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“Shotaro! Shotaro! Wake up!”
“Huh?” Shotaro’s eyes blinked open onto a worried face. His hair was quite dark, and were those hamster-shaped paper clips in his hair? What a weird kid. For some reason he had the feeling that this person was really concerned about him. How could he pick up on a stranger’s emotions like this? He was pretty sure that wasn’t normal.
“Shotaro, are you okay?” the stranger asked one more time.
“...Yeah, I’m fine. I just--” Shotaro started to explain to this guy why he had been asleep outside, but he was drawing a blank. Well, if he was here, calling him by his name, then maybe he knew something. “What happened?”
“We took a hit from the Blank dopant. It got away. Do you feel any differently?” Briefly, and fleetingly, Shotaro could see the battle in his mind’s eye. Including the blast that knocked him into the grass. But he was seeing it through another person’s eyes. And what was that red thing? He looked down at himself to find it was still around his waist.
But to answer the stranger’s question, he did a bit of an internal inventory. Nothing really hurt, and his head felt pretty clear. “No, I’m alright. But what’s a Dopant?”
The other guy’s face looked really confused. A wave of confusion spread from him too. It was then Shotaro noticed he was wearing one of those red things too. In the gap of silence while the stranger attempted to assemble an explanation, Shotaro found another question. “And why do we both have one of these?”
When the stranger’s face changed from confusion to hurt Shotaro’s gut twisted in pain. He actually flinched and brought his arm across his stomach. But it didn’t feel like his own. He looked down at his own belt and at the stranger’s again. Maybe that was the cause?
He reached over and took hold of the belt around the stranger’s waist. “Oi, answer the question already! You’re not going to get out of giving information to a detective, you know!” He tugged at it, trying to find a way to remove it.
“It’s a long story,” the stranger finally said. His head drooped now, most of his face hidden behind the curtain of his bangs. Shotaro felt bad, he must have hurt his feelings somehow. He reached over and released the belt around Shotaro’s waist. When the strap retracted, the identical one around the stranger’s waist disappeared in a haze of green pixels. The stranger kept his tone curt and businesslike. “Dopants are people corrupted by the power of Gaia Memories. Blank in particular appears to have the effect of creating blanks in a person’s memory.”
Shotaro considered that information. It was a lot to believe, but knowing some of the weird goings-on in his beloved Fuuto, it could be a reasonable explanation. And something in his gut told him he could trust this guy. And a detective had to trust his gut.
The stranger pulled out a strange looking cell phone. “You’re going to have a lot of questions. I will do my best to answer them, but I must take care of something first,” he started punching buttons on the phone. After a moment, it connected. “Ryu Terui,” he began sharply. “You will need to track down the Blank Dopant. Your physiology should render you immune to its effects. It creates a memory gap in its target. Shotaro and I just got hit…. No, we won’t require any other assistance.” He snapped the phone shut with a fair bit more force than necessary and wiped his face with the part of his sleeve that covered his hands.
Shotaro reached over and put a hand on the stranger’s shoulder. Almost immediately the stranger took a few steps away from that touch. Then he turned, and looked at Shotaro’s hand that hung uselessly in the air. Shotaro didn’t know what to make of that look on his face, but this kid obviously didn’t know how to deal with what was going on.
“Okay, okay,” Shotaro finally said. “I get it.” If what this guy was saying was true, then he must have forgotten something important about him. No wonder he was so hurt.
“I’ll take you back to the Agency,” the stranger finally said. He still was keeping his voice even and was looking at him only the bare minimum necessary.
“I’m fine enough to drive,” Shotaro said, heading to the bike. He handed the stranger the black helmet, keeping the more vintage-styled one for himself. “But just tell me one thing first,” he started while he pushed it onto his head. The stranger looked somewhat afraid, but nodded wordlessly. “What’s your name?”
There was that hurt look again, and while Shotaro didn’t feel that punch in the gut as keenly as he had when they had those belts on, he was pretty sure that’s what was happening again. “Listen, I’m sorry I--” he started, but the stranger cut him off.
“Philip,” he answered.
Shotaro smirked slightly. “Philip,” he repeated. The guy to which that name belonged looked down and away when he said it.
