Part 1 || 8 | Momo

A Tale of Cakes and Memories

The Cake Fairy had two kinds of customers, depending on the time of day. In the morning, parents with kids occupied the curbside chairs and tables beneath the large awning of the shop, but as the day waned into the afternoon, younger couples and dates began to fill these same spaces. Hence, by 8:30 a.m., Momo and her colleagues were met with the sounds of parents scolding naughty children for asking when their cakes would arrive for the umpteenth time, and the little ones were pining all the more. After the muses took their seats at a curbside table close to the edge of the curb, Momo noticed that they were the only single women amongst the customers. She even saw some of the kids looking their way, before their mothers scolded them for staring at strangers.

“It’s a family-friendly place,” Momo said, looking around at the waitresses taking their customers’ orders, all of them dressed as maids.

“It’s G-rated now,” Ryder said, “but it gets a bit sexier in the afternoons.”

“Let me guess,” Momo said. “Couples?”

“The horny kind, yes,” she said, nodding her head, “but we’ll avoid that when we go back for those reports.”

“It’s not even 9 o’clock yet,” Sakura said as more parents brought their unruly kids and took up more tables and chairs around them. “This place makes me queasy. I’d be annoyed if I had to stay so long with a bunch of crazy kids.”

At this, Momo deadpanned, saying, “You’re still a kid, so it’s fine. And you still act like one, too.”

“Like turning me into a peach blossom?” Sakura said.

“That’s for turning me into a cherry blossom at the office,” Momo said, “and you even took off my clothes afterwards.”

“Settle down, you two,” Ryder said when a waitress arrived and took their orders. Ryder ordered a slice of tiramisu, Momo ordered a slice of mocha cake, and Sakura ordered two slices of strawberry cheesecake. In addition, Ryder ordered a soda, Momo ordered iced green tea, and Sakura ordered orange juice. After the waitress left, Ryder smiled at Sakura. “Someone’s got a sweet tooth.”

“Trust me, you have no idea,” Momo said, smiling at the thought of spilling the dirt on another of Sakura’s childhood fixations. “You won’t believe the amount I spend on cakes every month. She demolishes them like there’s no tomorrow.”

“You have one, too,” Sakura said.

“Yeah, but it’s more in the ice cream variety,” she said, thinking of cookies n’ cream, mint, chocolate chip, rocky road, etc., till an epiphany struck her. “Ryder, do they serve ice cream cakes here?”

“They have a wide selection,” Ryder said, “so I’m sure they do. Ask the waitress when she comes back.”

When the waitress came back with their orders, Momo asked her if they served ice cream cakes. The waitress said that they did, as well as root beer floats, so Momo and Ryder and Sakura ordered root beer floats. In addition, Momo ordered a slice of cookies n’ cream ice cream cake, Ryder ordered a slice of mud pie ice cream cake, and Sakura ordered a slice of strawberry ice cream cake.

After the waitress left, Momo said, “Sakura, can you really handle that? I mean, two cakes, an ice cream cake, a root beer float, and an orange juice is a lot.”

“Yes, I can,” Sakura said.

“You’ll get fat, you know,” Momo said.

Notwithstanding her observation, Sakura brandished a fork and ate like a garbage disposal unit, shoveling forkful after forkful of the two slices of strawberry cheesecake and then the strawberry ice cream cake into her mouth and eating them. Then she took up her orange juice and finished that off with one massive gulp, then brandished a spoon and ate the scoop of ice cream floating atop the root beer, and then downed half of the contents of the root beer in one long swig. The amount of time it took to accomplish this gastronomic feat took around ten minutes.

And though Momo and Sakura had finished off both of their cakes at that time and were in the process of starting on their root beer floats, both girls paused at Sakura’s voracious appetite for all things sweet. After this, Momo just looked down on her root beer and green tea and felt her stomach lurch at the thought of consuming them at Sakura’s pace. So Momo took up her fork and swirled the contents of her root beer float, letting the ice cream melt into the root beer, till it became a thin slurry, and started taking slow pulls from it.

Ryder did the same with hers, swirling it with her fork and taking slow pulls of root beer slurry.

After her third pull of root beer, Momo set it down and eyed her partner, till something about Ryder’s disposition caught her eye. She said, “You wanted to talk about it here?”

Ryder put down her root beer and nodded.

“About the Windermere case?” she said and paused as she took a closer look at Ryder. “Or about your case?”

“Both,” Ryder said.

“Wait a minute,” Sakura said, looking from Ryder to Momo and back to Ryder. “What are you talking about?”

“Unless Momo told you about it,” Ryder said, “I don’t expect you to know the full details.”

“About what?” Sakura said.

“About Ryder’s case,” Momo said. “I’m sure you’ve already heard of it as the Rebel Reaper case.”

Sakura just gaped, saying, “I read about it in class, but it didn’t mention the investigator.”

“Of course, it didn’t,” Ryder said and took a pull of her root beer. “That particular case involved a muse officer going against protocol and solving it through underhanded means, which took it out of the hands of the Muse Bureau. In other words, it meant that the muse officer in charge had to take full responsibility in handling it on her own.”

