not that I was expecting anything different… I just never thought I'd ever see Risa in this condition; it's a little hard to swallow.

I drag my feet to her bedside but I can't bring myself to touch her, somehow if I do I'll only make her condition worst which is just plain stupid for me to think about. It's not like I can do anything worse to her compared to what has already been done but damn that fucking bastard. What kind of a man attacks a woman?

Risa was unarmed and she was attacked from behind, she never saw it coming. Never had the time to react, or have the time to fear for her life… Only a damn coward would attack someone that way.

I didn't think I'd ever come across another case that could fuck me up as much as the Specimen case did. I didn't think it was possible but here it is and the more we dive in deeper into this case, I'm starting to see my colleagues drop like flies and the old fears from back then is coming back to me.

I promised myself that I would never allow that to happen again and now I'm finding it happening again. I need to figure out a plan soon before we get checked mate.

I've been hearing some rumors about maybe there might be a season 3. Apparently the series' producer was interested in making more so cross your fingers.

Review and tell me what you guys think. Don't be all silent I know there's a lot of people reading this ;)