A week had passed since that meeting at the ramen shop, but it felt like an eternity.

The city buzzed with its usual energy—trains rattling along their tracks, the faint hum of traffic filtering through my window, and yet I felt disconnected, as if I were watching everything unfold from behind a thick pane of glass.

Despite our best efforts, despite combing through every lead, we had found nothing.

R.K. had vanished into thin air, and as for "The Benefactor," it seemed they were nothing more than a ghost—a whisper in the dark that we couldn’t track, let alone grasp.

Hana and I had worked every angle, followed every trail of breadcrumbs.

Matsuoka and Sato had been equally relentless, digging into Nagasuki's network, interrogating his former associates, pulling strings we hadn’t even known existed.

But it all led to the same dead ends.

We were running out of time, and worse yet, we were running out of hope.

I sat on the couch in my apartment, the soft glow of the TV bathing the room in flickering light.

It was late. Outside, the rain had started again, a soft drizzle against the window.

I wasn’t really watching the television—some news anchor droned on about local politics, but I wasn’t paying attention.

My thoughts were elsewhere, circling back to the last conversation I had with Hana.

Something about that conversation had left me unsettled, though not because of the case.

Hana and I had never talked about what had been left unsaid between us.

After all these years, after all the cases we’d worked side by side, there had always been an unspoken bond.

But that week—this silence, this failure to find anything—it had pushed us both to our limits.

I could feel the strain in every conversation, the way our words trailed off into awkward pauses, both of us feeling the weight of things we had never said aloud.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table, snapping me back to the present.

I glanced at the screen.

It was Hana.

“Hana”

I answered, feeling a familiar twinge of tension as I heard her voice on the other end.

“K—Keisuke”

She said, her voice tight, laced with panic.

This wasn’t about the case.

Something was wrong. I could hear it.

“What’s going on?”

I asked, sitting up straighter, my heart rate quickening.

I had never heard Hana sound like this—shaken, unsteady.

“It’s Taichi-san"

She said, her voice trembling.

“He’s been shot.”

I froze, the words not quite registering at first.

“What? Shot?”

I managed, my mind racing.

“Where is he? Is he—?”

“He’s at the hospital”

She cut in, her breath shallow.

“They—they don’t know if he’s going to make it. He was shot outside his house, Keisuke. Right in front of his door.”

I felt like the floor had dropped out from beneath me.

Sasaki?

Shot?

It didn’t make any sense.

The man was practically a legend in the Departement, cautious, always five steps ahead of everyone else.

How could this have happened?

“I’m on my way”

I said, already grabbing my jacket and keys.

I could hear Hana’s breath shaking on the other end, but before I could say anything more, she hung up.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The drive to the hospital was a blur.

The rain had picked up, drumming against the windshield, turning the streets into slick rivers of asphalt.

My hands clenched the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles were white, my mind racing through a hundred scenarios, each more terrible than the last.

Who would have done this?

Why?

Was it connected to the case?

R.K.?

The Benefactor?

As I pulled into the hospital parking lot, my mind jumped between fragments of conversations with Sasaki over the time I spent with him.

His gruff voice, always steady, always guiding us through the murk of our cases. Now he was the one lying in a hospital bed, and no one knew if he’d ever wake up.

I also remember the time I spent here.

Two months of hell, important in their own way, I wouldn’t be where I am now without the accident after all.

Inside, the hospital’s sterile, bright lights felt jarring against the stormy night.

I rushed to the front desk, barely managing to keep my voice calm as I asked for Sasaki.

The nurse’s expression softened when I mentioned his name—she knew who I was asking about.

“He’s in surgery”

She said quietly.

“You can wait on the third floor. They’ll update you there.”

I found Hana pacing in the waiting area, her phone clenched in one hand, her other hand tugging at the sleeve of her coat in a nervous gesture.

She looked up as I approached, her eyes red but dry, as if she hadn’t let herself cry yet.

“What happened?”

I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

Hana stopped pacing, her eyes fixed on the floor.

“It was outside his home”

She began, her voice hoarse from hours of tension.

“He was getting out of his car after coming home from work. A neighbor heard the gunshots and called it in, but by the time the ambulance arrived…”

She trailed off, her hands shaking as she spoke.

“The doctors… they say that multiple bullets hit his chest. He’s in a coma, Keisuke. They don’t know if he’ll wake up. Even if he does… they don’t know what kind of shape he’ll be in.”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut.

Sasaki was more than just our senior detective—he was our mentor, our guide.

The man who’d taught us how to think, how to approach each case methodically, like solving a complex puzzle.

And now, he was lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life, and none of us knew if he would ever wake up again.

