#or like its a reeeeeally really fine one and it brushes up against something and ur like. i didnt feel that but my cells did and

[gibbearish]

huh

[patchwork-panda]

If A Moment Is All We Are (37/?)

Please go to the AO3 link if you want to hear all the music!! I worked really hard to get everything just right and even then AO3 was being an absolute BITCH about the HTML so I reeeeeally hope you like this!!!

AO3 link HERE

S1, OP2

Music 1

Taking the stairs two at a time, I raced onto the fourth floor landing and down the hall towards the Armed Detective Agency’s main office.

“ Nomura- san!! ”

Several heads lifted towards me as I burst through the door.

“Has anyone seen my client?!” I gasped, collapsing against the door fram e as I fought to catch my breath . “ His name is Nomura—he ’ s supposed to meet me here at the Agency? Like, right now?! ”

“Kusunoki-san!”

I whipped my head up just in time to see Atsushi running towards me, his long black belt flying behind him like a tail.

“ He’s here,” Atsushi exclaimed, grabbing my wrist and pulling me towards the client booth. “He’s been waiting inside for maybe only a minute. What’s all this about a suicide—?!”

“There’s not enough time to explain,” I wheezed, trying not to trip on the tiles as Atsushi led me across the foyer. “ There’s something I need to do. Atsushi- kun , here—!”

I took the thick manila envelope out of my bag and shoved it at him.

“I need you to take this and call the police. Tell them we’re searching for a man named Matsuyama Shin; he’s about a hundred and seventy eight centimeters tall with dark hair and dark eyes, used to be a professor at a local university. His photo should be in there.”

“The police?!” Atsushi squawked, his golden eyes going wide. “Wait a minute, is he— ?!”

“Not yet—!”

Panting with exertion, I grabbed the stained glass door to the client booth, straining to slid e it open.

“Or at least...”

I gritted my teeth as Nomura finally came into view. Spotting me, he scrambled towards the door.

“I hope not.”

“Kusunoki-san!!”

Nomura was at my side the instant I stepped through the doorway.

“I got here as soon as I could,” he babbled, wringing his hands as he followed me back towards the seats. “I even called a cab but there were so many stop lights—I nearly lost it and started running— I’m so sorry, Kusunoki- san , I didn’t even think to call the police—!”

“Don’t worry about that,” I panted, practically falling into one of the brown leather chairs. “Atsushi- kun’s on the line with them right now, they should be looking for the professor as we speak.”

“ But what if they don’t find him?” Nomura pressed, his eyes wide with fear. “That suicide note could’ve been written hours ago . What if—?!”

“ That note couldn’t have been written more than an hour or two ago,” I informed him. “I wasn’t able to find the professor at the cemetery but I did happen to run into Natsuki- san while I was there. She said he’d been at home when she left this morning and it seemed like she’d only arrived a few minutes before I had.”

I rolled up my sleeve.

“Which means we still have time.”

And before Nomura knew what was happening, I grabbed onto his bare hand.

“ Kusunoki- san?! ” he exclaimed, inexplicably going red as he was jerked forward, “what are you—?!”

“Finding the professor,” I explained, squeezing his hand with both of mine. “I’m really sorry about this, Nomura-san, but I’m going to have to use my Ability on you. It’s the fastest way.”

“Your what?!”

“My Ability,” I declared, closing my eyes as the tug finally came.

“The Story of Your Life.”

Music 2

I followed the tug and dove headfirst into darkness.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in that place: that tunnel that was actually a giant book. Sparkling, silver letters danced all around me but I didn’t have time to dwell on their beauty today.

There was no time to waste: I had to find out where Professor Matsuyama was going to kill himself so I could head him off—and I had to do it quick.

Getting a feel for my incorporeal body, I swiveled my head around, left and right, desperately searching for the word “suicide” before I remembered...

“ That’s right!”

My own voice echoed soundlessly all around me as I reached up into the air and drew the words I needed to find.

“Professor Matsuyama kills himself.”

I stepped back, grimacing a little at the sight of the gruesome words hang ing in the air above me. But b efore I could really dwell on what I had just written , the words suddenly began to shine, glowing a bright, vivid gold.

They sped off into the distance, streaking through the dark and I chased after them as fast as I could. But all too soon, they stopped, hovering in the middle of the invisible page before me, shining like a thin, vertical beacon...

There it is...

I stopped running and stood there before it, eyeing the set of glowing words with a growing sense of agitation.

When I touch my hand to this phrase, I will see Nomura’s future... the future where Professor Matsuyama kills himself.

Shuddering a little, I shook my head from side to side.

No. Not “the” future where Professor Matsuyama dies. “A” future. A future that was not yet written in stone.

Stepping forward, I reached out with my hand.

I’d changed the futures of those I’d seen before.

I just had to believe that I could do it again...

Preparing myself for what I was about to see, I steeled myself and touched the glowing letters...

