A/N: I just had a bad day. And I think it did reflect upon my writing. Moving on . . . welcome to another chapter of HTWIWR! This is my first time writing a crime/detective one shot; so please, leave a note. Hands down to those who would read and bravely click the button down there and started reviewing. Why am I desperate for reviews in one? Because the main character is REI. She's a cool character, and the complexity—not only that, the irony of her whole being (that sound so awkward). I wrote this fic out of the fact that Rei deserves to have one!
HOW THEY WISH IT WAS RAINING
-TheSilentReader-
The Existence of Her Job
Hasekura crossed the yellow tape into the crime scene as she covered herself more with her maroon long coat, clutching its sides to prevent the cold autumn wind to further assault her skin, even with her white button-down shirt and black jeans she was wearing beneath it. She had just composed dragging reports of three separate homicide cases and submitted them to her department chief at exactly three hours ago; now, she was fresh from a hot bath—she was about to splash the second fill of a small dipper full of water when she got an emergency call that a body was found dead. Yet, that small discomfort for not having a decent bath did not bother her at all. As she discovered a constant hatred seeing the yellow tape flashing before her eyes, she wanted to solve any case assigned to her as soon as possible.
The existence of her job was the reason she did not become a P.E. teacher.
The detective was assigned to the homicide department at Musashino; however, accomplished she was during her training at the academy, she insisted that she should be where home was. She did not have any prior connection to the police, neither were her parents, but being able to convince her superiors to reassign her from her post from the other side of the city was an indication that somehow, she had a purpose to be where she wanted to be. Her attachment to the place was as personal as her existence. Her bread-and-butter, after all, was the life-sustaining drug to prevent her from losing herself.
She moved about the dead body, pinning a strand of her now shoulder length hair, while the medical examiner had been reciting to her the time of death that she needed to prep herself up for further sleuthing. Her two fellow detectives, Ryusaki Ichigo and Mori Kyo, were briefing her of the information they gathered from the moment the body was discovered, the victim's identity, the witness' name, to the possible cause of death.
And just like the moon and sun, her cases have always been murders, homicides.
"This is terrible." Mori simultaneously flashed the DSLR camera to the different angles of the impaled corpse, mentally noting possible scenarios that made a school girl considered dead, garnering three stab wounds upon her abdomen, neck dabbed violet with hand marks, and eyes almost rolled at the back of her head, and dried saliva upon her sides of her lower cheeks.
Ichigo, the taller and larger of the two of her colleagues, pointed with his gloved hands, "We thought that the killer strangled first the victim to suffocate her, as seen from the marks at her neck, but the hold did not was not enough to shatter the windpipe, so then he smashed her head repeatedly, as seen from the dirt-covered wound at the occipital portion of the head . . . ." Hasekura sat down upon her calves and crouched near to the victim's head. The killer was not satisfied by just blocking the passageway of her lungs—the killer smashed the head, and then stabbed her repeatedly. Either this was out of pure hatred for the victim, or he was just was just bloodthirsty that he wanted blood to be spilling.
He: that was only an assumption.
Thus the pool of blood bathing the girl's dark uniform. She tried not to step on the almost dried blood. She struggled not to vomit the remaining acid of her empty gut.
"Have uniforms check the grounds for the murder weapon and evidences that our killer might carelessly left behind. Get everything here dusted. And someone please get the press out of the premises of the school." She instructed.
She stood up, feeling nauseous. She could feel the bile and acid neutralizing in her abused stomach, yet she retaliated by slowly bobbing her head forward. She must not be overtaken by recurring memories, yet she wanted to get away, failing to pretend that she encountered this kind of victim for the first time.
Lillian high school student. Drenched in blood. Found dead hidden at the bushes and towering lines of ginkgoes of the cobbled pathway to Maria-sama. Suffocation by asphyxiation. Stabbed three times. This was too different from what happened before; but as she fixed her gaze upon the uniform, she was witnessing death.
She was seeing someone else's face, and not the victim's.
Her partner, Uesugi Jin, his presence unknown to Hasekura, stabled her by a shoulder, shoving her out of her hallucination. "Hasekura-san."
