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As a rule, Yuki always picked up when Chiba Shizuo called. This was not because they were friends. Yuki was far younger than the actor, and besides, the man was far more of a mentor to him than anything else.
But he owed Chiba--when he and Ban were first starting up Re:Vale, they had had a nasty fight that led to Yuki quitting the store on the spot and storming off, and somehow getting hired on as an extra on a movie set. Momo had been watching, Yuki remembered, for some reason, so he had thrown his all into his performance despite already having decided to return to Ban and Re:Vale, and Chiba Shizuo had been impressed, had sought him out for whatever reason after the filming was done. And later, after Ban had disappeared but before Momo had come, Chiba had given Yuki money to search for him, told him there was no need to pay him back, until Yuki finally gave up and locked himself away until Momo came and helped him come alive again.
This was all to say that Orikasa Yukito admired Chiba Shizuo greatly, and in all things aspired to be like him, and picked up his call on the first ring.
“Hello, Yuki,” said Chiba Shizuo. “How are you doing? I heard you were starting up a private investigation business.”
“I’m doing well,” Yuki said. “And yeah, we’re privately investigating stuff for Okarin a lot. He pays us well, and we’re keeping an eye out for Ban. How about you?”
“I would like to hire you to search for my son, Nikaido Yamato,” said Chiba Shizuo. “He ran away a couple of weeks ago, and he’s been missing for six days.”
None of this particularly struck Yuki as odd; he had run away often when he was younger, but Ban had always seemed to know where he went and his parents had never particularly cared. He knew that Chiba had a bit of a strained relationship with his son--he had shown him pictures of the boy where he was obviously being bribed with fancy toys and the bribes obviously weren’t working, which had made Yuki glad at the time he’d never bothered wasting money to try that strategy on Ban, who was not a child and probably would be far less impressed than the boy in the pictures.
“Okay,” said Yuki. “Where did you last see him?”
“Well, I last saw him at his mother’s house,” said Chiba, “but the man I hired to tail him after he’d run away last saw him sneaking into the back of a movie theater in XXXXXX at ten at night.”
“Is he still there?” asked Yuki.
“It’s been six days,” said Chiba, which wasn’t a no, so when Yuki and Momo went into XXXXXX to look for Nikaido, the first place they checked was the movie theater, where they watched a nice romcom and shared a bucket of popcorn and three kisses. They did not, however, find Chiba’s missing son, so they went around the back of the building to look around, where a young teenage boy was poking around near the dumpsters.
“Hi!” Momo called. “Are you Nikaido Yamato?”
“I think he’s a little young to be Nikaido Yamato, dear,” Yuki said. “Also, his hair looks like it’s a different color.”
Momo shrugged. “Hair dye is a thing,” he pointed out.
“...No, I’m Izumi Iori,” the boy said. “My older brother disappeared in this area six days ago, and the police aren’t doing anything about it, so I’m looking for him.”
“Huh, that’s the same day Nikaido disappeared,” Yuki said. “Weird.”
“Maybe it’s related?” Iori said. “How well did you know Nikaido?”
“His dad helped me out a lot, and I owe him, and since Momo and I are private investigators he hired us to look for him,” Yuki said. “He said the police aren’t doing anything either.”
“Maybe your friend’s kid and my brother’s disappearances are related,” Iori said hopefully. “Where was Nikaido last seen?”
“Here,” Yuki said. “Why?”
“Mitsuki was last seen a few streets over,” said Iori. “What night was Nikaido taken?”
“How did you know it was at night?” asked Momo.
“Because Mitsuki was too!” Iori said. “And--there’s something more going on here, I know it. The police are saying he just ran away, but there’s no way that’s the case. I mean, I’m fifteen and I know it’s ridiculous. He had no reason to run away, none whatsoever. And--they just closed the case, just immediately, and--ugh! There’s something else going on here, I know it!”
Yuki and Momo looked at each other.
“The police are saying Nikaido just ran away, too,” Yuki said slowly.
“It’s a conspiracy!” Iori said. “It has to be! I bet Nikaido was taken by the same people who took my brother--I need another coffee.”
“Who do you think took them?” asked Yuki.