Music 3

Glass crunches underfoot.

I wince as I feel it splintering under my shoes but I can’t stop running, not for a second. I’m out of shape. I know I’m out of shape but I have to stay ahead of her.

Because I’m the one who knows where we’re going.

“It’s just up ahead!” I tell her, “Natsuki-san said they lived in Apartment three -zero- two .”

The detective—no, the Ability User I hired, Kusunoki-san nods. Her red-tinted eyes are piercingly intense. She bites her lip for a moment before answering.

“Got it.”

We round the corner and I pick up the pace.

“ There’s the door!” I shout.

I dash towards it. K usunoki is shouting for me to wait for her but I’m already grabbing the doorknob.

“Oh no.”

It’s unlocked.

I grab it and push past the entryway and into the next room.

Please... Please let Sensei be alright...! I don’t know what I’m going to do or what I’m going to tell Natsuki-san if—

And then I see it.

I stop running at once to stare and I hear a loud gasp behind me. Kusunoki crashes into me from behind. But I can barely feel the impact her tiny body makes against my back.

I take a step forward, my eyes fixed upon the limp form above me.

A body swings from the rafters overhead. It’s the body of a tall, older man, one with dark, tousled hair. He is wearing a familiar shabby blazer and the tell-tale stains of urine and feces have soaked in a long, disgusting line down the back of his pants.

A pair of cracked glasses lies in the puddle below his body, next to the broken chair . It catches the dull red light of the setting sun, almost looking like they’re soaked in blood...

I drop to my knees.

We were too late.

A dry sound, almost inhuman in its agony , pierces the air.

Kusunoki, her face ashen white, appears at my side and she is shaking me. Only then do I realize I’m the one screaming.

But I can’t stop.

I can’t even stop staring at the body.

At Sensei...

We were too late.

We were far too late...

***

I felt Nomura’s hand slipping out of mine.

“ Kusunoki- san ?!”

Strange, I don’t remember letting go... and why...?

“ H -H ey! What’s wrong?! Kusunoki-san?! ”

Nomura’s voice seemed to be coming from very far away. He sounded panicked.

...why does my body feel so heavy?

“ Kusunoki—!!”

I got one fleeting glimpse of Nomura and the room around him tilting sharply to the side before something suddenly blocked my entire field of view—something beige and black, with a thin streak of red...

I heard a distant crash and a yell as I tumbled out of my chair.

But I didn’t hit the ground.

No... I was lying on something much warmer and softer than the cold, hard tiles below. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I was lying in someone’s arms... someone with nice, sturdy arms, who smelled like freshly brewed coffee and sweat and ink...

What a familiar, comforting scent...

And as I turned my face further into that scent and shifted a little in those arms, I heard a deep, pleasant voice softly calling my name from above.

“Kusunoki...”

Fingers softly brushed against my cheek, smoothing my hair back away from my face with one slow, gentle stroke.

“ Hey...” the voice called again, taut with worry. “Are you alright?”

Groaning weakly as I moved, my head still spinning like a top, I turned towards the source of the sound and opened my eyes .

A familiar face took shape amid a haze of red, a handsome one with fine features, wearing a pair of thin, rectangular glasses. I thought I could make out the outline of a set of mussed, dirty-blonde bangs and the shape of a long, curving ponytail.

I blinked to clear my vision and a hot, thick droplet rolled down my cheek.

“ Kuni...kida... san ...?”

At once, the detective’s gray-green eyes widened in alarm.

“Kusunoki...!” he whispered, his gaze following the trail of red curving down my cheek. “Your eyes—!”

“Ah...”

Gingerly, I lifted one leaden hand (it felt like it weighed a ton) to my face and touched my fingers to the corner of my eye. Unsurprisingly, it came away wet with blood. Thankfully, though I couldn’t feel any more droplets leaking out of my eyes and the rust-colored smears on the tips of my fingers were much smaller than I’d gotten used to them being.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Looks like it’s not that bad this time,” I mumbled, letting my hand drop back down to the floor.

I looked back up at my savior and tried to show him a smile.

“Thank you for catching me, Kunikida- san . I should be okay from here...”

“ K- Kusunoki- san ...!”

As one, Kunikida and I turned to look at Nomura, who was on the floor in a heap by the other side of the coffee table. From the way he was sitting, it looked like Kunikida might’ve knocked him out of the way in order to get to me in time... But as I slowly sat up with my mentor’s help and turned my face towards him, Nomura’s dark eyes suddenly grew wide with shock. He shuffled backwards even more.

“ What’ s going on... ?” he gasped, lifting one hand to cover his mouth, the terror clearly audible in his voice.

He kept going until he’d backed himself up against the client’s couch.

“What did you do?!”

“‘What’ s going on ...?’” Kunikida growled , his gray-green eyes abruptly narrowing to slits.