She now felt the prickling autumn wind beyond the superficial layers of her covered skin. Even with the long coat, she shivered that she felt the cold gripping her bones. She felt weak, yet she needed shrug it off.
"The M.E. needs to secure the body now."
She gulped as she tried to act normal. "Any information about the girl's identity?" she grabbed a folder from Uesugi's hand, flipping through pages. The M.E. then signaled her assistants to acquire a stretcher from the ambulance.
"The school principal had been contacted already by Mori. The sister's on her way here. The division head too was called to identify. There's no report yet of any missing Lillian student. Maybe, she's living alone, without adult supervision. There was no bag or anything near the vicinity that would disclose her identity, not even a student handbook." He checked his own notepad for confirmation.
"Did he call the highschool division head?"
"Yes. How do you know about the academic level?"
"That white neckerchief." She looked briefly at the body. "She's in high school division. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a rosary upon her neck. If her parents were influential and rich, this would cause a stir to the media. They might even poke into the investigation by hiring someone with better toys." She muttered later, almost to herself, "Her family, her grande soeur, and petit soeur will be shattered by this."
"Soeur?" Uesugi repeated. "What are you talking about?"
She had forgotten that he was transferred here a year ago from Kyoto. Rei sighed and looked straight to the statue of Maria-sama, glistening under the bright, uncovered moon. "I used to wear that same kind of sefuku."
The results from the M.E. had been submitted to her first thing in the morning, right after she went upon the thirteenth floor of the police station. The precinct was large enough to cover employment for a hundred of fresh graduates of the academy, but some of them could really enter inside and secure at least a working desk. Yet with the increasing complexity of crimes these days, from simple robbery to mass terrorism, the building had been the sink of too many divisions, each seemed assigned to a specific crime. But even with her excellent record in her job in the homicide division at a span of few years, all she wanted for her turf were a decent work table, an efficient laptop, and the classic murder board. With the extreme budget cuts this year, government funding was like a pot of gold at the end of a deceiving rainbow—but she would not be stunned by slacking off and doing a mediocre job because she hasn't had enough gadgets to play with. Yet, she felt she could change everything even with just a Glock hanging upon her holster.
She headed to the elevator and punched the number of the floor where medical examinations were held. She found easy talk with a good friend and M.E., Hanabishi Kyouko, who had been secretly dating one of the detectives belonging to Rei's floor. The name of the man, though, was still unknown; Rei did not want to ponder upon his identity.
She smelled sterilizing yet repulsive QUATS upon opening the door. She was already used to the smell of blood, opened intestines, fermented urine and feces, and the gruesome tinkering with scalpel and forceps that Kyouko had somehow enjoyed, but she would never be used to a cadaver of a Lillian highschool student—or any young girl for that matter. It was a fact that she had lived on ever since the first time she checked bodies after bodies on a daily basis. Old, young, middle-aged male cadavers—she can eat her least favorite food in front of them; but with young women, she could not even enter the chamber without taking deep breaths first.
"Come on. This will be over." Hanabishi smiled as she noticed Hasekura briefly took a look at the victims face before settling her eyes to a less traumatized body part—the foot.
"Right; thanks. Now give me something good." The detective folded her arms to her front.
As Hanabishi testified every bit of physical trauma that had been found upon the body, Rei listened intently, memorizing every word the M.E. mouthed, even though a memo would be given to her before she moves out the chamber. She felt her forehead forming long, branched lines upon her brows and forehead, as she tried to listen to the ways that led this dead girl to her horrid fate.
All she could think about was Yoshino. And with that she had foreseen an impending migraine.
"Here's the report of everything foreign from the body. And that included the lints upon her fingernails. She must have scraped a clothing of the —look," she motioned Rei to look at an extensive research microscope, "lints, and traces of thread from some clothing. This could be anything, without considering the material. I'll let the others analyze them."
"Thanks. Just give me the results as soon as possible. I'll take a look again at her." She sighed, and force herself to examine the vic with gloved hands. "I don't like this case."
"Give that a good look before leaving." The M.E. could only advise vaguely. Rei knew what she was hinting at her.
She was never this subjective and unprofessional when it comes to cases involving teenage girls.
