The metro station was nearly empty at this hour, a low ceiling of cracked tile, some of it chipped away entirely, exposing the gray concrete beneath, dim fluorescent lamps, some of them flickering, some not lit at all. The air was heavy, humid, smelling of old rubber from the rails, machine oil, and something faintly sour, sweat, maybe, or years of dampness worked into the walls. Only a handful of people stood on the platform: an elderly woman with a heavy bag, leaning against a column, a guy in a hoodie buried in his phone, two workers in dirty coveralls, smoking silently despite the ban.
Detective Itsuki stood with his back against a cold column. The tile behind him was icy even through his jacket. He took a drag of a cheap cigarette, the kind of tobacco that left his throat scratchy for the rest of the day, but he'd stopped buying anything better a long time ago, exhaled the smoke through his nose, and slowly scanned the platform with the practiced eye of a man who'd spent too many years looking at people exactly this way: not as passersby, but as possible witnesses, suspects, potential problems.
"Rain again," he muttered to himself. "And that same damp smell again. Like the city's slowly rotting on the inside while it still holds together on the outside."
He was tired. Not physically, tired in some deeper way, the kind of tiredness that builds up over years and no longer goes away after sleep. Ten years in investigations change a person quietly: first you stop being surprised, then you stop being angry, and by the end you just watch it all the way you'd watch the weather through a window.
The train emerged from the tunnel with a low rumble, its headlights blinding the platform for a second. The doors hissed open. Itsuki flicked his cigarette butt toward the tracks, it hissed as it landed in a puddle on the rails, and stepped into the car. Inside it was empty, just a few passengers at the far end. He sat by the window, put his hands on his knees, looked at his reflection in the dark glass, pale face, shadows under his eyes, two days of stubble. He didn't recognize himself in that reflection, the one from ten years ago, when he'd just joined the department. Back then he still believed something could change, if you tried hard enough.
Something heavy and wet suddenly slammed into the glass, a dull thud. A severed human hand, still fresh, still bleeding, smeared across the window in a long red streak and slid down, off the glass, onto the tracks behind the departing train. The fingers were curled, as if in some final moment they'd tried to grab hold of something. At the wrist, a torn edge, with shreds of tendon sticking out.
Itsuki raised an eyebrow slightly. He didn't flinch, didn't recoil, just looked, registered it the way you'd register any fact.
"Well, what a day," he said quietly, not taking his eyes off the window, behind which there was once again only the darkness of the tunnel. "First they bring me coffee without sugar, now this. What's next, a head at the next station?"
Itsuki took out his phone, made a call, and reported to the police that some woman had thrown herself under the train, that her arms and legs had been severed.
He wasn't really joking. He'd just developed the habit, a long time ago, of saying out loud what someone else might have screamed. Outside the train window, a light rain had begun to fall, blurring the city lights across the wet glass.
Renji left the house. The door closed behind him with a quiet click, a familiar, domestic sound he'd heard every morning for so many years he no longer noticed it. The street greeted him with dampness, the asphalt was dark from yesterday's rain, and today's was just beginning to drizzle, faint, barely noticeable. The houses along the street were low, run-down, with rusted gutters and peeling paint on the window frames; this wasn't a wealthy neighborhood, and it showed in every crack in the façades.
Renji walked with his hands in his jacket pockets, thinking about which café he and Genzo would go to today.
"Maybe that little one by the market. The coffee's decent there, the pastries are fresh. Or that dark one, where they always play quiet jazz, Genzo will complain again that it's too expensive, but I feel calmer there, I don't know why."
A crowd suddenly spilled out of the alley ahead, fifteen people, maybe a bit more, he didn't have time to count exactly. Worn jackets, busted-up faces, the smell of stale alcohol from several meters away. They quickly surrounded him, not in formation but chaotically, the way a crowd does when it's used to acting on momentum rather than a plan.
"Hey, kid," the leader drawled, tall, with a split lip and a tattoo peeking out from under his collar. "Hand over whatever you've got. No tricks, and we'll part ways nicely."
Renji stopped, scanned them. His heart was pounding, but he tried to keep his voice steady.
"I don't have money on me. Really, I don't."
Someone behind him snorted with laughter.
"Sure, right," that someone said, and at once strange hands grabbed Renji by the shoulder.
The first blow landed on his shoulder from the side, knocking him off balance. He tried to break free, but both his arms were immediately seized. A fist crashed into his nose, the pain was sharp, hot, his eyes instantly welled up with tears, blood ran down his lip, salty, warm. Renji spat onto the asphalt, jerked, and by some miracle freed one arm and threw a wild punch, it landed on someone's jaw, not hard, more by accident. He was knocked to the ground immediately. Blows rained down one after another, on his ribs, on his back, someone kicked him in the stomach so hard it knocked the breath out of him completely.
"Stay down," the leader barked from somewhere above him. "Now we're going to"
"Maybe don't, huh?" a voice said from the side, lazy, with no drama at all.
Raiden stepped out of the shadow of the nearby wall, his long, dark purple hair stuck to his forehead from the rain, an almost-empty soda can in his hand. He finished it off calmly, as if none of this had anything to do with him.
The leader turned, spat on the ground.
"Oh, it's the femboy with the girl hair. Want some too?"
Raiden shrugged, dropped the can, it clinked against the curb and rolled into a puddle.
"Well, since you insist," he said quietly, and started walking forward.
The first hit landed on his nose, blood sprayed, he shook his head, wiped his face with his sleeve, not breaking stride. The fight was messy, nothing pretty about it, he went for knees to knock people down, aimed elbows at faces, grabbed clothing and yanked to throw people off balance. He twisted one guy's arm, not some elegant movie move, just brute force, his full weight behind it, and the guy screamed and dropped to the ground, clutching his shoulder. He drove a knee into another's stomach; a third he just shoved into the others' path, creating a pileup.
