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The dead room doesn’t require dispassion, exactly. Many think that it does, and they’re subsequently surprised to hear that Yujin Mikotoba has devoted his life to it. How strange, isn’t it, that such a kind, mild-mannered, personable man would choose to slice up the dead for a living? Yujin disagrees with these assessments of his character—but he disagrees with the assumption that they would make him unfit for mortuary work even more.
That’s not to say that dispassion makes one unfit for it either. Doctors come from and succeed from all walks of life, and for some, autopsy is a useful application of a naturally detached personality. But for Yujin, on the contrary, what drew him to the dead room was compassion. A compassion strong enough to compartmentalize—at least long enough to work. To suppress the screaming human bit of him that needs blood unspilled and skin uncut, to smooth that instinct over with the knowledge that he’s doing good in a way few others can.
This compartmentalization is something many lawyers lack. Their profession, after all, is in the humanity of crime—the whys and the wherefores, the motivations, the costs. They don’t have the practice suppressing that compassion. Blood spilled and skin cut isn’t something a lot of them can handle.
Klint van Zieks waits patiently outside the laboratory for him to finish.
When he’s on his own, the work of autopsy is slow and methodical and almost calming. When he’s on a schedule, Yujin finds himself far more easily flustered. He stitches as expediently as he can and washes up, rolling down his sleeves and fetching the report the Director of Prosecutions had requested from the files.
“Thank you for waiting, Lord van Zieks.”
Van Zieks looks up at him, and his face pales. “Doctor—” he says as he takes the report, “—your apron, if you don’t mind…”
“Oh—” Yujin flushes, darting back in to toss his bloodied smock aside. “My apologies.”
“No, mine,” says Van Zieks earnestly. “Forgive me my squeamishness. It’s been with me since childhood.”
Yujin shakes his head. “It’s not unreasonable in the least.”
Van Zieks chuckles. “Amelia teases me,” he mutters, a good-natured little curl to his lips. “She tells me I’d never cope as a woman, the way my stomach turns at a drop of blood.”
Yujin laughs. Ayame would have. After so many years he finds himself thinking of it only some of the times she’d have laughed—but the guilt of forgetting is nearly stronger than the grief of remembering.
“I imagine that’s true," he says.
“I don’t know how she can find it so funny, frankly,” says Van Zieks. He’s remembered the report in his hands, and he shakes his head in bitter, distracted amusement as he turns his attention down to it. “I loathe to see her in distress." He chuckles. "Watching her nausea these last weeks has been positively agonizing, when there’s nothing I can do to help.”
“Oh, dear—" replies Yujin in concern. “Is she well?”
Van Zieks pauses uncomfortably. It seems he’d been speaking without thinking. “Ah…”
“I’m sorry, Lord van Zieks, I don’t mean to pry.”
“No, no.” He glances away, almost shy. “We’ve just recently found out. Amelia’s expecting a child.”
“Oh!”
It hurts. But it’s hurt for so long that Yujin can keep the hurt down without effort. He smiles warmly. “That’s terrific news.”
Van Zieks looks back up to him, and smiles almost-warmly in return. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Please tell your wife that I wish her the best,” says Yujin with a small bow. He pauses. “…Would you like me to keep this to myself?”
“For a little while longer, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” says Van Zieks, lowering his head in gratitude. “We’re not planning to announce it until it’s unavoidable, so as not to…invite public disappointment, should the worst occur.”
Yujin takes a deep breath, swallows.
“There’s no use in awaiting catastrophe,” he says as evenly as he can. “Of course the possibility is worth being aware of, but I don’t believe it’s worth fearing without reason.”
“This isn’t our first pregnancy,” murmurs Van Zieks. His fingertips fidget with the corner of the autopsy report. “Two children before this, both lost before term.”
“…Ah,” says Yujin softly. “I see.”
“It was dreadful, both times. Like nothing I’d ever seen. I was tempted to talk her out of trying again, but…”
For a family in their position, the heir to a title of great consequence… Yujin imagines the pressure to secure their legacy must be potent.
