Hyakki Yagyou

Chapter Ten: Alliance, Rouge

“Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up” 

-        Veronica Roth

December 12th, 11:20am

Emi kept tapping her fingers against the desk in Abe’s office. When they arrived at the police station, she thought she would be taken straight to the interrogation room (she imagined them to be rather small, semi-lit, grey and cold, with a large mirror on one of the walls – in the other room, other officers and/or detectives could see the women inside – and a window as well with curtains drawn across them) but instead Abe offered her a seat in the office and left somewhere.

It had been fifteen minutes since the detective left. Fifteen minutes since Emi was left to sit alone in the spacious office with a large, rectangular desk, where to computers and a bunch of papers lay. Also, paperclips. There were paperclips everywhere. Her partner, the man Emi met when she came down to identify her father’s body, was not there.

Wasn’t it unusual that only one detective did the questioning? Shouldn’t be there someone to supervise it?

For the first time, Emi felt that perhaps she needed a lawyer. But, how would she pay for one? She wasn’t supposed to start work at Delilah for another week. She got the job (the interview wasn’t even special. They hardly asked her anything and she was convinced her friendly, cute ish appearance was what made her future boss hire her almost on the spot) but she was told she should start working in a week from now.

Thereby, she had no money to pay the lawyer with.

The thought of a lawyer made her feel uneasy and even more so when Abe opened the door, walked in, closed it and walked over, sitting down in front of Emi-  all without a word.

They sat for a few more minutes in silence before Abe lit a cigarette and looked at Emi. “Where should we start?”

“At the beginning.” Emi replied, trying not to sound arrogant. “What am I doing here?”

“I’m sure you know what eremitis.jp is, right?”

She knew. Very well. For the first time, Emi heard the website’s name spoken out loud. She never noticed how odd it sounded until she heard it now, spoken by Abe’s broken Japanese pronunciation of the Latin word.

Why Latin though? Wasn’t it too typical? But maybe the admin had a thing for that. Olden European values or however one called it.

She said nothing though.

“xAmyx is a nice username. Is that how you read it? Amy, though, is too similar to your name, don’t you think, Emi-san? 

Emi sighed. There was no need for pretense. Even if she tried it, it would only be childish. “Yes, that’s how you read it. What do you want?”

“I want to talk.”

“About what?”

“Who are the other members?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“It’s a secret, hm?” Abe asked, exhaling some smoke. She leaned the cigarette on the ashtray and took a Doraemon themed notebook. She flipped a few pages and then started to talk.

“This is Suzuki Emi’s diary. I didn’t have time to read it since we discovered it this morning but at least I’ve gotten to see the last pages. She was a member of the website, wasn’t she? yumyum was, as you know, her username. And as you also know her case has been re-opened.” Abe crossed her legs. “You see, Ishihara-san, some strange evidence, coming from that website, has emerged and now it makes us believe that Suzuki-san did not commit a suicide. It was murder, I believe.”