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Snow underfoot, too crisp and new to turn to slush even as it's trampled by three pairs of wet winter boots.
They take up all the pavement, hand in hand with Saguru in the middle even though it garners more stares. Hurried stares, people in heavy coats, fingers raw with carrying shopping bags, with no time to gawk with the wind biting at them.
Saguru is the only one wearing gloves. He wishes that he wasn't.
Cars drawl by on the road, half-hearted and struggling. Getting anywhere in this weather is a struggle.
Aoko says they are making a pilgrimage.
-v-
A tall, rectangular building looms on the horizon, but that's nothing extraordinary. He barely recognises the city powdered white.
(He thinks that there is no better way to spend a Saturday.)
Metal safety rails frosted over. They begin to trudge up a hill, Aoko sliding erratically in her inappropriate shoes. "I told you," Kaito says, exasperated even beneath his patterned wool hat, but they don't get to hear what he told her before he, too, slips and almost falls. Judo strength, Saguru steadies him just in time.
(He thinks this is why people are made with two hands to hold.)
-v-
"It's beautiful," Saguru says without thinking, before it occurs to him that this could be a joke, a light-hearted jab at his reputation for timekeeping, a trap which he has already fallen into.
He had known this clocktower existed. Read about it in case files. Heard about it in gossip. The legendary scene, Kudou Shinichi pointing a gun at the Kaitou Kid, from a helicopter, unauthorised. Saguru was sorry to have missed it.
They stand at the scene of Kid's defeat to another detective.
Aoko steps closer to brush her bare fingers down the rough exterior, all flecked with frost.
-v-
The brickwork towers above them, the minute hand ticking, heavy. Saguru can imagine the cogs turning just behind.
"This is where we met," Kaito tells him, hands fisted in the pockets of his hoodie. He doesn't look at Saguru - only cranes his neck to watch the clock face, fondly, like greeting an old friend, and he realises a moment later that Aoko is doing the same.
The cold of his pocketwatch burns through fabric, chilling his goosebumped skin.
Kaito pulls his hands from his pockets, and with them, a rose - impossibly long-stemmed and pinkish-red, alight with the sunset.
-v-
He takes the rose between two fingers and doesn't understand at all.
"This seems like a place you could have been," Kaito says, airily, "If you had been seven and living in Ekoda."
Saguru has heard the story many times. Little Aoko, the damsel in distress; and Kaito, the perfect little charmer. They had stopped just short of childhood-friends-to-lovers, but the tale is still, admittedly, precious.
Saguru has no such tale to share. He can't make up for ten missed years; there's no way to wedge himself into that bond.
"Should have been," Aoko corrects, with the barest hint of a smile.