AU info

[leftbehindagain]

On Naoki’s first day of high school, his sister left school early and discovered a dead body on her way home. On the second day, she was ambushed by an obnoxious reporter, and barely obscured when the interview aired on TV. On the third day, she left with a police officer to talk about the body again… and never came home.

On the day before school started, Kanji ran an errand for his mom by the gas station. He ended up telling Naoki about his extremely weird week, and Naoki decided investigating it was a better use of his time than being places he didn’t really want to be (and no one cared if he wasn’t), so they went a-poking. It only got weirder from there.

Naoki’s still Hanged Man. It suits him; he has a tendency to overthink things if left to his own devices, and he still starts in a limbo of not really caring about his family’s store but not really being held accountable to anything else, either. Having the investigation to focus on does help him a great deal, though. It’s easier for him to tune out the pity visits, filial-piety lectures, and everyone at school walking on eggshells around him, since he knows he’s doing something that matters and is helping him find peace with Saki’s death. (He also doesn’t consider quitting school nearly as strongly, and still finds his way to genuine interest in the store. On the other hand, going to Junes isn’t as big of a deal, since they have to do that every time they rescue someone. Aiya is clearly the superior special headquarters, though.)

He does have a few spare pieces of information rattling around his brain – such as the fact that Saki left the house with a cop, not Namatame – but it’ll be some time before they’re really useful. In the meantime, he gets to beat shit up. It’s cathartic.

All in all, reconnecting with Kanji and having something useful to do both do him a world of good.