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No one's allowed to disturb the early morning but the train, and for the most part, everyone accepts this as fact.
It's not just common courtesy, but natural law, as inherent as day and night: that everyday, dawn will swoop in with its wings spreading azure across the sky, and everyday, Kamiyama Station will already be waiting, bulky streetlights turned off and schedules posted dutifully to the walls. The granite floors will be swept clean. The air will be chilly, nearly nullify the smell of people. It’s about as respectful as a train station could get, as courteous to the ever-busy schedules of the world; today, even the 8 o'clock crowd is polite, the bustling of people done in relative quiet, their collective gaze kept to the ground and the gaps they step over.
And eventually, the tide of people slows. The platform empties out, all urgent pacing and frequent glances at the time. The passengers gets settled into the next part of their routine, and already, the steam engine is rearing in impatience, smoke spilling from the smokebox above, the world ready to go.
The doors slide to a shut as soon as it hits 8:05. A huff of smoke for good measure, and —
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIT!"
Loud enough to rival the train's whistle, someone waves an arm and hollers.
Then, he leaps the steps. A suitcase swings at his side. Bursting from the crowd is a man left behind on the platform, his grey suit half-thrown over an unironed shirt, a frenzy to his eyes that spoke of misplaced luggage and delayed taxis. And, still slipping on his other sleeve, he starts in a mad dash alongside the locomotive, whom, in his mind, was already speeding away from him at full speed, and he, committing the almost superhuman feat of keeping pace.
In reality, as soon as Tsukasa had screeched that for all the train station to hear, it was so offended that it'd immediately stopped in its puffing.
The future world-famous detective is forced to skid to an inelegant stop, as dust and fume wheeze from the wheels. A gasp for air, a swing of his arms for balance — and when he recovers, he’s left staring at the doors of a train car, at the warble of his reflection within the steel exterior. At first with relief, that the train hadn't left without him... then, as the seconds drag on and the doors refuse to open, his hope begins to drain away.
Well, he's already decided, he could definitely run some more. Maybe he’ll hop the train, ride along the top of the cars, anything to avoid buying another ticket. Go on, he dares, with a defiant lift of his chin, try to leave the great Tsukasa Tenma behind!
Even so, he's relieved when the doors slide open for him and there's no Herculean task for him to face: only the unimpressed expression of an assistant.
"That was far too close!" he declares, once he leapt the gap and was securely in the compartment. His right arm aching, his breathing coming out in billows, the briefcase is left to rest against a divider as he throws his head back in a dramatic pose, running a hand through his comb of honey-yellow hair. Then, when he had enough of that, he remembers the man who saved his skin and shoots him a dazzling smile. "Thank you, sir!"
The only response is a noncommittal grumble. Tsukasa swoops up his suitcase and heads off.
No one’s allowed to interrupts the morning train, but Tsukasa Tenma is not considered with the should be's and ought to's of life. After all, he's aiming to be a world famous detective, and world famous detectives are sharp, smart, quick on their feet and unyielding. They're not the sort to shrivel in the face of adversity, even when Nene pointed out once that world-famous detectives aren't a thing outside of detective books. With immediate disaster avoided and his bearings back together, he checks the collar for his detective’s badge — it’s still there, thankfully, the Pheonix Agency’s emblem of greatness — and he continues his quest, looking for a empty compartment.
And when he does find one, he sets his suitcase in his lap and immediately gets to work. He’s not on this train for vacation, after all; he’s been called to an urgent case and there’s no time to waste! With this affirmation, Tsukasa unzips the outer pocket and thumbs through the tightly packed folders, eventually finding the one he was looking for — and as he pulls out the newspaper clippings, he feels the ground beneath him shift.
Wheels turning, engine rumbling: the train is moving again. He looks out the window, and sees the station outside falling behind, irreversibly on his way.
He’s going back to his hometown.
It’s not as if he’s returning from a grand quest, but his chest swells with emotion regardless.
He wouldn’t have expected to be called to a case there, not so soon. He might be seeking the world’s attention, but home is where Tsukasa has kept his heart: where Saki lives, where Shizuku had last been reported. He’d garnered that from the newspapers he scourged, anyway, the little columns he holds that spoke of the famed and fortunate; Shizuku didn’t need to chase after the attention of the masses when they’d naturally gravitate to her instead. Even before he left, she was nothing short of a celebrity, a famed actress, a star in her own right. She could’ve dragged in the sun with her smile alone.
