A Mentor's Hand (文豪ストレイドッグス)

10

Over the course of the next two weeks, Kiyo and another boy switched between surveillance (his name was Daisuke Nau. She had been on a couple of missions with him as one of Chuuya's subordinates. They were on friendly terms each other).

When she wasn't following the girl, she was writing a report or sleeping. She had seen Chuuya only once in the two weeks, when he had come to give her some food. She had been so focused she hadn't even realized he had come in, and he was gone before she could react.

Not many 'interesting,' to say, things had happened over the weeks. On the fifth day, she and Daisuke pretended to play tag, and 'accidentally' bumped into the girl. In reality, Kiyo planned that incident to put a small camera on the girl that would trace her location, see what she was seeing and hear what she was hearing.

Afterwards Kiyo could stay blocks away from the girl, pretending to be shopping or sitting at a cafe. In reality, she was watching the camera.

To everyone else, Kiyo was just one of many among Yokohama's crowds. Easily forgotten.

---

Despite being tired, Kiyo started to pick up some patterns from the girl on day 11 and 12. For the past four days, Daisuke and Kiyo had watched the girl (they still hadn't found out her name) wander aimlessly, except she was consistently marking the first building at the beginning and end of every other block.

Kiyo reported this once she switched over with Daisuke. She also told him, who knocked silently as he so often was.

When she got back to Chuuya's house, Kiyo fell asleep on the couch. Two hours later, when Chuuya himself entered the house, she blinked awake, and slowly as if pulled by a weight, dragged out the long file she had been writing up over the weeks.

"Tough going, kid?" Chuuya said.
"Mh- Hai, Chuuya-san," she yawned. Squinting to make sure her report was being written in a professional way, and without any grammar mistakes. The words were blurry.

He wandered off. She looked at her phone; 12 hours until switch. They moved around a 15 hour shift time.

She sighed, and set her phone alarm for 9 hours. She would allow herself more sleep this time around, and next time she would catch up on paper work. Heck, she'd do it in public and everyone would just think she was doing homework.

That night, her phone blared away the alarm. She didn't even have enough energy to jump. Chuuya was still up, sipping at some wine whilst staring at the the moon. He appeared lost on thought, so Kiyo didn't say anything. Resting her head back for a second, she gathered herself up, and found the strength to change her clothes.

In a couple minutes, Kiyo was figuring out what her disguise would be, as a girl walking around the dark streets of Yokohama would be far too suspicious. She decided to grab a sport bag, as if walking home from a club.

Someone texted her. She glanced at her phone, unconcerned as it was probably just a school girl. It was Daisuke. Her heart jumped: had she not kept time properly and it was already past the fifteen hour mark? Was he in trouble, and sending an SOS?

She grabbed the phone quickly, it read:

Meet me at the port. Sorry, I know it's not time yet.

Nothing else. Kiyo took off, forgetting to say goodbye to Chuuya, who was maybe confused but probably didn't care either way. In ten minutes, she was at the port, panting whilst looking out for Daisuke's dark figure.

A finger tapped her shoulder from behind, setting off all of her mental alarms. Immediately, Kiyo kicked out, spun and grabbed the person, shoving them to the ground.

"Oof... Kiyo I think you cracked a rib..." kiyo opened her mouth, then closed it, not sure what to say. She chose the most reasonable response. "Well then make your presence known before you go jumping on people!"

"That's not fun," Daisuke moaned.

"Baka," she scoffed, helping him up. His dark hair was messy, from lack of sleep and being attacked. His usually empty brown eyes were dead, definitely from lack of sleep.

"Anyways," he said, brushing himself off in brusque manner. "We've received new orders to make contact with the girl."

"In what way?"

"'By any means possible.'"

"Well the easiest way is to tie her up and get Koyou's torture squad to make her spit up information," Kiyo grumbled.

"But what information? We don't have enough evidence to conclude that she's a person going directly against the mafia."

"Then why are we following her in the first place??" Kiyo hissed, not annoyed at anyone in particular, just incredibly tired. Daisuke sighed. They looked at each other, muttering the well known phrase: "Boss' orders."

"Well in any case, we need to figure out how to approach the girl." Dausuke said.

Kiyo had an idea.