Handa
Shibuya had come to life since we’d left the station, lit up and packed with commuters. While I watched the rainbow parade of umbrellas bob along the neon sidewalks, Sugita reached up to slap a light on the roof of his car and began forcing his way through traffic.
I stared at him. “What’s the rush? Naito usually sleeps under his desk, doesn’t he?”
My partner frowned. “I’m not in the mood to waste time.”
After we’d spent a good five minutes sitting in the car so he could stare at the victim’s photograph, that seemed ludacris. “Well, but talking to Naito can’t make that much difference to our case. So what if we are after the same perpetrator? We still have to find some evidence. Even if we talk to him first thing in the morning, we’ll have all day to search.”
Once Sugita had made up his mind, though, there was no changing it, and the light stayed on the rest of the way to the station.
We found our squad room in a particularly tranquil state. Most of our peers were either filling out reports or had already clocked out for the evening while the night shift got briefed and geared up for their tours. They were a pretty grim bunch, used to the very darkest side of Tokyo, but people still greeted us as we walked in, side by side, so I offered some polite hellos, even to the ones I didn’t know well.
Sugita brushed by them with little more than a jerk of the chin. He must think he was on a mission, but I didn’t see how talking with a kouhai could be that important.
At his desk, Naito could be mistaken for a store mannequin, sitting perfectly still as he read something over. His dark suit didn’t have so much as one wrinkle, so he might not have moved all day, and the velvety pompadour piled meticulously on top of his head looked as fresh as if he’d styled it moments before we’d walked in.
“You’re not going to ask him to team up with us, right?” I asked, trying not to sound sour.
“I just want to find out what he’s working on,” Sugita replied.
“And that was worth running the light for?”
He paused to look at me, and I noticed an expression of subtle concern haunting his eyes. “We’ll find out.”
Naito had no way of knowing. He couldn’t even tell us what had happened to Kishi. How could he? We were investigating two different disappearances. After Sugita had brushed me off all day, it annoyed me he thought an outsider would have the right kind of advice, but I had to admit they had similar mindsets, so maybe he expected Naito to reinforce whatever theories he’d come up with. It made me want to throw a fit, make a scene, and confront the idea of Sugita transferring partners.
We’d reached Naito’s desk, though, and he lifted his head to look at us each in turn.
One thing I would say for the kid, he was nice to look at, between his tall, sleek build and his pearly complexion. A little beauty mark nestled beside his fluffy lips, so some of our coworkers had even nicknamed him the movie star. No doubt that all contributed to his overinflated ego.
“Senpai,” he greeted, getting out of his seat to offer a low bow. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
I snorted. He sure had his classy, polite act down pat.
“It won’t take long.” Sugita slapped our case file down on Naito’s desk. “Glance at this for me and tell me what you think.”
“Woah, wait, what?” I glared up at my partner. “I never agreed to that.”
If Naito really was on the trail of the same suspect as us, giving him our case file might provide the last piece of evidence he needed to make an arrest. We’d become an instant joke around here if we got showed up by a kouhai, exactly like Sergeant Hasegawa had become a joke after getting showed up by us.
“We need to find out if we’re after the same perp,” Sugita reminded me, impatiently.
Naito glanced between us without touching the folder.
“We don’t need someone’s help to figure that out,” I hissed, annoyed that so many people were witnessing this disagreement between us.
“Knock it off, Handa,” Sugita snapped. “You agreed to this.”
“I definitely didn’t. But fine. If you really think this is the right thing to do, let’s exchange files and share information.” That would be a fair compromise.
“I’m terribly sorry, Senpai.” Naito closed his file. “I’m afraid you can’t.”
Unbelievable. That bordered on insubordination.
“Then I’m sorry, there’s no reason for us to include you--”
“Stop.” Sugita bumped me with his elbow. “We don’t have time for this. Naito-kun. Please.” He gestured to our file again.
With one, final glance between the two of us, Naito resumed his seat and flipped open the file, bending over it to read.
I stood, smoking my cigarette and seething. Sugita had been blinded by the kid’s perfect manners; of course, he didn’t expect a kouhai to take advantage of him. But I was not okay with owing Naito Ryosuke anything. He might not ever bring it up, but he’d be thinking to himself about how pathetic we were, and maybe years from now, he might hold it over our heads or use it to get a favor from us.
A little quid pro quo wasn’t a bad thing, and the obvious solution was to get on good terms with the rookie and try to create a mutually beneficial relationship. I might even try it if he wasn’t so appallingly stuck up.
Naito didn’t read for very long before his body language tensed up and he exhaled a sharp sigh.
“Well?” Sugita prompted, impatiently.
“Frankly, Senpai, I’m not sure what you’d like me to say.”
“Your case is a lot like this one, isn’t it?”
“Well.” Naito drummed his fingers on the desk once. “Arai-san is a few years younger than your victim, but she did vanish from the same vicinity. A key difference I see is that Arai-san turned up dead last night.”
My partner groaned. “Any leads?”
Naito looked up at him, meaningfully. “The motive appears to be pure hunger. The suspect, I fear, is a monster.”
“Please,” I huffed. “Anyone who’d kidnap and murder an innocent girl is a monster. You didn’t answer the question.”
He turned to me next, and I felt like his jewel toned black eyes could see right through me.
“What’s that look for?”
“I only wonder what your opinion might be, Senpai.”
“I think we’re wasting our time with you. We came for answers, not riddles.”
“Handa,” Sugita scolded. “I told you—we don’t have time for this.”
“We don’t,” I agreed. “We have a missing college kid to find.”
Nodding, Naito got to his feet once more. “Sugita-san, if I may, I’d prefer to discuss this with you in private. Could we possibly…?”
“Conference room,” Sugita agreed, readily.
