Chapter Text
Tajemnica poliszynela - Polish term for ‘open secret’. A supposed secret that everyone (in a given community) knows about, but no one talks about it out loud.
The term probably comes from Italian or French puppet theatre. The Poliszynel (Italian: Pulcinella, French: Polichinelle) was a hunchbacked character in the commedia dell'arte. He was very talkative and constantly spreading gossip. He would share all sorts of information with the audience, as if whispering under his breath. Thus, a "Polichinelle's secret" is common knowledge.
At the time Mina hadn’t known, or maybe she just didn’t want to believe that the newest numbered Kaiju was Kafka. In hindsight though it was really obvious. The first piece of breadcrumb that led to this? The little girl Kafka saved on his very first night as a kaiju. She remembered that night vividly.
"Um, do you promise not to hurt the good kaiju? The one that saves me and my mom?"
Mina stared at the little girl that introduced herself as Yukiko. She saw a little bit of herself in this child. Her life was upturned by a kaiju attack too. All she cared for was taken from her. Her village, her cat… Taken in one swoop by a monster. So, it came to the reason there had to be some shock and trauma response involved here.
With that in mind, instead of telling the girl that there were no good kaiju, Mina smiled.
"Of course, but do you mind telling me more about it?"
Yukiko nodded shyly.
"When the bad kaiju was trying to eat me, Uncle Kaiju just punched it reeeeally hard!" The girl mimicked the punch, almost tripping herself. "I was really scared but he told me he would go away soon and that everything will be alright! He tried to smile but he was really bad at smiling. He did it like this, bleeeergh .” She demonstrated again by pulling at the corners of her mouth and sticking her tongue out. She giggled. Mina noted the ‘Uncle Kaiju’ title.
"Captain we can-" Hoshina approached them to let Mina know they were good to go but she waved him to silence.
"I can imagine a kaiju would have a hard time smiling," Mina told the girl softly. The fact the kaiju could speak alarmed her.
"Yeah." Yukikol nodded.
Hoshina touched Mina’s shoulder. "They need the girl to go with her mother," he whispered.
"Tell them I will drive her personally there. This is important," she retorted. Hoshina stepped back knowing when to let go.
Mina turned back to Yukiko, giving her a warm smile. "What happened next?" She tried to encourage her witness to keep talking.
The little girl thought hard. "The nice boy came. He helped pull mommy from under the cabinet after Uncle Kaiju lifted it up!"
She glanced at Hoshina and gestured to him to grab her paper and something to draw. They had an accomplice. No human before would abide a kaiju before. There were no "good kaijus" before, either.
"And then?"
"The bad kaiju got up and Uncle Kaiju punched it even harder! He was so cool! He shone all blue and then-!" The girl jumped up to imitate the kaiju punch. “Like- whoosh! And the bad kaiju went-" she gestured, mimicking the explosion with extra sound effects.
Mina chuckled. Children had an amazing way of storytelling.
"And then his head became human!" The girl finished.
Mina's eyes widened. "Whose head?"
"Uncle Kaiju’s!"
"Could you draw it for us?" Mina jumped a little when Hoshina spoke, she missed his return, absorbed in the girl's story. "We wouldn’t want to accidentally hurt him." The Vice-Captain handed their eyewitness a piece of slightly crumpled paper and a pen. No crayons were located.
The girl hesitated.
"It will be okay.” Mina jumped in to comfort Yukiko before she’d withdraw into herself. "I promise, I will protect him."
Still a bit unsure, their little witness carefully took the pen and paper and started drawing, describing best she could. It was crude and not very detailed but it was something. The horned skull face of the kaiju, the generic, white haired boy and the spiky black hair of the human form of the kaiju. Mina stared at the latter image. Maybe it was because she had just yesterday seen Kafka but- no.
"Thank you," she said and stroked Yukiko’s hair. "Let’s get you to your mommy."
"Okay!"
Mina took the child's hand and led her to the squad van. As the girl climbed in, the Captain turned to Hoshina.
"Get any footage you can get from the hospital cameras. Anything useful," she instructed.
"Yes, yes, I know, standard protocol. I will forward you everything," he assured her.
Mina nodded and climbed in after the girl. She drove off with her team leaving Hoshina with the other van.
"Well, ain't things getting interesting..." Vice Captain muttered under his breath.
Back at the base Mina combed through the report from the hospital and the recordings from cameras and CCTV.
The patients from the room where the kaiju was detected were Reno Ichikawa and... Kafka Hibino. Her eyes lingered over the photo of her once best friend. She picked up Yukiko's drawing and compared it to the photo. It could be him... then again, maybe she was just missing her friend and her mind was pushing scenarios in her mind. Maybe it was her PTSD or loneliness talking. Could she really rely on a child's art to make such grave assumptions?
The hospital corridor camera didn’t give her that much confirmation either. The kaiju's head appeared in view for a few seconds but it seemed the audience in the form of other patients spooked it back inside. After this both Hibino and Ichikawa were missing until much later. Until yoju was killed and number 8 was nowhere to be seen. They were caught on camera returning from somewhere outside of the hospital.
