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then
Hiro swung his flashlight onto the dark, still surface of wastewater and his light caught a wide-eyed raggedy doll floating past him. He jumped, hand instinctively reaching to grab at the black jacket directly in front of him.
Though he instantly let go, embarrassed, the damage had been done: Rye half-turned to look at him.
“Check that out,” Hiro said jokingly, nodding towards the wretched thing, and mentally congratulating himself for the lightness of his voice, like the doll was simply amusing and hadn’t just scared five years clean off his life span. “Fuckin' creepy.”
Rye shined his phone light down the tunnel, peering around him to take a quick look before resuming his walk, unconcerned. “I’ll buy you one of those for Christmas.”
“Fuck off,” Hiro laughed, following. Some of the tension bled out of his shoulders, at least until—
“Guys,” Zero’s voice rose from behind both of them, distinctly annoyed. “My light went out.”
Hiro turned. “Are you serious?”
Zero lifted his arm to block the light, squinting. “Yes, blind me, why don't you.”
“Phone?” Rye checked.
“Dead.”
“Come walk between us.”
“Yeah,” Hiro stepped back, leaving space. “Uh, yeah.”
Zero squeezed his shoulder as he walked past him, pulling down his mask to mouth, just batteries. Then, letting go, louder: “Let’s pick up the pace, the stench down here is vile. I’m really not getting paid enough for this.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” teased Rye, tugging up Zero's mask and placing it carefully on his nose.
Hiro spotted the hand settling on the small of his friend’s back, managing a knowing smile even through frazzled nerves. Ah, he really hated the dark, and he hated confined spaces. He should’ve stayed home. This sucked.
Out of nowhere, Rye suggested, “Why don’t we turn off all of our lights and try walking in pitch black?”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself, man,” Hiro laughed, and it was entirely nervous.
“Stop teasing him,” Zero admonished, elbowing Rye in the side. “He believes places like these are haunted.”
“Places like these?”
“Abandoned.”
“You have to take care of spaces, okay?” Hiro defended, unnerved by the dark, long, cold and narrow tunnel sprawling out behind his back despite his best efforts. “Old, abandoned and fashioned solely to house the waste of living beings? It’s practically a hotspot for ghosts. If I see something move in the corner of my eye I’m shooting it, I’m not even checking, I don’t care.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Rye said, voice surprisingly free of any judgment. “I stepped on a rat earlier.”
Zero glanced back. “See? It’s not abandoned. He stepped on a rat.”
“Ew,” Hiro says, heart warm.
They fell into silence, the tunnel filled only with the sound of wet footsteps and rather concerning noises until Zero pointed them to metallic stairs tucked in a corner, leading down to what Hiro thought was probably hell.
“Careful,” Hiro said, “there’s a missing step.”
“Hold Bourbon down or he’ll fix it.”
“Wh–? Shut up, Rye.”
Hiro lit up the closed door in front of him—chipped dark green, loose chains wrapped around a rusty knob.
“Hey Rye,” he called over his shoulder, “come and open this. I didn’t get my tetanus booster yet.”
"Don't you have gloves in your pocket?" Rye asked even as he obliged, and he and Zero both pressed to the wall of the tight space to let Rye shimmy past them. He tried the knob, and it cracked open only a few inches before sticking on the chain.
There was a pause as Rye considered them, a slight shift as he stepped back, before—
“Absolutely not,” cut Zero sharply, clearly having read something in that movement. “There's no space for you to kick that cleanly, and even if there was, the force would make the whole thing spray.”
“Blegh,” Hiro made a face as he immediately pulled bolt cutters out of his bag. “Yeah, nix on centuries of sewage dust in my eyes.”
Rye shifted back to take them, something like disappointment in the set of his mouth, which was fair, considering the chains were practically crumbling apart. Pretty pathetic use for him to be cleaning off the cutters later.
With a heavy clank, they snapped apart, and the door swung forward to reveal a small room, a chair, and a wonderfully familiar body slumped on it. Fucking finally, they couldleave.
“Is he dead? Check if he shat himself. Or that, yeah, that also works,” Hiro acknowledged, watching Zero press two fingers against a bruised neck.
He was immediately distracted by a huff of air, and swung his light.
Rye was slightly turned away as his shoulders trembled, the side of one gloved hand pressed against his mouth. “Scotch,” he managed, voice shaky with laughter, “there’s something deeply wrong with you.”
“What?” Hiro grinned, unexpectedly pleased he’d made Rye laugh.
“He’s alive,” Zero cut in, concern in his frown. “His pulse is unnaturally fast.”
“Well, yeah,” Hiro replied indifferently, glancing back at the door. “Who knows what those crazy fucks over at R&D have been doping him with? Can we get a move on already? I’m not carrying him, so you two figure that out.”
“I’ll do it,” Rye agreed easily, before tilting his head, “once I know who he is.”
“What? Zero didn’t tell you?” At Rye’s displayed curiosity, Hiro easily elaborated: “He’s the guy who–”
“Scotch,” Rei interrupted, shooting him an eloquent look.
“What? It’s Rye.” He gestured with an unnecessary sweep at the man in question, who blinked. “He just carried you across sewage water because you refused to walk through it.”
Rei didn’t reply, lips pursed.
“Hm,” said Rye, looking to the side.
Zero rolled his eyes. “Don’t sulk, you. It’s sensitive information, you should understand that.”
Hiro frowned. “Hey, come on. We’ve been working together for a while, right? And it doesn’t look like we’re getting rid of each other anytime soon either, so.”