They quoted her just before she disappeared. He stares at the little letters now, printed in dusty sepia, held together by flimsy paper. She said she was visiting her sister.
Why didn’t she let him know..?
Before he’d even realized it, his heart has sunken in misery.
Then Tsukasa’s blinking ferociously at himself, at the ball of sorrow building in his throat. Chiding himself with a shake of his head — because look at him, acting as if she’s already gone, letting grief choke him up. As if he’s already given up! She’s simply missing, and world-famous detectives do not quiver in the face of a simple missing person case. Certainly not when it’s his fiance who has disappeared.
That’s right, he remembers, his grip nearly crinkling the newspaper. Shizuku is alive.
(Even so, someone doesn’t need to be dead to haunt you.)
Tsukasa has learned to expect the unexpected. Never disregard the unassuming, never deny a possibility — the tiniest of details could come back to bite him, if he doesn’t keep a keen eye. Assumptions are the cards which the house of deductions are based on, and he’s no longer the fledging he was when he first took to the big city: if there’s anything his troupe of co-detectives have taught him, it’s to keep an open mind.
So Tsukasa expects, but he hasn’t quite learned to prepare. His ears still ring in shock. His breath still hikes, catches in his throat.
He never sees her coming until she’s already there.
When it finally does happen, he’s not thinking about her in the present-tense. The detective is too busy pouring over his pocket journal, preparing for his course of action when he gets off the train. Sitting comfortably in his seat, throughly sunken into the details, his pen scribbles away at a productive pace, words neat, tidy, controlled — visit Saki, find Shiho, investigate the Hinomori residence, the usual motions of a missing person case — then, unfinished. His hand, frozen.
That’s when it strikes him, this sixth sense, alarms blaring without explanation. The words are suddenly a jumbled mess of confusion, his muscles refusing to move.
Then, movement.
It's not a person, not anything of physical manner. He just feels it. A gaze weighing heavy on his shoulders, this nails-against-chalkboard shudder that runs through his nerves. Just beyond his peripheral, where his vision has locked onto the width of his notebook, someone has approached him from down the aisle. Has dipped into his compartment. Has leaned into his space, silent, like a breath held.
The train rattles. The world itself feels racked with apprehension.
Tsukasa keeps his eyes down and waits for the other to speak.
Finally, his accompaniment gasps. The sound quivers, as if it would snap.
“You’re visiting Shii!” And from across his seat, it’s Shizuku’s ghosty figure, the song of her voice washing over him. “I was hoping she’d invite you someday!”
His doubts cleared, he allows himself to breathe again.
”Hmph! More like I’m inviting myself!” he replies in jest, just enough to keep the tremble from his voice. He crosses his arms, leans back in his seat. “But I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see me. It’s been too long since I’ve been able to visit.”
“That’s true,” she hums, and the excitement she speaks with fades into something softer, fonder, “She’s become such a busy woman…”
And then she goes quiet. Tsukasa can’t bring himself to continue the conversation.
How do you talk to someone who’s not here?
Shizuku is alive, he has to believe, but she’s not here. Once, she had been. Once, she was a constant in Tsukasa’s life, his fiance, his love, even with her raise to acting fame, even when he left to join this agency and their only lifeline became a chain of letters between them — she existed, at the other end of the pen, behind that careful script and her choice of stamps.
And then she didn’t. At some point, in between the cases he's been solving and the jobs she took up and all they’ve both been aiming for, she disappeared, and he didn't even learn of it until the papers reached him. The full shock of that discovery never receded; even now, he feels the trembling in his hands, how his heart lodges in his throat, her absence, a cold, miserable presence in its own right. His life, accompanied by the hypothetical, the conjugate, the if she was here or if she had seen this. The if I had noticed sooner.
So if Shizuku wasn’t here, his eyes would make room for her. Call it magic, call it madness. Whatever had happened, she’s been by his side since the day she disappeared.
Before Tsukasa knew it, he had a ghost sitting across from him.
