“I have never seen such unprofessional behavior in my life!”

YF flinched when Honda slammed her fist on the table, her face beet red from anger. Behind her, Detectives Shoda and Higashi stood expressionless.

“And to think that Fujii volunteered to come help you with your job!”

YF ducked as Honda chucked a binder at his head. “If that woman was not sitting in that seat. Your seat, doing your damn job, not even Kuroda could save your ass from getting terminated!”

“Volunteered to come? So that’s what Fujii meant by making amends…”

What started as her owing him a favor quickly reversed into YF owing her a life debt. It only really dawned on him while Honda was screaming just how much he had asked Fujii to do. She was not only housing someone who was now technically an Enforcer in a government targeted sect along with the kidnapped daughter of a pureblood family. She was also trying to conceal the fact that she was doing that while juggling an impossible deadline for an equipment audit. And until he had stepped into The Antelope meeting room, Fujii had not conveyed any of that through her texts.

“I will apologize to Fujii and get started right away. I’ll find someone to cover her so she can rest a few days,” said YF.

Honda scoffed. “Seems I know the situation of your office better than you do because even if you wanted to do that you couldn’t. You need to be in the field with me and there is absolutely no personnel to cover her position. You just took a massive shit on her, and if she takes your apology then guardian angels must exist.” Honda straightened her hair and wiped some sweat from her brow. She then tidied up the scattered binders. “There isn’t even any time to apologize to her. Shoda and Higashi have something to say to you and we’re going straight for the field.”

When Honda left the meeting room, she switched the door to manual mode and shoved the sliding door so hard, it made an ear piercing pang as metal impacted metal, then ricocheted completely back open. Higashi walked slowly to the door and closed it as discreetly as he could.

“There are some more details on the investigation, Sakai. Please have a seat and we’ll discuss them,” said Shoda.

YF took a seat.

“Takahashi Momoko is missing, and presumed dead,” said Shoda.

YF’s eyes widened. He sat speechless for a few seconds. “The sole witness?”

“Correct. We came back to Itsugo after going to the morgue in Nishida. We knocked on her door but there was no response. A neighbor said she had not come out in days but thought that Ms. Takahashi had an altercation with a lover. When we entered, everything indicated signs of violent struggle.”

“I gave her my stun glove…” YF whispered.

Shoda sighed. “You gave away government property?”

“You know we didn’t have the resources here to protect her.”

“Mr. Sakai I admire your desire to help people but you made a grave mistake. You may need to appear before a district court outside of Itsugo, since the magistrate here is your boss and there’s a conflict of interest. You will need to explain why you distributed government property to unauthorized users and explain what you were doing the evening of her disappearance.”

YF smirked. “Did one of my colleagues report there had been a disturbance in her apartment?”

Shoda frowned. “Yes, one of your colleagues did.”

“How?”

“It seems it was done through a drone confirmation. A female voice from inside the property responded that she was all right.”

“Why do you think that is?” YF goaded.

“Mr. Sakai, if you’re insinuating that your station is underfunded and understaffed, whether I sympathize or not is beside the point. You cannot deflect your responsibility onto lack of funds.”

“I took responsibility by giving someone a fighting chance to protect themselves. I think you shouldn’t deflect responsibility by masking the fact that you don’t care about village residents behind some explanation of how we don’t have funds.”

Shoda’s eyes flickered. YF thought Shoda was about to lose his cool for a second, but instead, the detective grabbed his vape box and took a long draw. “Mr. Sakai, this is a fruitless argument. The fact stands that we have an unsolved murder, an unsolved disappearance, and for that matter, an unsolved bombing of your district’s Sentinel Station.”

“Double Phoenix Sect did the bombing,” YF murmured.

“Are you sure?”

“You watch the news,” said YF.

“It doesn’t mean the news is always right.”

YF looked into Shoda’s eyes, seeing what he thought was a hint of sympathy before it came back to business.

“The point I am emphasizing, Mr. Sakai, is that we need those camera audits. Ghosts do not appear and bite people, kidnap people, and bomb buildings.”

“Bite…?”

“Yes Mr. Sakai, the murdered man was bitten. In the neck. And drained of much of his blood.”

The image of Erika feeding on the sectarian woman came back again.

“You mean like ancient times?” asked YF.

“It would appear to be the case, yes.”

