Chapter Text
It’s not quite crashing and burning, she thinks.
The air is stagnant. Choking. Her empty lungs fill with a mix of ash, dust, humidity, and everything but oxygen as she exhales a grey cloud that dissipates off the edge of the balcony, invisible against the backdrop of a dark, grey sheet of clouds. She taps at a wristwatch on her right hand, tap-tapping at the faded screen, covered in fingerprints. It’s pointless. Battery needed replacing a week ago.
Whatever. Now’s a good a time as any.
There’s a metal bracelet on her left wrist. She rubs her index finger against her thumb. Puts out the cigarette over a patch of smooth metal, leaving bits of residue on its surface. An ember slips past the cracks and singes her skin. Oops.
The bracelet is a curled piece of… Well, who even knows at this point? It doesn’t matter. Her fingers trace the outline, up the spiral from one end to the other. They curl around the USB port, haphazardly welded on and caked in dust before finishing their journey.
She pricks her finger on the other end. Pulls a pair of frayed earbuds from the pocket of her dress pants.
She plugs them in.
Static rings in her ears. Somehow, she picks it out over the sound of rain hitting the canopy over her head.
Her tongue is dry. She opens her mouth. Then, she closes it again. Dry. Her lungs feel dry. There’s a dull ache in the back of her head that only grows as the static drones on, and on.
She fills her lungs with tar. Another drag, another cloud.
“Hey. Sorry it’s been so long.”
She leans over the railing. The ground is slick with rain that flows from sidewalks to sewer grates, too murky to reflect anything.
“Well. For a bit more than that, I guess.”
There’s a sound. A voice. Her eyes shoot open and she shoves her right earbud in deeper—
Nothing. Rainfall. Maybe some footsteps in the distance, sloshing against the muddy road. Some lights in the distance.
She can’t see past the clouds.
She goes back inside. Shuts the rain out. The static follows her, but she pays it no mind.
Her office is a bit of a mess.
Yeah, she can admit that much. Documents spread out all over her desk, a laptop open with all too many active notifications and windows open on her file explorer, and a few slips of… is that paper on the ground? Damn, she’d known that she hadn’t been the most precise in moving here, but mixing up documents? If she had any active cases, she may as well have just shot herself and saved her client the trouble. She picks up the papers, and—
Four girls on the beach. Three of them, crowding around the one in the centre. Two of them pulling her cheeks up, and into a smile entirely unbefitting of her.
The third girl is blonde. Smiling. Smiling in a way that makes it look like there isn’t a single thought rattling around in her empty skull besides the scene in front of her. In a way that renders the efforts of the first two meaningless, and the resistance of the victim futile.
The woman unplugs her earbuds.
She slips the photograph into her pocket. She’ll deal with that later. For now, she tucks away the earbuds to match, and busies herself with sorting out the tornado that appears to have passed over her desk and through the contents of her hard drive.
Her earbuds are off. The static lingers.
It builds in her ears, crawls down her neck, and into her chest, and her head, and she needs another hit. She goes to step out for just a moment, pulls a lighter out of her desk, and—
There’s a knock at the door.
The woman’s eyes narrow. How—rather, why is anyone here? Yes, she’d just put an ad for her firm in in the paper, but it hasn’t even been a full day, and what with the weather—
“Is this Sakayori Industries? Please, do forgive me if I happen to be in the wrong place.”
Hmph. Well, it isn’t as if stranger things haven’t happened.
“No, you’re good. Door’s unlocked.”
“Unlocked? Around here?”
Her fingers twitch around her unlit cigarette. She drops it into the trash under her desk.
“Come on in.”
The door swings open, and—
“So, whaddya think, Iroha? Am I cute enough to head up on stage? Or do I need to go hit up Roka and tell her she’s a total fraud?”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re the cutest in the world. I’ll make sure to thank Roka for that.”
“Wha—hey! You’re not gonna praise me?”
“Being all graceful doesn’t suit you.”
“But…?”
“…I guess it isn’t so bad every now and then.”
It’s not exactly crashing and burning.
She spies a flash of darkness through the crack in the doorway.
The door goes wide, and she feels the tar in her throat being scraped up and hacked out before she can take another breath.
