Archive of Our Own

Shinichi plants his oar firmly into the shore of new arrivals, resting his chin and hand on it as he waits. And waits.

Mist swirls aimlessly over the sand, thickening as it always does the further it gets from the water, a heavy wall blocking off… What, exactly, he isn’t sure. Not that it really matters; whatever lies beyond a few feet from the edge of the lake isn’t for him to think about, doesn’t exist within his realm of possibility, is only an unsurmountable presence. The lake’s surface, a great, uncrippled mirror of the endless sunset, is all that is his.

(This moment could be any moment, any point in his timeline-that-isn’t, yet here is when it first begins.)

He perks when he hears the tell-tale sound of footsteps moving sand, lifting his head to watch as the curtain of fog shifts, and there he finds him. Pale skin and dark hair, darker shirt and faded jeans, and a face that can’t be older than seventeen. Indigo eyes rise to meet his, and the usual sinking sensation of so young is suddenly and forcefully overpowered by an overwhelming feeling of-

What, exactly, he isn’t sure.

Not that it really matters.

The other boy blinks at him, brow furrowing as he briefly scans his surroundings, yet in the very next moment all traces of unease disappear from his face. “Kuroba Kaito!” he grins, sinking into a flourishing bow. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

It’s an odd introduction, too formal and informal at the same time, but Shinichi tugs his oar out of the sand and bows politely back all the same.

“And you are?” Kuroba asks, assessing. Unmoving.

“Shinichi,” he replies, and, because he isn’t an asshole, “I ferry souls from the shore so they may enter their afterlife.”

Understanding is quick, acceptance much slower. Kuroba’s smile becomes decidedly fixed. “Is that where I am?” He doesn’t wait to hear a reply; a neat sneaker kicks shadowed sand, his mouth tightens. “Am I dead?”

Shinichi says nothing. There are times where he tries to elaborate, or maybe to reassure, but Kuroba seems to have already sunk deep back into his own thoughts, Shinichi all but forgotten. When the teen finally looks up, Shinichi is ready for an array of responses ranging from outraged denial to resignation, but is most certainly not prepared for Kuroba’s bewildered tilt of head, and his following, “that doesn’t seem right.”

There’s an awkward pause.

“Sorry?” Shinichi says, a little confused. “It kind of is, though.”

He winces; in immediate hindsight, it’s a pretty callous comment to make.

Kuroba, for his part, doesn’t take it to heart. “No, it really isn’t,” he insists, and the last of the discomfort has bled out of his posture to make way for something far more stubborn. “There’s no way I died.” He turns quickly around, surveying the surrounding mist with his hands on his hips. “How do I get back?”

At the somewhat familiar question, Shinichi shakes himself out of minor shock. “You can’t,” he says, as he has to many before. “You’ll get turned around and around in the mist until you find yourself back here.”

Kuroba is silent, still considering the thick wall of fog.

Remembering himself, Shinichi calls, a little soft, “the boat is waiting. It’ll take you where you need to go.”

Kuroba turns his head just enough to raise a challenging eyebrow at him. “Why would I go to heaven when I’m not even dead?”

“Because, you are?”

It’s a process of trial and error, ferrying dead people, and despite being literally the only person with the job, Shinichi’s still not the best at it. Plus, there’s something about Kuroba’s cocksure attitude towards the whole thing that just grates in a way he’s never felt.

“Nope,” Kuroba denies. “Besides, the thing about the fog sounds like one of the old myths you tell kids to stop them from wandering.”

Irritated, Shinichi drums restless fingers along the handle of his oar. “Why would I lie to you about this?”

Kuroba shrugs. “Why wouldn’t you?”

And he promptly walks off into the mist.

Shinichi stares at the spot where he’d disappeared for a long, long moment in blank disbelief. Then, with a frustrated groan, he plants the oar back into the shore and drops to sit cross-legged in the sand, leaning the side of his face heavily on one of his hands. And he waits.

.

.

After what is either an eternity or a matter of seconds, Kuroba strides decisively out of the mist and back in front of him. Confusion and amazement flit as one across his face, and he glances back into the fog only momentarily before sitting down a few feet across from him.

“Okay, so maybe you were right about the mist thing.”

“Told you,” Shinichi says, feeling maybe a bit childish, but vindicated.

Kuroba’s fingers trail idly in the dark sand; red, black, yellow, blue all glint in the low light.

“I didn’t mean to imply you were a liar,” Kuroba says suddenly. “Just thought that maybe, you know, I could do it anyway.”

Shinichi leans back on his hands, stretching out his arms. “Didn’t think it was anything that personal.” Rolling his shoulders, he pushes back up on to his feet and grabs his oar - again. “It’s not like you’re the only one.”

Most are much less composed, shakily accusing the world of lying as they run desperately again and again through the mist, until the light has been sapped from their faces and their legs are painted in sandy colours up to their knees, until they collapse tiredly into his boat, eyes turned away.

(Shinichi will gladly take irksome over the alternative.)

The side of Kuroba’s nose twitches as he makes a face. “There’s still no way I’m dead, though. I’ve decided that you’re gravely misinformed.”

The irritation comes back full force, knotting Shinichi’s brows into a frown. “Excuse me?”

“This is a mistake.” Kuroba looks him straight in the eyes, face set stubborn. “You need to help me get back.”

In all his time, Shinichi has never met with anyone so sure of their continued survival as they stand a short boat ride away from the shores of Heaven. It’s still grating, but there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to see that certainty fall apart. Or maybe that fears what might happen when it does.

It’s not a big enough part.

“There’s been no mistake, Kuroba-san,” he says, endeavouring to keep his voice calm. “You’re quite literally standing at the boundary.” Which you couldn’t be if you weren’t dead, he doesn’t bother adding.

Kuroba opens his mouth as if to argue further, but shivers, stepping a little closer on instinct. He looks around apprehensively, flinching even closer to the lake as he does. The mist is creeping slowly in to tighten the semi-circle it draws on the shore, and even Shinichi’s hands have to clench around his oar to stop the shudder that run up his spine. The novelty of the conversation wears off quickly at the unpleasant reminder of just what exactly he’s supposed to be doing.

“Please get in the boat,” he says, taking a step back to pull it forwards. “The mist will only get closer until you have both feet in the water.”