H is grip tightened around my shoulders and he rounded on Nomura.

“ I should be asking you that!” he roared . “What the hell did you do?!”

“N-nothing!” Nomura stammered, attempting to scoot backwards and knocking himself into the client couch again. “I swear to God, I didn’t do anything! ”

He raised one shaking finger towards me and gulped.

“She—Kusunoki-san, she just—grabbed my hand and said she was going to use her Ability on me so she could find the professor—and then—!”

He swallowed again; he was shaking like a leaf.

“Then—!”

Music 4

That’s right...! The professor!

“Kunikida-san!!”

Without thinking, I grabbed onto the front of Kunikida’s shirt and yanked his upper body down towards me.

“ I need your help !” I cried, as Kunikida made a weird, strangled sound in his throat. “It’s an emergency!”

Kunikida looked taken aback.

“Wh-what—” he sputtered, trying to loosen the iron grip I had on his shirt, his cheeks going red . “What are you talking about?!”

“ The professor—” I sputtered, my fingers wrinkling the thin black fabric of his button-down. “We need to get to him before he can kill himself!”

Kunikida’s jaw dropped.

“What?!”

“ I saw it in my vision!”

I let go of Kunikida’s shirt at last and pushed myself to my feet.

“I know where he’s going to be!”

All traces of dizziness now cleared, I launched myself towards the open door of th e client booth and bolted through.

“Atsushi- kun ! The envelope!”

“ It’s right here!” the tiger-boy called, scrambling to get out of my way as I raced towards my desk . “I called the police, just like you asked—”

“Thank s, but the situation’s changed,” I gasped, grabbing the manila envelope off of my desk and dumping the contents onto its wooden surface. “ They’re not gonna be able to make it in time. ”

“ And how do you know that?!” Nomura cried, chasing after me along with Kunikida .

“ The body—” I mumbled. “Professor Matsuyama’s body—I saw it swinging from the rafters in the late afternoon .”

Nomura stopped running at once.

“You what?”

“Professor Matsuyama is going to hang himself in just a few hours’ time if we don’t do anything,” I told him, frantically shuffling the pictures around on my desk.

One by one, printouts and photos cascaded to the floor, as I shoved everything I didn’t need off of my desktop and onto the green tiles below.

“When I grabbed your hand, I was able to see your future, Nomura-san,” I explained, searching through the sea of documents for the one I needed. “A possible future. One in which we don’t get to the location in time and Professor Matsuyama manages to kill himself before we arrive.”

More pictures flew to the ground.

“ I’ve seen that place in my vision before—I’ve seen it so many times!”

And as the first picture of Matsuyama Shin and Masaoka Kei’s graduate apartment emerged, I snatched it off my desk and lifted it into the air.

“Here!”

I shoved it into Nomura’s hands just as Kunikida arrived at my desk.

“Professor Matsuyama is planning to kill himself in the graduate apartment he shared with Kei!” I declared, sitting down quickly at my desk and pulling my laptop towards me. “From the look of things, it’s one of the condemned apartment buildings somewhere near the edge of campus and in that version of the future, Natsuki-san told you it was apartment number three-zero-two.”

The search engine appeared and I quickly rushed to pull up a satellite map of the campus.

“I just need to find the right building—!”

“ Kusunoki- kun .”

I glanced up, the printouts from the police report clutched tightly in my left hand as Kunikida took a step forward.

“ Just now you said you needed my help to find the professor,” he said, one hand tucked casually in his pocket and the other holding his olive-green notebook.

He raised an eyebrow.

“If you already know where he’s going to be, what do you need my help for?”

I studied at him, chewing the inside of my lip as I thought about how to voice my request.

“I need you to drive us,” I said. “Atsushi-kun once told me that you have a car you keep here at the Agency. He told me you know how to drive and that you’d be willing to drive a fellow Agent in an emergency situation. Well...”

I felt the printouts wrinkle in my hand.

“This is an emergency. I saw Professor Matsuyama’s lifeless corpse swinging from the kitchen rafters as the sun was setting in the sky. Judging from the look of the body, he’d been hanging there for some time already.”

I saw Kunikida’s eyes widen as I looked to him with determination.

“ If I can’t get to that apartment in time, a man will lose his life!”

I gritted my teeth.

“I know I’ve troubled you a lot as a mentee already—and I know that I made a mess of things this morning alone but I need to ask you for your help one more time. Kunikida-san...!”

Without getting out of my chair, I pushed myself away from my desk and bowed as low as I could.

“Please help me!”

There was a beat. Silence choked the air and I could feel my own heartbeat pounding frantically in my throat. But then, Kunikida spoke and his tone was not what I expected at all.

“You haven’t been as much trouble as you think you’ve been,” he said quietly. “Kusunoki- kun .”

I looked up.

“So then...?” I whispered, scarcely believing his words.

He nodded.