"She's very private with her personal affairs. Yeah, she talks to others but not as open as with her onee-sama."
"She only comes here for club practice. One of the sempai in the club is her grande soeur."
"She's very close to her onee-sama. The last time I saw her, she was having a heated discussion with her. I never thought that this would happen. Ask her. She's the only one she's been talking to."
"Lately, she'd been agitated."
Hours of listening to the girls' testimonies, Rei had been virtually walking in an endless circle—but at least she's getting something out of the girls. Her grande soeur. The testimonies had been circling around the closeness of their sisterhood. Through the two-way mirror to the interrogation room, Rei watched, silently. The said onee-sama was sitting elegantly upon the chair, and her hands were situated at the table. Even mourning, the vic's onee-sama could not find herself in a more unfeminine state. As if her uniform was preventing her to mourn freely.
She went to the other room. Rei looked at the profile. She was very much like Sachiko—the vic's onee-sama. There had been too many interference, particularly from the girl's family that she only be interviews in the presence of her lawyer. Rei snorted silently as the representative of the family tried to recite the ojou-sama's human rights, but the girl commanded him to be quiet, because she wanted to be interviewed. Rei understood; she's cooperating.
She understood how an onee-sama felt when she could not do anything to save her imouto from death.
"I'm detective Hasekura Rei."
When they were in the interrogation room, Rei started the conversation. "Yahiko-san, you don't have to sit that stiffly. You're not inside the school anymore." She watched the young girl forced herself out of her habit.
"No, it's fine."
Indeed like Sachiko. She may be outside Lillian, but she still donned the black uniform. She doesn't want to be boss around. Hasekura commenced her questioning; if the girl's like her old classmate and friend, then she'd have to pick her words carefully. "You are the girl's onee-sama at school. I know the tradition; back in my time, I was once the Rosa Foetida. I too, had a little sister that I really loved." She let the works hang too long. She continued, "As her onee-sama, surely you should have known everything about her . . . her problems. I heard that you recently had a fall-out. Is that true?"
"Yes, that's true." The girl silently admitted.
"What was the fall-out about?"
"It's stupid. And we reconciled already."
"Still, you have to tell me."
Long silence. Yet, Rei let her take the time as if it were not a luxury at all. That is the problem with them, sometimes. They don't know how time costs just like they consider other things. The girl took a lengthy sigh. Her hands crumpled. "It was about the nature of our relationship."
"What about it?" Rei remembered; the Yellow Rose Revolution, as they called it. It was embarrassing and hurtful to remember it now, but she could not help it, not when her memories of young Yoshino have been in her mind ever since she saw the interviewee's dead little sister.
"She'd confessed that she'd fallen in love with me. I could not accept her feelings before. . ." she watched Yahiko as the latter tried not to break into tears. Her knuckles became more visible as words flowed out. ". . . Because of many reasons." She looked sideways, to an empty stool on her left, which was supposed to be reserved for her lawyer and family representative.
She continued, "And yet, she decided to wait for me, to 'make sense' as she eloquently pointed out, even if I flatly objected. Two weeks ago, I accepted her feelings. She was so happy—we were so happy about it, but I insisted to keep things in secret. I don't want my family to know about it, and she gracefully considered my reason. I don't want to let our relationship be known. Yet her ex-boyfriend—"
Rei perked her brows. "Ex-boyfriend?"
Rei could sense the irritation upon the ojou-sama's heated eyes the moment she repeated the word koibito. "Yes." She let the girl continued, "She tried to break up with him before she confessed to me."
Rei procured a small smile. "Thank you for bravely telling that to me." She only received a hurtful, almost teary glare. Then she followed up the question. "The ex-boyfriend, who's he?"
"He's a student at Hanadera."
"Have you seen him?"
"Yes," She spat at the word, bitterly. "He once came to the school gate to pick her up. He made quite an arrogant and boor impression of himself. He's a boor who paraded my little sister right to my face—what lack of confidence, to use a woman to emphasize his masculinity. What insecurity." It was as rude as Sachiko could procure with her mouth.
"Do you know his name?" Rei was now impatient of the long wait. Her foot began to fidget, tapping erratically against the floor.
