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Dojima wasn't too sure of what to think of Yosuke Hanamura.
His first memory of the teenager starts off neutral. Despite being an older and widowed man, which should have left him far from the noise of housewife gossip, he was also the top detective in Inaba. This, unfortunately, meant he heard a lot of rumors, including that of the apparent embodiment of Junes: Yosuke Hanamura.
Dojima wasn't an idiot; sure, he fell prone to the error of human judgment sometimes, but he knew the poor kid wasn't single handedly responsible for business slowing down in the shopping district. Besides, Nanako liked Junes. Unless the kid committed a crime or stirred up trouble - Dojima grimaced when looking at the complaints on that middle school punk from Tatsumi Textiles - there was no reason to waste his time thinking about the pointless chatter.
And that was that.
But, of course, it wasn't actually that simple.
(If life were simple, Dojima thinks to himself, maybe he would have less wrinkles creasing the skin around his eyes or maybe he would have less gray speckling his hair for Nanako to point out with childish laughter.)
.
Surely, after an abrupt but apologetic phone call from his sister, Ryotaro Dojima found himself making room for 180 centimeters of sixteen year old boy in his often empty house. He felt an odd sense of guilt. He would've liked to properly introduce himself to his nephew, really. Still, obligations to work were obligations. But he didn't have to wait long, because apparently if he couldn't meet Souji at home, he could meet him at work.
With a certain Yosuke Hanamura.
With swords.
And if Dojima didn't have enough reason from the angry gossiping around town to dislike Hanamura, he sure did have it now. He scolded the two, who appeared to be properly reprimanded, and they went their way. Figures, he thought, that the two kids from the city would be the ones causing a fuss in a tiny town like Inaba. He sighed and resigned himself to more paperwork. Only after, of course, shouting at Adachi to bring him his coffee, damn it.
.
It's not long before he crossed paths with the kid again. Dojima watched from a patrol spot as the boy slung his arm over Souji's shoulder, the two sharing conspiratorial glances and whispering in a way that seemed too serious for high school boys. Dojima watched with valid suspicion considering their little play with the police barely a month ago, and his eyes narrowed more when he caught sight of the recently gone missing Amagi and another student with a jacket so bright green that he wondered if school uniform policy was even still being enforced.
He nearly went up to the group to break up the blatantly suspicious activity. His detective intuition was burning; the four switched between wandering around town questioning random civilians and giggling like a bunch of idiots, but he didn't. He turned a blind eye, just this once.
(Dojima thinks, with what he supposes is 20/20 hindsight, that perhaps a fatherly intuition overrode the detective intuition. Perhaps it was because Souji's beaming smile to Hanamura in that moment was so bright and the one in the photo shown to him in April so dull that interfering would be a crime itself.)
.
Months passed, and Dojima knew with confidence that something was up. He observed as the group only grew larger and larger. First Tatsumi, then Kujikawa, and then an odd blonde kid who took an almost reverent shine to his nephew. He asked Souji about the group and their involvement with the case. Asked if his friends had anything to do with getting Souji involved, Hanamura implied heavily in his words. Nanako's discomfort was obvious, but Souji's eyes were filled with firm determination as he told Dojima that he trusted Yosuke, his partner, and that they had a promise to keep. So Dojima dropped it. Something about the resolve in his nephew made him believe him, at least for the time.
It took a while before Hanamura stopped by the Dojima household alone, or at least a while before he did when Dojima came home early enough to catch him. The two boys were crowded on one side of the living room table with papers covering nearly the entire surface and a number of textbooks stacked haphazardly on the floor in a manner that seemed to imply a competition was involved. They didn't hear him enter. Not at first. He thought it must have been uncomfortable to have their shoulders and legs pressing up against each other's, to be laughing quietly at each other's - or rather Hanamura's - slip ups in such close air. But they looked like it was the most natural thing for them to be doing, like it was the only for them to be doing. So it wasn't until Dojima purposely made a racket kicking off his shoes that the moment shattered and Souji straightened up his relaxed shoulders and said a gentle, "Welcome home, Uncle," that Dojima became aware, almost embarrassingly so, of the private moment he had intruded upon. Hanamura just nervously waved and practically threw himself away from Souji. Hanamura didn't stay for dinner.