“Are you that easy?” Zero shot.
He raised an eyebrow at him, amused. “You really wanna go there?”
Zero caught his meaning instantly, giving Rye a quick (and slightly embarrassed) side glance. “It's not the same thing,” he grumbled.
Rye simply stood there, slipping his hands in his pockets and looking vaguely interested, which Hiro now knew to take as him being very interested, and that should’ve been enough, really.
“This,” he made a circular gesture between the three of them, “isn’t gonna work if there isn’t some kind of trust, is all I’m saying.”
.
.
now
Kir doesn’t startle when Hiro drops in behind her, doesn’t even fumble as she flips her phone shut to slide it back into her pocket. He’s not surprised, wouldn’t be even if he didn’t know about the business with her chewing her father to death or whatever, but he doesn’t anticipate the sharp annoyance that grits his teeth at the sight.
“Scotch,” she greets evenly, eyes sweeping the area around him before they settle clearly on his face.
Nowhere is truly dark in tourist district Singapore, and even this tucked away parking lot is lit changing colours from the lights of the nearest attraction. Violet plays over Kir's face, hair tied into a bun and expression nearly just as tight. He spies the shadow of a shoulder holster under her loose overcoat, uniform black. Odd for her to still have it on—ah, was she expecting him?
“Kir,” he mimics. He tries briefly for an easy smile, but stops as soon as he feels his jaw tense unnaturally. Yikes. “Didn’t expect you to still be on the continent by the time I arrived.”
“Plans changed a bit,” Kir shrugs as she adjusts her bag on her shoulder, sharp eyes practically daring him to comment. “I’m not staying long.”
He dares. “Loose ends to tie up further north?”
Her brow furrows, gaze sinking to glare, because the insinuation she didn’t murder Rye is an insult. “Don’t start—”
“Hey, hey.” He holds up his hands with a rueful grin, a curl of satisfaction at her composure breaking. “It’d only be natural, after offing FBI. They don’t exactly take well to that sort of thing, heroes losing to crooks and all, yanno?”
She blinks, relaxing slightly.
“How did he lose to you, anyway?” Hiro wonders aloud like it’s an idle thought instead of the same fucking question he’s been asking himself ever since he heard it happened. “No offense, and not to compliment the enemy or anything, but even Gin couldn’t take him down.”
Kir’s lips press together, indicating that she is taking offense, thanks. “There was a solid plan.”
“Not yours though, right?” Hiro guesses carelessly, and it’s just another remark meant to dig, because he fucking hates her, but then–
She freezes.
Very briefly, easily passable as reacting to insult, but with slightest hesitation that makes him… pause.
“No,” she says so cooly afterwards that he almost thinks he’s imagined it. “It was Gin’s grudge, after all, not mine.”
He’s still stuck on that little moment when Kir pushes on before he can react. “You keep bringing Rye up,” she points out, head innocently tilted. “Are you having trouble dealing with his betrayal? You were very close, weren’t you?”
Her eyes glitter blue, green, yellow. There’s a few seconds where the words don’t parse, where everything goes completely, completely cold, with only the creeping feeling of, did she just…?
“But I’ll ask you to keep me out of your grief,” she adds, voice clipped. Professional, even with the mock-pity in the corner of her lips. “I’ll tell you this, though: Rye was a spy. Maybe remembering that will help move whatever this is along? Unless the person you’re really grieving is your fellow NOC, of course.”
Red.
Hiro takes one, shallow breath. He recognises the tightness in his stomach, understands the warning for what it is, and gives himself three seconds for the thoughts to spring.
One— if you shoot her without reason Gin will shoot you for fun —
Two— if she didn’t push back with how you’ve been provoking her it would have been grounds to tell Vermouth she’s losing her edge —
Three— this is only natural of her and of anyone, because Rye was your goddamn friend, wasn’t he?
Hiro takes another shallow breath, and ignores it all.
“You’re hilarious, Kir,” he channels every inch of Bourbon he can remember in that single, pleasant sentence. “Try not to get shot in the States, seeing as you’re jumping right back into the angry hornets’ nest.”
“Please,” she rolls her eyes, finally turning around to unlock her car. “I know what I’m doing.”
Hiro considers himself a pacific guy. He never initiates, just responds. He’d responded to his parents’ deaths with a death in return, and he’d responded to a messy shot in Zero’s arm with the cleanest slit of his knife.
Right now, he wants to shoot Kir, right between the eyes, at point blank.
It takes her an extra second to get her car door open, and the moment of struggle screams leftover injury so loud that he practically aches to take advantage, but then.
But then she’s in her car and Scotch is just there again, blinking the headlights out of his vision.
.
.
In middle school his favorite teacher, in-between shoving books about healing and PTSD into his arms and making sure he went to his mandatory therapy sessions, had once told him that forgiveness is an action, but Hiro's forgiveness is hollow; it's a fever that breaks every Christmas, every birthday, every milestone.
The first time Hiro killed someone, he was twenty and he didn't have the time to feel sick about it. The immediate stench of steel had brought him back to his cupboard in his family's house in Nagano, hugging his knees and listening to his father's pained, dazed groans, his mother's pleas. Listening to his parents' murderer cheerfully humming a tune as he trawled through their wallets and electronics and his Mom's jewelry box and his Dad's safe.
Revenge was also an action; in his case, the better one. It hadn’t been about the man, in the end, and even less about the violence. No one enjoys work as much as Gin after all, least of all Hiro. But he admits to a grim sort of satisfaction, in deciding to do something and doing it. The killing has just never been his point of contemplation for quitting.
