Archive of Our Own

Kudo Shinichi was avoiding him.
This had probably started a few weeks ago.

Normally, for someone as well-known at the university as Kudo Shinichi, disappearing from campus every few days was perfectly normal. Even when he did show up, he would just hurry between classrooms, leave as soon as his lectures were over, and the only person ever by his side was this friend who looked strikingly similar to him. Naturally, that friend was also a minor celebrity at school—but compared to the detective, he seemed far more relaxed, the kind of guy who looked like a carefree playboy. As a result, he was very naturally treated as a go-between, a human message relay for the perpetually busy genius. If anyone happened to harbor some interest in either him or the detective, he would smile kindly like some sort of proxy knight and accept everything on their behalf.

In reality, only the person involved knew that those messages never reached the detective’s ears at all. A man as sharp as the detective could not possibly be unaware of this, yet he never pointed it out. Kuroba Kaito grasped this unspoken, instant mutual understanding with ease—perhaps the detective himself even enjoyed it, just like those secrets of theirs that never saw the light of day and were known only to the two of them.
It gave great satisfaction to Kaito’s unspoken possessiveness, more thrilling than the moment before a greenhouse rose finally bloomed.

—which only made the current distance feel all the more deliberate and obvious.

Kuroba Kaito stirred his spoon and turned to ask whether they should go out for dinner and see the night view tomorrow, since it was the weekend. Before he could finish, Kudo Shinichi stood up and waved to a female friend he had been seeing around a lot lately. The second half of the invitation, never spoken aloud, weakened along with that line of sight and then dissolved into the mist of Tokyo.

“Is that Kudo-kun’s… family member? You really look alike.”

The woman—whose appearance he truly did not care about—ran over with a familiar air toward Kudo Shinichi, but her gaze turned to him instead.
…We haven’t even been introduced yet. How rude.

Just as Kuroba Kaito was about to put on that easy, universally gentle smile, he heard Kudo Shinichi, already turned away from him, say:

“…No, no. Just an ordinary friend. Let’s talk somewhere else.”

And after that, all Kuroba Kaito could see was his back.

—Ordinary friend.

Fortunately, he had never been the kind of person who obsessed over outcomes, nor was he someone who would start complaining over a casual label like that. It was just that there were so many things buried in the unspoken second half of his words: the fact that he had, unusually, booked a popular restaurant with a view far in advance; that he wanted to find an excuse to ask what Kudo had been busy with lately; that he was getting tired of this push-and-pull distance, and if possible, wanted to see whether there was a chance for them to take things further.
And then, during some random lunchtime, all of that was lightly reduced to “ordinary friend.”

Not even simply “friend.” Certainly not “close friend.”

A close friend would share similar goals and tastes with him, have plenty of common topics to talk about, share updates about romantic lives, and visit each other within their highly overlapping social circles when they had time—naturally, that was Hattori Heiji.
A good lover would wait obediently while he was busy, always place him at the highest priority, continue caring for him even when unseen and unanswered, and even if they eventually chose to give up, retreat gracefully back into a friendship—but he himself did not like that kind of relationship.
A good rival would face him with everything they had when he craved a mystery. No matter how excessive the sweet talk in the arena, it could always be ambiguously explained away as respect and admiration for an opponent. But a rival could only go that far; once the stage was cleared, they had the obligation to disappear promptly. The rule was that they must never enter his life outside the game. Besides, he had already ended his life as a phantom thief—there was no longer any need to weave riddles for him under the guise of a rival. That would be no different from exposing his own hand, and in any case, Kudo Shinichi should not know who he really was.

But none of that was necessary, because they were ordinary friends.
Ordinary friends only ask about the next classroom or each other’s weekend plans during brief gaps between university lectures, and even then only as a matter of politeness; ordinary friends each order their own dishes when they eat, share the same table for the short span of a lunch break, and once the meal is over, that one-to-one relationship ends without hesitation; ordinary friends walk side by side for three to five minutes on the way out after class, then part ways when they reach different train entrances.

