---

---

“Huh? Oh yeah, totally,” she muttered, scratching through another few shorthanded titles. There were almost too many angles to take this, and she didn’t want to waste time agonizing over a headline now, when there was a chance she’d have to scrap it if things went south—or north, she didn’t really have a preference.

Akari went on, but it was some kind of insult, or a threat, and Kanna had learned to tune those out. It wasn’t that she thought Akari was bluffing, hell she was probably one of the most serious people in Utsubyo, Kanna just didn’t care. If she took every threat of bodily harm to heart, or heeded every broody warning, the only things she’d get to report on were puppies and old people shit—and not even the weird, scandalous old people shit.

She took another bite of her sandwich, circled a few tentative points in her notes, and retuned to the conversation. “Hey, do you think this could’ve had anything to do with Kenzo’s, uh, hobbies? I mean, you’ve seen Totsuka. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s dabblin’ in the dark arts, if y’know what I’m sayin’?” Obviously she couldn't publish that sort of speculation, that would just be bad form. But if it was a lead worth investigating, she'd dog it. “Ooh! Could be gang related. You ever been in a gang? Y'know, leather jackets, nail-bats, that sorta deal?"

---

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“I don’t read manga.”

Kanna sat back as Akari begrudgingly began to engage. She watched the girl closely, discounting the sighs of annoyance and aggressive posture—she brought those out of most people, delinquent or not. Akari herself was a bit of a sphinx; all of her secrets and stories were locked behind stony expressions and spiteful, angry riddles. Sometimes it wasn’t about what people said to her, but rather, what they didn’t.

Dangle two leads in someone’s face, and you might just learn more following the one they explicitly didn’t pick.

Akari chose to bite on the gang line, and completely ignored the idea that Kenzo might have been dealing to Totsuka. Kanna made another circle in her notebook. Damn, if she’d stuck around longer in the parking lot she might have asked the poor guy himself. Oh well, it was what it was, and Kanna had the feeling she wasn’t going to be welcome to ask Kenzo any follow up questions.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Too early. Unless it’s like, some kind of takeover. Yikes. Hey, take it from me, if it’s part of something big like that, you probably don’t wanna get involved.” She held up her casted arm, knocked on it with her knuckles. “Those kinda dudes don’t mess around. Could get real bad for you.”

---

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Kanna perked at the sudden appearance of the new girl, mentally snapping her fingers for details. Ichiko? Ichida—ka! Ichika. Shimizu Ichika. Shopping, dress up, volleyball. An out-of-towner like Totsuka, whose pleasantness had been tragically overshadowed by the Ogre’s…abrasiveness.

But as compelling as the inevitable rivalry was, Utsubyo was too dull for Kanna to afford to let good leads slip by her. Shimizu might not be laying local plugs out in the parking lot, but that didn’t mean she was boring, or that there wasn’t a spot for her in the paper. Volleyball was an engaging sport, maybe—Kanna didn’t really do sports, but that was fine, because she often found the athletes to be infinitely more interesting than the games themselves.

Swinging around so that she could face both girls, Kanna beamed cheerily and bowed her head in greeting, subtly flipping to a fresh page in the flipbook as she did. “Nakano Kanna, reporter for the school paper, and as my good friend Akari put it, local sleuth. Nothin’ happens in this school—in this town—without me knowin’ about it.”

She twirled her pen in her fingers, scribbled the name, "Shimizu Ichika" at the top of the new page and gave it a bold underline. “Meant to introduce myself yesterday actually, but things kinda got, y’know, a lil’ bit hectic. Skateboards, assault, defending family honor,” she winked to Akari. “All that good stuff. But hey, what about you? Where’re you from? What brings you to a place like Utsubyo?”

---

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On the one hand, it seemed like Ichika hadn’t been listening, so she was high and dry on the questions. Oof. On the other hand, she was looking out for Kanna’s safety, which was cute. Normally whenever people told tried to warn her off doing something, it was because they just didn’t want her snooping around ‘invading their privacy’. but Ichika was the new girl, she didn’t know Kanna well enough to be perpetually exhausted with her. Yet.

Kanna scribbled down, “good person?” on the left margin, where the serious points went.

Then she wrote “SHI-SHI?????” in big letters right in the middle. She’d known Shiori for years, and there wasn’t a single person in Utsubyo brave enough to call her fucking Shi-Shi.

“Oh really?” Kanna asked, leaning on the desk. “Wow, you must know Shiori really well, huh?”

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Cousins? Shiori had cousins that looked and acted like this? Kanna would have checked her pulse, but at this point she would have rather risked the stroke than stop writing.



Akari chimed in as well; it seemed she and Ichika were already acquainted. The sister of the plug that was beaten up by Totsuka, was sat down with the cousin of Shiori, who was involved somehow. Utsubyo was small, but was it small enough to facilitate a coincidence this big?

Speculation later, she thought. Questions now.

“That’s craaaazy. Wow. Absolutely wild. What was she like back then? Is Totsuka from Tokyo too? Do you all know each other?”

---

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Kanna scratched out a line between the names Himawari and Totsuka. Damn, no prior connection. Maybe this really was the fickle hand of fate, moving the inhabitants of Utsubyo around like a child playing with their dolls. If that was the case, she wasn’t sure if she ought to shake that hand, or bite it. There’d been a whole half a year where the most exciting thing to happen were the weasels behind Family Mart. What the fuck was up with that, Fate?

Still, there was something here. Was it directly relevant to Totsuka’s outburst? Debatable. But hearing from Shiori’s family that she was a good person “deep down” was at once surprising, and entirely unsurprising. That was usually what people said when they didn’t want to admit someone was a through-and-through asshole, but Kanna had never gotten that impression from Shiori. Rude, impersonable, with a temper like one of those lobsters in the tank at a sea food restaurant, but not irredeemably bad.



“Yeah, you’re tellin’ me." Kanna circled the bit about her not being a good talker. Shiori was never boring, but rarely reliable as a source—not that she was dishonest, just that she was often more likely to deck you than give you something to work with. In a way she and Akari were similar, but Akari had the whole “giant” thing going on that was usually intimidation enough.

“So you’re saying it’d be out of character for her to hang around someone who’d do, y’know, she flapped one of the newspapers lying on a nearby desk. “That?”

Neat. A character witness from some random nobody wouldn’t count for much, but this was family, and Kanna had a feeling that Ichika was bound for a better reputation than her cousin. If it came to it, clearing Shiori’s name—at least officially—would be easier with a few good words from her.

---

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Kanna’s eyes shot up from her notepad. Now that was a familiar voice, and a relevant one to boot.

If there was one person in the school who had or wanted dirt on Shiori, it was Takano Junko. Unfortunately, that didn’t make her useful, in fact it made her almost entirely incredible. Nothing Junko told her about Shiori could be trusted, and the same could be said of Shiori about Junko. Few were the rivalries as fierce as theirs, which was a double edged blade. Yes, their spats were loud and occasionally violent, but they were also so frequent that hardly anyone found them interesting anymore. Water was wet, the sky was blue, Shiori and Junko beat each other up behind the gym.

Nevertheless, even bad information had its value. She wouldn’t print anything Junko said, but she could follow leads, and see if they panned out to anything worthwhile.

If—and that was a big “if”—she didn’t get her head bitten off for her trouble. But Kanna had lived here a long time, she’d gotten good at navigating the shark-invested waters of Utsubyo Highschool.

“Junkooo, heeeeeeey~!” Kanna leaned across the desk, giving enough visual attention for the both of them. “You’re a savvy gal, huh? You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that new delinquent, would you?”