And he does. Contemplate quitting, that is. He’s already gotten what he needs out of this whole thing, and the only reason he’s still in it is, well…
Hm.
The severance package sucking, maybe? The pay?
The point is, Hiro doesn't care all that much about organization goals. Hiro does care about murdering people who deserve it. And maybe the org loves Kir, but he doesn't, so she deserves it.
Revenge is selfish. He's made his peace with it.
However, Hiro also cares about staying alive, and keeping Rei alive. So he can't just shoot Kir when he feels like it, he has to plan for this, and planning is so goddamn hard when he's getting sent to the wrong side of the Pacific to kill a teenager.
"As worthwhile as your arguments may be in regards to whose… responsibility Sherry's betrayal is, Rum is making it your responsibility now," Vermouth had finally impressed after the third consecutive week of Hiro ruthlessly roasting Gin's fuck-up and pointedly not going to Japan.
He'd still dithered, hanging around Chicago and pushing Bourbon to draw out his business there, because Japan meant old police officers who might recognize him as a point of interest in an unsolved homicide and therefore a lot of fake ID refreshing. Plus, a kid who managed to slip her cuffs in a gas chamber wasn't really someone he was interested in killing.
And then Akai Shuichi was murdered.
Their flight to Japan is economy, which is something Hiro resigned himself to the second he left Zero in charge of booking it. The day he’ll get his friend to understand that it’s okay, they have money now, will be a day of reckless celebration, but then again as one of the few remaining traits they never ended up sharing Zero’s frugality has been a point of comfortingly recurrent contention, so any other day Hiro would simply suck it up.
Today though it’s just annoying, with his legs bumping into a surface everytime he shifts, with his eyes prickling from lack of sleep and Gin’s fucking video playing nonstop in his head and this stupid fucking plastic ass chicken —
Next to him, Zero asks, “Do you need help?”
Hiro pushes his tray onto him before he even finishes the question, immediately giving up. “Yeah, thanks.”
At first Zero doesn’t move, eyes trailing from Hiro’s face to his hands, offering fork and knife. He straightens and shifts to take them, his unpreparedness telling Hiro he must’ve misunderstood something. Nonetheless he tugs the plate without a word and starts cutting.
There’s a small pause, until, without looking up, he says, “I was talking about Sherry.”
It takes a minute for Hiro to place the codename. Right. His assignment. “You’re asking if I need your help tracking down a kid?”
It’s an innocuous question, bemused at best, but the side look Zero shoots him in response is loaded.
Hiro tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he starts, pushing Hiro’s tray back, meat perfectly cut into bite-sized pieces, “that you haven’t even started yet and you’ve already committed two mistakes. One—” He talks matter-of-factly, the same way he’d say I appreciate your help on this, Vermouth, with the same little touch of bourbon sweetness that permeates his every word and gesture ever since he found out. It’s getting harder and harder to not take it personally. “—grossly underestimating someone who managed to vanish from a sealed chamber full of carbon dioxide, and two—”
“Thinking I could possibly succeed in something without your help?”
Zero blinks.
Hiro makes no move to take the plastic cutlery he’s been holding up, so he puts them down next to his food. “I’m joking,” Hiro says reluctantly, aware he only half means it.
“That’s not what I was going to say,” he simply replies.
And maybe it’s the dejection as he looks away, the silence that ensues, the sleep deprivation, the fact that not even a week ago Zero’s biggest concern was overthinking the wording of his good morning text to—
Hiro deflates, hating himself a little.
He refuses to think maybe if I'd just come here a month ago we could've been there and this wouldn't be happening. Instead, he mentally backtracks, forces himself to consider the question.
Him, with a gig he can’t bring himself to care about to save his life. Zero, with nothing ahead but miles of free time. The video. The empty seat by the window neither of them acknowledges, no matter how cramped and uncomfortable it gets.
Hiro knows what his workaholic friend wants. What does he need, though?
“I’m not eating this,” he finally decides, pushing his tray back with disgust.
The corner of Zero’s lips curve in unsurprise. “I was wondering.”
“You know we’d be having edible food right now if you just—”
“Don’t,” he cuts loudly, lifting a warning finger without looking, “start.”
Hiro leans back with a sigh, looping an arm around Zero’s. “I think this is something I should do alone, yeah?” he says.
Zero squeezes back, easily forgiving.
Lightly, he says, “Guess that means I should find something to do while we’re in Japan, then.”
.
.
It’s not easy to get a lead on Sherry with his starting point being the entirety of Japan, but optimism, like crime, pays and it ends pretty much predictably, with Scotch, cigarette between two fingers, zooming on ruffled auburn hair, a bruised up face, and most importantly, the damning ring around Sherry’s finger.
The Gunma cabin fire video only gets uploaded online for exactly seven minutes before getting taken down, but it’s enough for it to be game over.
The Bell Tree Express departs in a week, which leaves Hiro with time on his hands and nothing to spend it on.
“Go to Nagano,” Zero suggests.
Hiro grimaces.
“You know you want to,” he adds, and it’s probably supposed to sound teasing, but it falls awkwardly flat. Zero never seems to know how to talk about Koumei: whenever the subject comes up, he gets that puzzled furrow between his brows even above a smile, like he’s trying to feel out the right answers. It’s alright—most of the time Hiro doesn’t know how to talk about Koumei either. And it’s comforting to see Zero at a loss about something, for once.
“Sure, I’d love to freeze and then get arrested,” he says flippantly.
