Chapter Twenty-Four: Something isn’t Right:

December 6th, 2010.

10:00 a.m.

Tatsumi read over the reports. For three days, they had something missing.

“Chief,” he said. “Could you take a look at this?” Konoe read over the report. He raised an eyebrow.

“It looks fine to me,” he said.

“Don’t the reports appear off to you?” Tatsumi asked. The boss took another look. This time, he blinked.

“Is this all?” Konoe asked.

“Yes,” his secretary said.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

“That’s it.”

“This isn’t right.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Konoe place the report on his desk. He picked up the phone and dialed up Hisoka.

“Hello?” the young shinigami asked.

“This is Konoe,” the boss said. “I have questions about your case reports.” There was a pause on the other line.

“Oh,” Hisoka said.

“What does that mean?”

“Well… We have a problem.”

“What?”

“Hunters, sir.”

“What did you say?”

“There are bounty hunters in the area.”

“You can’t be serious. How many are there?”

“We’ve ran into two so far, but I feel more in the are right now.”

“Well, what do they want?”

“Kato-san.”

Konoe spat out his tea. “What?!”

“It’s true,” Hisoka said. “What should we do?” Konoe looked at Tatsumi with big eyes. At first, the secretary couldn’t grasp what was going down. The boss struggled to speak for two minutes.

“Kato-san’s soul is on the loose?” he asked at last. Tatsumi’s jaw dropped.

“Yes,” Hisoka said.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“We didn’t have the whole story until today. What should we do until then?”

Konoe rubbed his forehead. “Try to stay out of their way. If they want Kato, let them have him. Just focus on the case at hand.”

“Okay, sir.”

“Don’t forget to report back to us.”

“Yes sir.”

Konoe hung up, sighing. He turned his attention to Tatsumi. The boss could guess the next question.

“Yes, Kato Iwao is still roaming free,” he said. Tatsumi pushed up his glasses.

“May I ask why?” he asked. “And how?” Konoe rubbed his forehead.

“I would assume that would be because of Kimoto-san,” he said. His secretary frowned.

I should’ve had her judged when I had the chance, he thought. “Will we have to capture Kato-san before things get ugly?” Tatsumi asked.

“We must.”

The kagetsukai raised an eyebrow. “Is something else wrong?”

“There’s still something else,” Konoe said.

“Something else, sir?”

“I don’t know how to put it, but…”

“There’s something else he didn’t tell you.”

“Yeah.”

“Shall I check out what’s going on?”

“Please do.”

“Yes sir.” Tatsumi bowed and vanished to Chijou. Konoe tried not to play the worst case scenario in his head.