“I’ll drive you. But it’s not my car,” he said, turning away. “It belongs to the Agency. So if anything happens to it, it’s on you. You got that?”

I almost collapsed with relief. Nomura actually did.

“Thank you...! Thank you so much!” he whispered.

“Don’t thank me,” Kunikida said, shooting him another judgmental look.

He inclined his head towards me.

“Thank the detective you hired. Now.”

The tall blonde detective opened his drawer and fished out a pair of shining, silver keys. He looked at me and frowned.

“Where are we going?”

---------------------------------------------------

Music 5

“ So let me get this straight,” Nomura babbled, running his hand through his short, black hair as the car made another wide turn. “You have an Ability that allows you to see the future of the person you touch.”

He began ticking off the points I’d summarized on his fingers one by one.

“It’s not a hundred percent accurate and you can sometimes change the future you see and it usually involves death. And that’s ‘The Story of Your Life?’”

“N-no.”

I winced as the car hit a small bump in the road.

“That’s not exactly right,” I corrected him. “I can see a short moment from your future and, up until a few months ago, I thought that future was fixed and could not be changed, but—”

I tightened my grip on the seat belt as the car hit another bump, sending me a couple centimeters into the air.

“After I started working here, I learned that that’s not necessarily the case.”

Nomura’s eyes widened.

“So, you can change the future once you’ve seen it?!” he gasped.

“Not quite,” I sighed, as Kunikida barked out a short order from the driver’s seat.

“Hey, kid, will you shut up?! I’m trying to drive!”

“S-sorry!” Nomura squeaked, instantly clamming up as we heard something scrape underneath the car.

“Ah, shit,” Kunikida grumbled, hunching forward against the steering wheel as the car rattled and bumped along . “There goes another chunk of the budget.”

“S-sorry, Kunikida- san ,” I mumbled, bowing a little in the backseat. “I—I got this, okay?”

But Kunikida didn’t answer. He just grumbled and cursed some more under his breath as we kept on driving through the undergrowth.

The dormitory the professor and Kei had stayed in as students was very, very far off of the current campus. So far, in fact, that the now- abandoned building in which they’d lived all those years ago was no longer a part of what currently existed as university grounds.

As it turned out, the main campus had been cut by about a third nearly a decade ago and the northwestern portion, where the grad student dorms once stood, had been sold to a small development company shortly after. That company had then gone under in the last few years and the remainder of the land remained abandoned ever since.

I’d been able to find the decaying dormitory building using internet satellite imagery and after a quick search through the student rosters and the police documentation, I was able to find the exact address and what looked like the path that would lead us to the building.

Unfortunately, the path was now severely overgrown—to the point where there was nearly no path at all—and as we plowed our way through the underbrush in the Agency’s formerly nice, shiny silver compact, I tried not to think of how much I’d have to take out of my next paycheck in order to cover the losses.

I grimaced as the car rolled over another particularly large tree root.

But it would all be worth it if we were able to stop the professor in time...

“ I think I can see something up ahead!” Nomura suddenly shouted, throwing himself against his window with a sharp slap of face against glass. “It looks like an old building!”

“Does it have a red roof?!” I demanded, grabbing his shoulder and pushing him a little out of the way.

It did.

I let go of Nomura and glanced down at the printout in my hand. The photos I’d found depicted a modest-sized complex built in the shape of a cinder block, with corrugated red roofs and bright white walls.

I squinted at the building up ahead.

There was no mistaking it. Despite the fact that the entire building was covered in moss and vines , I could still see some pale, peeling paint underneath the dense layers of green. The remains of a small, broken fountain loomed just up ahead and as Kunikida turned the car towards it, I thought I saw something moving in one of the windows.

“Hey,” I muttered, grabbing the edges of the two front seats and pulling myself forward between them. “What’s that...?”

It was there for only a split second, but it looked like the figure of a man...

I let out a sharp gasp as the figure reappeared in the next window.

“There!” I yelled, startling Kunikida so much that he actually stopped the car . “ I think I see the professor!”

“ What?!” Nomura choked out as we were all flung forward, the screeching of the car tires echoing in our ears as the vehicle spun around in a half donut around the fountain . “Where?!”

“ In that building !” I gasped, throwing one arm forward to point at the windows up ahead. “ The window halfway across the second floor!”

And without wasting another moment, I unfastened my seat belt, opened the car door and threw myself out of the barely stopped vehicle.

“Kusunoki!!”

I could hear Kunikida’s shouts echoing after me as I ran through the cloud of smoke and grassy debris.

“Wait for us! ”

“I’m sorry, Kunikida-san,” I yelled over my shoulder, “but I’m going on ahead! The professor must know we’re here by now. I have to get to him before he can do anything drastic!”

“But what are you going to do?!” Kunikida shouted, stepping out of the car as I saw Nomura struggling to disentangle himself from his own seat belt. “How are you going to stop him??”

