Work Text:
Kaito Kuroba was busy doing maintenance on his tools when his attention was caught by a news flash that came up during a commercial break. The details were sketchy, not enough to get the whole idea, but enough to paint a picture for the general masses.
A nation-wide syndicate was brought to light in a police-sanctioned raid operation that spanned from Tokyo to Osaka (and some smaller prefectures). The people were cautioned to stay indoors while the authorities were still looking for stragglers from said organization. Of course, there were no concrete particulars even after a few days of the news, just the same information and a couple of big names arrested. No mentions of anyone involved in the operation.
Kaito was curious and wondered if the syndicate on the news was connected to the one he was hunting. If not, maybe it was connected to those guys who blew up the Mystery Train last time (when his little rival detective needed his help). Either way, he needed to know.
So, in typical KID behavior, he took matters into his own hands and looked into it. He grabbed his ‘work’ laptop, and tried to hack into the police database.
There were many walls around the operation details, as expected, and while Jii had taught him how to hack discreetly before he passed, Kaito was still an amateur compared to the old man. He only managed to gather irrelevant information Kaito didn’t care about. He had, however, glimpsed a throwaway remark which pointed to a civilian consultant being part of the takedown. Kaito has no doubt it was about a certain small detective.
The next thing he did was plan a heist the subsequent week in Tokyo to corner the little detective and grill him for data that could be useful for his own search.
Unfortunately for him, the detective did not show up.
Worried at his absence due to all their past dangerous encounters, Kaito decided to forgo his usual methods. He tried to reach out to Conan Edogawa directly, only to find that the boy had already ‘left’ for America a week or so ago. And he also heard that Shinichi Kudo was dead.
His first reaction was quiet disbelief and also anger. He couldn’t accept it. There was no way, after everything that happened, that the Great Detective had died. He passed away…? Just like that? He was unable to finally regain the life that he always fought for?
So, not wanting to recognize the facts, Kaito kept digging around and stalking the detective’s old friends and girlfriend. And nothing helped him—people did believe that Shinichi was dead. They even had a funeral (without a body, he noted) for Shinichi weeks ago, and everyone was already in the process of moving on.
Well, except for Kaito who was apparently not important enough to be told the detective had died . Though, he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be .
Unfortunately, as much as Kaito wanted to continue searching for the supposedly dead detective, he also had his own life issues to deal with. The world didn’t stop turning after the death of a single person. Kaito still had to catch the syndicate after Pandora and Kaitou KID.
He promised to himself to keep an eye out for the detective just in case.
Two years after the Black Organization fell, Kaito managed to gather enough evidence to take his case to Saguru Hakuba for him to present it to the police. While Kaito did not fully trust the detective during their high school years, he had managed to form a begrudging friendship with the blond. Kaito trusted the detective enough to not worry that Hakuba would throw him in jail. After his classmate grilled him about every detail in his pile of evidence, Hakuba had accepted the task of informing the authorities so that they could take down the syndicate.
Aoko was told everything after the syndicate was taken down, and they had a fight that ended up with both of them emotionally hurt. Aoko was, at first, explosively angry and refused to speak to Kaito for weeks. It took Hakuba mediating between the two of them to get a conversation going. They eventually reconciled, but there was no further relationship aside from friendship that could happen between the both of them.
Kaito resolved (and promised Aoko) to stop being Kaitou KID after every member of the syndicate was brought to justice. There were still some stragglers that they had to catch before he fully put KID to rest.
Having more free time on his hands now let him pursue an engineering degree at Tokyo University, as well as accept a part-time apprenticeship with the Hopper Troupe. Joining the troupe built his reputation as a magician to great heights as he utilized techniques from his past heists along with newer tricks. As Kaito knew that KID was also a part of him, he kept the charm from his monocle as a pendant for the necklace he wears.
He still kept looking for the missing detective, but only as a pastime rather than actively searching.
By the time he finished university and got his master’s degree, he already lost all hope of finding Shinichi. There were simply no traces of the detective, or Shinichi was just really good at hiding his tracks—Kaito didn’t really know. He had slowly accepted that maybe Shinichi really did die during the syndicate takedown.
He just wished he could have been there for his funeral. To see him one last time as a rival. But no one really knew how to contact him as KID anyway, so he shouldn’t begrudge Shinichi’s friends for not informing him. There was also the fact that he was a criminal…
And as he accepted it, of course, life threw Kaito a proverbial kick while he was on a trip in Nagano.
//POV change
It was just another Tuesday.
His new routine in life was to go to his part-time job in a small cafe, sit around in the park for a few hours, and then go to university classes in the evening. Occasionally, there would be calls made to his phone that needed his expertise as a detective, but that didn’t take much time. He didn’t go to the crime scenes anymore unless the police had a particularly difficult case.
