—Chapter 7—Friday, April 29th, Nighttime—
Tetsuo pounded his fists into the steering wheel of his car, red in the face and screaming. He would kill him. Ren Amamiya was fucking dead. He would kill him himself. He could see exactly where he lived, and he would go in there, and he would kill him.
He could see her through the window, taking her clothes off. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he screamed. "That stupid bitch—what the fuck is wrong with her? I'll show her. He's fucking dead." He cursed Ren's name.
After a while, the light in the dorm room eventually went out. Tetsuo tried to calm down—it was time to go. He wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and took a few breaths to steady himself. A tapping on his roof startled him from his exercise, undoing his efforts.
"What the fuck, man?! What do you want?"
"What on Earth are you doing sitting in your car this late at night, screaming at the heavens?" the man asked, his voice carrying easily through the plastic taped over Tetsuo's empty window frame. "Everything okay, son?"
Through the translucent plastic sheeting and poor lighting, Tetsuo could make out only that this was an older man speaking. "Mind your own goddamn business! What gives you the right to ask me what I'm doing? What the fuck are you doing?"
"Just going for a jog," said the man. "I like to jog when there's no one around to see me. I don't like the way I jiggle," he added, laughing.
"Yeah, you're a real tubby bitch, aren't you. Get the fuck away from my window. I'm outta here." With that, Tetsuo started his car, and pulled away just slowly enough that he didn't screech his tires. Then, just because he could, he extended his arm through the open sunroof and raised his middle finger for the jogger to see.
Scowling, the jogger watched Tetsuo's car drive off and out of sight. "What a rude young man."
—Saturday, April 30, Early Morning—
The sun hadn't risen yet, but there was enough early morning twilight that Makoto could see across the room. A patch of black hair visible above the bunk railing let her know her roommate was still there. She sat up to look more closely. Ren was flat on his back, sleeping soundly.
As quietly as she could, Makoto scooted to the foot of the bunk where the ladder was. She threw the blanket back up toward the top, doing her best to tidy up in the awkward space. She climbed down and helped herself to Ren's toothbrush once more.
Her clothes remained just as they were after she'd taken them off last night, draped over the back of Ren's desk chair. With a hint of longing, she undid the drawstring of Ren's pants and slipped them off in favor of her brown capris. She took one more look in the mirror before stripping off Ren's nightshirt and putting on her bra, followed by her pink turtleneck.
Dressed, she scanned the room: Ren's clothes were all over the place. She collected his jeans and underwear from the floor, folded them, and set them on a clean part of his desk, followed by his dress shirt. She took a moment to appreciate the indentations he'd put in his bed slats last night—he had really grabbed the everloving shit out of those things.
Confident that Jiro wasn't going to step into a chaotic mess when he got back here, Makoto slipped on her shoes and prepared to depart. Hesitating, she took another look up at where Ren was sleeping—she decided to climb the ladder for a last look.
Standing just a couple rungs up from the floor, she was able to look up the length of his body and see the rise and fall of the blanket as it covered him. Anxious for one more touch, she carefully peeled back the covers from over his feet. She found them bare—he must have toed off his socks in the middle of the night. Makoto smiled. She didn't like sleeping with socks either—they made her feet too warm. Rummaging around ever so carefully, she located the two black socks and balled them together, then kissed the bottom of one of his feet. Ren sighed, but did not wake. Covering him back up, she descended the ladder and grabbed her purse from off the hook, letting herself out.
The rest of Ren's building was still resting. It was Saturday of Golden Week, the second full day of holidays. They would sleep late, stay up late, and put off their studies for as long as possible. Not Makoto. She would go home, shower and change, then head into the chem lab. Though there were no classes during Golden Week, buildings remained open to students with an I.D. to scan.
Today, Makoto would get control of things.
The elevator doors opened and Makoto stepped into an empty lobby. Reaching for her phone, she checked the time: 5:42am. On weekends and holidays, R.A.s weren't on desk duty until 9:00—and the same went for the shuttles. And she couldn't help but notice that her phone, having gone another night without charging, was sporting a whopping eight percent battery.
Here's hoping I can get home before my phone dies…
Makoto was much more attentive to her surroundings on the trip back than she had been on the trip there. Streetlights were still on, but the eastern sky was blue with the impending sunrise. She could see easily enough, and knew that she was in no danger. With the exception of the occasional illuminated window, there were barely any signs of life, on campus or off.
By the time Makoto made it back to her friends' house, her phone was at two percent. The house was unsurprisingly silent—a look through the windows confirmed there was no one awake who could let her in. She went to the window she'd unlocked last night and quietly pushed it open. Pulling herself up, she made her way inside.
With barely a thump, Makoto landed softly on the kitchen floor, turned, and locked the window. She picked up and discarded the note she'd left for her friends—she'd have fewer questions to answer if they just never knew she'd been out, so for now, she would maintain the fiction that she'd spent a restful night there on their sofa.
