Work Text:
Every artist and writer knows the cardinal principle of creation. The theorem is so well known and simple, in fact, it can be boiled down to one idiom and can be applied to nearly any field:
“Practice makes perfect.”
A simple concept, really. The more you do something, the better you get at it, a theory proved accurate time and time again, especially in the arts. And, well, Edgar was nothing if not an artist.
After Ranpo had bested him on a case close to eight years prior, Edgar had dedicated his time to writing a mystery novel that could truly stump him and exact his revenge. After the guild incident, he never expected it to happen, but now, five days after Ranpo read the first sentence and got sucked into his latest story? Well, Edgar was more inclined to believe he’d achieved the impossible.
It all started at 4 in the morning, over a month before. Poe himself would be the first to tell you intrusive thoughts and insomnia were by no means the best concoction for sleep, but boy, did they make for an interesting storyline.
“Hey, Poe! Are you almost done out here yet? You said you’d go to bed tonight, you know,” Ranpo’s voice had come from the doorway behind him around midnight. Poe, irritated at the work that sat before him, sighed and turned to face his rival. “Finally! I thought you were going to glare at that sheet of paper all night. Come on already! Karl refuses to stay still and he keeps waking me up.”
Now, despite being rivals, their relationship over the last two odd years had grown into something more, dare he say, intimate. His day trips to the agency became increasingly more frequent, despite not having as many finished manuscripts to test Ranpo's mind, and Ranpo gained his own shelf in most of the cabinets in the manor.
Granted, most of them were strictly for his snacks, but they had to be refilled often enough due to how much time the detective had spent there. The fact they often shared the same bed on these nights was purely coincidental, a common practice among rivals.
“Apologies, I didn’t realize what time it was.” They both knew that was a lie but Ranpo was merciful and didn’t call him out on it. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. Just kick Karl out for the time being and I’ll be there once I tidy up a bit.” He got up from his chair, scratching it across the ground while stretching his lower back muscles.
“Alright, you better!” Ranpo exclaimed before disappearing back through the entrance. Karl came skittering across the floor and taking his place on one of Edgar's shoulders after a few minutes while he was in the process of putting away the ink well. Even Karl made a few chitters at him as if to lecture the author further about his already poor sleep schedule.
“I know, I know, but it’s not my fault! There’s simply too many ideas to get onto paper before I can even think about sleep,” he explained himself in a whisper, not wanting to wake Ranpo who was most likely asleep again. Karl didn’t verbally answer, obviously, but he let out another chitter, sounding closer to a scoff. Poe gave him an apologetic head scratch which seemed to be an acceptable answer to Karl. “All this concern for something as trivial as my sleeping schedule… I never gave it thought before… Why do you think that is, Karl?”
The raccoon bit his finger, not enough to hurt or do any damage, but a simple nip as if to tell him to stop worrying and get moving. “Ow! I’m going as fast as I can here!” He quietly chastised his friend, opening the drawers of his desk carefully to prevent too much unwanted noise. “I’m just saying, it’s different. It’s….nice...Surely he only cares because his rival must be running at top performance to be considered a worthy adversary, right?” Karl didn’t answer him again, but Poe chuckled to himself as if he’d said something humorous. “Then again, maybe that isn’t all that accurate anymore. Ranpo’s a mystery far above my skill level at times.”
He finished putting everything away, sliding all the desk drawers shut as his monologue continued.
“But he does so care about his friends at the Detective Agency. I’m sure he knows the trivial details of everyone's day-to-day lives.”
“I can’t help but wonder…would he care enough to realize that one of them was gone?”The little voice in the back of his head asked. It shouldn’t have made him pause in his tracks the way it did. But that voice had a point, didn’t it? Ranpo saw everything, but occasionally there’d be something he’d overlook simply because he didn’t bother with things that didn’t interest him or to respect the privacy of his superiors and friends. He’d certainly overlooked aspects of Edgar upon request, especially when he was in the writing process for the sake of keeping the story a surprise. But if there were truly something wrong, he’d realize it in an instant, right?
