2025-12-24: Shaken Down and Shaken Up
- Log: Shaken Down and Shaken Up
- Cast: Hyousuke Suzuki, Tamaki Uchida
- Where: Kuzunoha Detective Agency
- OOC Date: 2025-12-24
- IC Date: Wed Aug 29
- Summary: Hyousuke and Tamaki meet at the agency to discuss opportunities for making money. He somehow manages to leave 100 Yen poorer than when he entered.
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Summer is officially almost over, as the end of August draws near. Sunlight streams in through the Kuzunoha Detective Agency's window.
Chief Todoroki sits at his desk closer to the back and occupies his attention with various forms of correspondence to his network of contacts, bouncing between phone conversations (both voice and SMS), emails, and faxes.
The Agency's maneki-neko statue looms at the entrance, the same as it ever does. It always watches for visitors to the Agency, nya~. As soon as someone walks through the doors to the Agency, it'll meow pitifully, asking for donations in its usual manner, its tinny cry for 100 yen emerging from what sounds like a set of installed speakers.
Right now, Tamaki herself is in the midst of trying to organize her case notes before her university classes resume within a few days. She's made some visible headway, as a stack of full-looking binders rests on her desk, but some portion of it is still covered in pages of notes, empty and half-full binders, dividers, and a variety of brightly-colored tabs.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Upon first glance, Hyousuke did not look particularly well. For one, he was wreathed in freshly-healed cuts and scrapes, patches of bruises in varying states of recovery, and the skin on his knuckles was either scabbed over or red-raw. Most of it was hidden beneath a thin summer-appropriate jacket and an upturned collar, but anyone perceptive enough to peer past the collar of his shirt or the cuffs of his jacket might have noticed them on what little exposed skin he had. Not to mention the bags underscoring his somewhat bloodshot eyes. Short of shades, there was no way to hide those, and even he wasn't desperate enough to wear them indoors.
Said lack of shades made it easy to track where his gaze went - namely, towards the cat 'speaking to draw his attention. He blinked, a glassy look in his eyes as the gears began to turn in his head, before something eventually clicked and he realised what exactly was being asked of him. A brief rattling of change provided a staccato rhythm to his mumbling as he fished through his jean pockets, before it all came to an abrupt stop and he placed a coin of the appropriate denomination in the appropriate spot. Perhaps it'd grant him luck. perhaps it wouldn't. It was only a hundred yen, and at the very least, it paid to show politeness to the people he wanted to work with.
"Hey, I heard that-" He began lightly, trying to speak only just loudly enough that only Tamaki could hear. When he glanced to the side and saw the mounds of paperwork, however, he cut himself off. "This a bad time? I can come back later."
GAME: Save complete.
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
The cat statue chirps, "Thank you, nya~!" Perhaps luck will come his way, indeed ...
"No, no, no, it's not a bad time at all! I could use a break from this particular tedium, honestly." Tamaki calls out as she bolts upright from her chair and moves away from her desk to greet Hyousuke as he enters with the start of her standard shpiel. "Hello, and welcome to the Kuzunoha Detective Agency, where we help with anything ranging from love affairs to -- "
As she notices Hyousuke's physical state, she abruptly stops midsentence and slightly reels back in surprise. "Oh, my. Are you alright? We keep some medical supplies here, if you need those."
Tamaki is, admittedly, no stranger to teenagers coming in to the Detective Agency looking worse for wear. It's too familiar of a sight.
She gestures to the center of the office, where a pair of couches rest on either side of a small coffee table. "Please, have a seat."
Having taken a seat herself, she leans forward, her eyes crinkling as she peers more closely at Hyousuke in recognition, at least via Resonance. The warehouse and the Palace ...
"What can I help you with?"
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"Huh? No, I'm fine, just sore. It'll pass."
He was not fine, he was not just sore, and it showed no signs of passing. However, Hyousuke had no desire to share all of his life's woes with someone he'd only just met, and thus kept quiet on the matter. Instead, he took the seat that had been offered to him, and lounged into it with the casual demeanour that one might have expected from some no-name Kasu student. His manner sharpened a little once he recognised that he was being scrutinised, and he himself began to return the gesture.
She looked familiar, there was no doubt about that. He didn't even try to hide that he had started to focus in on her, with his brow furrowing and his posture straightening gradually.
