“Sir, how many times do we have to go over this? If Namatame’s lawyers found out you–”
“To hell with his lawyers!” Dojima slammed his fists down on the bed’s table tray, sending a bowl of untouched apple slices onto the floor with a clatter. “Do you think his lawyers give a damn about what he did to Nanako? Do you? I just,” the senior detective heaved a frustrated sigh, burying his face into his hands, “I just need some answers… I just want to talk…”
“Talk. Right.”
Adachi released a sigh of his own, screwing his eyes up towards the ceiling. For a guy who’s just lost everything, Dojima sure was persistent. As much fun as locking his superior and Namatame together in a room to play ‘seven minutes in Hell’ would undoubtedly be, Adachi was actually planning to walk away from all of this unscathed – he just wasn’t so sure Dojima would be able to walk away with him. The younger detective moved to the other man’s bedside, and leaned in.
“Is this what Nanako-chan would’ve wanted?” he asked softly.
Dojima slowly looked up at his partner, regarding him. “It’s what I want,” he finally said.
“…”
Without breaking eye contact, the junior detective retrieved his radio and began speaking into it. “Adachi here. It looks like Dojima-san’s managed to get out of his room again. I’ve already got doctors and nurses searching for him, but can Yagami-kun and Kagura-kun help by doing a sweep of the third and fourth floors? I’ll come watch Namatame in case that’s where he’s heading.”
“Shit, again?” a voice – Kagura’s, maybe – replied. “All right, we’ll let you know if we find him.”
“Thank you…” Dojima murmured, looking down at his lap.
Adachi liked to think himself creative; he could probably come up with some kind of excuse in case Namatame winds up a little black and blue. “C'mon, Sir,” he urged, grabbing a nearby wheelchair and sliding it towards Dojima. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Perhaps Adachi should consider a career as an improv actor; when the two reached Namatame’s room, they found that it was, in fact, unguarded. The junior detective glanced down at Dojima, noticing how white his knuckles were from the way his hands gripped the armrests. He looked so tense, like he was going to spring out of his seat the moment Adachi opened the door.
“Five minutes,” he whispered into Dojima’s ear. “Okay? Then I’m taking you back to your room.”
Dojima said nothing, his eyes staring intently at the door. Adachi sighed, “Here we go…”
As soon as the door opened wide enough, the older detective wheeled himself inside. Before Adachi even had a chance to react, Dojima made an odd discovery: “He’s – he’s not here!”
“Not here?” It was true; Namatame was nowhere to be found. “But how–”
“Damn it, Adachi!” Dojima interjected. “Don’t tell me this is the wrong room!”
“No, this is it! Top floor in the second surgical ward, furthest room back! You saw the guards before!”
“Then…” The senior detective furrowed his brows as he connected the dots. “… He must have escaped! Adachi, you radio the others; I’m not letting that bastard get away!” Dojima forced himself to his feet, ambling out of the room and towards the elevators whilst supporting himself against the wall.
Adachi opened his mouth to protest, but decided to let Dojima go; he wouldn’t make it very far without help, and the doctors could just stitch him back up if he got himself hurt again, anyway. No, this was far more interesting. The detective’s gaze immediately turned to the large TV, which greeted him with a slightly obscured reflection. Could Namatame have entered the world inside? It wouldn’t have been the first time, but Adachi couldn’t imagine his last visit ended on a high note.
Movement – out of the corner of his eye, the detective noticed the curtains fluttering ever so slightly. The window was open? After giving it a once-over, he supposed it was large enough for a grown man to fit through, but that seemed like such a ballsy move, a feat which required something that Namtame clearly lacked. Adachi brushed the curtain aside and peered out the window, wondering if he’d see the man’s flattened corpse on the pavement below, but found something – someone – different entirely.
“… Yu-kun…?”
He’s become uncomfortably familiar with Narukami’s nighttime silhouette, having seen it coming towards him during so many evenings at the gas station. Even from this distance, he could tell that the boy stories below him was Dojima’s beloved nephew. What was he doing out in front of the hospital? He seemed – unsteady. Adachi watched as the boy stumbled towards a trashcan, only to fall down on the ground and – was he vomiting? His coughing and retching, though faint, managed to reach the detective’s ears. What was wrong with him? Was he ‘sick with grief’ over Nanako?
Another figure quickly joined Narukami. It must have been that Hanamura kid, judging by the way he rushed to the boy’s side and patted his back. Adachi’s eyes wandered to where the Junes brat had come from and found what he assumed to be the rest of the super sentai wannabes nearby. All of them looked so uneasy, even from far away; their arms wrapped around themselves, looking down at the ground. If Adachi didn’t know any better, he would have thought they had done something bad.
