Chapter Text
“Aaah, it’s no use! What do we do, Kunikida-san!?” Atsushi cried, standing in front of a police station with the older man. They had been working with the police on a kidnapping case and not one of the suspects was talking. The police didn’t have enough information to properly interrogate the men and not a shred of proof pointed to any of them. They were stuck. Worse yet, they were stuck when the life of a little girl was on the line. The suspects were too good at lying, they crafted almost believable stories and denied any knowledge of things and events which could incriminate them.
Kunikida stood on his left, frowning.
“We should ask Ranpo-san.”
“He’s out of town,” the blond said, shaking his head. “By the time he gets back…” It will be too late. Atsushi understood that, but there were no more leads, no more people to interview or vehicles to find. They were stuck and she was somewhere out there - the 11-year-old daughter of a hotel owner, a small black-haired girl called Mari.
“Go inside and ask the lead investigator to transfer all suspects to the 18th precinct. I’ll get the car,” Kunikida said, heading down the street.
“O-Oh, okay!” Atsushi ran into the building with sweaty palms and wavering hope.
Once they were in the car he turned to Kunikida and asked, “Where are we going?”
“There’s someone else who can help in this situation. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t involve them in a crime investigation, but for this one we’ll have to make an exception.”
“Are they another ex member of the agency? Like Katai-san?”
“…No. They’re just a person with a useful ability who lives their life outside of the businesses run by or hiring the gifted.”
It was Atsushi’s first time hearing about such a person. Then again, Kunikida did seem to know a variety of people - from ex employees like Katai to hackers, informants and police officers. They spent the rest of the drive in silence and while Kunikida parked the car, Atsushi glanced out of the window and noticed a creepy-looking shop across the street.
It occupied the ground level of a rather narrow two-story building, nestled in between a mechanic and a boutique. The old wooden sign above a heavy-looking black door read Doll maker. The store windows were stuffed full of dolls, big and small, porcelain and knitted, breathtakingly beautiful and eerily unnerving. On the left side of the door they were seated and hung to look as if they were dancing around a fire. On the right they sat prettily with plastic teacups and kettles on a fluffy pink rug. Atsushi shivered involuntarily as he closed the door on the passenger’s side and turned to look at the taller man.
“Which way?”
“Follow me,” Kunikida answered and, to Atsushi’s mild horror, headed in the direction of the Doll maker’s shop.
“We’re not going in there…are we?”
“Yes.”
A tiny golden bell rang when they entered and the inside was somehow even more sinister than the two displays in the windows. Dolls hung off the walls in fluffy dresses, like well-preserved corpses and sat on the old wooden shelves with their impeccable white faces and vacant eyes which never moved, but seemed to follow visitors as they walked up to the counter in the middle of the room, behind which sat the cash register and above which peered a head of red hair. Kunikida cleared his throat and a girl around Atsushi’s age jumped to her feet behind the counter.
“Welcome! What can I help you with today!? Glazed porcelain? Bisque? Maybe you’re looking for knitted or ball jointed dolls? We also do restoration and custom orders!” she recited with a bashful smile.
“We’re here to see the owner,” Kunikida said calmly and her smile disappeared.
“Are you, um, an acquaintance of hers?”
“Something like that.”
“Ah, well, I’ll need to check if she’s around. Your name?”
“Kunikida.”
“Right. I’ll go see, just a moment!”
She jogged to the left back corner of the room, pushed open another rickety wooden door and disappeared behind it. Atsushi was 80% sure that the owner was indeed in the building, but the girl wasn’t sure whether she should guide them to her. She wasn’t very good at playing cool. Kunikida checked his watch and the urgency of their mission came back to the weretiger. He also realised that the precinct he’d asked to have suspects moved to was the closes one to this shop.
“She’s in her workroom, please follow me,” the red-haired girl said, peeking out behind the door.
They followed her down a long, plain corridor, exposed brick on either side, then turned left into a different one, newer, with white tiles underfoot and freshly painted green walls with several doors on the right one.
“Middle door, straight ahead, it’s a big room. I have to go back to the front,” the girl explained, bowed at the waist and ran back.
