Chapter Text
Shuichi held the bomb in his hands, the red LEDs on the countdown display scrambling and flashing illegibly. What had it said before? Shuichi racked his brain. Ten minutes? Eyes. Eyes everywhere. They were blinking at him. Judging, breathing, expecting. They were angry. They were begging. Why did it have to be like this? Shuichi couldn't see the wires no matter how hard he tried, vision blurring. All he could see was the cold stare on his back. He had to move. He had to. Shuichi reached out for the flesh of the bomb and ripped as hard as he could.
Shuichi woke up breathing hard.
Breathing.
He was breathing.
He was in his room. On his bed.
He dipped his toes into the safety of his familiar surroundings like a warm bath until he was fully submerged, the bad dream slipping from his mind as if it had been merely a furrow in his brow.
“I guess that’s what I get for crashing after three all-nighters…” he muttered to himself as he tested out his morning legs at the side of the bed.
Back when he was a teen, Shuichi used to get anxiety nightmares like this all the time, but nowadays it only happened when he stressed himself out the night before. Shuichi had just worked out a case on his client's dead husband that strongly indicated foul play in what was ruled to be an accidental death, although it had cost him a couple days of shoddy sleeping.
"Hey, Shuichi," Maki Harukawa, his roommate, knocked on his bedroom door as she called his name, "If you still want me to drop you off at the police station before I head to work you better have woken up five minutes ago."
"Sorry!" Shuichi called, scrambling to his feet. "I'll be ready to go in a second!"
Although Shuichi's room in the apartment didn't have a window, Shuichi tugged on a snug sweater knowing it had been so far a particularly chilly week of autumn. He also knew that sleep deprivation always made him a little colder in the mornings, like his body hadn't rested enough to charge his internal heating system. He pulled on some black jeans as fast as he could before heading towards the door out of his room.
He stopped with his hand on the knob, remembering he had tossed his coat at the foot of his bed. He pulled on his long black overcoat and grabbed some of the papers he had been pouring over last night. He checked his hair very quickly in the small mirror over his dresser before rushing out of his room to catch up with Maki as she opened the front door of their apartment.
She paused in the doorway, sending an analytical look his way.
"Did you fall asleep without taking off your eyeliner again?"
"Ah, no," Shuichi admitted, scratching the back of his head. "The bags under my eyes are just that bad this time."
Maki let out an exasperated sigh. "... Idiot. You really ought to start taking better care of yourself. Do you want to die? Get some sleep tonight."
Shuichi hummed thoughtfully as he slipped into his already laced up shoes. "The last few times you said that you promised you'd kill me if I didn't, and yet here we are."
Maki nodded sagely, poking Shuichi's head with her index finger like it was the barrel of a gun. "You’re right, I should keep my promises. Bang." She mimed the rebound of a gun shot. "Now you can finally get some sleep."
Shuichi batted her hand away. "It's really alright Maki. This is the last case on my agenda. After this, I can close the office for a couple of days to catch up on my beauty rest."
"Good. We both know you're the pretty face of this operation."
Shuichi laughed. "I thought that was Kaito."
Maki snorted, turning away to exit their apartment. "Kaito can be the face again when he gets back down here and shaves that stupid space beard of his."
Shuichi made a face. "Oh right," he said, "I forgot about the beard."
When Shuichi first met Kaito Momota he definitely did not have a beard. It was the first day of his Sophomore year gym class. Back then, Kaito only had a few wisps of pinkish-purple hair on his chin that he called a goatee. Kaito saw a lot of things that other people didn't see. He had seen standoffish Maki Harukawa and paralyzingly shy Shuichi Saihara sitting apart from the group in gym and declared them his sidekicks. Maki kicked him in the side, but he got right back up again and called her "Makiroll." Then, somehow, as if the power of Kaito's belief had made it so, they became best friends. They went through a lot together in high school and kept in touch during college while they each pursued their respective dreams. Kaito was enrolled in astronaut training in Maki's home town, and after Shuichi and Maki got out of school the three of them bought an apartment and moved in together. Shuichi started setting up his own private investigator practice and used some of his uncle's connections in establishing relationships with local law enforcement. Maki worked for a while at a daycare, but then Kaito… well, Kaito went to space. He started to bring in the big astronaut bucks and sent it home to Maki and Shuichi who weren't quite sure what to do with it. That was until Maki had an idea. She bought out the previous, shady benefactors of the orphanage she grew up in and used her degree in child development to ensure that the kids were being properly taken care of every day. In fact, after driving Shuichi to the police station and back, Maki was taking the car to go to the orphanage to help look after the kids like she did every day. Essentially, the reason Shuichi and Maki got along so well was that they were both hard workers in their own ways. While Shuichi latched onto one case at a time, burning the candle at both ends to get his work done as soon as possible, Maki was particularly good at finding a routine of work that she could handle and sticking to it reliably every day. This key difference in the way they operated, however, did not get in the way of them recognizing the genuine effort and passion they put into the things they did.