“I’ll figure something out!” I shouted, dashing up the steps of the building . “ For now, please c all for an ambulence !”

I shoved the rusting metal doors open and barreled through.

“Kusunoki—!!”

The heavy metal doors slammed shut behind me with an echoing clang, cutting off the end of Kunikida’s shout.

I stepped forward and immediately heard the sound of glass crunching underfoot.

“Professor?” I called out into the gloom, walking deeper into the building . “ It’s me, Kusunoki. I’m the girl you spoke to in the graveyard? Nomura- kun’s friend?”

There was no answer.

I kept heading down the hallway, slightly unnerved by the deafening silence, broken only intermittently by the sound of more glass cracking under my shoes. Dimly, I wondered if my Oxfords were going to hold up under all that wear and tear...

“ I know you’re here.”

My voice echoed down the empty hall as the shadows seemed to deepen all around me. I tried to keep my voice from shaking as I said my next words.

“ I know what you’re trying to do.”

I heard something splintering from far away and as I jerked my head towards the source of the sound, I found myself looking up a darkened stairwell.

“Professor?”

The stairs!

“ Professor, wait!”

I took off running, straining to follow the sound of footsteps dashing across the hallway overhead. My own shoes clattered so noisily that I could barely hear anything else as I ran up the stairs and when I grabbed the guardrail, it all but came loose in my hands. I let go of it immediately and kept running. But as I quickly made my way up the turn, I thought I saw dust settling in a stream of sunlight just up the landing.

He’s close...

“ Professor!”

I ran down the third floor hall, faint clouds of dust swirling all around me as I dashed through the building. Every surface I passed was grimy and broken down and if it weren’t for the broken floorboards here and there and the continued sound of footsteps running up ahead, I’d think I was chasing after a ghost. I leaped over a patch of creaking, rotting wood and kept calling out.

“ Stop!”

Apartment unit three-zero-twelve... Unit three-zero-eleven.

“ Shit,” I cursed under my breath.

I’d started running up the wrong end of the apartment complex.

But I had to stop him...!

“ Professor Matsuyama, please stop!” I cried as I rounded the corner, my shoes slipping against a piece of glass, almost crashing to the floor.

But there was no answer, just the sound of a door closing from down the hall.

That was apartment three-zero-two!

My heart leaped into my throat.

This was it!!

“ Professor !!”

But as I grabbed onto the doorknob and flung open the door, I found myself staring into an empty-looking apartment.

“What?” I whispered, looking around. “Where did he go?”

In the vision, he’d gone for the kitchen...

“ Leave me alone!” came the hoarse cry back.

It was coming from the living room ?

Of course...

I felt my breath hitch in my throat.

Kei had shot himself in the living room.

“ Calm down, Professor ,” I heard myself saying as I quietly made my way down the hall. “ I just want to talk. ”

“How did you find me?” Professor Matsuyama’s voice was unnervingly calm.

Especially for someone I’d just chased up a few flights of stairs...

“ I never told N atsuki where I was going to be. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone.”

I heard the sound of crunching glass but didn’t walk any faster. As much as I wanted to race ahead, I was too nervous about what the professor might do if he heard my footsteps coming that much closer to him.

Was he tying the noose right now?

I started chewing on the inside of my cheek as the professor spoke again, his voice now falling to a hush.

“...And I certainly didn’t tell you...”

There was an accusation in his words. I suddenly realized that if I wanted the professor to remain alive long enough for Kunikida and the police to arrive, I’d have to keep him talking.

He sounds curious about how I found him. Maybe that was the key...

“ Do you remember what you said to me that day in the cemetery?” I asked, taking another step forward . “ And how you guessed that I wasn’t one of Nomura- san’s friends? Well, you were right...”

The pool of light at the end of the hall gr e w larger.

I’m almost there...

“ I’m not one of his school friends...”

The hallway ended and I found myself walking into a room I’d only seen in police photographs before: the room where Masaoka Kei had ended his life. Fifteen years later, the dusty, dilapidated chamber where Kei had taken his last breath looked nothing like the images I’d studied at the ADA office. The carpet was torn up and patchy, there was no furniture anywhere and the far wall—the one that had been covered in blood splatters after Kei’s death—now had an enormous door-sized hole in it. All that remained of the events of that fateful night was a single, bright patch of plaster someone had used to cover up the bullet hole.

And standing directly below that patch of plaster was Professor Matsuyama.

He was wearing that same shabby blazer I’d seen him wearing in Nomura’s future and he was standing so close to the opening in the wall that if he took just a few steps back, he could throw himself out of the room. A single plastic bag lay abandoned in the middle of the chamber between us and as I got a little closer, I could see the thick length of rope nestled inside.

I looked from it to Professor Matsuyama just as a cold wind began to blow into the room from the outside.

“ So if you aren’t one of Nomura- kun’s friends,” Professor Matsuyama said quietly, studying me from his place next to the wall. “Who are you?”