In Kudo Shinichi’s eyes, that was all they were—ordinary friends.

But that was fine. Even ordinary friends could one day become close friends, and he did have precedents of getting involved with someone close at hand. As for whether they could eventually move on to something further, that was still unknown.
—Then they would start as ordinary friends.

White moves first.
Kuroba Kaito began to appear, almost like a stalker, in every place where Kudo Shinichi would be. The latter suspected, with some subtle unease, that he might have suddenly developed some kind of delusion, but still did not stop him.
When White failed to receive a suppressive counter from Black in time, things escalated to the point where, whenever Kudo Shinichi turned his back and took even a single step away, he would immediately close the distance. He began attending all the days on which their schedules overlapped, strictly following the timetable he had previously investigated. If the figure in the corner of his vision failed to appear at school for even one day, he would deliberately take a detour to slip an empty card—one without any riddle written on it—into the mailbox of the Kudo residence.
A subtle hint where any written words would only be superfluous—even in blind spots beyond one’s field of vision, completely fixing one’s gaze on someone was not permitted.

The pawn advances, the knight and bishop are developed, yet Black remains still.
No matter how suggestive those looks might be, as long as the person involved reduced them to junk mail and maintained silence as if nothing had happened, this minor incident would not turn into any kind of crisis.
But these glances that lifted the corner of a card about to be flipped, these temptations, were not fundamentally different from probing along the edge of the encirclement laid out by the police. Even though both sides tacitly maintained silence, he insisted on pressing down once more on the quiet strings of thought. And you knew that every silence was the butterfly’s wings that stirred a storm at sea.
A perfect riddle was certainly enough to set one’s blood racing, but fragments of an unfinished puzzle left unsaid were even more enticing. A detective was precisely such a creature, naturally pursuing every immeasurable labyrinth as if it were food—and also such a creature that, if someone replaced the cheese in the cage with an unfinished riddle, he would pick up the key in front of him even while knowing full well it was a trap.

It only took three weeks to form a habit, but a lifetime to destroy excess curiosity. Construction and deconstruction were his sense of security and his eternal trump card; the drooping threads of the web would surely tremble on schedule.
Kuroba Kaito believed this without the slightest doubt.

…Or at least, he should have.

Kudo Shinichi was no longer avoiding him. That was a good sign. But he always maintained a certain distance from him—neither the firm focus they shared when facing the same enemy, nor the blazing intensity that seemed ready to burn the sun when only each other existed in their eyes. There was always a faint separation, as if something lay between them, a distance like camellias in the mist.
Kuroba Kaito could not guess the reason. For someone who did not specialize in deduction, it was still too difficult. Whenever it involved the great detective, it brought him back to that day at Tokyo Tower. The detective’s thoughts were harder to grasp than the third clue that had gone unspoken back then. The difference was that, at the time, no matter how thorny the challenge, there had been a little detective standing behind him. Now, what he had to face was Kudo Shinichi’s eyes, hesitating slightly when they looked at him.

He was about to ask the great detective again whether he had any free evenings lately to go out together, when someone in the distance waved toward them.
As expected, it was once again that female classmate who had been particularly close to Kudo recently—long hair, pale skin, a face that left an impression even when seen from afar, even when he had no interest in her at all. Although his own strategy had been advancing steadily, whenever she was around, Kudo never let him hear even a single word of their conversation. It wasn’t that he had never looked into who she was, but after learning nothing more than her name, he felt no desire to know anything further about this stranger. Back when he was still a phantom thief, he had been full of interest in cute women. But now, how broad-minded would he have to be to want to know the clues of his own rival.

Kudo, is she your next target? Do you really like people who are out of reach, craving novelty that much?

