"I shouldn't have pushed her so hard to make a decision. I should have known that there are some things out there that are better left alone. Even if she ended up finding her sister, it was not worth almost dying for.
And now, knowing what we have put our lives on the line for, how are we supposed to move forward? We have all had days where no amount of rhetoric makes them any less terrible, but we dry our tears, remember the things that matter, and continue on—because life is both good and bad. We try not to forget the former exists, we endure the latter, and we live on.
So why am I so terrified to find out what our next days will look like?" —Sonoda Umi
The smell of antiseptic and the sound of machines beeped in her peripheral senses, but Umi kept her gaze trained on the form of her redheaded friend sitting slumped in a chair. "How did this happen?" she repeated. Her voice sounded hollow, and it had nothing to do with the run she had made back from the outer districts to the hospital.
Maki shook her head slowly. "I don't know, Umi," she ground out. "Don't ask me. If I did, there'd be no way in hell we'd be here." She balled the material of her lab coat into a fist, creasing the heavy white material into uneven folds.
Umi tried to ignore the fact that she knew whose blood was on it.
She uncrossed her arms, shifting slightly from the stiff position she'd taken against the wall for the past few hours. "I don't understand," she said, dark blue bangs falling into her face; brushing them aside, the fingers of the hand she had used tightened into a fist. "How did they find out who she was?"
Maki's shoulders rose before she dropped them in a shrug. "I don't know," she said again, before she lowered the volume of her voice, its tone intensifying. "But think about it. If they were smart enough to find out who she was, then they would've known that we don't keep shit in the apartment. Anything that's actually important is locked away in the lab, so the only reason for them to even go to the apartment would be…" She trailed off.
Cursing silently in her head, Umi sucked in a ragged breath. She knew Maki was right. "They were after her specifically," she finished quietly.
She remembered the scene that had greeted her before she had even reached their apartment complex. There had been a group of people gathered just outside the campus gates—when she had gotten close enough to see what was going on, she saw the police pulling the body of the security guard out of the booth next to the front gate, his throat slit open in a bright red smile.
But that had not been the worst of it. She had run into the brightness of the emergency department at the hospital only to find Maki waiting for her at the door, expression exhausted and vacant, clutching her phone in one hand as though it was a lifeline.
I shouldn't have gone hunting last night. Maybe if I had been there…
She cast a glance at Eli's prone form lying on the bed next to them. If it wasn't for the IV inserted in the back of her left hand and the pulse oximeter on her finger, she might have been sleeping.
"Why, though?" she asked suddenly, half to herself. "She's not even…" Her thought had been anyone important, but Umi could not bring herself to say it out loud. Because that's not true.
Maki let out a dry laugh, the sound caustic and bitter. "Why? I'll tell you why," she snarled viciously. "You think she wasn't putting her neck on the line when she agreed to work for Toujou? They've probably figured out she's the one behind Toujou getting her hands on all that information. Convenient, isn't it?" she spat. "Toujou gets to sit all safe and pretty behind that desk of hers while this—" she swung her arm in the direction of the hospital bed to punctuate her sentence, "happens to the people who work for her. You think she actually cared about keeping Eli safe? About keeping any of us safe?"
Umi looked to the side, a frown tugging at the corner of her mouth. Her personal interaction with the district ruler had been in the form of a single, very brief episode, but that had not been the impression that she had received from the violet-haired woman, especially when she factored in the way that she had looked at Eli. "No," she said slowly. "I don't think that's the case."
Snorting, Maki swivelled her gaze towards the door. "When are you going to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt they don't deserve, Umi? Do you even think it's crossed her mind that this happened to Eli because she was able to get information they didn't want her to have? Forget about the fact that there was no way in hell it was of any use to her personally—the fact that Toujou was getting it was enough."
Her lack of an immediate response was all the ammunition Maki needed to keep going. "That bitch," she growled under her breath. "If she shows up, hoping to apologize to her, she'll find out I meant exactly what I said to her last time."
Reigning in her own sense of anguish and guilt, Umi took a few steps forward to put a hand on her redheaded friend's shoulder. "Don't," she advised. "That won't help."