Maybe that was what Kaito had seen that no one else had on that day that we met, Shuichi thought to himself absentmindedly as Maki took a right to get out of the apartment's parking garage.
"Shuichi are you even awake over there?" Maki asked, eyes shifting to him in concern. "We could stop and get some coffee before getting to the station."
Shuichi shook his head, half in response and half to rouse him from his daze. "No that's alright. I'll probably crash immediately after turning in this report to be honest…"
Maki frowned at him. "That isn't exactly reassuring, you know."
Shuichi rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. "R-right, you're right. Sorry. I just probably shouldn't have any more caffeine after solely subsisting off of it the past few nights."
"Well, I suppose you're right about that." Maki nodded decisively. "You're hereby banned from drinking any more espresso until you manage to get a full 10 hours of sleep."
" Ten hours? Continuously? Doesn't that seem-"
"You're right, not a long enough sentence for your sleep crimes. Get twelve hours."
"Hhh, can we stop talking about my future in sleep jail? I need to think awake thoughts while I hand my work over to Captain Kirigiri."
Captain Kyoko Kirigiri was the detective in charge of the local police station. She had come from the station Shuichi's uncle had worked in across the country and helped him on a few cases. By coincidence, she and Shuichi had ended up in the same area and nowadays when Shuichi's investigations actually turned up illegal activities he would report it to Kirigiri's station. On rare occasions, she would consult his professional opinion on some of the department’s cases.
After going through their morning pleasantries, Maki pulled over and stopped in front of the police station.
"I'm dropping you off here." She said, turning her face away from the police station. Shuichi couldn't tell if she was trying to hide her face or if she just didn't want to look at the building. Shuichi knew that when Maki had lived in this town as a kid she hadn't had the happiest life. The orphanage she now owned had once been completely reliant on a shady cult that taught children to kill for sport. After a big dust-up from the cops, a lot of kids were transferred far away, including Maki. When Shuichi and Kaito had met her she was grieving a friend who had died there, but not visibly. She had adopted the ideology of "that's just the way things are" and it took 3+ years of almost daily exposure to Kaito Momota to bring her around to believing in things again. Although Maki would never admit it, even all the time since then couldn't take away the painful memories she had endured in this very building.
Shuichi nodded in understanding. "Where are you heading then?"
She was still looking away. "Just to find a parking spot."
She was lying. Shuichi was good at figuring that stuff out. After all, he'd had a lot of practice…
When Shuichi woke up there hadn't been the smell of any cooking on the stove or the microwave heating up. There weren't any new dishes in the sink since he cleaned up his stack of coffee cups before he crashed last night. It stands to reason to assume Maki did not have breakfast, but if Maki were just going to get breakfast she would've just told him, probably with a snide remark about the most important meal of the day, seeing as he had skipped breakfast as well. No, it must mean Maki was embarrassed about something… something embarrassing for breakfast…
Shuichi snapped his fingers, "You're going to the patisserie aren't you?"
Maki was still facing away, but Shuichi could see her cheeks puffed out in frustration.
"... Technically it's a Confectionary…" she turned to glare at him. "Stop using your gross detective brain on me and do your job already."
Shuichi recalled one night in a starry field far far away he had laid in the grass with Maki and Kaito after a set of push-ups. Kaito had been talking about his astronaut diet or something when Maki had broken in with a soft voice. She recalled her favorite memory of an old friend. They were playing house with her friend as the mom and Maki as the dad. They had made sweets together while the cook wasn't busy. And things were just nice. Shuichi knew that Maki couldn't give a damn about what anyone thought about her diet, least of all Shuichi who occasionally drank espresso for dinner and said "good enough." No, it was, perhaps, the emotional vulnerability of the connection. Her soft spot for sweets that she instinctively hid.