He felt ashamed of the dark thoughts that surfaced within him. It couldn’t be like that— the great detective wasn’t that kind of person.
Then he saw the gentle smile that appeared on Kudo Shinichi’s face in an instant, and without even half a second of hesitation, he decided to grab him and pull him into the conversation as well, turning that happiness about to be shared with someone else into a flicker of confusion.
—Look at me. Even if it isn’t a smile, that’s fine.
—I don’t want you to keep showing me that distant expression. I don’t want you to keep doing things I know nothing about.

That was what Kuroba Kaito thought.
But this very clearly went beyond the bounds of ordinary friends, even of close friends. Kudo Shinichi had not yet recovered from his surprise, but he still finished waving to the person in the distance—and then suddenly turned around and grabbed him by the collar.
“…You’re Kaito Kid, aren’t you? If you are, then stop putting cards in my mailbox and stop following me.”

The great detective let those words slip out lightly, right in the middle of an ordinary afternoon. The eyes that usually gazed gently at everyone narrowed slightly at the corners, beautifully knit with a faint frown, and did not quite meet his gaze. Even spoken in a volume only the two of them could hear, it was more than enough for Kuroba Kaito to understand exactly what it meant.

He carefully examined that fierce face gripping his collar. He had seen it so many times before—on the far side of borders where he had forced him to yield, on airships, beneath every beautiful or ugly night sky. It had always been a game kept precisely within the distance between him and the little detective. And yet now, for the first time, he felt he could no longer read it. This sense of weariness in avoiding eye contact seemed to fall outside the range of all the micro-expressions he had learned, even for someone long adept at keeping a poker face.

—Is that so? If you already knew, why did you stay silent for so long? And with what intentions would you, for someone you haven’t even known that long, use such a sharp blade to destroy the unspoken understanding that had existed between us for so long?

Kuroba Kaito watched the person walking away, his gaze uncontrollably drifting to the figure beside the detective. Shorter by quite a bit, she had to tilt her head up slightly; after saying a few words she would lower her gaze and smile. Her long hair curled down her back, and only when their eyes met would she blink a beat too late. He watched those unreadable mouth movements grow farther and farther away, and suddenly wished he could turn into a carrot, or into the lure of an anglerfish—a single beam of light—so that the detective would forever chase after his shadow.
But he was Kuroba Kaito. He could not become a carrot, and he very much disliked anglerfish.

The black queen leapt out from the back rank for a decisive strike, overturning the board in an instant. Only then did he remember that the snow drifting inside a crystal ball existed only because the magician holding it kept turning it in his hands.

The winter sun made it hard to read any expression. The unreasonable wind swept past with thin clouds, leaving him feeling slightly cold. The figure at the edge of his vision had already vanished, the sound of the wind covering a barely audible sigh. He looked up at a sky that showed no intention of darkening at all, thinking that it was fortunate the sun’s lifespan was longer than that of all of them—that no matter how much time passed, the rhythm of Earth’s sunsets barely changed. Perhaps the night view he had so wanted to see with him, but never managed to, had in fact already been their last time, years ago.

Kuroba Kaito stopped refusing invitations to seminar mixers.
He tried to discipline his peripheral vision, to pull himself away from the detective. Being ordinary friends was the easiest thing in the world: stopping at pragmatic small talk, resisting the urge to turn back when brushing past each other, limiting the crowds of beautiful women at school who favored him, while every night in the city looked more or less the same.
“Next time, bring Kudo along too,” the person beside him leaned over and said, already drunk enough not to know what they were saying. “There’s someone who’s really looking forward to meeting him, you know. You’re probably the only one in the whole school who can get him to come out—he’s always so busy he ignores everyone.”
Kuroba Kaito’s hand holding the glass paused for a moment, then lifted naturally into the air. Golden foam rose up from the bottom, like snow reversing itself inside a glass sphere.

“You know, right? Miss Hasegawa is really into him. But he never meets anyone privately, so she’s been troubled about it… and her friends are all super beautiful too. Don’t you want to meet them, Kuroba?”

