Archive of Our Own

K

Rainyfox3

Shinichi is lying in bed fighting the aftereffects of the antidote since he took it last week. He feels bad enough to obediently stay in bed like Haibara told him to but also good enough to do something if only it takes away his boredom.

The first few days he enjoyed doing nothing but it got boring fast. So he started passing his time solving the cases the station had put aside but the pile of case files decreased faster than his health increased and he ran out of them in no time. With nothing left to do he began reading all the books on his to-read list. But now, half a week later, he has already read through everything and not even this list seems interesting anymore.

Once a day Haibara comes to check on him and sometimes the detective boys tag along.
For them he’s still their old friend. It’s been like this since the day they found out and they still treat him just like they always did, except for Ayumi who seems a bit more distanced now.
Shinichi is glad but it’s also weird. Still, he’d rather be treated like a kid than loose his friends from the time he thought he hated so much but came to love nevertheless. After all it was a part of his life. He has learned by now how he can accept it and make the best of it.
Ran who’s now like a sister to him comes by a few times a week to bring him food and exchange a few words. She is the one who was affected the most by what happened to him. Yet every time he sees her she seems to be doing slightly better and it's enough to make him happy.
That’s about it for visits though. The rest of the time he’ lying in bed alone, feverish, with a terrible headache and bored as hell. Just like Ran, he too is getting better day by day but it’s still much too slow for his liking.

Right now, he’s on his phone, randomly surfing around on the internet, while he listens to the newest album of the rising star named K who has been an internet sensation as of late.
The singer has a beautiful voice and his songs give Shinichi the shudders every time he listens to them. However no one really knows who he is. He’s never given a concert live and all you can find on him are his songs on Newtube. He never shows his face when he sings, all you can see in his "videos" is the album cover.

Shinichi is solving Sudoku on a riddle website when he sees an ad for a texting app.
ConText, The number one app against your loneliness, it says. Shinichi goes to their website.
It looks legit so he downloads the app… because… why not? He's too bored to care.
When he launches the app he’s asked what he wants:

☐ Someone to talk to for a while

☐ A partner to swear at

☐ Someone who listens to you while you get something off your chest

☐ Talk to [ account name ]

Shinichi taps on the first option.
He then has to create his account and choose some of his favorite topics and hobbies from a list. When he’s done he gets matched up with someone named Klover.

“Hi there 4869 ^^” Klover writes right aftwer they’re matched up.
“Ah! I see, a Sherlock fan!”

Shinichi is surprised they saw through his username.
“Heh, and you’re a fan of K I suppose?” he writes back.

“Eh? Wait why?”

“Cuz you’re K-lover… so you’re not a fan?”

“Ah (;^▽^)… well I don’t call myself a fan but I guess I do like his music…”

“You do?” Shinichi is thrilled. “What’s your favorite song?”

“Of his or in general?”

“… both? ^^”

“Hmmm… I like Meguru Kisetsu (the one by All That Jazz)… and from K… I guess I like Magic or You bet!

“Oh Magic! I love this song! It’s an homage to Kid, isn’t it?”

“That’s an interesting way to see it… I thought it was more like him reminiscing about the times when Kid still had his heists.”

“Isn’t that the same?”

“… It depends…” The answer takes longer than it should have. It gives Shinichi a weird feeling.

“You mean HE’s KID?!” he asks.

“Huh? No, of cpirse npt!” Shinichi frowns when he sees the typos in the hurriedly written response.

“You know something about him don’t you?”

“What?! No, I’m just cooking at the same time I'm texting you so…”

“Ah” Shinichi is not convinced, not really.
“Well I’ll let you cook then… was fun talking to you!”

“DW It’s ok tho!”

“Nah I gotta go eat something myself… thx for reminding me.” Shinichi types, despite not being entirely honest with himself.

“Ok, talk to you again next time? You got my id, right?” Klover writes.

“Hey how could a K-lover forget Klover?”

“OMG jokes don’t suit you XD plz just don’t…”

“Hey! How dare you insult my disaster of a joke?!” Shinichi grins.