Without further comment they got on the motorcycle together. Philip’s hands flitted over Shotaro’s back nervously, as though he wasn’t sure if he should hold onto him or not. “Go ahead,” Shotaro told him. The hands slowly wound their way around him, but he seemed to be holding only at the bare minimum amount. Shotaro glanced down, and saw the exact opposite was true of how his fingers wrapped around the front of his vest. He was clinging to that fabric as if his life depended on it. Shotaro decided against saying something about it, and just hit the road.
When they arrived at the agency, Akiko seemed to pick up on the fact that things weren’t right. Philip started toward the side door that went to the garage, but stopped. “Philip-kun what’s going on?”
“The Dopant got away. Ryu Terui will be chasing it on his own,” he answered in the same flat tone. He headed toward the bed in the corner.
“Shotaro! What did you say to Philip-kun?” She gave him a good whack with her slipper.
“Dammit, Akiko!” he yelled after shielding himself from her. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Then why is he so upset?! You must have done something!”
“I--” Suddenly he was concerned. Was this going to affect Akiko like it had Philip? No, he remembered Akiko Narumi, now Terui. She was the Boss’s daughter. She came to Fuuto after the Boss died during a case. What case was that? There was another blank spot again. He grumbled in frustration.
“Out with it, you little heartbreaker!” Akiko was not going to let him off the hook.
“I don’t remember, okay?!” he finally shouted at her.
“Eh? What do you mean? How can you forget something that hurt your precious partner that badly? You’re too half-boiled for that!” She reeled back to whack him again.
“It’s not his fault, Aki-chan,” Philip finally said. He’d stopped trying to keep his confusion and heartbreak out of his voice. When Akiko and Shotaro looked over, they saw him curled up in the bed, his back to them. “The Dopant we were chasing was the Blank Dopant. It seems to have erased me and anything related to me from his memories.”
“Eh?” Akiko was too surprised to harangue Shotaro any further. And seeing Philip like this was never a good thing. She left Shotaro and went over to Philip. “Don’t worry, Philip-kun. Ryu will take care of it. I know he will.” He didn’t make a response, though. He just pushed his face into the pillows more.
The silence hung thickly in the air for a long moment. “I-I’ll go see if Ryu needs help,” Akiko said.
“Wait, Akiko--” but before Shotaro could try too hard to stop her, she’d grabbed her bag and rushed out the door.
That only made the silence problem worse. This was going to be a long day. Shotaro looked over at Philip for a while. Why was he so upset? It wasn’t as though he could help it. It was the monster’s fault, right? Well, the reasons probably didn’t matter. He got up and went to the kitchen to make some coffee.
He found himself pouring two cups, and putting more sugar in one than the other. He walked the cups over to the tall table in the middle of the room and set them down. He kept the one with more sugar in it for himself. “There’s coffee if you want it. For some reason I made two.”
Philip glanced back at Shotaro for a moment before he began to uncurl and get out of bed. One of his clips had forsaken him, and let his hair hang a bit more in his face than usual. It was kind of endearing, Shotaro decided. Philip sat down and took the cup in his hands, but didn’t drink from it or say anything immediately.
So Shotaro decided to break the silence. “So how do we know each other?” he began.
Philip’s hand flitted upward to bury itself in the fringe of hair that half obscured his face. His fingers were a little spastic. Bad choice of first question, Shotaro decided. This was a witness that he had to approach from the side instead of head-on.
“I trust you, okay?” he told him. “I don’t know why. There’s not many people I trust right away. Especially considering what you’ve told me about monsters menacing my city and erasing my memory.”
That seemed to calm Philip a bit, and he nodded. The hand lowered so he was cradling the coffee cup with both hands. Shotaro continued. That was progress, he decided. “Why don’t you tell me what you can?” Maybe if he left it to Philip to decide, he would start with the easier stuff and maybe he’d start to feel better.
Philip seemed to consider the prospect while he took a sip of his coffee. He looked a bit surprised to find that it was made how he was used to having it. Shotaro’s coffee wasn’t as good as Terui’s, but this flavor was definitely typical Shotaro coffee. He smiled sadly at it, and finally found something to say. “I think it would be best if we just wait for Ryu Terui,” he said.
“There’s nothing wrong with a few questions. I know he’s a great cop, but a monster like that might be a lot for him to handle,” Shotaro replied.
Philip seemed to realize something with that statement, but he didn’t look like he was going to share. “He can handle it,” Philip said. “He’s very strong.”
Shotaro decided once again to not press the issue. He let that breathe by taking a drink of his own coffee. “Why don’t we just start with how we met? Were you a client?” He slipped off his chair and headed to the cabinet the case files were in. “Maybe the case logs would help…” He started running his fingers along the spines of the binders.
