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"Ryuu-kun!" Akiko's honey-sweet voice greeted Terui as he entered the Narumi Detective Agency.
"Terui!" Shoutarou barked, "Get inside and close the door!" As Terui complied, Shoutarou then hissed at Akiko, "Don't get distracted!" The two of them stood back to back in the center of the room, Shoutarou with hat in hand and Akiko holding a bug-catching net.
"Hey! Who's the boss around here?"
Leaving them to bicker, Terui approached Phillip where he was on the couch reading, legs pulled up in front of him so they didn't touch the ground. "What's going on?"
"Shoutarou was asked to find a lost mouse, but now it's loose in the office," Phillip explained mildly. "It bites."
Noticing more closely now, Terui could see Shoutarou's hands were covered in band-aids. He considered joining Phillip on the couch, not enthusiastic about the prospect of a mouse bite, but that probably wouldn't be very heroic of him. "Shochou," he offered, "I'll help Hidari catch it."
"No, no, that's okay." She waved at him to sit. "But thanks anyway."
Puzzled, he sat down and waited with trepidation to see whatever harebrained plan she and Shoutarou had come up with.
"Ah, Shoutarou-kun!"
"I see it, Akiko," Shoutarou responded, slowly inching towards the Foosball table. Terui could see a flash of white underneath, but Shoutarou would have to get down on his hands and knees, and that wouldn't be very efficient. His frown gave was to shock, however, as Shoutarou let out a loud, sudden yell.
Startled, the mouse ran around the corner and into the other room. As it reached the bookcase, Akiko let out a "Yah!" and threw a slipper at some of the books, causing them to domino over and the last one to fall on the floor just in front of the mouse. It turned and scampered towards the door, when Shoutarou reached out with his hat to catch it. Before it could evade again, Akiko followed with the bug net, and it was caught between the two, squeaking and thrashing as Akiko stood up, prey in hand.
The two of them chuckled in their respective slightly-creepy ways as they replaced the mouse in the cage that presumably the owner had left.
"Good job, Shoutarou-kun!"
"You too," Shoutarou replied, trying not to preen at the praise and failing due to being tragically half-boiled.
"They make a good team," Terui said, surprised.
Phillip shrugged noncommittally.
"Did they plan that beforehand?"
"No."
"So then...?" Terui wasn't getting it.
"Wait a minute."
Terui opened his mouth to get a better answer than that, but Phillip probably wouldn't have heard him anyway over the escalating fight-turning-screaming-match in the next room--
"We ordered soba yesterday!"
"Soba is hard-boiled! Augh! Akiko!"
"Give me the phone!"
--oh.
"Should we break it up?"
"No, Aki-chan will win in the end, Shoutarou should know that by now. He deserves what he gets."
Terui wondered idly if it was too late to change his mind and wreak bloody vengeance on everything that could possibly start with "W".