Grief

"No… that would be too reckless… This is becoming too much… If they are on to me, how long would it take for them to find out… I don't have the time for this distraction… Brother… what should I do… this would be something you could easily answer if you were alive…" The librarian thought as he retracted from his dramatization of possible plans for getting rid of possible problems.

He gripped onto the sink in front of him, pressing it with anger, something that he needed to release sooner or later, but he couldn't, not without a candidate for the next cake.

He then focused on a crumpled napkin that sat on a sink beside the one he stood in front of, to which he pleasantly grabbed the napkin and placed it in the trash as he walked out of the bathroom.

"Much better… I shouldn't think too much on this, I should just go back to work…" the librarian thought as he headed back to his desk on the second floor, leaving the sink that he gripped with dents in it, as if some overbearing beast was preparing to pull it off easier than a pen cap.

Meanwhile, back at the conference room that Yuki and Kaso departed earlier, Vivian and the others were working on their according tasks.

Vivian, on her laptop watching tapes, Anastasia, comparing the two victims to see similarities, and Olivia and Alex, going over the second crime scene photos and comparing them to the first one.

Vivian looked slumped and unamused as she continued to watch the last week, publicly, of Aiko's life.

"Why couldn't we have gone to the library…" Alex said, just as unamused as Vivian, and not putting any effort into his task at all.

"I found a couple of similarities between the two victims." Anastasia said, grabbing the attention of everyone within the room.

"Well… what is it?" Olivia asked.

"Both Victims shopped at that same supermarket—" Anastasia said before being cut off by Olivia.

"So, what's that supposed to mean?" Olivia asked.

"That closes in the radius of where the killer would live, he probably shops at this supermarket as well." Anastasia finished.

"Well, if he were actually more intelligent, he wouldn't live in the same area where he looks for his victims would he?" Vivian asked.

"Good point, but since both of these women shop at this supermarket on a normal basis, this supermarket is an excellent hunting ground in an essence for the killer. One thing we do know even if the killer doesn't live in this area is that he had to have shopped here and on a regular basis in order to precisely choose his next victim." Anastasia said.

"This is huge, we should maybe look into that." Olivia added.

"What are the other similarities?" Alex softly asked, not even attempting to give off an impression of sympathy or care for the recent development.

"They were both middle-aged married women with blonde hair. That could give us some information on why he's doing these killings. That similarity can't be a coincidence."

"Maybe he just doesn't like blondes…" Alex said.

"Even if it is that simple, that still is something. Vivian, did Aiko shop at the supermarket more than once this past week before her death?" Anastasia asked, she surprisingly took charge of the operation in a matter of seconds.

Vivian flipped through the receipts that were given to her by Martin. She paused in excitement and shock at the development that was taking place and the identification of the question at hand.

"Yes! She went three times this past week!" Vivian shouted, barely holding back complete excitement

"Did you see anything suspicious while she was in the supermarket those times?" Anastasia asked.

"I'll have to go over the recordings from the supermarket this past week. I'll get back to you on that." Vivian responded as she swiftly glued herself back to her laptop display.

"Wow, I didn't think she'd be this good… She's taking control of this whole conference right now and this is the longest I've ever seen her talk..." Olivia thought as Alex brushed off the situation and headed back to pretending to look over the crime scene photos in front of him.

Yuki and Kaso had finished at the library, undecided on which books to rent, so they decided to rent all of the ones on Asclepius.

They were headed back, both had their hands full with the bags of books from the library.

"Hey, Yuki, can I ask you something?" Kaso asked.

"Sure… what is it?" Yuki replied.

"Personally, what really led you to become an agent?" Kaso asked in curiosity of Yuki's story, what led him down this path, something that led him to the beliefs that he displayed earlier in the conference room.

"Huh? Why would he ask me something like that… out of nowhere…" Yuki thought, then said, "Well… it's complicated…" Yuki gripped the bags in his hands tightly as he responded.

Kaso took notice of the tension that his curiosity activated and chose to not continue down that path knowing it might stir the pot in the wrong direction.

"How about you?" Yuki asked.

"Oh, well... I've always wanted to be an agent of justice as far back as I can remember… well… when I was about 6 years old… I came home from school one day… I… I didn't know much other than school and toys, but that day, everything changed…" Kaso responded, holding back from spilling the paint onto the pavement.

Before Yuki could get much of a word in, Kaso continued his thought, this time, willing to speak more than he often would. "I… I came home from school and found my parents… they had been killed by someone who broke in… I guess that made me want to do something like this, to do something that matters, y'know." Kaso was still reluctant about the details, nonetheless, it was more than enough to leave Yuki speechless.

How was he able to tell his story, to tell that tragic story about his past, and yet, Yuki couldn't even bring himself to say his father's name aloud without wallowing in grief.

Yuki was quite envious of Kaso's strength that he displayed in telling his reason for wanting to become an agent of the IJA.

"I… I didn't know… I'm sorry…"

"Oh… uh… it's ok…" Kaso realized that Yuki was now one of the few people to actually know his past, he guessed that this was the first step to building a friendship.

Yuki clenched the bags within his hands again, this time, building up the confidence into resolving an old fashion quid pro quo, after all, Kaso's guts had been spilled onto the pavement, it was only right that Yuki did the same.

"You should know my real reason then, it's only fair since you told me you—" Yuki said as his words were cut short by a phone ringing from his pocket.

Yuki put both bags in one hand and picked up the phone from his left pocket.

"Hey Yuki, it's Alex, it's urgent."

"Huh? What happened?"

"Martin called us all to come down to Acoda street."

"What? What happened?"

"We're all in the dark here, he just said he wants us there asap, so head there and we'll meet you there."

"Oh—ok." Alex hung up as he got his message through to Yuki before Yuki could finish his words.

"What was that?" Kaso asked.

"It was Alex, he said Martin wants us down on Acoda street…"

"That's only a couple of blocks from here."

"We should hurry."