Maki snorted again. "Maybe not, but it'll make me feel better." She pulled in a deep breath and let it out before she finally deflated, leaning forward in the chair and burying her forehead against the heels of her hands. "Goddammit Umi, what if I didn't show up when I did?" she asked, helplessness and pain creeping into her voice at last.
Umi closed her eyes, feeling sick at the mere mention of the possibility. She shut the door on her thoughts before they progressed, pushing them to the back of her consciousness. "Don't," she said again.
Dropping a hand, Maki looked up at her with a worn out, amethyst gaze. "You know, the fact that you told her to keep that knife on her probably saved her life, right? I don't think he was expecting her to be armed."
Her fingers closed around the strap that held her bow and arrows in place. On any other day, Umi would have been glad to hear that her sense of precaution had been warranted, but not today.
She had just opened her mouth to reply when Maki gasped.
"The knife."
Confused, Umi raised an eyebrow at her, wondering what she was getting at. "What?"
"That knife," the redhead repeated. "She—"
Maki was interrupted by the sound of a polite knock on the door, causing both of them to turn and look in its direction.
Kotori popped her head around the corner, her tired expression softening when she caught sight of both of them. She was still wearing her scrubs, and blearily, Umi remembered that it was time for her to go home after her shift. She took a few steps towards the doorway.
Her fiancée made her way across the almost-silent hospital room until she was just in front of her, arms and hands spread in an open gesture. Wordlessly, Umi let Kotori wrap her arms around her. It was an act she did not normally allow in public, but at the moment, she no longer knew what was normal and what was not.
"She's going to be okay, Umi," the brunette told her softly.
Umi let herself relax very slightly. "I know. But still, I…"
"There was no way for you to know that this was going to happen," Kotori murmured. "Just focus on keeping yourselves safe in the future."
There were perhaps a hundred things that she would have wanted to say under normal circumstances, but all of them felt pitifully inadequate in the face of her sense of failure and the emotions that roiled just under the surface, kept painfully in check by some force of will she did not know she still had control over at the moment.
"Okay." It was the only word she could say without embarrassing herself.
Kotori gave her a small, fleeting smile when they broke apart, the expression belied by the concern that took over her features when she went over to speak to Maki, the pair of them bent anxiously over the yards of paper that the telemetry machine had printed out in the last few hours.
She rested a hand against the railing of one of the unoccupied beds. Though there was the sound of quiet conversation coming from Maki and her fiancée, accompanied by the steady beep of the machines in the background, the room felt empty, as though it was caught in some form of perfect, lifeless clarity.
Her thoughts were interrupted when there came a louder, harsher knock on the door.
Umi spun around, only to find herself face to face with none other than the district ruler of Tokyo.
For a moment, shock blanketed the rest of her mind.
"T-Toujou-sama," she stammered.
Nozomi had been prepared to face both of Eli's friends personally before she'd even stepped foot in the hospital, but the forlorn wariness etched in Sonoda Umi's features and the anger that glared back at her out of Nishikino Maki's amethyst gaze almost made her want to reconsider. There was another woman in the room she didn't know, but the young brunette was gazing between her and the other occupants of the room with a panicked expression of confusion—like a deer caught in the headlights.
The redheaded physician stood up abruptly as Nozomi took a single step over the threshold, motioning for her security guards to stay outside and closing the door behind her.
"What are you doing here?" she snarled at her.
If she was honest with herself, Nozomi knew she shouldn't have been expecting a warm welcome.
"The same reason you're all here, I expect," she replied blithely.
She hid her barren sense of guilt and regret in the only way she knew how, underneath a calm façade that fooled almost all of the people interacted with—save perhaps one. The agonizing breathlessness of the moments after Koizumi had hung up wasn't the doctor's to share. The surge of terror that had risen in her throat when the implications and possibilities raced through her mind at a hundred miles per hour wasn't for sale to her advisors who had no idea why she insisted on leaving the district building so urgently that morning. And she'd be three days dead before she allowed the moment of realization that had hit her in the chest like a physical blow on the way to the hospital to be spread across the internet like carrion waiting for the vultures.
