Detective Yamamoto Meets the Press Part 1

MONDAY

Satoshi had looked forward to an easy start to the week. He had looked forward to a slow morning at the detective's office, as people didn't normally have cases first thing on a Monday morning. He had even looked forward to catching up with the detective, even though her weekend activities would invariably have consisted of drinking and reading comic books. He was not, however, looking forward to having a camera and a microphone shoved into his face as soon as he answered the door.

“Good morning, Detective Yamamoto!” said the person holding the microphone uncomfortably close to Satoshi's face. “I'm Tomoko Tachibana, independent reporter. I understand you recently solved a case involving a cheating spouse. Would you care to comment?” Satoshi looked from the microphone to the video camera, and finally to the woman holding the microphone. She was of average height and build with orange hair tied back in an approximation of a professional ponytail. She wore a pair of large, rectangular lensed glasses and a cheap, dark colored suit and skirt, no doubt in an attempt to appear professional. None of that was grossly objectionable to Satoshi, but her expression of gung-ho excitement, combined with her mistaking him for the detective had started rubbing him the wrong way.

Satoshi mentally debated with himself. The angel on his right shoulder plead with him to call attention to the misunderstanding and set things straight. The devil on his left shoulder cunningly instructed him to shut the door in the woman's face, as that is what all media scum deserve. Satoshi opted to compromise.

“I'm not Detective Yamamoto, thanks!” he said before retreating past the threshold and moving to shut the door. Before he could fully close it, he saw that the journalist had swiftly stuck her foot in, preventing the door's latch from catching.

“Oh, please!” she said, slightly muffled by being on the far side of the door. “Can I just talk to the detective? It'll only take a moment!” There was something slightly pitiful about the way she plead and Satoshi felt a pang of guilt. While he and Tomoko worked in different fields, he could imagine himself all too well trying to jam a door open to demand a meeting with a publishing agent. Perhaps against his better judgment, Satoshi stopped pushing on the door and opened it again.

“Alright,” he relented. “Let's make this quick. The detective is a very busy person.”

“You won't regret this, um...” said Tomoko, pausing as it occurred to her that if he wasn't the detective, then she didn't have the slightest clue as to who he was.

“Satoshi,” he replied. “I'm the detective's assistant.”

“You won't regret this, Satoshi!” Tomoko said cheerfully. “I just need to get a few quotes for my publication and then I'll be out of your hair.” Satoshi led the intrepid reporter into the agency. He stopped just short of walking into the detective's office and subtly blocked the way. Knocking on the door jamb, he called out to the detective.

“Detective Yamamoto, you have a visitor: a reporter looking for a quote.”

“Okay, sure,” replied the detective, with a disinterested tone of voice that told Satoshi she was far more engrossed in whatever she was reading. Satoshi started walking into the detective's office followed closely by the journalist. Once there was enough room to maneuver, Tomoko stepped around Satoshi and rushed over to the detective's desk, brandishing both her camera and microphone.

“Detective Yamamoto,” started Tomoko before she fully registered the detective's appearance and halted. As was her wont, Detective Yamamoto was wearing about as little as she usually did and had propped her feet up on her desk. If that weren't enough the detective had apparently been very thirsty judging by the three new empty cans that had appeared since the start of the day.

“What do you want?” said the detective. Satoshi knew she didn't intend to be rude, but her tone of voice certainly implied she didn't really want to be answering questions from anyone less than a paying client. Tomoko seemed to be at a loss for words as she stood with mouth agape, camera still trained on the detective, and microphone hanging limply in her hand. Then she snapped back into professional journalist mode. She turned her camera so that it was focused on her.

“This just in,” she said, as though she was a news anchor who had just received a bulletin. “Local detective Hanako Yamamoto, despite having a sterling reputation for sagacity and attention to detail, is in fact nothing more than a drunken nudist as evidenced by this footage taken in the field! Detective, do you have any comment?” She turned the camera back on the detective, who by now had looked up from her comic book and had tactfully crossed her legs.