“With sub pills, why would anyone want to feed on a living person? And target a Reo instead of a daywalker?”

Shoda held up his box. “If vape boxes are enough, why do people spend a fortune on real cigarettes?” asked Shoda.

“I don’t know,” YF replied.

“There will always be people for whom blood substitute pills are not enough, Mr. Sakai.”

“But feeding on someone is a death penalty level offense,” said YF. Even as he said it, he felt some level of worry for Erika, despite the negative feelings that thoughts of her stirred up.

“So is murder, and yet people do it. What happens when you feed and murder at the same time?” asked Shoda.

YF swallowed, unable to reply.

“Get me those audit results, Mr. Sakai.”

***

YF ran his scanner over the location of the failsafe clock. “Says it’s twenty second hour, thirty two minutes.”

YF waited until Fujii responded through his earpiece. “That’s what it says here. Time is correct.”

“I’ll read you off the manufacturer’s sticker.” YF hovered his scanner over the side of both the clock and the camera, reading off the information to Fujii.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Got it, next position please.”

YF went to the next area with a failsafe clock and ran his scanner around the bushes a few times to find it. He then repeated the same procedure, letting Fujii know the time reading and the manufacturer’s information.

“Think that’s enough Sakai,” said Honda, pocketing her receiver as she approached YF. “Sun will start rising in two or three hours. Review as much footage of the cameras we got today as you can. Do the rest over the weekend.”

“Yes ma’am.”

YF drove the two of them back to The Antelope. By the time they arrived, the fourth floor was empty except for Fujii. Honda went ahead to the meeting room and spoke with Fujii briefly before exiting the room and descending the stairs, not saying a word to YF as she did. YF gazed into the meeting room for some time after. Fujii looked up with tired eyes, smiled, then continued to look down at her screen. YF slowly approached the meeting room and opened the door.

“I’m…sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. You can go home Mr. Sakai. I’m going to continue reviewing the camera footage.”

“Why don’t you go home—” YF felt a sudden panic. “Wait, don’t you usually stay with Honda?”

Fujii paused and looked up at him. He could tell that she was trying to communicate something with her eyes. “Let’s take a break. I need some water,” she said.

***

The two of them stood near the trees behind The Antelope, YF drinking his coffee from the cafe while Fujii drank water.

“The Ward Office got us an apartment to stay together here during the audit, yes,” said Fujii. “But I didn’t take Ms. Ueno and Ms. Hayashi to that place.”

YF breathed a sigh of relief. He then lowered his coffee slowly. “Which village office were you originally from again?”

“Taura.”

YF lowered his coffee. “You’re commuting here from Taura every day?”

“I said I have some family business. Ms. Honda doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Fujii…” said YF. He scratched the back of his head, trying to find the words to say. “I can move—”

“No, it’s quite fine,” said Fujii. “I enjoy the company, and we get along better than…better than I had anticipated.”

“You and Erika get along?”

Fujii looked to the side. “I want to say that Ms. Hayashi seems to have great influence over Ms. Ueno. I can’t tell whether Ms. Ueno and I are getting along better or Ms. Hayashi is making us get along better. In any case, it doesn’t matter.”

“So they just…stay in all day?” asked YF.

“Ms. Hayashi does. Ms. Ueno does not.”

“Oh,” said YF.

“Ms. Ueno goes to work.”

“Goes…to work,” YF repeated. “How is she managing to do that?” he thought.

“Yes forgive my biases but I was just as confused when she said she was going to work. I saw her…her…” Fujii made a motion with her hand across her body.

“The mark.”

“It’s pretty. I mean the design is beautiful,” said Fujii.

“I’m not offended.”

Fujii nodded. “But she went out and bought just standard office clothes. I didn’t want to pry into it.”

“Erika can be intimidating.”

“Yes but things have gotten much better…” Fujii giggled.

“What?”

“She kept calling me ‘chocolates girl’.”

YF flinched.

“It felt a little cold at first,” Fujii admitted. “But today she started calling me ‘chocolates’ or ‘choco’ in a slightly lighter way. It seems to be more in good fun now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize Mr. Sakai. I think it doesn’t suit you.”

“That sounds like something Hayashi would say.”

“Perhaps she’s rubbing off on me then,” said Fujii, smiling. “I like her. She’s quite the character.”