All of the emotions I was told under no circumstances was I ever to show to anyone. The fact was no longer true, but her list of anyone did not include anyone that could hear her at the moment.
Nishikino's features twisted into a mask of anger as she took a few slow, measured steps towards her until they were practically face-to-face. It was a proximity that her security guards normally didn't allow for her, but there was a reason that she had left them outside of the door. "I warned you," she hissed, the tone of her voice colder than antarctic winter. "I told you last time that it didn't matter who you were, because if she got hurt because of you, you'd pay."
"Oh, I'm aware."
The physician slammed the heel of her hand into the bedside table beside her, her expression as thunderous as a storm cloud. "So explain this! Tell me exactly why someone tried to kill her last night. Didn't you promise her the best security you could offer?"
Nozomi sensed that there was something more that redhead wanted to say, but she was cut off abruptly by Sonoda Umi, who had strode forward and caught her sleeve in a gesture of sharp restraint. The flash of dark red on the white material caught the corner of her eye, and Nozomi swallowed once before she spoke again.
"I did. That was arranged for." The words tried to stick to her throat and she had to scrape them out, banishing the tremors underneath her voice to the back of her throat where they'd come from.
"So what—are you trying to tell me Eli was the careless one?" Nishikino retorted, wrenching her arm out of her blue-haired friend's grip. She seemed to have forgotten who she was speaking to, but Nozomi wasn't here—nor was she particularly in the mood—to assert her position. I'm here to apologize, but not to her.
Nozomi shook her head slightly. "No. That wasn't how they found her." The syllables of her next words felt like unfamiliar shapes on her tongue, thick against the back of her throat on their way out. "We—" She had to cut herself off before trying again. "Both Eli and I were careful. But… she had to say something out loud during one of my conferences. I'm almost positive that's what they used to identify her."
She ignored the scowl that appeared on Nishikino's face when she referred to Eli by her first name. The tall bounty hunter at her side took a step forward towards her, disbelief colouring her features. "Her voice? But— How?"
Looking up at the window, but seeing none of the morning sun outside, Nozomi closed her eyes for the briefest moment before she opened them again. "I don't know," she admitted truthfully. "But the number of people who have that kind of access and the resources to do so are limited."
"But you're going to find out, aren't you?" Nishikino challenged her. Her amethyst eyes dared her to contradict her.
Nozomi met her fierce gaze equally. "Of course I intend to," she informed her, keeping the tone of her voice light.
The redheaded physician held her gaze for a few heartbeats longer, the anger in her eyes not quite spent.
Fifty heartbeats passed between them in silence.
"Then you're going to help us with something else," Nishikino said suddenly; her voice was marginally more controlled, as though she had finally realized that yelling wasn't going to get them anywhere.
From the way Sonoda Umi jerked her head up, she too, had no clue what Nishikino wanted to say. Nozomi quirked an eyebrow at her, feeble curiosity stirring under the surface despite the wholly unwanted situation they were currently in. "Oh? What might that be?"
The redhead straightened up, squaring her shoulders at her full height. "I need access to the citizen registry."
Regarding her skeptically, as though she was just another politician she was used to dealing with on a day to day basis, Nozomi pressed her lips together, narrowing her eyes. "And, may I ask, why you 'need' access to it?"
She watched Nishikino breathe in through her nose, the expression in her gaze darkening. "There's a knife on the floor back at our apartment. Eli had it with her last night. I'm almost positive she stabbed the man who attacked her with it when he tried to run. You'd like to figure out who he was, wouldn't you?" The aggression in the question was unmistakeable.
Opening her mouth, Nozomi closed it before she said something too carelessly; as interested as she was, she didn't intend to give in to the hotheaded young physician so easily. "Don't you think it would be more productive if you handed that knife over the police?" she inquired, tilting her head slightly to one side for effect.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sonoda Umi stiffen very slightly. Nishikino laughed, the sound derisive. "The police? I don't think so. Forgive me if I don't find them very competent. After all, they were asked with keeping us safe, weren't they? If you ask me, I think they're doing a pretty poor job of it so far."