Mina bit her bottom lip. Kafka...
She couldn't get his medical report, not without rising too much suspicion from both medical staff and her own superiors, but if there was a possibility that maybe... maybe the kaiju killed her friend and took his form? She shook her head. What ifs were not going to help her. Only facts.
Facts stated there was a new kaiju around. First one to evade capture and with soon to be announced number 8 given to it by the JAKDF. It originated from the same room Hibino and Ichikawa were in, but they weren’t attacked, claiming they hid the second it appeared according to the statement they gave the medical staff. Hid where? Why were they outside the hospital grounds?
Back to the monster itself. This kaiju was humanoid, it could talk according to Yukiko’s statement. It was intelligent enough to talk in some capacity. She couldn’t rely on Yukiko’s statement fully, so there was no telling if it could form full sentences. It wasn’t aggressive towards humans. Speaking of humans, there was someone helping it. This was the information she could somewhat rely on.
Unfortunately, there weren’t many CCTV cameras in the area around the hospital. One camera had a brief image of Ichikawa running and the kaiju chasing him. That’s it.
Outside the window it was getting dark, she spent the entire day on this. The only thing she managed to get was the anxious feeling that her friend might be a kaiju. Which was completely irrational. She needed to sleep.
Mina couldn’t officially investigate Kafka, that could put him at risk.This much was obvious. She could only hope he would come to tell her but then again how would he? They haven’t spoken in… a good while. The silent resentment she had for him when he didn’t join her in the JAKDF festered and built a wall between them that neither knew how to dismantle. She couldn’t understand why he stopped talking to her after he aged out. Was he feeling guilty for not keeping his promise? Whatever the reason, she couldn’t change how it made her feel. They used to be best of friends. She used to look up to him. Now they were nothing more than strangers.
It seemed though that fate put them in vicinity of each other again. For better or worse.
The only thing she really did after the incident was to check on his workplace. Kafka took a sick leave, which was to be expected and neither of his coworkers reported anything unusual. Then again they didn’t really have an opportunity to talk to him afterwards. Ichikawa was absent when she dropped by.
She decided not to visit him. She didn’t feel like she could.
Then his name appeared on the list of the latest examination takers. She had forgotten that she still had a special alert for him there. She scanned the other participants' names. There it was - Reno Ichikawa. Seemed like the two got along really well. It was good that Kafka found some new friends.
Well, there was no reason to get her hopes up. Kafka always failed on the 2nd part of the exam.
To her surprise though, this year - he didn’t. He did well on the fitness exam, not shockingly well but he placed somewhere in the middle. While he didn’t score any kaiju kills he showed exceptional team-oriented behaviour. The only problem was his battle release force being an astounding 0%.
Mina sighed. This was his last chance to join. If not for that last bit she was going to argue to let him in but could she-
“Captain Ashiro.” Hoshina stopped her before entering the examiners room. “Before we go in, I’d like to quickly discuss with you the problem we encountered three months ago.” He showed her a manila folder with Kafka’s photo peeking in.
“Captain, Vice Captain, we start in two minutes,” Ebina spotted them talking.
“It’s going to take a moment,” Mina assured him and grabbed Hoshina, taking him to the side, away from the platoon leaders and JAKDF HQ representative.
“Talk to me,” she told her Vice Captain.
“I looked into the incident,” Soshiro began. “Hibino Kafka, I kept an eye on him like you asked. I found something interesting.” He flipped the pages to the prints of the examination area map with locations of individual examinees. “It’s true the cameras were shot during the incident but we had sensors. Here’s Shinomiya with the Honju. Now here,” He pointed to another dot, “is Hibino. And here,” he flipped to another print, “he disappears and instead…”
“Kaiju no. 8 appears,” Mina whispered, finishing his sentence. She took the page carefully into her hands.
Hoshina smiled. “Kafka pops back again here, away from the Honju site,” he showed another print out. “With Shinomiya and Ichikawa. Speaking of Ichikawa, he was also detected next to Shinomiya and number 8 very briefly.”
Mina looked pensive, glancing between the maps and readings. She still didn’t want to accept what Hoshina was saying but at the same time she couldn’t deny that something was wrong with Kafka.
She thought back to the hospital visit she tried to pay him after the exam. He should have had some bone fractures but it seemed like they turned out to just be some bruising. She ran into him outside the building. He looked and sounded so much like himself in the conversation with Ichikawa. But when she looked him in the eye there was something just… off. Shape of his eyes? His hair? Or maybe it was just her, making things up in her head, going crazy with paranoia.
“I want to take Hibino as a recruit into my unit, keep a closer eye on him,” Hoshina said, bringing her back to the present time. “Good thing he isn’t completely useless even with that fat 0 on his affinity score,” he chuckled.
“Be careful Hoshina,” Mina sighed, handing him back the papers. She couldn’t quite stop him from acquiring his ‘comic relief’, but she already felt bad for Kafka… if that was still indeed Kafka.