“You know, I didn’t think princesses were supposed to be so flashy.”
“Ehhh? I mean, I guess I could go all stiff and stuff on ya, but, bein’ like this is way more fun! Plus, you like me way more like this, Iroha, don’tcha?”
There’s something in the way she walks. The way her black, slightly shiny dress sways back and forth along her hips, thin straps over her shoulders half-covered by the thin black scarf around her neck. How her heels click against the carpeted ground. How her veil makes her hair colour just muddied enough to see things that aren’t there.
There isn’t a single crack in her image.
Somehow, it looks like she’d rather be doing anything else.
…That’s probably projection.
“You’re Iroha Sakayori, correct? Or are you one of her employees?”
“No, that’s me.” The tar starts clawing its way back down, coating the inside of her lungs. Her hand twitches towards a drawer. “I don’t have any employees.”
“I saw your advertisement,” the light-haired woman says, taking a seat at the desk across from her. She leans forward a little as she tucks her chair in. Iroha picks an eyeball and stares. “And I must say, you made quite the claims! I mean, being a repeat expert witness on any subject is already quite impressive, but mechanical engineering, computer engineering, and software development, and cybersecurity? On top of being a private investigator as well as a licensed attorney? Honestly, a girl has to wonder: is there anything you can’t do?”
“How ‘bout we all go to the beach together next year?”
“Kaguya, if we win, then we'll celebrate with pancakes, okay?”
There’s the sensation of ash seeping under her nails. She digs her right thumb into the point of her bracelet, then into the thigh of her dress pants.
She bites her tongue. Breathes. The air hits a snag in her throat. “What are you here for today, then?”
“Well, there's this case, you see.”
She blinks.
Her pockets feel uncomfortable all of a sudden. Iroha plants her elbows onto the table, steepling her chin atop her hands.
“I’m listening.”
“I have this colleague, you see,” she says, slowly rotating in her chair with a mix of grace and whimsy that—that doesn’t bring any particular feelings bubbling down her throat. “An idol. And recently, that girl went on a company cruise! You know how it is—brand development, content creation; that sort of thing.”
Hm.
“Iroha, I know that as long as we keep makin’ songs, we’ll get to the top in no time!”
Iroha sighs. Digs an elbow into the table as she digs a finger into the side of her temple.
“I’m following.”
“On the trip,” she continues, crossing her legs as she leans back. Iroha steadies herself and straightens her back. “That girl is assigned a bed next to their agency’s number one: the top streamer in the whole country—she constantly tops charts and hasn’t lost her position even once in the last year.”
“You want to get to the top? I knew you were a little crazy, but seriously?”
“C’mon, Iroha! The number one changes all the time! We can totally get there!”
Things really do change, huh?
“Continue.”
“The two of them grew close during the cruise.” Did they really? Or was there something else at play? So far, this is sounding like a textbook setup for determining animosity between a defendant and a witness. A dusty gauge clicks upwards in the back of Iroha’s mind. “They had quite a bit to discuss, you see.”
Iroha nods. Begins typing at her laptop. The rust in her finger joints leaks into the keyboard.
“See, that number one was actually a recent hire.” Jealousy. Resentment. Iroha digs a finger into her head. Maybe if she does it hard enough, she’ll scoop out the part of her brain that can’t sit still. “And she had no idea about what kind of skeletons the company had in the closet, so to say.”
Type. Grind. Process.
“What kinds of skeletons does the company have in the closet?”
“Mistreatment of workers, blackmail, union busting, monopolistic anti-competitive practices—honestly, it might take less time to list what they haven’t done!”
Iroha believes it.
“You’re paying your clerks—what, thirty dollars an hour? And you’re paying your janitors thirty-five?”
“I assure you, sir, I have determined that this is best practice for my company. High wages attract high-quality employees. Proper sanitation is of the utmost importance in a technology-focused enterprise such as mine. I would not have gotten as far as I have without their expertise.”
“The expertise of janitors. And on top of that, you could easily charge double, or even triple for products such as these, but you choose not to? I’m sorry, but I cannot invest in a company with such inefficient practices.”
Oh, does she believe it.
