Chapter Text
Fukuzawa sat restlessly by the hospital bed, his fingers wrapped protectively around the boy’s own limp ones. Though he had many thoughts and feelings swirling in his mind like a raging sea, the main thing he felt was anger.
Anger at himself for not releasing soon enough.
But mostly anger for those who dared lay a hand on his son.
~~~
It started off a normal morning - or as normal as things could be with a boy like Ranpo Edogawa living in your house. Ranpo had been living with him for almost 7 months now and Fukuzawa felt as though he was finally getting into the groove of things. He had been dancing around the notion of he and Ranpo becoming a family for the better part of a year, with his steadfast refusal to mentally acknowledge any and all paternal feelings he felt as he was still trying to wrap his head around the whole situation. But he was finally understanding his role a little more now. And that had to count for something, right?
Ranpo, on the other hand, seemed to have fully attached himself to Fukuzawa straight away and was more than comfortable being clingy and getting up in his personal space, as evidenced by current events:
Fukuzawa was stood in the kitchen trying (and only somewhat succeeding) to plate up their breakfast as Ranpo had his arms wrapped around his legs, rocking him back and forth like a whiny child as he complained,
“Fukuzawaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I’m so boreeeeeeeeeeeeeed! Why can’t we go work a case instead of eating boring breakfast?”
“Because we don’t have any. We’re still a relatively new agency, and it will take a while for the government to recognise an ex-bodyguard and a 14-year-old boy as capable and respectable detectives.”
He sighed and his arms drooped slightly around Fukuzawa. Of course, this was not new information to Ranpo. But he was hoping that maybe something had come up, especially since he had heard some rumblings on the street of a ‘fancy new detective agency’ that debuted 7 months ago with a fake murder case involving a famous actor and apparently a gifted detective. He’d assumed that the excitement surrounding his superior gift would’ve elicited a few cases by now. Didn’t people want to see the work of the greatest detective in the world in action? But alas, his dreams of solving his boredom were crushed.
“Besides, even if we were to have a case, you would still have to eat your breakfast. Now, hurry up and eat.”
At this, Ranpo fully dissolved onto the floor with a groan.
Fukuzawa sighed before extending the boy an olive branch.
“If you do, I’ll buy you more of those sweets you like”
~~~
Fukuzawa had made a grave mistake.
He stood in the supermarket holding a basket full of sweets in one hand, and hiding his face in embarrassment in the other as Ranpo ran rampant in the candy aisle, laughing wildly as he added more and more into the basket.
Fukuzawa knew there was no way that mixing the already hyper Ranpo with this many sweets would be a good idea, but he found that when it came to the kid, for some reason, he had a hard time saying no. Besides, he had learnt early on of the boy’s sweet tooth, and it was clear that Ranpo was in need of a pick-me-up recently, so he sighed and resigned himself to his fate and he took the basket to the queue for the till and tried to ignore the judgemental looks of other customers and workers.
Ranpo, after all of 3 seconds, had declared himself incredibly bored and told Fukuzawa he would wait outside. The man just nodded, too tired to deal with his shenanigans and figuring that the boy wouldn’t wander off as he never went too far without help.
However, when the young detective walked out the supermarket’s doors, something piqued his interest. He saw a hooded figure running into a nearby alleyway, leaving a small trail of blood behind them.
Aha! This is what Ranpo had been waiting for! Finally, a mystery to solve. He ran across the street to the entrance of the alleyway and began following the trail of blood. The trail ended soon at a dead end with no mystery figure in sight, just a pool of blood.
Now things were getting really interesting.
The boy reached into his pocket to grab his glasses, but the second his hands met the cool metal frames, he felt something smash into his head as he blacked out.