Anxiety
"A set of knives?"
Hei nodded. "Misaki's are pretty cheap, and she doesn't take very good care of them. I spent an hour trying to get a good edge on her chef's knife, and then it went dull again after just one onion. So I thought a new set might be nice. I've never had good knives before. For cooking," he added unnecessarily.
"Then that sounds perfect. And how about your other assignment?"
The spiral-bound notebook that she'd given him last week was sitting on the coffee table; Haruko could have picked it up from where she sat, but she waited for Hei to hand it to her. He did so with as much solemnity as a grad student handing over his final thesis. Curious as she always was when she asked her clients to keep track of something in their daily lives, she flipped open to the first page and was pleased to find that it was almost full.
"Monday," she read aloud. "Held the door for an officer in the lobby. Held the elevator for another officer."
Well, they were small things, but it was a start. At the next line, she noticed that the handwriting had changed from cramped and barely legible to clean and clear characters. "Spent an hour babysitting a witness's preschooler so that she could give her statement without him seeing his mother cry." Haruko raised an eyebrow and glanced at Hei.
"Um, Misaki added that after I fell asleep. She did that the first couple of nights; she didn't think I was writing enough down. We did them together starting on Wednesday."
"You didn't think that pausing your work for an hour to look after a child was very selfless?"
"I mean, I didn't mind doing it; kids are alright."
Haruko read on. "Rewrote all of Kouno's reports for him even though he's a grown man who needs to learn for himself how grammar works."
"Uh, she must have added that too. How did she even know I did it?" he added, half to himself.
"At lunch, accidentally paid too much for noodles and didn't ask for the money back. Yours?" she asked, though the handwriting made it obvious.
It was always difficult to filter through a client's perspective and determine whether they were seeing themselves. It could be entirely true that Hei was as self-serving as he seemed to believe; it could also be true that his putting Misaki up on such a pedestal was baseless, and she was in fact domineering and unreasonable, and he was refusing to see it. But given this list - helping out the public, taking on tasks for his co-workers - it was pretty clear that it was his girlfriend who had the accurate view of him.
She moved on to the next line. "Tuesday: risked life and limb to get Matsumoto to safety after he was injured and nearly killed by a contractor." Her eyes widened slightly. "This is in Misaki's handwriting, not yours." It was difficult to keep a note of accusation out of her voice, but she managed.
"I was just doing my job." The way that his gaze skated away from hers told her that he was holding something back.
"I'm sure you were. I'm also sure that there are plenty of police officers whose reactions would be to protect themselves first; but obviously that wasn't yours." She folded her hands in her lap. "What is it about this incident are you not saying?"
"It..." he began before trailing off into distracted silence.
"Hei," Haruko said gently, "it's okay to acknowledge our fears. There's no way to grow as a person if we ignore the things that make us afraid, the hard truths. I'm here to help you with that." He still looked uncomfortable, so she continued, "I remember when the government first told us about contractors a year ago. Everyone was pretty freaked out, and understandably so. To know that such dangerous people are out there, with frightening powers that we can't understand; it's normal to be afraid. Your position in the police makes you even more vulnerable. I can't even imagine what it must be like, to go out there every day and know that not only are you facing normal criminals, but something potentially superhuman as well. Is this first time you've run across a contractor?"
He blinked. "No. I know how to handle contractors; that's why Misaki hired me."
Haruko's mouth opened slightly as she tried to figure out what to say.
Hei ran a hand through his hair. "But Matsumoto wouldn't have been hurt at all if I'd been paying more attention. It was my fault."
"Does the rest of your team blame you for the injury?"
"No. They think I was -" his mouth twisted slightly - "heroic, for a rookie."
"But you don't think so. Why not?"
"I saw - I saw something that should have tipped me off about the second contractor, the one who broke Matsumoto's leg. Something that I shouldn't have seen, so I acted like I hadn't."
Haruko tapped her pen on her pad, trying to parse his words. "What do you mean, shouldn't?
"It - it doesn't really matter."
This lack of concrete details was starting to frustrate their ability to communicate; but this was the most that he'd volunteered in all of their sessions combined. She had to remember that and not push too impatiently. "I take it you haven't told Matsumoto or the rest of your team about this?"
He shook his head glumly.
"What about Misaki?"
"I…left it out of my report. No."
"Why? Are you afraid you'll get in trouble with her, as your boss?"
"No. She'll - I don't know. I guess I'm afraid she'll be disappointed in me. She has this idea in her mind of who I am, and I'm trying to be that person." He heaved a sigh, the most emotional reaction Haruko had yet seen from him. "But I was trying to protect myself by not saying anything to Matsumoto. If I had, maybe he wouldn't have gotten hurt."
"Maybe - do you know that for sure?"
He shrugged. "Shit happens in the field. I know. But I still could have been more prepared, if I hadn't been so worried about myself."
Haruko sighed. "Hei, I think you're focusing on the wrong part of this situation."
"The wrong part?"
"Let's look at the facts here," she said, spreading her hands. "You were out on patrol with Matsumoto?"
"We were tracking down a lead on a contractor involved in one of our cases," he amended.
"And you saw something that should have tipped you off about an attack, but you didn't mention it because it would have revealed...something...about yourself that you don't want your coworkers to know. So you stayed quiet; there was an attack, and you risked yourself to save your partner."'
He gave a single, heavy nod.
"How long did you have to make a decision, between when you realized…whatever it was you realized, and when the contractor attacked?"
"I don't know. A few seconds, I guess?"
"A few seconds. You had only a few seconds to decide how to treat this situation before the attack; would saying something have made any significant difference?"
"I…don't know. Maybe?"