He placed one hand against the edges of the softly rotted wood and I stopped walking towards him immediately. Instead, I slowly raised my hands into the air.

“You guessed correctly back at the cemetery, Professor,” I said, as the professor continued watching me, the wind ruffling the edges of his tousled, dark hair.

“ I am a private investigator,” I told him, “ and I work for the Armed Detective Agency.”

“ Ah.”

Professor Matsuyama closed his eyes and breathed a tiny sigh.

“So Nomura- kun did hire you to look into me after all,” he said.

He grew quiet for a moment and I saw his grip tighten on the edge of the wall.

“ Did he also hire you to stop me from doing something drastic ?”

I stiffened.

As much as I wanted to run to his side and pull him away from the hole in the wall as fast as I could, I couldn’t help but feel like that would be the wrong move.

The look in his eyes...

I bit my lip.

With the sun at his back and the wind blowing through his hair, Professor Matsuyama looked like a man who had died long ago and whose shell had lingered on for far too long in what was left of his world.

Kind of like the way Dazai had looked that cold, windy night he’d walked me home to my new apartment.

A shiver went up my spine.

“ Not quite,” I said honestly, surprising even myself. “Nomura- san asked me to look into two things: who Masaoka Kei was and whether or not—”

“—I had something to do with it, yes?” the professor finished for me, a wry smile making its way onto his face.

He let out a low, humorless chuckle.

“I see. I suppose my behavior would lead him to come to such a conclusion, wouldn’t it? And?”

He looked up a little, that wry smile becoming grim.

“ What did you discover?”

“I learned about the history you and Masaoka- san have,” I replied, my voice soft. “I learned just how close you were... a nd how devastated you were when he died.”

I watched his grip tighten on the edge of the rotting wood.

“I also learned...”

I risked a step forward.

“That none of this was your fault.”

“How can you know that?” the professor asked, inching towards the hole in the wall. “ You didn’t hear the conversations we had—you don’t know how poorly I treated him in his last days on Earth—!”

“And you don’t seem to understand how upset Masaoka- san would be,” I suddenly cried , “if he saw you doing this! Did you even read his suicide note to you?!”

Professor Matsuyama froze.

“I read it,” I said, taking a step forward when I realized Professor Matsuyama wasn’t going to move. “The police kept a copy of it on file the day they came to your apartment— this apartment—fifteen years ago and they let me see it when I asked for the information. Professor... Don’t you see?”

I took another step forward.

“Masaoka- san ... no, Kei-san ... cared very much for you. It sounds to me like he blamed himself for the things that happened and that he didn’t want you to blame yourself. He...”

I swallowed dryly as the professor inched a little bit closer to the space in the wall.

“He wanted you to live a full and happy life. He wanted you to take care of Natsuki- san .”

At the mention of his wife, the professor twitched.

From far away, I thought I could hear the sound of a door slamming downstairs.

Kunikida must be on his way...

“Nomura-san’s outside the building, you know,” I said quietly, moving a little closer as carefully as I could. “He was the one who found the note you left at your house. The note that was meant for your wife. Professor... do you know how upset they would be if they were to find out you’d killed yourself in the very room where you’d lost Kei-san? Do you know how upset Natsuki-san would be if she were to hear that she’d lost you too?”

“ I don’t deserve her,” the professor whispered, his voice shaking. “I never did.”

He took another step backwards, the dusty floorboards creaking beneath his feet.

My pulse quickened.

“Kei was the better man between us and we all knew it,” he said. “I betrayed him that day when I’d asked Natsuki to marry me— in fact , I’d been betraying him for years.”

His shoulders sagged and he seemed to shrink in size, so that the shabby blazer seemed to drape around him like a scarecrow’s ill-fitting coat.

“ I knew how much Kei cared for Natsuki,” he whispered, “ and I knew how much she cared for him. I should’ve been content to watch their love blossom from afar but... I couldn’t do it. I was selfish.”

He clutched at his chest.

“Horribly selfish. I’ve loved Natsuki from the moment I first laid eyes upon her and from then on, I couldn’t stop thinking of one day havi ng her as my wife. I wanted to make her the happiest woman on Earth...”

He let out something like a shaky sigh.

“But I’ve failed. I may have married the love of my life, but I could not make her as happy as I wished. Because of my selfishness, Kei’s death now hangs over our lives like a shadow and I will forever wonder how much better it could’ve been if Kei had been the one to live while I...”

No...!

I started towards him .

Just a few more centimeters to the left and he’d fall to his death...!

“ I should have been the one to fade away into oblivion.”

He looked at me, his dark eyes hollow.

“ Did you know, Kusunoki- san ? That I was informed of my imminent termination on the very same day that Kei shot himself right here in this living room? Exactly fifteen years to the day. ”

He put out a hand towards me as I tried to take another step forward.

