Nobody had money.
⠀
That was the first problem. Roby had a wallet full of receipts and a single crumpled ten-Nanum note he refused to spend "on principle." Saoirse had a puppet in each hand, and a pocket full of bottle caps she swore were worth something. Yuhuan had nothing, because the last time he'd carried real money, somebody had lifted it right out of his coat in the 9th District, and he'd never bothered replacing his wallet after that.
⠀
"We could go back for my family's card," Yuhuan said, not for the first time.
⠀
"Absolutely not," Roby said. "I ain't crawlin' back to your rich murder-family for cash after what just happened to us!"
⠀
"It wouldn't be crawling. It'd just be a phone call."
⠀
"It'd be crawlin' with extra steps..."
⠀
They'd been walking for close to an hour, and the 7th District didn't seem interested in helping them figure out where. The rain had eased into a cold drizzle, the kind that soaked through a coat slowly but somehow felt worse. Streetlights buzzed on early, one after another, throwing long yellow smears across wet pavement. Mori's scarf hung low and sullen around his neck, its usual restless wind barely stirring, like even it didn't have the energy to argue with the weather.
⠀
"We could sleep under an awning," Saoirse offered.
⠀
"We are not sleeping under an awning," Yuhuan said.
⠀
"Arny thinks the one by the noodle place looked pretty comfy."
⠀
"...He did not say that," Stuffy muttered. "He said it looked like it had bugs."
⠀
"SAME THING!"
⠀
Mori trailed a half-step behind the others, Pallas's badge turning over and over in his fingers, the same way Sam's brush had turned that morning. He kept catching himself doing it and couldn't make himself stop.
⠀
He almost walked straight past the alley.
⠀
It was Roby who noticed the light first, a warm one, spilling out from a narrow side street between a shuttered bakery and a pawnshop with bars on the windows.
⠀
"...The hell's that?" Roby said, already veering toward it.
⠀
A sign hung above a narrow door, hand-painted, half the letters peeling: THE GUMSHOE OFFICE — CASES TAKEN, ANSWERS GIVEN, SATISFACTION NOT GUARANTEED. Underneath, in smaller and clearly more recent paint: (WE'RE WORKING ON THAT LAST PART).
⠀
"Satisfaction not guaranteed," Roby read aloud. "Well, that's honest, at least."
⠀
"It's warm in there," Saoirse said, pressing her face to the fogged-up window like a kid outside a candy shop. "I can see a heater. A HEATER, Mori!"
⠀
Yuhuan looked at the sign, then at the three of them, then at the rain still coming down. "I don't see a better option presenting itself."
⠀
He pushed the door open.
⠀
A bell jingled somewhere overhead, cheerful and a little out of tune. The office was one big room crowded with filing cabinets, a woodstove glowing orange in the corner, and three mismatched desks pushed together in a rough horseshoe. Case files covered every flat surface that wasn't already covered in mugs.
⠀
A man behind the center desk looked up first.
⠀
He was broad-shouldered with short, black hair, wearing a coat two sizes too big for him with the collar popped, and he had the kind of face that had clearly smiled a lot more in his younger years. Though he wasn't old. He looked around 22. A magnifying glass sat on the desk in front of him, next to a cup of tea gone cold.
⠀
"We're closed," he said automatically, then actually looked at them and reconsidered. "...We're closed, but you all look like you could use some warmth, so... come in before you drown the carpet."
⠀
"Thank you," Mori said, stepping inside, and immediately sneezed.
⠀
"Bless you. Oliver Androux Teteruepta," the man said, standing and offering a hand. "Chief Detective, for what that's worth these days. Everybody just calls me Oliver, unless they owe me money, in which case they call me 'sir' real fast!"
⠀
From a desk in the back corner, a woman didn't look up from the file she was reading. She had long pink hair that fell to about her waist, reading glasses pushed halfway down her nose, and a badge clipped to her lapel that read ANGELIKA FREDES in small block letters. She wasn't wearing an outfit anything like the chief, though. She wore a white, gothic lolita dress that seemed from a time long gone.
⠀
"You're dripping on my floor," Angelika said.
⠀
"That's Angelika," Oliver said. "6th Division. Please, ignore the tone. It's just how she says hello."
⠀
"It's how I say everything," Angelika said, finally glancing up. Her eyes moved over the four of them fast, cataloging. She stopped on the torn threads where their patches used to be.
⠀
"Argus," she said. "Recently."
⠀
Roby stiffened. "How'd you—?!"