"Heard you had some jobs open." he said offhandedly, hoping to buy some precious few moments to let the gears in his head spin a little more. By that point, they were working overtime - if she listened closely, Tamaki might have been able to hear a hamster wheel squeaking away in the back of his skull as it desperately tried to conjure up a coherent thought.
"Something like the last two we were on." Despite his appearance, Hyousuke was capable of at least *some* manner of subtlety, even if it took his brain a little while to spin up enough to make it happen.
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Perhaps at Hyousuke's insistence that he's 'fine', perhaps at his mention of 'the last two' we were on, Tamaki's expression visibly grows more flat. She stands up to briskly step behind Chief Todoroki's desk to rummage around in one of the large cabinets behind him to get a first aid kit. She returns to the table and places it there next to Hyousuke.
Tamaki still chooses to stand after coming back with the medkit. Her tone is firm - she is no longer asking. "Look, I get these on a steep discount. I'm still on some very good terms with the Satomi Tadashi pharmacy." She almost was family, in fact, but events transpired so that particular engagement was cut off. "Very good terms. So don't worry if you feel like you're imposing or anything."
Her expression and voice both soften as she continues. "I, uh, see it all the time, honestly. A few other people in that sphere of things come here for a safe place to relax or take care of themselves, mentally or physically. There's one guy we keep spare changes of clothes for, even."
Hyousuke's remark about jobs causes Tamaki to pause for a few moments as she tries to decipher his meaning about that. Tsubasa helps with searching through databases, but otherwise they don't ...
Tamaki snaps her fingers and exclaims "Oh!" then steps behind her own desk to retrieve a binder from the bookshelf. This one had already been sorted and isn't involved in the mess on her desk. She returns to the couches and table, then places the binder on the table. "To be clear, it's not us that actually issues these jobs, but we collate rumors -- and in the case of Demons which come from those rumors, we in turn keep track of requests from clients who offer a reward."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke said nothing as the first aid kit was thrust upon him, but anyone with sharp enough eyes would have been able to see that the entire exchange hadn't been received well. Tensed muscles, a hardened gaze, lips tightening as if trying to resist twisting into a frown or a snarl - such reactions might not have been the expected when help was offered, especially something as innocuous as treatments for his injuries, but there was no denying their existence. They faded as the conversation shifted towards the reason he'd come there, however, and he relaxed enough to speak without his tone reflecting his earlier demeanour.
The kit remained untouched, however.
"But the rumours mean Shadows, and the Shadows mean loot. I think?" The hamster wheel spun again, and he looked to the binder, as if its surface held the collected secrets of the supernatural, and would offer unto him the greatest clarity. "And I could use the rewards from those 'demons' too." A scant bit of hesitation preceded his mention of demons. It wasn't a term he was familiar with, but the mention of money was enough to have him intrigued, at the very least. He looked back up at Tamaki. "So I just... pay you for some info, and go hunting? Do I need to bring proof or anything back?"
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Hyousuke's cold reception towards the first aid kit is, also, a dynamic familiar to Tamaki, and it's just as frustrating to her when it comes from Hyousuke right now as it is when a certain red motorcycle leather-clad teenage boy refuses help. While she tries her damndest to not let her sunny countenace fade, her inner monologue is screaming. Is this a guy thing? Are most boys just like this?! AGGGHHHHH. Despite her best efforts, when her consternation reaches its peak, her eyes briefly widen in a flash of irritation.
She inhales deeply and presses her hands together as she tries to reset herself. No no no. He must have his reasons. Don't be too forceful and let it slide this time. After a moment, she places her hands back in her lap and listens more intently to Hyousuke.
"Uh. Hm." Hyousuke's remarks about Shadows as opposed to Demons gives Tamaki pause. "I don't think any Shadows come from rumors, but Demons may. Allow me to explain my understanding of the distinction between the two:"
(BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqTMxx9goDg The Great Ace Attorney - Joint Reasoning: The Great Deduction (Type A))
For this first part of her explanation, Tamaki seems certain and speaks as if reciting a well-practiced lecture. "Demons are what I have the most experience with, personally. They come from collective societal myths, stories, and legends, whether said legends are those of antiquity or they're legends of antiquity. Even if the story is about some unique individual, a Demon comes from one of these archetypical templates, and there may be multiple instances of Demons cast from the same template. Pixies and Jack Frost hailing from tales from England, Orthrus and Cerberus of Greek mythology, Poltergeists and Kobolds which originate from German lore, Nekomata and Nue from Japan's own stories ... and from right here in our modern day and age, I have seen Demons spawned from this locale's retelling of common urban myths of Hanako the toilet ghost and cursed taxi cab drivers.
