There is more than one of him

Chapter 2

After the call, both of them were confused.

"So, what are we gonna do now. We can always tell him we couldn't find anything."

"If he's only half as smart as Dazai, he'll know, that's not true. We need to find out, if Dazai really doesn't want anything from them, or if he thinks they won't want him if they found out he was in the mafia and to some degree still is now. What I'm worried about right now, is Itsuki running into someone Dazai knows, He is in Yokohoma, Dazai has a reputation, at least his face does. If anyone mistakes him for Dazai we're busted. He heard us talking about Dazai and you working on the case"

"So, what do we do?"

"Well, since Dazai won't be shownig up in the office again any time soon, we can take Itsuki and work with him on old evicence and stuff like that. Assuming we find it. We need him for that anyways, to confirm information."

"Well, then we shall do that"

And so it happened, on the next afternoon, the man entered the office again, this time wearing simle jeans and a shirt, no longer the suit from the day before. Looking at him close up, he could finally discover, why Ranpo had immediantly seen, that this was not Dazai.

The arms were uncovered by the shirt, but there were no bandages, the arms and especially the wrist didn't look so boney. Kunikida had always thought, that it was just a genetic thing, that Dazai was so boney, but seeing the muscular and big arms of the man. Itsuki wasn't specifically trained, the muscles seemed natural, not too big like someone who trained his muscles. Dazai wasn't physically weak, but Kunikida knew, there were certain physicall acts, he just couldn't fulfill.

This man, Kunikida guessed, could.

Itsuki looked much more alive than Dazai ever had.

"Good afternoon Tsushima, how has your night been?"

"Good morning, sir. My night has been fine, thank you. May I know why you called me here today again?"

"Well, as it turns out, Dazai is unable to come into work at the moment, for an undefined amount of time. Therefore I will be working on the case alone. I alone am not as fast as I would be with my partner, but there are many things he's dealing with at the moment, so I don't want to force him. In other words, since Dazai can't come in, I need you a little more ofthen, then I originally thought. That's also why we're here today. We have many files of missing people. I wanted to go through them with you about suspects and victims and compare the one of your brother to them, so we might get a lead as to where to start."

In all honesty, Kunikida was waisting time, trying to stretch it until either the man gave up, forgot about it or Ranpo came up with a plan.

"alright, then I shall assist you with that today, but is it really ok for me to see those files?"

"You are head of a police force and I'm only showing you the kidnapping cases, most of these files, you can get access to by yourself."

Unfortunately for the agency, Itsuki was a tad smarter than they had hoped. After only ten files, he made a comment about the port mafia seeming like a good place to start looking, fortunately for Kunikida, Ranpo interfered.

"The port Mafia is not a place to start looking. The port Mafia basically rules most of the city, if you want to go up against the port mafia then you must be a lot more similar to Dazai than you look like. A suicidal psycopath who loves to play with his life and everyone eleses without care."

The comment was snarky, Kunikida understood, because it wa the truth, Itsuki seemed offended by it.

"I am not a suicidal psycopath and I am neither intending to play with anyones life, all I said, was that there is a possiblitiy that the port mafia, is connected. Specifially the cases of the port mafia until 8 years ago. After that, they were rarely taken as possible suspect."