That day fifteen years ago was a rainy day, just like the one YF stepped into when he exited the bar.

“Saru!”

Mohan — who had run ahead of YF and Ken — suddenly stopped, using his long arms to force the other two to halt. YF was too on edge to snap at Mohan, instead turning to Ken, who completely missed YF’s gaze.It was then a dark figure rose up from in front of the squatting form of Saru. Immediately, YF recognized the person as his brother. As the rain poured harder, the last remaining streams of crimson washed from the side of Hiroyuki’s face before the water turned clear again. All those present remained silent; YF watched as droplets of water fell from the back edge of Saru’s shirt. He thought back to the two weeks before then, when they found the masseuse, Ms. Arakawa, lying face down in a parking garage near her shop. That day was also a rainy day.

Hiroyuki became much more withdrawn the weeks after Ms. Arakawa’s death. Though Hiroyuki never expressed his thoughts on the incident to YF, YF had a feeling he knew what was about to happen. And on that day with Saru crouched and Hiroyuki standing over the motionless man’s body, YF had witnessed the conclusion of his brother’s private thoughts.

That memory had been suppressed in YF’s mind until he now sat cramped in the taxi sedan with Mohan seated in front — him, Ken, and Beef in the back.

“Sir, I understand your concern, but —”

Mohan raised his receiver, punching in a number of DTKs and showing it to the driver. “I could help with your reactor loan, a small token of my appreciation.”

Before the driver could respond, YF placed his hand on the shoulder of Mohan’s seat. “They’re not the Ward Police. Vehicle colors are similar, but they’re someone else.”

Mohan squinted at the vehicle. “Looks like an undercover one to me.”

YF shook his head. “I know who they are.” He had already fired off a text to Erika the moment they got into the taxi, though she had not yet replied. Then, just as Mohan lowered his receiver, YF’s receiver beeped. The others looked toward YF. YF unlocked his receiver and pressed the notification.

“She’s busy,” it read simply.

Barely able to contain his anger, YF started to text something but then deleted it, shoving his receiver into his pocket in anger. The car they had been following pulled over to the side of an abandoned building. Mohan indicated for their taxi driver to do the same. When the taxi stopped, the two armored men and the one senior man with a trenchcoat stepped out. YF tapped Beef’s shoulder to indicate they should get out as well. When Beef stumbled onto the sidewalk, YF quickly exited the vehicle and took a few steps toward the other car until the men raised their rifles toward him. Two red dots crawled along his shirt.

YF raised his hands. “Just want to talk.” He paused. “We think you’ve got the wrong man.”

At that moment, a strong beam of light shone in his face, but YF forced himself not to move his hands.

“It’s him!” he could hear one of the mercenaries shout.

The second mercenary walked into the path of the light, briefly restoring YF’s sight before strong hands clamped handcuffs over his wrists. “Our colleagues from the Nishida West Scrapyard incident circulated a video of you,” said the man, yanking the chain down and tying what looked like a shock rope to it. “It’s your lucky day. You’re going to help your friend recall where the boss’ daughter is.”

YF could feel himself being pulled over to the car. He managed to turn around and stare Mohan in the eyes, shaking his head. YF could then see Mohan mouth the words “fuck that”. The two armed men raised their rifles toward the tall, dark man. YF grunted. “Go back!”

Mohan took a step back, waited a few seconds, then stepped into the passenger’s seat. When the unarmored man pushed YF by the head into their vehicle, he could see that the taxi he had arrived in still did not move. The armored men walked backwards until they reached the car. One of them climbed into the passenger’s seat, the other into the back seat with Saru and YF. The leader of the group then drove off.

“It took me a while to remember who you were,” said the driver.

YF didn’t respond.

“You lived at the apartment Hayashi-sama was staying at.”

“I would imagine if I was meant to protect her, I would be,” said YF.

“You can drop the act,” said the driver. “If you were really there to protect her you would’ve just submitted to a wrist scan that day. My guess is if I asked you for one now you wouldn’t show up in our database.”

