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She picks up on the second ring.
“Aoko,” a familiar voice breaks through, over what sounds like the distant noise of traffic and wind.
Her lips curl up into a half smile. “Kaito,” she replies, tapping her pencil idly against the paper. She glances for a second out the window; the moon still in the same full shape it was before.
“What are you doing right now?” he suddenly asks, and she blinks.
“I was working on physics homework,” she says. “Y’know, the same one that you’re supposed to be doing right now.”
Kaito laughs – a faint pinpoint of sound against the background noise. “Guilty as charged,” she can hear him smile. “But surely there are more interesting things to talk about than homework.”
“Is that why you called me?” Aoko wants to know. “As a means of procrastination?”
He laughs again. “Maybe.”
She rolls her eyes.
“But, seriously, Aoko,” he says, and she thinks she detects an undercurrent of desperation in his tone, “please talk to me. About anything. It doesn’t matter.”
She sighs and puts down her pencil. “Fine.” She pauses a moment, thinking. “Did you see Murata’s new tattoo? Him and Yokoi have matching ones now.”
“…Oh my god.”
It’s Aoko’s turn to laugh. “Did you seriously not notice?”
“I’ve been busy, sue me,” comes the immediate retort. Then – “What was the tattoo of?”
She hums. “A cowboy hat.”
There’s a lengthy pause on the other end as Kaito lets that sink in. “A cowboy hat?”
“Yep.”
In the distance, Aoko can hear the telltale rise and fall of police sirens. She frowns. “Kaito…where are you, exactly?”
The silence stretches on considerably, with the gusts of wind and the sirens being the only indication that he hasn’t hung up. “Kaito,” she intones. “Are you at a KID heist again?”
“…Maybe I am,” is the eventual reply, and she resists a long suffering sigh.
“Why do you do this to me?” she groans out, and he only chuckles in response. “You know how dangerous his heists have been getting lately. What if something happened to you?”
The sirens grow louder.
“I’ll be alright, Aoko,” he half whispers. “As long as you stay on the line.”
“Kaito –“
“Please,” he interrupts her. “Just keep talking about anything.”
She listens to the sirens, to what sounds like indistinct chatter of a crowd. “Not until you promise me that you’re leaving.”
“…I can’t.”
Aoko sniffs. “Then I have nothing to talk about.” She pulls the phone away from her ear, hovers her thumb over the [End Call] button.
“Wait, I –!” he exclaims, then abruptly cuts himself off. “Please, Aoko. Don’t hang up.”
She hesitates, then brings the phone back to her ear. “You have ten seconds to give me a real good reason not to.”
He sighs, almost inaudibly. “Okay.”
Aoko waits.
“I can’t tell you right now, but when this is all over,” he whispers, “…I promise I’ll tell you the reason why I keep going to the heists.”
She waits a few seconds more. “Is that all?” she asks, when nothing else seems to be forthcoming.
“I…yes,” he replies. “I’m being completely serious this time, Aoko.”
“Oh?”
“You have to trust me,” he continues on.
She hums again, contemplating. “Alright,” she eventually acquiesces. “But I’ll be holding you to that promise.”
Kaito laughs, a breathy sound. “I know.”
The sirens stop, and the chatter falls silent. She can hear his footsteps over the phone, quiet as they are, and there’s the near silent click of a door being opened and then shut. “Stay on the line, Aoko,” he whispers. “I won’t be able to say anything for a while, but just –“
There’s a yell echoing in the background. “Shit,” Kaito curses, and the call goes silent.
Aoko checks her phone – he hasn’t hung up. She presses it as close as she can to her ear and listens, very carefully.
For about five minutes there’s nothing.
Then, gradually, she begins to hear a heavier set of footsteps approach on the other end. It goes silent again, briefly, then she hears – “Who’s there?”
Aoko draws in a shaky breath. The voice is older, male, with a bit of a rasp that she identifies as belonging to a smoker. She stays silent, and the man speaks again. “This is KID’s personal phone, isn’t it? Am I speaking to someone?”
Her heart beats rapidly in her chest, so loud that she thinks the person on the other end must hear it.
“Hey!” someone in the background says suddenly. “What are you doing? We’re wasting time here when KID’s out there.”
She hears the scowl in the man’s voice as he responds. “Yeah, but this phone was found next to one of his police disguises. And the call was still going – he must’ve been talking to someone before he ran.”
“Who is it, then?”
“Hell if I know,” the man grumbles, sounding farther away. “Couldn’t get anyone to speak up.”
“We can deal with them later,” the other person says. “You know what the orders from the boss are.” The man mutters something, followed by the heavy slam of the door, and finally all is quiet.
Aoko waits. One. Two seconds. Three seconds, before she collapses back in her chair, letting out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
“What the fuck was that,” she asks no one.
