Chapter Text
Taking the very last train turned out to be not such a bad idea. On its way to the end station the half-empty carriage was steadily getting emptier, creating a smooth transition from the noise and hustle of the city to the peace and quiet of the countryside. By the time a mechanical voice announced the arrival to the train’s final destination, it only had one passenger left.
Yu stepped on the empty platform, covered with white frost, and lowered his travel bag on the ground. The cold air gave him a shiver and made him want to put his both arms in the sleeves of a gray coat that he was wearing on the shoulders. After taking the brown messenger bag off, he was just about to properly put on the coat when he heard a short but loud car horn.
Yu raised his eyes and noticed a familiar car approaching the train station. With a short laugh, he put the satchel and the coat back, picked up his travel bag from the ground and started to move toward the headlights.
“I told you that you don’t have to meet me, didn’t I?” he smiled at his uncle after occupying the passenger seat next to him and closing the car’s door. “I really would’ve made it on foot.”
“That’s some great memory you think you have, if you believe you would’ve easily found the place after five whole years,” Dojima chuckled when Yu turned behind to put his bag and coat on the empty back seat. “For one, I see you’ve forgotten what winters are like here.”
In his dark-purple shirt, with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and a striped gray vest, Yu had no right to contradict.
“There are some warmer clothes in the boxes that will be delivered later,” he replied, trying not to sound too defensive.
A slight smirk on his face, Dojima was looking at his nephew for a couple of moments until he extended his right arm for a handshake.
“Welcome back, Yu.”
Returning a smile, Yu took his uncle’s hand with his gloved right one and gave it a warm clasp.
“Thanks. It’s nice to be here again.”
***
“You go inside, I’ll be right there.”
Having left his uncle to park the car in the garage, Yu headed to the front door of the house he had last visited five years ago. He slid the door open and took a few moments to remember were the light switch was. Once the lamps lit on, he toed off his shoes, left his coat on the hanger, and went inside the living room.
From how dark the house had been before he entered, Yu already figured out that he wouldn’t see Nanako in front of the TV. Inwardly, he had to admit that his cousin didn’t have to keep her habits from when she had been a six-year-old.
“Looks like she’s still not back from the store,” Dojima went into the kitchen area, neared the fridge and opened it. “Yeah,” he turned to Yu and clarified: “She wanted to make a special dinner before you get here. But her concert band’s been having late practice sessions for the school Christmas event this whole week, and she’s.. responsible.”
Hearing subtly proud notes in his uncle’s voice, Yu smiled.
“Can you make me your special coffee instead?”
“Sure,” with a short laugh, Dojima motioned Yu to the chair and turned on an electric kettle.
While silently admiring some other technical improvements in the kitchen – a new microwave and a rice cooker – Yu left his bags on the floor near the stairs and came up to the table.
“The room upstairs is all clean,” Dojima said, putting a few tea-spoons of coffee in two colored mugs. “The desk might feel too small for you now, though, and we moved the working table to Nanako’s room at the start of this school year. But you can use the dining table here for any paperwork.”
“Don’t worry, I think I’ll be bothering you only for a couple of days,” Yu shook his head. “I’m planning to find a place to rent soon.”
Dojima, who just put the coffee jar back on the shelf, turned around and raised a surprised eyebrow.
“I really don’t want to be an intruder in the household again,” Yu explained. “I can’t even tell how long I’ll have to stay here – a week, a month, or more. I’m sure you two are used to your own routine and I’ll be just unnecessarily shaking it up.”
For a few moments, Dojima was silent but then chuckled to a shake of his head.
“Sorry, I’m just treating you like a child here. You’ve got the right to decide such things for yourself now,” he agreed. “You aren’t a bother in this house but the way you live is up to you. Adapting to a place like ours after five years in the city could be really tough, so I get it.”
“I didn’t mean that I don’t like it here, I just-…” Yu hurried to follow up, but Dojima let out another chuckle.
“Relax, Yu. I simply wanted to say that whatever reasons you have are valid. Just know that you’re more than welcome here,” he smiled. “Also, I’m sure Nanako will be upset if you choose to move out. So if you do, promise her you’ll be visiting.”
