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A good memory is a crucial ability for a detective to have. Among other skills, a good memory means being able to ask better questions, to have a database to fall back on when the clues run dry, and to recall details to keep from barking up the wrong tree.
Shoutarou has a pretty good memory. Better than average. He'd describe it as great, though Terui and Akiko are less charitable in their description of his prowess. Both halves of Kamen Rider W always had good memories, really, though their strengths differed. Philip remembered facts. Locations. Dates. Always an open encyclopedia, full of whatever knowledge they needed. Shoutarou remembered microexpressions, voices faltering, eyes darting. Histories, habits, routines. He's very good at remembering those things.
That's why he hadn't looked at Philip once, the day he'd had to close the Driver. The day he'd tasked himself with putting the final nail in his coffin.
His memory is good. But his vision at the time had been blurry. Some mysterious phenomenon of the Xtreme Memory, he tells himself. That's why his eyes were burning and he couldn't see very well. That's why his chest felt tight, and why he couldn't breathe. Why his blood was pounding in his ears. If he'd looked at Philip then, this mysterious phenomenon would've ruined the image he had in his head of him forever.
He glances over at the picture of Philip, Akiko, and himself, and feels his own argument to himself crumbling. Of course he'd never forget what Philip looked like. He has photographic proof, right here. And he remembers with perfect clarity the way his eyes lit up when he heard about a new topic he wanted to research, the way his hand rose to his mouth as though he wanted to chew on his fingernails—the way he'd chewed on them, the first few weeks he was at the office, until Shoutarou had told him it was a bad habit.
The way he held mugs was weird. He was always changing out the clips in his hair, but they were almost never actually intended for that purpose. His sleeves were always too long. Even in summer. Philip didn't like being cold.
There was no wake, of course. What body did they have to hold one with? Just crying, screaming, Akiko's hands uncharacteristically gentle in his hair as she let him use her shoulder, Terui standing in the corner as always and yet communicating grief perfectly with his posture, silently staring at the floor as though willing Philip to materialize in that very spot through sheer willpower. The moment that Driver closed was the last time anyone had the chance to look at him at all, and Shoutarou replays the moment in his head like a vinyl record that keeps skipping, stuck eternally on the same two horrible chords. He doesn't know if he regrets it. He doesn't know if he should regret it.
He could feel Philip's eyes on him the whole time. Did he want Shoutarou to look back at him? He never asked. He avoided seeking the answer to that question because he knew he wasn't strong enough, if the answer was yes.
It wouldn't even have been the first time he watched someone die, he reasons with himself, but seeing that even once was horrible, and Narumi Soukichi and the regrets left behind hover above him like a specter that he's not sure he wants to meet the eye of, either.
It had been a little easier to deal with those, when he had Philip to take care of. The last thing the chief had entrusted him with.
"And you couldn't even do that," Shoutarou mumbles, staring up at the ceiling.
"Hmm?" Akiko lifts her head from the other side of the agency.
"Nothing."
Held by the throat by Kamen Rider Skull, and embraced from behind by one single right arm, in bright shiny green, so tightly it feels like he's going to snap in two. That's what it feels like. The two most important people in his life haunt him even now.
He can't even blame them. They have every right to.
Shroud had asked him to ensure that Philip died with a smile, but he doesn't know if he was able to do that. He'd heard it in his goodbye, but what kind of face was he making after that? Did he hesitate too long for him to keep it up?
The sound of a mug being placed in front of him snaps him out of his thoughts. Akiko pushes it toward him a little bit. She knows it won't help (and she's wrong; he likes her coffee just fine), but she makes him coffee every day. The tiny ritual the two of them have, the smallest semblance of something normal in their lives right now, is sometimes the only thing Shoutarou has to cling to, and he gives her a tiny smile as he reaches for the mug.
"Ah—"
He pauses at the same time she does as they both realize the same thing. It's the first time he's managed one, since Philip died. Akiko flings her arms around his shoulders, squeezing him so tightly that he feels the phantom grip of her father and the charge he tasked Shoutarou with loosen up just a little.
"Here, Akiko, c'mon, look at me. Let's get those—Akiko, this is one of my nice shirts, you…!"
Her expression when he finally pulls her away by the back of her collar, tearful and bursting with joy, is one of those things that Shoutarou will remember fondly for the rest of his life.
Today he regrets that he didn't look back at Philip. Yesterday, he didn't have any regrets about it at all. He doesn't know how he'll feel about it tomorrow. Maybe these feelings will settle into something constant, and maybe they won't.
Being hard-boiled, Shoutarou thinks, is about figuring out what to do with the weight of those regrets and the ghosts they leave behind, and becoming the kind of person strong enough to always stand straight up even when the pressure seems unbearable.
His thoughts turn back to something they'd snagged on before: Shroud had asked him to keep Philip smiling until his last moments. The thing keeping him standing under the weight of today's regrets is faith; he didn't need to look at him at all.
Shoutarou has a penchant for remembering these sorts of things. And he remembers Philip was the kind of person who would have smiled.