"You can converse with them, and you do not always need to combat them. It's quite possible to form pacts with a given 'archetype' of Demons. I happen to benefit from one such arrangement, myself!"
She blinks a few times, folds her arms, and furrows her brow as she tries to recall the half that she has less direct knowledge of. "Shadows, on the other hand, I have only dealt with a handful of times, so I don't quite have as strong of a grasp on them. From what I know, however, their definition is a little bit fuzzier. In one particular -- instance -- " Tamaki hesitates and shudders as she recalls this particular memory. " -- I have seen one directly come from a person's coffin during the Dark Hour."
Tamaki leans in to Hyousuke to momentarily give him advice in a grim, urgent tone. "If you see that happen -- run. There's no fighting that, and doing so would kill the person who the Shadow belongs to, anyhow."
She furrows her brow even deeper. "... From what I had observed during my own exploration of the Palace, Shadows seem to disguise themselves as a Demon. Others still seem predatory and mindless, unassociated from a single person, like the kind you'll see during the Dark Hour. I'm given to believe that there are more varieties past that ..."
Tamaki closes her eyes in thought and curls a finger on her chin. "I don't believe Shadows are a phenomenon you will often see within Sumaru City ... perhaps on the very rare occasion." She opens one eye to lightly smirk in Hyousuke's direction. "But the supernatural world we're privy to extends far beyond Sumaru, like Iwatodai and Tokyo."
"Eh? Pay us?" Tamaki raises her eyebrows, then shakes her head. "No, the info's free up-front. We just take a bit of the reward in the end as a finder's fee. If someone else beats you to the punch, then at least it doesn't cost you anything."
"If you do manage to fell a Demon that's been causing someone grief -- like a gaggle of Jack Frosts messing with the refrigeration at a convenience store -- then yes, some sort of proof is often required, often a trophy of what the Demon leaves behind upon its defeat. Bring it back to us, and we can verify that it came from the Demon corresponding to a client's request and arrange payment from there."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
It wasn't Tamaki's irritation that caused a notable shift in his expression. It only appeared for a heartbeat, and what little he saw he managed to brush off - as long as Tamaki was willing to work with him on a professional level, then she could be as annoyed as she wanted. He wasnt' even entirely certain she was annoyed at him. He supposed she could have just been reacting to an errant insect fluttering around a light fitting, or the thought of reams of paperwork awaiting her attention. In the end, her irritation was easy enough to ignore.
It wasn't her explanation of Demons that caused his face to twist a little. He nodded, and made quiet sounds of acknowledgement all throughout, jotting down as much of it as possible in the archives of his mind. How much of it actually stuck was anyone's guess, but the attempt was made, and he was silent throughout it all. He even seemed moderately concerned about the idea of killing someone through their Shadow, but even then, said nothing about it.
What caused him to furrow his brow and look at her with a hint of suspicion flickering in his gaze was the promise of free information. It lingered in him as a tightening of his lips and a narrowing of his gaze, only lifting when he heard that they took a finder's fee on success. That, at least, made sense.
"Interesting..." He said, mulling the information over as he looked to the binder again. "Think you could set me up with some now? Haven't had much luck with jobs, and I need the money." It wasn't the entire truth, but it wasn't technically a lie either, and that was enough to let him speak without hesitation.
"And if you're not in when I get the proof, should I just hand it off to anyone? Or do I need to ask for, uh..." He paused. "...I never got your name."
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
When Hyousuke says that he never got Tamaki's name, she reels in shock at the realization that she neglected this basic courtesy. "EhhhHHH? Oh my goodness, I apologize for my rudeness! It slipped my mind entirely."
She adjusts her shirt collar and clears her throat before continuing. "Ahem."
"My name is Tamaki Uchida, and I am an assistant private investigator of the Kuzunoha Detective Agency." She bows forward slightly, then rises again to give him the most sociable smile that she can muster. "I work here only part-time -- at least while I have to juggle both this and my university studies. After I've graduated, and with enough hours of casework under my belt, I'll no longer be a mere 'assistant'."