“Don’t think it’s wise to advertise who’s there for her protection,” said YF.

The driver shook a finger. “Very clever. But the problem is you were not there for her protection. You were there to hold her hostage.”

“What do you mean? She was shown on national television rescued from the Double Phoenix compound,” said YF.

The driver smirked. “Rescued. What a choice of words.” He shook his head. “No, we know Viper Sect was keeping her to continuously extract ransom money from Hayashi Corporation. Viper Sect only ‘rescued’ her to save their meal ticket. It’s true that no one was ever able to ascertain what Double Phoenix wanted with her, but to say that Viper Sect ‘rescued’ her is an overstatement.”

YF frowned. He had assumed up until then that Reina had some way of paying for her sectarian activities. But rethinking what she was capable of, he realized extorting her own father indirectly for money might be within the realm of possibility. The thought turned his confusion into anger. For a split second he thought about exposing her, but one glance at the driver was enough for him to decide against it.

“Why don’t you run a wrist scan on me to see who I am then?” asked YF.

YF could feel the car slow down.

The man tried to laugh, but YF could tell he was growing uneasy. “You some big shot or something?”

“Just do it. I think if you’d prefer to be on the right side of the law, I’d do it sooner rather than later.”

The man pulled the vehicle over to an opening in the road for a bus stop, placing his emergency blinkers on. “Ito, scan him,” the man ordered.

The armored man in the back retracted a cover from his forearm terminal and punched a few buttons, bringing his arm over to YF. YF twisted his wrist so that it faced upward.

“Scan complete. Sakai Yasufumi detected. Further details requested. Searching database. Sakai Yasufumi belongs to the Main Sentinel Office of Itsugo Village. Identification status: Active.”

Upon the word “Active” YF wanted to thank Magistrate Kuroda out loud, but restrained himself as best he could.

The driver frowned. “Forgive me Mr. Sakai, let’s step out of the car for a moment. You two stay inside and watch our friend Mr. Kitase.”

Saru looked at YF expectantly, who only nodded in response. YF climbed out of the vehicle and slammed the door, waiting on his own side. The man stepped out and closed the door, walking over to the sidewalk to stand in front of YF. The man then pulled out his receiver and pressed a few buttons, releasing YF from the handcuffs.

“Again, my apologies. My name is Investigator Hayakawa. You are free to go. The bus should arrive in ten minutes.”

YF tried to appear as confident as he possibly could. “Private Investigator Hayakawa,” YF corrected. “You do not have official authority to detain anybody. And I am not leaving without my friend,” said YF, nodding toward Saru.

The man sighed. “You can understand that it is of utmost importance that Hayashi-sama finds his daughter safe and unharmed. You obviously had nothing to do with the incident of her abduction, but we have strong evidence to believe Mr. Kitase does. It is unfortunate we had to disturb your gathering earlier.” Hayakawa paused. “You will understand,” he repeated.

YF shook his head emphatically. “No I won’t. Were any formal documents submitted to the Office?”

Hayakawa bit his lip, obviously trying to contain his impatience. The truth was that mercenary groups and private investigators detained and used violent, illegal methods of interrogating subjects all the time. Everyone knew this, and YF was sure the government even made use of it. It was usually a simple matter of waiting when law enforcement personnel was not around to nab a target — not too difficult given how understaffed even Ward Police were. Hayakawa took one look at YF’s receiver and then nodded with a half smile. “You’re right Mr. Sakai, and I’d appreciate it if we shook on it.” Hayakawa extended his hand out.

YF understood that Hayakawa wanted him to erase any possible recording of the event. “I’ll make sure we’re straightened out when I get back to the Office,” said YF, leaving his hands at his side. “There won’t be any problems.”

Hayakawa seemed to relax. “Thank you Mr. Sakai,” he said, retracting his hand. “The files should reach the desk of Magistrate Kuroda soon. When they do, I hope to see this man detained until he can be transferred to Ward Police. After that, you can be sure I will see him in Nishida.”

