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“Ah-ah you’re too short. Shorty! Shorty!”
“Shut up! I’m taller than you!”
“Ack! No way you’re taller than me! You’re sooo not taller than me!”
“Then get down here, right now, we’ll see who’s right”
“Nothing in the world could get me in the range of your hands. Not even like, a cake. I so don’t want to die”
“Die? Oh no, don’t you worry about that. I’ll keep you alive, hell, you’ll be better than when I started”
“I wish I could call you a liar, then at least I’d have that satisfaction”
“Give it back and I’ll only hit you a little”
“I don’t want to be hit at all! And I can’t give it back! I told you I don’t have it”
“You do, you are the only person who came into my room, so you are the one who took it”
“I don’t have it. You have lost it. Lost it I say!”
“There’s no way, it doesn’t fit me anymore so there’s no way I lost it! It was in my room, in the second drawer, by the purple and pink one. It was there three days ago and then you came in. Pervert! Thief!”
“You thought I meant your skirt? Nono, you’ve lost your mind. Also, you have a bad memory! Did you check your thyroid? Maybe that’s why you're so aggressive!”
“I’ll show you aggressive!!”
Akiko started throwing whatever was in her reach at Ranpo, who was still perched on the highest shelf of his wardrobe and trying to defend himself from the onslaught with the sliding door
A gleeful “ah!” made Ranpo slide the door open just enough to see what she had found in the rubble of his room. She was standing in the middle of it, a hand on her side and one grasping the hanging side of his gaming console. She looked right in his eyes -wide open- and started running.
“Don’t you dare!” he jumped from the shelf and landed of a pile of what was probably clean laundry, throwing himself to the chase “Yosano, I swear if you break it!”
He followed her through the house right to the kitchen, where a pile of dirty plates was soaking in soapy water -over it, Yosano was dangling his precious console.
“Don’t move a muscle. I’ll only ask once, give me back my skirt” Before, she had been angry, yes, attacking him verbally and (trying) to attack him physically; Ranpo had retaliated with barbed insults and misdirection, and while their tone had been aggressive, it'd had a hidden note of playfulness. Now though, standing two meters apart in the small kitchen, they were deadly serious.
“I. Don’t. Have. It.”
“Say bye to your games then”
“Yosano” a deep voice interrupted “Ranpo”
Fukuzawa was standing in the doorway at Ranpo’s back, groceries in one hand. Surveying the scene, he noticed that the two teens were now frozen still, waiting on his word. “Yosano, please put the console down. Ranpo” -he added quickly when he saw the teen reach a hand to grab it- “go wait in your room. I’ll have the game in custody for the time being”
Ranpo eyed the console, Akiko, and finally Fukuzawa, before turning on his heels and hurrying in his room, not without closing his door just a bit too forcefully.
“Akiko. What is going on?”
She was fighting the lump that had lodged itself in her throat, hands bunged up in the front of her pleaded skirt.
“My skirt. My blue skirt, the one -the one you gifted me for Christmas. I can’t find it anymore, I swear it was in my dresser three days ago and now it’s not there anymore. I know Ranpo took it! He was the only one that came into my room. But he won’t say where he put it!”
Fukuzawa hummed quietly, the situation now much clearer “Come, I’ll draw you a bath. While you take it, I’ll talk to him, and then we’ll all have dinner”
--
He knocked on Ranpo’s door, and waited a courtesy 15 seconds before going in. Ranpo was sitting in his wardrobe (this time the lowest part), a thick blanket on his shoulders, sullenly eating chocolate cookies.
“So, you took her skirt. Should we have a discussion about boundaries? I’ll take it up to HR”
“Ack!” Ranpo started coughing when a cookie went down the wrong way “Foul! Old man, that’s just foul!”
“I was just jesting; I know you wouldn’t do it, so explain to me what you did do, and why, please”
“…can you keep a secret? Just a couple days more”
“Depends on the secret”
“Nothing bad I swear! It’s good. I think. I think it’s very good actually, I’m so amazing for having thought of it” he edged his way out of his hiding place “come closer and I’ll tell you”
And tell all he did.
--
After talking to him, Fukuzawa prepared dinner and Ranpo made the table. Yosano was still in the bath, which was good, because Fukuzawa needed her to be as relaxed as possible when delivering what would not be the news she was hoping for.
Once they all sat down, him by the head of the table and the teens on his sides, he removed the gaming console from were he had tucked it in the inner fold of his kimono and he placed it in front of his plate “Yosano, Ranpo. I’m very disappointed in seeing you couldn’t reach a point of understanding, and instead decided to resort to threats”
They were both shamefaced and looking down at their streaming plate -Yosano with more a rebellious air to it, though, as she felt she was at least 65% in the right.
“That being said. I understand why you felt the need to react that way: you took something of equiparabile worth to what was taken from you. Ranpo assured me it has been taken temporarily though, and will be given back. Yosano, Ranpo shouldn’t have taken your skirt without permission; I think it is fair for me to keep his console for myself until he gives it back to you. After that happens we can discuss any further punishment, if you’ll think it fair”
Yosano thought it through for a moment, coming up with worse and worse punishments for every scenario in which the skirt came back badly ripped, bleached or stained. Waiting until he gave it back gave her leeway, as she would know exactly how gravely he’d treated it and could act accordingly, without under or overestimating the abuse; she nodded -revenge was better served cold.
“Then Ranpo, do you think it fair?” pouting, Ranpo nodded too “good. Let’s eat”
--
While the dispute was at standstill, the tension in the house (and at the agency) was still perceivable. Yosano, who usually looked up to Ranpo, was now much colder and aloof; for his part, Ranpo was much less talkative, preferring to indulge himself in sweets and candies than conversation. Really, they barely spoke to each other.
When, by the evening of the second day, he saw Ranpo approach Akiko with an air of forced indifference, Fukuzawa was flooded with relief that this strained peace would finally end.
--
“Here”
Akiko reached out to the well made package Ranpo was awkwardly holding: his arm was straight as a pole, away from his body, which was half turned as if ready to run. The packet was soft to the touch, and it did not take a detective to guess what it held inside.
But. Why had he packaged it?
She opened it quickly, ready to catalogue each and every difference in the fabric; it was with surprise that she found not one, but two identical blue skirts inside.
“You were really sad when it stopped fitting. And then a week ago, I got lost on the way back and I found this seamstress shop that had a dress exposed; the fabric, it looked just the same as your skirt so I thought, maybe I could ask the woman for a bigger skirt? She said of course, but that she’d need to see the original and to take it to her” Ranpo was looking everywhere but at her, half mumbling his words “…so I took it”
Yosano was speechless, looking down at her old skirt, and at her new, bigger one just beneath. They looked exactly the same. Ah, were those tears gathering in her eyes? Damnit
“Why didn’t you tell me two days ago? I nearly broke your console”
“uhhh” he rocked on his feet a little “I wanted it to be a surprise”
She rounded the desk that separated them and threw her hands around his shoulders, hugging him close “Goddammit Ranpo. Never take something of mine again. I don’t care what your intentions are! Stay out of my room” she squeezed harder “but thank you. I love it a lot”
“okay, I promise in the future I’ll spoil every surprise for you. And hey, the seamstress said she left some extra fabric in the seams so if you need it adjusted again you can! Not that you should get taller, I stopped growing so you should to, not fair! Stay shorter”
Akiko just laughed. From this close it was clear-
She already was taller than him