For the most part, he tries not to look at her. There’s no reason to it except the pricklings of instinct, a gut feeling he’s long learned to heed: that if he looks at her properly, the certainty of what he sees will burn through the vision, and there will be nothing in the leathered seat across from him but the early morning rays. But he can look around her, below her, past her. He can appeal to that which distorts sight, the glass and the mirrors. And what he sees at these edges is truly, undeniably her. Hair as blue as the sky, made even paler in translucency. Hands crossed over the ruffles of her dress. Her humming, echoing from nowhere and everywhere at once, her best impression of cheer despite the circumstances.
Tsukasa turns to the window, to the reflection it holds rather than the town careening by. In the glass pane’s eyes, Shizuku exists in a smudged sort of translucence, and he can extrapolate the lift of her cheeks, the bob of her head, her face melting at the thought of seeing her beloved sister again. And from there, the rest of her appearance: she’s dressed — had been dressed, the last time he’d ever seen her — in a cream shirt, a fluttering black skirt and bow, sleeves tied up at its ends and a thin hat balanced on her head. Her usual traveling attire, as typical as if she had been catching a tram, going to the store.
It raises questions. Tsukasa has so many questions.
But for now, he sets an elbow against the window, props up his chin with a hand. And despite himself, a smile makes its way to his lips, small and unintentional, to see her like this: it’s a echo of normalcy, as if they truly were a traveling couple. A fleeting, mundane moment, where the not-sight of Shizuku soothes instead of stings.
Then, a fluttering of her expression, her head turning away.
“Ah, Tsukasa, your ticket —“
“…Tsukasa, you’re here?”
Torn back from his drifting thoughts, the detective startles, turns to the aisle outside his seat. And of course, Shizuku’s warning is correct: it’s a held-out hand which greets him, thin white gloves that crinkle at the folds, and his gaze trails up to the navy-blue of her coat, the pin she adorns, the brim of a conductor’s hat half-dipped over her eyes. It’s a young lady standing at his seat, a conductress in navy.
It's a young lady, yes, but it’s only then that he looks her in the eyes and realizes —
“Ichika!”
He leaps to his feet. His briefcase falls from his lap.
“What a pleasant surprise!” Tsukasa goes on, regardless of Ichika’s bemusement, as he bends down to set the suitcase besides him. “I didn’t realize you’d be here!”
She smiles politely. “Well, I am the conductor…”
“But still, a delight to see you again!” he insists, and takes her outstretched hand in a strong handshake. This time, her smile breaks into something more genuine — still small, still shy, but the grey pools of her eyes shine as she returns the handshake, and it really is pleasant to see his sister’s friend again, after so long out in the field. It takes him back to rose-tinted days, to a quartet of little kids let loose on the streets, to two older siblings trailing behind them…
His breath hitches in his throat. It’s a stinging memory, now, the kind that creeps up on him when he least expects it.
He refocuses on Ichika in front of him. Her expression falls, and for a moment, there's a similar sort of pain reflected in her eyes, sympathy which softens her expression.
"I..." she starts - her mouth is left open, wordless, and then she looks down to the ground and she's found the words again - "If you're here, then it's true that Shizuku's..."
"Missing, yes."
Ichika blinks. Tsukasa doesn’t rephrase himself.
"Right, missing." A distance has built itself in her voice, made tight with memory, with emotion. Tsukasa can't tell what she's thinking. "I'm sorry to hear that. It must be hard..."
"...Thank you, Ichika." It's strange to be told that, for these emotions to be so bluntly addressed, even as Ichika's gaze dances around and away from him. Even if Shizuku isn't gone. Still, he accepts her condolences, and it occurs to him a second later, "I could say the same to you too. She's Shiho's sister, after all."
He's about to ask her how Shiho and the rest have been, but he says Shiho and it's as if she has seen death — it flashes across Ichika's expression, a rigid shock, a tightening of her features — and it catches Tsukasa off-guard.
"Right, of course," but she regains herself too quick for him to comment. She holds out a open palm for him, her tone freezing over in professionalism. "Your ticket, Tsukasa."
(He hesitates. He wants to question further, detective's habit. But she's already readied the ticket-puncher and he really can't hold her, not when they're both grown up now, caught in the middle of their duties.)
So he just nods without comment, brings the briefcase onto his lap. It’s somewhere in there, he remembers, as he wrestles with the locks; he'd shoved it in with all the rest of his files in his rush to catch the train, and the leather casing bulges for his efforts. He needles the sides of it for the zipper, scowling when it refuses to budge. Really, he intended to pack light...
