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“Where are we going?”
The world is vast. and large. and significantly bigger than Japan. and Yui Samidare hasn’t seen most of it. To be fair, she hasn’t seen most of Japan. Her detective services normally keep her closer to her hometown, which means she’s usually much more familiar with the locale and places where lost children might be hiding – and the dangers that might arise if one of them was kidnapped. The further away she gets, the less specific her information gets. She knows standard, typical detective know-how, but she knows less about everything else.
And here, on the other side of the world, Yui doesn’t even know anything about the culture.
(Kyoko said her onee-sama shouldn’t take this job. Kyoko was probably right. Kyoko had the habit of being right about a lot of things where being a detective was concerned.
However.
Kyoko was frequently wrong where human interactions were concerned. She was good about predicting and unraveling murder mysteries – and the puzzles of them (the different potential motives, the way the murder occurred, the likely murderer pool until it was narrowed down to the actual murderer (or murderers, as the case occasionally was) – but she wasn’t as good with disappearing persons, and she was less good with lost children. Sure, kidnapped children were often the victim of someone they already knew, but that wasn’t always the case, and it was vital to find them within a certain amount of time, or else the likelihood of finding them at all dropped significantly.
Kyoko likely said her onee-sama shouldn’t take this job because Rantaro’s sisters disappeared a long time ago, and even if she could unwind the thread of who kidnapped them and where they went, it would be hard to find what happened in the days afterward – years afterward, in some cases.
There are better detectives. (Kyoko is one of them.)
There are better kidnapping detectives. (Lico could be considered one of them, since he’s one of the best of the best.)
But Rantaro came to her.
Yui still doesn’t know why.)
Rantaro holds back one of the branches covered in large fronds. Sweat trickles down his dark skin and flattens his mossy green hair to his forehead. He meets Yui’s eyes. “Didn’t you say the evidence led into the forest?” His voice is so gently inquisitive, not accusatory in the slightest.
“Yes.” Yui says it without hesitation, but she still runs through everything she knows – everything they’ve learned – and comes to the same conclusion. They’d found this little village while trying to track down one of Rantaro’s sisters, and when one of the villagers heard who she was – well, less who and more what – they’d given her another case to solve.
(Kyoko would’ve told her onee-sama not to take that case, too. Sure, Yui might be more likely to solve a missing persons case when the victim only disappeared a few hours ago, but she is supposed to be on another case. She is supposed to be helping Rantaro Amami look for his sisters. It doesn’t matter that his case is harder and less likely to be solved, especially by someone of Yui’s skill. It matters that he is her client – that he was her client first – and that his case should take priority.
Fortunately for Yui, Kyoko isn’t here.
More fortunately for Yui, Rantaro is like her. He wants to find the missing girl, too.)
Yui steps forward and pushes back another branch, another long frond. Sweat prickles her brow, but she knows better than to wipe it away. It won’t do any good. It’ll just come back. She licks her lips and takes the lead. Then she pauses, leans down to the ground, and brushes her fingers along a footprint left in the soft ground. Her lips curve. “This is fresh.”
Rantaro bends next to her, grips his chin, examines it, and then nods. “It’s small enough.”
It could be hers.
“We’ll find her.” Yui glances up and meets his eyes again. She gives another little nod. “We’ll find her.”
Rantaro’s gaze grows steely, and he glances up, staring further into the forest. “I know.”
(Sometimes Rantaro’s determination scares her. But Yui will never tell him that.
If her sister was still missing, she would feel the same way.)