Chapter 20: An emotional pansy's aftermath

For the past few weeks, the pile of tissue in my bedroom has been shooting up. I think it’s almost as tall as Mount Everest now. On a 1:3750 scale or something like that anyway. Every time the shop around the corner sees me coming, they hide all their tissue boxes and tell me they’re out.

I still don’t understand why the girl would want to kill Yuki. What did Yuki do? If I annoyed her she should have come after me. Me, you understand? Apparently the girl cannot tell the difference between an English bloke and a Japanese girl. She needs her eyes checked.

A week ago, however, someone came and turned my life the right side up again. Or at least tried to. The first time she walked in, I was drinking coffee while tying a report on my super slow computer. After I saw her half the coffee was slopped down my front and the rest was short circuiting the keyboard.

It was the girl from the café. Illinois?...Illythingy?...Illasviel. We had coffee to compensate for the stuff swimming around my computer. And we’ve been having coffee after work since. And I’ve been emotional every time we have coffee and my coffee becomes salt water. She always seems a bit uneasy around me, like today. Thing is, I’m going for the same meeting. Operation Rose Garden. Stupid name, if you ask me.

The superior greets me with his usual, friendly words and gestures which could turn this story into an R-rated movie. “Sit down,” I am told. So I sit and wait.

“We have found a single blond hair at one of the murder scenes,” he exults. “Not that it should matter, but I was the one who found it.”

I bet you I can ask ten other people at the scene and not one of them would agree.

“We’ve sent it to the DNA lab and the results will be in two days from now. So now all we’ve got to do is to figure out how to catch the murderer once we’ve got his identity.”

A picture of the hair is shown. Look’s like Illy’s, but it can’t be hers. I glance over at her. She doesn’t seem okay. But I’m sure she’s worried about something else. The hair can’t be hers.

…can it?