The seconds slip by. The train rumbles impatiently. Ichika's beginning to fidget with her hands.
"Stubborn thing..!" Tsukasa mumbles through gritted teeth. The first time he sees Ichika in months, and this happens. In a last-ditch effort, he hits the suitcase with a fist, and to his surprise, the zipper flies off with a pop.
Then his suitcase explodes.
It doesn't, actually, explode, but the seconds afterwards are long and panicked and his head rings loud enough that he thinks that it had. Some outburst of sound, some force of energy had erupted, strong enough that he'd startled and pushed the suitcase away in a panic, and he hears the BANG! it makes, the scattering of papers that ensue.
And for the long seconds afterwards, he’s struck dumb with the thought of What just happened?! He certainly didn’t pack that much. Still reeling, he turns to Ichika, and sees her frightened, eyes squeezed shut and arms held out in front of her.
She's also covered in confetti.
He looks down at himself. He, too, has confetti on his suit. It peppers his shirt with pink and purple and green, a disaster of hues against the sophisticated grey of his attire. And in the center of his floor, propped up proudly in the confetti nest of his suitcase, is a colorful, handwritten message.
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR SUPER-SECRET ALL-ALONE DETECTIVE CASE TSUKASA!!! EVERYONE'S CHEERING YOU ON FROM HERE ⪩(ᐢᗜᐢ)⪨ (DON'T LISTEN TO NENE SHE'S CHEERING YOU ON TOO)
…Right. It’s coming back to him now, a memory that pokes its head from amidst this morning’s hurry. He’d told Emu that she could keep the ticket in his briefcase, and clearly, didn’t specify what she couldn’t. It’s foreign, really, remembering that he has a team alongside him now; so long he’s been out in the field alone, trying to claim the title of a world famous detective, that it’s a shock to have his office actually lived in.
But as charming of a gesture it is, he almost wishes the suitcase spared him the embarrassment and just exploded.
“My apologies, Ichika.” Tsukasa runs a hand through the lengths of his scalp and ends up combing out more confetti. “My co-detectives…”
He’s not quite sure how to put it, but Ichika doesn’t seem to need further explanation. She just nods understandingly, and he just hands over the ticket, and with a punch of the ticket-puncher, it’s silently returned.
“Um…” His gaze follows hers as she looks over the compartment, the windows and the floor and the seats all speckled with confetti and littered with documents, and her frown turns in a tighter wince. “Could I ask you to clean up? I have to collect tickets…”
“Yes, of course! It’s my mess, anyway.” Emu’s mess, he quietly corrects, and maybe Rui’s as well, now that he looks over the miniature confetti dispenser. He huffs his disapproval at the suitcase. “Carry on, Ichika.”
She meets his eyes with a thankful smile, and turns away just as quickly. With a hurry to her step, she's fled the crime scene; the compartment door slides open with a shuddering grate, and Ichika disappears into the next car.
Tsukasa stares down at the confetti on his lap.
“There had to have been a better way to wish me off,” he says to himself, dusting away the bits of paper clinging to his chest. In a flash, he remembers his companion across from him, and as he begins to collect the confetti in his cupped head, he rambles on, “I suppose they felt bad about not being able to say goodbye in-person. They’re characters, I tell you… and talented, but still. Ah!” — and Tsukasa’s struck with a brilliant idea, so much that he looks back to the window, to that who lives in its reflection — “I’ll tell you what, I’ll take you to meet them one day! You’ll enjoy Rui’s company, I feel—“
And just as suddenly, his hands stop moving. The words trail off into empty air. Tsukasa’s left quieted, staring at the window’s reflection.
Shizuku isn’t there.
The world beyond him continues to rush on.
His eyes latch onto the sight out of plain instinct: of buildings, of telephone phones, of brick walls which hide away the apartments, inching in on the train’s path. So close that the shadows smudge across the compartment, drag its claws across the walls. A shudder overtakes his body, a rush of loneliness and horror and all that haunts him, worsened by the sway of the train cars, by the sway of his heart, realizing all over again what he has lost.
He’ll find her, he swears, silently. Shizuku is alive, after all. They’ll be sitting in this train again, one day.
With that silent promise, he continues to sweep up the confetti.