“When was the last time you slept?” asked Momo.
“That’s irrelevant,” Iori said.
“Isn’t it?” Momo asked. “You can’t do anything for your brother if you aren’t taking care of yourself, too.”
“You don’t understand!” Iori shouted. “He’s been missing for six days, and nobody’s doing anything or saying anything and I’m the only person still looking for him! If I give up, then--then--” The boy scrubbed at his eyes. “Then who will find him?”
“We’ll help you look,” Yuki said, an uncomfortable familiarity crawling its way up his throat.
“Yeah! We have lots of experience in looking for missing people,” Momo said cheerfully. “Also we’re looking for another missing person right now.”
“Have you found any missing people ever?” asked Iori.
“That’s irrelevant,” Momo said. “We have lots of experience in looking for missing people.”
“I can’t believe this,” Iori muttered. “And you call yourselves private investigators?”
“We investigate private things,” Momo said seriously. “Also, just because we’re batting zero for two on missing people doesn’t mean we’ve never succeeded as private investigators before. Ban disappeared from a hospital room nearly three and a half years ago now, with no proof, a year before we became private investigators. Nikaido Yamato disappeared six days ago and we just got hired to find him today. It’s not like there weren’t extenuating circumstances.”
“Also, Momo didn’t know Ban was missing for that first year,” Yuki added. “So it was only me looking. Things are different now.”
Iori sighed. “Well, I guess you guys are all I’ve got,” he said. “Do you want to work together?”
“Sure,” Yuki said.
“Not until you’ve gotten ten consecutive hours of sleep,” Momo told him. “You’ll be much better at finding clues once you’ve given your brain time to rest.”
Yuki met up with Iori again two days later--on purpose this time, in a coffeeshop that reminded him far too much of Re:Vale and Ban but served good enough coffee that Yuki didn’t want to run out in tears. It was, apparently, Izumi Mitsuki’s favorite, and Yuki knew what it was to miss a person so much that you took all their favorite things into yourself, so that a piece of them lived in you always. He didn’t begrudge the boy his coffeeshop--if it had been Ban who had loved this place, Yuki thought that he might even have tried to sleep there.
“I think your partner was right about the sleeping thing,” Iori said, “because I’ve realized something about the days leading up to Mitsuki’s and Nikaido’s disappearances.”
“What?” asked Yuki.
“There was a company car hanging around,” Iori said, “just hanging around on the street. It followed me home from school one day, even. It was for some company called Tsukumo Corps, and I haven’t seen it since my brother went missing.”
“Tsukumo Corps…” Yuki echoed. The name sounded familiar for some reason, though he couldn’t quite place it. He pulled out his phone to text Momo about it before remembering his most major source of irritation before Ban’s disappearance. “Hang on a moment--Tsukumo is Momo’s ex’s surname!”
“What?” Iori said.
“Tsukumo Ryo. He was an asshole. Momo broke up with him years ago, though,” Yuki said.
“I don’t think there’s a connection there,” said Iori. “Anyway, I noticed something else, too. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before--but before Mitsuki disappeared, and I mean starting weeks before, this same man and his daughter started hanging around in this cafe. They would sit right over there, by the window. Mitsuki and I even talked to them, a couple times. I saw the man in the police station when we reported Mitsuki missing. The police took us seriously at first, and then that guy started talking to them, and then it was all ‘oh, he’s just run away, there’s nothing we can do’ or whatever bullcrap.”
“So he maybe blackmailed the police or something,” said Yuki.
“Yeah,” Iori agreed. “Dickhole.”
“What was his name?” Yuki asked.
“Kujo,” Iori said. “Kujo Takamasa.”
Yuki’s cup fell from his hands and shattered on the floor.
“What?” Iori asked. “What is it? Do you know that name?”
“...Yeah,” Yuki said gravely. “He’s--he--he caused a lot of trouble for me and Ban. I wasn’t ever able to prove it, but I think he was behind his disappearing like that. Ban said that he was probably involved with something illegal. All I ever knew was that he was trying to take our home from us--our home that we had made--and when Ban told him no, he said we’d regret it, and then--” Yuki sighed. “This isn’t important right now, though. What sort of things did you see him do? How did he behave towards your brother?”