Arms crossed to fight off the sudden chill, Kuroba still manages to shoot him an affronted glare.  But slowly, slowly, he walks towards the boat.

“This is coercion.”

Shinichi nods, stepping into it.

“I’m really not meant to be here.”

He holds out a helping hand which Kuroba primly ignores, stepping and sitting down in the little rowboat with smooth, disgruntled grace.

.

.

The boat glides of its own accord over the mirrored surface of the lake, and Shinichi simply rests the tip of his oar on the side, not bothering to pretend that he’s doing any of the heavy work. Sometimes he carries the façade of normalcy a little further, spares his passenger any more anxiety. Kuroba had only briefly raised an eyebrow when they’d set off, so he thinks it’s alright if he rests his arms.

He steals a glance at Kuroba out of the corner of his eye, apprehensive. A raised eyebrow had been the limit of Kuroba’s interactions with him since they had set off, and the teen’s face has been set in a sharp, contemplative stare ever since. It’s more than a bit unsettling, that he won’t deny.

“Are you some kind of demon?”

He blinks. Kuroba squints harder at him as though expecting to see pointed teeth, or perhaps a hooked tail. Unfortunately, while he didn’t expect the question, it’s not a look he’s wholly unfamiliar with.

“I don’t think so,” he replies truthfully. He doesn’t exactly have anything to hide. “I’ve only ever spoken to spirits, though, so I can’t really be sure.”

Kuroba doesn’t seem to have any problem with poking at potential landmines, because he asks, “so you don’t actually have any idea about what you are?”

Lucky for him, it’s nothing Shinichi has a problem with affirming. “Well, I think you could be a demon,” Kuroba decides, sticking his nose up in the air. “Demons probably drag people’s to souls to hell, after all. Live people.”

Shinichi feels his eye twitch.

“Which is, incidentally, exactly what you’re-“

“If I might remind you, Kuroba-san,” Shinichi cuts him off with razor-sharp politeness. “You stumbled onto the shore of your own accord. I would appreciate a little more evidence before you make wild conjectures.”

To his surprise, Kuroba snorts.

“You’re pretty snitty for some mysterious spirit-demon-person.” His lips quirk into an amused half-smile, oddly and rather jarringly casual. Relaxed. Under Shinichi’s surprised look, the expression clouds with uncertain confusion, and for a moment Kuroba looks inexplicably lost.

The moment passes, as Kuroba clears his throat and wipes the expression from his face with unsettling ease.

“Have you never thought about it though? What you are, I mean?” he asks, jumping quickly back to the previous conversation. Shinichi hesitates, wondering if he should ask, but he lets it slide.

“I’m just,” he pauses, but there’s not all that much to think about. “Here.”

Kuroba’s brows furrow at his unhelpful answer, and something stirs uncomfortably in the pit of Shinichi’s stomach. In a world where all he can do is think, this is one of the few things he doesn’t like to ponder. Namely because there is nothing to ponder, and thinking on the subject only serves to cast his mind to something vast and empty and painful in a way which makes him regret thinking at all.

“There it is,” he blurts in relief as they pass the halfway point of the lake. The imposing shape of the opposing shore slides as a merciful distraction into previously endless fog. Kuroba turns, and shock skates over his face as he takes in the sight.

He hisses, “what the hell is that.”

“The afterlife,” replies Shinichi, shooting him a questioning look.

Kuroba huffs a disbelieving laugh, edged in hysteria. “Right. That is what God thought someone’d want to just waltz into after dying?”

“I suppose?” Shinichi tilts his head, frowning. “Kuroba-san, what exactly do you see?”

The boy startles, glancing back at him. “You don’t see it?”

He doesn’t. The shore looks different to everyone who sees it, so he’s never entirely sure of how to act at this part – it’s impossible to gauge what kind of reaction is appropriate. To him, the shore is simply several metres of sand before a looming stone wall, unpassable.

Or, it should be.  In truth, it looks like he could climb it – not easily, and he’d likely have to think hard as to where he’d have to start in order to make use of the protruding parts, but just doable-looking enough that he’s. Curious.

The implications of that curiosity don’t escape him. He shakes his head no at Kuroba, dispelling his thoughts.

“It’s… A forest,” the spirit starts haltingly. “If forests had trunks the width of houses and the height of-” he cuts himself off, gazing far, far up into what looks like only sky and biting his lip. “It looks so- like the fog, but so much worse. It just- It doesn’t end.” There’s clear panic in his eyes, and it squeezes infectiously, painfully, at something in Shinichi’s chest.

He doesn’t know if that’s what makes him do it. He doesn’t know why he does it at all.

Grabbing Kuroba by the shoulders, he jerks him sharply around. Kuroba stares at him, eyes wide, breaths still running quicker, and he can only stare blankly back. He should probably be leading him in regardless. Maybe all Kuroba needs is someone to walk him part of the way. Kuroba’s irises are flecked lighter towards his pupils. Yet the lines of their edges border on navy.  Does anyone have eyes like Kuroba’s? Has he looked anyone long enough in the face to be able to tell?

Kuroba regains his composure unnaturally fast, features marshalling into sudden nonchalance.

“Thanks,” he says a little awkwardly. He rolls his shoulders, tactfully dislodging Shinichi’s frozen hands. Shinichi jumps to lock them together behind his back, fingers twisting, twisting.

What… What was that?

His thoughts storm in disjointed colours and broken sentences without rhyme nor reason, and the unchanging wood of the bottom of the boat doesn’t offer any answers as he hurries to drop his gaze. Meanwhile, in his peripheral, Kuroba turns around to look at whatever it is he sees again. This time, there’s only a slight shiver.

“Not… as bad the second time,” he mutters, before looking back at him again, gaze piercing. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he repeats, only this time, it sounds like an ultimatum.

Shinichi says nothing, eyes on the dull wood of the boat. His heart is still beating confusion through his veins, in his ears, and he concentrates on the heady sound if only to ignore the fact that.

He almost believes him.

He hears Kuroba sigh tiredly, and a quiet thump as he rests his chin in one of his hands. It’s a long time before he chances a look up; Kuroba is staring off over the water.

“Tell me something else,” he says abruptly.

Shinichi jerks, surprised, as the last few moments are brushed aside like sand by a gale. Shooting Kuroba a confused look, he asks, “Like what?”