"Hanabi Ginousuke."
"When was last time of you've seen Kiiko-san?"
Her brows began to meet. "At school. I left early before her. She said that she had to do something before going home. If I didn't leave . . . ."
Rei decided to finish the interrogation. "Where were you last night between six to eight o'clock?"
"At home."
She stood up to leave the room, and she was expecting that Yahiko-san to follow her. She gathered the folders upon the table. "You may go now—"
"If I stayed with her . . . ."
The girl's head was hanging low, her back bent, her bangs were now covering her forehead and eyes. She was crying; she could see tears pouring and blotting her dark skirt.
Rei hesitated—but she walked slowly to the mourner, and she stretched her arms and let the girl cry to Rei's stomach.
She was once like Yahiko, was once saying what Yahiko had been afraid to say, cying for the same loss.
Ten years ago, Rei found out about what happened to Yoshino through the phone. The only thing that she knew before turning off the phone and rushing to the hospital was that she was stabbed. She rushed to the hospital, thinking of nothing else but her dear cousin.
How she able to got into the hospital, she did not know. Somehow, she was able to kept sufficient money to her pocket for her to get to the subway and select the fastest possible ride. Somehow, when she received the call, she had not removed her jacket. She would not even mind.
Other things did not matter, as long as she'd to see Yoshino, smiling back at her, telling her that she's an idiot, coming all the way from the far side of the city out of a small matter. She desperately opposed pessimism and negativity, which was successfully eating her slowly; the longer the time passed, the more her hope diminished.
She tried to call her father, to tell her everything he knew, yet he was not answering. She called her mother, yet she was not answering too. She called Yumi-chan, but she was just going to the hospital too. Then, her phone died down. In her frustration, she smashed it to the floor at the train station. They don't know what happened—Yoshino was all alone.
She should have not left her alone.
When she went to the other room to meet Uesugi, she said to him, "You heard the name?"
"Yeah. Ryusaki-san's on his way to Hanadera Academy. And Mori-san's digging everything, from bank acounts to anything he bought in the last few weeks. The guy's rich too. He'll give you a tons of info with that new computer of his. That guy's got weird attachment with his laptop—so freaking weird."
"Hmph."
The other detective continued. "Her bookbag was found in the clubroom, along with her phone. His name registered there too. She called him two weeks ago, and yesterday at 5 pm. I also talked to students who have been inside the campus even after 7pm. They said that they did not notice anything. It seemed that the girl's the last student in the campus. The guard who had been doing the rounds did not even notice it until 8pm. The latest time the girls left from the campus was 7:10."
Then she was killed between that time-frame. The time narrowed down, she mentally pictured her murder board. She still had to meet up with the parents. "Nearest kin; have you contacted them?"
"Yes. On the way to confirm the body. They were away from the city."
"Get them to my desk the moment they arrive."
"Yes." Uesugi hesitated—"That girl—she . . ."
"An aborted love story."
Mori interrupted them with a whistle. He was tapping a white folder above his head, and said, "The, ugh . . . grande soeur's alibi was true. That guy that she just mentioned . . . really obvious. I could already see that he's the killer. Hasekura-san, you won't even break a sweat."
"Why's that?"
Mori wedged between the two partners. "The guy just wasted his money buying gasoline, cleanex and trash bags, got his loaded his car in full tank—all with his credit card. Then got a large amount of money from his savings. I can't help but say that the guy's stupid."
"He'll bail out if he's got a good alibi." Uesugi lazily reasoned.
"Uhuh. All that spending after 8pm. He was not wasting time."
"Hand it over." Hasekura ordered. Mori obliged, and gave the folder to the detective. Ryusaki would soon bring the Hanadera student to the interrogation room. If Mori had been correct, which he always was, she would be grilling Hanabi Ginousuke later on.
Mori concluded. "I'm positive that we have the guy. Don't worry Hasekura, if you talked to him, surely he'll give away."
She wanted to end this investigation today. As much as possible, she wanted to go home, to be at peace, to sleep. She hoped that even with this early an investigation, and the little information they knew, that they'd find the killer. By the minute, her resolve was dissolving. She doesn't want to linger in a case like this anymore.
