The rain began to fall as Arata and Hana pulled up to the Tokyo Detention House. It was a monolith of concrete and barred windows that seemed to absorb the gray light of the afternoon. This wasn't the clean, polished wood of the courtroom; this was where the system kept its "mistakes" until they could be properly buried.
"Are you sure about this, Arata-san?" Hana asked, clutching her tablet to her chest. She looked smaller under the shadow of the prison walls. "A detective killing his partner? The police union is already calling for the death penalty. If we fail this... the firm's reputation won't just be 'zero-percent.' It'll be extinct."
Arata stepped out of the car, adjusting his collar against the wind. "The firm's reputation is already a joke to everyone in this city, Hana. We don't have anything to lose. But Detective Yatsurugi? He's losing his life every second he stays in there for a crime he says he didn't commit."
They passed through three security checkpoints, the heavy magnetic locks clicking behind them like the teeth of a trap. Finally, they were led into a small, sterile booth divided by thick plexiglass.
A moment later, Sato Yatsurugi was led in.
He didn't look like a murderer. He looked like a man who had been hollowed out from the inside. His detective's trench coat had been replaced by a drab jumpsuit, and his eyes the eyes of a man who had spent twenty years hunting criminalswere bloodshot and unfocused.
He picked up the phone. Arata did the same.
"You're the kid," Yatsurugi said, his voice raspy. "The one who found the coins in the vending machine. I read about you in the morning papers. You've got guts, I'll give you that. Or maybe you're just too young to know when to run."
"I'm the one who's going to get you out of here, Detective," Arata said, leaning in. "But I can't do that if you keep lying to me."
Yatsurugi's grip on the receiver tightened. "I haven't lied. I told the Internal Affairs rats everything. We were in the Evidence Room. We were logging the heroin from the Shinjuku bust. I went to the corner to get a fresh stack of bags, heard a bang, and when I turned around... Kaito was on the floor. My gun was smoking in his hand. No, wait... it was on the floor next to him."
"The police report says your fingerprints were the only ones on the trigger," Arata countered, his voice sharp. "And the security footage shows you were the only two people who entered that room. No one left. No one came in. The door is biometric. It only opens for your thumbprint or Kaito's."
"I know how it looks!" Yatsurugi hissed, slamming his free hand against the plexiglass. The sound echoed through the silent room. "But I loved that man like a brother. Why would I kill him in a room I couldn't escape? I'm a detective, not an idiot."
"Then explain the smoke," Arata pressed. "You said you heard a bang. Did you see a flash? Did you smell anything unusual? Think, Detective. If no one entered the room, the killer was either a ghost or the room itself."
Yatsurugi closed his eyes, his forehead leaning against the glass. "There was... a smell. Not just gunpowder. It smelled like burnt sugar. For just a second. And the lights... they flickered right before the shot."
Arata signaled to Hana, who immediately began typing on her tablet. Burnt sugar. Power surge. Evidence Room 4.
"One more thing," Yatsurugi whispered, looking up. His eyes were filled with a sudden, sharp fear. "Nosaku came to see me this morning. Before you arrived."
Arata felt a jolt of electricity go down his spine. "The Prosecutor was here? Why?"
"He didn't offer a plea deal," Yatsurugi said. "He just stood there in that red suit and told me to look at the clock on the wall. He said, 'Every minute you spend in here, Arata Ōgi gets closer to realizing he can't save you. And when he realizes that, I'm going to make sure he goes down with you.'"
Arata felt the weight of the 900 cases pressing into his chest. This wasn't just a trial anymore. Nosaku was using Case #2 as a snare. He wasn't just trying to convict a detective; he was trying to destroy the "Zero-Percent Lawyer" before the legend could even begin.
Arata stood up, hanging the receiver back on the hook. He looked at Yatsurugi and gave a single, firm nod.
"Let him try," Arata said, though the glass didn't carry the sound.
As they walked back to the car, Hana looked at the notes on her screen. "Arata-san, the 'burnt sugar' smell... that's a common byproduct of certain industrial chemical reactions. But there shouldn't be anything like that in an Evidence Room unless..."
"Unless something in that room wasn't evidence," Arata finished, his eyes tracking a black sedan following them from a distance.
"Hana, we aren't going back to the office. We're going to the crime scene. I don't care if the police have it cordoned off. If we're going to win Case #2, we have to find the person who wasn't there."