“I don’t know. What do you know?”

He thinks about that for a moment, wondering what on earth he could say that someone like Kuroba wants to hear. He hesitates, and admits, “not much about either shore.”

Kuroba’s index taps idly on the side of his cheek. “So tell me about here.”

“There’s nothing about it that you can’t see.” Shinichi fiddles with the thick fabric of his robes. “It always looks like this.” Always sunset, always on the cusp of something else.

“What about the lake?”

“What about it?”

Kuroba shoots him an unimpressed side-eye. “What’s in it?”

Rather than answering, Shinichi leans over the side of the boat and, under Kuroba’s stare, pushes a finger down into the water.

His fingertip presses against the surface, as if touching a giant sheet of glass.

“You can’t fall from this boat,” he explains simply.

There’s open amazement on Kuroba’s face, as well as stark relief that Shinichi doesn’t fully understand, but still he says, “that didn’t answer my question.”

Shinichi sighs. “Most likely, nothing at all.”

The other quirks his head. “But, you don’t know.”

He purses his lips, tensing. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

Surprisingly, Kuroba leaves it at that, only humming in acknowledgement. Shinichi’s shoulders relax.

The boat drifts steadily over the three-quarter mark, the sunset seeming brighter in the lightening mist. Silence falls once again over the both of them and, unbidden, Shinichi’s gaze drifts towards the boy sitting in his boat. He wonders what it is that makes Kuroba so certain he isn’t supposed to be dead. What exactly had he left behind?

(As so often happens, he doesn’t know how to ask.)

“What you said before,” Kuroba says, quiet enough that Shinichi almost doesn’t hear him, “about ending up with both feet in the water. What would have happened then?”

“Then,” Shinichi starts delicately, “I would have felt compelled to put you in the boat by force.”

The spirit meets his eyes with a surprised snort, one of the corners of his lips quirking up like he can’t quite control it. “You’d have wrestled me into the boat?” He looks him up and down, playfully doubtful.

Shinichi nods seriously, and it’s embarrassing how giddy he feels at the sight of Kuroba’s half-smile. “I am given all the means to do my job.”

Kuroba really laughs at that, gripping the sides of the boat to steady himself as he doubles over. Shinichi feels a smile tugging at his own lips, noting helplessly that Kuroba’s laughter is doubly as infectious as his fear.

Then there’s a slight thud, and the spirit’s laughter abruptly ends. The boat has moored itself in the shore. Shinichi doesn’t climb out, feeling awkwardness and something worse descend back over them. Kuroba glances back behind him, back at the forest only he can see, face unreadable.

“Kuroba-san,” he calls hesitantly, and isn’t this what he’s supposed to be for? A guide, a support for people unable to walk of their own accord to the end of their lives?

(He isn’t sure, for once he wants to be sure)

His throat closes: he stands instead of speaking. Stepping decisively out of the boat and onto soft sand, he holds out a hand and somehow, it feels starkly different from the one he normally extends out of courtesy. Kuroba assesses him with a long stare but, unlike before, he takes it. His grip is tight, just on the edge of painful, but none of the tension touches his expression. Shinichi doesn’t comment as the other lifts himself from the low wooden seat, and they begin a slow walk inland, in silence.

It’s only a few feet from the wall that Shinichi falters, and Kuroba must notice because he stops.

“This is as far as I can go,” he whispers into endless quiet. He turns to Kuroba, who hasn’t turned to him. The spirit nods, stiff, and his hand drops from his.

Without another word, Kuroba takes a slow step towards the solid wall, as though testing himself.

At a loss, Shinichi falls back on his self-made traditions and simply bows, clutching the hand Kuroba held in his own. When he lifts his head, Kuroba has already disappeared.

.

.

It is only when Shinichi finds himself back on the other side of the lake and waiting that he is able to push Kuroba out of his mind, if only a little. Whoever he is to see now deserves his full attention, after all, regardless of how strange his last passenger was.

(It takes a conscious effort not to trace the lingering sensation of a palm in his.)

He hears the humming first, the melodic yet plaintive notes of a sonata. The spirit walks slowly into view, young, with clothes and hair as black as his own. Their long strands are tied neatly into a ponytail, though when Shinichi looks a little longer he notices the ends are curled up, like they’ve been singed.

Then suddenly, the spirit freezes.

They stare at him in shock, eyes searching over his face, jaw dropping slightly open. Shinichi shifts uncomfortably, but follows routine.

Bowing, he says, “I’m Shinichi.”

In the same moment, the spirit’s face breaks into a blinding smile, as though they were meeting a cherished old friend. “Of course you are,” they reply warmly. “Asou Seiji. I suppose you’re here to lead me onwards?”

Shinichi blinks, bewildered, but takes it in stride, nodding and moving towards the boat floating on the water. Asou folds neatly into the boat, lips still curved in a smile. Casting a wary look their way, Shinichi lightly taps the side and tucks the oar away, praying he hasn’t made an error in judgement. Luckily, as he thought, Asou only looks amused.

It isn’t like it’s rare to get a spirit who’s both fully expecting and accepting of their death. Only, it tends to be people who are much older, or from an older time. Not someone like this person, who looks like they should be safe in the prime of their life, who looks like they stepped on the shore only by unfortunate accident.

He doesn’t quite know how to ask.

It’s Asou who breaks the silence first, taking a slow breath and leaning his head back to look up at the orange-tinged sky. “I didn’t think I’d get to go somewhere beautiful,” they muse, before laughing at what must be an extremely sceptical look on Shinichi’s face. “Maybe not in the traditional sense. But I like it.”

“It’s full of fog,” Shinichi protests.

“Sunset over water,” Asou goes on, “The day ends, for the night to begin. I didn’t think I’d ever see something begin again.”

Robbed of a response and struck just a little dumb, Shinichi only stares.

“Hey,” Asou nudges, excitement dancing in his eyes. “Do you think there’ll be music?”

“Yes,” Shinichi says automatically, before thinking and adding, “there must be.” He doesn’t know much about the shores, but surely if there is a different place for everyone, Asou’s must have music waiting for them.

Asou smiles wider at the thought, gazing over the lake like it’s something wonderful. It’s quiet for a moment, Shinichi wondering at how he somehow managed to have two passengers at ridiculously different levels of acceptance follow each other. His eyes drop to Asou’s folded hands, to the fingernails trimmed to the quick.