“What do you mean?” Sakura said.

“This morning,” she said, “when you saw me get off the subway train, did you notice anything weird about me?”

“Yeah,” Sakura said. “You weren’t . . . yourself.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Ryder said. “Momo is the investigator of that case, and I’m the so-called Rebel Reaper you read about.”

“Seriously?” Sakura said.

“As serious as a heart attack,” she said, then to Momo: “You can tell her.”

“Are you sure?” Momo said.

“It’s fine.”

So Momo took another pull from her root beer, then caught Sakura’s eye with her gaze, saying, “All right. I don’t share information about high-profile cases with anyone all that often, let alone with newbies like you, but since Ryder’s fine with it, I’ll make an exception. Just don’t go spouting this off to anyone else, got it?”

Sakura nodded that she did.

“Okay, good,” Momo said and took another pull from her root beer, then began the harrowing tale: “Two years ago, the Muse Bureau received a private commission on the Rebel Reaper case for causing people’s sleep to deepen into a comatose state. Because of the collateral involved, the Chief passed the case onto the Muse Inspector, and the Muse Inspector passed it onto me, and I was expected to . . .”

A Tale of a Rebel Reaper II

At the time, Momo Yume was 18 years old and had been a Muse 3rd Grade for about three years at that point, with several supernatural burglaries and missing persons cases under her belt and one suicide-turned murder case that she had to refer to her Muse 2nd Grade colleagues early in her career as a Muse 4th Grade on one of her first cases. Her experiences at work for the Muse Bureau had bucked her up for many of the inexplicable and incomprehensible cases that came her way, yet every once in a while appeared a case that flew under everyone’s radar for the better part of a month. During that time, she had heard about a series of comatose cases amongst her colleagues in whispered conversations, yet the higher-ups had been sitting on it.

Thus, when Momo headed into Muse Inspector Nathaniel Coleman’s office, she was told to close the door behind her. That was the first tip-off. So she closed the door, sat on the chair before him, and asked him what was going on, but he said nothing as he opened the bottom drawer on his desk. And when Momo turned in the paperwork on her previous case involving the recovery of a stolen idol from a museum, she noticed the Muse Inspector taking out a manila folder and sliding it over to her before shutting the drawer. That was the second tip-off.

“What’s that?” Momo said.

“This is confidential,” Nathaniel said. “None of the details of this case leaves this room. When you finish it, turn in your paperwork and don’t say a word about it to anyone.”

Momo took up the folder stuffed with papers, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Why all the secrecy?”

“It’s in that folder,” he said. “Now I’m leaving you full leeway to conduct this case at your discretion, but there’s one parameter you shouldn’t cross here.”

“And what’s that?” she said.

“Don’t approach the witnesses,” he said. “The Muse Bureau wants to keep this hush-hush.”

“Wait,” Momo said as it dawned on her, “do the ones involved in this case even know about this?”

“Nope,” he said, “and we want to keep it that way.”

“No backup?” she said.

“I’m afraid so,” Nathaniel said.

“But how am I supposed to work this case?”

“Figure it out,” the man said. “You’re dismissed.”

With that, Momo got up and left the office with the manila folder in her possession. She exited through the floating double doors of the Muse Bureau building, where the afternoon sun shone through the hologram of a giant clock hovering over the above-ground subway station like a shimmering ghost. The time on the dial face was 3:15 p.m., just after Sakura’s middle school classes ended, so Momo hurried towards the subway station. There the afternoon rush of commuters crowded onto the raised platform and waited for the train to take them home after a long day’s work. Instead of joining the crowd, Momo cut across the foot traffic into the restrooms and entered the women’s restroom, where half of the stalls were occupied. She headed towards an empty stall, opening and closing the door behind her without locking it, and manifested a blank omamori charm in her hand and pressed it against the door with her finger.

“Open,” Momo said under her breath and snapped her fingers, and the hiragana for opening a door flashed on the charm. She then opened an astral copy of the restroom stall door and entered into another empty restroom stall.

Holding the manila folder in the crook of her armpit, Momo exited the stall, washed her hands at the sink, and dried them with a paper towel from a dispenser. She then took up her manila folder and exited the restroom and entered a small quad area, where she sat on a garden ledge by the outdoor student locker area and waited for her younger sister. And while she waited, she opened the folder and read the witness statements of each comatose case, seventeen in all, in which she noticed a few common motifs: one, all the cases were time-sensitive, for they all happened at around 2:40 a.m. at night; two, the locations of the comatose cases occurred in the victims’ bedrooms; three, the victims were all females no older than 13 years old; and four, all the witness statements were signed either by their parents or legal guardians.

Momo rolled the details through her head, deducing that the culprit might be a 13-year old girl, though she had no way of knowing without interviewing the witnesses. And since the Muse Inspector stipulated no direct contact with them, Momo focused on the details of each witness statement, for the Devil was in the details. After a preliminary reading of the statements, Momo shifted her focus onto—

“Sis, over here!” Sakura said.