She gestures to a somewhat portly old man sitting at a desk much fancier than her own, the aforementioned person juggling multiple means of communication. "Chief Todoroki over is the boss. At the moment, it's just us two. We used to have a third, but ..."
Tamaki trails off and narrows her gaze in the distance as she considers how to phrase this next part. Given the thought she had seemed to put into her words, what she actually says comes out with a tone far more flippant and callous than one might expect. She snaps out of her brief reverie with a bright grin and concludes, "Well! He had some family matters to attend to."
She isn't lying, per se, but she'd very much like to avoid talking about her ex-fiancé.
Tamaki presses her hands together and tilts her head to the side, continuing on cheerfully as if that particular line of thought never ran through her mind. "In any case! My role here is mostly anything that involves physical work, running around town, and uh." Tamaki pauses, briefly glances to the side, then narrows her eyes and returns her attention to Hyousuke, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You know, encounters like those in the warehouse and Palace." She jerks her head in his direction. "Don't worry, he knows."
She then turns her head to stare over at the cat statue, clearly regarding it with suspicion. Raising a hand to the side of her mouth as if to shield the lucky cat's eyes and ears from whatever she's saying, she mutters, "Dunno if I trust that one, though."
Returning to her normal volume and bright cadence, she continues further. "Point is, to answer your main question, he's here all the time. Given our age difference, he's all desk work these days, and I'm often on my feet. If you've got proof that you've resolved an issue regarding a Rumor Demon, leave it with him and he can take care of it."
Having answered that, she adds, "We also have several other services, if you're interested in hearing!" Careful how you answer, this might be the start of a sales pitch ...
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke kept quiet and attentive, nodding and mumbling his acknowledgement as she spoke. He even offered something resembling a wry smile at her somewhat bombastic self-introduction, though he said nothing in response, preferring to save all of his questions and comments for the end. Even her trailing off at the mention of a third wasn't enough to keep him from reacting, though he kept a little more still and completely silent out of respect. He couldn't guess at the particulars, but to draw out such a reaction from her in the middle of the conversation? He assumed it wasn't pleasant.
The mention of the warehouse, however... that drew a different manner of silence from him altogether. It was only for a fleeting heartbeat, but the once-attentive look turned to a vacant stare. He did not look to her, but through her, his eyes instead drifting towards the middle distance. Muscles froze, movements halted, he didn't even blink. It was as though something had gripped him, pinning him in place until he caught himself, and emerged from whatever thoughts plagued his unfocussed mind. He nodded along again, glancing over at the chief then back again, hurriedly acting as if nothing had happened.
"Do any of those services involve me working with... You know..." Hyousuke jerked his head slightly towards the cat, doing so as quickly and subtly as possible - as if its eyes and ears were sharp enough to catch his suspicion. "That guy shook me down as soon as I walked in. I'm scared I'm gonna lose whatever I make if I have to be around them." There was another pause, and yet more squeaking of the wheels. Subtler this time, but still there. "Oh, right, MY name. I forgot. I'm Hyousuke Suzuki, and I'm a third year at Kasu. Pleasure to meet you."
He decided to leave out the part where he'd only just transferred to Kasu a handful of months ago. That much, he decided she had no need to know.
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Tamaki did in fact catch notice of Hyousuke's reaction to her mention of the warehouse. She doesn't draw too much attention to it. Just a brief apologetic glance, an interjection of " -- ahh, sorry about that -- " and moving on.
For her, that day was a highly notable failure, but given her longer exposure to the world of the supernatural, it's only one failure at the tail end of a string of many. That's the thing with becoming an adult: the regrets keep piling up. Such regrets eat and eat away at some people, especially one as tragic as the events of that particular night.
Tamaki isn't one of those people, and every so often, she forgets this. At least, not anymore -- there was a previous point in time where she would have reacted the same way that Hyousuke did.
Her perspective is incredibly skewed as a result of some extreme circumstances from several years ago. She carries the weight of responsibility, regret, and guilt, the feeling of not having done enough to prevent the late Hayashi sibling's unfortunate fate. On the other hand, she's no stranger to death.
She's seen worse.