She took another look at her phone: one percent battery. Rummaging around in her suitcase, she produced her phone charger and plugged it in next to the couch, but not before it gave a final buzz to let her know it had died.
Time for a shower. Makoto went back to her suitcase and pulled out what she planned to wear that day, then stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light. Her toiletries were already there on the counter. She found her shampoo, then proceeded to undress.
On the inside of the bathroom door was a full-length mirror, and Makoto took a moment to study her own reflection. Examining her curves, she recalled Ren's body: How it looked, and how it made her feel to touch it. Just thinking about it made her belly burn. She tried to imagine what feelings the sight of her own body might evoke in him.
Makoto inhaled, blowing out her cheeks and trying to forget the ache in her loins that she'd inadvertently summoned. Grabbing her shampoo bottle, she stepped into the shower and turned on the water.
Her nipples hardened under the cold spray. Cursing, she stepped back and hugged herself while she waited for the water to warm up a bit. She tried to recall her mental checklist for the day: What was it she wanted to do? All she could think of was Ren's body.
Just wash your hair, Makoto, she thought, chiding herself. She squeezed a bead of shampoo into her palm and applied it to her scalp. As she massaged it in, her mind wandered further. Flashes of skin and muscle. Sounds of heavy breathing. A soft moan. Writhing bodies. A mouth on her neck.
God dammit, Jesus Christ, she cursed, squeezing her legs together. Getting desperate, she studied the shampoo bottle in her hands. She couldn't believe what she was considering doing, but she needed to fuck herself with something. Anything.
But the bottle was entirely the wrong shape. Improvising, she stretched her arm out of the shower and reached for her hairbrush on the bathroom counter. The handle was a little too skinny, but it did at least get wider in the middle. It would have to do. Spreading her legs, she thrust the handle of her hairbrush up into herself and moved it slowly up and down. She exhaled gratefully, but it wasn't enough. Hopeful, she looked up: detachable showerhead. Wasting no time, she used her free hand to pull it from its cradle. She set it to "massage", and put it to work.
Between the thrumming pressure of the jetstream and the brush handle in her pussy, Makoto writhed involuntarily. She wanted to let herself go completely, but she seriously worried that if she wasn't careful, she would slip and fall over. The last thing she needed was for her friends to find her unconscious in the shower, with a goddamn hairbrush in her cunt.
As her climax approached, Makoto curled her toes and bent down at the knees, doing her best to keep her center of gravity over her feet as she came. The hairbrush shot out of her as the walls of her pussy clenched down on it. The clattering of it striking the basin startled her, interrupting her orgasm and making her comedown a tad awkward. Breathing deeply, she felt better just for having had some release.
She returned the showerhead to its original setting and spot on the wall, then wrapped things up getting clean. Stepping out of the shower, she reached for a towel and dried herself off, then dressed in the clothes she'd picked out for the day: jeans and a short-sleeve, button-up white blouse. Glancing up at the clock on the wall, she saw she was still way ahead of everyone else: 6:50am. Using her hairbrush as God intended, she finished up in the bathroom.
After a simple breakfast of instant oatmeal, it was still only 7:04, and everyone else was still asleep. It would be a few hours before anyone would answer calls about her locks or her pantry door, but she wasn't about to squander this time. Makoto cleaned up her oatmeal mess, tidied the couch, grabbed her phone off the charger, and pulled the sealed beer from her suitcase. She was ready to hit the chem lab.
—
At home on the deck by his pool, Dean Giichi Yoshinora treated himself to some much needed peace, listening to the birds chirp while reading a good book. The dean of a well-respected police academy needed a break from time to time, and he wanted to enjoy his while he could. In a few hours, his wife would be leaving to spend the rest of the week with her sister out on the coast, but he couldn't go with her—not with everything going on. For now though, the tranquility of his backyard was good enough.
"Honey, phone for you," called his wife from inside the house.
Son of a bitch, he cursed to himself, laying his open book down on his chest as he leaned back in his deck chair. "Who is it?" he called back.
His wife walked outside, phone in her hand. "It's the police," she said. "Sorry, I know that's the last thing you want to hear," she added, kissing him on the cheek as she handed him the phone.
He sighed. "It's fine, thank you dear," he said, bringing the phone to his ear. "Yoshinora," he said, answering.
"Dean Yoshinora?"
"Yes, speaking."
"Dean, this is Detective Hotaru Naabe of the Capital Police Force. We've spoken before."
"Yes, I remember. Are you calling to tell me you caught the murderer?" he asked, a facetious lilt to his tone. He knew that couldn't be the case.
"No, unfortunately. There's been another murder. This one very close to your campus."
The dean sighed. "Are you just calling to let me know, or is there something more you'd like me to do?"
