Chapter 7
"Nee, Tanaka-san. You sure you can get down there."
"Cats learn how to fall on their fours genetically."
"Tanaka-san, be careful."
"Don't worry, Nishiyama-kun. I'll be back."
Reina arrived at the bottom floor with the blueprint in hand. She exited the elevator to find Jun standing in front with a towel resting on her neck, smiling at her, and holding onto a bag in her hand. She entered the elevator without saying any words and took it up. She ventured through the dark, damp cave with the stings of the abuse clouding her mind. Reina halted her progress, feeling the air thicken around her. She began to wonder if she went down the wrong tunnel with the dark tunnel giving her the chills.
"Tanaka-san, are you here?" The voice called out.
She wasn't sure who it was but the blade was taken out for protection hopefully the opponent didn't have a bigger weapon. Reina walked slowly towards the sound, hearing it get louder with every second. She could hear the footsteps after about a minute and finally a light came to her vision. Reina clasped the blade in her hand and started to run without visualizing the path, thrusting through the air. Her arm stopped midway as she opened her eyes.
"Reina! You should have entered through the other door." Eri said as she pointed towards the entrance through the long tunnel.
"There was no door." Reina replied as Eri took the lead with her light.
The duo backtracked to the entrance of the tunnel, turned left to find a mossy wall. Eri pushed the wall with her body to open the door to the meeting room. Yossie and Rika glanced at the two for a few seconds before looking back at their computers. The door automatically went back to its original position with the group typing furiously. Goto approached Reina with her outstretched arms and gave her a hug.
"Glad you made it back."
"Thanks."
Reina strode over to Yossie to find her deep into the computer screen. She let out an audible grunt to get Yossie to turn. Reina handed the paper over to her in which she unrolled it to let Rika analyze it for her. A few minutes in, Rika pointed out an area on the lower right side and turned towards Reina.
"This door is oddly place don't you think?" She said catching the attention of Yossie.
"It was how it was." Reina explained as Yossie stepped between them.
"Rika, we can fix the details but if it is that way, we have to approach it."
"I don't want to be setup into a bloodbath." She commented as she closed the computer down.
The group closed their computers and headed towards the dining area with a stack of bentos in front of them. Reina observed the group, noticed the lone person missing, and ran towards the dorm where she saw the lone door that was closed. She reached for the knob to notice it was locked and calmly knock on the door. After a few seconds, she knocked harder to get the woman to open the door.
"What do you want Reina?" She said in an annoying tone.
"Let's go eat dinner."
"I'm not hungry at the moment."
"You sure? I came back alive at least we should celebrate." Reina slid by her preventing the door to close on her.
"It's okay but you have to get out of here." She warned as she brushed her long black hair away from her shoulder.
Reina noticed the mirrors around the room and how it faced toward the middle. The only light on was the lamp on top of a cluttered table. Sayu looked ready for bed rather than dinner but it didn't stop Reina from venturing around the room. The furniture wasn't relatively new but seemed in good shape. She grabbed the knob and slowly turned it but felt her wrist being clamped down before leaving. The kitty swung her head around finding her hand was in a wrist lock.
"Why are you holding me?"
"I needed to know if you have a favorite person within the group." She said with her grip slowly loosening.
Reina knew what the answer was and what the answer should be but she kept her lips pursed until Sayu had no control over her wrist and escaped into the main room. She took a seat on the couch, keeping her eyes on the white ceiling above her. There was nothing to say to the world; the wounds stung a bit and the adventure took most of her energy from her body. Yet, she seemed bothered by a simple question that would be brought up in a primary school situation.
Sayu returned to her desk with a printout of the criminal acts committed by Tanaka Reina. At age 12, she was booked for petty theft. At thirteen, she was caught blackmailing a politician about his son's conduct with her. Then, she had a period of no activity which was related with a stint in juvenile detention. After her release two years ago, she disappeared from the radar.