Yu smiled at his uncle, already somewhat reconsidering the initial plan to rent a separate place.
“I will.”
“Good then,” Dojima turned back to the boiling kettle, waited a few seconds until it turned off on its own, and poured water in both mugs. Leaving one on the counter, he took the other mug, neared the table, and put it down on the wooden surface near Yu.
“Thanks,” Yu reached for the steaming hot drink while his uncle returned to the counter and leaned against it.
They both took a few gulps of coffee in silence.
“Say, Yu,” Dojima was looking in his own mug. “That broadcast three days ago has something to do with you getting back here all of a sudden, doesn’t it?”
Looking at the small clouds slowly lifting from the dark surface of his coffee, Yu pressed his lips together.
“I know you’ve said that you have an official assignment from that Public Safety department,” his uncle went on. “And with how my work duties now mostly consist of signing papers and giving out orders at the station, my detective skills might’ve gone rusty. But this doesn’t look like a coincidence to me.”
Dojima looked up, focusing his gaze on Yu.
“You’ve seen that interview, right?”
After bringing a mug to his lips, Yu took a few slow gulps and then gently put the mug down.
“Yeah, I have,” he answered at last.
Yu heard his uncle exhale and mutter “thought so” under his breath.
They both didn’t say a word for a while.
“How long has he been like this?” Yu lifted his eyes from the mug.
“Can’t really tell,” Dojima replied after a few moments. “Normally, he’d just try to be his usual dumb blabbing self whenever I visited him in that detention center in Okina. I’m sure as hell there wasn’t a single day when he actually felt good, but at least he had the strength to make it look like he kept it together. Until at some point about a year ago he really started to come undone.”
He paused to take a sip of coffee.
“First I noticed that the number of his dumb jokes dropped. He started to talk less in general and soon I was the only one who kept the conversation going. Then in spring, he asked me to stop visiting him in general. I brushed this aside, but he just kept bringing it up every goddamn time.”
Dojima clicked his tongue and looked down in his mug.
“I was really run down the whole summer after I’d gotten that promotion, so I couldn’t go see him for a while. When I finally squeezed in the time for a visit and missed the first 30 minutes of Nanako’s concert for that, hearing him blabber how I “shouldn’t have come at all” was the last straw, so I…” he rubbed his neck, before sharply exhaling, “I snapped. Left the place and didn’t come back for a month.”
“And when you did, he simply refused to see you, right?”
Dojima answered with a mirthless chuckle and slowly shook his head.
“You still know him better than anyone else.”
A weak smile tugged on the corners of Yu’s lips.
“Have you visited him since then?” he asked.
After taking a few last gulps of coffee, Dojima let out another sharp breath and shook his head.
“I probably should have, I know. Had I told the guards that it’s for the investigation, he would’ve had no other choice but to get his ass into that visiting room even if he still didn’t want to see me.” Keeping the empty mug in his left hand, Dojima was silently staring at it for a while before he heaved a sigh. “..Call me a coward, Yu, but I just don’t know what to say to him at this point.”
For Yu, it was obvious that simply showing up would’ve been a good enough start. Yet he couldn’t but admit that the situation was complicated and understood why his uncle chose to withdraw.
Besides, Yu believed himself to be the least fit person for calling someone a ‘coward’.
“When everyone at the station started flapping their mouths about that show on Monday, I realized that it’s been three full months since my last visit to Okina. With all the work, I didn’t even notice how the time passed…” Dojima exhaled. “This time did take a toll on him, though. He looked absolutely miserable during that interview and the way they dragged him through the mud right in his presence despite his condition felt..” he furrowed his brow in search of a suitable word, “..unsettling.”
Still silent, Yu started to mindlessly rotate the mug on the table surface.
He had watched the interview in live broadcast too and the word he would’ve easily chosen to describe it was nothing but ‘harrowing’. From how the entire show was staged, he could hardly even tell its initial purpose. It had been just an hour-long, cruel and derogatory public interrogation without any purpose to make some actual, legal progress with the case.
Heaving a quiet sigh, Dojima turned his head to the right.