“He wouldn’t.”
Hiro blinks, spinning in his chair to look over at where Zero’s paused over his laptop, looking taken aback at his own quick response. Still, he swallows and plows on.
“You said he didn’t agree, but he understood, and,” Zero doesn’t look at all sure of himself as he says this, “You’re important to him, aren’t you?”
Hm. Hiro casts his mind back to the last time he met with his brother, when all their conversations were quiet, stilted, edging around an unconfessed truth.
“I’m thinking of moving around a little. Getting out of the city, maybe going abroad.”
“Oh. What about work?”
“I’m a guitar tutor. It’s not really an issue where I do it.”
“‘The wheels of justice grind slow but grind fine.’ …That is, do be careful.”
“...”
“And when you feel like it, come visit.”
There’s an edge of paranoia that tells him that it’s not that simple. That Koumei may have said when you feel like it but really meant when you’re ready to turn yourself in , because he had to have known. Neither of them had said it in so many words, but he had to have known.
But then, there’s something else, something deeper. Koumei is… his brother, after all.
“Mmm,” Hiro agrees vaguely. “Maybe.”
“There’s no harm in going up there even if you change your mind,” says Zero more mildly now that he’s not in foggy ground. “...You could even bring back some kurikanoko, seeing as it’s the season.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is about?” Hiro raises an eyebrow, feeling a pull at his lips. "You do know it's canned, right? You could easily get some here."
And of course Zero pouts, because his first and truest love will always be food. "But it's the specialty over there."
“Next you’re gonna ask for shichimi because you wanna check if it tastes different when it’s from its hometown. Do you also want me to lug back a crate of apples?”
Zero smiles mischievously, staring back down at his laptop screen. “Don’t forget to grab fresh buns before you get on the train back.”
“Unbelievable,” Hiro scoffs, but he's already switched to looking for shinkansen tickets in a new tab. Why not?
.
.
So he goes, and death follows.
The first thing Hiro does when he finds a dead body in one of the public restroom stalls of the train station, after washing and drying his hands, is reach for his phone.
“Did you do it?” Zero asks.
Hiro scoffs. “Of course not.”
“Do we know him?”
“Uh,” he leans forward, bending at the knees to get a proper look at the man’s face, “No.”
“Then what are you calling me for? Call the police and let them handle it.”
“But,” says Hiro, then stops. He considers himself for a moment. He, surprisingly, doesn't have anything compromising on him. He'd emptied out his backpack for the day to fit even half the souvenirs Zero wanted him to get, and he's left without even the ittiest bittiest revolver he owns.
He's going to bitch anyway, just on principle, but then Zero takes the matter out of his hands by hanging up on him.
“Rude,” he mumbles, frowning at his screen. He feels… slighted, somehow. Rei’s picking fights and when he’s not he’s putting distance between them, and Hiro hasn’t been much of a delight either lately but he’s not telling Rei to go to another city and call the police for help. And Hiro gets it, he does, Zero needs space to grieve. They both do. In Rei's mind, Hiro had probably started this in the first place by denying his help, and this is his way of being a perfectionist.
It's not like they haven't had bad times before, either. But bad times before meant a personal fight between them that they had to get over, or an external crisis that had them clinging to each other even worse in the aftermath. Hiro is aware of and has accepted what codependency means. It hasn't ever been quite like this, where something hurt them both so fucking horribly and yet the only thing they can do now is avoid each other's eyes when mentioning it.
And it all comes back to that asshole, doesn't it? Because Hiro had said we should learn a bit about each other and Rye had said my drink of choice is bourbon and Zero had to take a solid minute of fortifying breaths while Hiro choked on his. Because Rye sniped a man clean through the skull before Hiro could even register the threat on his life behind him. Because he and Zero have had a dynamic called no one is important except you and some plausibly deniable family since they were preteens, but Rye came and set a chair down at their table and didn't move until Hiro learned his distaste for sweet potato fries.
Because Rye forced a space to knot himself into their mess of a relationship, and then went and fucking died still holding the threads.
"You're being a real inconvenience, you know that?" Hiro tells the body cooling on the ground. "Don't you people ever think before doing shit like this?"
The corpse, predictably, doesn't respond.
"Unbelievable," he mutters.
And alright, maybe it's unfair to blame this all on the dead, but who else is he going to blame? Himself? For not jumping at the bit to hunt a kid who managed to leak her whereabouts online?
Why the fuck didn’t he just come to Japan when he was told to?
Hiro taps out of his call log and dials 119 before he can do something he’ll regret, like kick a dead body. Nothing else to be done for it, really.
It's all pretty standard: he rattles off his location and what he's seeing and begs an ambulance even though he knows this dude is dead as hell, then hangs up and makes the same call to the police, before pausing at what the responder asks.
"Please stay on scene to assist the police with any questions they may have."
Which, uh, he didn't even consider that he could just straight up leave. He hasn't called the police in so long that it genuinely didn't register as a possibility, and now Zero's cavalier attitude makes so much more sense: even if he'd been wearing four holsters, what would it matter if he didn't stick around long enough for anyone to know? Sure, they've probably tracked his phone number and connected it to Shindou Ryo as all emergency services do, but what does he care? Ryo isn't real, and Hiro is a criminal.
Grief is not doing his reasoning center any favours, here. Wow.
…
"Are you God's way of forcing me to talk to my brother?" Hiro asks, nudging the cadaver with his foot.
His brother. His cop brother, who definitely knows he killed someone, even if he can't prove it.