“Are you a musician?” he asks, curious.

Asou follows his gaze to their fingers, stretching them out. “I play the piano,” they affirm, and their eyes take on a far-away cast. “I was playing as I left.”

They probably catch the fact that there’s no appropriate reaction Shinichi can give to that, so they turn and smile reassuringly.

“What about you?”

“What about me?” Shinichi says too quickly, nearly wincing at the too-familiar turn this conversation has taken.

“Do you play music?” Asou asks, gentle yet expectant.

No is the straightforward answer, and the truthful one, but somehow it’s as wrong in his mouth as a lie. He struggles, and finally decides on, “I haven’t had the chance.”

It still feels wrong. Saying that is like implying he will get the chance, or perhaps that the chance can be available to him, when really he is getting and will be getting no chances to do anything at all, has been left with only a boat and an oar, the compulsion and understanding to use them, and nothing else. No music, only vague knowledge of what it may be without the paired memory of how he got it.

Complicated mental state aside, it’s still the truth, at least.

“That’s unfortunate,” Asou’s face falls as though it’s them who has been deprived of music. “You probably would have had a knack for it.”

There’s no reason for Asou to say it, no real basis upon which their comment lies, but Shinichi feels embarrassingly flattered nonetheless. “Thank you.”

For a while the only sound is the subdued ripple of the water moved by the boat as they both fall silent. Asou, unlike most of his other guests, seems perfectly content to simply watch the monotonous scenery pass by like a looped film reel, and Shinichi isn’t inclined to stop them. He lets himself take in, once again, all that he’s ever seen and lived, and unwittingly his conversation with Kuroba sidles into mind.

“There’s nothing about it that you can’t see.”

Well, he’d been surprised on that front. He hadn’t dreamed of it having the capacity to inspire the word ‘beautiful’ – though, he secretly thinks that was more Asou’s particularity than any grace on its part. Still, it had become something for someone to covet.

He can’t remember the last time he was surprised before Kuroba stepped out of the fog. He must’ve been, though, if he could recognise the feeling.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost doesn’t catch it when Asou begins to speak again, their voice quiet and their cheer dropping.

“Sorry?” he says, shame creeping red in his cheeks.

The musician only looks amused, if with a rueful quirk in their lips. “It must be redundant to ask, when I’m going to see it for myself not too long from now. And maybe it’s silly, considering how I got here.” At this, they glance up from their hands to Shinichi as though expecting some reaction, expecting that that means something to him.

Shinichi keeps his face studiously neutral. He’s not here to judge people’s lives.

Asou tilts their head, faint sunlight streaking along sooty hair. “Could you tell me about where I’m going?”

For once, it’s a question that Shinichi knows enough about and has thought on long enough that he can begin to answer, and a small part of him feels put out that Kuroba hadn’t asked it.

“I’ve heard a lot about what you call Heaven and Hell, Asou-san,” he begins slowly, weighing every word. Asou’s attention is unwavering. “It seems to me that these ideas were created when man wondered how the decisions he made in life would affect his death, and created threats of punishment or delight to enforce upon himself the values and choices he believed in.

“If there is a judgement system, it isn’t here,” he speaks with certainty, clutching one of the few fundamental truths he’d been left with. “Your afterlife is one created to best fit the choices you made and the hands you were dealt. There is no single decision that may create an eternity of suffering.”

He feels relief well inside him when he sees Asou relax. “How kind.”

Shinichi can’t really agree or disagree. He nods, and it is quiet for a moment before Asou pushes a lighter conversation about the different types of composition, snatching Shinichi’s interest with ease.

.

.

When the boat moors itself in the shore, Asou doesn’t pause before rising.

“Are you ready?” Shinichi asks, and promptly regrets it, barely holding in a wince.

Asou’s expression remains benign, if sad. “I want to talk with you longer. If I’d-“ they quickly shut their eyes, cutting the thought off, and when they open them they simply say, “yes, I am.”

With that, they make their way with steady, determined steps towards something they hadn’t disclosed. Their jaw is set with resolve, hands unshaking, and Shinichi is sinking into his usual bow when Asou begins to hum, voice full of melancholic warmth.

It isn’t anything like before, not meant for soothing or for sounding beautiful or inspiring love for music; the notes are dissonant and the tune is nonsensically wrong, but-

Shinichi gasps in pain just as Na- Asou crosses the wall, and a hurricane of unfamiliar emotion wrenches at his heart with the notes of the song, a harsh sense of failure beating down on his bones in a way he’s never experienced. He coughs like he’s inhaled smoke, staring in shock at dark sand as something inside him cries why and the response is only I don’t know, I don’t know, what’s happening to me-

“So that’s how it looks when someone leaves, huh.”

He shudders at the voice, confusion momentarily overtaking the torrent of grief because shouldn’t he be alone? His head jerks up and there’s Kuroba Kaito, as real as he was two trips across the lake ago.

The boy blinks at him, whatever expression was on his face making way for confusion and alarm. “Are you crying?”

Shinichi flinches back, turning away and furiously rubbing at the tears bubbling out of his eyes with the heels of his hands as he feels his face heat with embarrassment. “What are you still even doing here,” he says, or rather growls, because it’s so much easier to feel angry than whatever it is he’s being forced to feel.

Kuroba looks thrown by the question, hands hanging awkwardly in the air as though he wants to do something but doesn’t quite know how.

“I came here to- Well, I ended up-“

Something at the back of Shinichi’s mind is pinging him rather important information, like the fact that he’s currently in more than one unprecedented situation, that he should be handling this with a little more delicacy, and also that he should probably be figuring this out with more than a quarter of his brain. “Be quiet,” he curses, shushing Kuroba with a push of his index finger against the other’s lips. He takes the seconds to pull himself together, wiping off his face on his long sleeves, carefully rolling them up afterwards.

.

.

So maybe it takes longer than a few seconds to get himself together, and maybe it also takes Kuroba taking a polite walk a short distance away to offer a scrap of the complete privacy Shinichi usually always has. Either way, his face is clear now, his sleeves are neatly rolled up, and his eyes are only barely stinging. He sits down cross-legged on the sand, exhausted.