"And in the end, what happened - you saved Matsumoto's life. You didn't have to. It was your job to watch out for your partner, yes, but you risked your own life to do so. Very, very few people would be willing to do that. Maybe it was a mistake to not speak up, but in no way does it make what happened your fault. Did you attack Matsumoto?"
"Well, no, but -"
"But you saved his life. That is what you need to be focusing on. You seem to have a pretty major blind spot when it comes to your own actions. It's why I asked you to take notes on everything you did last week that demonstrates you putting others ahead of yourself." She jabbed the notebook with her pen. "I'm looking over it, and what I see is that the things that you noted down are kind gestures, certainly; they're small, but there are an awful lot of them. Is that how you see yourself - as someone who is generally kind to people, but has very little positive impact on their lives otherwise?"
"Um, I guess so?"
"And here are the things that Misaki wrote down for you - going to extra lengths to help out strangers, taking hours out of your busy day, risking your life. Do you really think that her opinion of you is so wrong? That you're not a selfless person?"
"Well..." He frowned, as if he was trying to think of a counter argument; but apparently unable to come up with anything, he stayed silent.
"Let's go back to the reason why you didn't say anything to Matsumoto during the incident, and why you omitted this detail in your report," Haruko said.
His gaze was focused on his hands, clasped together in his lap. She wasn't entirely sure that he was listening to her at all, and was just about to repeat her question when he said, "Matsumoto and the others - they don't know, about me. And I'm not ready - Misaki says it'll be fine if I tell them, but...I don't know."
Oh dear. Where to start? "And this thing that they don't know, this is why you left that detail out?"
He nodded, still unwilling to meet her eyes.
"But Misaki knows, even though you didn't tell her about this incident either?" Haruko took a steady breath; it was time to push. "Hei, what is it that Misaki knows about you that your co-workers don't?"
He looked up. "That I'm a criminal," he said simply.
"You - what?" Well, that certainly wasn't my first guess.
Then again, she realized, Hei didn't exactly have an accurate perception of himself. What constituted a crime for him might not be the same for the general population. Given the cloud of guilt currently surrounding him, she had a feeling that that was the case. "You are a criminal, or you were?" she asked. "Are you actively committing crimes, right now?"
"Um..." His brow furrowed in thought. Why does he have to think about this answer? "No? Well, mostly not, I guess."
"Mostly?"
"My papers are forged. But Misaki knows, and she said it was alright. She waived the background check requirement for my hire."
That sounded extremely irresponsible, and not at all in character with the Misaki that Hei had described thus far. "Misaki, your boss, a police officer who has hiring powers, knows that you're using false papers and hired you anyway?"
"Yeah, it kind of surprised me too, actually - she's pretty strict about laws and things. I didn't turn a library book in on time once and she was more upset with me than the library was." The corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile.
It was sweet how much he loved his girlfriend, Haruko thought to herself, remembering back to those days when she and Michio had been newly in love, before each other's quirks had gone from adorable to an annoyance to learn to live with for nearly two decades.
Having false papers didn't sound much like the sort of criminal activity that would cause cops to turn on one of their own if they knew about it. The reason for needing forgeries, however….
"Does this have anything to do with what happened a year ago, when you and Misaki first met? You told me that you were helping her with a case; I assumed that you were already with the police at that time." But the time lines didn't line up, she realized - he'd joined the police just a few months ago, after having been away for a year…having left the country for 'legal reasons'.
As expected, Hei nodded. "I was, um, a confidential informant. Giving her information on my employers."
Having crooked employers still didn't make him a criminal. They were going to have to do some serious work on this self-recrimination problem. "How did Misaki recruit you?"
"Well, she didn't. I went to her."
Interesting; and totally in character for him. "Did you single her out specifically?"
"Yeah. I'd run into her a few times before, and I knew - well, I was pretty sure - that she would take me seriously and not just try to arrest me."
Haruko smiled. "In other words, you knew you could trust her?"
The ghost of a smile finally returned to Hei's own features. "Yeah. And it wasn't just me - my whole team, there were four us - we decided together that we should do something. It was my idea to go to Misaki. If I hadn't been sure about her…I wouldn't have risked them along with me."
And he still didn't understand why Misaki believed him to be selfless. One thing still didn't quite make sense to Haruko, however.
"So your papers," she began when the clock on her desk chimed the hour. Damn - just when we were finally starting to get somewhere. She sighed. "Well, it looks like we're out of time today. Next week, I want to pick up right here." She didn't miss the worry that appeared briefly in his eyes. "I want you to continue recording your selfless acts every night. If Misaki is interested, maybe you two can keep separate lists, and compare them at the end of the week.
At that suggestion, he looked positively horrified; Haruko had to laugh. "I think we're making progress," she continued. "Think about everything we discussed today. Also think about telling Misaki what you left out of your report. It's okay if she's disappointed in you - disappointing others is an inevitable fact of life. But hiding the things we're ashamed of, pretending they don't exist - that's not the way to move forward." She gave him a pointed look. "You trusted Misaki with your association with these criminals; you're trusting her with the knowledge that you are not in the country legally, and she went as far as to bend the rules for you so that you could work for the police. Don't you think you can trust her with this one small thing?"
He nodded, taking the notebook back from her. "I'll - I'll think about it. Telling her."
"Good. That's all I ask."
It was only after he'd left the office that she remembered that she'd meant to ask him about his previous relationships. Well, maybe next time; they needed to deal with this strange perception that he was a criminal first. Except, he said that Misaki hired him because he knew how to handle contractors… She shook her head. Eventually, this unexpectedly surprising new client was going to make sense. Eventually.