It probably would be even more awkward over the phone, honestly. He might as well bite the bullet and see if life wants to laugh at him today and give him his long awaited brotherly reunion standing over a dead body.
Hiro sighs again, stepping away from the poor bastard on the ground to lean back against the sink. And he waits, like any concerned civilian would.
It's not very long before he hears sirens and despite himself, he swallows, fidgeting with the zipper of his hoodie in anticipation. It’s a pretty regular process from there, or at least Hiro assumes it is, having never stuck around long enough to make sure. He hears yelling as exits are blocked off, sirens cut off as the paramedics presumably rush in, and then heavy footsteps approaching the door.
He straightens just as it bursts open, and lo and behold, the first face he sees is also the first one he remembers in his entire life.
Koumei slows down upon reaching the scene, flanked by a familiar man and woman firing off orders to the uniforms. Huh, Hiro thinks with conflicted feelings. It looks like he wasn’t the only one to drag his childhood friends into his career with him.
Silently, Koumei looks at the dead body, the bloody tiles and then, finally, at him. He doesn’t react, not outwardly at least, but Koumei had remained calm when he came home at fourteen to find their parents dead on the living room floor, so Hiro hadn’t expected him to. He feels five again, caught drawing on one of Koumei’s books with a sharpie in the laundry room.
“Uehara Yui,” the woman steps past him to flash her badge even as one of the paramedics shakes their head over the corpse. “Were you the one who called the police?”
It takes an inhuman amount of effort to break eye contact with his brother. His gaze slides to her badge, pretending to examine it as he collects himself, before he looks up. “Yeah, that’s me,” he says. There’s a pause, before Hiro adds, with a sudden sense of shame that makes him lower his voice, “Shindou Ryo.”
Koumei still catches it, judging by the brief freeze in his motions before he continues ushering the paramedics out. Why did Hiro think this was a good idea again? At least if he’d called, he’d be able to ease that decision out instead of… whatever he’s doing now.
This would be easier if Rei was here.
“We’re going to need to ask you some questions,” Uehara states the obvious. “Can you walk us through how and why you got here and found this man?”
Hiro does, without lying even, because it amounts to I needed to make a personal call and also take care of personal business, and I guess someone else did too. She nods at him like this is valuable information.
“Inspector Yamato,” the man steps into the conversation, introducing himself gruffly without even the flash of a badge. “Ya touch anything?”
"May I look in your bag?" Uehara says at the same time.
“Watch the merchandise, that stuff's precious," he jokes, and she unzips it to be faced with canned chestnut products. “And no,” he replies to Yamato, tries to reach for another light joke or a sarcastic quip but comes up blank. “I didn’t touch anything.”
“May I see your ID?” Koumei asks.
Hiro blinks, his hand finding its way to his hoodie’s zipper. He almost, almost lies and says he doesn’t have it. It’s not unheard of, wouldn’t make him immediately suspect. But Koumei’s eyes are piercing, and Hiro, twenty-nine, working for an international crime ring, finds himself shrinking under them.
“Sure,” he agrees quietly, pulling out his wallet from his back pocket to retrieve his fake. The plastic burns his fingers as he offers it for inspection.
Hiro almost wants him to take it, wants him to examine it and see what even a scanner wouldn’t, that it’s fake, it’s fake, but Koumei just looks it over for a few seconds, and nods. “Thank you,” he says.
“You can wait outside,” Yamato dismisses him, turning away to approach the body.
Uehara shoots him an unimpressed look, before offering Hiro an apologetic smile. “Sorry, we’ll probably have more questions after the preliminary investigation, so if you could wait outside until we’re done?” She glances towards one of the uniforms, “we can have someone wait with you if—”
“I can do that,” interjects Koumei smoothly.
A pause washes over the room. Hiro raises his eyebrows, mildly surprised by the display of bluntness from his brother. The silence stretches, and Hiro turns to look at the two other inspectors, blinking when he’s immediately met with the twin scrutiny of their gazes.
A rare display, then. It didn’t used to be, but Hiro supposes that’s the difference between fifteen and thirty-six.
Huh… thirty-six.
“Koumei, you’re an inspector,” Yamato says, probably code for leave that shit to a grunt.
“‘Humility is the basis of all virtues,’” replies his brother, code for I will not.
“Oh, come on, that one’s a stretch,” he complains, very fairly.
“The mind, you will find, is not an undisturbed pool of water.”
Uehara frowns. “What does that mean?”
“That’s not even a quote,” Yamato grumbles. “Maybe you could argue for the Daoism aspect, but…”
“It’s foundation,” Uehara suddenly interrupts, looking startled. “For the first one. The foundation of all virtues. Confucius. Is it not?”
Yamato grins, nudging at Koumei’s shoulder. “You messed up Confucius? What, you skip breakfast or somethin’? Oh, look, he’s gonna ignore us.”
Hiro looks between the two of them. In other circumstances he would’ve found the teasing fun, but as it is he feels… He feels. He watches Koumei pointedly ignore them both, the way they don’t take offense to it, like they’re used to this exact exchange, and it’s not like Hiro’s not happy for his brother for having–
He sighs, tired and annoyed, ducks his head and steps past them and out before he’s even asked to.
“Excuse me,” he hears behind him, and then the door shuts, leaving them both in the emptied cordon of the train station. Hiro makes his way to a bench within the cord to sit down, slumping against the hard metal back like it’s actually comfortable.
Koumei pauses, standing above him for a moment before moving to sit down next to him, and Hiro feels maybe a little better.
“That was rude,” is the first thing Koumei says, gently admonishing.
