I don't know how long I stayed inside that trailer, watching the blood slowly pooling around the body. Probably not very long—my urge to leave was stronger than anything. And I don't know how long she had been there or how much she saw about this whole mess. I didn't hear her coming. Maybe she was discreet enough. Or perhaps I simply couldn't focus on anything other than what was before me.

I only noticed her when she came closer and placed her hand on my shoulder. "We should go now," she said.

"Who are you?"

She didn't answer, and I didn't recognize her immediately, but I had a strange feeling of déjà vu when I looked at her. She was a youkai, with dark hair in braids and an expression that told me she was used to making things go her way.

She turned me towards the trailer's door, and I followed blindly. It wasn't exactly obedience—I didn't want to stay there myself. But that's how I felt as she closely followed me out of the vehicle and onto the street.

When I stepped outside, the cold hit me hard, and I had to put my hands in my pockets to keep them from freezing completely. Nonsense. It wasn't the cold wind that had made them like that.

Down the road, the police were still too busy taking their statements to notice that something had happened. They didn't even look our way.

"Let's go," the youkai said again, directing my body away from the cops, her hand still on my shoulder, guiding me.

And once again, I obeyed. My willingness to cooperate with the police had vanished, gone just like the life of that poor sucker inside the trailer. The last thing I wanted was to attract their attention, and leaving was already in my plans. So I walked in silence where she led me, but as soon as I felt we had moved far enough, I pushed her hand away.

"Alright, who the hell are you?" I asked, turning to her and stopping in my tracks. The youkai didn't seem fazed one bit.

I could take a better look at her now, and I finally understood where the familiar feeling had come from. She was the youkai from inside the tent, the one I had stumbled upon. I recognized the pointy ear, the tattoo, the same energy. Her presence there hadn't been a coincidence.

"We just need to talk to you for a moment," she said. "Who's 'we'?"

She nodded towards a parked car ahead. It was a black car with tinted dark windows. I couldn't even tell if anyone else occupied the seats. The darkness of the street didn't help either. With the engine off, it went completely unnoticed. "I'm not getting in there."

"Why? Are you scared?" she snickered.

The youkai went to the car and opened the passenger door. A light came on inside, and I saw someone else occupying the back seat. The person was at the far end, opposite the open door, but still far enough for me not to see who it was. "Come on, it's just a chat. All you need to do is listen to what Ms. Kishimoto has to say. If anything, consider this a ride. We're not kidnappers, detective."

I walked over to the car. The wind cut into my skin, drying the sweat that had overtaken me back then. But besides that, the night was still and silent. The light from the sirens and ambulances was far behind, but the sounds the demon had made before dying still buzzed in my ears.

When I got closer, I saw another youkai sitting at the end of the seat. Older, more polished. She gave me a piercing look as I bent down to look at her and patted the seat next to her, inviting me to get in.

"I think you got the wrong person, lady," I said, straightening up.

The older youkai looked confused from inside the car. "Daya," she said, "are you sure—"

"Just get in," the younger youkai—Daya, apparently—said behind me, sounding impatient. She was so close to my back that I had nowhere to retreat unless I pushed her. Which, thinking back now, was what I should have done. But I didn't; instead, she forced me into the car. I sat in the passenger seat while Daya closed the door on us and went to ride shotgun. Only then did I notice that there was also a driver.

Without delay, the car started and began to move. "You don't mind if I smoke, do you?" I asked after a while, already lighting a cigarette. I opened the window slightly to let the smoke out.

"Thank you for joining us, Mr. Urameshi."

"How do you know who I am? How long have you been following me?"

"Everyone in High Town knows who you are," Daya said from the front seat.

Great, just what I needed. I didn't even need to ask if that was a good or bad thing. I already had my assumptions.

The High Town had become the go-to place for the youkai living in the Human World. Most lived there now, as they were not exactly welcomed in other human neighbourhoods. Almost no humans set foot in High Town, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd been there. I didn't expect my name to still be known in the area, but I get it.

"Good thing I don't need introductions, then. But I still have no fucking idea who you are or what you want with me."

"Of course," the youkai beside me handed me a business card.

The card had the name and logo of the Blue Lotus Club, an old nightclub in High Town. Probably the oldest one there. Probably the most infamous, too. Below that, her name—Chieko Kishimoto.

"I need your help with a... peculiar case. Of course, I am willing to pay all your fees generously. I only ask for discretion."

"You're wasting your time," I tried to return the card, but she gestured for me to keep it. I put it in my coat. "I'm not taking on new cases."

"Aren't you a detective?"

"I was," I replied.

Kishimoto pulled something from her purse and handed it to me again. An envelope. I pulled the contents out.

"What is this?"

Inside the envelope was a photograph, so confusing that I had to stare at it for several long seconds to understand what I was looking at. The room in the photo was a complete mess, with things scattered all over the floor and furniture overturned. In the center was someone's body, limbs twisted as if they had fallen haphazardly. The head was so disfigured that any recognition was impossible. The face was a tangled mass of flesh, blood, and bones. More blood spread across the floor. The splatters seemed to have touched almost everything in the room.

"Nika was one of the girls who worked at the Blue Lotus," Kishimoto explained. "This photo was taken last week inside the dressing room."

"And you want me to find out who did this to her?"

"We know who did this, Mr. Urameshi."

I stared at her, waiting for her to continue. The youkai next to me was completely impassive, showing no emotion whatsoever. Her lips were pressed together, almost in a thin line. She didn't move an inch. I was starting to regret leaving home today.

