“Is this a regional dish?” Harold asked as the chef walked away.
“Yes, I’d eat it a lot back when I lived in Kautokeino.”
“This is my first time having it.”
“Don’t you worry, it’s great!”
Even as they chatted, Bigga snuck glances at Harold. Ever since his malfunction, something about him had changed. She’d be hard-pressed to put her finger on what exactly was different, but he wasn’t the Harold she knew. His gentlemanly attitude and gaze were unchanged, but somehow, something felt shallow about them.
If she had to say, it was like he was acting with the uniform artificiality of a mass-produced Amicus. Was this because of the malfunction? If so, Bigga couldn’t help but feel saddened by it. She wished he’d go back to being his old self.
“I hope the last autopsy yields some kind of clue about the Alliance…” Bigga casually examined his expression. “But I didn’t expect Miss Hieda would be in the meeting earlier.”
“Yes, I wasn’t expecting her, either. I was surprised. It must have been a last-minute decision.”
“Have you talked? Um, about you not fully recovering…?”
“If you mean about me stepping down as Belayer, Chief Totoki should have informed her by now.” Harold wasn’t smiling, but his demeanor was serene. “It was the chief’s idea. She thought Investigator Hieda would accept it more easily if it didn’t come from me.”
“I think she’d still be shocked, though. Plus, in her case, she might not find another aide who’s able to work with her…”
“Yes, I do feel guilty about that. But Investigator Hieda has already experienced setbacks like this one in the past, so I believe she’ll find a way to overcome.”
The chef approached with glasses of carbonated water on a tray, and their conversation ended there. They hadn’t ordered any drinks, so it must have been a freebie. Bubbles rose from the water in the thin glasses. As Bigga sipped her beverage, she wondered what was making her restless, like the gears weren’t meshing right.
“Even if our positions change, I’ll still be Investigator Hieda’s friend.”
Bigga couldn’t help but feel that what he’d said back then was superficial. Harold looked too calm, to an excessive, eerie degree. Echika was irreplaceable as a partner. He must have decided to keep up a calm facade, since getting depressed over things wouldn’t fix his malfunction. He was much more mature than Bigga was, so that must have been it. Still, she wanted to see Harold and Echika go back to their old relationship, if possible. Though she wasn’t sure why she felt that way.
After all, normally, she should have envied Echika.
This wasn’t to say she didn’t envy her right now, of course. But the two had been working as partners for as long as she’d known them, and Bigga assumed this was just the natural state of things. She’d only been accepted to the academy in the first place because the two of them had recommended her.
She’d never seen the two of them apart, so seeing their partnership disintegrate was painful. It made her anxious, for some reason.
Bigga glanced out the window, hoping to calm herself. Large piles of snow had formed in the parking lot, melting away the darkness of night. Snowflakes were still flittering down incessantly. The aurora wouldn’t be visible tonight, but…
“You two visited me in Kautokeino on a snowy day just like this one, right?”
She thought back to the night one year ago, when she’d met Harold and Echika for the first time. Bigga had opened her front door to find a girl roughly her age dressed in all black and a young man who looked more handsome and refined than any she’d seen in her village. At the time, she’d been focused on maintaining a facade of composure so she could hide her cousin Clara Lie, who was taking refuge in her house.
“That brings back memories.” Harold noisily placed his glass on the table.
“We can look back at it and laugh now, but Miss Hieda was really rude when we first met.”
“It’s funny to me now, but I do regret letting her handle the questioning.”
“And I spilled coffee on your hand.”
“Yes, you got really worried about it, which showed me just how kind you are.” He smiled at her softly. Her heart skipped a beat. “It still eats away at me that Lie got hurt as a result.”
“She and I are both over it by now! She said she got herself into that accident by trying to run away…”
Speaking about it made Bigga think back to what happened, which made it impossible not to recall that specific memory.
“I’ll, um, go pour you some more coffee.”
This was after she’d invited Echika and Harold to the living room; they’d come to investigate an electronic crime. Bigga had taken their mugs and scurried out of the room to refill them. At the time, she was convinced that Echika and Harold had come to chase down Lie because she’d used bio-hacking. She hurried to the kitchen, determined to get her cousin out of the house.
“Clara, get out through the back door, now.”
“I just got the snowmobile ready.” Lie already had her poncho on and was getting ready to flee. “I’ll be at the fishing spot we used to play in. Come pick me up once they leave.”
Lie dashed out of the kitchen, but then Bigga’s eyes were drawn to the table. There was a palm-sized plastic case sitting there. An untouched suppressant syringe. She broke into a cold sweat. It was almost time for Lie’s suppressant to wear off. If she didn’t get another shot, she’d start seeing that blizzard again.
Bigga grabbed the case. Just as she was about bolt out of the kitchen, however—
“Pardon. Are you all right?”
Harold showed up in the entryway, and she nearly bumped into him. He placed his hands on her shoulders to catch her, just barely stopping their collision. Bigga blushed on reflex. She’d been moments away from diving into the chest of a very good-looking man.
No. I have to go after Lie, fast.
“A neighbor just knocked on the back door.” Bigga hid the case behind her back, sensing Harold’s gaze. “He wanted to return something he borrowed. If you could just wait a minute for the coffee—”
“I came from the back door, too. That case, it’s a bio-hacking tool, isn’t it?”
He knows.