Momo looked up from her papers and saw her sister waving at her along with a clique of yokai friends. Momo waved at them as her sister ran up to her with her book bag slung across her shoulder.

“Are you ready?” Momo said.

“Almost. I have to get some of my books,” she said and left her book bag on the ledge beside Momo, then took off into the rows of lockers beneath a roof shading the whole area from the elements. After a few minutes, Sakura came back with three textbooks on earth science, geometry, and mythology in her arms.

Momo whistled at the amount of reading and said, “They’re really loading you up, aren’t they?”

“You have no idea,” Sakura said, putting her books in her bag and hoisting her bag across her shoulder again. “I have to start an earth science project that’s due at midterms, study for my geometry test tomorrow, and write up a book report for my mythology class that’s due next week.”

“Ouch!” Momo said in a grimace.

“I know, right?” she said.

“Thank God, I don’t lug around so many books anymore,” Momo said, collecting all the witness statements and shoving them inside the manila folder. “Are you ready now?”

When Sakura nodded, they both headed through one of the three double doors of the back entrance towards the pick-up area of the school facing the afternoon sun, where yokai and ghosts and other entities waited at the teleportation booths for their parents and guardians to pick them up. As was customary, though, Momo allowed Sakura to hang out with her friends while they waited for their folks to pick them up.

All the while, Momo removed the witness statements from the manila folder and reviewed them again, in which she noticed a fifth motif connecting all seventeen comatose cases: all the comatose cases were dated on Saturday mornings when most middle school students would still be asleep. Now Momo was sure of it. Whoever was behind these comatose cases was a middle school girl no older than 13 years old. After that, Momo focused her attention on the details of what might’ve happened, which were scant on the outset. Since contacting the victims’ family members was out of the question, Momo had to make do with armchair deductions and hope for the best.

“God, I hate shooting from the hip,” Momo said under her breath. “How the hell do you solve this case without interviewing the witnesses?”

That was the rub, anyway. Yet the more Momo thought about it, the more she wondered if Nathaniel believed she could solve the case without resorting to contacting witnesses. If that was the case, she thought, then what reason would the witness statements serve? What role did the witnesses play beyond the information they provided in their statements?

She dug her smartphone from her pants pocket, dialed Nathaniel’s office number, and waited. When he answered, she said, “I have a question, Muse Inspector.”

“Ah, Momo,” he said. “Ask away.”

“What’s the angle of this case, anyway?” Momo said.

“You have to be more specific,” Nathaniel said, “and I’ve already left you a lot of leeway for you to pursue this case, so it’s up to you how to solve it. Just make sure you don’t contact any of the witnesses.”

“Why is that?” she said.

“Because it's sensitive,” he said.

“And why is this case sensitive?” Momo said.

“I believe I’ve already told you at the office,” he said.

“Then answer me this,” Momo said, thinking of her words. “Is the perpetrator of this case one of our own?”

“No, thank God,” he said, “but we’re under pressure from our friends in the Reaper Bureau to get it resolved ASAP.”

Then Momo said, “What are they saying?”

“I can’t answer that,” he said.

Silence reigned through the connection.

“Muse Inspector, are you under pressure?” she said.

There came a sigh through the connection, and Nathaniel said, “Yeah. I’ve got the Muse Bureau Chief and the Reaper Bureau Chief breathing down my neck over this case, so I’m expecting some results ASAP. Got it?”

“Got it,” she said. “Oh, and one more question.”

Again, there came a sigh through the connection, and Nathaniel said, “What is it?”

“You could’ve assigned this case to someone more qualified than me,” Momo said. “So why me?”

Silence reigned.

“Figure it out, Momo,” he said and hung up.

After that, Momo replaced her phone in her pocket and reviewed the witness statements a third time, going over the details and mulling them over in her mind: cases were time-sensitive, occurring in the victims’ bedrooms at around 2:40 a.m. on Saturday mornings; victims were middle school girls no older than 13; and witnesses were their parents or guardians. Momo bit down on her lip, because the details hit too close to home as she looked up from the statements and saw Sakura conversing with her friends over cute yokai boys and ghost boys.

She smiled, then had a brainwave and turned over the witness statements to the back sides of the paper, where she noticed the names of all seventeen victims fluorescing in invisible ink. Her hands started trembling, her breathing became labored, and sweat glistened her temples. These papers weren’t just witness statements: they were talismans.

Momo then looked back on Sakura, berating herself that such an idea even crossed her mind, and tried to forget it, yet she couldn’t. The solution to this mystery was standing there this whole time, and she was holding seventeen talismans of girls currently in a coma in the hospital. When she thought about Nathaniel Coleman’s warning to keep this a secret, Momo finally knew why he had assigned her the case. So she knew what to do next and gulped at the prospect.

After solving this case, Momo was going to storm into the Muse Inspector’s office and slam her report down on the table and have a chat with him on Monday morning next week.

But for now, she’d have to prepare.

TBC