Chapter Text
The library where Kokichi Oma and his intrepid detective-y boyfriend were headed was in the middle of such a rotten place, but Shuichi had said that couldn’t be helped. It was a library honoring their world’s dead, after all – honoring the cultures that came before, and honoring the corpses that had melted their skin and bones into the earth to help new societies grow from what they’d made. From what they knew. Rich cultural soil, or something else weird like that. Lullabies nobody sang anymore out in the real world were sung in that library-crypt, and broken, forgotten things were stored inside lovingly polished glass cases. Cracked skulls with gemstones worked into the bone like crystallized thoughts; manuscripts with dusty grey pages as fragile as moth wings.
Even if something hadn’t died quite yet, it could be stored in a library like that, waiting. All new things would be old someday, after all; gods would be handed down and changed with the people who worshipped them.
Kokichi had joked that the library sounded like something out of a video game, or one of their friend Himiko’s fantasy novels with all those wand-waving, pointy-hat wizards, and Shuichi had said yeah, that was just about right. His friend Korekiyo Shinguji ran the place, and he had devoted himself to humanity and all its rot, all the too-many secrets it left behind.
Shuichi had also said Kokichi didn’t have to come along with him as he went to go check in on dear old Korekiyo for a detective-ing info hunt, but that was ridiculous and they both knew it. If Shuichi was gonna be strolling out beyond buzzing highways and neon signs and places that sold actual decent soda brands, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna be doing it all alone. Not anymore; not now that Kokichi and all his infamous laughing clown gang had his back. D.I.C.E. members never had to go anywhere full of waiting death all by themselves, not unless they wanted to and their Supreme Leader (ahem, Kokichi) couldn’t actually talk them out of it!
Detective Shuichi Saihara had solved a lot of spooky cases in the past, though, of course – he was the one who had put the famous pianist Kaede Akamatsu’s ghost to rest, once she’d been falsely accused of murder and strung up by a delicate lying noose. Shuichi was the one who had freed the very confused tourists that got roped into mandatory Russian roulette mahjong tournaments in Celestia Ludenberg’s crumbling old castle, too, burying her spirit in fire and gold… And he had rescued a really loud team manager from the ghosts of old failed athletes who wanted another chance at glory by stealing his current trainees’ living skins. Shuichi was amazing! Not even lying. But he’d never had someone to travel with him to the heart of half-dead, haunted places like this one, ‘cause his normal investigation partner was terrified of all things supernatural.
And that was a bonus, right? Maybe Kokichi kinda wanted to invite himself along more often, and sidle in all close, thinking up witty things to murmur over to Shuichi at just the right moments. Maybe he wanted to see what kinda pranks he could pull in some creepy death-library, and try to make Shuichi laugh in that flustered, honest way he liked to think his detective only laughed around him.
They were in the middle of a sprawling, miles-wide graveyard, just then, with Korekiyo Shinguji’s library waiting at its echoey stone heart. There were grave-markers in styles from all over the world spiraling around them, just then, some crammed in together like crooked smiling teeth, others standing aloof off by themselves where no flowers would grow. Sometimes dead things seemed to stir under the earth, shifting in their worm-eaten burial clothes, knocking at the wood of their coffins; sometimes carved stone mausoleum doors groaned and Kokichi found himself jumping at shadows and trying to laugh it off. It was a place full of prayers to gods Kokichi couldn’t have named, and every now and then he caught himself talking loudly about comedy movies he’d seen recently to drown out the whisperings. He told Shuichi he wasn’t afraid even a little bit so many times they both might’ve almost believed it was true. He could smell funeral pyres still smoking in the distance, and told himself he was probably imagining things.
They slept among the graves, and headed on, Kokichi brushing a spider off Shuichi’s coat with the edge of his long, striped sleeve. He muttered, “Ick. There’s another one! Careful, or they’ll spin webs in your ears and crawl deep into your brain! That guy who’s obsessed with bugs told me, so it has to be true.”