The detective glanced back towards the TV. Experimentally, he touched the screen with the tips of his fingers and watched them slowly slide past the barrier between this world and the next. The sensation reminded him of Mayumi Yamano and the way he’d pushed her inside the TV at the Amagi Inn – and the way the other world had spit her body back out.
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Adachi struggled to stay quiet; the chains linking his handcuffs to the cuffs around his ankles jangled together at even the smallest of movements, and that annoyed the hell out of him. It was part of why he preferred visiting hours to take place behind a window and not in a recreation room, so he didn't have to subject himself to this feet-binding shit. Besides, they didn't actually think he'd try to run off, did they? He had no where to go.
Dojima had been the one to arrange the whole thing--no surprise, there. He told Adachi during their last session that he wanted to bring another visitor with him for next time, and it looked like that's what was happening. The former detective didn't give much thought to who Dojma had been referring to; Narukami was the most likely candidate, but he had no idea if the fool was even in town. Adachi slowly lifted his hands onto the table, and toyed with the various items (crayons, paper, knit dolls--nothing inherently dangerous, but could be with the right amount of ingenuity) while he waited.
It wasn't a long wait before the buzzer went off and the door opened, signifying the visitors' arrival. He looked up to see one of the guards enter, followed by Dojima, who was then followed by not Narukami, but a young girl wearing a Yasogami High School uniform (something he could easily identify, courtesy of the Investigation Team) and holding a notebook protectively--defensively?--against her chest. It wasn't until the two were standing in front of Adachi, and he saw the way she stared at his bindings with a mixture of fear and concern, that he realized who she was.
--Nanako-chan...
Adachi felt many things in that moment--surprise, confusion, anger--but most of all, he felt deflated; like he just got the wind knocked out of him, like the rug had been pulled from under his feet. A part of him vaguely wondered if the expression on his face properly conveyed what he was experiencing; he stopped micromanaging that after getting caught. Dojima squeezed his daughter's shoulder, which seemed to snap her out of whatever daze she was in, and she quickly bowed to Adachi before sitting across from him.
"Hi, Adachi-san. It's... been a while." Years, it's been years, but he said nothing. Why did Dojima bring her here? He'd told her what his 'partner' was really like, hadn't he? Or did he decide to lie to Nanako about that, too?
"Um..." It was obvious she was struggling for something to say--not that he could blame her. Nanako's eyes widened suddenly, and she opened her notebook on the table and began flipping through its pages. It was well-used, he noticed, well-loved. "I've been drawing a lot, and my teacher tells me I'm good at it! Do you want to see?"
Nanako removed some loose papers stored between the sheets, and carefully set them out in front of Adachi. Curious, he leaned forward (slowly, so as not to scare her) to get a better look: one was a sketch of a sphere on a surface, probably a practice in lighting and shading; another one was multiple sketches of a cat in different poses and at different angles; and the last sketch was a profile of man who looked an awful lot like Narukami. Adachi glanced up at her, but Nanako was doing her best to avoid eye contact, a faint blush on her cheeks. Oh.
"Do you... like them?" she asked, still recovering from her embarrassment. Did he like them! It didn't matter if Adachi liked them or not--they were amazing, a far cry from the pink alligators and blue butterflies Nanako used to doodle. He wanted to tell her that, but his throat seemed to constrict and his mouth went dry; if Adachi tried to speak, chances are he'd just give himself a coughing fit.
It didn't take a genius to see that the silence discouraged her. He considered letting it continue to permeate, make the whole experience as awkward and painful for Nanako as possible so that Dojima would think twice before pulling this kind of shit on him again, but something about that plan didn't sit right with him; punishing Dojima was one of the few hobbies he had left, but to do it through his daughter...
Adachi reached out and picked up the sheet with the cat sketches on it, his rattling chains startling Nanako and Dojima alike. He set the paper down in front of him and grabbed the cup full of crayons, picking out a few colors before returning it back to its proper place. Careful not to let his bindings smudge the paper, he hunkered over the sketch and used one arm to block their view, while his other hand picked up a crayon and got to work. He looked up at them occasionally, then continued what he was doing. Nanako seemed to catch on; she leaned this way and that, even stood up from her chair to try and sneak a peek, but Adachi would catch her red-handed every time and adjust his arm accordingly--it was like they were playing a game.
When he was finished, he set the crayons down and sat up straight, then slid the drawing back to Nanako before placing his hands in his lap. She picked it up and brought it closer to her face, thumb lightly rubbing against the waxy surface. The mystery was enough to get Dojima looking at it, too. "A flower," she said, "you drew me a flower."
Green leaves, purple petals, and a yellow center. It looked so rudimentary, so stupid, sitting next to the cats, but... Nanako was smiling at him, and that smile was probably the brightest thing Adachi had seen since he resigned himself to this world. He couldn't help but smile back.