Overall, it was monotonous.
However, he didn’t mind the boring nature of said routine. It was better than the alternative that he had already tried beforehand.
There was that time when he decided to tell Ran and her father about Conan actually being Shinichi. Unfortunately, with the long-term constant lies from him and his allies, Shinichi’s former love decided to cut off their relationship, and all of their conversations tended to become strained. There wasn’t enough trust between them to do anything anymore, not to mention that there was no antidote to the APTX 4869.
He had known there was a very slim chance of him getting back his life after the second year of his life as Conan had passed. Still, he tried to get his old identity back after he took down the Black Organization. Barring an antidote, he believed he could regain his old name and identity.
It was a futile effort.
No one could look at him in the same way as either Shinichi or Conan, save but a few he could count on one hand. In the end, he turned tail and ran away from both identities. Shinichi Kudo was killed and Conan Edogawa was shipped away back to America to live with his supposed parents. A new person emerged from the identities who died for his own hubris.
He, upon finalizing his resolve to change his identity at last, accepted the offer from the FBI and PSB for him to enter the Witness Protection Program. When he was accepted, he initially thought he would be sent out of the country due to how high profile he was. Thankfully, some of his friends told him in no uncertain terms that they would still like to have contact with him physically, and so he ended up in another prefecture of Japan—away from Tokyo and Osaka which were the hotspots of the war against the org.
There were very few people who still had some contact with him from his old life unlike other people in the program. He couldn't help but feel it was a waste of resources for someone like him, but he supposed the work he did to take down the Black Organization saved a lot of people. He wanted to believe it did.
After a lot of going back and forth with the prefecture policemen who knew him and tried to grab him for their own, he put his foot down and decided to stay within Nagano. At least that prefecture had a trio of officers who were competent in their job and wouldn’t need his detective services that much, if at all.
Regardless, the few years he spent with this ne w identity gave him a m easure of peace, but also gave him too much time alone. And being solitary made him think a lot—the kind of contemplating that was dangerous. What was worse was that no one really caught his new thoughts as he was not really close to anyone but Heiji and Haibara nowadays, and neither of them could visit him often due to how far his new residence was. He lived alone in an apartment close to his university and job, and his neighbors generally didn't care about the new person who lived there.
His pondering always kept wandering towards his own self-worth and identity.
It always seemed to him that he was not a real person anymore. He was a pitcher into which knowledge fell, yet truth bent around his edges despite his first name's meaning of 'one truth'. Every person who knew him had their own version of Shinichi—the parts of him that they could see.
What, then, was he actually?
Was he still a real person? Was he doomed to be someone that was just a sum of the parts that everyone else saw him as?
When did this start, he wondered, as he stared at the crowd of people that visited the park.
Was it when he became Conan Edogawa unwillingly? No, he didn’t think it started that late.
He felt that this had started way back when he was a child the first time—when he just wanted his parents to look at him and be proud. His parents didn’t give him what he wanted, and instead they left him alone, behind in a mansion too big for himself since he was fourteen. It was then, that he knew, he would have to try and find something to fill the gaping hole in his being.
He found that getting attention from the media and grudging respect from the police filled the void somewhat, but it wasn’t enough. He tried to use Ran to close up the hole, but that plan was thrown away rather quickly when he became Conan Edogawa. (He tried to keep it anyway, even though that didn’t work out in the end.)
When he became a child again, Conan did not know what to actually do. Shinichi Kudo never really knew what or who he was aside from being a detective, so he also became a detective on his second identity.
When Ran chose to cut all ties to him, both Shinichi and Conan felt empty—emptier than what was previously there. The hole was now a gaping maw that threatened to swallow him whole and not allow him to escape.
Perhaps that’s why he just felt dead inside when Haibara told him the news regarding the antidote. And, it must be why he just accepted the new identity without really thinking too much about the lives he left behind.
He’d been "Yuhi Hinomoto" (陽ノ下・由比) for the past five years. A name which meant "comparison of reasons beneath the sunlight". He was an eighteen year old with dark black hair and mottled hazel eyes. He was a working student pursuing a bachelor course in Psychology at Shinshu University. Thankfully, his intellect made his admission to the university easy enough despite not really looking eighteen yet (as, physically, he was something more like fifteen).
It was an identity that took time getting used to, but he liked the name’s meaning enough that he chose it from the ones the agencies provided him. He didn’t forget about the lessons he’d learned from being Shinichi and Conan. Unfortunately, with the amount of secrets he held and the real age gap between him and his ‘peers’, he didn’t—couldn’t—find many friends. At best he counted his classmates as acquaintances. He trusted no one but those already in the know with his history.
