Chapter Text
i.
“ – know it must be unpleasant to recall, Yui-san,” Heiji vaguely makes out a voice saying as he races towards the stables, “especially after – ”
After what, exactly, Heiji never does quite find out, because he bursts in to see a lady who’s got to be the first victim’s wife, but instead of that Mouri ossan and Kudo she’s being questioned by some other guy…
…who’s now turning to regard him with a raised eyebrow, even as Heiji abruptly swallows whatever quip about a small-moustached man that he’d been about to make. “And who might you be?”
(Turns out the answer to the inverse of that question is a Morofushi-keibu from the local precinct, though he doesn’t stay for long after the widow answers the same question they’re all thinking: no, she didn’t find a centipede beside the body from six years ago.
But Heiji also can’t help but notice the sudden distance between them that hadn’t been there right before, and the fact that the inspector’s almost oddly careful to address her only as Torada-san after that.
He tells Kudo as much while they’re preparing to crash in one of the Tatsuo’s guestrooms, since the Tokyoites hadn’t arrived in time to hear the first part.
“You’re sure you didn’t mishear him or anything?” Kudo says, mildly skeptical, then rolls his eyes at the – entirely deserved – stinkeye Heiji gives him for that before his expression sobers again to something more considering.
Call them paranoid, but potential suspects attempting to hide a connection between them? Rarely a good thing, in Heiji’s book, much as he dislikes even suspecting any police officer to start with.
“It might be entirely unrelated to the case, for all we know,” Kudo finally settles on, “but…”
“We’ll just have ta keep an eye on it too, yeah.” Heiji tugs the covers over his head with a grumble. “As if this case wasn’t already shapin‘ up to be enough of a mystery already.”)
ii.
The way the rest of the case unfolds doesn’t exactly do much to alleviate their suspicions, save for allowing them to confirm Torada Yui’s past as a police officer with one of the junior officers sent to secure the crime scene in the forest, although he’d been too much of a rookie to know much.
Yui stands guard over the last two thugs until one of the officers hurries over to take them into custody, looking even more flustered than she does – Conan honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this is the single largest arrest that the local precinct has had to handle in recent memory, which begs the question of why someone from prefectural headquarters hadn’t been sent to deal with it instead.
It feels like there’s a missing link in this puzzle somewhere, and Conan’s about to ask Hattori what he thinks when Yui rounds on them, expression blazing with the sharpness he’s caught only the barest glimpses of these few days. “You two!”
(Conan isn’t expecting it, and judging by Hattori’s open-mouthed gaping he hadn’t seen this coming either.)
“That was dangerous! What were you thinking, hiding out in here? This is police business, not – ”
She only breaks off at a light (if pointed) cough from behind her, and Conan leans over slightly to see Morofushi-keibu, expression still unflappably mild save for a raised eyebrow.
Yui returns his look with utter equanimity, but instead of commenting any further on her outburst he turns to glance over at them with a distinctly unimpressed look.
“However it is that things are done in your prefectures, I would hardly bait a trap without sufficient force to back it up, rest assured of that. Your involvement was unnecessary, and a further risk besides. Now,” he adds, gesturing at the sword still in Hattori’s hands, “if I might have that back as evidence?”
Hattori huffs with no good grace, and only holds the sword out when Conan kicks him swiftly in the shin, even if he does look more than halfway tempted to fight the inspector with it instead.
Then he turns swiftly around, but Conan shushes him and bends down to switch the kick-powered shoes in favour of the house slippers, which conveniently gives them excuse enough to linger and listen surreptitiously in on the next part of the conversation.
“Though I could say the same to you as well,” he can just make out Morofushi-keibu saying. “Tatsuo Akira alone would’ve been enough to draw them in.”
“You well know I couldn’t,” comes the reply before they both drift out of earshot, and Conan doesn’t even need to look up to see his look of speculation reflected on Hattori’s face.
(Conan’s best guess is that Yui-san must’ve been Morofushi-keibu’s subordinate when she was a detective, although that doesn’t explain the odd dynamic between them. Hattori disagrees, though he can’t offer anything more concrete than them having been friends at some point.
As it turns out each of them is about as right as they’re wrong. They won’t find out what really happened until several days later, well after Hattori’s gone back to Osaka, and asked Otaki-keibu about the Nagano duo in the name of updating him about the case.
Conan feels his heart sink and sink as he listens to the unusually-serious voice over the phone, and finally understands why Hattori had insisted on calling only when he’s alone to hear it.
Not that he’d thought police detective invincible, before – he’d been all but personally acquainted with the untruth of that, if anything, and he doesn’t think knowing this would’ve changed anything about what either or both of them would’ve done to solve the case, but.
A lot of things made sense, now, in a way stark enough to make him wish they almost didn’t.
“Doesn’t matter, though,” Hattori says, with the faintest forced cheer. “Not like we’re likely to run into them again.”
Conan huffs in half-amusement. “Well, now that you’ve gone and jinxed it,” he says tartly, which at least sets them back on the familiar ground of Hattori’s protestations.