Someone swung a bottle at him, Raiden caught the arm, twisted it, hit the man's knee from the side, and he went down into a puddle with a thud. The fight sprawled out, lost all shape, no longer a crowd against two, but a dozen separate scuffles, angry, disorganized, with no tactics on either side.
"Who the hell are you, bastard!" the leader roared, swinging from behind.
Raiden turned halfway and hit him in the jaw with his fist, not for show, just sharp, with a twist of his whole body, and the man flew back, landed on his back, cracking the back of his head against the curb.
Within a couple of minutes, half the attackers were lying on the asphalt, groaning, clutching their bruises, the other half scattering in different directions, someone shouting something about a "psycho" as they ran, and soon the alley was empty except for a few bodies on the wet pavement.
Renji lay there, breathing hard, feeling every part of his body throb with a dull ache. Raiden walked over, held out a hand, helped him up.
"You alright?" he asked, brushing raindrops off his jacket. "Next time don't wade into a crowd alone, they don't exactly stop to check who they're hitting."
Renji spat out blood, nodded.
"Thanks. Seriously. Without you they'd have finished me off there."
"Don't mention it," Raiden said, already turning away. "Go on, someone's probably waiting for you."
Renji made it to the café limping, feeling his cheekbone throb and an unpleasant pull in his side with every step. The café was small, with a peeling sign, warm yellow light in the windows, the contrast with the gray street outside was sharp enough that he wanted to go in just for the warmth of it.
Genzo stood by the entrance, leaning against the wall, staring at his phone.
"You're late," he said, without looking up. "As usual."
"Got held up," Renji answered, wiping his face with his sleeve.
Genzo finally looked up, narrowed his eyes at the blood on his cheekbone.
"Got in another fight? Seriously, every time. Who was it this time?"
"Some crowd from an alley. About fifteen of them. But I wasn't completely alone."
Genzo snorted, shook his head.
"Fine, let's go inside before we freeze out here completely."
Inside it was warm, smelling of freshly ground coffee and slightly burnt pastry – not a pleasant smell exactly, but a familiar one, homey in its imperfection. They sat at a small table by the window, which let in a bit of a draft. What money they had left was only enough for two cups of the cheapest coffee and one onion roll to split between them.
Genzo stirred sugar into his cup, staring into it as if he might see something there.
"Listen," he finally said. "Doesn't it ever seem like this whole life is just... not great? School, work, these fights all the time. Same thing every day, like walking in circles."
Renji shrugged, tore off a piece of the roll.
"Sure, it seems that way. But what can you do about it. Just sit around and wait for it to change on its own?"
"I don't know," Genzo sighed. "It just gets to me sometimes. Anyway, forget it, I wasn't being serious."
He was quiet for a moment, then added, a little embarrassed, as if he hadn't expected this from himself either:
"Good thing you're around, at least, you walking chocolate bar. At least I'm not dealing with all this crap alone."
"Hm." Renji snorted, but smiled. "Weird hearing that from you, you're not usually one for softness."
They laughed a little, quietly, harmlessly, genuinely, that brief kind of laugh that happens between people who've known each other a long time and don't need explanations. Outside, despite the rain, birds were chirping somewhere, stubbornly, as if they didn't care about the weather.
They finished their coffee and headed to work. The foreman met them at the warehouse gates, scratching his stomach.
"Pay's a bit unstable today, boys," he grumbled. "Might come on time, might not. But the boxes still need moving either way, the work doesn't wait around for the paycheck."
"Deal," they both answered, almost at the same time.
The whole day passed in dust, sweat, and the monotonous squeak of cardboard boxes, load, check, load again. By evening their arms hurt worse than after the fight.
On Monday morning Renji woke up as usual, went down to the living room. His older brother Akio was sitting in front of the TV watching football, the commentator shouting something about a goal.
"Akio, close the chicken coop door," Renji said, tying his shoelaces on the way, "or the chickens will get loose in the yard again."
"Yeah, sure," Akio replied without looking away from the screen, taking a swig of beer straight from the can.
Genzo was already waiting by the gate, looking up at the gray sky.
"Let's move," he said, "or we'll be late, and Nakamura will start lecturing us again."
They walked to school together, as usual, along the familiar road past the same houses, the same puddles. The school building greeted them with its usual hum, worn concrete walls outside, faded paint on the doors, and inside, linoleum worn shiny by decades of students' footsteps, the smell of chalk and damp jackets hung along the hallway.
Almost everyone was already seated in class, it was quiet, Sunday hadn't fully let go of everyone yet. Genzo sat at his desk, opened the window, let in fresh air smelling of rain.
Mrs. Nakamura came in, and behind her, a new girl, thin, pale, eyes downcast, as if she were afraid to even breathe loudly in this classroom.
"Attention," the teacher said. "This is Ayako, she'll be studying with us starting today. She can't speak, so please be considerate – if she needs anything, help her, write notes, don't leave her alone without reason."
Kaoru, sitting near the window, gave a quiet snort, smirked.
The teacher turned to her sharply.
"What's so funny? Care to share with the rest of us?"
"It's nothing, sensei, I wasn't even laughing at her," Kaoru waved a hand. "Just thinking how nice it is that there are still people left in the world who stay quiet. Some people could learn a thing or two."
Nakamura sighed, shook her head, said nothing in response, and turned to the board.
"Alright. Open your books."
Outside, rain began drumming against the glass, steady, unhurried.