Chapter One Part Two

The lights were bright within the Omega Squad’s office. Perhaps too bright - blinding - for that time of night. The air was hot, stale although not completely, utterly displeasing; there was the smell of disinfectant but it was not too strong to be bothersome. The place was quiet, too, except for the sounds of people filling past as they went from department to department within Tokyo’s 5th precinct. Every now and then there would be a young man in handcuffs paraded by the two, remaining detectives - the rest retired earlier that evening. And just as often as that a set of distressed and shame-faced parents shuffled through the maze of desks.

But it was the light that got to Sasuke. There was just something about fluorescent light - and its dead, lifeless light - that did not agree with him and inspired more than a little bit of melancholy in the detective. He tapped his pen and let it fall onto the cover of the folder the contents of which he had been sifting through for almost an hour - it was that damned, detestable light with its eerie, otherworldly humming, echoing like heavy metal within his skull - he could not take it anymore.

Detective Sakura swiveled in her chair and spoke to the absent-looking man who needed a good haircut as his black hair was forever falling into his equally black eyes, which were at the moment scrutinizing the folder’s cover as though it was an object that held an odd sort of fascination that he could not break away. “Sasuke? Earth to Sasuke?”

Sasuke Uchiha merely grunted an answer as he clicked and unclicked the pen. Annoyed, his pretty, red-haired partner snatched the pen away and shook it into his face. “Good lord, Sasuke, you’ve been like a zombie this whole evening. How much sleep did you get last night?”

“About fifteen minutes,” he replied. “I catnapped when the boss was talking.”

Sakura pursed her plain, light pink lips in a disproving manner. “Oh, Sasuke. You don’t take care of yourself. You’re going to have a nervous breakdown if you don’t.”

“You gonna eat that?” he said instead, addressing the rather soggy cup of uneaten Ramen that adorned her otherwise clean and organized desk. Slightly repulsed, she pushed it at him.

“Be my guest.”

He attacked the Ramen with gusto, forcing her to look away. “You don’t eat right, either,” she remarked, in the manner that always made the other detectives in the precinct jokingly call her ‘mother’. The two, though obviously mismatched, made good partners and they had been working together for nearly five years, all of them in which Sakura had - quite unsuccessfully - tried to fix Sasuke’s bachelor ways and unhealthy habits that often got him sick or in trouble. “By the way...” she said casually, playing with a paperclip she found on his desk, “How is the American...?”

“Still gone,” Sasuke answered with food in his mouth. He appeared not to care, but Sakura knew her partner well enough to be able to read the pain in his eyes. His latest relationship mistake involved a young American who cleaned out his bank account and left with half his stuff. Sasuke wasn’t very lucky when it came to love.

Sakura gazed at her partner detachedly. He appeared to be enraptured by the Ramen he was eating. If only he wasn’t the way he was, she thought. She disliked the word “gay” but it still didn’t change the fact that Sasuke was, in fact, not into her. Or anyone else like her. She sighed and dropped the paper clip into a cup full of pens. “You report it?”

“Nope,” he replied. She scowled.

“Sasuke, he’s not coming back.”

“I know.”

“So then why... -”

“I just like,” he interrupted her, “To give them a chance.”

Puzzled, she said nothing. He continued, setting his chopsticks down. “Not everyone in this world is good,” he said softly, “But I can’t believe that the majority of the people are purely
bad. There’s always some good in everyone, and if you just give them a chance....” He proceeded to start daydreaming, staring at his bowl of Ramen.

“Sasuke-” she began to reprimand her partner for his romantic outlook, but was interrupted by the shrill phone that rang in the otherwise silent office. She picked it up. “Detective Sakura speaking,” she clipped in a professional tone. She listened, then an uneasy frown crossed over her face. “Again?! Okay. Thanks. We’ll be there. Bye.” She wrote something down, then hung up and turned to her partner, who seemed lost in thought and had abandoned the Ramen. “We have another one.”

Sasuke, still out of it, gave her a curious look. “Another one what? What happened? What’s going on?”

She sighed with exasperation and gave him a gentle whack on the side of the head as she stood, grabbing her jacket. “Now’s not the time to be daydreaming about you-know-who, Sasuke! The boss called - it could very well be another one, Sasuke.”

“Another one what?” He looked completely stupefied. “When did the boss call? I wasn’t that out of it! I swear!”

She merely shook her head and exited the precinct and he followed suit, grabbing his own jacket to flee after her, past another one of those sickened-looking parents. “Really!” he insisted. “I wasn’t that out of it! He’s not even my type!”

The parents looked at them, hesitated, then continued on.