Sunday 11:00 am
        Balancing the tray on one hand, she signed her name on the account for a bowl of steaming ramen from the hospital canteen, spotting an empty four-person table amongst the room of people eating their breakfasts, she smiled and hastily approached it before someone else claimed the table as their own.  She noted the half eaten bowl of ramen that lay discarded on the table, shaking her head in disgust at the wastage of food, and placed her own tray next to it.  Pulling the chair from underneath, she collapsed into the chair without looking due to her extreme fatigue and was only slightly aware of the height and hardness of the usually soft cushioned chairs.
        Picking up her chopsticks, Dr Mizuno gathered strands of the hot ramen into her lips mechanically, hardly tasting the soup base that the cooks had carefully created.  If she had noticed, she would have raised her eyebrow the less than ordinary soup that had been prepared, a significant falling short from the norm due to the sudden increase of demand by visitors and over-worked doctors - the soup had not been cooked long enough for the rich flavor to be effuse from its ingredients.
        She had only taken a few bites when she felt a presence behind her which she ignored as a brief hallucination, until a voice interrupted her.  “Excuse, ma’am?”
        Dr Mizuno turned to address at the thin gentleman behind her, dressed in a light grey summer suit, white shirt, and a light turquoise tie, “yes, how can I help you?”
        “You are sitting on my files.”
        She immediately jumped up from her seat as she realized the reason for the extraordinary hardness and height of the chair she had just been sitting in, indeed, there was a short stack of black clipboards lying there.  “Excuse me, I’ll find another seat.”
        “No, that’s fine, I’ll just put them on the table, plenty of space for the two of us.  Please, join me, I’d enjoy some company.”
        She laughed self-consciously at her embarrassment as he placed his steaming tea beside the half eaten meal that had previously been discarded, then stooped to retrieve the files.  “I’m afraid that I’m not much of company, as you might have observed, I am a tired wreck.”
        He chucked softly, “I didn’t notice; I thought that wrecks were supposed to look like ones, you are obviously the exception to the rule.”  He bowed and introduced himself, “Doctor Kendo Daiki, I am part of the Special Investigation Unit from the police department sent here to investigate the strange return of the children, I am forensic psychologist of the group.”
        She bowed back, “it’s nice to meet you, tell me, what exactly do you do in the department as a forensic psychologist?”
        Sitting down, he gestured for her to join her, as soon as she was settled he sighed, “my job is like a fictional role in books, I am a profiler, I construct crime scenes in my mind after the physical labor has been done by my colleagues.  This is rather out of my element, but the police wanted a psychologist to interview the children, and I had a minor in children’s psychology, that’s what I’m doing here now.”
        “No wonder I have never seen you before.”
        “That, and I’ve just transferred to Juuben to investigate the,” he used his fingers to draw the quotations marks,        “ ‘paranormal’ activities around here.  And what about you ma’am, do you have a sick child here, is that why you should have seen me before?”
        “Oh, how rude of me!”  She ran her fingers through her short dark hair, “you’ll remember me in your books forever as the scatterbrain, first to sit on your files, second to forget my manners and not introduce myself.  Mewagi Mizuno, I’m a doctor here.”
        “Doctor?  That’s an understatement; I recognize your name, I have you here on my list as the Head of the Emergency Department and Pediatrics, I’m supposed to ‘visit’ you after interviewing a few more patients.  Where is your identification?”
        She looked at herself and laughed, “you are not seeing me at my best, I must have left my overcoat in the changing room down in the Isolation Unit,” she said, referring to her white medical jacket, “I must be making quite an impression as a credible witness.”
        “Well, according to my information here Doctor Mizuno, you have been working here for a stretch of over thirty hours, you have a right to be tired.”
        “I was pulling an extra shift earlier for another colleague of mine, and then just as I was about to leave, this happened.  How are you finding your work?”
        “Different, I usually deal with dead people’s matters, now I am dealing with something that no one remembers, and no one knows where it took place.  If this is indeed paranormal, then I am hardly qualified, I deal with human psychology, not some, outer space green-skinned alien.”
        “It takes time to get used to I suppose, tell me, why did you transfer?”
        “I am writing a book right now about forensic psychology and the applications of that to my job as a profiler.  It’s a slightly obscure topic actually, but very useful for people interested in this field, it also makes my job less fictional for those who can’t utilize their talents because they think that my field is an imaginary novel idea.  One day, I might even find myself applying that as a book for leisure reading, but at this stage, it is strictly non-fiction.  To get back to the point, I transferred for job with less pressures to spend more time on my writing.”
        “Sounds interesting, but I must tell you that you chose the wrong district.”
        “Now I know; I have been on my toes for the past fortnight, and I’ve only arrived for a fortnight so far.  Well, I’ll be in to see you after I interview…” he opened the uppermost file and used his finger to scroll down the list of names, “three more of those children who, I bet, will tell me that they don’t know what happened for the past few years of their lives.”
        “The same result as our own resident psychologists…”  She was cut short by an outburst of his laughter as he flicked through some papers in the same clipboard.