“Heh… CU next time ^^”

They both log off and Shinichi realizes he’s lying on his bed grinning like an idiot. It’s been a long time since he felt like this. The fact that he knows literally nothing about his texting partner intrigues him.  To his astonishment they were able to talk easily and even banter right from the start. It makes him happy.

Thinking back to their conversation he looks up “Magic by K” and listens to the song again while he scribbles around on a crumpled notepad.
Shinichi can’t draw, for crying out loud… but he still does it when he has feelings to get rid of.
And somehow the best way for him to do this was is on paper.

When the song is over his thoughts linger on but his brain starts working differently without the lyrics in the background. Shinichi immediately starts to rhyme his feelings into scraps of text and hums along them as his imagination invents one melody after another.
He cringes, however, when he hears his own voice.

Kaito is indeed cooking but that’s definitely not the reason for his typos and the pause he made before answering 4869’s message. The pizza he has in his oven doesn’t need that much attention after all.

He puts the phone aside and rubs his face with both hands, still rattled by how close he was to disaster.
The Sherlock fan is extremely sharp, maybe they're a detective in real life. It's fascinating.
Kaito knows it’s dangerous but it intrigues him a lot to contact them again. He wants to know just how much they can find out about him. He has the sudden urge to gauge his texting partner’s wit.
It's always been his weakness to play with danger and challenge his rivals with games and riddles. It’s not a habit he’d lose so fast.

Grinning he reaches for the potholder and takes the pizza out of the oven, wondering when he'll get the opportunity to talk to them again.

The next time Klover texts him Shinichi searches for his crumpled notepad.

“You said you liked music… so… um I thought I might show you this” He types gathering his courage.
“I’ve been writing scraps of text and composing parts of songs but never did anything with them cause I can’t sing and I’m like really bad when it comes to music…”

“Oh! Wanna show me?” Klover writes back.

“Ummm you really don’t mind? It's kinda selfish of me after all...”

“No! On the contrary! But might I ask why you do it when you think you’re bad at it?”

“It’s a great way to express my feelings…” Shinichi answers.
“Like you know, when you have something bothering you or when you’re melancholic or extremely angry… don’t you have the urge to do draw or write or something then?”

“You draw too?”

“Heh… I do but you don’t wanna see it cuz it’s even worse than my voice XD” Shinichi makes a face. He really can’t sing OR draw at all.

“Hahaha, well, then I won’t ask ^^ but I really wanna see those lyrics and song bits now that you told me about them!”

“… alright… wait a min”

“looking forward to it ^^”

While Shinichi is typing it strikes him that Klover has evaded his question.
Do they really not have these moments where they have the urge to express themselves or did they have another reason not to answer?

“Here you go:” When he finally sends it his heart is beating fast and his fingers are cold and jittery from nervousness. He’s never showed these texts to anyone, not even Ran or the professor. He doesn’t even know where he found the courage to show them to a random stranger.

“These are the things I wrote together when I listened to Magic the last time we texted:

… um that’s it… there’s a whole lot of other crap… I could show you if you want to but you don’t have to go through it if you don’t want to ofc…”

When there’s no answer for quite some time Shinichi gets anxious. Maybe that was too cringe and Klover doesn’t want to talk to him anymore? Maybe they think he’s a weirdo now? He has to force himself not to come to conclusions too soon.

“Whoa! Hey that’s real good!” Klover writes all of a sudden.

“Wait... you for real?”

“Yeah no joke you got a knack for this!”

“… sooo what do you think?”

“Hmmm… I like how you describe your feelings with the scenery and the weather and how bring across that you’d like to know more about the other person and meet him… I also like the way the last part rhymes and fits together. This is supposed to be the chorus, right? But it seems you got stuck writing the second verse, no?”

“Whoa! You’re good! That’s exactly how I imagined it and yes, I’m stuck XD”

“Haha it happens ^^”

“…Wait… HIM?! Why did you assume the person I was talking about is a him?”

“Isn’t he?”

“Well he is but how did you know?”

“Well it’s either Kid or K… since you were listening to that song just before you wrote the text… but you met Kid before so it has to be K who somehow reminds you of Kid, right?”

“Holy shit! How’d you know all that?! You should be a detective!”