“To be frank, I now wonder how he held out this long. Five years of questionings, repetitive and useless procedures, and all other ‘privileges’ of remaining a ‘suspect under investigation’ with no end to it in sight,” he closed his eyes. “No matter the crime, everyone deserves a verdict. Keeping someone on tenterhooks like this forever is just-...”
“Torture,” Yu finished his uncle’s line on an outward breath and slowly lifted the mug to take a few gulps of the bitter drink.
Even if Dojima had another word in mind, he didn’t contradict. He turned around and after switching on the tap, started washing his mug.
When the sound of the running water ceased, Yu spoke up again.
“You said he first asked you not to come back in spring,” he was looking down at his coffee. “..Did he ever ask anything about me at that time or later?”
By the pause that followed, Yu could tell that Dojima had to take his time to recollect.
“I’d almost gotten used to him barely participating in the conversations by then,” he answered after a short halt, “so I usually told him how you were doing on my own. Like when you joined that department and got into the graduate law program.” He paused again for a few moments and then sighed. “Perhaps it was his condition in general, but.. he didn’t seem very interested in learning any details.”
Staring at the table surface, Yu didn’t respond.
“You plan to go see him?” Dojima asked after a short while.
“Yeah,” Yu nodded and then failed to stifle a short, sad laugh. “I promised him a visit in 2011. But back then I imagined it to be somewhat earlier than 5 years later…”
“You’ve had a lot on your plate,” Dojima noted. “Still have, for that matter. And from what I’ve seen and heard, you’ve even been sending him books all this time.”
Yu pressed his lips together and dropped his eyes.
“..I stopped doing it some time ago,” he said in a low voice after a pause.
He didn’t get the unwanted follow-up question and wondered if the position of the chief officer at Inaba station had something to do with the unusual tact and discernment his uncle was showing.
“Well, he still has quite a library there thanks to you. I even tried bringing him a book or two myself, but he said that, unlike you, I have horrible taste in literature,” Dojima jokingly scoffed. “Jerk.”
His eyes still on the mug, Yu cracked a smile too.
The room sank into silence for almost a minute until Dojima spoke again, his voice level and serious.
“You don’t owe him anything, Yu. No one does. Don’t feel guilty for trying to leave the past in the past. You had the right to let all this go way back in 2011.”
With a sigh, Yu lifted his gaze.
“You didn’t”, he pointed out.
“I feel responsible. Even if only for half a year, I was his senior partner.”
“And I was his friend.”
In response to Yu’s matter-of-fact, calm reply, Dojima breathed out a soft chuckle and shook his head.
“I think I mentioned it to both of you already, but to me you looked like the strangest duo five years ago,” he said with a wan smile on his lips. “I still don’t get how it worked out between the two of you, but..”
He paused for a while before heaving yet another sigh.
“..But if he managed to make a friend like you, seems like his luck didn’t run out completely.”
Yu only tightened his pressed lips and lowered his eyes to the mug again.
“Anyway, I really hope that you didn’t come back here because of some twinge of consciousness,” Dojima forced himself to go back to casual tone of his voice. “And that some assignment you’ve mentioned to me on the phone wasn’t a lie.”
Yu chuckled wryly.
“It wasn’t a lie,” he assured his uncle, looking him in the eye. “Adachi-san is my assignment.”
This time, Dojima’s eyebrows shot up, but the sound of the front door sliding open interrupted him even before he voiced his question.
“Dad, I’m-..” Nanako must have noticed the unfamiliar coat on the hanger and, after hurriedly taking her shoes off, appeared from behind the corner in a split second.
“Big bro!” she dropped her school bag and a plastic bag full of groceries on the floor and dashed forward to Yu, who already got up from the chair, for a hug.
“Woah, you’ve grown taller, Nanako,” he laughed when his cousin – still in her light-brown duffel coat – burrowed her face in his vest.
Nanako looked up and giggled.
“It feels like so have you though.”
“That’s unlikely,” Yu chuckled while looking at Nanako’s twin tails that were now reaching her elbows in length.
“So, what happened to that ‘Dad, I’m..’?” Dojima chuckled, reminding of his presence.
