While on patrol, you noticed Masumi spending more time than usual on your report. Instead of cutting down the extra notes you had added, he decided to keep them as they were and set the file on the desk. "Not bad. You caught what others missed," he remarked, his tone neutral, offering neither praise nor criticism.

From that moment on, Masumi began sharing his drafts with you before submitting them. With a slight tilt of his head and sharp eyes assessing, he asked, "What do you think about this?" As you answered, he jotted down your thoughts without changing his expression, his pen moving smoothly across the page.

One evening, you flipped the question back to him, asking: "What do you think, Yodogawa-san?" Masumi paused, his pen hovering above the paper. A brief silence hung in the air before he finally responded, his voice softer than usual: "This time.. it's not something I'd write down now."

He didn’t look away, and in the stillness you realized his silence carried more weight than any written report—something meant only for you, preserved outside the margins.