—That name again.
Humans were truly strange creatures. Some people should never occupy any weight at all in one’s life, yet once they left a brief impression in some inexplicable place, they would thereafter appear again and again at every intersection of one’s paths, confiscating even the smallest impulse to escape.
If they were close friends, he would naturally care about how things were going in Kudo’s love life. He would talk about personal matters frequently, like that detective from Osaka, staying closely connected with endless conversations. But the last time they had met was already weeks ago, and their chat history had stopped at polite exchanges from long before. As an ordinary friend, Kuroba Kaito had no need to concern himself with his personal life.
And ordinary friends would, at a moment like this, hesitate not at all to give a push to a potential romance.

The foam surged upward, then shattered and fell the instant it met the light, like a figurehead mermaid at a ship’s bow.
Kuroba Kaito tucked away the fleeting, misplaced expression that had surfaced when he tilted his head back to look at the lights, turned toward the drunken classmate slumped beside him, and answered with an easy smile.

“…Sure. Next time, I’ll bring him along too.”

—That was why the detective was here now.

To be honest, he hadn’t expected the great detective to actually agree. He had carefully controlled his tone, making the invitation sound as casual and flawless as one offered to any passing classmate. Yet the detective only looked at him from afar, lowered his lashes, and asked questions he couldn’t quite decipher—asking whether he was sure, whether this really was his choice. For a moment, Kuroba Kaito even wondered whether the detective’s usually brilliant mind had correctly understood his meaning, despite the words themselves being so simple.

Snow that melted the moment it touched the ground drifted behind Kudo Shinichi. The collar of his black coat covered half of his lowered face; he hadn’t had time to put on a scarf or a hat, leaving his cheeks and the tips of his ears flushed red from the cold. And then, unusually, the detective—who was always so good at handling rejection—hesitated for a long time. Only after the fingers exposed to the air had gone numb with cold did he seem to make up his mind, lifting his face to show half a smile again, gentle enough to make Kuroba Kaito doubt whether he had truly read the loneliness that had flickered across it a second earlier.
“Then take me with you.”

—Pop.
The sound of beer foam bursting rang out with strange clarity in the crowded izakaya.

The heroine of tonight’s romance story wore a vivid red dress, standing out strikingly even amid the warm yellow lighting. Urged on by the crowd, Kuroba Kaito gave up his seat and moved to a place a few people away from the male lead of the evening, letting himself be swallowed by the noisy, swaying faces around him.
He subtly hunched his shoulders, letting the clamor separate him from that half of the room, so the crowd could easily conceal that person’s expression.

Fortunately, he himself was also something of a celebrity at school. The seat beside him was never empty—filled instead with beautiful women he rarely encountered in daily life, all the type he would normally like. Gentle, proactive, lips tinted with color and glistening faintly like honey. They took turns drinking with him. The beer wasn’t anything special—an ordinary taste you could find anywhere—yet it always made any man who drank it grow overly excited, collapsing drunkenly against whatever woman happened to be nearby.
No matter how much time passed, Kuroba Kaito still couldn’t get used to the bitterness of beer with no sweetness. And yet, right now, he wanted nothing more than to sink into this indulgence, to surrender with closed eyes amid different shades of sweet lipstick to the low alcohol content. But the more he tried to persuade himself while facing those shy or smiling expressions, the more the little devil inside him lingered stubbornly in his mind.

No—he wouldn’t react like this.
He would frown in faint disgust and ask if something was wrong with him, then refuse outright. He would never wear such a conciliatory expression.

Without drawing attention to himself, he clinked glasses with someone’s hand—whose didn’t matter. As long as there was alcohol.
—Perhaps what truly made alcohol addictive was precisely its lack of sweetness, the way it didn’t become as easily consumed as some random drink from a vending machine. What made alcohol addictive was the sense of taboo that only came at twenty, the fact that it required an ID check before you were allowed to touch it. That distinction was what made it feel precious and different, what made someone like him—who loved sweets yet always chose stimulation—cling to it so stubbornly.