A sudden breeze from the forest blew toward them, pushing loose strands of Fujii’s hair over her face. She first tried to brush them off but then handed her bottle of water to YF, tying her hair up instead. The two of them stood in silence for a long time.

YF felt his heart pounding. “Listen Fujii…about that night…”

Fujii waved her hand to get him to stop talking. “There’s a saying…”

“What starts on ground level stays on ground level?” asked YF.

Fujii gave a half smile. YF thought he could see her turning slightly red. “I was looking for a different phrase,” she said. “But I suppose that one will work.” She took the water bottle from YF. “We’d best get back to work Mr. Sakai.”

“You can just call me YF.”

Fujii waved the bottle. “No, I think YF and Mr. Sakai are different people. To me, you are Mr. Sakai. We won’t discuss YF again.” As she said that, her smile widened so that her fangs showed over her bottom lip. “I hope that’s okay.”

“I think I get what you mean,” said YF. “Very well Ms. Fujii. Let’s review the footage.”

Fujii nodded.

***

YF and Fujii set up eight screens to monitor eight cameras’ footage at the same time, using cheaper outdated motion detection models to capture any anomalies. The first few times they ran validation on sections of the training set it took some time to read the model manuals and pick the right hyperparameters. By the time they got the hang of it, they began to run the full training sets, reading the intermediate data occasionally to see if something needed to be adjusted.

“You know the case that prompted this audit,” said YF.

“The murder,” Fujii replied.

YF nodded. “The only witness from that is missing.”

Fujii put her hand to her mouth. “Missing? Is anyone looking for her?”

YF shook his head. “Not yet. Shoda probably told Kuroda about it today so maybe one drone pilot will look around. They probably won’t find anything.”

“Mr. Sakai…when you say witness. Did she see the entire incident?”

YF thought back to the frightened expression on the woman’s face and how she did not look much more relieved when he gave her the glove. “She said she just saw the body. But…something was off. It’s hard to explain.”

“Could be worth another look.” Fujii held her chin in her hand. “Honda checked the cameras near the scene on the first day, we have the footage on it and I already looked at it using a preset model. But we can look at it again. Maybe tune the model this time.”

YF bit his lip, feeling worse now that he knew he owed her yet another favor. “Yes please.”

YF thought for a moment while Fujii setup the footage from the cameras near the murder scene. “Fujii, could you just sample from when it was installed to one year after?”

Fujii nodded, changing the time window and entering in the parameters they had used on the most recent cameras. They waited in silence while the model trained, Fujii yawning multiple times and looking as if she were about to keel over. YF tried to offer to buy her a coffee from downstairs, since all the waiters and waitresses had already left, leaving only the graveyard shift baristas. But Fujii declined, saying she had already had enough before he and Honda returned. When the validation step started, it did not run two minutes before some strange trends started showing up in the data visualization tab.

“Can you play the section where these lines start to jump here?” asked YF.

“Sure.”

Fujii played the footage from the designated time frame, but it did not show anything substantial.

“Erika got her degree in engineering. I’m sure she has some idea about this...” thought YF.

But he was hesitant about how much he could trust her still. “You like Erika?”

Fujii seemed caught off guard. “Well...there’s some friction...but yes. She’s a kind woman. She seems to really care about the common folks. Common folks like us.”

The thought that Erika was somehow involved in either the murder or the disappearance of Takahashi did cross his mind after the events of Nojuku-Yonchome. But talking to Fujii now, it seemed completely ridiculous. Erika had attacked the sectarian woman for the sake of the mission. It didn’t seem like she would feed on people for the pleasure of it.

But even if Erika was not a cold blooded murderer, YF did not like the idea that he needed her for this job, nor the fact that he was about to show her confidential data. But if he was going to show up in court for giving his stun glove to a person in danger, what difference was this going to make? YF connected his terminal to the wall printer and printed a blank piece of paper. He then scribbled some notes on it with a pen that was laying on the table. He pocketed the note.

“Shut down the terminals, let’s go outside,” said YF.

Fujii looked confused but nevertheless helped YF shut down the terminals and lock the documents laying around, following him outside. When the two of them had activated their sun visors and were far enough away from the building, YF turned to her. He then planted both the paper and his own receiver into Fujii’s hands. “I’ll ride the train with you to Taura. Could you deliver these to Erika? She’ll know what to do.”