“Kuroba-san,” he calls. The spirit looks back at him with relief flooding his face, and he feels a slight warmth amidst the cold which had overtaken him. Kuroba comes over to sit facing him. Compared to when he last saw him on this shore, the spirit looks considerably more cheerful, like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

“I went in, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he tells him without preamble. “Granted, I was dead – ha – set on finding a way out, but I figured that there was like, maybe a 0.001% chance I was wrong about not belonging here, so I thought I might as well check. And well-“ he grins a wide, Cheshire cat grin, gesturing to himself with a flourish, “here I am, as not-in-heaven as ever.”

Shinichi can only squint at him, an ache beginning to build behind his eyes, and he can’t even tell if it’s because of the ridiculous person in front of him or because he just had the first crying fit in his entire memory. A mix of both, he thinks.

“So, you walked out of your afterlife.”

“Nope! I walked into my afterlife, fully planning on walking out of my afterlife, but I ended up not having to plan anything at all.” Kuroba flicks out a hand to the side. “I couldn’t even see the shore behind me the moment I walked in, you know? I kept walking, and walking,” his eyes brighten with satisfaction, “then suddenly I was just walking out again.”

Shinichi looks down to pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers, shutting his eyes as the information parses. “Right.”

He’s startled by Kuroba’s face, leaning far, far into his personal bubble to look up at him, expression lit with excitement. “I was, wasn’t I? So, take it from an experimentalist, nay, a scientist, that I really, really don’t belong here.”

He pushes his palm against Kuroba’s nose, shoving him away. The up-spike of strange things happening in his world, a dramatic and unprecedented increase from zero to two, is already enough on his frayed nerves.

“I am given all the means to do my job.”

He’s just being proven wrong at every turn, isn’t he? He can’t even begin to think of a situation he’d be less equipped for.

Still, as tiring as the unexpected has proven to be, he can’t deny that Kuroba’s situation is interesting, if baffling. Lifting his hand to chin, he thinks. “Did you go in more than once?”

Kuroba’s smile falters for a millisecond before he catches himself. “’Course I did.”

Shinichi tilts his head at him, suspicion rising.

“I did,” Kuroba insists, discomfort twisting his expression. “It felt worse each time. Like I wasn’t supposed to be doing it.” He crosses his hands over his stomach, swallowing.

Shinichi hums, but doesn’t push, because any warning issued in his world, subconscious or not, probably shouldn’t be tested.

It’s then that he feels a light prickling in his shoulders, and hears water stir as the boat shifts a little further down the shore, and he immediately stands.

“What it is?”

“I have to cross the lake again,” Shinichi replies, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders. He looks back down at the spirit. “In the meantime, go through what you know. There may be something you haven’t come to terms with that’s keeping you from peace.”

Kuroba frowns. “Does that happen often?”

“No,” Shinichi admits. It doesn’t happen at all. “But it’s worth a shot.”

Shinichi steps into his boat, a light tap unmooring it from the sand. When he looks back the spirit looks sceptical, and thin threads of worry are beginning to mar his earlier cheer. He can’t help feeling guilt curl inside him, even though it’s meaningless – he really does need to go.

“I’ll be back soon,” he assures him, and Kuroba nods as the boat finally slips away.

.

.

“Okay,” Shinichi says as an old woman disappears through the wall. “Any new revelations?”

“No,” Kuroba looks contemplative, and a little uneasy. “It’s kind of hard to think; my memories, everything’s hazy- and that means something to you,” he cuts himself off, somehow easily picking out recognition on Shinichi’s face. “What?”

Shinichi chews on his lip, thinking for a moment on how best to explain. “Memories are rooted in reality, reality being your sense of time and the world’s,” Shinichi starts tentatively. He wonders if he should even be saying any of this aloud, this little bit of information usually useless to anyone but him. “When a soul’s body dies, it… takes stock of its life. So that it supports its memories rather than relying on its body and its world. Since this world-” he waves vaguely at the setting sky and the silvery lake, “its timeline doesn’t run, um, parallel.”

Kuroba pokes his shoulder. “Parallel?”

This part feels even more difficult to explain, and he furrows his brow in frustration for a long moment before, “all the dead have come and will come here, in no real order. I might have met some of your family, several generations down the line, before I met you.”

“So, stuff I remember technically has and hasn’t happened.”

“Pretty much.” Shinichi winces. “But your memories should be clear. That they aren’t means that your soul… that you weren’t aware, even on the most incomprehensible of levels, that you were going to die.”

Kuroba swallows, his jaw working, but then his face sets in a stubborn look of determination.  “I didn’t die, then. I didn’t come here naturally.”

“That’s-”

“You said incomprehensible. That means it goes beyond sense or gut feeling or anything someone could influence.”

Shinichi bites his lip. “Yes, but-”

“Come on,” Kuroba pushes, and for the first time he looks frustrated. “I obviously won’t be able to just- to just find peace and leave after you’ve told me that.”

“I-”

“So tell me what I should be looking for instead.”

“I don’t know.” Shinichi tastes blood on his bottom lip, mind fraying at the edges, and he stands to turn away, hands fisting in the fabric of his robe. The words seem to have stuck to the roof of his mouth the moment he said them, tinging everything with uselessness. “I’m sorry, Kuroba-san, I am, but I just don’t know.”

They fall back into silence, and Shinichi thinks he could hate it. Maybe this place was made to be serene, both a beginning and an end, but right now its lack of anything only hurts.

He hears Kuroba fall into step beside him and his jaw clenches; he keeps his gaze on the ground. There’s a hand, sudden and warm on his shoulder, a gusting sigh, and, “guess.”

Almost unwillingly, his eyes dart to him. “What?”

“Look, I know you don’t know what you are.” Kuroba looks troubled, tension lining his face. “But I didn’t think- I didn’t want to think that you don’t know about this either. I’m kind of…”

Kuroba grimaces.

“Still, you obviously know a lot more than I do so- A theory, maybe? Just, something.”

Shinichi stares, as Kuroba goes from averting his gaze to looking solidly, if apprehensively, back. Kuroba wants him to… think. Not to guide, or play some dialled-down version of God, but just to figure things out with him. Slowly, like he’d ask of another human being. It’s… wrong.

(And shameful, how happy It makes him feel.)