Nozomi had forgotten about the suspicion that Eli had viewed her with the first time they'd met. She only trusts—trusted—me because we spoke about things that were too personal—for both of us. But… that's not the case here. To them, I'm the head of state that couldn't care less about Eli's wellbeing, whether or not we know each other personally. Judging by what she knew about the blonde in question, Nozomi didn't think she had told them about the things the two of them had discussed—and even if she had, it was more than clear that neither Nishikino nor Sonoda approved of their interaction.
The redhead swept on. "I want to do that blood analysis myself. That way, I know there's nobody sabotaging my results."
Nozomi hesitated. As much as she disliked her advisor's constant nagging, Fujiwara's words rung in her head. "Giving ordinary citizens access to information they aren't allowed for a reason? Do you want to get assassinated?"
However…
Nishikino's reaction to her words was an almost painful echo of the very first time she'd met Eli; Nozomi had absolutely no doubt as to what her intentions were, because she might've been wearing them on her sleeve.
In that moment, an odd thought struck her. In this world, who do we trust more? The people whose intentions we can see, or the people we're told to trust? For her, it might've been the latter. For the people standing in front of her, Nozomi knew it was the former.
Nishikino took half a step towards her, the fingers of one hand balling up tightly in a fist. "You're here to see her, aren't you?" She gestured in the direction of the bed by the window as if to emphasize her question. "If you give me access to that database—hell, I don't even care if it's only for five minutes—we'll leave you alone."
"Maki—" The blue-haired woman reached out to grip her friend's shoulder, but the redhead shook her off, glaring at her.
"Don't argue with me, Umi," she snapped, turning her attention to Nozomi once more. "Well?"
Nozomi resisted the temptation to fiddle with her hair. Perhaps… it's better if I let her do the analysis anyways. She pretended to think about it for a few minutes, though she had already come to a conclusion. "Fine," she said delicately at last. "I believe we have an agreement."
Raising her left hand, she undid the clasp of the bracelet that dangled there, and held it out. "Take this to my secretary in the district building. She'll be able to provide you with a one-time access key to the citizen database."
Nishikino eyed it warily. "Why the hell do I have to go all the way over there? Can't you just call her? Or get one of your bodyguards to do it?"
A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Oh, Nishikino-san. I don't think I need to remind you about the danger of information. Would you trust this information to a phone call?"
She saw the redheaded woman press her lips together tightly in a faint scowl, before she thrust out her open hand. The answer was there, but Nozomi knew that the physician didn't want to admit that she was right out loud. Dropping the bracelet into it, she watched her close her fingers tightly over it.
"Umi, Kotori, let's go." She gripped Sonoda's arm with her free hand and hauled her out of the hospital room, the brunette—who had remained silent the entire time, her golden gaze wide as she watched the exchange before her—following close behind.
The door closed behind them.
The moment she closed the door to Eli's hospital room, Umi rounded on Maki. "What are you doing?" Disbelief shook her voice as she raised a finger to point in the direction of the closed door, only to catch the eye of one of Toujou's bodyguards.
Maki did not answer her immediately, pushing past her to stride down the hallway. She didn't stop until they were past the nursing station and out of earshot of the two men outside the door. Shrugging, she finally turned back to meet Umi's gaze. "What needed to be done," she replied simply, a slight tone of indignation in her answer.
"You're going to leave her alone in there? With Eli?" She tried to keep the shock out of her voice. Half an hour ago, she was telling me how much she hated her.
Kotori tugged on her arm, a small reminder of restraint.
The redhead let out a soft snarl, but Umi did not miss the gleam of determination in her amethyst eyes. "I didn't say I liked it. But we need to find out who did this—and hell will freeze over before I trust the police to give us an accurate report on that knife if we hand it over."
Umi shook her head. "No, I understand that," she said. "But are you sure that we should be leaving Eli alone with her?"
Maki tossed a look back at her. "She's hooked up to a vitals monitor. Toujou couldn't hurt her without anyone noticing if she wanted to, even if she is the head or state or whoever." There was a small pause. "She acts like she doesn't care and that she's above all the rest of us, but I know what I saw when she walked in through that door. The two of them have some – thing going on. I hate to admit it, but I don't think she's got it in her to actually hurt her—on purpose, at least."