Back at home in the ordinary living world, Shuichi sometimes took Kokichi around interesting places – bars with arcades in them, maybe, or giant soda emporiums with a gazillion flavors, even gross nonsensical ones perfect for messing with that other detective partner Shuichi brought around. (Kokichi had gotten good use out of a “Cat Piss” soda, for instance, and now Kaito Momota took a while studying whatever drinks he handed him.) Sometimes Shuichi ended up hiding out with D.I.C.E. for a week or so, until a gang-related problem blew over or they threw together one of Kokichi’s trademark over-the-top, super-complicated plans to deal with it… And other times they just flopped on Shuichi’s apartment couch and read in silence for a while, Kokichi’s sock-feet draped over Shuichi’s legs.
All that was worth a few spiders; all that was worth the ghosts they had to banish back into their earth on the way to the library, even if Kokichi would remember the skin-shriveling feel of unliving hands reaching up to grab at his ankle for the rest of forever. He gagged on the hard candy he’d been eating at the time, too, and Shuichi probably saved his life with both an exorcism and the Heimlich maneuver. He got all shy when Kokichi gushed at him about his heroics, afterwards, but it seemed as if maybe he liked that attention, too. Kokichi was the kind of Supreme Leader who’d awarded fancy titles and homemade medals to his D.I.C.E. members for their accomplishments ever since they were kids – it was important to tell his beloved underlings (and boyfriend, obviously) when they were being wonderful.
Shuichi scooped up Kokichi’s hand as they walked on, and rubbed at his knuckles like listening to him choke-scream might’ve really rattled him or something. Kokichi assured him he’d been faking his abject terror, mostly for the ghost’s sake (so he didn’t hurt their feelings, don’t be dumb), but he had a sneaking suspicion his detective didn’t quite believe him.
And finally, deep within that world of waiting dead, they came to Korekiyo Shinguji’s library. It was huge, like Kokichi had known it would be, full of swaying dangerous staircases that’d make it only too easy for a person to trip and die – full of howling underground labyrinths with bones in the walls and books that probably wouldn’t have been opened for centuries if Mr. Shinguji hadn’t been there to tend to them. The main library building itself creaked in the wind like a drawling old voice, telling secrets Kokichi couldn’t understand. The library had no windows, and only one entrance; Korekiyo kept the key tucked into the mysterious bandages winding up his arms. Actually, Shuichi said he kept a grip on it even while he slept, and he didn’t take off his inexplicable gimp mask then, either.
Korekiyo greeted them at the door with a warm, sing-song voice, telling Shuichi how glad he was to see him still well. His eyes were a murky, rotting green-gold and very knowing – he nodded to Kokichi like, “Yes, yes, I got your letter, Shuichi. This one may come inside, too.”
“Alrighty then,” Kokichi chirped, and Shuichi said they were very grateful. Thanks, Kiyo.
Kokichi knew he was gonna brag to D.I.C.E. later about how his boyfriend actually had a cute nickname for the keeper of that ancient haunted library. How many people could say that in the world, probably? Korekiyo explained where they would be sleeping – he took their bags, drifting away all willowy and ethereal, murmuring under his breath. He poured them something suspicious to drink and bantered back and forth with Shuichi. Mostly about some of the recent cases he’d solved that “Kiyo” had managed to watch about on the news? It was pretty amazing he got any kind of reception out in the middle of a graveyard-city, but hey, Kokichi had seen plenty of weirder things!
At one point, Kokichi asked what the dangly beads on Korekiyo’s hat meant, and ended up listening to a half-hour long lecture-explanation before they really got to see any of the library… And by that point Korekiyo mostly wanted to show them other, similar beads, to keep the tangent spiraling onward?
All this to say, Kokichi learned a ton about beads.
Korekiyo’s living quarters were close and quiet, cluttered with artifacts from around the world and a single, strange painting of a woman who looked almost exactly like Korekiyo himself. Kokichi didn’t ask about it, but he didn’t really have to – Shuichi caught him looking, and whispered, “Please don’t mention that. She doesn’t have use for Korekiyo anymore, and seems happy in such a restless graveyard. We found her a hundred friends this way: no one is hurt, anymore, and Kiyo’s mind is his own again. You know?”
Kokichi didn’t really know, but he nodded like he did. That was enough. Shuichi kissed his forehead, very lightly, and they slept with the aching mutters of that library all around them. Hungry things skittered beneath the floorboards, and winds howled in different, contradictory directions around the bookshelves and artifact cases way high up past all those awful staircases. The next day, they were gonna have to get to work on Shuichi’s latest case! It had to do with luck, mostly. Luck in awful life-rattling extremes.