Iori shrugged. “Normal. I mean, he was just some guy, you know? We only really talked to them because his daughter seemed nice. Aya’s her name. She has a brother named Tenn--or so they claimed--but he never came here.”
“Aya and Tenn…” Yuki repeated, scribbling the names down. “Maybe I’m biased, but I think Kujo definitely had a hand in your brother’s abduction, and maybe Nikaido Yamato’s, too.”
“It can’t be a coincidence that they were so close together,” Iori agreed. “Do you think your friend Ban is related to this somehow too?”
Yes. But Yuki swallowed, pushed the answer down in his throat. “Ban is related to everything when it comes to me,” he said. “He and Momo--they’re my entire life. I...took Ban for granted. I thought he would always be there. I put too much pressure on him, because I relied on him too much. There’s always the chance that he’s really gone--that he left me and wasn’t taken, because I got to be too much for him. I’m really too close to the situation to know for sure if he’s related to it.”
“Oh,” said Iori.
“Sorry,” Yuki said. “Being--in a place like this. It reminds me of him.”
“Did he like coffeeshops?” asked Iori.
Yuki smiled. “He loves them,” he said.
Yuki and Iori worked together for a year and four months. Momo didn’t come--he had taken Iori’s theory about Ban’s disappearance being somehow related to this, and gritted his teeth, and taken off to search any connections there while Yuki fulfilled his promise to Chiba Shizuo to find his son. Yuki was so lucky to have Momo--he loved him so much. He loved him so much. Momo didn’t have to look for Ban like this. Momo could have taken his days off as days off, and relaxed, watched a show, called his sister. But he looked for Ban instead, and when he and Yuki got home they kissed and talked about how their days had gone, and Momo said, sure and resolute, “We’ll find them,” and Yuki marveled at how he could lean on Momo and Momo didn’t break. He could lean on Momo, and Momo leaned back, and he smiled that beautiful smile of his, and they held each other up.
It was a long year and three months. Much like Ban’s disappearance, there were no clues, and nobody helped except for Chiba, who was worried out of his mind about his son. It seemed like every week, Yuki got up, met with Iori, talked about how nothing had changed. He hated how the light in the boy’s eyes started to fade, how the hopelessness he saw reflected back at himself in the mirror was entering the teenager’s eyes. Sometime it felt like they were just going through the motions--the same search, the same conversation, the same facts, over and over and over. The closest thing they hcad gotten to a new clue was a boy on vacation going missing the same week as Mitsuki and Yamato had, but the boy's older brother, Seth, had refused to answer any questions and had simply grinned when asked if he was worried about his brother Nagi, so there was nothing new to be learned there. Iori had stopped looking for similarities between Mitsuki’s situation and Ban’s once they stopped being similarities in culprit and MO and started being similarities in stagnation and pain. But then--three months after the one year anniversary of Mitsuki’s and Nikaido Yamato’s disappearances--Iori called Yuki up one afternoon after school.
“Kujo’s showed up again!” he said. “He says he has no idea what happened to Mitsuki--he claims to have been out of the country for the past year--but he’s lying, he has to be, he has to know something!”
“I’m investigating another case right now,” Yuki said, adjusting his hold on the phone to better point a gun at his current case’s head, “but we can investigate this weekend!”
“Great,” Iori said, and he hung up.
As the month flew by, Yuki and Iori came up with plans of attack to track down Kujo and make him give them answers, and scoured the news and surrounding area for any sign of missing persons.
And then, Iori didn’t show up one weekend after texting that he'd found a lead and would be running a little late.
Yuki looked around on his own for a bit, but when a month and a half had passed and he didn't hear a word from him, he started to look into what had happened to Iori.
The Izumi family had, he learned, picked up and moved suddenly a month prior. Their bakery closed, they cut off friends and family. Yuki kept looking, found out they moved to a city five hours away, opened a new bakery there.
And he found death records, too: for Izumi Iori and Izumi Mitsuki, a year and four months apart, and Yuki thought about how Kujo had spoken to both Izumi brothers, and how Iori had clawed his way into every lead on his brother, and then he cursed, and added a new name of his list of people he needed to find.