Some of Shuichi's sympathy must have been slipping onto his face because Maki frowned at him. "Stop with the disgusting expression and get out of the damn car Shuichi."
"Fine fine!" Shuichi said, checking to see he had all his papers. "You don't have to tell me twice."
"I already did have to tell you twice."
Shuichi opened the door, pausing before getting all the way out. "And if you want to talk about-"
" Goodbye, Shuichi."
"R-right see you in a bit."
Shuichi hopped out of the car and started walking up to the station as Maki pulled away. An officer Shuichi didn't recognize tipped his hat at Shuichi as he exited the building. Shuichi himself hadn't worn a hat since he was 15, so he just nodded his head in response.
As he walked in the building he found Captain Kirigiri fairly quickly. Past the desks in the main room for the lower ranking detectives, Captain Kirigiri's office had it's door open. Kirigiri herself was shuffling through some files as if looking for something. She didn't notice him at first and Shuichi stood in the doorway for a few seconds considering his options. Would it be rude to interrupt her? Maybe he should come back later… but that would inconvenience both Maki and his client… well standing silently in the doorway wasn't really a good look either. Shuichi hesitated only a little further before clearing his throat and knocking on the door.
Captain Kirigiri broke her focus on the documents in front of her, looking a little startled. She seemed to relax when she saw it was just him. "Oh, it's you. How can I help you Saihara?"
He looked down into his papers. "I'm, uh, sorry to interrupt you Captain Kirigiri, you seem rather busy, it's just this case the department ruled accidental last month… "
Kirigiri held out her hand. Shuichi almost shook it out of instinct before remembering the papers in his hands. He tactfully handed them over to her. Kirigiri skimmed through them and Shuichi felt the familiar heart rate increase that came from having his work scrutinized. No matter how confident Shuichi was in the moment of his investigations' deductions, he was always a little anxious at what would happen next.
Kirigiri finished reading and gave Shuichi a look that he couldn't quite decipher. Was she going to tell him to buzz off? Maybe he really should have-
"I'll look into this. It's a solid case. We could use you on the force, Saihara. You always seem to be picking up our slack."
Shuichi shook his head a little shocked at the suggestion. "No, I wouldn't say that. Being able to set my own hours for investigations and only dealing with a few cases at a time has a lot to do with my deductions. I'm just not suited for department work."
Kirigiri nodded. "Understandable. While you're here, however, could you offer your insight on something?"
Shuichi hesitated. He didn't want to make Maki wait for him, but he supposed that Kirigiri would just ask him to look over a file before he left and offer some sort of connection she hadn't yet noticed.
"Um, yeah sure. I'd be happy to help."
Kirigiri nodded. "Very well."
Kirigiri, however, did not pull out a case file for him to squint at. She instead walked past him out of her office, and after a moment Shuichi deduced that meant he should follow her.
"We've got a guy in interrogation." She started to explain. "We suspect he's some sort of big shot in a gang, but we're worried there might be more cult activity popping up." She paused in front of the door that lead to the interrogation area and turned to look him in the face. "The force has worked decades to dismantle the hold that sinister organizations have had on this town. I haven't heard anything like what this man has described, but if there's anything you know at all, tell me without hesitation."
Shuichi nodded, trying to look even half as stern as Kirigiri and failing. He felt a little nervous at this description. Just who was this guy? A violent gang member? Some sort of mob faction agent? A cult leader bent on forcing children to murder each other?
Kirigiri opened the door to the interrogation room. At first, it looked like a small hallway with a desk facing the right wall at the end. A bedraggled looking patrol officer sat at said desk scowling ahead through a large glass panel in the wall, presumably a one-way window to view the suspect with, seeing as there was a door beside it. To the right of the door was another table that had a pile of things that most likely were confiscated from the subject.
"We don't know what he's capable of, so be cautious." Kirigiri said, continuing down to the desk area, "Our officer here brought him in on suspicion of substance abuse, but he's completely clean and lucid as far as I can tell, which makes what he says all the more..."
Kirigiri's words faded to the background when Shuichi saw the figure behind the glass. A short man leaning back in a metal chair with his feet on the table even though his hands were cuffed to it. The odd pose, however, was not what drew Shuichi's attention.
Purple hair, purple eyes, pasty skin, and a laid back grin.
Shuichi moved forward without thinking and opened the door.
"Kokichi?"