The precinct felt smaller after the Guild.
Maybe it was the ceilings — too low, too fluorescent — or the way the carpet held the stale perfume of old coffee and older arguments. Maybe it was the noise: printers chirping, phones trilling, the quiet percussion of keyboards. After nights in the underground city of drills and humming generators, it felt like stepping from a mountain gale into a crowded elevator.
Seigi set a box of case files on his desk and watched the room breathe. Two uniforms argued fondly over a soccer score. A suspect in cuffs asked for a lawyer and then for a cigarette and then for his mother. Across the aisle, a rookie swore he'd lost his login again. Normal. Predictable. Safe.
He almost missed it already.
"Morning, dead man walking." Renji Takeda slid into his chair opposite and thumped two canned coffees onto the desk. "Black for you. Because you think tasting things is for civilians."
"You're an angel," Seigi said, dry. The can hissed open. He took a swallow and felt the bitterness steady his ribs. "What's the docket?"
"Catnapping," Renji said, deadpan.
Seigi blinked. "Like… kidnapping. But a cat."
"Owner says her precious Snowball was abducted by a rival in the neighborhood association." Renji flipped open a notebook. "Threat note taped to the door made from magazine letters. I'm not kidding."
"Any demands?"
"Custody of the hydrangea planter near the recycling area and an apology for last year's Tanabata display."
Seigi stared at him, then started laughing. It felt like water on a burn. "Fine. Let's go rescue Snowball."
They canvassed the quiet rabbit-warren of alleys and balconies behind a row of apartments until Seigi found the cat two buildings over, perfectly content, sprawled like a prince in a laundry basket. The alleged abductor, an elderly man in slippers, insisted Snowball had simply "chosen truth." Ten minutes of mediation, a signed agreement about planter placement, and the cat ambled home, indifferent to their diplomacy.
"Big win," Renji said, straight-faced as they trudged back. "Tokyo sleeps safer."
"It's nice," Seigi admitted, surprised to mean it. "To fix a thing that wants to be fixed."
Renji angled him a look. "You've been… different."
"How so."
"Like you're listening to music no one else can hear." Renji's mouth twitched. "You're not doing hard drugs, are you? Because I need to revise my retirement plan if so."
Seigi snorted. "I'm still me."
Renji's phone buzzed. He glanced at it too long for a nothing message; his jaw set, then relaxed by force. "Gotta make a call. Two minutes." He slipped away toward the stairwell, voice casual for anyone listening and tight for anyone who knew him.
Seigi watched the glass door swing shut and wondered which world he was in at that moment. Then he turned as Sato's shadow fell over his desk.
"You finish writing the report on yesterday's domestic disturbance," Sato said, not waiting for hello.
"Almost," Seigi lied.
"Finish it," Sato said. "Then you can get back to stargazing." He lowered himself into the spare chair with old knees and a cigarette he wasn't lighting. "Take a walk when you're done."
They took a loop around the block in the thin noon sun. Delivery bikes skated between taxis. A woman scolded a small boy for weaponizing pigeons with bread. Sato pointed with his chin at a ramen shop and they went in.
"War stories?" Seigi asked once the broth steamed the glasses of the world and loosened his throat.
"You sure? War stories make young men heroic and old men insufferable." Sato tapped chopsticks on the bowl. "Had a case once — guy claimed his apartment was haunted. Pots moving. Doors slamming. Neighbours heard screams. We set up overnight. Turned out his ex-wife had a key to the crawlspace and a grudge against cookware."
Seigi grinned into his noodles.
"Another time," Sato went on, "a robber crawled through the bottom panel of a vending machine to steal cash. Got stuck. We found him singing to keep his courage up, half his butt hanging out next to the lemon tea slot." Sato shook his head, smile worn but present. "Point is: half of what scares people is a draft and a loose hinge. The other half is worse because it looks like a draft and a loose hinge."
"Which half am I chasing?" Seigi asked before he could stop himself.
Sato's gaze slid to him. He didn't answer. He didn't have to.
Back in the bullpen, Seigi found a pale yellow sticky note on the corner of his monitor in a precise, neat hand.