They found him.
Hasekura slowly rested her hands upon the table, rose up, and narrowed her face to the sitting Hanadera student to a mere foot. Uesugi, who joined her in the interrogation, could not even stop her from losing little of her composure. The boy was repeatedly smirking when his lawyer had been stopping their train of conversation every time she asked a question. They sent the best lawyer his family could provide, thinking that a smart-ass recitation of the boy's human rights could bail him out of the interrogation room. The lawyer made sense, yet she urged on.
She gritted her teeth. "Let me take out that smile off your face. Do you think that the police could not even get through your house? Your car? The murder's just fresh since last night. Have you ever heard of a search warrant? Guess what, richboy; we had permission from your uncle, and we just finished poking around your car and house. Apparently, the chief doesn't know that you're involved with the victim. He was even surprised when he saw the address upon the warrant when we handed it to his office. Right now, through that window," she motioned her head sideways, to point out the mirror that in front of Hanabi, "Big Brother's watching you."
On the other adjacent room, Mori and Ryusaki were nervously watching the whole scene with the head of the presinct. The old, sturdy man was silent; his hands at the back. Before his boy could get inside the interrogation room, Hasekura already explained the situation to her superior, without blinking en eye, without considering that he could interfere with the investigation by using his position and power. Yet, Hasekura urged on, explaining. He knew of her past, her reason for being joining the academy, the police. He could not fight with a woman whose determination of a hundred men.
Hanabi gulped. Finally, the provoking was finally sinking in him.
"I told you about your purchases with your credit card, your whereabouts until 6pm yesterday. Gasoline, cleanex, trash bags. Guess what?" Hasekura settled down to your seat. "We found your discarded uniform, your black leather gloves."
She bluffed. The M.E. had a good job identifying the even the tiniest object upon the body. Kyouko-san reported that she found traces and prints of leather upon the neck, and the lint upon the fingernails matched the any Hanadera high school uniform. The information would not narrow down to the guy himself. She also instructed uniforms to look for them, and she hoped that they'd return with good news on time.
But if Hanabi had been the killer . . .
"Everyone at Hanadera owns black leather gloves and the Hanadera uniform." He gnashed abruptly.
"Yeah, we know that." Hasukura feigned a bored expression and pretended as if she was removing dirt from her fingers. "You chose to hide your clothes instead of throwing them at different parts of Musashino, thinking that the police would not bother with junk. We thrived in rummaging junk. But why Musashino only, Hanabi-san? Your car's in full tank. You could just drive to different parts of the city and throw it there. Yet, your curfew is 8:30pm, and you went home just in time, or else your father will not be very happy. You did not plan to kill her, so when you realized that your uniform's just covered with her blood, you could not just throw them away. Your name's in the uniform so you have to burn it. The "third-year" collar pin could not be burnt that easily, so you kept it.
"You're not used to buying in a local grocery store, for everything's being handed to you on a daily basis. You don't know where you could get cleaning materials inside your big house, so you took your chances and bought in a grocery store that's too foreign for you. For the first time, you only have yourself to depend on.
"You know that you cannot just go outside the house, given your father's reasons about your latest activities, so you could not just burn something at your own backyard. So the gasoline did yet not serve its purpose. But not the trash bag. So you put them there, and save the burning for later."
"But how did you manage to buy those in a grocery store? You wiped blood from your hands with the dirtied uniform. You have your extra shirt and shorts in your car, so you changed your clothes inside. Take the liquid car freshener, and apply them to your hands while you let water wash the remaining blood in your hands. It's better to smell like car perfume than fresh blood. We saw them in your laundry. Yet your car had traces of blood. So you went out with fresh clothes to the grocery store. The cleanex now served its purpose. After you went home, you cleaned, for the first time, the seats, and the floor carpet. You told yourself, you did a good job, that's why your hands were a little bruised and tender, not only from killing her, but also for cleaning. You did not know that chlorine and hard soap would do much to the delicate skin. But you did not notice to clean backview mirror that you unconsciously adjusted, as you hurriedly drove off from Lillian, in pure shock. As I said, we poked into every thing you have."