Karl nudged him with his head, more dissatisfied chitters filling the author's ears and drowning out his thoughts. However, it was already too late, and the early seeds of a story had been planted in his mind. Edgar did not go to bed that night, staying up an extra four hours before Karl's consistent biting became too much to bear, forcing him to set his pen down for the night.
It took him about a month of non-stop work to complete the novel. It was short and sweet, admittedly not his best work considering the whole premise was born of a stray thought in the dead of night. Regardless, his curiosity fueled him throughout the project, and now it was complete, neatly printed and leather bound.
“This one looks pretty small,” Ranpo examined it skeptically when he first received it. “I’ll be back within a minute! So don’t go too far, alright? Oh, actually, maybe you should fetch me some of that ice cream from the freezer for another job well done,” the shorter detective wasn’t fully teasing. Although, how he knew about the ice cream Edgar had purchased for himself, he didn’t want to know.
“A-alright, just don’t expect too much from this one, alright? I simply wanted to test out a new concept for some future works. I suspect even a high schooler could see the twist coming,” he sighed, dejected. He had some serious doubts about the work, especially during the end process, but it’d be worth it to hear some good feedback and spend some time with his best friend. Edgar left for the kitchen while Ranpo opened the book, reading the first few words and activating the ability. With a bright flash of light, Ranpo had disappeared into the pages and the book fell to the ground with a soft thud.
When the author returned, a bowl full of chocolate ice cream in his hands, he fully expected the shorter detective to be there, waiting and asking what had taken him so long before going on a tangent about how easy the mystery was to solve. Instead, the author was met with silence, the book still in the same position as it had landed. At first, Poe was unable to do anything but blink at the book, like it was out of place in his living room. His second reaction was to look around the room in confusion, thinking that perhaps Ranpo had just been playing a prank on him. “Ranpo?” He called out to the room. No response came.
Edgar set the bowl on the coffee table before going to the book hesitantly, and then picking it up. The realization set in as he turned the book in his hands, that Ranpo had yet to solve the mystery of the book. The maniacal laughter that filled the manor soon after sent Karl scampering into the room to see what all the fuss was about.
“Such an easy mystery, and yet Ranpo still has yet to solve it? Perhaps I’ve finally created a masterpiece that could best ultra deduction!” Poe felt his entire being swell with pride as Karl walked over and climbed up to his shoulder, sniffing at the book curiously. “If only I knew what interesting reactions I’d get by putting real people in the center of it all,” he couldn’t help but giggle to himself, before stopping again. “Ah- wait…wouldn’t that mean this work is nothing more than a piece of fanfiction?”
Karl snorted as if to say, ” Yes, that’s exactly what it is.” Poe moved over to the couch, setting the book down on the cushions so Ranpo would have something soft to land on when he inevitably defeated his ability.
“It’s nice to have a victory over dear Ranpo, no matter how small, but I highly doubt he’ll be much longer, don’t you think, Karl?” He was still riding the high of getting Ranpo stumped for more than a minute. It was a rare occurrence, but he relished the way his ego inflated just a tiny bit every time it happened. Ranpo’s surprised face would be even better once he returned.
One minute turned into five, five into ten, then ten into half an hour. He’d beaten his personal best time for trapping Ranpo in a mystery. Before, the longest had been the day they first reunited during the period he aligned with the Guild. The ice cream on the table had begun to melt, and Poe stood across the table, watching the book, expecting something to happen.
He didn’t start to get truly worried until an hour passed with no sign of the detective. He’d made his way to the couch, sitting beside the book with Karl seated in his lap, doing his best to calm and ebb the building anxiety Edgar felt.
