Chapter Text
It was like looking up from the ocean floor. Swathes of darkness, subcutaneous protrusions of light in thick watery skin.
His head was swimming. Blink, and the waves rush back into his eye sockets. Body was a dull weight, twisted at his midsection like a cheese cloth.
The metal was cold. Water drops pricking his skin all over. There was Hamura behind him, voice the cadence of a jagged hand saw cutting through a block of wood. There were other voices too.
He thought he broke his nose. The sound of a scuffle. The chair he sat on was sinking into the earth, a hot ball of lead burning through sponge.
His eyes were slipping shut when the noises stopped.
“Kaito-san…”
There was Sugiura’s red hair. Grey for Higashi’s suit. They stood there, looking at each other a couple paces away.
Arms hoisted him upwards. Gravity got a million times stronger.
Kaito needed help. They needed to help him.
“Higashi-san, help me carry him.”
No, they weren't…
“We can let Matsugane-san handle it.”
He needed a hospital. He needed medical attention now.
“We don't have time for this,” Higashi snapped in the taut, angry voice he only reserved for Yagami.
Darker, murkier. He couldn't do anything to stop it. Frigid body dragged into the pale, cold sunlight. He closed his eyes and sank deeper, deeper down.
***
Yagami opened his eyes to the cold, foreign square lights of a hospital ceiling. It had been a long time since he sought medical attention for any kind of injury.
He studied his environment for clues. Blue hospital gown. An IV drip, so he lost a lot of blood. He raised his arm and found a sharp stabbing pain in his side, from a knife wound, maybe? How many hours had passed?
He still had to question Hamura. And what about Kaito? What became of him? Sugiura or Higashi mentioned Matsugane-san, was he there too?
He didn’t have the time or luxury to sit here. He pried away the various tubes and wires attached to him. He used the wall to drag himself up, thankful that his pain was half of what it would be without medication.
A change of clothes was awaiting him, folded on a chair at the far side of the room. Mafuyu must have stopped by then. A lot of his belongings were left at her place, and he hadn't seen that t-shirt in so long it must've forgotten his name.
He felt feverish and numb. He imagined he looked a lot worse, so much that it was a miracle he made it out of the hospital with no one stopping him. The cold night air scalded his face.
Would Hamura still be at the abandoned building? If Sugiura and Higashi were able to extract him then they might’ve taken care of him. In that case he must be in their custody somewhere.
Higashi was leaning against a pillar, smoking. He turned his head when he heard someone coming, and leapt in his suit when he realised it was Yagami.
His name was the last thing he heard before crumbling to the ground.
***
He was in a hospital room. Once again he was unaware of how much time had passed. He tried not to panic over how long Hamura and Kaito have been out of eyeshot, how long they had until The Mole killed again and whether the sensitive window where Yagami could gather information was closing. This whole thing was wrecking his investigation, and at this stage it could ruin it all together.
Saori was with him this time. He sat up, fairly certain he was attached to more wires than before. “There any news on Kaito?”
“Shut up,” she said.
Yagami did for a second, more because he was taken back by her saying something like that.
“I need to know he's okay,” he continued. ”He was in the abandoned building with Hamura. He needs to be taken to a hospital.”
“He's in the hospital.”
Higashi walked in, gingerly closing the door behind him. He and Saori immediately started exchanging short whisper bursts that slowly scaled in aggression. Yagami loudly cleared his throat, silencing them.
“Higashi, where's Hamura?”
Higashi gave him his usual sour look and folded his arms. “Cabaret Honmaruen. The Kyorei clan are watching him.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“You almost painted the floor with your brains the second you left the hospital. You're not going anywhere.”
“It's important. I'm the only one who knows how to get the info I need out of him.” Yagami wished he had Kaito with him, like a carrot on a stick to force Higashi to cooperate.
After mentally boring a hole in Yagami’s head he relented. “Alright,” he kissed his teeth. “One second.”
Higashi called someone, who gave the phone to Shioya who put it on speaker. “He can hear you.”
Yagami asked questions and under the threat of torture Hamura recounted his twenty year-long business relationship with The Mole. The time came when hit jobs became the most lucrative business for their family, and that got them into bed with Shono and the Ministry of Health, when they needed victims abducted and people silenced.
“He's on his way now,” said Hamura, bemused.
“You think this mess isn't gonna affect you? If I was The Mole you'd be the first person I'd kill,” Yagami made no attempt to stave his rising contempt. “I don't know how you can think so highly of yourself, dirtying Matsugane-san’s name and selling out the family. Kaito never would've stooped so low.”
Hamura just laughed. Then there was chaos, shuffling, erratic yelling and the click of the line being shut.