⠀
"You've got the marks of a patch on four sleeves, and none of you are wearing one," Angelika said. "...Not exactly a locked case."
⠀
A third figure leaned in the doorway of a back room, chewing on the end of a pencil, tall and lanky in a rumpled vest that had definitely once belonged to someone else. He had a badge too, half-hidden under a stain that might have been coffee. KRAUS PLUM.
⠀
"5th Division," Kraus said before anyone asked, around the pencil.
⠀
"Kraus," Oliver said, "put the kettle on. These four look like they haven't eaten in a while... could you heat up the soup, too?"
⠀
"On it, boss."
⠀
Oliver pulled two more chairs over from an empty desk, waved for Roby and Saoirse to take the couch by the woodstove, and settled back into his own seat.
⠀
"All right," Oliver said. "Start wherever you want. We've got tea, we've got time, and frankly, we've got nothin' better goin' on tonight."
⠀
So they told him.
⠀
It came out messier than Mori meant it to: Vance, the charges, the patches, Pallas's badge still sitting warm in his coat pocket, Mitchell's promise on his way out the door. Yuhuan filled in the parts Mori skipped over. Saoirse added commentary nobody asked for. Roby mostly stared into his tea and let the others talk, which, for Roby, was its own kind of loud.
⠀
By the time they finished, Kraus had gone through two full pots of tea between the six of them, and the fire in the woodstove had burned down to embers.
⠀
"So lemme get this straight," Kraus said, dropping into a chair backward, arms folded over the top of it. "Argus Directorates just... cut you loose? Over charges that didn't even happen yet?"
⠀
"Some of them," Yuhuan said. "One of them did happen. We're not innocent of everything."
⠀
"Nobody's innocent of everything," Angelika said, not unkindly, from behind her file. "Not in the Ring, at least. But that still doesn't mean you deserved a public hanging over it..."
⠀
Oliver was quiet for a long moment, turning his mug slowly between both hands.
⠀
"You know," he said, "the Gumshoe Office isn't much. We've only got three people, but it's ours. And we don't answer to any Coalition, or some scary guy in a grey suit with a pocket watch." He glanced up. "We could use four more sets of hands, if you're willing to work for a lot less glory than what you're used to."
⠀
"You'd take us in?" Mori asked. "Just like that?"
⠀
"You just got kicked out of your home into the rain, and you're still worried about being a bother?" Oliver asked. "That just tells me plenty... I don't need divine judgment from some higher-up or fancy glowing eyes to know you guys need our help."
⠀
"We ain't exactly experienced detectives..." Roby said.
⠀
"You came out of that scary DaeSyndicate adjunct when you were up against a KKA-level ARCH, alive," Angelika said, flipping a page without looking up. "I think you'll be capable of a lot more than these two meatbags!"
⠀
"M-Meatbags?!" Oliver shouted in surprise.
⠀
"We've actually got a stack of stuff we've been sitting on," Kraus said, jerking a thumb at a cabinet drawer that didn't look like it wanted to close all the way. "A couple of missing persons, a shop owner who swears his goods keep walking off on their own, and just today we had a guy reporting some stolen watch... Small stuff. Boring stuff. But it keeps the lights on, I guess."
⠀
"We'll take a crack at it," Mori said, before he'd fully thought it through.
⠀
Yuhuan looked at him. Mori just shrugged.
⠀
"We don't have anywhere else to be," Mori said. "Might as well be useful."
⠀
Oliver smiled and stuck his hand out across the desk.
⠀
"Then welcome to the Gumshoe Office," he said. "You're all Junior Detectives starting tonight. Pay's bad, hours are worse, and Kraus makes terrible tea."
⠀
"The tea's fine," Kraus said.
⠀
"The tea's terrible," Angelika said.
⠀
Mori shook Oliver's hand. It was warm.
⠀
"Junior Detective Ryunosuke," Oliver said, testing it out loud. "Has a ring to it!"
⠀
Behind him, Saoirse had already draped herself dramatically across the couch, Stuffy and Arnold held aloft.
⠀
"JUNIOR DETECTIVE SAOIRSE, AT YOUR SERVICE!~" she announced to the ceiling.
⠀
"...We are not qualified for this..." Stuffy said.
⠀
"WE'RE VERY QUALIFIED!"
⠀
Outside, the rain kept falling on the alley, and the little hand-painted sign creaked once on its hinge. For the first time since they'd walked out of Antollio's gate, nobody in the room felt like they were drowning in an overwhelming sense of guilt, danger, or anxiety.