[color=slategray][h3]Kazuhiko Tsuda[/h3][/color]
[indent][i]In transit from District 7 to 9[/i][/indent][hr]

[color=slategray]“Well, that just happened,”[/color] the frazzled looking esper with black hair grumbled. If he squinted, he was sure that he would still be able to just make out the bus he was supposed to be on fading farther into the distance. Yet his bitterness had less to do with the reality that he would now need to walk to his job and more so with the fact that he had missed out on one of the precious few chances to nap today.  After all, even if he wasn’t blessed enough to get a seat, nodding off while standing was a skill Kazu had been dutifully cultivating over the past few weeks. It was only a matter of time before he mastered it and became that much closer to being able to say that he could sleep literally anywhere. 

Letting out a noise that was an odd cross between a dejected sigh and exhausted yawn, he took off at a rather sluggish pace. There was plenty of time before his shift started at the noodle shop that currently had a reserve on Kazu’s free time, so there was little point in using up what little energy he had left rushing there. But even so, some of that energy was still wasted dwelling on the person that had caused him to miss his bus to begin with.

A tired hand ran down an equally tired face as Kazu recalled the phone call he had received from his dad, who somehow managed to be equal parts doting and deadbeat. And as if to illustrate that very point, his father had called to let Kazu know that he had dropped off a surprise at his son’s apartment. The sheer dread from such news had caused the young esper to turn even paler and rooted him to the spot just outside of his school for five full minutes.

As a child of the Tsuda household, Kazu had been engrained with the knowledge that his dad only bought presents in two situations: when it was somebody’s birthday or when he had [i]really[/i] screwed up. And seeing as the teenager’s birthday was still months away, Kazu couldn’t even begin to fathom what kind of mess his old man had managed to get himself into this time. [color=slategray]“I seriously don’t feel like going home today…”[/color] 

Kazu’s attention snapped back to the present, his eyes falling on a news segment being broadcast across the street while he waited for the crosswalk to turn. The picture was unbelievably grainy, as it was coming out of a relic of a model that was completely out of place in the modern world, but he was able to get the gist of it from the banner running across it. Apparently there had been a murder in the warehouse district, and a rather gruesome one at that. Everything about the incident just didn’t add up to Kazu no matter how he looked at it, from the motive behind it to the method involved.

After all, just how much sleep could that guy have gotten if he had just turned in for the night instead?