Nobody

Chapter 1

DAYS PRIOR, ON A SUNDAY NIGHT

"No body, no crime." Officer Walt pronounced in such a way that the declaration was final. That Shoji merely ran away from the house and spent her nights at a motel with a boyfriend.

Kioshi knew, deep down, against the traditional beliefs of their mother, that Shoji had involved herself in out-of-the-ordinary romantic affairs. She never liked men. He imagined his sister surreptitiously eavesdropping, close to the act of retching, on the prosaic disposition of the police which seemed to be the viable standard for the whole operation until it collided with the unrelenting force of a mother.

They'd eye Yua's attitude as an adversary to their flow of work — which was receive, sign and toss. Kioshi had already foreseen how the police would behave in a situation like this. They were pretty particular with their treatment towards foreign skin.

The cop rose up from his chair, snatched a samosa, and strode up to the front door. He tore through the crust of the samosa with his teeth, taking in bits of potato filling in his mouth, and spoke. "Your daughter is just moody. That's all. I don't see a missing person here." He, however, had viewed the person through outdated stereotypes.

While he spoke, he'd pause at some point, hitting back at the atmospheric silence with the crunching of the food in his mouth.

He turned to Yua, failing to connect with her anxiety. Officer Walt was only interested in the food that she had offered to him. Anything else, especially the case of Shoji, was a tag-along in his mandatory visit. Had it not been mandatory, he'd be stalking the burger shack for pounds of orders that would probably explode his body. "File a case after forty-eight hours."

"Forty-eight hours?!" Yua shattered the pacific charade that she'd convinced her son, Kioshi, to partake in as well.

The elevation of her tone and her anxiety drove her to grab Officer Walt by the shoulders. She looked him in his apathetic, narrow eyes. He looked rather exasperated by what she did. "Forty-eight hours is too long. I will not wait like this."

Even if they were eligible to file a case, the likelihood of it enduring an actual response would nearly be impossible. The station had other priorities like falsely accusing a person of color for a crime they had never even thought to commit.

"You have no choice, ma'am." Officer Walt replied and wrested himself away from her grasp. "And please don't touch me again. You'll ruin my uniform with your hands." His eyes poked at the weathered skin of Yua's palms, all wizened by her household routine and other hobbies that people her age would take a liking to.

Yua's volcanic behavior tamed itself in the dawn of indignity. She hung her head in that heavy weight of shame over her shoulders, whispers of her parental incompetence an unwanted chaperon in the situation. "I'm sorry..." Her apology preceded the cop's which boiled Kioshi's blood.

He could not stand to see his mother being treated like this. Since this polite pretense had been broken, he might as well walk beyond his good-boy image and spit a warning at Officer Walt. Kioshi pushed himself forward and shielded his mother from the cop. "Don't you disrespect her like that ever again."

Officer Walt's arrogant smile directly heightened his smug composure. "People like you shouldn't even be living in my country. And for your information, I only pointed her out. There's no... disrespect... involved." He widened his smile, irritatingly, and took another bite of his stolen samosa.

Officer Walt drifted beyond the exit and looked back. "You Asians better behave and not disrupt the work of police. Wasting our time is illegal."

Then he held up his samosa, shifting the subject in his farewell. "Thanks for the food by the way." He finally disappeared from the front door and shoved himself in his sedan.