“Alright,” he says hesitantly. Because he wants to help Kaito, he really does, but this is completely new territory for him. Theories are usually for discussion, not action. Still, Kuroba’s face brightens a little with that word alone, and it gives him the courage to continue.

“If something got you here in a way in which you didn’t die,” he starts contemplatively, “then they probably did something which affected your soul directly. I know your memories are hazy, but they’re still rooted in your soul.” He turns to face Kuroba fully. “I say you go through them and rely on, well, feeling. Something abnormal. Off.”

“Helpful,” Kuroba comments dryly, but he looks thoughtful.

“I hope so,” Shinichi mutters to himself, waving off Kuroba’s questioning hum. He rolls his shoulders and walks back to his job, leaving the spirit to it.

.

.

Admirably, Kuroba attacks the task with a dogged persistence, spending all his time either deep in thought or throwing ideas around for the both of them to contemplate.

Unfortunately, they’re met with a much less admirable yet equally persisting lack of progress.

.

.

Kuroba has his eyes screwed up and both his fists clenched in the sand; Shinichi’s come to dub it his ‘come to me, memory” pose.

“If someone around me practised magic, would that have messed with my soul?”

Shinichi squints sceptically at him. “Really?” he says doubtfully. “Magic?”

The spirit’s jaw drops, seemingly at a loss for words, looking simultaneously the most affronted and most disbelieving Shinichi’s ever seen him. He opens and closes his mouth soundlessly for a few moments, index finger pointing in a slow sweep at everything around them, before finally giving up with an exasperated yell of, “you’re asking ME that?”

.

.

“If…” he sounds uncharacteristically hesitant, almost afraid. “If someone curses you from death, could that…?”

“No, I’m fairly certain it couldn’t. Why do you ask?”

Kuroba’s face twists into a rueful grimace. “Just checking.”

.

.

“Does everyone coming through here ask you stuff?”

Shinichi straightens from his bow and glances sideways to Kuroba, resolutely pushing down surprise. Discovering the spirit’s tendency to move in total silence had been unpleasant, but he refuses to let it startle him more than once. Well, twice.

“You know, the whole,” Kuroba adopts not only a melodramatic tone, but an entirely new voice, sounding like a completely different person, “‘Oh spirit not-rowing my boat, tell me, what was the point of it all!’ kind of thing.”

“That’s not for me to decide,” Shinichi replies automatically, before the shock registers and he does a double-take. “How did you do that?” he demands.

Kuroba blinks innocently. “Do what?”

“The-” he begins to point a finger at his own throat, when he spies the mischief on Kuroba’s face. “You know what I’m talking about,” he accuses, turning his hand around to poke Kuroba in the neck instead.

“Ow,” Kuroba laughs. “It’s a talent, I guess. I kind of forgot I could do it until like, half an hour ago.”

Shinichi hums. “That’s really impressive,” he murmurs, and taps experimentally on Kuroba’s throat.

“It was a serious question, by the way,” Kuroba’s voice vibrates against the pad of his finger, making him look back up at him. “Do they?”

He lets his hand drop back to his side as he thinks it over. While it’s easy to concentrate on a name and summon its matching encounter, it’s hard to actually order up his memories long enough to examine them all, and they slip in and out of focus as he tries.

“Not always,” he decides to say instead. “Sometimes it’s enough for people just to have someone to tell anything. Someone who can’t judge or affect them.”

Unimpressed, Kuroba raises an eyebrow at him. “I’d say you were judging me pretty hard when I got here.”

“That’s different!” he protests, feeling a flush in his cheeks. “You were just, you were just-”

“Unique? One of a kind?” slots in Kuroba, the corners of his mouth widening into a grin.

“Weird!” Shinichi bursts, crossing his arms as he turns to stare at Kuroba straight on.

“I’ll take it,” replies the oddity, smile sliding into smirk. After a moment, the expression smoothens out again, a hint of a furrow tracing his brows. “Though, when it comes to something weird or unprecedented, wouldn’t that be you? Doesn’t anyone ask?”

“I’m Shinichi,” he recites, “I ferry souls from the shore, so they may enter their afterlife.” He shrugs. “What more would they care to know?” Rather, what more is there to know?

The question goes unanswered, yet Kuroba only continues to consider him with his same, unsettling stare, and Shinichi’s spine prickles with the feeling of something left unsaid.

.

.

Kuroba is lying face down in the sand.

“I finally understand now,” he mumbles almost unintelligibly.

Shinichi tilts his head indulgently. “What do you understand?”

“They did this to me. They forced me to live in fear, and now they’ve finally dragged me to hell.”

“Who?”

“Them. The things in the ocean, scouring the depths, always waiting. Watching. With their weird, gross, bulgy eyes…”

“…Are you talking about fish?”

Kuroba screams and coughs, hurriedly sitting up to wipe the mess of dusky colours from his face, spitting globs of sandy saliva.

Shinichi levels him a long, long look before silently walking back to his boat and leaving without word.

.

.

It’s only after over a dozen return trips across the lake that they reach something even vaguely resembling a breakthrough. Or rather, what Kuroba considers a breakthrough.

It’s purely by accident, purely because Kuroba had been fully in sight, laying on his back and staring at the sky when Shinichi brought a woman to the shore, prompting her to root her feet and refuse to leave until she knew the whole story.

“It sounds to me,” she says, sitting down and brushing her brown hair into her lap to keep it from the sand, “that you might want to consider something different. Even if you figure out when and how you got here, you might not be able to do anything about it, right?”

Shinichi’s mouth twists, and Kuroba’s nose twitches.

“You can’t go back, you can’t go forwards,” she tilts her head, “maybe there’s something you need to do here before you can do either.”

“Here?” Shinichi echoes sceptically, but when he glances at him, Kuroba looks surprisingly thoughtful.

“Maybe,” he nods slowly and idly thanks her, his eyes already glazing. The woman smiles, brushing herself off as she gets up.

It’s kind, wonderfully kind, and Shinichi stares at her, her long hair shifting in barely felt wind and her melancholy glowing gold in the sunset. She’d spent the nearly entire boat ride talking about her sister, about how clever she was, about the future she hoped the girl would have. About the quiet man she’d met at work, about the way he started smelling less like cigarettes and more like mints the longer they knew each other.

(“Will you listen…”)

Unfair, he thinks, not for the first time.