“The Mole,” Yagami whispered. Dread replaced oxygen in his blood. They'd all seen the monstrous things The Mole was capable of, but worse was that he and Kaito weren't there to control the situation. All the people he’s dragged into this and the danger he's barely avoided, and disaster was striking, despite all his attempts to thwart it.
“I have to go,” Higashi snatched his phone out of Yagami’s hand. Before rushing out the door he turned back to him, “The building’s full of Kyorei guys. Matsugane-san will be fine.” The latch clicked shut.
Yagami looked forward, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I have to go. You can't stop me.”
Saori turned a page in a book he didn't know she had. “You physically can't, no matter how much you want to.”
“This is my case,” the beeping of the heart monitor betrayed his accelerating pulse. “Kaito and I are the only ones who can stop him.”
“The police can,” she bristled.
“They might be in on it,” Yagami said, remembering how Kuroiwa kept showing up wherever they were.
“Of course you'd say that,” Saori muttered.
Yagami began ripping away the electrode heads on his chest like they were hydras. “Stop it.” Saori said, her voice the least monotone he's ever heard it.
He chose to act like she wasn't there. He kept going, entranced, tape ripping, ripping, ripping like grafts of skin and as he did the machine beeped louder like a man diving off a building into a screaming flat line-
“STOP IT!”
Yagami looked up to find Saori had shot up from her seat. She yelled so loud it made the room echo. He hoped that didn't mean some nurses were going to bust in here and sedate him.
She went near him to turn off the heart monitor, then backed into her previous position.
“Yagami, there's something I haven't told you,” she started. “Because you’d never believe me but it's true.”
“What is it?”
She went quiet for a second, just looking at him. Her lips were slightly parted.
He was about to repeat himself, and then she said “Kaito.” Finally, he thought, someone was willing to talk about him.
“Kaito…” she said slowly, while Yagami stared at her like he was looking through a microscope. “Kaito isn't real.”
He stared at her some more, and then he laughed. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”
“I'm serious.”
“It doesn't sound like you are,” he replied, offended.
Saori didn't say anything. Then she said, “If you were there to save him, why are you the one who's injured?”
“Hamura got one over me.”
“And shot you in the stomach? The same place you said he shot Kaito?”
“He’s a man of habits,” Yagami answered. “People can get shot in the same place.”
“What about the chair?”
“The chair?”
“The one you were strapped to, and that you said Kaito was strapped to, in the center of the room.”
Yagami wasn't sure why she knew all of this, and it was the most unnerving thing to him about this barrage of nonsense. Some details seemed to come from him, which he could imagine he told her in brief bouts of lucidity while he was unconscious, but it wasn't everything. It sounded like she was building a case, and cases he knew were built off evidence, and through investigation.
“How could you both be in the same chair at once?”
His memory was hazy, but he could remember hands on him, Sugiura and Higashi’s hands, tendrils of myosin pulling him up. “Hamura could've untied him then tied me to it…”
“Why would he do that? He'd risk letting Kaito get away. It would be easier to tie you up on the floor.”
“Unless Kaito passed out from his injuries,” though Yagami was also injured and on the verge of unconsciousness so tying him up on the floor remained the more convenient option.
Maybe Hamura wanted to hide Kaito, so he'd have the leverage of two hostages, thus motivating him to switch Kaito out for Yagami. It made sense with the memories of him calling out for Higashi and Sugiura to help, and them tending to him like Kaito wasn't even there.
He told Saori as much. She shook her head. “Nobody's ever seen him. Nobody's ever talked to him.”
“Yes, they have,” said Yagami, annoyed.
“No they haven't,” Saori pressed back. “You just think that.”
“Why are you telling me this?” He began raising his voice.
“I don't know, why am I?” She walked towards him in her anger. “What do I stand to gain from this, Yagami!?”
“I don't know! Maybe this is a joke! Maybe you're trying to raise my spirits, or maybe you're mad that I got myself hurt and this is payback. You were acting pissed off when I saw you here!” He paused to catch his breath. “Or maybe… maybe you did this to distract me from going to Honmaruen.”
He heard the door open and saw someone standing near it in scrubs. Saori pointed to him.
“He’s delirious. He's ripping out his IV, he wants to run again.”
Yagami tried to leap out of his bed but it was too late. The nurse was already there, holding him down, and more were rushing in.
“No!”
He saw the syringe prepared out of the corner of his eye, and felt the pinch of the needle next. Pictures started overlapping each other, blurring and multiplying. He felt his muscles giving away, and closed his eyes.
“Damn… it, Saori…”
A few hours would pass before he’d be awake to open them again.