“It’s a murder scene,” Hiro points out, sulking. “At least one guy was already ruder than me.”
“One guy?”
Ugh. “Poor wording. At least one unidentified individual was ruder than me.” He aims his brother with a look. “I really don’t know anything about this, y’know?”
“Then why did you stay?”
He scoffs, fingers itching for a cigarette. “I don’t know, civic duty?”
“Hiromitsu.”
Hiro starts, head swiveling, and for a second Koumei’s eyes are just as wide.
“My apologies,” Koumei amends, recomposed. “Shin—”
“Hiromitsu’s fine,” he cuts him off before he can finish. “You can call me that. It’s still my name. Legally and stuff.”
“I see,” is all Koumei says. For once Hiro wishes his brother wasn’t so goddamn stoic all the time. He wishes he knew his tells. Wonders if Yamato or Uehara do. “You shouldn’t have told me that.”
Hiro snorts. “What are you gonna do about it?” he asks, flippant like it doesn’t matter when really it’d been on his mind ever since he booked his ticket, since he was dialing and redialing a dug up number, since their last dinner eight years ago.
There’s a pause.
“Be glad, I suppose.”
Hiro purses his lips to the point it hurts.
And Koumei, because he’s the absolute worst, adds, “It’s good to see you, Hiromitsu.”
To reiterate: Hiro is twenty-nine, working for an international crime ring, and he is not going to cry because his brother is happy to see him.
“I didn’t know you were in Nagano.”
“I’m not. I mean, I don’t live here or anything.” Hiro, currently in a train station, is really beating out his record for inane statements today. “I came to see you,” he lamely fights back.
Hiro thinks he sees a single tear in Koumei’s right eye. It could also be wishful thinking and sunlight reflecting.
“Any particular reason?”
Hiro blinks. “What?”
“Why now?” Koumei asks. “Did something happen?”
The last month comes to mind. “Not really,” Hiro shrugs, a bit perturbed. Did he subconsciously come here to be comforted? Like a child? No… no, right? He came… because he had time to kill, that’s all. And maybe because when the subject of Nagano came up for the first time in eight years, he felt emotionally vulnerable enough to say fine, because apparently anyone could die nowadays.
But none of that makes for especially good conversation, so he asks, “So you’re still a cop, huh?”
“Of course.”
“Congrats on making inspector,” Hiro offers. “Long way from Elementary Detective Koumei-kun.”
“Simply a natural progression.”
Hiro nods. “Is it everything you wanted it to be?”
There’s a brief silence before Koumei acquiesces, with a small smile.
“Good,” Hiro fumbles. “That’s… really good.”
“What about you?” Koumei asks after a pause. Hiro looks up and meets clear blue eyes, ten years older yet just as infallible in their convictions. “Is it everything you wanted it to be?”
Hiro doesn’t have to ask for clarification. “I’ve never exactly wanted much. But yeah, more or less.”
“Which one is it currently?”
“Less. Definitely… a lot less.” He runs a hand through his hair and laughs. It comes out slightly shaky, though, so he stops as soon as he starts. “Sorry,” he sniffs, and can only be thankful that his eyes are dry.
“Hiromitsu,” Koumei says again, so softly it aches, and Hiro needs to cover his face with his hands because this is not happening today. Or ever.
“No,” he says. “Can we be quiet. Please.”
“As you wish.”
Hiro makes an aborted movement to reach inside his jacket, before he catches himself and lets his hand fall to his lap with a frustrated sigh. It’s such a stupid thing to care about, hadn’t even given it a thought on the way here, but suddenly, keeping Koumei from knowing he smokes is so, so important.
“Do you have somewhere to stay?”
Hiro breaks out into a derisive smile. “Yeah. Why? You inviting me into your home?”
“‘The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home,’” Koumei recites, and then pauses, like he’s considering. “Or perhaps the better quote would be, ‘stop thinking, and end your problems.’”
Hiro laughs, properly this time. “Who’s that from, you?”
“Laozi, actually. He was very partial to simplicity where it suited him.”
Hiro raises an eyebrow at him, before shaking his head. “I guess that’s all you need, sometimes.”
“Then?”
“I’m not… I’m not going to talk, um, about it. I don’t think I can. Is that enough?”
“That’s fine.” Koumei takes an audible breath, for once doesn’t bother with a line. “I’m not looking for a confession, or whatever you think I want from you. My home is simply open, because you are and always will be my little brother.”
Hiro buries his face in his hands. “Please stop,” he whines through his fingers, and feels a light hand coming to rest on top of his head.
“I need to go check on the investigation. Will you wait for me?”
“Sure, yeah.” He doesn’t look up, miserable and relieved. “I’ll wait.”
.
.
“Alright, thanks for waiting!”
The Ramen So Good, It's to Die For shop owner grins bright as he sets their bowls down on the counter, steam wafting up. Hiro gives Zero a side glance and doesn’t find any clues, just the snap of separating chopsticks and an easy thank you for the food. So Hiro follows suit.
He feels a lot more refreshed after his stay in Nagano, more grounded than he’s felt in a while. Coming home to Zero’s invitation to dinner had been a nice surprise. Their interactions had been strained prior to his impromptu trip, cold a minute and hot the next, fraught enough for them both to avoid it altogether. They kept missing each other in the apartment as they stuck to their respective research. It left Hiro suspicious as to what, exactly, is keeping Zero so busy that he's out the door by six in the morning, but he hasn’t asked.
Maybe the distance had done Zero just as much good.