“…There’s no knowing what will happen,” he says, resting a sympathetic hand on Van Zieks’s upper arm. “But you can take comfort in the fact that Lady van Zieks lives on the cutting edge of medicine. She’ll be well taken care of when the time comes, whatever time may come. I’m certain.”
Van Zieks turns back to him and smiles tightly. “Of course. I trust the doctors of London wholeheartedly.”
Yujin smiles back. “It’s an honor.”
For a moment they look at each other, and then Van Zieks straightens his spine, forcing himself back to work. “I do hope you weren’t busy, Dr. Mikotoba,” he says with a little rueful laugh. “Please excuse me.” He shakes his head. “I suppose I hadn’t realized how frayed my nerves had become, until I got to speaking of them.”
“It’s better they be spoken of than bottled up,” says Yujin.
“I suppose.” Van Zieks sighs heavily, lifting his fingers to his knit brow. “God knows I can’t speak of them to Amelia. She’d throttle me if she knew I was so terrified.”
Yujin tilts his head. “You think she’d judge your concerns for her welfare?”
“Well…less those concerns,” mumbles Van Zieks. “But…” He laughs again, weakly. “As much as I’m terrified by the thought of losing another child, or, God forbid, my wife… I find the thought of fatherhood terrifies me no less.”
Ah. Concerns that Yujin is no stranger to, that he knows well even still.
“I’m sure she’s just as terrified by motherhood,” he says. “A great many parents are, no matter how much they like to deny it.”
“Perhaps.”
Yujin clears his throat. “For what my opinion’s worth, I believe the both of you will do excellently.”
With an awkward swallow, Van Zieks looks back into his eyes. “Do you, Doctor?”
“You raised your brother, didn’t you?” asks Yujin. It’s his understanding that the former Lord van Zieks had passed away shortly into young Barok’s teenage years, and his mother sometime before that.
Van Zieks gives a quiet snort. “Barely.”
“But well,” Yujin insists. “He’s a fine young man. As fine as any child of yours will be.”
“That’s very kind.”
Van Zieks looks grateful, but unconvinced. Yujin shakes his head slowly and pats his arm. “Though I know that anxiety is difficult to dispel, even with good sense,” he says. “When my wife was expecting our daughter, it kept me awake more nights than I care to admit.”
Van Zieks blinks at him in shock.
“Your daughter?!”
Yujin doesn’t make a habit of involving his colleagues in his personal life. He doesn’t show them photographs of Susato and tell them stories, the way Genshin does with Kazuma. In a way, he doesn’t feel he has the right to. But he feels Van Zieks is owed this openness, when he’s opened his own heart to him.
“Yes,” he says. “Susato. She’s nearly six.”
“I had no idea!”
Yujin imagines he’d never have felt he could voice his fears to him if he had. He’s glad for that. And he’s pleased to see Genshin had respected his privacy, at any rate—he’s sure the likes of the judiciary have heard the entire story.
“Baby Mikotoba… What a thing!” Van Zieks shakes his head, marveling. “I suppose I’d always thought you were, well…”
“What?” asks Yujin, knowing very well what.
“Oh—nothing in particular. But you’re married?”
He supposes the English don’t consider such things, when there’s no ring to prove it. “I was.”
“Dear me—no longer?”
“She passed away,” says Yujin quietly.
“Oh, Doctor, I’m sorry…” Van Zieks reaches out for his arm now. “And your poor daughter… Recently?”
Yujin shakes his head. “No,” he says. “During the birth.”
The shame settles on Van Zieks slowly, slackening his face into open horror.
He opens his mouth once, then twice before he can figure out how to speak again. “Oh—Doctor, I… I shouldn’t have… Please forgive me—”
“Please, Lord van Zieks, there’s no need—"
“No, I shouldn’t have said such things without thinking—”
“You had no reason to think.” Yujin shakes his head. “You may have if I had been more open with you, all these years that we’ve worked together. I chose to keep that from you.”
“You’re under no obligation to inform your colleagues of your personal tragedies!”
“And my friends?”
