Becoming an investigator hadn't really been Shin's ideal career.

As a child, he'd fantasized about the usual jobs - doctor, firefighter, teacher - but anything relating to law enforcement and the like hadn't ever interested him. Too much of a hassle, too little incentive to risk his life. People aren't grateful for being saved, he thought, they're only grateful for being alive. Whoever was tasked with fishing them out of harm's way tends to be inconsequential even in the heat of the moment.

His outlook hasn't changed in any significant way, if he's being honest (something he's loathe to do whenever he's on the clock), but here he is, fighting in the name of supposed justice, saving the hides of helpless victims who couldn't give a damn what his name is or who he is as a person. And at this point, he can't say he cares who the hell they are, either. It's his job to stick out his neck for ungrateful prey - he wouldn't bother being concerned with them otherwise.

But sometimes, sometimes he hits a point where that isn't enough anymore. Duty-bound honor can only get you so far when day-after-day you're faced with the tragic mortality of fleeting human life.

"Nomura-san, I--"

"Step back, rookie. You shouldn't even be here."

"I'm aware of that, Nomura-san, but--"

"Oh, talking back to your superior? That's cheeky of you, Amon."

"Sir, I just--"

"This isn't for your eyes, Amon. Go back. Shoot the breeze with Takashi for all I care. Just leave for now. I'll make sure you're briefed on everything we find once I'm back in the office. Alright?"

Silence.

"Alright?" Shin repeats, sharpening the word into a lethal dagger, because he knows what it takes to get through to Amon. They've been together for two months now; it'd be strange if he hadn't picked up on the kid's habits and tells yet.

There's a pause in which Shin can hear Amon's slow, careful exhale, and he imagines the man is unclenching his fists, shaking his head. He doesn't like complying with Shin when he thinks he's being unreasonable, but Amon's a good kid - he won't outright disobey him unless Shin drastically crosses Amon's moral line. So far, he hasn't been guilty of doing anything like that. He wonders if it'll stay that way for the next month.

"Of course, Nomura-san."

Shin waits until Amon's footsteps have receded down the street, until he's sure that the man has heeded his words and started for headquarters; then he signals to the grouping of police officers that called them to the scene. The lead officer dips his head in acknowledgement and ushers the others away from the mouth of the alley, leaving it clear for Shin to walk through.

A stiff breeze coasts through the alley, ruffling Shin's hair and wafting the stench of rotting things and the rats that make their home in them up under his nose. He teases out the knots from his hair with one hand, brow furrowed; his fingers tighten around the smooth, frigid handle of his briefcase.

He almost doesn't want to breathe - sharp, metallic blood coats the roof of his mouth with every inhale, and he has to stifle the urge to clap a hand over his nose and mouth, turn right on his heel and follow Amon back to the office.

He was right to send Amon away; something like this - something this inhumane - might have triggered a dangerous reaction in the admittedly volatile man.

Shin sets down his case after a moment of hesitation; he'd sought out a spot close to the body that wasn't layered with crimson, but... it appears he won't have the luxury of a clean briefcase tonight.

The soft glow of the streetlights hardly reaches this far into the alleyway, making it perfect for carrying out an attack, but also miserably difficult for Shin to get a good look at the body. Or, what's left of it, at least. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, stepping lightly across the blood-splattered asphalt, wary of crushing anything of vital importance beneath the hard soles of his shoes.

It's grisly, from what he can make out. Flesh strewn about the alley, crimson painting the walls of the adjacent storefronts. Despite his best efforts, Shin feels something thick and gelatinous give beneath his feet as he stops beside a red-spattered trash can. If one wasn't privy to the nature of this crime scene, they'd think it was an animal attack, it's so devoid of any sort of human compassion - it's primal in its brutality, disturbingly so. But Shin knows that this - this grotesque show of dominance - is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the work of ghouls.

As a kid, ghouls had been the stuff of fairytales for Shin - existing in the peripheral of his thoughts, real in some surreal way but completely out of reach. Outside the realm of possibility, and at the very least, outside of Shin's world. There were news stories blaring from the TV, newspapers splayed across the kitchen counter, but those were for his parents, not him.

But things can change quickly.

He didn't lose his parents. Didn't lose a brother, a sister, a best friend, hell even his babysitter was untouched. Ghouls never directly infiltrated his innocent childhood years.

But they did slip into his neighborhood.

A boy just a few blocks away from his apartment turned up dead one day, body decaying, flesh ripped from his bones, face a mutilated mess that not even his parents could identify. Only DNA testing confirmed it was their missing child. Shin, only nine at the time, really hadn't been too perturbed by the whole affair; in his defense, nothing like it had ever happened, and he couldn't honestly say he understood what was going on. All he knew was that the small, timid kid from down the street wouldn't be meeting up with them to play anymore.