“C’mon that wasn’t too difficult (^.<)~* you of all people shouldn’t be surprised by such deductions ^^ (Also, now you’ve only confirmed my suspicions, thanks XD)”

“What the… what do you mean, suspicions? Have we met? (Also, hey, that’s not fair! Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow...)”

“(XDXDXD Ok, I take back what I said about your jokes.) And the other thing... just forget about it… I might have read one too many crime related stories and began to take a liking in playing detective… I bet you can relate (^⩊^)”

“?! … well you’re right my username says it all…”

“Anyway… about your lyrics, are you gonna do something with them or can I play around a bit with them? I might have a few ideas on how to turn them into something complete ^^”

“Oh you actually play music yourself?”

“Yeah, a bit ^^ It’s only a hobby tho (but I’d rly like to turn it into a profession)”

“Wow! What do you do then?”

“I work in a bar in the evenings and serve at a restaurant during the days…”

“(;-‿-) I meant the music… do you play an instrument?”

“Ah XD bit of singing and piano and drums but nothing great… I'm still learning”

“That doesn’t sound like nothing to me?!?!”

“Like I said, it’s just a hobby…”

“If you say so… but yeah, you can do something with my text if you want to… I mean it's just some stuff I’d throw away after a while I guess, because I'll probably think it's cringe the next time I'll read it XD. So feel free to use it ^^”

“Hey don’t say that! Your text is way too good to just throw away! I’ll do something then show you, promise ^^”

“Heh, what a gentleman (gentlewoman?) Looking forward to it then!”

“Gentleman’s fine :P”

Kaito chuckles when he sees 4869 call him a gentleman.
He's probably the last one who would have called me that if my suspicions turn out to be true and it is indeed Kudo Shinichi who I've been texting with, he thinks. He would have to confirm that later.

Grinning he goes to his room. The picture of the magician hangs next to the door now and where his Kid hideout had been is now a soundproofed room complete with an upright piano, a MIDI keyboard, a mic, a bass, an acoustic guitar with amplifier and drums.
He doesn’t play the guitar but Akako and Aoko do. They would both sometimes come over to jam or record something. But he does most of the songs himself. It’s become kind of a substitute for his days as Kid. He still does magic but it’s mostly in the bar in the evenings and he wants it to stay a hobby.
Music however… it’s his new life. It was his way of dealing with an angry Aoko after she found out about him being Kid and it was his way of coming to terms with her dating Hakuba.
Every time he was in a bad mood, he would pack all his feelings into the songs he wrote and then sing them with all his heart until he felt better.
Music, he thinks, is a wonderful way to heal. One that can also bring others joy and entertainment.

Kaito sits down in front of the piano and begins to improvise. The he reads the new lyrics again.

He chuckles mirthlessly. The text describes exactly how he feels.
After he’d stopped performing as Kid, he didn’t have a reason to see the detective again. He wasn’t even supposed to know him as his civilian self. He’d always hoped he’d run into him again sometime, when he was alone and allowed not to pretend to be a stranger. But of course it didn’t happen. This was real life after all. It never happens the way you think it will.
Right now, Kaito doesn’t even know what the detective is doing or where he is.
Did he still have the body of a small child or did he have the chance to change back?
Kaito doesn’t know a thing.
He continues reading and tries out a few melodies and experiments around comping under the melody.

He makes that part the pre-chorus, putting And the wind blows in a pickup measure and starting the beat on cold. It seems to be a nice way to push through into the chorus and he likes that it begins seemingly mid-sentence. It would be no problem to put it behind the second verse no matter what he’s going to write.

Kaito doesn’t stop, he plays on, singing what comes to his mind. He doesn’t stop when he thinks he's playing trash and he doesn’t stop when it’s good, he just listens to himself and tries to make the music deliver the feelings he wants it to convey.

When Ran visits Shinichi the next time, she brings Christmas cookies and a bunch of hungry detective boys with her.

“Nee-san?” Genta asks, “Can we have another one? They’re really good, you’re talented!”

“Yeah! You should open a bakery!” Mitsuhiko exclaims enthusiastically.

Ran laughs. “Come on guys you wouldn’t want Shinichi to have only the crumbs left, now wouldn’t you?!”