Yuhi sighed and got up from the bench, knowing he had stayed in one place for too long. He gave the park one last cursory glance before heading for his apartment. Before he could take more than a few steps, his arm was grabbed roughly and he was yanked backwards. Instincts honed from all the danger of his past two lives made Yuhi immediately react by opening his sedative watch and aiming at the offender. He froze before he could press the trigger.
“Tantei-kun…? It’s you, isn’t it?”
Yuhi's eyes widened at the familiar voice and endearment—one he hadn’t heard since the last heist he attended as Conan almost six years ago. He schooled his expression even though he knew it was already too late. He found himself observing the differences between the Kaitou KID of his memories and the civilian in front of him.
He never tried to go to a KID heist in his new identity—it was too much publicity for someone who had to become a new person altogether. It was also a bitter reminder of what he had lost by becoming someone new. Yuhi noted that it had been a while since he had seen KID in the news though—three years to be exact. Maybe he’d retired?
Yuhi struggled to remove the hand on him, but KID held true. “Please let go,” he said roughly, thanking the voice changer mask that he usually wore nowadays for making his voice sound deeper. “You got the wrong person.”
“No. I know it’s you even if you look a little different,” KID tightened his grip instead and Yuhi grimaced. “I’ve been trying to find you for the past five years!”
“What…?” Yuhi blinked in surprise at the words and then frowned at him. He couldn’t believe someone would still be looking for him for that long. KID really was different from most people. “I can have you arrested for assault, you know?” he griped with clear annoyance in his tone.
“Stop joking around, Tantei-kun.” KID looked at him, frustrated. The moonlight magician looked around and tugged him closer. “Do you have anywhere we can talk in private?”
Yuhi thought about the pros and cons of going with the thief. On one hand, KID probably knew he was Conan already due to his instinct to use the watch when in danger. He would probably be stalked by the magician if he didn’t agree now. On the other hand, maybe it was Yuhi’s fault that the magician-thief didn’t have any news about what had happened to the detective. But could he let someone who knew his old identities attempt to reconnect with him?
He sighed and relaxed his stance. He supposed he owed some sort of explanation to the thief, at the very least.
“Come on, I know a good cafe near here,” Yuhi took his hand out of KID’s grip and started walking. He didn’t look behind him to see if the thief was following or not—he knew the other would.
“You’ve gotten cheekier than the last time we saw each other,” KID said as he sauntered beside him on the sidewalk. The thief was glancing at Yuhi occasionally.
“You still don’t observe personal space despite all these years,” he grumbled back. Yuhi led the two of them to the cafe he worked at, and he nodded to the barista. “What drink do you want?”
“Are you paying?” KID grinned and pointed to a drink on the menu. “I’ll have this.”
“Fine,” Yuhi glanced at the choice, then walked to the counter to order a cheesecake slice and their drinks. “I'll have my usual americano and a pure double chocolate berry blend for this guy.” He ignored the complaints from the thief who wanted a chocolate cake slice too. “Come on. Follow me.”
Yuhi checked his usual corner spot and saw it was mercifully free. He sat down and narrowed his eyes at the magician who had just randomly popped up in his life again. “Alright, what do you want?”
KID sat down on the chair with an air of nonchalance, but the detective in him could clearly see that the thief was nervous. Yuhi kept his observation to himself, but he already had an idea of what this was about.
“What happened, Tantei-kun?” KID looked at him intently, probably trying to map out the differences of his new identity to Shinichi and Conan. “You just disappeared all of a sudden after the crows got taken down.”
“First off, my name is Yuhi Hinomoto,” Yuhi crossed his arms and gave the other his patented deadpan stare. “It's a pleasure to meet you. May I know yours?”
KID was silent for five seconds before he tipped his head slightly in the detective’s direction. “My name is Kaito Kuroba, magician extraordinaire. Nice to meet you.”
Yuhi knew that the name wasn’t fake—he’d known long ago who Kaitou KID was back when he was still Conan. He just never meant to catch the thief as there had been other, more dangerous criminals that he would have rather arrested back then. The magician-thief was only a brief distraction from his goal of bringing down the crows. He didn’t think that their rivalry-friendship thing had led to this much trust though.
At the very least, he thought he owed the thief an explanation.
“There was no antidote,” he said softly, and stood up as his name was called by the barista. The magician didn’t follow him, and he didn’t expect him to. Yuhi thanked his fellow employee and brought their orders to the corner table.
When Yuhi went back to their table, Kuroba had an expression he’d grown to hate over the years. Yuhi frowned. He hated pity. He didn’t need pity.
“How do you want me to call you?” Kuroba quietly asked when he got handed the drink.
Yuhi blinked, and adjusted his earlier assessment. Maybe the thief wasn’t pitying him? The thief was staring at him with eyes that understood the pain of secret identities. Of course he would… he had been Kaitou KID for almost a decade. Yuhi wondered if his personal friends knew about his night job or not, but he wasn’t going to ask.