“Thank you,” Shinichi says properly, sincerely, as they slowly make their way towards his wall. At this point, she had no reason to help anyone, and yet she had.

She shrugs, still smiling. “It was interesting. I kind of like thinking about puzzles like that. Besides,” she goes on ruefully, a soft sigh gusting out from between her lips. “It’s not like I don’t get wanting to go back.”

The words sting painfully at his heart in the same, unfamiliar way which had so blindsided him when Asou Seiji had left. He swallows hard against the tight, choking feeling overtaking his throat and the overwhelming prickling he now understands as tears in his eyes, and fights the wrong, wrong urge to check his palms for blood.

(“…to the last thing I have to say?”)

He bows, and Miyano Akemi is gone forever.

.

.

 “I’m thinking,” Kuroba starts the moment he gets back, looking down at his crossed legs, “that there isn’t much to do here.”

Shinichi sits down, rolling sore eyes as he tries to shake off lingering exhaustion. “I told you that at the start.”

“So, it follows,” he continues, unperturbed, “that if there is something I need to do here…” He looks back up at Shinichi, only unlike before, his expression is cautious. It raises Shinichi’s hackles; his shoulders hunch.

“What.”

The spirit pauses, eyes darting away.

Shinichi determinedly ignores the frustration he can feel rising, he calls, “Kuroba-san-”

“A weird mess of memories,” Kuroba begins again, cutting him off. “Feelings I can’t properly connect to anything, and… a sense of not belonging, yet not knowing where I’m meant to be.”

He freezes, one hand half-extended to prod Kuroba in the shoulder. Something cold feels like it’s trickling further down his spine with every symptom listed off. Like every moment of emptiness he can remember, a void compacting into something endlessly dark.

“You know,” Kuroba’s renewed gaze is searching, raking, like it’s tearing deeper and deeper through the surface, until even Shinichi doesn’t know what he must be seeing. “Isn’t that exactly what’s going on with you?

Shinichi’s hand spasms as it tries to clench and flex at the same time, and instinctively he draws back, yet Kuroba only follows, moves closer, resolve steady in his eyes.

“Are you supposed to be able to cry?”

Shinichi doesn’t breathe. The tear tracks he scrubbed away burn on his cheeks.

He can’t hear Kuroba breathe either. He must be holding it too. Without movement, with Kuroba holding all of himself so very, very still, with Shinichi still frozen where he sits on his knees in the sand, there is no sound in the entire world, the world is-

His world is wavering. Poised on the edge of indecision, his brain slows, wants to reject the thought of even considering the implication presented before him, and yet…

And yet he doesn’t.

Because the answer is no. No, he isn’t. Why would he be, when all he does is lead? For a boat that moves alone…

Why is he here at all?

And when the world finally moves again, when he finally takes his next breath it’s as harsh as the beats of his heart; it beats with fervour as though relieved to do it, yet scared, so scared, brain nor body understanding why.

“I don’t understand,” he whispers.

Kuroba is still close, his nose a bare few inches from his own, and he can see the heavy movement of his throat as he swallows.

“I don’t get it either,” the spirit confesses. “But I saw you. You knew her. I don’t know how, but you cried for her, you know her, Shinichi. You just can’t remember how and that’s-”

(tight, squeezing fingers around his hand, his tiny knucklebones grinding together as they’re held in a weakening grip, fear horror fear as a voice grows faint, as a smile goes slack and a life goes-)

“-how it is for me too.” Kuroba’s hand is on his shoulder, jerking him to reality, and his eyes are knowing, still unmoved from his own. “Bits and pieces you can’t make sense of, but tell you just enough to know that you don’t belong here.” Shinichi tries to pull back, yet he holds him still.

(“I beg of you,”)

“Think about it,” Kuroba implores him. “Just think about it,”

and Shinichi does, brain moving like a machine finally given purpose, snatching every stolen emotion and memory he’d pushed away and breaking them open like bytes of encrypted information, and it’s petrifying as much as it is exhilarating, as natural as it is impossible. That it was not attempting to speak to other people as a person himself, he simply was, that he is, has been all along.

“Because I’m thinking that if I’m going back, you’re coming with me.”

“Back?”

He almost doesn’t recognise his own voice, certainty and nervous hope in equal parts melding together. Could it be, could it really be the case that the place Kuroba came from, Kuroba, someone with vestiges of a living sun still shining from his skin, be where he came from too?

“Of course,” Kuroba says, determination warring with the barest trace of doubt.

Shinichi feels fresh tears break loose and race down his cheeks, soothing the scrubbed burn on his face.

Kuroba flinches back, panic flitting over his expression, and Shinichi coughs a laugh, but he doesn’t bother reaching up to wipe them away. Like this, he can once again see the wide expanse of sunset, of lake, of shore, and he’s known for so long that this wasn’t the only world there was but now, he’s struck with the giddy and terrifying thought that it may not even be his.

He glances sideways back towards the wall that cuts him from Heaven, and it’s completely smooth, stretching to disappear into the sky. Unquestionably impassable.

And as he stares, stares at death’s clear and blatant rejection, the last bit of hesitation burns away.

He stands, toes digging into the sand, and Kuroba follows uncertainly with a look of concern.

“Kuroba-san,” he says softly, because he’s sure he’s right but if he’s wrong, “Turn around.”

And he does, shock lighting his face.

“What do you see?” he asks, knowing the answer from the way the corners of Kuroba’s lips are lifting from the way his entire body goes slack with relief.

“A wall,” Kuroba’s smile warms his voice. “I don’t think I could get past it if I tried.”

.

.

For the first time in Shinichi’s memory, he takes someone with him on the trip back over the lake.

His hands shake when he lifts the oar to tap gently on the side of the boat, wondering and fearing that it might reject him, yet it moves without consequence, makes its steady line back, and the far shore disappears into mist barely twenty feet away, as though it couldn’t wait to do it.

Relaxed and leaning on the side of the boat, Kuroba looks peaceful for the first time since he arrived. Shinichi fidgets, full of trepidation. It’s still hard to believe, even now, but at the very least he is confident Kuroba can and should go back now. He’s much less sure about himself, but…

Kuroba looks at him every so often, his gaze strong and steady, and he figures that’s enough certainty for the both of them.