Haibara exchanges glances with her and grins. “He’ll only recover if he eats properly.” She says bluntly.

The effect is immediate. Genta promptly gives up his biscuit and offers it to Shinichi. The latter chuckles. Ayumi brings him one too and so does Mitsuhiko.

"Thanks guys!" He says laughing. "I'm sure I'll get better in a flash like this."

The cookies good. For a while they all sit there and eat in silence, except for Haibara who only ate one and then proceeded by staring into her phone with an awfully bored expression.

Shinichi watches her. After all those years he's still not accustomed to the huge discrepancy between her personality and her tiny body.

Suddenly the girl’s expression lightens and she shows something to Ran.

“You listen to this stuff, don’t you?” she says as if it isn’t a question.

“Whoa!” Ran exclaims. “A concert?! Live?”

Her remark makes Shinichi pick up his ears.

“Who so?” He asks. “Two-Mix?”

“No, K!” Ran says incredulously but not expecting any reaction from Shinichi.
She’s quite startled when he jolts up into a sitting position all of a sudden.

“K?!?!?!? When?!” He nearly shouts it.

Ran raises an eyebrow at him. “Tuesday in Shibuya… I didn’t know you were a fan.”

“Well, it’s not been more than a week since I discovered his music but is he really doing this live? I can’t believe he does!”

“Well it’s not exactly live…” Ran explains. “He’s streaming it in Shibuya – honestly, I wonder how he managed to organize this – but he didn’t say where he’ll stream from.”

“Oh…” Shinichi looks mildly disappointed which makes Haibara snicker.

“But still” He says, “I have to see this!” He slowly turns his head and looks at Haibara with a questioning look.

“Jeez… You can go but you have to take your meds and a warm jacket and beanie. Promise me?”

“Ok thanks, promise.” He smiles and she nods in approval. Thanks mom he thinks.

“You’re really cool Ai-chan!” Ayumi says out of nowhere.
They all chuckle. She’s got a point.
Shinichi on the other hand goes beet red. He still can’t cope with the situation.

The strangely happy feeling from the lively visit lingers on long after Ran and the Kids have gone home. But Shinichi starts to feel lonely again nevertheless. Absentmindedly he checks his phone.

“Hey Sherlock! Are you going to the concert?” Klover has asked him just a few minutes ago. It's as if he'd been there with them the whole time. Shinichi is not even surprised anymore. In his opinion, his texting partner should really consider working as a detective. Maybe he’s still online? He thinks and writes back.

“You mean K’s? I saw, yes, I’m planning on going if my health allows it.” It takes a while until he gets an answer.

“… are you ok?” Klover seems genuinely concerned.

“Yeah, don’t worry, it’s just like a cold or something, nothing more. It just takes a bit longer.”

“Oh! I think I get it… did you… how am I supposed to ask this…” Klover seems to have accidentally sent the message before he was finished typing.

“What do you mean?”

“… did it go well? You don’t have severe complications, do you?”

Shinichi’s eyebrows rise higher than he ever thought they could.
Do they know something about me and my past?! But how? He again forces himself not to conclude things before he's a hundred percent sure about it.

“Tf you talking about?!?!?!” he writes, hoping to gain some more information.

“Growing up…” Was the answer to Shinichi’s alarm.

“KID YOU MORON!”

“Hehehe, hi there tantei-kun ^^… so you coming to the concert or not?”

“!”

“Now what do you mean by that?! Yes or no?”

"How the hell did you find out who I am?!"

"Come on... Sherlock fan, usually bad at jokes, can't sing, finds out way too much about anybody by simply texting to them for five minutes... sooo yes or no?"

“HEY! I'm hurt!" Shinichi laughs. "I'm not gonna answer your question if you don't apologize..."

"Okay, you're the bestest pain in the ass in the world, that's how I found out, happy now? So you coming or not?"

Shinichi suddenly has a weird thought. Could it be... "No way… don’t tell me…” he writes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about but ok, I won’t :P”

Yeah, he’s right… Shinichi decided he shouldn’t come to conclusions before he was really sure about something.

"Shut up…” He writes back. “Ok, I’ll be there.”