“You can call me either Hinomoto or Yuhi,” he replied evenly as he took a sip of his coffee. “Either works fine with me, Kuroba-san.”
“Call me Kaito then,” Kuro—Kaito decided for him and also sipped on his drink. “I’ll call you Yuhi. Can we exchange numbers, or are you not allowed contact with your previous lives?”
“You were technically not part of my first one,” Yuhi shrugged and handed him a sticky note with his number. “Don’t give that to anyone else. I am technically in witness protection so you’ll have to remember not to treat me like you did with Conan or Shinichi.”
“I suppose we’ll be starting over as friends, this time around,” Kaito took the paper and magicked it away in a puff of smoke. “Though, you’re not being subtle enough,” he said and pointed to Yuhi’s earlobe that had a mini clover earring. “Really, it looks like you ended up picking up a thing or two from me.”
Yuhi glared at him to shut up and subconsciously rubbed at the earrings. He liked them, and no one will make him stop wearing them. Kaito laughed at his reaction and told him that he looked good with the new jewelry. Yuhi huffed and stopped fiddling with the earrings when he realized that the thief did have a point. He did pick the clover design because it reminded him of the days he chased the magician around during heists.
“You know I can’t be your rival anymore,” Yuhi shook his head ruefully. “As unfortunate as that sounds.”
“Indeed, though I’ve also retired from that life,” Kaito pouted, also sad about the lack of challenge that usually came from the detective. “Well, I could always throw you fake heist notes through text and you can go crack them and tell me if you figured it out?”
Yuhi smiled at the offer. “That would be nice,” he said with a nostalgic look. “I only ever saw your notes when they were announced in newspapers, and by then, Hakuba would’ve already cracked the code.”
“Tantei-san wasn’t much of a challenge, but I can’t really complain about that,” Kaito shrugged. “So, how did you end up all the way here in Nagano?”
Yuhi laughed at the question, remembering the silent war between police departments over what prefecture he’d go to. “I chose this place because it has a competent detective force that doesn’t need me to consult for every damn case.”
“Oh?” Kaito raised an eyebrow. “I thought you liked detective work?”
“I do,” he smiled, a little bittersweet. “But…apparently seeing too much death is not good for you. I’ve been told repeatedly that I’m too young to have this many cases linked to my name. I think I’m beginning to see what they meant about that—at least, after these past few years of my new life.”
“Yuhi…”
“Ah, sorry to get all moody on you,” Yuhi shook his head and smiled at the magician. “I’m fine with this new life. I’m sure you’re going to be digging into what I’ve been into for the half-decade so I won’t bore you with the details. Just know I’m in university right now.”
Kaito nodded, not minding the change in subject, likely figuring out it wasn’t something he could help with. “Wait, aren’t you like, fifteen years old? How are you in university already?”
Yuhi smirked. “We changed my age so I’m at least eighteen.”
The magician laughed at the answer, not expecting such a thing from the straight-laced detective that Shinichi was. “Okay, that’s a good one. At least you’re not as terribly short as you were last time. I probably can’t pick you up easily at your current height.”
“I dare you to try,” Yuhi growled, not really wanting to get carried around again. He’d had enough of people randomly scooping him up, thank you very much. “I can kick you harder now. I’m on the uni’s soccer team as a forward striker.”
Kaito whistled in mock amazement, “Aren’t you a bit too strong to join a club like that?”
“It’s fine. I’m not using those shoes,” Yuhi shrugged with a grin.
“I see you’re still a menace,” Kaito clucked his tongue before he finished his choco berry blend. The magician looked at him with serious eyes, and Yuhi couldn’t help but feel fond at the genuine concern in the gaze. “I know you said you’re fine with your new life, but I want to ask you anyway. Are you happy?”
Yuhi was startled by the question, not expecting it from his former rival. He couldn’t help but smile at Kaito. “I am striving to be. I’m not completely there yet, but in time, I believe I will be.”
“I see,” Kaito nodded and stood up and offered his hand to the detective. “Unfortunately, I have to go as I have other plans for the day. This has been a rather interesting talk, Yuhi. I’ll see you around whenever I stop by in Nagano.”
Yuhi stood to take the hand and shook it. He knew that Kaito would pester him a lot after this, possibly forcefully inserting himself in the detective’s new life. Even then… Yuhi couldn’t help but look forward to his future. “I’ll text you back. Give me a challenge with your note, okay?”
“Sure thing, Yuhi. I’ll keep in touch.”
With that, the magician left the cafe and the detective stayed, pondering over what the meeting meant to both of them.
Later that evening, Yuhi smiled as he received a text message that contained a riddle.