The frequent clatter of glasses exceeded the level of politeness he usually maintained. The male classmate who had invited him remarked that he looked incredibly happy, that it was rare to see him so excited at a mixer. Kuroba Kaito lifted his face and laughed, saying really? Then it must mean he’d invited the right people today.
He lowered his gaze, watching the faces beside him change several times. He kept the same curve of a smile, spoke similar words that might please them, yet in the brief blur of a blink, he was already starting to forget their features. It hadn’t been like this when he was in disguise—back then, he would investigate every detail of a person’s life, terrified of missing something and failing to fool those sharp eyes.

The warm air was too thick, making his consciousness float just above the surface of the ground. He could only mechanically repeat the motion of lifting and setting down his glass. His gaze, too, felt programmed—not allowed to drift even an inch toward the left half of the room, or else he would see that striking red.
So striking that even a single moment of peripheral vision was enough to remember the face beneath that long hair—light-colored eyes, straight hair brushing the shoulders, an awkward, restrained expression that suggested she wasn’t used to places like this. He had always liked this type. That had never changed.
He should have known this long ago. How was it that he only remembered when he was on the verge of getting drunk?

Maybe it was because it was too lively.
The livelier it was, the more his body felt like an empty shell.
Noisy to the point of irritation.

An izakaya halfway through the night was the place farthest from order. The rented room was separated from the human world by nothing more than a paper sliding door. As people began to spout nonsense in their drunken fantasies, someone suggested playing the King’s Game. Only then did some of the still-conscious ones remember there had been something important they were supposed to do tonight, and they started jeering, turning to look at the faces of the two people who were still sober.
Kuroba Kaito hadn’t been that drunk to begin with, and what little haze there was had already faded. He was starting to want to leave. Unfortunately, Kudo Shinichi’s seat was near the door—any move to exit would inevitably be caught by his eye.
But it no longer mattered.

He stood up to get his coat while all eyes were on the detective, and sure enough, Kudo Shinichi turned back and gave him that brief glance. It had been three hours since he had last looked straight at his face. The detective was clearly a little drunk now, the red spreading across his face like rose petals steeped in hot water. Or perhaps it looked more like that dress.

“Leaving already? You’re the one who asked me to come, and now you’re going to leave by yourself first—still as good as ever at playing with people.”

As Kuroba Kaito passed by, he was stopped just like that by a line spoken with no clear intent. He lowered his gaze to the detective’s slightly disheveled bangs.

Wasn’t it already decided? What was the point of provoking him now—weren’t you the one who walked away first? He had a stomach full of anger he wanted to vent, but every time he met those slightly damp eyes, he couldn’t get a single word out. Kudo had always had a poor tolerance for alcohol, which was why he almost never came to mixers like this. Judging by what was on the table, he was probably already at his limit. But this was someone who would absolutely never admit that himself, so among everyone present, only he—who used to stick so close to him—would know. What is this supposed to be, asking for help? Doing it in this slightly threatening way really does suit a KID Killer. He paused where he was for a few seconds. The detective didn’t say anything else, just looked up at him blankly, reflecting a blurred image of him in his eyes.

—Fine.
I really can’t do anything about you. Whether it’s Edogawa or Kudo. I really can’t beat you.

Kuroba Kaito sighed, sat back down beside him amid the noise, lingered for a few seconds in that gaze, then smoothly turned away and put on the standard charming smile that looked good at any time. This was probably the last time. From now on, you wouldn’t come to drinking parties anymore, and if you did, someone would take you home. You wouldn’t need to deliberately take the opposite train line just to get back to a place that counted as home.

“Then I’ll be the judge and prepare the drawing.”

“—Hey, Kuroba, that’s unfair. Then Kuroba won’t get punished at all, I was looking forward to it,” someone nearby complained.
“Well, that can’t be helped. He’s always good at magic and drawing lots—otherwise he’d just be king all night…”
“…Huh?”