"We mainly wanted you to be aware, and to urge you to increase your campus security and other safety measures."
"I won't be in the office today, but on Monday I can put out another bulletin. Will that do?"
"We'll be speaking to the local media about this as well, so information will spread that way. The sooner you can get the word out, the better, but you can have your weekend."
"Thank you. I appreciate you taking some of that on."
"And Dean?"
"Yes?"
"Do you have CCTV cameras as part of your campus security?"
"Not over every square inch of the campus, but yes, we do. Will you be asking to see any of our footage?"
"Perhaps, yes. We received a tip from a jogger who was out last night that there was an irate man in a red car outside one of your dorms that happens to be very close to where we found the body."
"We generally keep footage for seventy-two hours. If there was something to see, it will still be there on Monday."
"That should be fine. But for the time being, we would ask that you keep all new surveillance footage, deleting nothing."
"All? That will overwhelm our servers."
"If it gets to be an issue, we can offload some of your data to our police servers."
The dean sighed. "Thank you, Detective, I'll bear that in mind. May I wait until Monday before making this change?"
"Yes, you may. If you can go back three days in your surveillance footage, then what we need will still be there on Monday. We just want to be prepared."
"Understood, Detective." The dean pinched the bridge of his nose. "Are we done?"
"Yes, Dean, thank you for your time. Enjoy Golden Week."
"I'm trying," he answered. "Good day to you."
The dean hung up the phone and set it down on the table next to him—his tranquility was ruined. Monday would come all too quickly.
—
Makoto swiped her I.D. card, and the door locks clicked open. It was early still, and the chem lab was empty, but Makoto preferred it that way—she was hoping to avoid answering any questions as to what she was up to.
The lights in the lab flickered on at her approach, and she set her things down at the lab station she'd gotten used to using over the course of the term so far. At her station, there were various manuals, test kits, reagents, and equipment, most of which she'd not gotten to explore yet. In spite of the dreadful reason she had for being there, she couldn't deny a twinge of excitement at the thought of having a real, non-theoretical excuse to dive into some practical chemistry.
Scanning the titles on her shelf, she spotted one book in particular that looked promising: Presence-Absence Tests: A Compendium. Pulling it off the shelf, she skipped to the index. 'Date rape drugs, page 118; see also: barbiturate, benzodiazepine, flunitrazepam, gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), ketamine, Rohypnol'.
"Sheesh, there are a lot of drugs for this…" she whispered under her breath. Turning to page 118 revealed a list of symptoms, reagents, and tests for different specific drugs, with different page numbers to flip to for how to administer them. She read: "'Most drugs can be detected in a urine sample up to one to two days after being administered. For a hair follicle test, wait at least one week, or up to ninety days.'" She crinkled her brow, wondering. "Huh… Doesn't say anything about testing for it in alcohol… Is that just because they don't expect to have the luxury of the actual spiked drink to test? Or will this not work?"
After reading a description of side effects for the different possible drugs and comparing them to what she'd experienced, she decided to test for Rohypnol, a benzodiazepine. According to the compendium, she would need the 'Dragendorff reagent'. Cool… She really was way too into this.
"Let's see," she said, poring over the directions, "'For the detection of primary, secondary, or tertiary amine alkaloids and benzodiazepines… one gram of bismuth subnitrate is dissolved in three milliliters of ten-molar hydrochloric acid… diluted to twenty milliliters… dissolve one gram of potassium iodide…'" Looking up, she scanned the racks for the reagents and equipment called for in the assay. She didn't have to browse for long before finding what she needed.
She prepared the chemicals exactly as the directions specified, then unsealed the beer bottle. Using a pipette, she withdrew some of the liquid and added it to the vial. Scanning ahead in the manual, she read a bit more: "'A positive test result will yield an orange or orange-red precipitate'..." Watching carefully, she nearly rubbed her eyes in disbelief: At the bottom of the vial was an orange-red dusting of solid material. It was positive.
That fucking asshole.
She was feeling some very mixed emotions. On the one hand, she wanted to run out of the lab, find Tetsuo, punch him in his smug face, and tear off his dick. Another part of her was having so much fun playing chemist-detective that she found herself looking for urine sample collection cups—because why wouldn't she test her urine?
There was something incredibly empowering about the idea of collecting all this evidence against him herself to then bring to the cops. She pulled a sterile cup from the rack and headed to the restroom. Tetsuo would still get his dick torn off—just metaphorically.
A few minutes later, she was back in the lab with her sample of warm yellow liquid. Looking at her existing preparation on the lab bench, she scrunched up her mouth, realizing she'd probably have to remake the solution—it was one-time use. No biggie, she thought. She was actually enjoying this. With an honest-to-god spring in her step, she recreated the assay.
As she'd expected, the same orange-red precipitate emerged, and her eyes set with a steely resolve. The clock on the wall read a quarter to nine. It was time to hit the police station.