The man tried to look at her in the eyes, to appear unaffected, yet Hasekura knew that she was getting her assumed story right, from the reaction the Hanadera student have been trying to suppress while she story-tell.
Hasekura continued, when the boy could not retaliate anymore. Even the lawyer had doubted his presence inside the room. "It was out of obsession, if not, out of the fear of getting dumped." Hasekura was a little quiet as she told the presumed motive.
"Two weeks ago, when she tried to break up with you, you knew her reasons, even before she even told you. You knew that she was in love with her grande soeur, and your pride as a man was hurt, because she settled not for another man, but for another of her same sex. You threatened her before, that if she broke up with him, he would reveal her secret to her family. You even threatened to hurt her, as she told her grande souer. Yet, in fear, she stayed with you."
"She's lying! She said that because she did not approve of our relationship."
Hasekura interrupted. "She said that herself; she doesn't like you at all. You were the boyfriend." When the boy went silent again, she carried on slowly, letting the tension to saturate in the room. "Yet yesterday, she said to you that her onee-sama accepted her feelings, and she doesn't care anymore of what her family would think about her. She tried to break it up with you through her phone. You insisted to talk to her personally yesterday. She told you of the time and place. At Lillian, a place she thought was her safe ground.
"You took with you a knife, thinking that you could threaten her with that. Yet when you met, she must have said harsh words, words that you could not swallow. She might have said that you could not stand that she left you for a woman. That you use women to man yourself up. You were furious at her, she being a lesbian slut. Then you showed her the knife. She fled; you hurriedly followed, tucking the knife to your pants pocket. She shouted, even when everyone that evening left, so she tried to go to the guard post. You became too agigated. Yet she wasn't heard."
The boy was now having cold sweat upon his forhead, neck, and back.
Hasekura breathed. "You caught up, and pushed her to the bushes. You tried to shut her up. You tried to block her mouth, but she still struggled. You tried to throttle her, yet she still struggled. With force, you repeatedly banged her head to the ground. But she was determined to get away from you. You could not control her, even if she's weak. You still have the knife. You cannot have her—it's better if she's dead. Then you stabbed her."
Everything was heard by the other detectives at the other room. The old man tried to stand up, and he struggled. Ryusaki just supported his back. Inside the interrogation room, sounds of the ventilation was heard. Hasekura quieted down. Her throat was dry—her salivary glands exhausted from stress. Uesugi could only watch. The lawyer seemed not to remember his purpose inside, hearing such a convincing story.
Someone knocked at the door. Her head snapped to its direction. A uniformed officer appeared before the door, and nodded. She knew its meaning, and gathered the evidences the M.E. gave her to her side of the table. She closed the folder that Mori gave to her a while ago.
"Hanabi-san, where were you last night between seven and eight in the evening?"
There was no answer.
"Chief," Hasekura only just said. The door opened revealing the old man at the other side of the room, with a uniformed officer behind him. "Hasekura-kun, I'll take it from here." Her superior painfully said.
When she and Uesugi were about to close the door, they heard the old man recited sternly, "Hanabi Genousuke, you are under arrest for the murder . . . ."
Ten years ago, Rei just knew the story from the police officer. She could not talk to the girl that witnessed Yoshino being slaughtered; she was still traumatized from what happened.
Ten years ago, Yoshino tried to help a Lillian student from being harrassed by two men, at the back gate of Lillian academy. With her bag, and from what she learned from kendo discipline, she tried to defend the girl. She bravely struggled to severe them, yet they were too strong. Both tried to escape, yet, one of them grabbed Yoshino, who was slower to fled, and stabbed her at the chest with a knife. They fled, when the other man noticed blood upon his partner's shirt.
The other girl called for emergency. But Yoshino lost a lot of blood.
She secretly tried to look at her cousin's body, and saw the bandages upon her chest blotted with crimson.
Later, the two men were caught, but Rei could not even get her hands to the person that stabbed her beloved. Her hands bled from the pressure of her fingernails; her eyes were red because of fatigue and sleeplessness and could not produce tears anymore.
Everyone said that it was not her fault—those criminals should be punished. She wanted to avenge her, to feel their blood on her hands. Yet, she could only watch, as they were trialed and disposed to prison.