Umi thought she knew what Maki was talking about. She was used to the carefree, charismatic air around Toujou, but there had been more than a few instances during the brief interaction that she was sure she had seen some flicker of emotion cross the violet-haired woman's face before she erased it. It was subtle, but it had been there.
I know Eli said she trusted her. That has to be enough, right?
Finally, she nodded once.
Maki met her gaze, clenching her first around the piece of jewellery that Toujou had given her. "I'm going to go to the district building, and that secretary of hers better not give me a hard time. Umi, I need you to go back to the apartment and get that knife. Bring it down to the lab and don't leave until I get back."
"Okay," Umi acknowledged with a dip of her head.
"I can stay here and watch over Eli-chan," Kotori instantly offered at her side.
Umi turned to her fiancée, knowing that she had just finished a twelve-hour shift. "Are you sure?"
Kotori nodded seriously. "I'll be fine." Her expression turned solemn as Umi placed her hand over her fiancée's; the brunette gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. "Don't worry about me, Umi-chan—just go and find out who did this."
"That you can be sure of," Maki growled from a few steps away. "Come on, we're wasting time."
Eli awoke to the uncomfortable sensation of afternoon sun on her face. Her side felt like it had been replaced by crushed glass, with gritty eyes and stiff hands; she felt slightly nauseous, complete with a bout of light-headedness as she blinked in the too-bright glare that was compounded by the sterile white of a hospital.
"Good afternoon, Eli."
She froze, eyes widening. Wait… I know that voice— "Toujou?" she mumbled, still half-groggy from what had to be an inordinate amount of painkillers, forgetting for a moment that she wasn't alone and that she shouldn't have addressed the district ruler by how she referred to her mentally out loud. Oh god…
She moved her right hand up against her forehead, partially to shield her eyes from the sun and partially to hide the expression on her face. The discolouring of bruises on her wrist might've given her pause on any other day, but there were too many things crowding in her mind at the moment for her to care. "What… Why are you here?" she asked, throat feeling like sandpaper. She wanted to ask where Umi and Maki were, but Eli sensed that Toujou probably wouldn't give her the answer.
Squinting in the brightness, she made out the figure of the violet-haired woman standing by the window several feet away. If Toujou was offended by her lack of formality, she didn't show it. "Because I heard what happened last night," she replied. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but Eli thought she could hear a slight tremor in it.
If truth was told, she barely remembered what had happened after she'd heard Maki's voice by the bedroom door the previous night. Pulling the memories out of that particular void was about as effective as trying to hold onto water in her bare hands and she gave up shortly afterwards. The only thing she remembered with absolute certainty was the fact that someone had waited until she was alone in the apartment before trying to kill her. Even in her current state, she had a pretty good idea of why someone might've wanted to get her out of the way.
The thought crossed her mind briefly. Is that why she's here…?
When Eli didn't reply to her statement, Toujou took a few steps closer to her, mercifully blocking out most of the sun streaming through the window with her silhouette. "How are you feeling?" There was genuine concern in her voice, along with something else.
Eli choked down a dry laugh, mostly because she didn't think her side could handle it. Like shit was the answer she wanted to give, but she reminded herself that she'd probably crossed some sort of line already by calling Toujou by her surname only and didn't need to cross another. "I'll live."
"From what I heard, you almost didn't," Toujou said quietly, turning her head to look out the window instead. "I… shouldn't have let this happen."
She had finally pinpointed the emotion lurking behind the other woman's words—it was regret.
"Except… it has nothing to do with you," Eli murmured, trying to give her head a shake to dislodge the cotton balls stuck at the edges of her consciousness. "I made my own choice." I've… been prepared for this possibility from the start.
It was a thought that struck her with alarming clarity.
"That isn't what I'm talking about."
Too exhausted to play along with Toujou's usual games today, Eli lowered her hand from her face at last. "So… what are you talking about, then?"
Toujou half-turned her head. "I realized how they figured out who you were on my way here," she said, her voice devoid of its usual placidity. "Neither of us were careless enough to leave something they could track behind, but I forgot about your voice."
