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Barok van Zieks was used to scorning Kazuma as the son of a disgraced killer, the infamous Professor who'd murdered his brother. Now, in the space of a single trial, the world's axis had shifted.
For a day, he stubbornly clung to the last pieces of his grudge: Genshin Asougi may not have been the Professor, but he was still the man who'd wielded the blade that pierced Klint's heart, and the man who'd taken his brother from this earth. Whatever his brother had done was a matter for the courts. What right did Genshin have to play judge, jury, and executioner?
But after a day, even that resentment gave way. Barok was a just man, and he could see the honor in Genshin's unlawful-but-principled path. Unlawful and Unjust were not one and the same. If he himself had been forced to choose, between action and silence while the Professor's murders continued, could he have tolerated standing idly by? Barok was grateful he wouldn't have to find out.
So he stood before his brother's portrait in the office, and breathed a deep sigh, raised a chalice of his finest vintage, and drank it in three large gulps. And then, he put his hatred to rest.
But into that space crept a new, troubling thought: Klint had left Genshin Asougi with only two choices, and the idle path was one an honorable man couldn't stomach. Klint had driven Genshin to action, and by extension... to his own conviction and death.
Barok glanced across the room, to Kazuma's desk and cushion, and shuddered. No doubt his apprentice had already come to the same realization. Perhaps he saw Klint as his father's killer, the man who'd started down the road to hell and taken his father with him. And now every day, his father's killer's face would stare down at him. He went home stewing, slept uneasily, and resolved to broach the subject with Kazuma.
In the morning, Kazuma was at his desk, reading a witness report diligently. Barok cleared his throat. Kazuma looked up, annoyed. "Something on your mind?" he said tartly.
Does the sight of the man who led your father to his death upset you, Barok imagined saying. Kazuma was watching him with narrowed eyes, clearly impatient to get back to work. A bead of ink was gathering on the end of his quill pen, and it would fall in another second, and splatter upon the page. "Nothing," Barok said with a sigh. "Nothing a glass of my rare vintage won't soothe."
Some gulfs were simply too great, Barok mused, sipping his wine and seeing nothing of his cases. He imagined saying the words to Kazuma, tried to guess his reaction. Would he scream? Would he scoff? Would he say, It doesn't matter to me, while his face went cold and blank like a corpse? A childhood without a father—a career without a brother—it was a grievance he himself would never have forgiven, that now ran the other way. A grief too vast for words... whichever side of it he stood on.
Kazuma looked at him with a thoughtful expression, but he got back to work and didn't press. Barok swallowed a sigh. So often they were like that, both men of few words, preferring to leave underlying tensions alone. Barok had borne the title of the Reaper for a decade, saying nothing to clear his name.
He tried to focus on his own work, but his thoughts and his eyes kept returning to the massive, eye-catching portrait. He wondered if Kazuma's resentment would grow and fester—like the Reaper rumors had grown, until he was regularly being ambushed on the streets.
That night, he arranged to have the painting taken down. And when Kazuma came in the next day, when he saw the blank wall and faltered half a step, Barok hurried to explain. "It's being cleaned and restored," he lied.
"I see," Kazuma said, sounding entirely unconvinced.
A week passed. Several times a day, Barok caught sight of the raw, gray stone of the blank wall from the corner of his eye, and he stirred uneasily. Once, Klint had been his anchor: his role model to aspire to, and his reminder of the need for justice. Now, he didn't even have his brother's face to keep close by. He turned away each time with a pang in his heart. It felt like losing more than just the portrait.
Another week passed. Barok turned his desk around to face the window, turning his back on Kazuma and the wall. But the sun's glare caught in his eyes, blinding him and giving him a headache.
"How long until the restoration is finished?" Kazuma asked pointedly.
"Fine art, like fine wine, cannot be rushed, lest the brushstrokes become as coarse as the vintage. It will be ready when the solicitor contacts me, and not a moment sooner," Barok said loftily, still facing the window so that Kazuma wouldn't see him grimace. He could practically hear that annoying defense attorney's bluffing habits coming out of his own mouth.
Kazuma frowned. "That sounded like an argument worthy of Naruhodou-san," he said doubtfully.
Another week passed, until the day that Kazuma put down his book with just a bit more force than usual. Barok swung his chair around to find Kazuma glaring at him.