∞
A half hour later finds her in the living room, curled up on the couch clutching a steaming mug of chamomile like her life depends on it, with her eyes glued to the TV screen as the reporter drones on about the weather.
The call is still going – despite Kaito’s absence, she can’t bring herself to hang up.
So she waits.
And waits.
She’s in the process of washing out the cup when she hears his voice come back online. With a speed that would put the Flash to shame, she dives over the back of the couch to grab at her phone and jerk it up to her ear.
“Hello?” she asks.
“…Aoko?” she hears him say, and she nearly sobs in relief. His voice hitches, having caught onto the sound. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she nods. Closing her eyes, taking a deep breath in, she forces an attempt to sound casual. “You?”
“I’m alright,” he replies, a touch of humor in his words, as if he could see her trying to calm herself down. “Sorry about ditching you earlier. Something…kinda came up.”
Aoko bites her lip, unsure of what to say next.
“Talk to me, Aoko,” Kaito says.
She breathes out. A million questions dance in her head – about why he was gone so long, about who the people were that she overheard on the phone – but the first thing out of her mouth instead is, “You know, I was actually thinking of getting a tattoo myself.”
“…What?”
“A tattoo,” she repeats, feeling a bit more confident. “I mean, have you seen how cool Murata’s looks? Not that I would get a cowboy hat. Maybe something like a bluebird. Something with blue in it.”
“Ah, I see,” Kaito says after a long moment. “Finally hitting that rebellious stage?”
“Shut up.”
He chuckles, though it sounds a bit strained. “I’d join you, but I’m afraid that it would ruin my image.”
“You have an image?”
He snorts. “I’m a model citizen, thank you very much.”
The words remind her of the mystery people from before. “Kaito…” she starts. “While you were gone, I heard something.”
“…Yeah?” he replies. Something about his tone is off.
She swallows. “Where are you, right now?”
“At the park.”
“Which park?”
He doesn’t answer. “What did you hear?”
“Why do you really go to those heists, Kaito?”
The question seems to catch him off guard; he fumbles his words for a minute, then eventually says, “Seeing KID in person is better than seeing him on TV, right?”
She closes her eyes again. “Is it?”
“Uh…yeah?” He sounds wary, unsure.
Aoko laughs to herself.
“Do you go there to see him,” she inquires, “or to be him?”
It’s quiet, for what feels like an eternity.
“What, exactly, did you hear, Aoko?” he asks, in an almost hushed voice.
She repeats the words of the man and his accomplice to him, and he lets out a sigh. Weary, she thinks.
“Where are you?” she insists.
“The park.”
“There’s like five different parks in this ward,” she says, a hint of annoyance trickling in. “You’ll have to be a little more specific.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“ ‘Doesn’t matter’, my ass,” she snaps out. “Tell me where you are this fucking minute or I swear to the heavens –“
Kaito laughs weakly. “You sure know how to cheer a guy up.”
“And you sure know how to send me to an early grave,” Aoko retorts, and at that, he seems to sober up.
“Sorry,” he replies. He lets his voice fade out for a bit, replacing it with the sound of an occasional bird song. “For what it’s worth, Aoko, I couldn’t have asked for a better friend.”
“…Why are you talking like that?”
“Like what?”
She gestures wildly, even though he can’t see it. “Like – like you’re about to die, or some shit. Stop.”
He utters a laugh. “I’ll do my best.”
“Stop.”
“Just –“ he groans, and curses under his breath. “Just stay on the line, okay?”
Aoko would have stolen the moon if he had asked her to.
“Okay, theoretically speaking, if you could get a tattoo, what would it be of?”
The answer is almost instantaneous. “A monocle.”
“…Of course. I don’t know why I expected any different.”
They both laugh.
“That’s what you promised to tell me, isn’t it?”
“Yeah…”
“You know I’m going to kill you for that later, right?”
“Of course,” he replies, mimicking her earlier words. “That’s why you’re my best friend.”
“I thought I told you to stop that.”
“Make me,” he says.
“I will shove the mop up your ass.”
Kaito starts to laugh, only to quickly dissolve into a fit of coughing.
“Are –“
“Mm, Aoko,” he says, like something is strangling him. “Don’t – don’t worry about those guys you heard, alright? Not after tonight.”
A thing starts strangling Aoko’s own throat, reaching down into her chest to squeeze at her heart. “Are you okay, Kaito?”
“Yeah,” he says, with all the false bravado that she cannot bring herself to feel. “Tell me more…about these tattoo ideas of yours.”
She opens her mouth.
A shot rings out.
“Kaito!” she hears herself shout. Everything suddenly seems so far away.
All she can hear is his labored breathing.
“Kaito –“
The line goes dead.