Kunikida pushed the door open and Atsushi’s stomach did a backflip. He thought there could be no room more unsettling than the shop, but the workroom beat it by a long shot. Ball jointed limbs of all sizes on the first table to the right, under it boxes of frilly dresses and tiny wigs. To the left blank porcelain dolls, even more ghoulish with their features yet unpainted. The deeper they got into the room, the more boxes and shelves there were with art supplies, doll parts - from eyelashes to bodies, and small working instruments - brushes, tweezers, needles and small scissors among many others Atsushi didn’t recognise. Most disturbing of all, he decided, was the glass jar of doll eyes.
At the end of the room, opposite the door they’d come in through, sat a person with their back turned towards the two. She sat at a lamp-lit desk with her back perfectly straight on a backless stool which swiveled around a bit every time the woman twisted her body and reached for something. Kunikida approached her, stopping a few feet away from the stool and called the woman by her name, which Atsushi didn’t recognise.
Without stopping her doll making the woman spoke in a soft, melodious voice, “Is Fukuzawa-san in need of my assistance?”
“No. Actually, I’m here to ask for your help as a personal favour,” Kunikida said firmly.
“So not on Fukuzawa-san’s orders?”
“No. Feel free to refuse.”
“Alright.”
She put the tweezers down and swiveled around to face them. The woman was rather plain looking overall, but she fit in with the room perfectly. Her dark brown hair was in two braids, falling over her collarbones and framing her modest chest. She wore a plain white dress, like something out of a movie set in medieval times - long, thin, loose and adorned with silver lace under the bust, at the ends of long sleeves and the rim of the flowy skirt. Her ghost-like appearance was completed with oval, silver-framed glasses, the colour of which was only slightly more intense than that of her eyes. Atsushi couldn’t recall having ever seen a pair of such colour - a dull, paling grey, soft and fleeting like moonlight. She folded her hands in her lap in a lady-like manner and tilted her head ever so slightly to the side.
“I’m listening.”
“We’ve come to a dead end in a kidnapping case. Time is of essence, otherwise I wouldn’t have come. I would like you to check the stories of our suspects.”
“Right now, I suppose?”
“If possible.”
She nodded curtly and rose from the chair, her dress flowing around her body. She took her glasses off and put them on the desk next to an unfinished bisque porcelain doll. Kunikida took a step back when she started making her way in between the men, so Atsushi did the same. Unfortunately he was caught unawares by the lamp cable at his heel and momentarily lost his balance. Swaying his arms around to regain it, he knocked a china doll off a table. The woman dove for it, but so did Atsushi and upon that realisation she flinched back with a sharp gasp of a terrified person which stunned the boy just long enough for the white porcelain body to fall to the floor and shatter into pieces between them.
“Are you al-”
“Please, don’t touch me,” the woman said firmly, leaning back and away from the hand he offered.
“I’m really sorry,” Atsushi started to apologize and was promptly interrupted.
“Please,” she said more desperately, carefully pushing herself up and off the floor, “even if I’m falling or I’m hurt, please, never touch me.”
Mortified by the situation, Atsushi was about to bow and ask for forgiveness when the girl from before poked her head into the room.
“Owner, is everything okay? I heard something fall.”
“We’re okay, Sawa,” she told the girl before glancing at Atsushi. “You didn’t cut yourself, did you?”
“N-No, I’m fine.”
“Good. Sawa, I’m going out. Can you please sweep this room before I’m back? Any time you have leftover, add to your break.”
The employee’s eyes lit up. “H-How long will you be gone?”
The woman looked at Kunikida.
“No more than three hours,” he said.
“I’ll get it done!” the redhead said with a smile, disappeared into the hallway and then popped in again, this time with a broom and dustpan. “Thank you, owner!”
“Of course.” The woman nodded, then turned to the detectives. “If you could please wait for me in the front. I’ll get a coat and my purse.”
Kunikida nodded and headed for the door, Atsushi following suit.
The two detectives waited at the counter and Atsushi took the opportunity to ask about the woman.
