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It was silent on the rooftop.
The shouts of the taskforce had died down a while ago, probably because they had taken pursuit of an unmanned hang glider.
Kid was standing there, leaning against the railing and holding the stolen diamond into the moonlight.
His attire seemed to shimmer in a blueish hue, as if it reflected the color of the night sky, the cape was flowing in the wind, making a low fluttering sound. It was the only thing Shinichi could hear besides the relentless rush of the cars driving through the streets below and a lonely police siren somewhere in the distance.
It was a night like many he’d experienced before.
But something was different this time. Shinichi couldn’t quite point his finger on it.
All of a sudden Kid gave a low chuckle, turned his head and looked towards him. His hat cast a sharp-edged shadow over his face, obscuring his eyes. His smirk, however, was quite well visible, teeth glinting white in the moonlight.
It was then, that Shinichi realized what was different.
Something was wrong.
Kid’s smile had never been heartfelt, Shinichi knew that much, but there has always been a tad of honesty within it. Kid really seemed to enjoy his heists, the chases Shinichi gave him and the challenge they presented him with.
But today his smirk felt empty, almost like an emotionless mask.
Shinichi had the impression that there was a different expression hidden beneath it. A bitter one.
Kid obviously tried his best to hide it in front of Shinichi but it showed.
“What’s wrong?” Shinichi asked. “Has something happened?”
Kid froze for a brief moment, then he chuckled again. It sounded as empty as his smile.
“Can’t hide anything from you, can I?” He said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Tantei-kun” he began, “this is my last heist.”
What?!
Shinichi didn’t know what to say.
He hadn’t expected this.
He realized he had taken Kid for granted.
Almost like the phases of the moon the thief appeared out of nowhere, entertained the people and annoyed the task force, only to fly off into the darkness of the night and reappear about a month later. For Shinichi this pattern had been like an endless cycle. He didn’t think it would have an end to it, not so soon at least.
“I’ve found what I was searching for, so you can have this back.” Kid said, interrupting Shinichi’s train of thoughts. He was holding out the diamond he had just stolen in Shinichi’s direction.
“This one was just a pretense to see you one last time. Make sure to give it to Nakamori-keibu, it’s a fake anyway, so I’m sure the owner would like to press charges against whoever sold it to him…”
Shinichi had a while until the full impact of those words hit him.
“Pretense to do what?!” Why would he do that? He asked himself.
“I’m a criminal, detective.” Kid said in a matter-of-fact tone. “If I were to confront you as my civilian self you would have to arrest me. That’s why I planned this last heist to say my proper goodbyes to you.”
“Why?” Was all Shinichi could manage before Kid approached him in three fast steps and pulled him into a tight hug.
“I like you Shinichi.” He whispered into the detective’s ear, his voice suddenly sounding shaky. Shinichi froze when he heard his first name come out of the thief’s mouth. “But I also know you’ve got a girlfriend… Tantei-kun, we’re not meant to be.”
With this he pulled away and in an instant leaped over the railing.
“Wait!” Shinichi shouted after him, “I don’t…”
But the thief was already too far away to hear him.
I don’t have a girlfriend.
Shinichi was left alone on the rooftop.
The night air suddenly felt cold as he watched the white triangle of Kid’s hang glider disappear in the distance.
Six months later Shinichi came out of the lecture hall at university and headed for the cafeteria.
His mind was a mess of thoughts pivoting around kaitou Kid like some kind of cyclone.
Why the hell did the lecturer have to take Kid as an example for different theft cases and remind him of that night? Shinichi couldn’t think straight anymore.
What the hell was that about back then?
Was he hitting on me?!
He had never thought of Kid in this way before but as the first three month without a heist had passed he noticed how much he had enjoyed chasing the thief around. He missed his cheeky remarks, the – he had to admit – actually quite funny pranks he pulled on the task force and most of all… this terribly annoying smirk of his.
Sometimes he caught himself looking out the window at night, imagining the white figure standing on a rooftop in the distance, almost fooling himself in the process.