“I'm not a nudist,” complained the detective, lifting up her hole-riddled shirt slightly so that the camera could have a better view. Satoshi cringed. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew precisely where this was going, and he didn't like it. Although Tomoko Tachibana had arrived under a reasonable pretense, any reporting she now intended to do would bear more resemblance to a hit piece than anything else.

“Alright, time to leave,” said Satoshi, interspersing himself between the detective and the reporter. He started to walk forward, forcing Tomoko to start walking back.

“You can't interfere!” complained Tomoko. “You're meddling with the free press!”

“Go be the free press somewhere else,” said Satoshi as he directed Tomoko outside and shut the door behind her. He stalked back to the detective's office and sat down heavily at his desk. The detective offered an expletive-laden observation regarding the woman Satoshi had just ejected, her profession, and her parentage.

“I agree,” he said, “but I'm sure we've seen the last of her.”

~~~

“Here you go, ma'am,” said the detective, handing a small, anxious dog over to an elderly woman. The woman reached out and hugged the dog to her body, whereupon it began yapping. Satoshi got a slight impression of why exactly the dog went missing to begin with, but kept the thought to himself.

“Oh, thank you detective,” crooned the old woman. “I don't know what I'd do without Gingersnap. How much do I owe you?”

“It's all in a day's work,” replied the detective, trying to affect an air of calm certainty. Sure the detective seemed calm and collected now, but Satoshi knew that this was a facade. The detective's earlier run-in with the press had irritated her and the search for this poor elderly woman's dog took more effort than either of them wanted to admit.

“Congratulations, detective,” said a third voice. “You found this missing dog after five hours and thirty-six minutes. Do you think you would have found the dog sooner had you not consumed four beers before nine o'clock this morning?” Slowly, Detective Yamamoto and Satoshi turned to find themselves staring down a camera held by none other than Tomoko Tachibana. The old lady, who had, up until now, been prepared to sing the praises of Detective Yamamoto, now looked at her with the expression of a disappointed grandmother whose family had done something uncouth at the dinner table. She took a step away from the detective just on the off chance that the alcohol was contagious. Detective Yamamoto seemed to be on the verge of giving a very choice comment regarding the microphone and where precisely Tomoko could stick it when Satoshi insinuated himself between the two women again.

“No comment,” he said, doing as good a job to block the camera's view as possible.

“Fair enough,” replied Tomoko. “Next question: detective, now that you're wearing more clothing, have you put on underwear or are you still not wearing any?” Satoshi risked a look at the detective, and for the first time he could remember, she looked incredibly embarrassed; the brilliant redness of her face was testament to that. The old lady, now nowhere to be seen, had presumably combusted spontaneously due to the scandal of the question.

“No comment,” said Satoshi again. Seeing that the detective was clearly in distress, he grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her along while blocking the view of the camera with his other hand.

~~~

The detective had decided to close shop early. The aggravation the journalist had induced set the detective in an exceptionally foul mood, the likes of which even Satoshi had never seen. The closest thing he could recall involved one morning where the detective suffered from an especially bad hangover following a particularly rambunctious night of drinking.

As he shut the door of his apartment behind him, Satoshi's thoughts were still caught on that journalist. She mentioned she was independent or freelance or something.

Surely, Satoshi thought, she can't have that much reach. Even cable news is struggling these days.

By now, curiosity had gripped him. He had initially intended to use his unexpected free time to write some more, but he figured it couldn't hurt to look into Tomoko Tachibana, if only so he knew who he had to deal with now.

Satoshi was surprised to find that when he searched her name on the internet, he was given a plethora of results, most of which were on topic. He felt a peculiar sinking feeling in his stomach as it certainly seemed like Tomoko had a following and some degree of popularity. If she set her mind on hassling the detective, as seemed to be the case, this could escalate into a larger issue in short order.

Satoshi navigated to her personal website, where she posted the video footage she recorded. There were many videos, hundreds even. It seemed like she would publish multiple videos per day. As he examined the view count, his sinking feeling intensified, as no video had less than a high five figure view count, with many hitting six figures, and some even breaching one million. The sinking feeling, which Satoshi sincerely hoped had bottomed out, took another plunge as he saw the most recent video.