Everyone’s attention shifted again from Kudo Shinichi to Kuroba Kaito, who was half standing. Just preparing the magic props, there was no one who could outshine him in any situation that called for attention. With his eyes lowered, he folded paper as if breathing life into it; in just a few seconds, a rose was engraved at the base of the winning lot, materials prepared at some unknown point. He still looked perfectly at ease, thoughtfully setting everything up, completely unlike someone who had been drinking for hours—every inch the prince. That red figure sat there with her chin in her hand, staring at him and remarking, “Kuroba’s face feels like I’ve seen it somewhere before. It looks really familiar…”
“So even Miss Hasegawa uses such old-fashioned pickup lines? That’s surprising,” Kuroba Kaito said without blinking, tossing the chopstick engraved with a rose into the container. “But it’s probably because I look a lot like Kudo. Everyone says that.”
He shook the container, the clatter of the chopsticks sounding by Hasegawa’s ear, her face blocking the izakaya’s light and casting a halo over his curled hair. “Then we’ll start from here.”

The moment he agreed to take part in this game, Kuroba Kaito had realized it. No matter how many layers of flesh eventually grew, an apple placed on the scales would still show the imbalance caused by worms. After a series of harmless punishments, the real peak of the atmosphere finally arrived, as someone made a long detour before letting their gaze settle once more on Kudo Shinichi, who had drawn the lucky number.

“Number seven—tell everyone here whether you currently have someone you like.”

No matter how much he didn’t want to hear it, this moment was bound to come. Like a warrior caught by thorns in a maze, there was always only one possible ending, let alone a probability this simple. Kuroba Kaito frowned slightly at the lot in the detective’s hand—the number he himself had written when making them. But no one cared about the slip of paper anymore. Everyone, sober or not, wanted to hear the answer. He didn’t even need to turn to see the detective’s distant, alcohol-softened expression; even the silence as he thought before speaking was long enough to be unmistakable.

“…I suppose you could say I do.”

The detective set down the lot in his hand a little awkwardly, his head tilted several degrees farther than usual, his eyes reflecting someone it was impossible to tell. It was the answer he least wanted to hear, carrying a dangerous warning, already letting him sense the answer he wouldn’t like. Like how, on the day before a mouth ulcer forms, he would always bite his lip with uncanny precision.
Naturally, cheers filled the cramped room at once.
“Who is it?”
“Is she here?”
“Hey, Kudo’s still single, right?”
“Wow, aren’t you going to confess while you have the chance? Making a girl wait too long really isn’t very manly.”

The mixed voices of men and women egged the detective on, pushing him to take another step forward. The collective body heat that also happened to surround Kuroba Kaito made him feel sick. He quietly stared at the decorations on the wall, though his gaze never settled on anything in particular. —Even at a time like this, he wanted to be different from the others, wanted to be remembered, so he didn’t follow the crowd in looking at him.

Are you going to say yes?
Are you going to say her name outright?
Say that name, satisfy everyone’s excessive curiosity, and then he would naturally step back—returning to the role of the ordinary friend you both most expect and least expect.

It would take only three seconds to pause and say her name. Perhaps longer, factoring in the way alcohol slowed the brain. But even drunk, the great detective would still calculate faster than most people. That meant he had only the time it took for a coin to pass from index finger to little finger before the match was declared over.
Kuroba Kaito’s fingers began to fall in sequence from the thumb, practiced, as if playing a nonexistent piano to the air.

One…
The sound of a glass and a plate clinking.

Two…
Someone was already so drunk they kept repeating the same line, probably not caring about the answer at all.

Three…
Chewing noises continued even now.

Four…
Someone tried to hype the mood and started calling out Hasegawa’s name—but it wasn’t the great detective’s voice.

The nonexistent coin dropped from his little finger onto the table, making no sound. And yet the long silence was deafening to him. This kind of hesitation, this complete lack of forward motion, was something Kuroba Kaito had never seen before. He wasn’t usually like this with other people. He would always answer frankly or refuse outright. If love truly had to make someone lose their head, he never thought that person would be Kudo Shinichi.