“Wow,” Hiro blurts at the first taste, eyes widening.
He looks over in surprise, and Zero brightens back. “It’s good!”
The owner guffaws. “Wouldn’t boast a name just to lie about it!”
No kidding. Hiro slurps down another bite, savouring the way the pork practically melts in his mouth, before casting one more look round at the bustling business. “Dunno. Doesn’t really feel like someone died here, old man.”
“Sure did,” the man hmphs, hands on his hips. “Stool to the right of where your friend is, if memory serves.”
Both his and Zero’s heads swivel to stare at the innocuous stool in question when the owner waves their attention back. “Ah, well. Not here, exactly. We were a little outside of Beika when it happened.”
Makes sense. Good marketing or not, not much can save what a realtor would call cursed. “Hell of a recovery,” he commends. A glance to his right has Zero looking fully focused on the conversation, chopsticks at his mouth telling Hiro he’s not interested in contributing quite yet.
"Thanks to Sleeping Kogoro! Would’ve been damn near impossible to bounce back if tha’ case had gone cold."
The name is so ridiculous Hiro's ready to blindly accept it as the name of some loyal family dog, but then Rei's eyes light up. "This was his solve, then?"
"Oh, for sure," the owner laughs. "Him and his lil pipsqueak of an assistant. You a fan, son?"
Hiro has no clue what this dude is talking about. Zero obviously does though, as he ducks his head bashfully, the entirely fake movement at odds with the very real smile playing over his lips. "I'm something of an aspiring detective myself," he admits, gaze turned humbly down, and Hiro has to bite his lip to not cackle at him right then and there. "I can't say I'm not interested."
"Look to the best, that's what they always say!" the owner nods in agreement. "It's a high bar, though—barely two hours before he was pointing at the culprit. Ah— Well, not pointing himself, since he's gotta be sleeping, see—"
"Weird gimmick for a detective," Hiro murmurs quietly, eliciting a subdued snort under Zero's breath.
"—so his boy was doing most of the gesturing. Seemed pretty used to it by that point, so no one can complain, really."
Hiro frowns in confusion. That’s even weirder.
Sharp blue eyes and an innocently pleasant smile tells Hiro that this is exactly where Rei planned the conversation to go. Since it's Zero, it's not a coincidence that he brought him here, and it wasn’t evasion that sat them at the counter instead of a booth.
What, exactly, has Zero been keeping himself busy with?
"Edogawa Conan," Zero says, with a touch of triumph inaudible to anyone who isn’t Hiro. "Right?"
.
.
Coming out of the encounter with far more new knowledge about a local child than expected, Hiro waits until they’re well past a block away from the restaurant before he breaks. “Are you a social worker now?” he jokes, nudging Zero with his elbow.
He's expecting a puzzle, some sort of dance around the real meaning of this outing so they can fall back into their old routines, push back some of the pervasive ice that's snuck in the spaces between them. But then Zero stops in his tracks in a way that tells him he’s been well past the breaking point for a while now.
“I think Rye could still be alive.”
Three steps ahead, the words sink in, and Hiro turns around, the ramen warmth in his stomach growing cold again.
There’s no trace of Bourbon looking back at him. It’s all Rei, hands in his pockets and nose red from winter. “I think he could have–” He catches his own wording, a moment too late, nose scrunched as he amends, “I think he faked his death.”
Hiro swallows. It’s all Rei, and Rei is smart, realistic and reasonable, because he’s never had much reason to be wishful.
That’s not the case here.
“It would’ve taken a miracle,” he finally says. It’s not supposed to sound reproving—just a fact. They both watched the video.
Zero chews on his lip, opens his mouth, closes it again, and Hiro knows to brace himself.
“We could have done it for him. If we needed to.”
Hiro breathes out, considers his possible responses:
Bitter— maybe if he had asked us, sure.
Discouraging— what, and then give Kir a triple kill?
Discouraging but also complimentary— yeah, and how many people out there are like us?
They all kind of suck. He goes for a slow nod instead. Sure, okay.
“He was FBI,” continues Zero, tone not betraying what he thinks of that. “He must have had other avenues to get help from. I doubt they would’ve let him—let an agent go so easily.”
“You’re overestimating them,” Hiro says, because it’s true. Rye's cover would never even have been blown if it wasn't for his dumbass coworker. He tilts his head in concession, though, holds his reaction until he has all the info. "But go on."
Rei perks up, encouraged. “Okay," he says, voice tight with relief as he leads him to a nearby bench. "Okay, so I was rewatching the video–"
Hiro winces.
"–and his last words struck me as odd." He doesn’t need to repeat them for them to play cleanly in Hiro’s mind. To think you’d come this far. "Why would he say that, right?" Rei asks. "We all know what Kir is capable of. It's not a surprise she'd kill anyone, not under her circumstances, least of all a spy. So I started wondering, if it was a ruse, if Rye somehow faked his death, how would he do it? Who would he turn to?
“There is an obvious answer,” he goes on, pushing blond locks off his forehead, “and we can rule it out—when I showed up in front of his coworkers wearing his face, they looked like they saw a ghost.”
"You did what?"
"Yeah, his ex chased me to an alley," he says, waving dismissively, "not the point. What matters is that someone who isn't the FBI helped him."
"You disguised as Akai publicly?" Hiro asks, unable to let that go. "Did you give Gin a heads up at least?"
"No," Rei frowns a little. “Vermouth told him before Chianti shot, I think.”
Hiro feels nauseous. "Okay," he manages, crossing his arms. "So? Last words, flailing FBI, where’s the connection?"