        “Sorry, this next kid that I am seeing, the preliminary report from your resident psychologist was, in summary, ‘sat, rocked, traumatized, didn’t say a word,’ in other words, I could go and interview a rock, sorry again, I am not good at dealing with living patients.”
        “That’s why we have pathologists in our field,” Dr Mizuno said, returning his smile, “and tell me, who is this poor child that you have to see?”
        “I sympathize him though, he had a bright future ahead of him before all of this mess, the famous skating Asuka Akiyama.”
        “Oh, yes, he did have a bright future, and I’m sure that he’ll rise to the challenge and reclaim what was his,” she raised an eyebrow, “let me come with you, I know him quite well.”
        He buried his head in his hands in embarrassment, “I apologize then, for offending you and my somewhat insensitive remarks about your friend’s state of mind.”
        “There’s no need, I understand your frustration.”
        “I was actually hoping that you would accept my apology and let me make it up to you with a dinner invitation some time this week.”
        “I’m married, with a teenage daughter.”   Dr Mizuno said with wryly, he was a nice man, but she didn’t want to lead him on as a single woman looking for a date, friends perhaps, but she still did not trust her heart to be placed in someone else’s hands, not Ami’s daughter.
        “Pity, I was hoping for some company for dinner, and some intellectual conversation, by the way, where would your ring be?”
        “Professional standards, I don’t wear a ring Doctor Daiki.”
        “Call me Kendo, may I make a bet with you, Doctor Mizuno?”
        “And call me Mewagi, what bet would you like to make?”
        “I will profile your daughter and yourself, and if I am correct, then you will have to agree to dinner at a time of your choice, providing that you allow me to ask you three questions before I give you a profile.”
        She smiled as shook her head, “Kendo-san, I thought that we were no longer in high school, but you don’t give up do you?”
        “I am a police officer too, well, what do you say?”
        “Very well, your questions?”
        “Fine, the three questions are: what is your husband’s occupation, his name, and whether you are proud of your daughter?”
        “A landscape painter, Hiro Mizuno, Ami Mizuno, and yes, very.”
        He leaned forwards and stared at her as though he was in a trance, “your daughter is an intelligent young woman, she is like her father, she has his talents in art and leisurely activities, but truth be told, she is her mother’s daughter.  She is an intellect, a scholar, and a realist and knows that her artistic talents are hobbies.  She has good heart, and she wants to be like you, a doctor, although, she probably leans towards the pediatrician side because of her compassionate heart and love for children.
        “As for you, Mewagi Mizuno, you regret the little time you spend with your daughter, but despite the time constraints, you watch her like a hawk and you know much more than you usually let on about her life.  Again, an intelligent woman, as obvious as it seems considering your position, but you are not a scholar, you got here by sheer determination and a dream to help people.  Admit it, you are a dreamer, and an idealist beneath the realist façade you put up, your husband is the realist and that’s where your daughter got it from.  He was a realist and that was why you two separated, you dreamt of the perfect family, but he knew that he wasn’t cut out for a family no matter how much he love his child, which, by the way might be one of the reasons why he is not very successful as a painter.  And yes, you are divorced, but you told me that you married because you don’t trust yourself, you are a dreamer, but you’ve had your share of hard knocks, and that is why you are so vulnerable, that is why you won’t let me try to take you out for dinner.  So, how accurate was I?”  He sat back with a satisfied look on his face.
        “How?”  She was flabbergasted.
        “Do you agree to dinner?”
        “Yes, I suppose I must.”  Mewagi Mizuno replied in shock.
        “Now, a few confessions, I thought I recognized your surname: I’ve heard about your husband’s work, as a portrait painter though, not a landscape painter; and then your daughter, well, I have her vital statistics on one of my files as an interviewee, I saw her through the glass of the isolation room this morning.  You two are physically strikingly similar, which is why I asked for her name, to confirm my guess, and that’s where I got her intelligence levels from.”
        She smiled as realization dawned, “you cheated…”
        “Other than that though, the rest was purely from my training, her compassion comes from your answer to my last question, you would have been proud if her dreams were monetarily based, but you were ‘very’ proud because she was compassionate.  And your profile was based on my observations just then, so I didn’t cheat that much.”
        “… I can’t believe that I fell for that.”
        “You were tired.”
        “Although I am impressed by the rest of it, tomorrow evening, I finish at 8:15pm in the hospital, if you are free, I’ll meet you in my office.”
        “Thank you, I’ll meet you then, and now I want to extract from you another promise, your previous offer of help with Asuka Akiyama?”
        “Let me finish my breakfast first Dr Daiki, your file might not have told you that I haven’t eaten for over thirty hours.”
        “It’s doctor now, is it?”
        “Lets keep it professional in hospital precincts shall we?”
        “Fine by me Dr Mizuno.”
        “What are you conclusions so far with this case?”
        “Professionally speaking that is,” he said with a smile, extracting a similar smile from his audience, “so far, it seem like…”

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