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Shuichi paused as a fast-paced rhythm filled with hollow drum sounds reached his ears, listening to the lyrics that started almost immediately- something about a hole in a pot and curry without meat. He tilted his head slightly to the side, ignoring the strands of hair that fell across his forehead, almost unable to believe what he was hearing.
“Is this… Hatsune Miku?”
“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing, Mr. Detective?” The phantom thief, known to Shuichi as Dice, stood on his toes and rocked back and forth on his heels, standing on the other side of the roof.
Shuichi stutters over his words. “Well- ah- it’s just, I wasn’t expecting to hear Miku when you said you were going to start a song. It’s a bit funny is all. I wouldn’t have expected Hatsune Miku from a thief like you.”
Shuichi couldn’t see the phantom thief’s face behind the clown mask covering his features, but he could almost feel the change in expression through the space between the two. The wind hitting his exposed face and hands seemed to become colder.
“Don’t ever insult Miku again. Or you’ll regret it deeply.” His voice had deepened to the tone Shuichi only heard when the famed thief was making some flirty comment that he knew would fluster the detective to no end. Before he could respond, or even make some attempt at thinking of what to say in response to the most serious threat he’d ever received from his counterpart, Dice was talking again.
“Anyway, we’re missing the song! Come on, beloved.” His tone was back to normal, the high-pitched, lilting voice that he used to taunt the police of the city. Shuichi muffled the thought that he missed the serious voice and tried to ignore the pet name he’d been given when the two met.
“What are you talking about, Dice?”
The thief threw back his head and laughed. Shuichi wasn’t sure whether it was because of his words or because of the detective’s use of the fake name he’d been given when they met. “You aren’t so intuitive for such a renowned detective, are you? We’re dancing, of course! Wasn’t that obvious?”
The detective tried to ignore the flush that rose to his cheeks at Dice’s words. “W-what?”
“Are you deaf, too? We’re dancing. You do know what dancing is, right?”
“Well, yeah, but-”
“Great! Then we’re dancing!” Before Shuichi could try to protest again (although it probably would’ve been in vain, knowing the phantom thief’s tendency to get what he wanted) the thief’s hand was on his arm and he was tugging him away from the air conditioner unit where he’d set up one of those portable bluetooth speakers. It was clear that, as spontaneous as he’d tried to make it seem, Dice had planned this out. Shuichi was oddly touched by the thought.
The chorus was about to start when Dice stopped in the middle of the roof, turning back towards Shuichi so quickly that the detective almost stumbled into him. The painted-on grin of the clown mask didn’t change, but his eyes scrunched up in the corners as if he had grinned to match it. Shuichi saw something else in his eyes- he looked cheerful, the same way he almost always did, but there was the tiniest hint of something like anxiety- that was something the thief hadn’t ever shown before.
“Well?” Shuichi tore his thoughts away from the nervousness in the master thief’s eyes, quickly blinking to clear his mind. Dice spoke again. “Come on, detective. Dance with me already, would you?”
And then, there was a hand draped over Shuichi’s shoulder, another intertwining their fingers together. There was no point in trying to deny or hide the redness of his face anymore- he could already tell that anyone looking at him would have no clue how pale he normally was. Dice paused for a second as if waiting for something, then sighed in the same fashion he seemed to do anything and everything else- as overdramatically as possible.
“Do I really have to do everything myself? Ugh.” With another sigh, he grabbed Shuichi’s other hand and set it firmly on his hip before looking back up at him. “There! Now we can dance.” Shuichi didn’t get a chance to answer (or stutter awkwardly) before the two were suddenly spinning in circles.
The chorus was in full swing now- a repeated pattern of “you and me, you and me, you and me” that matched the speed the detective and thief were spinning at. Some dramatically poetic part of Shuichi’s mind that he thought he’d left behind in his edgy high-schooler days compared the dance to his relationship with the thief- the dance was dangerous, and they kept dancing closer to the roof as they spun around each other, but the dangers didn’t seem to matter when he was looking at Dice.
Shuichi could hardly keep up- he was surprised that he hadn’t tripped over his own feet. Yet he somehow kept the pace, twirling across the roof as he held onto Dice for dear life and stared into the eyes of the man who should’ve been his enemy.
He knew this was wrong. He was on the roof to stop Dice, not dance with him. And even more than that, he had the chance to pull away that mask and expose the true identity of the country’s most famous thief. They were so close that the thief wouldn’t have time to stop him, and then a year’s worth of chasing after the phantom thief would’ve finally paid off.
As the two kept spinning, Shuichi decided that maybe he didn’t really want to catch the thief after all.
Because they were dancing, circling around and gazing at each other as a vocaloid song played in the background, as if the city around them had all but vanished. All there was anymore was this Miku song, and maybe the feeling of the hard roof as their feet barely avoided tangling together, and Dice’s hands, one on his shoulder and one holding his, and the thief’s purple eyes and hair that was almost the same shade tugged into a messy ponytail. Perhaps there were things more important than catching the criminal.
All of this crossed through his mind in the span of a few seconds, until the song’s chorus ended. Dice stopped their dance, and the pair was standing in the same spot they’d started out- although their faces were significantly closer than they’d been before, and the thief’s hand was less on Shuichi’s shoulder than it was curled around his neck, and Shuichi’s arm was wrapped loosely around the thief’s- his phantom thief’s, he thought with a start- waist. Miku and the male voice mixing with hers had fallen to background noise, with shallow breaths from both of them filling that space. They stayed there, frozen in each other’s arms, for an eternity, stuck in an unspoken game of who would speak first. Shuichi found that part of him desperately wanted them both to keep winning. He wanted to stay here, looking at the phantom thief forever, or as long as possible.
“You never told me you could dance, Shumai.” The thief normally would’ve said such a thing in his regular, joking tone, but not today. Not now. His voice was low, more serious than it had been just a few minutes before, and it cut through the invisible tension in the air like a knife. Nevertheless, the spell was broken at Dice’s words- not that either of them moved away. Dice stared, seemingly waiting for a response.
“Ah- not really. That was all you.” Shuichi looked away, shocked that he’d even managed to hold eye contact as long as he had.
“Don’t look away now, Mr. Detective.” The hand holding his slipped away, and Dice gently tilted his chin so Shuichi was facing him once more. Shuichi caught his breath as the unthinkable happened.
Dice was taking off the mask. He slipped it off his face, exposing his features. Shuichi tried to memorize every detail- not for the police, to give them the information to relay to a sketch artist, but for himself. He wanted to remember this. The thief was pale, with soft features and a spray of light freckles across his nose. His lips were curled up in a tiny smile. Shuichi never wanted him to put the mask on again. If he did, the detective wouldn’t be able to learn everything he wanted to know about the phantom thief.
His lips were soft. That was something he did get to learn while the mask was off. His lips were soft, and they were pressed against Shuichi’s in a gentle way, uncharacteristic for the usually so confident Dice. Shuichi didn’t think about it; he just leaned forward and cupped the hand that wasn’t still looped around Dice’s back around his cheek. He could feel his counterpart smile softly and mirrored it.
A million miles away, Miku was still singing, and maybe the song wasn’t so silly after all.