"Well, there wasn't, at first," he admits. "But then at the bank robbery–there was a robbery at the bank," Rei supplies helpfully at Hiro’s confused and mildly alarmed expression, "when I was dressed as Akai? I was one of the hostages. That's when I met Edogawa Conan."
With great effort, Hiro ignores the casually slipped bit of insane information, and instead remembers the ramen shop owner's proud rambling. "The seven year old?"
"He seemed like he had an interesting secret," Rei simply says. "I met him again while I was doing P.I work for this guy — his fiancée killed herself when she found out they were twins — and it pretty much solidified my suspicions, so I got a job. I'm a waiter now."
“Your suspicions that…?” Hiro presses, feeling a bit like a stuck record.
Rei blinks. “That Conan-kun is the mastermind behind Sleeping Kogoro, and the one that Rye turned to for help.”
Hiro stares.
“None of what you said means that Rye is alive,” he finally says, carefully. He desperately wants to put his head in his hands, but expressing his concern in this instance wouldn’t do anything. Falling back onto cold facts would be far more efficient. And less patronizing. He adds, “And just so we’re clear, what you’re saying is that Rye asked the seven year-old for help, yes? Rye.”
“Rye likes kids," Rei protests.
Hiro doesn’t even know what to say to that, but it turns out that he doesn’t need to say anything, because then Zero turns and presses his hands into the space between them. In every tight line of his face Hiro reads, I know. I know but—
"Please tell me something's there."
Under the bright light of the nearby lamppost, his eyes look dangerously shiny.
Hiro swallows and shuts his eyes. For just a second, he imagines not wanting Kir dead, imagines what he might be thinking if he actually wanted to be sure the job was done, if he didn't want to not be thinking at all.
He takes out his lighter and his newly bought pack, shakes a cigarette out of it. “Tell me more about the kid.”
“He sets up bugs in the cafe I work at,” says Zero immediately. “And he alternates between looking terrified I exist and watching me like a hawk.”
“Okay, maybe he’s just a smart kid who also doesn’t like you. What else?”
Zero shoots him an unamused look. “Everyone likes me. And you didn’t see his anxiety. I could only believe that if I resembled a traumatic figure or something, but then why would he go out of his way to watch me? I think he’d try avoiding me first.” He pauses. “He is seven.”
“Exactly, he’s seven. How would he have gotten involved?”
“I don’t know yet, that’s what I’m saying. We need to investigate.”
Hiro exhales a puff of smoke, listening.
“Look,” Zero goes on, shifting closer, “the deductions are always delivered in Mouri— Sleeping Kogoro’s voice, but in speech patterns he’d never use. There’s probably voice-altering tech involved, which means the kid has access to that. And possibly anything else you could use to disguise someone.”
“Okay.”
“Voice-altering, so it’d ideally be placed around the mouth. But if it needed to be more… covert, then the throat.”
“So?”
“So, this kid talks about his Shinichi-nii all the time, even talks about going over there, but the only person currently living in that house has a permanent turtleneck on.”
Hiro blinks, confused.
“Okiya Subaru,” Zero finishes with a self-satisfied nod, and looks at him triumphantly.
Hiro stares, a gap between the moment he opens his mouth and his response coming out. “Who…?”
“Akai! Okiya’s a bit taller than him, granted, but it’s small enough of a difference for it to be in-soles. And the general frame and body types are the same, even if he tries to cover it up with all the layers.”
“That doesn’t make any—”
“Plus he has that giant union jack on his bag, which is exactly his idea of a good joke.”
Hiro pauses. “That’s true, he would.”
“Right?”
“Okay, so to sum up: you’re saying this Conan kid has the resources to completely disguise someone, resources Akai was somehow able to get him to offer before Raiha Pass, which was actually an elaborate theater performance he survived to become… someone who managed to score a very nice sublet.”
Rei nods along.
“You do realize this hinges on Kir allowing it?”
“We’ve had the suspicion before, remember? Her father was, and NOCs will go to any lengths to protect their cover. Who’s to say that wasn’t another performance?”
Hiro inclines his head. Point.
“I know there’s holes, but… I think he could really be alive, Hiro.”
Hiro rests his elbow on the back of the bench. Hm... “I guess the question is,” he says, shooting him a side look, “What’s it to us?”
Zero tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, what’s the aim, here, exactly? Because if he really managed to pull that off, then either he doesn’t want us to know, or he didn’t bother telling us. So say he’s alive,” A spike of anger pricks at the thought, “we’re clearly dead to him.”
Zero is quiet for a moment. “I’d rather be angry at him knowing he’s alive,” he says, decisive. “What about you?”
Hiro… looks away, taking a long drag of his cigarette. To grieve in peace or to tear out the scab and hope it doesn’t scar? Whether Rye is dead or alive, does it make a difference if Hiro loses his friend either way?
He wonders what Koumei would say.
Hiro looks up, trying to think of one of the dozens of quotes his brother had dropped over the three days of his stay. What did Koumei say?
“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”
(“You’re right,” Hiro’d said, handing the waiter the menu. “Panaang curry it is.”)
Hiro sighs, defeated. “Yeah, fuck, me too.”
Zero cracks into a smile, genuine. “Let’s investigate, then.”
Hiro groans, putting his cigarette out under his shoe. There's a part of him that's frustrated, that Rei has turned even grief into a spiraling chore. But on the other hand, it’s just like Zero to find the miniscule possibility hidden in the mess and turn it into something so big and hopeful.