“Yay ^^” I s the immediate answer he gets. “See you then ^^”

Shinichi is no longer sure what to think about everything that just happened.
He'll just have to go to the concert, keep his eyes sharp to spot the bastard and see what happens.

Tuesday, 07:25 PM, Shibuya. It's time.
People are gathering on the crossing, chattering agitated and waiting impatiently for the concert to begin.

Shinichi is standing in the middle of the crowd and feels slightly out of place. The mood is just like before a Kid heist and it wouldn’t surprise him if people started counting the seconds in the last minute before it started. Normally he’d be busy searching for Kid or talking about security and all the “ingenious” plans with the task force by now.
Automatically he starts looking around and studying people, searching for suspicious behavior but of course, he can't find anything.
He has to tell himself what he came here to do, although he doesn’t quite know it himself yet.
Kid sounded like he wanted to meet him somewhere and he isn’t sure what to do with this information.

Two minutes before the concert starts, the monitors on the buildings go dark and the murmur of the crowd ceases.
It’s unbelievably silent all of a sudden.
Shinichi can hear the cars rush through the nearby streets and the rustle of somebody’s jacket a few meters in front of him. He’s never seen the otherwise lively crossing in this state.
Before he can wonder longer about it, the screens flash to light again and all start showing the same thing. It looks like a stage with smoke and colorful spotlights, blue and red.

“Good evening everybody!” A voice says from the many speakers installed on the crossing.
Shinichi shivers. The people next to him look at each other and start whispering.
Shinichi knows this voice.
He also knows the feeling he had in the beginning wasn’t so wrong. Maybe I should have initiated the countdown in the end… He thinks.
Shinichi is sure the screens lit up right to the tick.

“It’s my first time singing live for such a huge audience so I’m quite nervous,” the voice says laughing. “please bear with me.”

“Nervous my ass…” Shinichi mumbles. A corner of his mouth is lifting up into a lopsided smirk.

“It’s also the first time I’m singing a song I did in… sort of a collaboration with somebody. The song is dedicated to them and… If you’re here, and I really hope you are, I’d be happy to meet you afterwards at the right spot…”

Shinichi feels his body tense. That was directed at me, wasn’t it?
He checks his phone but there’s no new message. He frowns. The right place? Is that a challenge? At once, his frown gives way to a cheeky grin. “Challenge accepted!” he murmurs. The people next to him look at him questioningly.

Right then the screens come to life as a man walks on the stage. He’s wearing a coat, the color of which Shinichi isn’t able to discern exactly with all the smoke and the colored spotlights. Fluttering ribbons are hanging from his sleeves, his hair is a mess but it looks great on him. A mask obscures his eyes. It makes him look sculpturesque, nearly otherworldly.
Still not ready for the world… Shinichi thinks.

“I’ll be singing Magic first, as it’s an important song to the person I mentioned before.” K says and smiles. It’s weirdly similar to Kid’s smirk but at the same time different, more genuine.
He seems to be looking at the camera for a split second. Shinichi feels like he's looking straight into his eyes.
And then he sits down behind the piano and begins his performance.

He has a sampler on stage and records himself playing the piano and later the drums, both times he adds incredible solo parts. The song is different from the Newtube version Shinichi knows. It's beautiful.

When everything is recorded and the music seems to be playing on its own, K stands up from the piano and walks a circle around the whole stage. When he starts singing Shinichi gets goosebumps.

K looks as if he’s floating with all the smoke pooling at his feet. When he has his back to the camera for a split second a white dove appears in his hand, then flies away. The crowd on the crossing starts to cheer.
K on the stage performs what looks like a dance, all the wile singing flawlessly. And here and there, magic happens. Once he fishes a deck of cards out of thin air, another time a piece of paper folds itself into a crane and flutters away, defying the laws of physics, accompanied by a cloud of red dust.

Shinichi is speechless.
Never in his life has he seen something like this, not even at Kid’s heists, and this speaks for itself.
Before he knows it the show is almost over. He’s watching in a daze until he’s woken up by K’s announcement of the last song of the evening.