Blinking a few times in an attempt to clear the haziness in the corners of her vision, it took her a few moments to process that statement. "What?"
"Your voice," the violet-haired woman repeated. "You shouted at me to move during that conference with President Tenjoin."
Suddenly, Eli half-realized, half-remembered what she was talking about.
"I didn't realize that that was enough for them to identify you," Toujou continued. There was a pause, filled only with the sound of a machine beeping in the background. "I'm sorry."
Not for the first time around the woman in front of her, Eli realized that she was rendered speechless. How am I supposed to respond to that? What… does she want me to say? Should I not have done it?
It was a miracle she was putting coherent thoughts together at all, let alone trying to piece together what Toujou was trying to say to her in her usual perplexing manner.
Minutes ticked by between them in silence, stretching into moments that neither of them were counting anymore.
"You know," the other woman began gently, "I never asked you why you chose to save me. Your friends have never given me the impression that they like—or even approve—of me. When we first met, I assumed you were the same. So… why did you make the decision that you did?"
Shifting her weight ever so slightly, gingerly easing the pressure off the sharp pain in her back, Eli rested her cheek against the pillow. There was only one answer, and she knew she had to say it whether she would've preferred to keep it to herself or not. She wasn't sure whether she was thrown more by the amount of drugs in her system, or the vulnerability she was hearing from the one person in the city who she would've assumed would never show it—especially in front of someone else.
"It was the right thing to do," she said quietly against the starchy material of the pillowcase. "That's it."
"Really?"
Eli nodded, before she remembered that Toujou probably wasn't looking at her. "You… don't sound like you believe me."
It was awhile before the district ruler replied. "Because… I've never met someone who would do something like that without asking for anything in return. Nobody that I know personally—knew" she corrected herself, "would've done what you did without demanding repayment."
She turned her head back over her shoulder to find that Toujou had also turned around. The expression in her green eyes was unreadable as their gazes met.
"What… is the point of doing something just so you can ask for something in return?" Eli asked her. "You might as well not do it at all in the first place. If you're going to help someone, what you might get back should never be what you're thinking about first… if you're thinking about it at all. If you're going to do something for someone, you should mean it."
Toujou gave her a sad half-smile, only an echo of the one she was used to seeing. "What you're saying isn't making my case any better, you know. The fact still remains that they found out who you were because you saved me. You might have survived this time, but... they know who you are now."
They had finally arrived at the topic of the conversation that Eli had somehow been anticipating, though she had no idea how she had known it would be brought up.
"Are you telling me you regret everything, then?" she asked. "Regardless of who you hired… you knew that this was a possibility." Irritation—partially due to pain, and partially due to the fact that the woman in front of her might've been a younger version of herself when she still thought it was possible to survive that way—lent strength into her next words. "In the grand scheme of things, what do you think is worth more? This city and everyone who lives in it, or the life of one person?"
The almost tangible answer hung between them and Eli knew they both knew what it was—it was just that neither of them wanted to say it, as though acknowledging it out loud would somehow increase its gravity.
Worn out by the simple effort of speaking more than two sentences in a row, she paused before continuing in a more subdued voice. "You shouldn't… be asking yourself if you regret it, because you had to choose someone. The choice was mine, so the only person that you could ask that question to is me." A painful cough seized her chest, and she winced. "And before you do," she panted softly for breath, her lungs forcing the rest of her words to come out barely louder than a whisper, "the answer is no. I don't. I thought… No, I know that you care about this city—enough to sacrifice everything that you were raised for to see it rebuilt. Don't… throw that away because of one person."
I mean it. Everything. From not regretting anything that's happened up until this point, to what I said. I walked into this hoping against all the odds that I'd somehow find Alisa at the end of it.
Not only did I find her, I stumbled across something else—something that somehow connected me to someone has both the will and the power to create the change I know I wanted to see. How… could this not be worth it?
