The first thought that crosses Mido’s mind when she sees the rain-blurred newspaper headline is: Ah. Figures.
She’d known it wouldn’t be over, deep in her bones. They hadn’t said how Higuchi had died, which felt like proof enough, but even before that she’d known.
She takes the newspaper inside just in time for her phone to ring.
“Mido!” Shimura blurts on the other side as soon as she picks up. “Oh, thank god!”
“Good morning to you too,” Mido says, setting the newspaper down and entering the kitchen.
“You saw the news, right?”
“Yes.”
“God, how are you so calm,” Shimura mumbles. “I — we can’t talk about this on the phone.”
“After work?”
“How can you think about work right now!”
Sighing, Mido opens her cabinet and takes out a bottle. Hmm. Not much left. “I’ll be here waiting.”
“Thank you,” Shimura says fervently, “I’ll be over in—”
She hangs up.
-
Shimura shows up on her doorstep in less than half an hour, which is unsurprising. More surprising is that he's also dragged Namikawa in. His hair is sticking to his cheeks with rainwater, giving him an extremely sodden-cat look, which may be the one good thing about this morning so far.
“I grabbed him on the way here,” Shimura explains.
“I really didn’t want to meet either of you like this again,” Namikawa complains.
That makes three of us. “Here, slippers.” She doesn’t wait for them to kick their shoes off before heading to the living room, grabbing one extra glass on the way there.
They follow her in soon enough. Namikawa actually snickers at the bottle on the coffee table. “It’s nine in the morning.”
“It’s five p.m. somewhere,” Mido says, pouring whiskey for the three of them.
Shimura takes his glass with a quiet thank-you, but stares into the depths instead of sipping.
“We,” he declares miserably, “are fucked.”
“We aren’t dead yet,” Namikawa points out, ever the optimist.
“He only started killing again yesterday!” Shimura counters. “You think Kira is going to spare people who know how his killing works? We’re the only ones to know that he can kill without heart attacks. Maybe he’s already written us down for disease or something.”
“What is there to do?” Mido murmurs.
Shimura drags a hand down his face. “I don’t know. I was hoping you two would!”
“I agree that we shouldn’t just lie down and die,” Namikawa says. “But…”
“Do you still have L’s number, Namikawa?” Shimura asks. “He said he’d protect us, right?”
Mido almost snorts. “And how is L going to do that?”
“I do,” Namikawa says, ignoring her. “I could try, I suppose.”
They sit in silence until the call goes to voicemail.
“Alright, something else,” Shimura tries. “The newest Kira has to be human, right? Higuchi wouldn’t have acted like that if he was just being possessed or something. And if Kira’s human, then he can be stopped.”
Namikawa nods. (Their combined hope is sort of admirable and incredibly exhausting. Mido takes a sip of her whiskey.) “We have to use our knowledge against him.”
“I have a copy of the rules in my room,” Mido offers.
Shimura blinks. “I thought Ooi said to destroy all evidence?”
“I wrote it in code, obviously.” And almost thrown it into a fire on at least three different occasions, but they don’t need to be aware of that.
“We also know” — Namikawa continues ticking off on his fingers — “that Coil failed to catch L, but knows we wanted him to, and that L knows everything we do, since he was listening in to those meetings.” Mido notices Shimura shiver a little. “L thought Kira was Higuchi, and came up with a plan to catch him. But Higuchi died, and Kira is active again.”
Mido hums. Despite it all, she does like theorizing. “So, the power to kill switches to a new person as soon as the current one dies?”
“That would mean the one before Higuchi is also dead, right?” Shimura taps his fingers on his knee nervously. “Then L’s caught Kira twice by now.”
“Or the original person with Kira’s power died of other reasons. Perhaps it’s already happened multiple times. It’s not like the public would know.” Namikawa scowls. He’s more ruffled than Mido’s ever seen him, now that she thinks about it, though maybe part of that is the alcohol. “Which would mean we miscalculated.”
Shimura looks up sharply at that. “What?”
“Higuchi was under control,” Namikawa says. “He needed us for his judgments. Now that someone else entirely has the power, we’ve become disposable.”
A short silence rings. They all remember what happened to Hatori.
Shimura looks like he’s opening his mouth to speak when Mido’s phone boops with a message. “Excuse me,” she says, pulling out her phone.
It’s Ooi. There is no actual text attached to the message; all he’s sent is an image macro of a bundle of kittens clinging onto a tree branch labeled, HANG IN THERE KIDS!
Mido huffs, turning her phone around to show the others. They both crack smiles. Ooi has that effect on people.
“I texted him to see if he’d come along too,” Shimura says, “but he said he was done thinking about Kira forever.”
“I wish that were me,” Mido mutters as she types back a ‘Thank you. Appreciated.’
Shimura pauses. “Wait. If the new person is someone completely random, would that mean we’re safe? I mean, no one knows we were involved other than L, or the people working for him.”
“But we don’t know that it’s completely random,” Mido says, sending her text and then leaning forward to run her hand through her bangs. “If the power to kill is a physical object, someone on the police might have gotten it…”
“The police don’t know about us either,” Namikawa points out.
More silence.
“My luck isn’t this good,” Shimura mutters. “It just isn’t.”
Mido nods in silent agreement.
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Namikawa proclaims. Then, sounding more genuine if only due to his frustration: “I suppose there really isn’t much to be done for now. We’d be best off first gathering information on the target demographic of this new Kira.”
“And in the meantime?” Shimura asks.
“In the meantime we go to work,” Namikawa says heroically.
Mido rolls her eyes a little. “I called in sick today.”
“Ah. I did too.”
“Same here,” Shimura says.
Another silence, this one expectant.
“Fine,” Mido relents. “We can finish the bottle.”
It’s nice being complicit in something that isn’t murder. She can admit that much.