“And she has evidence?” Of course, Iroha believing it means nothing if the corporation that this woman is talking about has implemented any form of protection for its confidential information. Honestly, the only way that she can imagine such complaints resulting in any lasting consequences for a corporation as large as this woman claims would be—
“Yep! We’ve got text messages, confidential documents, hidden company policies, recordings with a consenting party present in the recorded conversation—the only things stopping her from getting the ball rolling were the legal fees, and—”
“Public perception.”
The woman stops in her tracks. Iroha had barely noticed her leaning closer and closer before she returns to her seat, matching Iroha’s posture.
“Co~rrect! She’s an idol, after all! You’ve heard of the McDonalds coffee suit over in the United States, haven’t you? Or Tetsuya Nakato’s suit?”
Oil. It seeps in through her ears, down the canals, and into her brain. Gears begin to grind, and squeak, and whirr to life.
With the right PR campaign? The media would destroy her. Her and everyone else involved would be destroyed.
And the corporation? You can’t imprison an enterprise no matter how much of a person the law states they are.
“So, this woman—let’s call her ‘Colleague’, okay?” Iroha nods. Eyes, once narrowed, start to open a little. “She told her new friend—’Number One’—for her help. Hearing such a passionate, sympathetic plea for aid, Number One accepted.”
Which would lend her the public pull and resources that she needed to cause lasting consequences for the company, and preserve the lives of the victims that she was involved with.
How fortunate.
It’s more complicated than that, obviously. Bits of sludge—case law, news articles, and countless nothing-sentences are dredged up in the back of her mind. But if she had the support of someone who, allegedly, has lasted more than a year at the top of the entertainment world as an independent creator…
Against her better judgement, hope, wriggling and warm, froths in the pit of her stomach.
Iroha opens her mouth.
“That night, Number One was found lying dead with an empty syringe next to her in her locked bedroom. The only other person there was her Colleague.”
She closes it.
Of course. Of course, that would happen.
If an emperor sees an uprising brewing, then what do they do? Placate the people? Address the root causes behind its origin?
Of course not. They cut off the head and leave the bleeding stump to rot in the dirt.
Iroha sighs. She needs a light.
“Obviously, I’m sure that you’re quite sharp enough to know of Colleague’s role in the crime?”
Iroha narrows her eyes.
What is this woman getting at? Is—is she seriously suspecting her Colleague?
Iroha hadn’t realized she was leaning in again, but she straightens up without a moment’s hesitation. Grime pools at the back of her throat. She swallows it down; even she has depths that she won’t sink to.
“I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing the venom pooling on her tongue and letting it drain into her mind. “But I’m quite sure that law enforcement can conduct its own investigations.”
“Oh, absolutely! Iroha,” First name? Iroha opens her mouth to say something, but she can’t seem to summon the energy to object to that. “I’m sure you know that my Colleague never killed anyone!”
“And how can you be so sure about that?”
The woman smiles. “Why, that’s the easiest part!”
And then, she reaches up. Behind her back, around her neck. There’s a little corner of Iroha’s mind, filled with cobwebs and epoxy, that wants to say something about decency, decorum, or professionalism.
Tar drips back into her brain and she can’t summon a single word.
But even as she slumps into her seat, fog building inside her skull, she can’t help but stare, eyes glued to the woman in front of her as she takes her scarf and unties it, revealing a single angry, red pinprick on the side of her neck and silver hair that even the grimy, gunked up gears in her mind can churn into coherent thought:
“My name,” she says, leaning forward again, and grabbing Iroha by the chin, “Is Yachiyo Runami. Currently the primary investigator for the defence, and presumed murder victim!”
It’s completely absurd; the thought trudges up to the forefront of Iroha’s mind.
She recognizes that whimsy. That playfulness. The flare for drama. Traits that, despite being common to almost any performer, conjure images of late nights with a warm weight pressing into her back, fireworks under a crescent moon, and a celebration cut far, far too short.
Tar rises to the surface of her throat. She chokes back a sob. Her face remains impassive.
This isn’t crashing and burning.
But she can feel the soot gathering on the walls as Yachiyo sits back down.
It’s not crashing and burning, Iroha tells herself. Not one bit.
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