“I wouldn’t be in any of those,” Philip told him. “You never made a record of my case.”
“Eh?” Shotaro turned back to look at Philip who was again avoiding looking at him. “Why not?” Shotaro always made case logs. Not only to have a reason to use the typewriter, but also so he could have something to go back on if he had a repeat customer with an issue like stalkers or a chronic runaway puppy.
“Because it would have been dangerous,” Philip answered. If someone had broken into the agency and searched through the logs, it would have been easy for the Museum to find their long-lost Child of Fate.
“Dangerous how?” Shotaro was getting concerned. Not that this guy was at all dangerous, but that he was in some kind of danger. If he, a detective, had no way of knowing what kind of trouble, then he had few options when it came to protecting his client.
Philip just shook his head. “We will wait for Ryu Terui. That is the best solution,” he insisted.
“No!” Shotaro came around to find an angle where Philip couldn’t hide from him any longer. “Tell me what you’re talking about! If you need protecting I can do that but not unless I know what’s going on!”
Philip’s patience ran out. “There’s more in the last three years, four months, and 12 days than I could ever begin to explain!” He wasn’t trying to hide his tears either. He wiped his face with his sleeve and pressed on. “You mean more to me than I could ever find the words to tell you! I have not yet found the words in any language that adequately describe what you are to me. You are my only partner, Shotaro. You said you trust me, so please do that. Stop asking questions. I don’t think I can take it much longer…”
Shotaro was stunned by the outburst. He had no response to that, other than the feeling of his cheeks getting hot.
He gave Philip some space, wandering over to his desk. Patience wasn’t a thing he had a lot of. He’d just as soon go and punch the shit out of this monster himself. But if waiting was what he had to do, waiting was what he was going to do. He plucked one of his trusty hard-boiled novels off his shelf and started to read to pass the time.
The sun had begun to set when Shotaro began to feel a twinge of pain in his head. He ignored it, but eventually it grew to the point where he couldn’t focus on his book anymore. He reached up and rubbed at the sides of his head, just above his ears.
“Is something the matter?” Philip asked. Shotaro glanced up to find he had been watching him in much the same way one might a lab rat that had just ingested a chemical it had no business doing.
He shook his head. “Just a headache,” he answered.
“Can you describe it for me?” Philip persisted. “It may be related to an effect of the Dopant.”
“It doesn’t just ache…” he started, searching for words around the pain. “And it’s getting worse.” He clenched his jaw against it.
Philip closed the distance between them and put his hand on Shotaro’s shoulder. It was then his phone began to ring. “Philip-kun, how is Shotaro?!” Akiko shouted into the line.
“He has a headache, he says it’s getting worse,” Philip replied. Shotaro groaned in pain and buried his hands in his hair.
“Ryu! Hurry up!” she shouted at her husband. “This jerk Dopant says that Shotaro is going to lose the memories he took permanently!”
“Permanently?!” Philip repeated dumbly. His eyes searched for a solution. He couldn’t even focus enough for a lookup. Through the phone came the telltale sounds of Accel Trial’s Maximum Drive.
Philip did the only thing he could think of. He wrapped his arms around Shotaro and held on. Shotaro clung back, only out of the extreme amount of pain he was in. After another couple of seconds, he went limp.
Philip closed the phone and focused on Shotaro. “Shotaro! Shotaro!” He tried to shake him awake. “No! Shotaro! Please!” He couldn’t take his partner forgetting about him forever. It would hurt too much. He loved him too much. Tears poured down his face. “Shotaro!”
All at once, Shotaro moved again. “Sho--” He pulled Philip down by the collar and kissed him. Philip was startled at first, but soon melted into the kisses. He could have kissed him happily like that for hours, except that he needed to breathe. He pulled away and ran his hand down the side of Shotaro’s face. “You got your memory back?”
“Yeah, every bit of it,” Shotaro replied. He reached up and wiped the tears off his partner’s face. “Sorry I forgot about you, partner.”
Philip’s smile grew. “What kind of detective forgets all about his partner?”
“Oi.” But Shotaro was glad to see him smiling again. Philip wasn’t about to let his partner go so soon. He climbed up into Shotaro’s lap in his desk chair and rested his head on his partner’s shoulder. Shotaro wasn’t really going to complain.