Kazuya's and Inuko's Punishment

“I can’t believe either of you!” Chief Akechi Shinemori shouted at the young detectives.

He paced up and down in his office, fuming. Kazuya and Inuko stood before his desk with hung heads, guilty and ashamed. Inuko even had her white ears and tail slumped. When they stormed the yakuza nightclub last night, they didn’t suspect that the surveillance cameras would record their movements. Now, the Kagenashi Clan of the fox yakuza held those recordings against them.

“Your father and I, and many officers before us, have been chasing those foxes for years, Hattori!” Akechi glared at Kazuya and emitted fumes from his nostrils – the quirk of his Explosion Magic. “Now, we can no longer pursue them openly since they have a kompromat against us. Do you realise how difficult it will be to monitor them without their noticing? If they release that footage, our whole department will be sacked!” He slammed his fists on the table. “I can’t even begin to think of a proper punishment for the two of you!”

Inuko yelped at Chief Shinemori’s rage. Kazuya stared at the floor, with his brows knitted and his nostrils flaring. He clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Chief Shinemori noticed Kazuya’s remorse, so his frown lifted. He sighed, retook his seat and reclined on the back of his chair.

“Hattori,” he said quietly, “do you remember your father’s last message to me?”

Kazuya’s eyes widened. Inuko pricked up her ears, too. She knew Hattori Senpai’s parents died in a fire. The Paranormal Department believed that the kumichō of the fox yakuza, Genzaburō, had killed Detective Jin Hattori. Inuko figured that his last words to Chief Shinemori should be interesting.

“Father wrote, ‘All are one’,” Kazuya said. “That was his last message.”

“Indeed.” Chief Shinemori nodded. “I showed it to you after you graduated from the Police Academy and vowed to help me hunt down Genzaburō Kagenashi. Your father’s message likely concerned him, but we don’t know what it means. We’ve been trying to crack this puzzle for years. And now…” He joined his hands and pierced Kazuya’s eyes. “What are we going to do? – You nearly destroyed our chances.”

Kazuya’s muscles tensed. Guilt gnawed at his heart.

“I… I’ll think of something, Sir,” he said, his voice shaking. “I…”

“No, you won’t,” Chief Shinemori replied calmly. “Not for a month.”

“A month?!” Inuko gasped, her tail standing upright. “You mean…”

Chief Shinemori dug into the folders on his table. Kazuya glimpsed the Takahata case among them – the fire incident in his neighbourhood last night, killing a family of four. Kazuya drove past the scene and noticed that the fire was similar to the one that killed his parents ten years ago, so the culprit must be the same yōkai. Chief Akechi Shinemori’s son, Jin, was on the scene, but he didn’t allow Kazuya to investigate.

Seeing the case folder on Chief Shinemori’s table, Kazuya’s anger towards Jin Shinemori resurfaced. Chief Shinemori put the folder aside, meaning that he wouldn’t entrust it to Kazuya. It made Kazuya’s blood boil, but he knew he had only himself to blame. If he hadn’t messed up with the yakuza, Chief Shinemori might’ve given him the desired case. Now, he was likely choosing an insignificant job for him and Inuko. And he had said, a whole month… Working that long on dull cases would be hell, Kazuya figured.

Inuko had the same thoughts. She stared at Chief Shinemori’s folders and prayed that their new case wouldn’t require them to look for some yōkai drug dealers. She’d been doing that kind of work when she was first hired. She still remembered the reek of those herbs and couldn’t understand how people smoked them. But the way Yukihiro Kagenashi smoked the cigars of burning wisteria yesterday, nothing surprised Inuko anymore.

Chief Shinemori extracted a thick red folder from the bunch and opened it before Kazuya and Inuko. To their dismay, the first file contained newspaper pages from 1925.

“This will be your new assignment,” Akechi Shinemori said. “We usually don’t give such complicated cases to youngsters. But,” he added mockingly, raising his eyebrows, “considering your superior talents, which made you confront the strongest yōkai crime syndicate alone, I suppose it’ll be a piece of cake for the two of you.”

Kazuya and Inuko went red at the Chief’s passive-aggressive jab. They turned the pages of the folder. In the first file, 1925’s newspapers reported about four missing women aged fifteen. The next file contained newspapers from 1935, reporting the discovery of mutilated bodies of the same women, with only their heads left untouched. The other parts were all bones, chewed out as though a beast had eaten them. The next file contained the newspapers from 1945, then 1955, and so on, until the modern day, 2025. Each file reported missing women from fifteen to eighteen years old, found a decade later as head and bones. It was a gruesome case.