Suspicious, he tilted his head as well to look at the detective’s expression. Kudo Shinichi still sat upright in his seat, showing no inclination toward anyone, simply holding his glass, his gaze reflecting no one at all.
That wasn’t the prelude to a dramatic display. He had shared too many moments of standing shoulder to shoulder with him to mistake it. He understood all of his hesitation at a glance.
—For reasons he didn’t know, he clearly didn’t want to answer. And the only person who could tell was himself, just as he had understood every silent cry in the night.

Kuroba Kaito half rose from his seat and snapped his fingers. In that single moment of distraction, all the lots in everyone’s hands returned to the chopstick holder.
“That’s another question, so let’s save it for the next round.”

Whether it was a magician’s intuition, a delusion, or simply a tactic to delay learning the outcome, in any case, it wasn’t checkmate yet.
And if it came to refusing to admit defeat, the only person in the world who could rival Kuroba Kaito was you.

And so, until the very end, no one ever asked the second question.
It wasn’t just because the rose-engraved lot never fell into the same group again. Even if anyone else showed the slightest desire to press further, Kuroba Kaito would volunteer himself, saying he could tell the detective didn’t intend to answer, so they should just drink instead—and since the detective couldn’t drink anymore, he would take it for him.

Despite his endless curiosity about the detective, this was the one moment when he didn’t want to hear the great detective’s answer right away. Even the strongest refusal the detective could manage might only delay the answer by a single day, but if someone was going to hear that answer before he did, they would have to beat him first.
Under the detective’s slightly stunned gaze, Kuroba Kaito downed glass after glass of foam, like a lost man unable to find the wheat fields. By the end, he could hardly remember what his original purpose had been; all he knew was that the golden color made him dizzy.
Were humans actually made of seawater? Otherwise, how could one allow so much bitterness to endlessly dilute oneself? To hide treasures on the ocean floor, remaining silent day after day, melting down complex industrial products, swallowing the gales that passed overhead, and even drinking down the sky’s tears.

In the end, it was the great detective who seemed more clear-headed. The last train had already stopped, taxis late on a weekend night had waited too long, and with no idea where his house was, there was nothing to do but let him find somewhere nearby to sleep. Luckily, it wasn’t too far from his own place. Carrying him back was still better than dumping him on people who looked even less sober.

The sharp contrast in temperature was the only good thing about winter nights—it cleared the head. The person slung over Kudo Shinichi’s shoulder didn’t seem quite as heavy anymore. Even with the weight leaning against him, he was still stubbornly walking under his own power.

“You’re really hopeless… how did you suddenly drink that much? If you throw up on the road, I’m not dealing with it…”

He held onto Kuroba Kaito’s arm. This guy looked slim, but he was still a grown man. For someone without any professional training, carrying him for long stretches was a bit too much. Carrying him in a firefighter’s carry down the street would be ridiculous—like committing a crime in broad daylight.
And besides, he looked completely out of it…

Kudo Shinichi turned his face slightly to look at him sleeping. That face—so strikingly similar to his own, the face of a phantom thief that had caused him so much trouble—was not one he disliked. Even with his eyes closed, it was objectively beautiful. That was why so many people fell in love at first sight. Even seeing him up close for a single moment was enough to be captivated, to make the whole world desperate to obtain any clue about him—just like Hasegawa, who had mistaken him for someone else.

