Work Text:
Shiho and Shinichi
I was so tired I almost couldn't stand. After an exhausting day at the police station, busy solving complicated and intricate murder cases, all I wanted was to go home and get some rest. On a cold day at the beginning of January it was not recommended to stay out too long, I thought. I arrived at the block of my house and, when I approached the gate of Dr. Agasa's residence, I saw the house lit up. I haven't been there for a while actually. I remember Miyano inviting me to home a couple of times to have a coffee and watch the Big Osaka games together, but I was so busy with work that I had to refuse her invitations.
I entered with the spare key.
"Hey Kudo" immediately greeted me.
" Hey Miyano hi how are you-" at that moment I shocked. She was in the center of the living room with a dress that reached a few centimetres above her knees and high black heeled boots. She was fixing his hair and I was stunned.
"Kudo you're drooling"
I immediately tried to recover and answer with a joke, believing that he was making fun of me but then I actually realized that I had saliva just out of my lower lip and I was immediately embarrassed. But I had never seen her like this. Where was she going? What was going on? She was dating someone and I didn't know anything about it?
"Kudo-kun? Kudo-kun are you okay?”
" um yes, yes I'm fine"
"Ok" he said "I guess you're here for the food, it's in the oven warm if you want it, unless you came to ask me about the research I promised you about the murder suspects for your last case, I put them on the couch"
"Yes, thank you, wait miyano"
" What's up?"
"How do you know I was going to come?"
"In what sense?"
"You cooked for me, right? How did you know I would come here if I didn't warn you or mention that I would pass?”
At that moment there was silence, a contemplative silence, I saw her absorbed in her thoughts until she answered:
"Every Friday you always stay a little longer at the police station, especially when there is a complicated case to work on, so you come home late in the evening and exhausted and end up having dinner with bento bought at the supermarket months before, or, you come here to Professor Agasa to see if there is something to eat"
Again, for the second time in five minutes, I was shocked and impressed . How did this woman read me and know me so well. And my surprise must be expressed on my face because she said: "kudo we've known each other for many years, besides it's not that difficult to understand what's going through your head"
"I think you're right, by now I must have become predictable but what do you know, maybe I just went to see how you were"
"What? "
"Today I just came by to see you Miyano, I had completely forgotten about the case and also about dinner. I wanted to see you.“
"Passing by just to be together for a while without requests for favors or anything else? Impossible, it wouldn't be you”
This last line made me a little uncomfortable. “ Did you really think so? “ But i wasn't joking before.
" What do you say if we eat together?"
"I would like a lot of course, but I have a date."
“ a date? With some of your friends?”
"No kudo, with a boy"
"Ah"
And there I didn't understand why but a feeling of sadness and anguish pervaded me. Miyano, my brilliant partner and faithful friend was meeting a guy. It wasn't hard to imagine, she's a beautiful girl, but it was hard to accept. I decided to have dinner and she, who was already ready and was just waiting for this mysterious boy, sat down at the table with me to accompany me a little.
i was curious and i asked "Do I know him? Do you like it?”
"No you don't know him and well kudo-kun if I’ll go out with him , I'll have to like him right?"
"Right" " it's just that you never told me about it. Can I at least know who it is?”
"How nosey and annoying you are. Anyway it's a colleague of mine from the forensics, he asked me today to go out actually and I didn't expect it, you can say it's sudden"
"I know all your colleagues but it never seemed to me that any of them were interested in you."
"Eh you see instead, life surprises. Do you remember when I asked you to go see the jazz show tonight?”
"Yes, I told you no because I had to work on the last murder case and in fact it is"
"Eh, I don't know how it happened, but right after you refused my invitation here at Agasa, as soon as I arrived at the center, Nakagawa-kun asked me to go there with him"
"And you accepted"
"Yes"
We remained silent from that moment on. I really didn't know what to say. She, on the other hand, seemed calm, serene.
At a certain point we heard the engine of a nearby car and we realized that this Nakagawa had arrived. Miyano greeted me and went out to meet him and I was left alone with my thoughts in front of the now almost empty plate.
I could also have gone to the show tonight, I thought.
I told myself I was calm but I don't know why my heart was beating like crazy. I realized at that moment how stupid he was to reject his invitation every time for an affair and other futile reasons. Miyano thought he was only looking for her to discuss his murder cases or to ask her for information or laboratory analysis or for dinner. You considered me an idiot.
Is it possible that in all these years he has not been able to transmit anything more to her? And then this new guy, he had heard about him by chance that he was going out tonight. If instead of going through the residence I had decided to continue and go to my house, maybe I wouldn't have known anything.
Would you have told me? Would you have told me about him? Or one day she would just enter the central and casually tell me that she got engaged to this? And then there was only him, maybe more men were courting her.
Doubts were haunting me, I was tired and my heart was in turmoil. Waiting for an ending, a conclusion, an explanation that I didn't find.