Inuko shuddered at the photographs. She noticed a peculiarity about the way the bones were chewed. The fang pattern belonged to the relatives of her canine kind.

“A fox!” she snarled, the fur on the back of her tail standing up.

“A powerful one, at that… judging by the crimson flame trace,” Kazuya muttered, observing the reports with his Absolute Sight Magic. His pupils dilated to detect yōkai aura. These flames are like back then. He thought, remembering the death of his parents. Unlike that yōkai, this one didn’t rip out the women’s hearts but ate them whole. Still, maybe it’s the same fox, acting differently to erase his trail? – Genzaburō…

His heart pounded with newfound curiosity about the century-old case, now that he suspected that it might be linked to his parents’ deaths. He looked at June 2025’s report, which was only a month ago. The photograph showed the head and bones of a girl abducted in 2015 when she was sixteen.

“Poor girl…” Inuko whispered, covering her mouth with her hands. “S-She looks Miss Hattori’s age!”

“She was sixteen in 2015, so Kasane’s age, indeed.” Kazuya frowned. “But this bastard fox seems to kidnap only teenagers, so Kasane’s safe.” He turned to Chief Shinemori. “If we take the century-old pattern into account, the fox might attack again this month. And… Sir, the foxfire traces are similar to the fire from that day.” He gulped, trying to muster his courage, and dared ask, “C-Could it be the Kagenashi Clan?”

“I gave you this case to take your eyes off those damned yakuza for once!” Akechi Shinemori shouted, emitting fumes from his nostrils. “I hate Genzaburō as much as you, but he and his thugs have a moral code. They don’t eat humans! As for the fire, it may be similar, but the perpetrator’s methods in this case are different. This fox has only been targeting teenage girls, as you said, and eating them whole. It must be a rogue, whose streak likely goes beyond a century. But we have no documented cases before 1920 when our department was established.”

Kazuya sighed. Chief Shinemori was right. Due to his trauma, he’d been irrationally associating every flame yōkai’s crime to his parents’ deaths. The Takahata murder in his neighbourhood was, undoubtedly, perpetrated by his parents’ killer, but this century-old case was different.

“S-So… you believe the two of us can solve this case alone?” Inuko asked the Chief, nervously wagging her tail.

“No.” Chief Shinemori’s lips formed a vile smile. “I gave it to you as a punishment. You’ll wrack your brains over it for a month, and then, I’ll set you on your regular cases. Good luck!”

Thus, the young detectives were dismissed from the Chief’s office. Akechi Shinemori transferred all the necessary files to their emails because neither Kazuya nor Inuko wanted to stay in the office on Saturday.

“This is so unfair!” Inuko pouted, walking in the corridor. “A century-old case nobody could solve! I’d rather the Chief had ordered me to look for drug dealers again.”

“Drug dealers?” Kazuya chuckled, walking beside her. “That must’ve been tough.”

“It was stinky.” Inuko laughed.

They emerged in the parking lot. Inuko was about to leave, but Kazuya’s voice, low and timid, stopped her.

“Miss Takeda!” he called.

“Yes?” Inuko turned around, her ears and tail set upright.

“Uhm…” Kazuya scratched the back of his head. “I… It was my fault you got into this scrape, and I owe you for saving me in the yakuza nightclub, so… W-Would you like to go grab some ice cream?” His face went red like a tomato. “I mean, just the two of us… like, a date.”

There, he said it. His heart throbbed as he eyed Inuko, afraid she’d be puzzled or disgusted. But her cheeks flushed crimson, and she wagged her fluffy white tail.

“Oh, Hattori Senpai…” she whispered, tears glimmering in her golden, canine eyes.

“M-Miss Takeda?” Kazuya widened his eyes. She hates the idea so much that she’s crying?!

“I… I’d love to!” Inuko smiled, wiping her eyes. I never thought Hattori Senpai would ask me out! He’s so popular, while I… Every guy calls me a ‘mutt’. She sniffled. Mom was right. There are good men in this world.

Kazuya sighed in relief. Inuko wasn’t upset with him but happy. He smiled and invited her into his car. Chief Shinemori might’ve punished him for yesterday’s folly, but that venture also got him a date with this gorgeous girl. Kazuya was reassured that in life, ups and downs came in pairs.