“There’s no way for Ranpo to have perished in that book… there’s no killer. What could possibly be taking him so long?” The frustration and denial were starting to build, mounting onto his building fear. “Is this it? The thrill of victory? What if I’ve finally done it, Karl? I’ve trapped Ranpo in a labyrinth he can’t solve, and I remain here, the victor of this long-drawn on-out game of ours.” But then why did victory taste so bittersweet? He expected to feel relieved, to feel joy beyond comprehension, but now, sitting across from the book that held his greatest rival he felt empty. It was as if someone had reached through his chest, and carefully cut away small chunks of his heart, not enough to hurt but just enough to feel the loss of what once was whole. “No, it can’t be a true victory. Not with something like this. A victory with this book wouldn’t be satisfying in the slightest! What would I do with myself…”
The ice cream fully melted into a brown, chocolaty soup by the second day. Poe had gotten up sometime over the past day to shut all the blinds in the house. Sunlight was quite harmful to paper after all, even if the light wouldn’t hurt anything in the short term. Closing the blinds served another purpose too, to make him feel more secure, like no one could peer in the windows and see what mess he was making of himself.
He sat on the couch with the book securely in his grasp, cradled against his chest. The manor had been silent, save for Karl's occasional noises and the ticking of clocks. Poe couldn’t bring himself to move very far, replaying the events of the book in his head over and over to see where he went wrong. The times he did get up, when his body demanded food or water or when it was time to feed Karl, the book came with him, held close to his side and never put down for more than a few moments.
It was hard not to read into what could be keeping Ranpo trapped within the novel. Considering the book's contents, Edgar was almost worried to know what the answer would be.
The plot revolved around Ranpo and his life at the Armed Detective Agency, and the mystery was a fairly simple missing persons case. The only thing that set it apart from any average case he’d solve on any old day was that it affected the people he was closest with. Although Poe had been spending more time at the agency as of late, he never thought he’d observed enough to write convincing replicas of the detectives. Regardless of his abilities, it should have been a routine solve for Ranpo, but that wasn’t the most devastating thought on his mind.
Not wanting to risk portraying anyone incorrectly or paint a picture that’d describe the victim outside of their norm, Poe wrote himself in as the missing party. Or, rather, in this tale, he never existed at all. The thought of writing himself as some sort of damsel in distress sat uncomfortably when he went to write himself in, so he came up with something new. Instead, the idea of Edgar Allan Poe in this tale was nothing but a group hallucination. A delusion that everyone within the agency claimed to have one or more experiences with, yet had suddenly stopped. If Ranpo hadn’t realized he was missing and why within such a story, well, did that mean Ranpo never truly cared at all?
All theories he had churned his empty stomach, making him feel nauseous. Victory really wasn’t supposed to taste so awful.
No one came knocking at his door over the three days that followed either. It was something that brought just a small bit of comfort. He didn’t just give out his address readily, so naturally, no one came knocking at his door when Ranpo went MIA. His phone had died days ago, but he’d received no calls or texts before that either. Frankly, Edgar feared he was in no condition to face his friends either, especially not the president. Or, perhaps he and Ranpo were truly alone in the world. Or maybe it was just him now, helpless as the days stuck with a silent book dragged on.
By the fourth day, the ice cream started to smell rancid and Poe had gained enough sense to at least move to the bedroom to pretend like he’d try to get some sleep, just as he promised Ranpo he would over a month prior. Gently, he set the book on the pillow that once belonged to the detective, the scent of his shampoo still faintly lingered, nearly breaking his heart in two by such a simple reminder.
A week prior, such a realization would have filled him with joy. His dear rival, his best friend, and his loyal partner share the dreary space enough that it starts to smell of him? It sounded like a dream come true. Such a large manor was too big for him and Karl alone, Ranpo helped fill the place out, made it seem whole. Now, just like his soul, the manor was incomplete, a large wrecking ball tearing through the walls and leaving a hole in its wake.
Poe went to shower and change before bed, unwilling to risk the dirt he’d been collecting to sully the pages of his hated masterpiece. But when he stepped back into the room, something was different. The book still lay on the pillow, but it throbbed. The leather cover writhed and beat as if it were a human heart, but the worst part of all, it was loud. The sound filled his ears, a wet, squishy squelching noise as if the heart was his own, pumping his blood hard and fast into his ears.
He couldn’t take it, falling to the ground, all the denial and guilt finally bubbling over in his broken soul, sobs beginning to tear themselves from his throat.
As the guilt and sobs took over his body, he sat on the floor across from the bed being taunted by the beating heart that was the book. He was defeated by his own demons, helpless to do anything but hope one day he’d see Ranpo again.