She wrote out a timeline of the crimes and observed the pattern lay out in front of her. Sayu wasn't aware of the hirings of her colleagues but she did dig into their lives before and found most had a background in defense training, which Reina had none. The group was police-trained so there wouldn't be any unnecessary actions put forth against them but Reina had no such training. Finally, Reina's profile was mostly blank which would even throw a caution towards any recruiter.
It started to become obvious that Reina was a liability to the group and to rid of her quickly would help the group in any issue. Despite the background in psychology, she knew what the computer was capable of storing and used it when she needed research to do her job. She scanned the pa one last time before turning off the lamp and headed for bed.
The next morning, she was awakened by a door knock. Sayu rolled out of bed and took a glance at the clock. It flashed a few times in front of her to know that the power had gone out and had missed breakfast. She quickly changed from her pajamas to shirt and shorts and hurried out to the main room.
"Someone's late for the meeting." Rika said with an annoying tone as she took her set in the back.
"Okay, we have all the data to attack but I want to rid of some loose ends." Yossie started as she held onto her cup of water. "Reina and Eri will be the duo to do it."
"Yossie, Ichiro's gang has a natural enemy correct?" Eri spoke with her hand above the crowd.
"The Yamashitas are rivaled to the Shimokawas but they have been dormant for months based on my research. Ichiro knows this fact but doesn't know that the Shimokawas have joined the Odas and the rogue Lee gang."
"That isn't good for us." Ai commented as the group slowly nodded.
"It isn't great for either of them." Yossie said bluntly. "Both sides can lose a lot of blood, while we wait on the sidelines to draw them outdoors. Eri and Reina will attack in three days."
"The two will commence in lockdown and the rest will do other jobs except for Sayu." Rika announced as Sayu looked at both of them.
She couldn't expect anything good coming out of a meeting like that and hoping that neither would get down on her for tardiness. The group exited the room and closed the door behind leaving the three women in the room. Yossie threw down the stack of papers in front of her as Rika took the seat across showing her grin.
"You were looking up on Reina's past correct?" Rika question Sayu as she nodded slowly.
"Why is she here? There is no way she can be qualified." Sayu shouted to the two.
"She isn't qualified but Yuko wanted to have her on our team because if she goes back to the streets, she will die. Reina is in deeper shit than you ever think. You saw the damage you did to her just for an act. Think about what will happen when people see her out in the streets." Yossie ran her finger over her throat.
"Her position will be temporary." Rika added.
"Do you guys know what she did?" The two looked at each other.
There was a long silence between the three of them and Rika removed the clutter on top to show her a manila folder filled with a report.
"This is everything about Ichiro's father." Rika explained.
"She was the killer, I thought it was..." Sayu stopped midway as she scanned through the report.
It wasn't gruesome but in everything that she had learned in missions, it was the perfect crime. Everything seemed perfect as they found nothing to indicate that Reina would be the killer. However, Reina confessed about it because it weighed on her for days. Reina was described as too small to commit the crime. The items didn't seem to match up but it Reina ending up with the blame. The report seemed too good to be true that Sayu threw it back at them.
"She can't be the killer." Sayu blurted.
"We know she isn't but Reina has the authority to show us who the killer is or was."
Sayu suddenly put the picture together and bowed deeply to the two. She wanted to admit that she had snooped around to find out the truth and found out by ways of the bosses. She headed to Reina's room and knocked on the door. Sayu pushed the door open to find the two staring at each other.
"Sayu, what are you doing here?" Reina asked breaking her battle from Eri.
"I wanted to know your answer." Sayu insisted.
"Maybe Eri for now." Reina answered with the door shutting quickly.
Sayu marched back to her room cursing at her hand for the problems with Reina. She wanted the wounds to stay forever on her but never felt embarrassed to this level. Closing the door behind her, she stared at the papers and threw them into the air. Questions swirled about the incident and if she could find the real killer, probably Reina could be won over with her skills.