“I should’ve told you - some of her ability activates with touch. The right shall unfold the future, the left delve into the past and the eyes will know the truth of the present - ability: The Norns. Touching someone with her left hand allows her to see their past, the future with the right. By watching someone for a while and concentrating she can ‘see the present’, which, as far as I understand it, means she starts hearing one’s thoughts as they pop up into their head.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. “I don’t know her as well as the president or even Dazai, but I’ve been informed of her aversion to looking into the future. She sees everything up until one’s last breath. And as far as those go, some are worse than others. Those haunt her, so she avoids people. At least according to what I’ve heard.”
“So she never touches anyone? Not even handshakes or high fives?”
“To my knowledge, no. She keeps the right out of the way so militantly, she’s actually learned to use her left hand with equal dexterity, so she could, in the worst case scenario, end up only seeing the past.”
Atsushi thought back to her workroom. She’d been working with her left hand and holding the doll with the right. Ambidextrous. All to avoid seeing the future, seeing people’s deaths. How haunting must that be.
“But if she never worked for the agency - why does the president know her? And why Dazai-san?”
Kunikida shrugged, saying, “The president and her go way back apparently. She was there before Dazai’s entrance exam. Both the agency and Port Mafia call her in to aid in the vetting of new members from time to time. Although Dazai was recommended to him, the president saw a need to test him beyond just the entrance exam. You might’ve noticed, but if it’s a request from the president himself, she does it no questions. The president only calls her in if he has to - which is why she wasn’t there to vet you when you were joining - and while the rest of us know about her, he also prefers that we don’t pull her into conflict unnecessarily.”
“I see…” Atsushi bit his lip, thinking about her unusual situation.
A moment later the doll maker appeared, now clad in a thick black coat, with a black purse on her left shoulder.
“Lead the way,” she said, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
Kunikida led them outside and down the street, in the direction of the 18th precinct.
“Um, could you please stay on my left?” she mumbled to Atsushi who had instinctively started walking on the other side of her, used to keeping clients in between himself and his partner during missions for protection.
“Ah- Sorry, yeah,” he said sheepishly, falling behind and then jogging up to stand next to Kunikida with her on the far right.
“How is Fukuzawa-san doing?” the woman asked after a pause.
“Very well, thank you for asking.”
“Would you be so kind as to deliver a present to him? If you plan on returning to the agency after this.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.”
She spoke to the blond detective with respect, so Atsushi assumed she was younger, yet she didn’t look like she could be his own peer. There was that ageless, unique, doll-like beauty to her which made it hard to tell her actual age.
“So you know Dazai-san?” Atsushi asked in an attempt to start a conversation.
“Yes. I met him before his entrance exam two years ago. I was nineteen then,” she said calmly and the weretiger blinked at that. It was as if she’d read his m- Oh. “Your thoughts are rather loud,” she explained with a bashful smile, a hint of pink on her pale cheeks - the first thing Atsushi noticed about the woman that separated her from the dolls she made. It took him a moment to realise that she’d probably heard him think about her ‘doll-like beauty’ and the boy went a bit red in the face himself.
“Ah! S-Sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh…”
“It’s alright. There really isn’t much you can to empty your mind, except meditate which is significantly more difficult than one would assume. Yet you manage to do it, Kunikida-san,” the doll maker said, glancing in the man’s direction with an amused expression.
“It is a healthy practice.”
“That it is.”
The more time passed, the more alive she seemed to get. Atsushi could definitely see her sitting in the back of her shop and making dolls for days on end. Going out with people might be as fun and wonderful an experience to her as a festival was to others. Then he started sweating, wondering if she’d heard that.
“I did,” she said softly. “It’s alright. I take no offense to people’s thoughts. After all I’ve heard the best and worst of them already.”
“Sorry,” Atsushi mumbled anyway.
“I don’t particularly enjoy the sun. My skin burns rather easily. I do like walks though. And talking to people, though that tends to go the wrong way once they realise that I can hear their thoughts. They get flustered and start to overthink or try to suppress their thoughts. Just like you are,” she explained with a comforting smile.
Atsushi felt the need to apologize again, but swallowed the words instead. She didn’t want apologies. The woman herself must always feel bad for others, because she unwillingly makes them uncomfortable, because people try extra hard to censor their thoughts and feelings around her. People don’t like to be vulnerable. And what can make one more vulnerable than someone else having access to their innermost thoughts? It must be lonely, living with that kind of ability.