The trip is over much faster than it usually is, the boat shuddering as it moors itself into the bank. Kuroba gets out first, grasping Shinichi’s hand and pulling him up with him before he can protest, and together they take a step closer to the swirling mist.

Then Shinichi frowns. It feels right to let Kuroba back through the mist; somehow he knows that it will let him go where he needs to go. But, “I don’t think I’m supposed to go through here.”

Kuroba turns to him, opening his mouth with what looks like an already prepared protest, but Shinichi quickly cuts him off. “I think this is where you go,” he says, “but I… I might have to try something different.

“Don’t worry,” he assures the doubt in his expression. “I won’t stay here. Besides,” he smiles, “I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to.”

The other assesses him with a searching look, and he must find what he’s looking for, because he nods.

Then they both realise that this is the moment that they part, and they come to a standstill, linked hands hanging limp between them. Kuroba laughs, a touch awkward.

“It’s kind of hard to go, now,” he admits, staring down at their hands. “Who knows when or where you’re from?” His eyes rise to meet Shinichi’s, rueful smile on his face. “I might never actually know you, you know.”

“But you were here.” Shinichi squeezes the other’s fingers. “You were here, and that doesn’t- won’t ever change.”

Kuroba squeezes back, before finally letting go and stepping back. His eyes drift to the lake, past the water to a shrouded shore neither of them yet belong to. His mouth opens as though to say goodbye, but then he stops, and simply turns, disappearing into the mist.

Once and for all.

Shinichi waits there for a long moment, waiting to see if he’ll come back out again after all, but the mist does not move.

He takes a deep breath, feeling a tremor in his fingers. Regardless of what Kuroba had shown him, regardless of the fact that he does not belong here, there must have been a reason that he was cast here. A reason that he couldn’t continue life as he must have known it. The thickening mist only confirms it – he can’t go back so easily.

He has to try something different.

Turning sharply on his heel, he makes his way back to the boat on the shore, climbing into it without an inch of his usual care. Before he can even try to tap the side, the boat unmoors by itself – not moving in its usual smooth glide, but simply drifting out into the water. The oar lies abandoned on the sand where Shinichi was startled into dropping it.

The movement is endlessly slow, yet the shore he’d left steadily melts away into nothing. Soon, he is alone in the boat, surrounded by water and not a trace of anything else. No path going directly back to what might have been his old life, no desire nor means to pass on.

He has to try something different.

He takes another deep breath, his legs rooted on the boat that for a time was the centre of his existence.

Another breath, held in his lungs, and he steps forward.

His foot breaks the surface of the lake with a splash that barely makes a sound, and the water swallows him whole.

.

.

.

.

Kaito jerks awake as a sharp pain slams into his head.

“Don’t fall asleep.”

“Wha-” he blinks in confusion for a moment before his eyes focus on the face leaning over him, and exasperation wells up immediately. “I’m bleeding, not freezing to death,” he complains, rubbing the spot on his forehead that had fallen victim to Shinichi’s vicious flick.

“Still doesn’t mean you want to be sleeping.” Shinichi’s unrepentant, hand still poised in the optimal position to deliver another one. “You’ve been out for nearly ten minutes.”

The van doors are half closed behind him, and despite his attempt at casualness it’s obvious he’s tense, Kevlar vest still tightly strapped to his torso and altered goggles still on his face. There’re specks of wiped blood staining the pads of his fingers and palms, and Kaito groans because those stains had stupid bullet in Kaito’s shoulder written all over them.

Wait. Ten minutes unconscious, plus whatever amount of time he’d phased in and out of as the harried paramedic patched him up? “Update me,” he demands, struggling to sit up.

Which, holy shit, was a horrible decision.

“If you try that again, I’m going to knock you out and let you wait until the media finally gets their hands on this before telling you anything,” Shinichi hisses, one insistent hand pressing down on his chest. Kaito says nothing, breaths quick as fire flares all throughout his shoulder and back, but he tries for a sheepish smile.

He waits for the pain to ebb slightly, before repeating, “update me?”

Shinichi’s expression shutters, just a bit, but he acquiesces. “A few agents Furuya-san was leading found Rum. She was… waiting for them.”

Kaito’s stomach drops.

“They made it out,” Shinichi says firmly, before he can react any further. “Two of them were shoved straight into a van heading for the hospital, but they’re going to be okay. Furuya-san’s got a burn, but,” he shrugs, “he refused to leave until the operation is over.”

“Sounds about right,” grins Kaito, relieved, before he sobers. “…Rum?”

 “In custody.” Shinichi’s mouth twists.  “In the ICU.”

“Fuck,” Kaito sighs.

“Yeah,” Shinichi agrees tiredly. His fingers idly playing with strands of Kaito’s hair. It feels wonderfully soothing, and counterproductive: if Shinichi truly wants Kaito awake and alert, he’s fighting against himself, here.

“It doesn’t look like anyone got a message out,” he hears Shinichi say. “Or at least, not immediately. So there aren’t already minor hopefuls trying to reroute Org plans, but it probably won’t last.”

“Probably not.” Kaito’s eyelids dip, and he mentally curses the combination of blood loss and what must be painkillers finally kicking in.

Or apparently not so mentally, because Shinichi dryly replies, “You took them for a reason, you know. You heard what you needed to hear, so this van is going to the hospital pronto.” Tension finally unwinds, and his body relaxes as he traces the mask on Kaito’s face, subdued alternative to the full hat and monocle. “It’s over.”

Kaito reaches awkwardly up, taking care to only bend his arm at the elbow, and half-grips-half-strokes Shinichi’s sleeve in the worst show of reciprocation he’s ever attempted. His detective, showing all his usual sensitivity, snorts.

“Let your painkillers take you away, KID,” Shinichi laughs at his aggrieved look. His smile is soft, and he silently mouths Kaito’s name right after his title. “I’ll stay with you.”

“That sounds a lot like a vow, great detective,” Kaito grins, familiar warmth coiling in his chest.

“You’re delirious,” Shinichi dismisses, but he’s still smiling, and he doesn’t deny it.

“Yeah. I’ll always be with you too.” Kaito shuts his eyes, and right away he can feel sleep pulling him under, but he resists it just long enough to say, “or whatever.”

.

.

And at the beginning of the story, long before that moment, Shinichi wakes into another life laying slumped on bloodied grass at Tropical Land, and he thinks,

‘Lucky!’