As if any protesting could be louder than actual bodies falling from the sky. Please.)
iii.
Yui’s been sitting at the bar for almost half an hour before Koumei arrives.
“Apologies for the lateness,” he murmurs, settling into the stool next to her. “I had to call in extra forensics staff from headquarters to process everything, you know how it is.”
Yui winces at the thought, abruptly glad that she doesn’t have to complete the paperwork for that. The jurisdiction alone is going to be a right mess, since she’s fairly certain that such a major case would have gone to HQ if Morofushi-keibu hadn’t somehow strongarmed his way into investigating it.
“Well, as long as you don’t mind me having started first,” she finally settles on with a tilt of her beer glass, although she’s barely sipped at it much since arriving.
(Honestly, neither of them have ever been much for alcohol – that always was more Kan-chan’s thing, if it ever was anyone’s. It’s just that Yui doesn’t think that she could stand having this conversation over tea, even if Koumei could.)
“Not at all,” Koumei replies agreeably, if in no little exhaustion. Yui relates on so many levels. “Have you had dinner yet?”
Yui shrugs noncommittally. She has – well, mostly, though an appetite has been the furthest thing from her mind of late.
What Morofushi-keibu gleans from her response, she’s not sure, but either way he turns to place his orders with more familiarity than she’d expect. Neither of them speak as they wait for the food to arrive, and even then Koumei only breaks the silence to request for an extra bowl.
Yui looks in bemusement from the half-portion of edamame that’s now taken up residence beside her beer, and back up to where Koumei is somehow managing to eat izakaya food with his usual fastidious neatness, improbable as that would seem.
If he feels her scrutiny (which she’s certain he does) he shows no sign of noticing it, and Yui gets the sudden certainty that said inspector actually isn’t going to talk to her until she actually eats something, so she gives in to the inevitable with a not-entirely-reluctant sigh and tugs the bowl closer.
“So,” she begins after she’s methodically decimated at least a third of it, then flounders silently for want of a second half to that sentence.
“Indeed,” Koumei answers anyway, as if she’d actually said anything of meaning. “You must have questions for me, I imagine, especially seeing as you no longer have to keep up appearances of being unassociated with the police.”
Not that it had mattered after all, she thinks, but there’s also the faint edge of something – wariness? – lacing his words that’s enough to make her wonder if this feels as odd to him as it does to her. Which is odd in itself, almost, since there’s never been room enough between them to be awkward, but Yui is also slowly realising that this is only the second time they’ve been alone together since he first broke the news.
She tries to shake away the sudden surge of recollection at the thought, much good as that does her – she doesn’t think she can forget it any more than she can the first sight of Kai-senpai lying pale and still, even six years later.
Yui wrenches her thoughts towards the first question that comes to mind. “What happened? With your job, I mean,” she clarifies before he can ask. “I know the official story is that you put in for a transfer to Arano, but that’s…”
“Too uncharacteristic of me?” he finishes, toying with the empty kushiyaki skewer in his hand – not quite fidgeting, because Morofushi-keibu doesn’t do fidgeting, but infinitely close. “Nothing complicated. Merely headquarters being cognizant for once of how it would look if they meted out a penalty given the… circumstances.”
Which effectively amounted to a milder version of the same result. Yui wonders briefly if it’d been the Chief who’d suggested the compromise.
“It was this or a demotion. And, quite frankly,” he adds after a long pause, “the concept of staying any longer at headquarters was unappealing, to say the least.”
Yui tries to imagine it – Morofushi-keibu alone in his office surrounded by two echoingly empty desks – and can’t.
“I’m sorry,” she says, for want of anything better. “I shouldn’t have left.”
“Your reasoning was not unsound. As were your insights to this case. Those two detectives, on the other hand…”
Yui can’t quite stifle the faintest amusement at the familiar disdain. “Hardly so bad, are they? I can see why their precincts are so fond of them.”
“Edogawa-kun, maybe,” Koumei allows. “Not so much his louder companion.”
“Hattori-kun’s got potential.”
“Potential for disaster,” he retorts, except Yui gets the feeling they’re almost definitely not talking about Hattori Heiji anymore.
It’s hardly surprising. Neither of them have said anything about how his whirlwind recklessness is too-familiar, because they’ve had enough ghosts on this case as it is, but then again they never needed to.
But the moment passes as quickly as it arrives, and Morofushi-keibu offers up a wry look of apology. “If you should ever see fit to bring some of that insight to Arano…”
Can she? Yui tries to imagine it, and draws a blank – but then again, what else should she do, from hereon?
“I’ll think about it,” she offers in return, because it’s the best she can promise right now, and Koumei doesn’t press the issue any further beyond an accepting nod.
It’s the first of too many things unsaid between them, and Yui doesn’t know that they’ll ever find the end of it, not when there’s a third voice missing in too many of these conversations now.
But a way forward is already more than she’d had a week before; it’s a start, at least.