“We’re coming to the last song for today, I hope you had fun, because I definitely did and it would be a shame if you, as my audience, didn’t.” He laughs. It makes him strangely likable. “This is the song I told you about in the beginning... I call it Soulmate.”

Again he records the backing and rhythm first. It‘s kind of melancholic this time and the harmonies are jazzy.
Shinichi instantly gets the feeling of being alone on the crossing despite the many people around him. It’s cold and suddenly notices how the wind keeps ruffling his hair, sweeping coldly over the narrow strip of bare skin on his neck. The screens seem to be nearly the only light source on Shibuya crossing and despite it not being dark at all, Shinichi can see the stars sparkle between the buildings.
Shinichi all too aware of the mood the music puts him in. He knows it well, too well.

And then K begins to sing in a voice which isn’t his.
Shinichi stands shivering in the middle of the crossing, staring on the screen, petrified, as K sings his own words in his very own voice.

Without warning K switches back to his own voice when he sings the bridge. And he sings it almost a Capella.
There’s only very few quiet piano chords, nothing else.
Shinichi huddles deeper into his jacket and blames the tears in his eyes on the icy wind.

All of a sudden the music stops on a hold.
K deliberately never finishes the sentence but Shinichi suspects that everybody on the crossing knows exactly why he chose to do this and why he used the word anew instead of again in the incomplete rhyme.

He blushes and tries to hide it by burying his face in his scarf. The people next to him seem to have understood the situation too, which is not exactly helping with his embarrassment.

He smiles shyly, nods politely and backs off, breaking his way through the crowd. He hopes he can blend in and get to the other side of the crossing without attracting too much attention.

He knows where he’s headed.

When he arrives on the roof of Haido City Hotel, however, no one is there.

Shinichi walks to the railing and gazes in the distance over the city.

Below him, the streets flow in meanders between the houses like golden rivers.
He waits. No one is on the roof besides him.

He lies down on his back, looking at the stars who appear so much brighter  from up here. It makes him feel like he is a lot closer to them, even if he knows that the height of the building is basically negligible considering their light takes ages to reach his eyes. He lies there and waits but still, no one is there.

Shinichi begins to wonder whether he might have got the location wrong.
Nervously he checks the texting app.
No new messages.

The icy wind tousles his hair and freezes his neck and ears.
Shinichi wishes his coat had a hood.
He puts his scarf over his head, then sits up and turns around…

And there he is.

Just like the second time they’ve seen each other, just like the first time they met for real, on this exact rooftop, he lands silently in front of Shinichi’s eyes without disturbing the silence of the night. And he smiles.
It’s not the smirk he used to wear as Kid, no, this time it’s a genuine expression, joy, maybe gratitude, love.
This time it's not just a meaningless facade.

K takes a few steps towards Shinichi. With a single sweeping motion he takes off his mask and seemingly makes it vanish into thin air.

“Sorry for making you wait,” he says nonchalantly and he looks gorgeous. “I had to finish up backstage and it took longer than I expected…”

“K! … or… Kid? … You came!” Shinichi breathes.
His feelings are a mess and his heart is racing as if he had been running full speed for the last ten minutes.
He didn’t expect he’d react this way the first time he sees Kid’s bare face.

Kid smiles. “Kaito.” he says and Shinichi nearly faints.
“K for Kaito and K for Kuroba." he explains. "Kid is in the past now. He was my father’s legacy and he has reached his goal. It’s time for me to write my own story now.”

Shinichi looks at him for a long time. He has no words fit to respond.

“K is my way of expressing who I really am.” Kaito says. His gaze wanders over the city, into the distance.

“Will you ever be ready to reveal yourself to the world?” Shinichi asks shyly.

“Yes.”
Kaito looks at him and smiles.
“Little by little, starting with you, right now.”

Shinichi is deeply touched. He draws Kaito into a hug, glad he finally found a way to leave the shadow of his father behind and start leading his own life.
And Shinichi is more than honored to be considered a part of it.

“Thank you.” He says softly. “And me too… I wish I could just tell you…”

Shinichi hears Kaito’s breath hitch next to his ear, then he feels his arms tighten around him as he buries his probably red face in Shinichi’s scarf.

It’s then, that Kaito finishes the the incomplete rhyme for the first time.