That last sentence sent a chill down YF’s spine. “I’ll see the papers first.”

Hayakawa nodded and walked past YF toward the car, pulling open the door YF had stepped out of. “You’re free to go,” he said to Saru, motioning with his head for the large man to get out. “Consider yourself lucky.”

Saru had a fear in his eyes as he stepped out of the car and held his hands out for Hayakawa to loosen them. Hayakawa repeated the motion with his receiver to release him. When Saru was free, he stared as the older private investigator walked to the driver’s seat, disappearing behind the automatically closing door. Then, the vehicle pulled out of the bus stop and took off at a moderate pace into the night. When the vehicle was safely out of sight, Saru turned and grabbed YF’s shirt near the collar, lifting the latter into the air. YF grabbed onto Saru’s wrist, landing a front kick on the large man’s chest, forcing him to drop YF.

“What the fuck man?” YF exclaimed as he staggered a few times before regaining his balance.

“You have some explaining to do…” said Saru in a low voice.

YF breathed out slowly. “I will tell you everything when we get back.”

Saru shook his head. “You knew I already did time for mods.”

YF recalled when Saru was arrested for modifying the vehicles of some notorious drug runners from Itsugo. He suspected the Ward Magistrate gave Saru a harsher sentence because they could never catch the runners themselves. Looking into Saru’s eyes, YF could tell his friend knew since the beginning that the rider of the Tanaka R1 that had taken Reina was himself; why Saru had never pushed the question, YF did not know.

“And it seems the new girlfriends you’ve been making aren’t the hometown neighborhood kind. I need some answers” said Saru.

The image of Hiroyuki and Saru over the dead body fifteen years ago came back to his mind. That incident had bound Saru and his brother together until Hiroyuki left the neighborhood for good during his university years. Saru was not the type to show his emotions. But YF remembered the split second of disappointment in Saru’s expression when he realized Hiroyuki would not be coming back to Itsugo for summer break of freshman year. If YF revealed what was going on with Reina and Viper Sect, would Saru tell everything to Hiroyuki? YF searched Saru’s eyes for several moments.

“Well?” asked Saru. “You can tell me now, or tell everyone on the bus what the fuck is going on.”

YF glanced back down the road, where the bus had not shown up yet. Deciding he had no choice, he sighed and then relayed the entire story, leaving out the part that Hayashi Reina was actually the oyabun of Viper Sect.

Saru nodded slowly. “Huh…I always knew Erika was something special. She exceeded my expectations, as always.”

“This needs to avoid my brother’s ears,” said YF. “There’s something going on between the two. Not the good kind.”

“I talked to him a while ago, when they were still going out,” said Saru. “Seemed like a chaotic mess. I’m not sure whether they were madly in love or fixing to kill each other.”

“I’m sure there was a good amount of both,” said YF.

Saru eyed the bus as it pulled up to the stop. “I’ll keep my mouth shut on one condition.”

“What?” asked YF.

“We’re going to call all the guys back to the club, and you’re going to buy us all a few rounds.”

YF grimaced as he made a quick estimate of how much that would cost.

“And some extras too,” added Saru with a grin.

***

YF could feel the weight in his head as he slowly woke up. Moving slightly to the side produced a splitting pain that caused him to instinctively grab his forehead. It was only then that he registered the beeping of his phone as a continuous stream of notifications instead of his alarm clock as he had initially thought. YF crawled the few shaku to his receiver which had been tossed absentmindedly into the corner. Thankfully only Beef was lying in his path, whom he carefully avoided as he reached out to grab the device. He then ran his finger over the sensor to unlock it. YF was immediately greeted with a whole list of text messages and voicemails left for him. He forced his eyes fully open as he swiped through the list, reading each leading text before it disappeared into the right, followed immediately by the next text bubble. He held his thumb on the last text message, pulling down to reveal the entire text.

“If you don’t get your ass to Independence Square Station right now, you’re fucked.”