It was already late Rei stopped her car in front of a house in a suburbian area. Rei knocked at the door. She was tired. A man's voice said that there was someone at the door, and she heard footsteps.
She took a risk at the presinct—she tried to provoke Hanabi into admitting the crime with just few evidences. She told the story as she clearly picture in her head, letting herself succumbed into her story, and making it believable, reasonable, and sensible. If Hanabi weren't the killer, he could just deny it with his alibi. But when she questioned him, he could even lie.
Her assumptions were true. Before the interrogation, she instructed the Mori and Uesugi to get to the boy's mansion, check his car and room for the purchased items, his laundry. She told them to check the number of uniforms and gloves the boy had. And confirm their number to the staff of the house. She told them to get the car dusted, particularly the trunks, chairs, carpets, and mirrors.
What they found were traces of blood at the mirror. Kyouko-san confirmed: it was the victim's blood.
One black trash bag was also missing from the roll that he purchased. The newly bought cleanex was consumed half. The car reeked with the smell of chlorine.
The case was solved. She needed to rest. Non-negotiable. She had no appetite, even if she just had two strong coffees for the rest of the day.
It was like before; the men responsible for Yoshino's demise were caught within hours' time, just like what happened to Kiiko-san. When she left with Uesugi from the interrogation room, her first stop was the restroom. Uesugi even followed her inside, but never to console her, but to just watch her from afar and prevent her from doing something suicidal. Kiiko-san's killer admitted to the crime to his uncle and asked for help, but the latter refused, according to Mori, who had been watching the whole exchange from the other adjacent ro om. She was scolded for interrogating the boy without confirmation that the evidences gathered were truly pointing the suspect, and being so rash inside the interrogation. But with the confession from the boy himself, she was tolerated this time. She promised again, that this would be the last time she would be impulsive.
Rei waited for the door to be opened. She heard incoming footsteps. The doorknob clicked.
"Rei-chan! Finally, you're here. Shoutaro's just preparing dinner." A woman softly said, raising her eyebrows as she scanned Rei like laser. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and blue jeans. "Let me guess, another solved case?" She ushered Rei inside. "With all your cases, I don't need any more crime novels to be entertained. Tell me the story." While heading to the living area, the woman babbled on; her long straight, ebony hair flowed as she walked.
Rei sat on the couch. "I don't think you'll like it."
"Try me." Yoshino challenged.
She survived. The person who she loved more than a sister battled death miraculously. In the three months that she was in the hospital, Rei watched her dear cousin closely, monitoring the wound that had not fully healed until three months later. Ten years ago, for four months of healing and therapy, she watched, as Yoshino gradually gaining a healthy color. Later, she became a slave of Yoshino's every whim. At first, she could not leave her alone and did not dare, but Yoshino's rebukes were more powerful than Rei's resolve. When she said that Rei should relearn to be without her, it took her until now to get used to it.
"Come on. It could not be too traumatic for me." The host urged on.
Yoshino was much stronger than Rei was. She moved on quickly after her accident, unlike her older cousin, who still wallowed in the past. She recovered, telling Rei that she's fine already. She was scared to die early, that she might not recover from the shock, but she repeately told Rei that she'll move on, as soon as she recovered. She did accomplish all. Only Rei was left behind with the past.
Rei put her hands on Yoshino's head. She just said, "I'm starving, Yoshino." and smiled.
"Oi, Shou! Where's dinner?" She shouted across the room.
A man's voice resonated from the kitchen. "Coming, commander."
Yoshino grinned.
She could not forget yet, or even let it go, but later in an unknown future, she hoped she could. Like Yoshino had done so many years ago. With that, she was sure secure peace with herself.
END
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this chapter. If there are inconsistencies in the crime story, even to the smallest detail, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me right away, through PM or a review. This is a crime/detective oneshot, so I don't know if I had rightly put all the pieces together. I intended to put a vague description upon Yoshino's case just to let you assume that she had died. I don't know if I nailed it right. I am begging for a review on this one! T_T
This is not related at all to my other fanfic, Behind Closed Doors. As Shoutarou and Kyouko of this oneshot did not come from Skip Beat!