His parents, though, they weren't so naive.

Shin and his younger sister had their whole lives uprooted because of ghouls. Their parents moved them out of their home and further into the city, closer to the CCG headquarters of the Eighteenth Ward, out of (to them) justifiable fear and paranoia. Like somehow being within spitting distance of the CCG would scare off any potential ghouls from snatching up their kids. And Shin, well, he was still trying to cling to a scrap of normalcy in the sea of chaos his parents created for him.

Until they went missing.

It was never confirmed that ghouls killed them - it was never confirmed they were even killed. For all Shin knows, they took off to some remote part of the countryside where they thought ghouls wouldn't congregate and decided kids would be too difficult to deal with while on the run. But the CCG didn't see it that way, and Shin and his sister found a new home in the orphanage dedicated to kids who've lost their guardians to the menace that is ghouls.

Which is how he ended up in the Academy. Not by choice, not because he wanted to make a difference, leave his mark on the world. Because it was easier, more convenient for a kid that society saw as damaged to enroll with other damaged kids and learn how to prevent the spread of damage to younger kids who were once just like him.

His sister, she got off easy, all things considered. Investigators tried convincing her to follow in her brother's footsteps, but she held her ground and attended regular high school, made it into a decent college. She's a starving artist now, or some version of that that actually has enough to eat on a regular basis. Shin's never asked her to clarify. It's enough that they keep in touch and that she doesn't think of him as some stuck-up do-gooder, the kind of investigators they couldn't stand when they were younger.

Why he's recalling all this right now, he doesn't know. Maybe it's a coping mechanism, a way to distract himself from the horror show being presented to him. Maybe he's evaluating his life choices, wondering if someway, somehow, things could have been different if he'd just taken another path, took an adjacent turn somewhere. Maybe Shin's just tired of playing investigator and acting like any of this matters to him.

He's good at his job, at catching ghouls. That doesn't mean he's proud of it.

Ignoring as best he can the piles of shredded flesh and drying blood dotting the scene around him, Shin pulls a pen from his pocket and pokes around the torn clothing littered near the body, lifting it up in search of any identifying items. He comes across a laminated card still attached to the pocket of what he thinks might be a woman's jacket. Clicking the pen, he uses the point to detach the card from its metal pin and draws it closer to him, reaching into his own pocket to grab his phone to provide a little light.

An ID card. Caked with blood but still readable.

Fujimori Akane.

Shin blinks, his shoulders tensing subtly. He knows that name. Why the hell does he know that name? It's...

Running a hand through his hair, Shin cocks his head, eyes narrowed in thought. He's only a few blocks from the newspaper, the one that Ikehara Kaori worked for, isn't he?

Fujimori Akane.

It suddenly clicks for him.

She's another reporter from the same newspaper, a friend of Kaori's, a friend of Rui's. He'd done a quick background check on all the employees for that firm when he took on Rui's case, and of course the name hadn't stuck out to him then, but he'd filed it away along with all the others.

He stares down at her ID card, seeing green eyes through the smear of red, and yeah, he remembers her, if just a little bit.

He doesn't want to - he really does not want to - but Shin forces himself to straighten up. He lifts his head, keeping his eyes off Fujimori Akane's remains, and scans the alley with the light of his phone's flashlight, sweeping low from one building to the other - until he finds what he's looking for.

At first, he could mistake it for a pile of crushed cardboard boxes, stray plastic bags that have tangled together into one misshapen heap; it's so dark, really, it could be anything. But no, that's just wishful thinking. There's too much blood leaking out from under the mass, too rotten of a stench permeating the air around it.

He doesn't need a DNA test to know that what he's seeing is Fujimori Akane's skin, shorn off her muscles and discarded like the wrapper of a fast-food burger.

Skinner's made another kill.

"Amon's going to kill me," Shin mutters under his breath, following a string of colorful curses mostly directed towards himself.

Shin slides a thumb across his phone's screen to unlock it, pulling up Amon's number. They're going to need more resources, because this isn't the low-level ghoul the higher-ups were hoping it would be, and this'll give Amon something to do, put off the inevitable lecture for a while longer. But just as Amon picks up, his voice crackling through the phone with a mixture of excitement and panic, Shin spots something glinting just at the edge of the pool of light cast by the closest street light. He'd missed it upon walking closer, but that wasn't hard to swallow. It's small, circular - he takes a step closer, bends down to squint at it.

Another curse leaps from his tongue, startling Amon on the other end of the line.

"It's a fucking engagement ring. As if I didn't feel bad enough."