“You said you didn’t have the time to pick him up,” after releasing Yu from her hug, Nanako turned to her father, pouting and furrowing her brow. “If I knew you’d be going to the train station, I would’ve gone with you.”
“I said I’d see if I can leave work earlier.”
“That phrase always means exactly what I’ve just said.”
Yu felt as if he was unintentionally being given a sneak peek to what living with a chief officer of the local police station must have been for an eleven-year old girl. Seeing Nanako so confidently retort also made him realize that during the past five years she had learned to interpret her father’s words in the most pessimistic way possible – most likely in an attempt to avoid the disappointment she’d been facing so often as a six-year old.
“You want me to help you with the dinner?” Yu motioned to the plastic bag, hoping to ease the mood a little.
Nanako quickly caught his drift and pursed her lips, obviously feeling uncomfortable. She knew it had been her job to stop the ‘fighting’ five years ago.
“..I wanted to make it in time before you get here,” she said as she dropped her eyes.
“Don’t worry, your dad mentioned the band practice and the event,” Yu already made a few steps to the bag, picked it up and carried to the counters. “Will you tell me more about it?”
Nanako finally smiled again and nodded.
Letting his daughter near the stove, Dojima left the cramped kitchen area.
“I’ll step out for a while to make some calls and have a smoke,” he said, heading to the entrance and then turned back to look at Yu. “I’ve still got some questions about what you’ve said at the end, so we’ll discuss it after dinner.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Satisfied with the answer, Dojima disappeared behind the corner. A few moments later there was a sound of a sliding front door, which Yu found a little nostalgic.
“Are you working with dad now?” Nanako asked carefully. The tone her father used in the last line must’ve reminded her of that he used while talking to his subordinates on the phone.
“No, I’m not planning to join the police force, remember?” Yu replied with a smile. “But I do have some business here from the department I work with, and your dad’s work is somewhat related.”
“Is it gonna take long? That business.”
From how Nanako was looking at him, Yu could figure she wasn’t eagerly expecting a ‘no’. He remembered Dojima predicting her reaction to his plan to rent a separate place and could already picture her disappointment too.
“It all heavily depends on a certain person,” he answered honestly. “But if it goes more or less well with them, I think I’ll be staying here for a few months.”
Nanako’s eyes lit up again and a wide grin broke onto her face.
“Wow, then you’re here for Christmas, too!”
“Yeah, that’s for sure,” Yu chuckled at his cousin’s modest expectations. “Oh, and,” he took his old cell phone out of his pants pocket and lifted it, showing the attached colorful strap, “thanks again for making me this, by the way.”
Somewhat abashed, Nanako smiled and dropped her eyes again.
“..I didn’t really know what to get you this year. I wanted to give a real birthday present like the ones you send me. And it felt stupid to make it another drawing, like I’m a little kid.” Suddenly, she pouted. “Although dad said it would be okay because he thinks I am a kid…”
The corners of Yu’s mouth gently turned up, but he didn’t say anything.
“So I just thought that.. since we talk or exchange messages on the phone and you still have your old one, I’d make you a strap.” She sighed. “I wanted it to be a surprise, too, but dad didn’t know your address, so I had to ask you.”
“Had I known I’d be here in two weeks, I would’ve just told you to wait a little,” Yu let out another chuckle. “But I was glad to get it right on the day.”
Nanako smiled again and, after glancing at the mug on the table, headed to pick it up.
“You’ve had dad’s coffee already?”
“Yeah. I remember liking it when I used to live here, so I asked him to make one.”
“Doesn’t look like you liked it this time,” Nanako let out a laugh, looking at the half-full mug in her hands.
“We just got side-tracked to a complicated topic and I didn’t notice when it went cold,” Yu explained with a smile.
He decided to keep silent about the fact that nostalgia played a dirty trick on him and Dojima’s instant coffee indeed didn’t taste as good as he remembered. The realization that the same could apply to many other things wasn’t really pleasant. Yet, some part of Yu wished for this disillusionment to finally help him get a fresh and objective look at the memories and emotions he’d been struggling with for the past five years.