“Please, Kusunoki- san . Leave me to do what I must. I understand your concern and I can see that you are as kind a woman as my Natsuki... but please, understand.”

Professor Matsuyama smiled, his dark tousled hair blowing around his face, the round ball of the sun dipping lower in the sky behind him as the cold wind continued to blow.

“I would be doing her a kindness by leaving her today. I know that one day, in the future, she will find a man much better than I. And she will finally leave the curse that plagued us all far behind.”

“ You don’t know that,” I stuttered. “ You can’t— ”

“ Oh, but I can,” the professor sighed. “If only I had been a little less selfish, my brother might still be with us today... If only...!”

His voice broke and he looked away.

“I could never quite make her smile the way he could.”

“Professor Matsuyama, please...”

I was shaking and so was my voice. I reached out to him, my palms open and placating.

“Please don’t do this. Natsuki-san and Nomura-san will be inconsolable if you die. You would be doing to them what Kei-san’s death did to you! I saw how much pain you were in when you were looking at Kei-san’s grave! Do you want Natsuki-san and Nomura-san to feel the way you did that day?!”

My voice ended on a shout.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. I thought I could hear the sound of footsteps drawing closer down the hall but it was too quiet to tell. But then, the professor spoke and his voice was suddenly bitter.

“ What do you know?” he asked.

His free hand balled into a fist and I watched with my heart in my throat as he sagged against the opening in the wall.

“You’re young. You still have so much life in you. You cannot possibly understand what it is to be left behind by the world you worked so hard to be a part of.”

“Maybe not,” I said quietly, letting my hands drop to my sides. “But I do understand what it is to feel worthless, like you can be nothing more than a burden to society.. .”

I let my gaze drop to his shoes.

“And to believe that the best thing you can do for this world is to take yourself out of it.”

I sucked in a shaking breath.

Music 6

“But then I met these people...”

A nd as I spoke, the images came, one after the other...

Dazai, standing before me at the crosswalk, holding out my drawing with the most brilliant smile on his face. Kunikida, slamming Dazai to the ground and bowing to me in apology. Dr. Yosano carefully picking the glass out of my hand in the infirmary, the butterfly clip gleaming in her hair. Edogawa Ranpo shoving milk tea and a handkerchief at me and hiding my bleeding eyes from view. Haruno and Naomi texting me picture after picture of Mii-chan as I tried not to choke on my milk tea.

“And they saved me...”

My lower lip wobbled as the images kept coming.

Kunikida, looking down at me with those sharp, gray-green eyes as smoke filled the air above us, gunfire echoing all around. Dazai, patting my back soothingly as I cried over Mrs. Yamazaki’s photo.

I looked down at my hands.

“ I used to think that the world was a dark and terrible place,” I said, staring at the lines on my palms. “That the future was fixed from your m oment of birth and that death and destruction and despair would be an inevitable part of life no matter who you are and what you do. But when I met these people...”

I looked back up.

“Everything changed.”

I took a step forward. Professor Matsuyama didn’t move.

“And I realized... that n o one can know for sure what the future will hold.”

Not even me.

“ Professor.”

I extended my hand again.

“ Please step away from that ledge. I don’t know what awaits you tomorrow or the next week or even the next year, but I do know this...”

I smiled.

“Life finds a way to surprise you. If you keep on living, I’m sure that you’ll see it for yourself. And even though there will be difficult times along with the good, you’ll have Natsuki-san and Nomura-san to get you through them.”

I took another step forward.

“So, please... please...”

Professor Matsuyama didn’t take a step towards me. But I realized that he hadn’t moved further towards the wall either.

“Honor Kei-san’s memory. Honor his last wish.”

The professor was now within arm’s reach.

I was so close... to both him and the cavernous hole in the side of the wall. I could feel the wind on my face...

If I could only get him to take my hand...!

“Come on...”

Edging towards the hole, carefully avoiding any patches of rotted wood, I slowly stretched out my hand and reached for him.

“Let’s go back.”

But the professor didn’t move.

And as I looked into his eyes, a subtle sense of dread began creeping in.

“...Professor?”

He was hesitating. I could see how strangely tense his shoulders had become, how unreadable the look in his eyes was growing.

I bit my lip.

Was there something more I needed to say? Something more I needed to do?

But what was I supposed to do if I didn’t want to spook him into making any sudden moves?

And then, the professor took his hand off of the edge of the wall.

Thank God...!

But just when I thought he was going to reach back...

“Sensei?!”

The professor stiffened. I froze as I heard Nomura’s voice calling out from the hallway.

“Sensei, it’s me, Nomura! Where are you?!”

“H-hey, stop that!” Kunikida yelled. “Come back!”

Footsteps pounded down the hallway towards us as Nomura continued calling out.

“Sensei!”

Shit...!!

Music 7

I glanced back towards the professor just in time to see him turning towards the hole in the wall.

