Ouma's POV:

It was meant to last a week more. It ended up being five days, five days till I was called back down to the police station.

I didn't think much, I hadn't expected to stay long despite Akamatsu trying to promise me otherwise. She had held my hand and promised me that she would always be there whenever I needed her, and she apologized for everything that had passed by all the years before. She meant those words, I know she did. But my heart remained numb as I just silently nodded and brushed past her attempts to try and stay in contact.

It was better for us both this way.

Even though I had been called back to the station though, it didn't seem like the preparations had been finished as the social worker I had been briefed with earlier wasn't there. In fact no one from the home was there, making me wonder if maybe the police were trying to warn them about how much of a problem child I was when I was younger to prepare them.

Maybe I shouldn't have told Akamatsu to go home, maybe I should have let her stay a little longer.

Instead I had been left in the lobby of the station, and had never felt more scared in a place I was meant to feel safe before. Not the fast boiling hot adrenaline fear though, more of the slow oncoming storm type of fear. One seen on the horizon, yet never fully prepared for.

The occasional clicking of pens and the phone calls were the only real noises I heard, something I hadn't expected. I guess those cop movies with prionsers banging against the cells were a lie as I fiddled with the small puzzle box again.

I would need to thank Akamatsu for it someday, maybe I could have at least tried to when she finally left me behind to the cold of the station after insistence from her family that I would be fine on my own.

I wish I could say I would miss her.

I finally took out the small MP3 Akamatsu had also given me, apparently it was meant as an apology for the headphones only making me mourn the loss more. I plugged in the cheap earbuds as static accompanied by the sound of classical music, choices made solely by Akamatsu began to invite me out of the station, to somewhere new. Somewhere thousands of miles away, to where Kiibo was now.

Maybe I was already there.

The soft shuffling in the background however rooted me back to the present as I lowered the volume.

"Hey" was all Harukawa did for a greeting. I nodded not really in the mood for talking.

'What are you here for?' I asked, "sending you off" she responded, "after today you won't be stuck here anymore, and in a short year you can go anywhere. You never have to come back, nothing is here to trap you anymore" Harukawa congratulated, she sounded genuine but...

"You're happy about that, right? I can't imagine there was much to keep you here besides your family" she put it bluntly.

...

'Yeah, I'm pretty happy to leave' I signed and smiled, 'this place leeches the life out of me' I added.

Nothing to keep me here, not one single thing...what a cruel lie...

"I wish I could leave, if I could I would be able to be with Momota- Kaito without having to get on a train for three hours away" she complained.

'Is that what you're going to do after you graduate?' I asked, "yeah, there isn't much I want to do with my life yet" she explained calmly.

'It's the same with me' I told her, finally relating to her, 'I don't know what to do with my life, didn't know what I wanted back then I just wanted...' I paused over the last statement.

I promised Chiasa a joke shop, a place of our own to make other people laugh. A place where all of DICE could be together forever, and all the naive dreams a fourteen year old could craft.

I would leave those dreams forever in a few hours...Saihara's voice lingered in my mind of our last conversation, I had begged him to stay with me.

Yet leaving him behind wasn't that hard, maybe it should have been.

Finally slow footsteps came as Harukawa reached for my hand. I returned the gesture and took a deep breath as I waited...

"Your grandmother can't pick you up so some officers will take you home" an officer explained calmly, maybe a bit bored though. I paused before replaying his words in my head.

...what?

"He doesn't have a grandmother" Harukawa quickly told him, her voice was almost a threat and I was reminded of when we were in the alley.

"Hikari Osaka, sixty seven, and lives in Tokyo. She is very much alive I assure you, it was hard to track her down due to neither your mother or your aunt had any contact with her in the past two decades, do you have any idea why?" The officer asked.

...'I don't know' I admitted as I tried to force myself to remember if grandmother was ever brought up. Any inkling or passing regard, I always thought she had been dead from how little my mother and aunt mentioned her.

And...I was disappointed by the results. She wasn't mentioned, for reasons I could only assume must've been sour. But this...for all my aunt and my mother seemed to argue, there was one time they got along and agreed on something. Not a good sign, seeing as you would have to move heaven and earth for such a thing to occur.

When I was ten and my mother had been sober for five long years, my aunt and her had been smoking out back on Christmas. All I remember was them drinking some 'adult juice' which now that I think about it might've been just apple cider they didn't want to share, the two had sat outside on the porch.

And they cheered the fact that they didn't have to spend it with my grandmother. They drank to that, and I learned some colorful words that night before my Uncle shooed me away from the porch.

"You can't just send him off to live with someone he never even met" Harukawa insisted, "Kokoro Ouma's will left Kokichi Ouma in Mayumi' Idabashi's care when she died, along with leaving some meager finances for him when he comes of age, and Mayumi Idabashi didn't have a will pertaining to the custody of Kokichi due to likely the recent addition to the household. Kokichi Ouma's father has a restraining order placed on him by his mother that will remain in effect on him till he is eighteen years old, his only remaining kin is his grandmother and she has accepted him living with her" the officer explained in an annoyed tone.

"So yes, he can and he will, it might not be the most ideal situation but I'm sure the pair can work out an arrangement" he concluded like it was the end of the argument.

Tokyo.

...when I leave here...will I ever be able to see you again...?  And...what if Mother and Aunt Mayumi had a good reason for despising my grandmother...?

Harukawa didn't say anything when the officer left seemingly tired with me. She was just there, for the second and only time, she was here. Here for me when the world fell apart, and I didn't want to piece it back together.

...but I still felt alone.