Then Daya, who had been silent until now, partially turned her face from the front seat. "Nika killed herself," she said.

I looked from Daya to Kishimoto and from Kishimoto back to Daya. Neither of them said anything else. Daya had already turned back to face the windshield, and Kishimoto was watching me in silence, her thin, pressed lips now curved downwards in disgust. The car glided smoothly along the street. Only the faint sound of the tire on the asphalt broke the silence.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"What you heard. Nika took her own life," Kishimoto said.

"Then there's no case here," I said.

"The case, Mr. Urameshi, is to find out why. Nika was not suicidal. Someone made her act this way. Or something did."

"I can think of a number of reasons why. Drugs, depression, debts... lots of things can break a person."

"Not like this. I know my girls."

I looked at the photo again. The rest of the body didn't seem injured; just the head was badly smashed. Whatever had happened in that room had been violent, not only from the state she was in but also from the disarray in the room.

"Why me?" I asked. "I don't work with this anymore. I probably lost all my connections by now. I bet half of High Town hates me."

"You are one of us," Kishimoto said. "And I know you have experience with unusual elements. No one else could handle this case. Certainly not the human police."

I sighed.

"I don't know what you want me to say," I said.

"Just say you'll accept, Mr. Urameshi."

(…)

The car dropped me off two blocks from my house. I don't know how they knew where I lived, as I never gave an address, but decided not to ask. I asked to be let off a couple blocks earlier so I could walk a bit. The night was getting stranger by the hour.

"You want me to investigate a suicide case. That doesn't even make sense," I said.

Daya had gotten out of the car with me and followed me along without me asking her to. She wore a jacket over her thin dress that was now zipped to her neck, covering most of her tattoos. I stopped at a corner and lit a cigarette. There were only the two of us on the street.

"Kishimoto offered good money for the case. Are you sure you want to refuse?"

"I don't need money."

She stared at me with a smirk on her face.

"But you need a purpose, don't you? Isn't that why you went to check out the youkai attraction at the market tonight? Because you were tired of your boring, quiet life and self-imposed retirement?"

I took a drag on the cigarette, almost crushing the filter between my fingers. "You might have heard my name, but you don't know shit about me."

Daya leaned against the wall beside me. I still didn't understand why she hadn't continued in the car and left me alone, even after I promised I'd think about it.

Of course, I wouldn't think about it; there was nothing to think about. But I knew they wouldn't let me go if I kept saying no.

"I know you witnessed another suicide tonight," she said. "And that got you thinking."

"What does that have to do with anything? Suicides are normal. It's a horrible thing to say, but that doesn't mean it isn't true."

"Did anything about what you saw today seem normal?"

I didn't respond. I just remembered the feeling I had inside the trailer, how everything seemed eerie to me. That damned grunt, those white eyes, that bizarre death that didn't make sense at all.

"Are you saying the two deaths are connected?"

"I don't know. You're the detective here. But Nika's death was like that, too. Strange. Inexplicable. She banged her own head against the wall so many times that she managed to burst her brain. You saw what was left of her in that photo. No one kills themselves that way."

Fucking hell. I had the same bad feeling again.

"How can you be so sure that's what happened?" I asked. "How do you know someone else didn't do it to her?"

"Because I was there."

I pulled away from the wall and shot her a look that I'm sure was as baffled as I felt.

"You saw it happen?"

She nodded.

"Was anyone else there at the time?"

"Nope."

"You're telling me you were the only witness to this girl's bizarre death? You know that makes you the number one suspect, right?"

"So you're going to take the case?"

I leaned back against the wall. My head started to spin, my stomach hurt, and all I could think of was that I needed to lie down. Everything had been a mistake, from deciding to close the restaurant early to getting into the car and now continuing the conversation with this crazy chick.

Daya kept staring at me, but I looked away. When I was about to take another drag on the cigarette, she took it from my fingers, brought it to her lips, puffed, and blew the smoke to the side, her eyes still on me. Then she handed it back. That was a bold move, and I would have given her shit for that if I wasn't too tired.

"Why do you care so much about me taking this case anyway?" I asked. I thought Daya was just doing her job, but her insistence was too much, even for the best of employees. "What's your connection to all this?"

"Nika was my friend. She was important to me."

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. The cigarette now had a lipstick stain on the filter, so I threw it away.

I couldn't stop thinking about the conversation with Koenma. It was as if everything went back to that day, to his words about youkai being in danger or his interests not being aligned with the Reikai. And I know I had promised myself not to get involved in anything remotely related to the Spirit World again—though, in theory, I didn't yet know if there was really any link between the deaths and Koenma's worries.

I've been sticking to this promise for the last six years, ever since the fight that broke out between us. Okay, I'm not proud of being an asshole to Koenma, but I don't regret it either. At the time, I had shouted, our faces barely two inches apart, that I didn't want to ever be part of anything else anymore. That I didn't even want to hear a word. That Koenma and everyone else in the Spirit World could go fuck themselves. It took years for us to speak again. And it was never the same.

That's why I regretted it the minute I took a step to the side, shoved my hands into my coat pockets, looked at Daya over my shoulder, and said:

"Alright, tell your boss I'll take the case. And my services ain't cheap. Now leave me alone, I need to sleep."

I don't know what I expected, but maybe at least a thank you? Or just a nod, I don't know. Instead, Daya simply responded:

"She is not my boss."

And walked away from me. Damn woman got what she wanted after all.