Eli let her eyes close for several moments, feeling too lightheaded to keep them open. She wasn't sure where the source of her exhaustion was coming from—the increasing pain in her side or the tumultuous swell of emotion that had taken over her chest. Somehow, she felt afraid to open her eyes again, unsure of how the violet-haired woman would react to her words. Opening them felt like drawing back the curtain on the stage; she hadn't lost nearly enough blood to face the district ruler in front of her, whose reception to her monologue had yet to be seen, and the streets of Tokyo beyond, where she now knew a much darker force lay lying in wait.
Silence wrapped around them, the absence of sound rushing in to fill the space between them.
It was a long time before either of them spoke again.
A gentle, tentative touch brushed against the fingertips of her right hand. Blinking her eyes open in surprise, startled at the sudden, unexpected contact, the warmth of the hand holding hers barely registered next to her pounding heartbeat as Toujou met and held her gaze.
The other woman gave her hand a gentle squeeze, breaking the silence at last. "You know… I'm glad that we met."
The corner of her mouth twitched into a smile. "So am I," Eli replied softly.
Letting go after a few moments, Toujou straightened up and put her gloves back on, returning the smile with one of her own. "Then I suppose it's time that I return to the district building. I have a few things I need to – ah, sort out."
The acknowledgment of what she had said earlier caused her to press her lips together, her smile widening by the slightest of margins. "Good."
The violet-haired woman took a few steps towards the door before she paused. "But before I go, there's one more thing I'd like to discuss with you."
Eli glanced over at her, though heaviness was beginning to tug at her eyelids. "What is it?"
"I think it's about time we dropped the formalities between us, don't you? I call you by your first name, so it's only fair that you should be able to call me by mine. What do you think?"
Even in her current state, Eli could understand the implications carried underneath the simple request. I… What? She tried to discern further than that, but the rest of her thoughts were smoldered underneath a blanket of fatigue.
Laughing softly at her stunned silence, Toujou rearranged her single braid of hair as she went to let herself out. "Why don't you think about it?" she asked serenely, lightly tossing the words over her shoulder as though it was the simplest question in the world, before closing the door behind her with a soft snap.
Maki wrenched open the door to her laboratory to find that Umi was already sitting by one of the steel gurneys that she used as a table. The knife that she'd sent her blue-haired friend to fetch was lying on top of it in a specimen bag, winking innocently at her under the bright lamps overhead.
Umi looked up the moment she let herself in. "Did you get it?" she asked.
Nodding, Maki strode over to her computer, turning it on. She fished the small OSD out of her pocket, holding it up. "And it better work," she muttered darkly under her breath.
While her computer was booting up, she snapped on a pair of latex gloves before opening the clear plastic bag. Umi hovered anxiously at her shoulder, watching her work.
The blood on the blade of the knife had long dried, so Maki took a small knife, carefully shaving off the dark brown flakes into a petri dish. Every citizen in this city was DNA profiled. If he lives in Tokyo, it'll be pretty obvious pretty soon who he is.
Opening up the program that she'd been given to perform autopsies on her computer, she ran the sample through the usual tests. Two distinct DNA profiles appeared once the initial analyses was done, but that particular fact did not surprise her, given where the knife had ended up.
Plugging in the OSD that Toujou's secretary had given her, the citizen database was open before her within seconds. She clicked into the profiling system she wanted, before importing the data from her earlier tests.
Umi gripped the back of her chair with a hand as she set the search parameters, the machine humming as it worked. Maki could feel her heartbeat elevating slightly as she waited for the program to finish its match.
The first name that popped up on her screen was Ayase Eli. She skipped it, flicking her mouse onto the next screen.
The fingers of her left hand tightened against the keyboard when the next profile loaded. There was no one hundred percent match in Tokyo's database, but something blinked underneath the red characters letting her know there was no match.
Maki scrolled down, skimming through the computer's warning that the profile it had used to provide a match was taken from an outdated hospital record. Ignoring its advice that she obtain a more recent sample, she paused when a name finally appeared on her screen, citing an approximate sixty-five percent match with the businessman Imori Shinn.
There was a sharp intake of breath behind her from Umi.
She hit print on the screen, snatching the piece of paper that the printer spat out moments later. "I think Toujou's going to be very interested in this information, don't you, Umi?" she snarled quietly.
I knew it. Of course it had to be one of them.