He’s gonna jump!

“No!!”

And as I watched the professor taking that step towards the edge of the building, I knew what I had to do to stop him...

I grabbed Professor Matsuyama’s wrist over his shabby blazer sleeve.

“Use your opponent’s weight or momentum against them,” Kunikida’s voice called back to me from the training session as I tucked my body in close, the professor’s thin wrist still fully locked in my grip.

Suddenly realizing what was happening, Professor Matsuyama turned to look at me his dark eyes widening in surprise.

“Apply a certain amount of force to the upper body... to push your opponent off balance...”

Folding my free arm in on itself, I placed my elbow and forearm against the professor’s collarbone.

“...Then create a second point of contact on the lower body.”

I stuck my foot behind the professor’s, making sure that my extended leg was positioned below both of his knees. There were only a few centimeters between the toe of my shoe and the open air outside.

“It’s a very versatile technique and when used correctly...”

“ I’m sorry about this, Professor.”

Gritting my teeth, I pulled his arm down and twisted sharply to the side, leaning all of the weight I had into the technique . I got one final glimpse of the professor’s shocked face as he fell towards the floor, away from the massive opening in the wall.

“You should be able to knock any opponent to the floor, even if they’re bigger or heavier than you...”

He hit the ground with a deafening crash. ***

Panting with exertion, I let go of the professor’s wrist and stood up.

It worked...

I looked down at his limp, unmoving form and winced.

“I might’ve overdone it a little ...” I mumbled, rubbing the back of my neck just as the apartment door flew open with a loud bang.

“Sensei!!” Nomura cried, racing into the room from the hall. “Sen—”

Spotting me from across the room, Nomura took one look at me, standing over the professor’s crumpled form, and abruptly screeched to a halt.

“ Sensei ...!” he mouthed, staring at us just as Kunikida collided into him from behind. “Is he...?”

“He’s okay!” I exclaimed, waving my hands in front of me. “He’s still alive! Just passed out. I think.”

“You think?” Nomura repeated, glancing from the professor to me in horror as Kunikida, grumbling under his breath, pushed Nomura away and straightened up his glasses.

“What happened?” the blonde detective asked, stepping out of the hallway and into the room. “ Why is he on the floor?”

“ Ah, he uh...”

My eyes flicked to the broken section of wall behind me and I gave Kunikida a sheepish look.

“ He was going to throw himself out of that hole in the wall so I threw him back into the room.”

Kunikida’s eyes widened.

“You what?”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, bowing slightly as Nomura dashed forward and went to the professor’s side. “It was the first thing I could think of. It seems like I got here before he was able to hang himself so he was going to improvise. So...”

I met his gaze.

“I did too.”

For a second, Kunikida just stared at me in silence.

“ You threw him?” he asked, still staring incredulously at me. “Using the technique I taught you just this morning? ”

Bracing myself for an oncoming lecture, I nodded.

Taking one more look at the professor’s prone form, Kunikida glanced back up at me. His lips thinned into a line.

Uh oh. He’s mad, isn’t he...?

But to my surprise, Kunikida crossed his arms and nodded approvingly.

“Not bad, Kusunoki-kun,” he said at last, looking back down at the body. “Not bad at all.”

“ He’s still breathing! ” Nomura called out as the professor let out a pained groan from the floor. “It looks like he just hit his head real hard earlier.”

I concussed him?!

Grimacing, I went to them as Kunikida scooped up the plastic bag the professor had left in the middle of the room and followed along . I could hear t he wailing of sirens off in the distance.

“ Is... is he gonna be okay?” I asked quietly, my eyes immediately drawn to the distinct black and blue bruise in the middle of the professor’s forehead.

“Physically, yes,” Kunikida said, crouching down and taking the man’s pulse. “Mentally and emotionally...”

He let the professor’s wrist drop as the sound of sirens steadily grew closer.

“Only time will tell. But...”

ED theme

A small, quiet smile crossed his face.

“I think he’s got a good shot. Nomura!”

Nomura stiffened.

“Y-yes!”

“Help me get this guy up,” Kunikida said. “We’re going to carry him out of the room for the paramedics. Kusunoki? ”

I stood to attention as Kunikida’s eyes met mine.

His expression softened.

“Good job.”

And with that, he grabbed the professor under the arms as Nomura grabbed the man’s legs and lifted him off of the floor.

“Now let’s get out of here. Kusunoki, get the door please? Nomura—!”

“Yes!”

“You’re the client, so you’re paying for the damages to the car.”

“Huh?!”

And as Kunikida and Nomura began carrying the professor out of unit three-zero-two at last, I took one final look around the room and pulled out my phone camera.

Case closed...

As I lifted the device up towards the hole in the window and began snapping photos, a soft breeze began to blow in from the outside. Documentation complete, I put my phone away, closed my eyes and took a deep breath in.

It smells like the sea...