“Sometimes,” she said softly, jolting him out of those thoughts.
“Sor- Um,…”
“It’s okay. I appreciate it.” A bit of melancholy dulled her eyes. “You weren’t wrong... It’s nice to be understood from time to time.” She then leaned forward to look at Kunikida. “Quite a gentle child this time around,” the woman commented, smiling a dazzling smile.
He only nodded in return, but there was a bit of pride in his expression. Atsushi felt a bit flustered, being the subject of conversation, so he looked down at his shoes.
Just as they were about to pass an alley on the right a man ran out of it, clutching a briefcase in both hands. He slammed right into the doll maker’s right shoulder, knocking her back and onto the ground. It happened too fast for either detective to react and by her pained gasp and wide eyed stare of pure horror, Atsushi realised she’d already seen.
“Shit, sorry, you okay!?” the man said, pulling her up roughly with a hand on her right arm. The woman’s eyes filled with tears and she nodded mutely. The stranger went on his way and she looked around in a panic.
“Kunikida-san, can you knock that onto him!?” she asked, blinking back the tears, and she pointed at a pot of flowers on a windowsill the man was about to pass under.
“Wh-”
“Please!”
To Atsushi’s great surprise, the older detective used his ability to summon a sling and did as asked, while the woman dialed a number. The heavy pot fell on the man’s left shoulder and brought him to the ground.
“Hello, yes,” she told the person on the phone and gave a fake name, “please send an ambulance. A man has been injured. He couldn’t breathe, complained of a sharp pain in the chest, I’m afraid something’s not right with his lungs. He collapsed on the street and then a flower pot fell on him before I could move him… No, just a stranger… Yes, thank you so much, please hurry, his lungs must be in really bad shape.”
A shudder passed to her body as she hung up and turned to look at Kunikida who was now kneeling by the passed out man.
“He’s out cold. The shoulder will bruise,” the blond said and got to his feet. “His lungs?”
The doll maker nodded, a single tear running down a smooth cheek.
“Lung cancer… He doesn’t know yet,” she bowed her head, eyebrows furrowing, eyes closed tightly as if that would protect her from the visions of his deathbed. “We should go,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, quiet and sorrowful.
The three hurriedly left that street, turning right at a corner on their way to the precinct. Kunikida glanced at the woman with respect.
“You may have saved his life,” he said quietly, in an attempt to soothe the woman.
“Or I may have killed him faster. It’s happened before,” she said evenly, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief as white as her dress.
Atsushi felt a pang in his chest. He wanted to offer some comfort, but didn’t know how.
“It’s alright. Thinking about it is comfort enough,” she told him. “I act because I refuse to lose hope.Yet, I have never successfully changed anyone’s future.” Her gaze became distant, eyes void of any emotion and for a moment she perfectly resembled a doll. A lifeless, empty, beautiful thing. Elegantly still. Incredibly fragile. So easily broken to pieces.
“I’m tougher thank you think.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to, um, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. You’re very empathetic, that’s a wonderful quality,” the woman said softly.
“I owe you an apology, Kunikida-san. For such a reckless request,” she added, looking at the older man.
“That’s no problem. The president trusts your judgement, so I am inclined to do the same.”
“I’m sure Fukuzawa-san is very proud to have a protege such a yourself.”
“I simply fulfill my duties.”
“Impeccably, I’ve heard.”
“From Dazai?”
“As it happens, yes.”
Atsushi couldn’t help but wonder when it was that she’d spoken to Dazai and in what capacity. The boy had yet to hear about the woman from the bandaged detective. He remembered then that she could probably hear him think that and glanced at her nervously. Her face was an expressionless mask, a living woman, the picture of a porcelain doll, betrayed to be human only by the painful, shimmering wetness of her silver eyes. Atsushi thought back to the incident. Her eyes had almost… flashed. Intensified in colour or rather - glowed. Like a full moon on a cloudless night. He watched them now, but they were back to the faded glint of well-worn silver.
“Here we are,” Kunikida announced when they stopped in front of the precinct. “Are you ready to go in?”
“Yes.”
Okay, so this one was kind of hastily written in the middle of the pandemic madness, so bear with me. Updates every other day! Thank you for reading, gimme your thoughts in the comments!