Van Zieks looks back at him, lips tightening with tender emotion, and grips his arm.
“Not even your friends, if you’d rather not,” he says firmly. “Your business is your own.”
“…I’m grateful, then,” says Yujin. “For your trust.”
Van Zieks smiles more earnestly. “And I yours.”
Yujin swallows.
“Su-sato, did you say?” asks Van Zieks. “She’s been in Japan all this time?”
“With my mother, yes.” Yujin lowers his eyes. “I hear she’s a bright child. Happy and curious.”
“I’m certain she is.” Van Zieks smiles once more. “She must be very proud of her father.”
“Perhaps.” Yujin is sure of it, but the feeling in him isn’t pride. Susato is proud of her father because she doesn’t yet know not to be. “Perhaps if she knew me she would be prouder.”
“You’re still there for her, wherever you are,” says Van Zieks. “You’re working to make a better world for her to live in, and you’ll return to her when you have.”
Yujin laughs weakly. “You’ve been talking to Genshin.”
Fondly, Van Zieks sighs. “So I have.”
“Does he know, then? That your wife is expecting?”
He nods. “One of the few fathers I trust—given that I was unaware of yourself.”
“Few?” asks Yujin.
Van Zieks looks away. “Barok and I, as well as many of my peers, saw the staff more often than our parents in our childhoods. And many of those parents were less affectionate than a child deserves. My own father… I will not be the father that he was. I have no intention of carrying on that legacy.”
Yujin nods. “You find Genshin’s more agreeable.”
“I do,” says Van Zieks. “Detective Asogi… I value his philosophy, on the world we owe to our children. That it’s our life’s work to make a society worth inhabiting.”
“Quite right.”
He snorts gently. “And yet when I spoke to him… I couldn’t confess how fearful I was to a man like Asogi, no more than I could to a woman like my wife.” Hurriedly, he shakes his head. “Not to say that you’re any less admirable, of course—”
But more accepting of weakness. Yujin smiles. “No, I understand.”
“I’m grateful.”
“But…” Yujin hesitates. “I don’t believe you’re any less admirable either, Lord Van Zieks,” he says. “Considering how tirelessly you work for this city every day, I daresay you do more than most for the next generation.”
“…Yet not enough,” says Van Zieks. He turns his eyes back down at his report. A young man close to his brother’s age, stabbed in the gut.
Yujin sighs.
After a few moments, Van Zieks finally speaks, his voice hoarse when he does. “Do you think any of us can ever do enough, Doctor?”
Yujin looks back at him as he stares down at the pages. “…True change takes time,” he says. “We work to build a better future for the next generation, that’s true. But none of us are superhuman. We can’t expect too much of ourselves, or we'll achieve nothing at all.”
“…Yes,” says Van Zieks after a very long time. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“All we can do is what’s in our power.”
Van Zieks lowers his head in agreement, and then he clears his throat.
“I apologize for leading us off-subject,” he says. “You’ve confirmed the weapon?”
Yujin nods. “A single-edged knife, four to five inches in length.”
Van Zieks looks down at the report, turning to the corresponding page. “You’re certain?”
“Completely,” Yujin replies. “Blades tend to be simple to identify from their wounds.”
The prosecutor hums thoughtfully. “Then Scotland Yard and I have some work to do yet. Thank you, Doctor.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you for everything.”
Yujin meets his eyes, and he bows once more. “Of course.”
He turns and returns to the laboratory, preparing to get everything in order to leave himself, but Van Zieks pokes his head in the door before he goes.
“Doctor Mikotoba—one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“…Your wife,” he says. “Could I ask her name?”
He’d ask more if he had the time. He’ll ask more someday. Yujin has told Sholmes a great deal about Ayame, of course. But mainly years ago, early on. The thought of saying such things to Lord Klint van Zieks fills him with dread equal to his excitement. Fear equal to his need.
“Ayame,” he says.
“Ayame.” The name rolls awkwardly off Van Zieks’s tongue, but it’s heartwarming to hear spoken all the same. “How lovely.”
“Yes,” says Yujin, with a small smile. “It is.”