"If you have something to say, just say it," Kazuma demanded.
"Where did you get such a ludicrous idea?" Barok protested.
"All your shuffling and sighing!" Kazuma said, waving a hand at Barok, the desk, and the room at large. "You've picked up that book and put it down five times today. You're so noisy. I can hardly finish a thought!"
Barok van Zieks? Noisy? Had he really slipped so far?
It seemed he truly couldn't avoid it anymore, not if their work was going to be compromised. He had to say something. He opened his mouth and closed it. Before, the right words had always come to him like flowing wine, haughty, acidic, dripping with scorn. Now, he was as lost as a hapless witness on the stand. He didn't have the words for this.
"Don't torture yourself over the right words," Kazuma snorted. "The wrong ones will do."
His habits took over. "It has come to my attention," Barok began, as formal as the opening statement of a court case, "that the portrait of my brother may cause you some distress."
"Come to your attention?" Kazuma repeated sarcastically, mimicking Barok's voice. "How could it have? I certainly didn't say anything."
"Is it not obvious?" Barok said incredulously. "Your father's visage would have distressed me endlessly. Your heart cannot be made of stone—you wouldn't have come all this way to find the truth, if it were."
"No, it is not. But as it happens, I wouldn't have objected to the portrait because I don't feel anything towards your brother," Kazuma said. "The real mastermind has been punished. To me, Klint is nothing more or less than your relative. Is that all?"
He spat out the name carelessly, an unimportant name of an unimportant person, hardly worth his notice. Without waiting for an answer, Kazuma bent back over his work, leaving Barok torn between offense and relief.
After that conversation, Barok began to notice when Kazuma glanced at the still-blank wall and turned a sneer his way. He held out a few more days, then sighed and brought the painting back. He turned his desk back around, and life at the office seemed to return to normal. And with his prosecutor's eye, he began to notice and understand.
Now that he knew the history of Kazuma's sword, Kazuma's daily rituals seemed to take on a weighty, sacred meaning. He bowed before it and prayed to it every morning, holding it reverently before him. He meditated facing it in the afternoons, and bowed again before strapping it to his side to leave the office.
It was his memorial to his father, Barok realized. Kazuma couldn't keep a shrine in Great Britain, not when everyone feared and hated his father. The sword had been the best he could do.
It took a month of research, interrogating a certain Great Detective for Japanese cultural practices, and then another month of cross-referencing to refute the detective's more dubious assertions—"No, Sholmes, cat food is not a traditional offering, Mr. Natsume's practices aren't reliable evidence in this regard." Then followed another month of careful preparation. At last he was ready.
Barok sent Kazuma on a three-day trip to watch a trial in France, claiming it was part of his training. He saw Kazuma off on the train, then hurried to bring in the supplies he'd commissioned.
When Kazuma returned, he froze in his tracks. "What's this?" he asked, staring at the room in disbelief.
Against the far wall, across from Klint's portrait, stood a tall mahogany cabinet fashioned into a shrine. Barok held his breath as Kazuma approached it. His father's portrait hung prominently, high up in the center of the cabinet, over a plaque with his name engraved in gold. "Asougi Genshin," Kazuma read, tracing the words with his fingertip. The shelf held a vase of fresh flowers and a gleaming katana stand of polished wood.
"Well? Will it do?" Barok asked. The silence seemed to stretch forever. His jaw ached from how hard he was clenching it. He reminded himself to breathe.
"It's not bad," Kazuma finally said, his voice a little gruff and a little hoarse. He set Karuma on the stand and bowed deeply.
That was the start. In the days that followed, the darkness seemed to lift from the office. Kazuma brought more items for the shrine: letters and an incense tray, and on occasion, trinkets that Naruhodou or Susato sent with their letters. He never became talkative, but he did start to talk of his father in passing.
Barok began to mention his brother too, not on purpose, but when he was thinking deeply on case or when he saw something that reminded him, out it would come. "When Klint was stuck on a case, he'd review the evidence in reverse order to look from a new perspective," he heard himself saying one day. For too long it had been only grief, and now he was starting to remember more details about how his brother had lived.
There was no righting the injustices of the past, but bringing the truth to light had been the first step. Now, with relief, they could embark on the next step that would last the remainder of their lives, and with luck, their friends' and childrens' lives too: keeping their memories among the living.