“What do the doctors say?”

I asked quietly, feeling the weight of Hana’s grief and fear pressing down on me.

“They’re doing everything they can"

She replied, her voice barely above a whisper.

“But... it’s bad. Really bad.”

For a long moment, we just stood there in the sterile silence of the hospital hallway, the beeping of distant machines and the soft murmur of nurses the only sounds around us.

It didn’t feel real.

Sasaki, the man who always seemed invincible, was now fragile, vulnerable.

I didn’t know how to process it.

“I don’t get it"

I muttered, more to myself than to Hana.

“Who could’ve done this? Was it connected to the case?”

Hana shook her head, her hands wringing together anxiously.

“I don’t know. But it feels like too much of a coincidence. Someone shot him because they wanted him out of the picture, and if that’s true, then they’re trying to send a message.”

Her words hit me hard.

This wasn’t just some random act of violence.

It was deliberate.

Calculated.

And it made me sick to my core.

“We’re getting close, Keisuke”

She continued.

“Taichi-san’s shooting… it’s too connected to everything we’ve been digging into. R.K. The Benefactor. Someone’s trying to cover their tracks, and they’re not playing games anymore.”

I clenched my fists at my sides, feeling a surge of anger rise in my chest.

We had been searching for R.K. for a week now—combing through every lead—and we had come up with nothing.

And now, Sasaki had paid the price for our failure.

“What about the other patrols?”

I asked, forcing myself to stay calm.

“Have they found anything? Any witnesses?”

Hana shook her head again.

“Not yet. They’re still investigating, but whoever did this covered their tracks. There were no cameras near his house, no witnesses. It was fast, clean. Professional.”

My stomach churned with a mix of frustration and helplessness.

If Sasaki was the target, that meant whoever was behind this knew what we were up to.

And that terrified me.

Hana was still pacing, her hands moving restlessly as if she couldn’t stand still.

I watched her for a moment, and it hit me again how much this had shaken her.

Sasaki had been a father figure to both of us, but for Hana, there was something deeper, something more personal in the way she looked up to him.

Seeing her like this—scared, vulnerable—only made me angrier.

“Hana”

I said gently, stepping in front of her to stop her pacing.

“We’re going to find out who did this. We’re going to make sure they pay for what they did to him.”

She stopped, her eyes meeting mine, and for a moment, I saw the uncertainty behind her strong facade.

But then she nodded, her resolve hardening once more.

“We have to”

She said quietly.

“For Taichi-san.”

For a while, we stood in silence again, the hospital sounds filling the gaps in our conversation.

Every so often, a doctor or nurse would pass by, but no one approached us.

We were just two cops, out of our depth, waiting for news that might never come.

Finally, Hana broke the silence.

“I’ve been thinking about what we didn’t say last time”

She said softly, her voice barely audible over the hum of the hospital.

“About us.”

I looked at her, surprised.

In the midst of everything, I hadn’t expected her to bring it up, but now that she had, I realized it had been weighing on me too.

All those weeks of working together, of building something more than just a partnership, and yet neither of us had ever had the courage to speak about it.

“Hana—”

“I know this isn’t the time”

She interrupted, her eyes downcast.

“But I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Especially now, after what happened to Taichi-san. We can’t keep pretending there’s nothing between us.”

I swallowed hard, feeling the weight of her words sink in.

She was right.

We couldn’t keep pretending.

But how could we even begin to deal with that, with everything else happening around us?

“I don’t know what to say”

I admitted quietly.

“But you’re right. We can’t keep ignoring it.”

Before she could respond, a doctor approached us, his expression somber.

“Officers”

He said softly.

“We’ve stabilized him, but he’s still in critical condition. We won’t know the extent of the damage until he wakes up—if he wakes up.”

The words hung in the air like a death sentence.

“Can we see him?”

Hana asked, her voice trembling slightly.

The doctor nodded, leading us down the hallway to the ICU.

As we entered the room, I felt my heart sink at the sight of Sasaki lying motionless on the bed, tubes and machines surrounding him.

He looked so small, so fragile—nothing like the man I’d known.

We stood by his bedside in silence, the beeping of the heart monitor the only sound in the room.

I reached out, placing a hand on the railing of the bed, feeling a surge of helplessness wash over me.

“We’ll find who did this”

I whispered, though I wasn’t sure if I was speaking to Sasaki or to myself.

Beside me, Hana stood still, her eyes fixed on Sasaki’s face.

Whatever we had left unsaid between us, it would have to wait.

Right now, there was only one thing that mattered—finding the person responsible for this.

And making sure they paid for it.

As we stood there, the rain continued to fall outside.