.
And between the cases - Morooka and Kubo and Shirogane and everything - and Nanako and Souji, Dojima found months of his memory to be a blur. He knew Hanamura had to be Souji's best friend in Inaba. Maybe his best friend in general. He was the only one who ever actually came to the house without having the rest of the group, and Dojima was even startled into a brief shock when his daughter rambled excitedly about her day and said, "Oh, and! Yosuke-nii gave me a free soda at Junes!"
Dojima considered calling his sister to update her on Souji's stay in Inaba and his questionable, but at least loyal, group of friends, but it only took one look at Souji's face when mentioning his parents to know he didn't need to, not really. He was growing into the parent role, and Souji could talk to him about his friends anytime he wanted to. So he did. Dojima didn't comment on how much more often Hanamura appeared in the stories.
.
Souji had mentioned something like a flashbulb memory before; a memory that stands out no matter how much time has passed since it occurred. When Dojima was laying on the cement, bones in places they shouldn't be, and looking over at Hanamura and Souji, he supposed that was one of those memories. And later, when Hanamura was the one Souji chose to lean upon and clutch with weak fingers when he discovered his little sister was dead, and then alive just hours later. And even later, when the two lead the front of a group of furious teenagers looking too mature for their young ages. When they demanded to hear the truth from Adachi. When they brought his former partner to jail.
(Dojima remembers it all in crystal clear vision, and he wonders why it took him so long to figure out why they were always two. Why, in that group of eight, that the two always gravitated to each other in the end.)
.
Dojima was allowed to come back home with Nanako for a bit. All of Souji's friends were there, and Dojima was so tired, but it was worth the smile on Nanako's healthy face. Yosuke came back, though. It was the first time he stayed for dinner, and the first time Dojima welcomed Yosuke, not Hanamura, into the home. He watched, with a faint curiosity, as the two angled to face each other, just barely; he didn't comment on the way their pinkies linked and bodies brushed in a way that seemed more than what two friends might do. He just watched. It was something he was doing a lot more as a father, not a detective.
The smile on Souji's face was worth it, after all.
.
To tell the truth, Dojima didn't think too much about the two boys' relationship. He was grateful, and had a few bouts of curious observations, but there were things of greater concern. Yosuke and Souji, and the rest of that ragtag team, he's sure, had saved Nanako and solved the cases and the fog in some way beyond Dojima's knowledge.
All he knew was that Yosuke was more than the awful Junes Boy, and though he might have been a bit of an idiot from what he could glean from Souji's stories at the dinner table, he saved his family. He knew he was glad to see that Souji, practically his own son now, had found value in Inaba.
Ryotaro Dojima, however, did not know if he needed to see the two boys kissing each other goodbye at the train tracks, no matter how chaste. It made sense; he had seen all the signs, and he should've seen it coming, but the way all of Souji's friends rolled their eyes or made gagging noises made him feel almost embarrassed for not catching it earlier. He wondered if he missed out on some practice at parenting on how to talk about dating, but minutes later when Souji caught Dojima's eyes through the glass window and gave him a boyishly shy smile suited only for a seventeen year old in love, Dojima found himself placated. He watched as Yosuke lead the chase for the train, and he watched as Souji waved to all of his friends but blew a kiss to an extremely flustered Yosuke. Dojima laughed at the sight with more heart than he had in a long time. Nanako looked up at him curiously before breaking out into giggles of her own.
(Besides, Dojima thinks as he covers his head with a pillow to muffle the poorly hushed sounds of moaning from a nearby bedroom, Golden Week exists. He'll have plenty of chances to be a dad tomorrow morning.)