“Local Detective solves cases NAKED, refuses to wear underwear,” proudly proclaimed the video's title. The thumbnail consisted of Detective Yamamoto seated behind her desk with a strategically placed, albeit unnecessary, censor bar. No doubt it had been intended to provoke the viewer and bait them into clicking on the video in hopes of seeing something salacious.

Out of morbid curiosity, Satoshi clicked on the video. It was more or less exactly what he expected it to be. It started with the same woman Satoshi had met earlier talking into the camera. She talked about how she had heard stories of this incredibly effective, albeit eccentric detective, and she intended to investigate and see if this was just a rumor.

Satoshi scrubbed through the video. Most of the ten minute run time consisted Tomoko talking to the camera. Abruptly, as Satoshi spooled through on double speed, the subject of the video shifted from Tomoko talking to a view of the interior of Detective Yamamoto's office. Satoshi remembered these events. He felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed that he hadn't appeared in the video. In hindsight, it made sense, given his first appearance didn't add anything to the video from the reporter's perspective.

The video transitioned back to Tomoko talking for a moment and then cut once more to the site of the case the detective had solved earlier in the day. Tomoko had made sure to get a nice big close-up shot of Detective Yamamoto as she gradually blushed until she was bright red. The video feed then abruptly shifted to Satoshi, as he had endeavored to block the camera. Finally, the video shifted once more to Tomoko herself, now slightly bedraggled. The video concluded with an end card beseeching the audience for donations and imploring them to support independent journalism.

The video certainly didn't paint Detective Yamamoto in a flattering light, but it didn't seem to be as bad as Satoshi thought it could have been. That was, of course, until he saw the view count. Even as recently posted as it was the video was on par with the average view count of the other videos. Furthermore, the comment section was awash with activity. Most of the comments were the sort of inane things that litter all comment sections, but there were two significant subcategories that caught Satoshi's attention.

The first category consisted of people who found the title enticing, the detective's choice of clothing disappointing, and were upset that there was no visual proof of the claim made in the video's title. No doubt they had thought and hoped the detective would have been solving cases while wearing significantly less and had been disabused.

More worrying were the people who were outraged, as if Detective Yamamoto did not live up to their own personal standards for how a freelance detective should conduct her investigations. Most of the comments echoed sentiments raised in the above category, but took the opposite approach. Rather than being disappointed at the detective wearing too much, they instead insisted she wasn't wearing enough.

Deciding that he had had enough of this particular strain of humanity, Satoshi closed the browser and turned his attention instead to his writing. Tomoko Tachibana had gotten her scoop and made her video. There was no reason to ever interact with her again.

TUESDAY

When Satoshi arrived at the agency, he found Detective Yamamoto still in a foul mood, but less so than yesterday. Detective Yamamoto stuck to her normal routine of drinking and reading at her desk, but to Satoshi's vague surprise, she had deviated from tradition. Instead of a hole-riddled shirt or tank top, Detective Yamamoto wore a more substantial t-shirt that appeared entirely devoid of holes and a pair of shorts. When Detective Yamamoto noticed Satoshi staring, she shot him a glare. Satoshi averted his eyes and moved over to his desk.

“It's a bit cold in here,” said Satoshi, just to break the silence. It wasn't really that cold, or even cold at all, but he felt he had to say something, and when you're out of options, what better than the weather? Detective Yamamoto did not respond. Instead, she continued to glower at her comic book. She hadn't turned the page as far as Satoshi could tell, not so much reading the comic as trying to burn through the page with her eyes alone. The increasing tension Satoshi felt in the atmosphere of the room gave way to profound euphoria as a knock at the door gave him the opportunity to leave the detective's office for a moment.

“Good morning,” said the man at the door. “I've got a case for the detective.”

 “Perfect,” said Satoshi, not even having to feign enthusiasm. “Come right this way.”