Bone density at impact sites suggests vector bias. Stop overcommitting to your right-hand lead.
PS: buy new tape for evidence bags. The cheap stuff peels. — H
He felt the corner of his mouth lift without permission.
He saw Hana an hour later in the hallway outside the lab, her hair pinned up, mask tucked under her chin. She nodded once, business-like, but her eyes softened a fraction.
"Your report from the warehouse," she said, handing him a folder that didn't need to be handed. "A few photographs didn't upload properly. Try again."
He opened it. Between crime-scene shots lay a single slip of paper the size of his palm.
Listen on the inhale. Move on the exhale.
When he looked up, she was already walking away.
The afternoon slipped into a collage of small human dramas: a missing-person report that turned out to be a university student sleeping at a net café to avoid exams; a street-side argument about who owned a battered bicycle that neither could ride; a pickpocket who returned a wallet on the condition that the owner stop carrying it "in the stupidest pocket evolution ever invented." Seigi took statements, nodded where needed, made the machine of the city oil itself.
He felt good at it. It felt… less than enough.
At his desk, he lifted his coffee and felt the rim quiver against his fingers — the tiniest hint of that other current — and set it down like it might betray him. He tried the listening Hana had written: inhale, exhale. The hum under everything brightened like a wire heating in winter.
Not here, he told himself. Not this world. Not the fluorescent one.
Renji came back around four, hair mussed like he'd run a hand through it too many times. "Snowball filed an appeal," he said, sliding a photo onto Seigi's desk: the cat now asleep on the other neighbour's veranda like a furry judge. "Ready for a second mediation?"
Seigi laughed despite himself. "Charge him rent."
Renji's smile didn't move his eyes. "If only."
They ran errands across town — a witness who needed coaxing, a shopkeeper who decided to tell the truth after three cups of green tea, a quick stop where Sato asked them to drop off a file and ended up staying long enough to school a rookie on the art of writing a report that didn't get you eaten alive by the prosecutor's office. The city breathed around them, oblivious to all the undergrounds and whispers and threads.
On the way back, Seigi's mother called.
"You sound tired," she said, skipping hello.
"I'm eating," he lied.
"Eating is not sleeping."
He smiled into the traffic. "How's Dad?"
"Shouting at the television in a way I'm sure is scientifically proven to lower the team's chances." She paused. "You're careful at work?"
"Always."
"Good," she said, and the word held more weight than it should. "Come by soon. I'll make too much food."
He promised he would. After the call ended, he stared at the dark rectangle of his phone and felt the world he'd grown in press against the world he was entering. The seam held. Barely.
Near shift's end, Sato pinned him with a look across the bullpen. "Walk," he said again.
They stopped in the alley behind the station where the smokers pretended not to judge each other's brands. Sato didn't light one.
"You're straddling a fence," Sato said. "Eventually fences make choices for you."
Seigi met his eyes. "I can do both."
"Kid," Sato said, not unkindly, "no one can."
A beat of silence stretched. It was broken by a muffled clang farther up the alley — a bottle rolling in shadow. Seigi turned instinctively. Nothing moved.
When he looked back, Sato was watching him, understanding laying wrinkles deeper across his face. "If you're going to jump," he said, "make sure you're jumping because you decided to. Not because someone pushed."
"Is that what you did?" Seigi asked.
Sato's mouth bent, not quite a smile. "I was never as good at choosing as you think." He patted Seigi once on the shoulder, the touch heavy with a hundred unspoken things. "Go home."
At home, Seigi ate instant curry over rice and watched the lights of the city paint the window in a language he didn't read yet. He thought of the training hall's bright hum and the way Aya's hands had warmed bruises into quiet. He thought of Hana's note and Riku's barked laughter and Kurogami's voice like a blade across the chest.
On the cusp, he told himself. That was what it felt like. One toe, the smallest one, hooking the edge of a cliff before you leaned into the fall.
His phone buzzed.
Tomorrow, 22:00. South entrance. Don't eat before. — H
He smiled despite the day's weight. Then he set the alarm for dawn, because he had to be two people for a little longer, and fell asleep without dreaming.