If I were to meet him, would I arrest him? Shinichi asked himself, thinking back to what the thief had said when he hugged him back then on the rooftop.
“Of course I wouldn’t arrest him” he murmured, not realizing how biased his judgement was. “When has he ever committed a serious crime? He always returned what he stole and most of the time pointed out a much more severe crime nobody had even noticed before.”
“What? Kid?” Somebody asked behind him. Ran nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Dude you’re always ever thinking of him, aren’t you?”
Shinichi flushed hard up to his ears. “Shit, did I just say that out loud?”
“Yes you did.” She chuckled. “You’re a hopeless case Shinichi. When will you forget about him and give others a chance? Didn’t he tell you it wouldn’t work out between you two?”
“Jeez Ran, it’s not what you think! Besides his reason for saying this was that he believed you were my girlfriend.”
“What?! And you didn’t tell him you were gay?”
Suddenly there was a loud clatter behind them. Somebody had dropped his books, which were now scattered all over the floor.
Shinichi hadn’t seen the boy around university before but there were many people on campus, so this wasn’t anything special. Still, the guy looked somehow familiar.
The two of them helped him collect his books, he thanked them and they went their separate ways, Shinichi having already forgotten about the weird first impression the guy had given him.
Somewhere along the way to the cafeteria they ran into Sera who proceeded by dragging Ran away from Shinichi, apparently to show her something really special but Shinichi knew she wanted to get some alone time with her girlfriend, so he let them go.
When his thoughts started to spiral around Kid again, he sighed. Well, he thought, she was right, I guess… He did in fact think a lot about the thief and it wasn’t because he was irritated by him. Not anymore at least.
Thinking back to that night, being hugged by him felt nice and warm. He hadn’t been offended in the slightest, rather it had felt like something was missing from the moment they broke apart. A feeling, he realized, which had not gone away completely since then.
I miss him… He thought.
The next week he saw the book dropping guy again in one of the university’s open workspaces.
By now he had learned that he was called Kuroba Kaito and that he was majoring in dance and visual arts. He was a rather shy boy, often alone and was known to be rather hard to approach.
Some people even described him as some sort of sheepdog who was hiding himself behind his own bangs.
When he saw Shinichi the boy glanced up through a curtain of dark brown hair and nodded briefly before directing his focus back on the sketchbook lying in front of him.
Shinichi sat down on the opposite end of the table, opened his laptop and began writing on his analysis of the “sunflowers” art theft case.
As if he would need to analyze this case with the help of newspaper articles, police reports and witness interviews… Shinichi cursed at the need for citations and references.
He was there the whole time after all, right in the center of action...
They both were.
Shinichi grabbed his phone and studied the little Kid phone strap Ran had given him when he lost the soccer strap. It had been a joke back then but he had come to like it quite a bit. He sighed.
“You miss him, don’t you?” somebody said, pulling Shinichi back to reality.
When he looked up, instead of the introvert who had been sitting there until a moment ago, he saw a sociable attractive young man raising an eyebrow at him.
Shinichi couldn’t believe what he saw. Was this really the same person?
“What do you mean?” He asked dumbfounded.
The other chuckled in a weirdly familiar way, looked down for a brief moment and when he turned to Shinichi again, he was holding his right hand over his eye to mimic a monocle.
“Him.” he simply said. Shinichi shuddered.
The person in front of him was neither a shy boy nor the man he had just seen.
This was kaitou Kid.
Suddenly there was a pattern in the mess of Shinichi’s thoughts. He understood now why the boy had looked so familiar when they first met, how he was able to look like a completely different person in the blink of an eye and why he had let those books fall at that exact moment.
“You heard.” He said. “… what I was talking about with Ran.”
Kid smiled.
It was a smile like no expression Shinichi had ever seen on his face before.
Honest and heartfelt.
“Yeah.” He said. “I did.”
When Shinichi came home that evening he found a card in his laptop case.
It was a blank playing card, signed by none other than kaitou KID.
The message written on the card is a secret for Shinichi to keep.
But he knew that his future will certainly look way different than he ever dared to imagine.