“I’ll meet you there.” With another bow to me, Naito murmured, “Excuse me, Handa-senpai,” and then he struck out for the conference room, moving with all the precision and grace of a soldier.
My mouth threatened to fall open. It really took a lot of gall to push a senior officer out of a conversation concerning his own investigation.
I turned on Sugita. “What the hell? This is my case.”
A slight wince curled his lips. “It’s still your case, Handa.”
“So, you’re okay with leaving me out of the discussion?” I felt my face threatening to collapse into a glare.
“It’ll only take a second.” Lightly, he laid his hand on my shoulder. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Not to you, I guess.”
It put him on pause a moment, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose, wearily. “I’ll try to explain later. Just don’t get bent about it.”
Too late. I already felt very bent.
But he simply turned away to follow Naito, and I watched him until he’d disappeared behind the conference room door. After that, there was nothing to do except look for a way to distract myself from what had just happened.
Sugita
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
This case that had looked so simple on paper was turning into a disaster, and my partner didn’t even know it. I could try to explain why, but he wouldn’t believe it.
Naito asking for a private discussion in the conference room made me think I should prepare for the worst. I’d been doing that all day anyway. Kishi’s disappearance was too bizarre.
I had no idea what kept Handa and Naito from getting along, unless they’d had an unpleasant encounter when I wasn’t around. The drama and bickering served as an annoying distraction I couldn’t tolerate, but regardless of their problems, I didn’t believe Naito had it in him to humiliate a superior for fun.
I wouldn’t blame him if he wanted a break from Handa’s smart mouth. My partner was always trying to get a rise out of him.
That would be preferable to him having information too classified for Handa to overhear.
“I did a very rude thing,” Naito said, as soon as I’d closed the door behind me. “I’m sure I made Handa-san very angry.”
“We don’t have time to worry about that,” I grumbled. Naito didn’t, anyway. Who knew how long it would take me to convince Handa no one had slighted him on purpose? He didn’t like Naito-kun already, and my wife had even suggested he might be jealous. As much as I’d like to believe my partner wasn’t that petty, I couldn’t think of another reason for him to harbor such an intense distaste for this smart, hard working kid. “Right now, I just need to know what you think about our case.”
Naito cleared his throat but paused a long moment. “If I may, Senpai. What is it that makes you think our two cases might be connected?”
“A hunch, I guess.” I hated how my bad hunches always turned out to be right. “I thought something was off since the beginning. Kishi-san disappeared without a trace. We haven’t found a single lead to help us.”
He nodded. “I see.”
“You have a yokai case,” I added.
He handed me his case file. “Please, see for yourself, Senpai.”
Shit, I really didn’t want to. So far, I’d stayed out of supernatural investigations. Here or there, the lieutenant asked me to do a fact check or help with some paperwork, but I had never gone after a yokai myself. As long as Handa was my partner, I couldn’t.
Bracing myself, I opened the file and studied the well organized reports Naito had typed up, but right off the bat it sounded brutal. Arai-san’s body had been mutilated, partially devoured, and left to rot. Other than that, he’d recorded very few details. Yokai hunters like Naito-kun had to keep to the shadows and pass their maneuvers off as routine criminal investigations, going largely uncredited for the dangerous work they did. I didn’t see anything about the type of demon responsible, just a few dates, addresses, and locations of interest, including the dumpster Arai’s body had been recovered from.
“To be clear,” Naito-kun said. “I can’t confirm that this particular monster murdered your victim.”
“It’s possible, though.”
“There is a chance. Because of that, I humbly advise you to consult with Lieutenant Kudo. Handa-senpai has no idea yokai exist, correct?”
“None.”
I always worried this day might come, that a case involving yokai might land on my desk and force me to choose between duty and my partner. Go figure, it had to come at a time like this, when our friendship felt strained to its limit and I could barely get Handa to talk to me about anything other than baseball and cars.
He’d been so low and so moody ever since my wedding, even a temporary transfer would piss him off. It worried me how he’d react to feeling abandoned.
Once, I’d deeply believed in his resilience. Once, I’d felt so close to him, I would have at least believed that I could step away from him a while without risking losing him completely.
After that night on the Rainbow Bridge, back during the summer, it scared me he might be one bad day from giving up.
“Pursuing this issue is crucial,” Naito said, clearing his throat. “I’d be happy to join forces with you long enough to at least confirm whether or not your victim was killed by this yokai.”
I looked up from the file. “You’re working on the Arai case alone?”
“There’s no good fit for me at this time,” he admitted, humbly, though, honestly, Naito-kun was so good at what he did, it spoke volumes to his skill set that, at twenty-one years old, the echelon trusted him to hunt yokai by himself. He was a stickler for rules who barely spoke or went home to sleep, so pairing him with someone might be difficult, but I thought it was more likely our lieutenant didn’t think anyone else could keep up with Naito.
Other than me. He’d mentioned, a couple times now, that he’d love to see how far the two of us might go together. Everyone was just waiting for me to say the word.
Even now, I all but felt Naito’s anticipation.
My partner was out there expecting the very same thing, thinking I was bound to trade him in the first chance I got.
To this day, I didn’t believe anyone on the squad measured up to Handa’s raw talent, and he was fearless. If he had any idea hunting yokai was a possibility, I’d say we should charge in headfirst, put a few monsters down, and carve out a name for ourselves.
“I have a good fit.” I closed the folder and handed it back to him. “And you have more than your share to work on. I can confirm if there’s a yokai behind this, and then I’ll talk with the lieutenant.”
Naito-kun took the folder, looking visibly disappointed. “The decision is yours, Senpai. However, please be aware, if you do discover hints of a yokai threat, you must act with discretion, or else I fear you may not have a good fit anymore.”
With a deep bow, he walked back out into the squad room, leaving those chilling words to sink in.
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