She's felt worse. She's felt it over and over and over again, to the point where her ability to experience what Hyousuke did seems to have burned out entirely, like she doesn't have any freeze or flight left in her anymore.
She's forgotten what it's like, and every so often, her unintentional carelessness ends up causing people such as Hyousuke undue pain. That much, she's still sympathetic to, and would prefer to avoid doing.
... ... ...
Which is why she takes this opportunity to cackle at Hyousuke's reaction to her own little joke from earlier, re-injecting some much needed levity into matters. "Pffffthahahaha!"
From across the room, Todoroki loudly and pointedly clears his throat in Tamaki's direction, and she bolts upright as she casts a nervous glance his way. "Uh -- sorry for the noise, sir."
Tamaki grins and waves a hand dismissively. "Nah, nah, see, that thing used to be more strictly automated, playing its pre-canned recordings and all, but now it'll actually have conversations with people. Rumor has it that it'll tell you secrets once you donate enough. I can, uh, attest to this myself."
It is, in fact, how Tamaki had obtained news that Kasugayama High's Death Boss, Eikichi Mishina, had been designated the next target of the Joker Killer. This came at her own personal expense.
"What we can do, in addition to investigating people, company, and other matters, is spread rumors within Sumaru City for you -- in exchange for a modest one-time fee."
Tamaki examines Hyousuke for a few moments, and given his lack of knowledge on Demons, she feels compelled to ask this next question: "Do you ... understand what the situation is with Sumaru City and the rumors that circulate within it, at least?"
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
She'd noticed. He'd lapsed for the scantest hint of a second, he'd acted as if it hadn't happened, and he'd tried to distract from it, but she'd nevertheless noticed. Though he retained a fairly neutral look about him, morphing it to fit whatever was expected in the moment, he cursed internally at his own lack of resilience. He had to be better than that. He couldn't freeze up, he couldn't let his judgement slip or himself be distracted. There were people counting on him and his strength, and he faltered at some crucial juncture
It wasn't a thought worth paying attention to. Whatever lingering aftershocks remained of the warehouse's mention, he ignored or pushed down, numbing himself through sheer force of will to its effects. He was better than it. He was stronger than it. He would not let it affect him. He would... lose his train of thought at Tamaki bursting out in a fit of laughter at his joke. One of his own cracked its way across his face, either by reflex or because her smile was just that infectious, and whatever tension had remained in him began to fade.
He returned to nodding, remaining attentive, if a little slow to process everything that'd been said to him. It took a few seconds after she'd finished, but he replied, a hand idly stroking his chin as he gave his response.
"Well, the whole deal with the supernatural stuff is that it changes depending on how people see and think about stuff, don't it?" He wasn't entirely certain that was an accurate representation of the collective conscious and how it affected the supernatural realm, but he barrelled on anyway. "So... You throw about a buncha rumours, and if it spreads enough, does that mean you can shift things around a bit?"
<Public> Tatsuya Sudou gives gold star to staff for the post, doing that is hard
<Public> Junes says, "Thanks"
<Pose Tracker> Tamaki Uchida has posed.
Tamaki snaps her fingers and gives Hyousuke a wink and a winning smile. "Bingo! With a few caveats, mind you. One: Sumaru City seems far more receptive to the influence of rumors than Tokyo or Iwatodai or ... anywhere else, for that matter. And two: the populace has to be susceptible to the rumor in the first place. What we really do -- what Todoroki really does with his network of contacts, mind you -- is give it that final little push over the edge so that scuttlebutt gets promoted from feasible fiction to solid fact."
"Too many conflicting rumors on the same subject can also muddy the waters." She stretches her arms forward to crack her knuckles. "But we can also serve as the kingmakers, the tiebreakers, the one who sells the throne of a rumor reified to the highest bidder. Or earliest bidder."
Tamaki taps at the binder full of rumor-spawned Demons and client requests to rid the world of them. "And these things -- these cropped up without us saying anything, but they came to be through the same mechanisms, all the same."
Turning through the pages, she says, "Now, then, let's look at what there is ... there's a neighborhood where the upper half of a girl hops around on with a scythe to cut other people she runs across in half, there's a cursed package that came through a post office that caused anyone who touched it to become sick, there's a park where a shrine's statue of a local goddess causes any happy couples who visit it to break up prematurely ..."
And many, many more options to peruse.