This person wasn’t quite as perfect as she had imagined, either. Just tens of minutes ago he had been smugly volunteering to act as the judge, his face full of that provocative confidence of someone who believed he held the whole game in his hands. After cup after cup of beer, though, even he had misjudged his tolerance, ending up like this—completely defenseless in sleep. Did he think there would always be someone to clean up after him and take him home? Kudo Shinichi felt a headache coming on. It was an utterly irresponsible way of living, and annoyingly enough, it was exactly like himself.
But that was precisely where human complexity lay. People who perfectly followed the logic of social operation would never truly enter another person’s life. It was precisely these unforeseen troubles that made one person truly notice another, that caused unexpected intersections along paths that were never meant to cross, that let two people—though not playing the same harp—strike chords with the same deviation in the same performance. He didn’t dislike that.
Still, no matter how careless this man was, he should at least leave an address before passing out. With a sigh, the detective set Kuroba Kaito down on a park bench. He had grown far too used to Kaito cleaning up his messes for him; now that the roles were reversed, he found himself unexpectedly understanding how that must have felt back then. Calling the Professor at this hour and getting no answer was only to be expected, so he had no choice but to trouble Mr. Okiya again and ask him to come over. He turned to look around and reported his location, apologizing repeatedly to the person on the other end of the phone. It was so cold, and it was the middle of the night—luckily, people who liked Sherlock Holmes were all good people.
His smile returned as he hung up, but before he could turn back, a pair of hands still carrying a trace of warmth suddenly caught hold of him.

“…Don’t turn around.”

Kuroba Kaito’s simple instruction came from behind him, tinting the space around him with white mist in the subzero air. That tone—he had heard it many years ago, amid a surging crowd, only back then there had been a toy gun in his hand.
“…What is it, you’re awake already? Can you still walk back on your own?” Kudo Shinichi felt Kaito curl the four fingers exposed at his cuff into his palm, the warmth of his hand unmistakable. Usually, whenever they needed physical contact, he would grab his wrist; this position was different. Not knowing what had come over him, the detective awkwardly changed the subject.
“If you’re awake, then tell me where you live. Mr. Okiya will take you home later. Honestly, being careless has its limits—you just passed out outside like that. I don’t even know where you live. I should really just dump you somewhere and leave you.” He stared out at the empty park and obediently didn’t turn around. Even on the outskirts of the commercial district, no one would be coming by at this hour.
The white mist behind him appeared and vanished intermittently in the darkness. After a moment of silence, the hand still didn’t let go.

“…Am I bothering you?”

The unmistakable dejection in the voice behind him took a long time to arrive. Kudo Shinichi stood there, unable to see his expression.

“Of course you are. You’re not some seven- or eight-year-old kid—how am I supposed to carry you?” The detective’s complaint grew softer, as light as drifting snow, but still loud enough to be heard in the quiet of the night. “You asked me to come to a place like that, then drank yourself senseless before it even ended… This kind of place—you’re supposed to be good at it…” He tried awkwardly to pull his hand free, not wanting to overinterpret the reason Kuroba Kaito was holding onto him now. But the moment he moved, Kaito noticed, and tightened his grip.
Of course. How could he ever win against a magician in a place like this.

“…But isn’t this convenient for you?”

“Someone invites you, and there’s a perfectly safe excuse to take things a step further. Whoever likes whoever can hide it in the crowd. Even if you confess and get rejected, you can say the next day it was just a drunken delusion.”

“…What are you talking about…” Why was he suddenly saying things like this to him?
Kudo Shinichi tried to turn around to see his face, but was cut off by his urgency, the hand gripping his tightening until his knuckles went white.

“Don’t say anything yet, great detective. Just let me run away once. I don’t want to hear you say someone else’s name right now.”

“….”
The intermittent cold wind drew the warmth from his exposed skin, and it looked like it might start snowing again. The detective sighed, and white mist bloomed from his breath once more.

“Being drunk doesn’t make baseless thoughts appear out of nowhere. Alcohol doesn’t work like a spell. It just happens to give people like me—who want to run away—an excuse to say what we’re thinking.” Kuroba Kaito’s unusually long fingers wrapped around his hand, his palm warm in a way completely at odds with winter.

Even words this out of the ordinary were spoken by him with such blunt honesty. This wasn’t some joke to smooth over the atmosphere. Whenever he spoke seriously, it was always in this tone—just like that distant memory by the fountain. Kudo Shinichi had always known this was the kind of person he was.

“…So just let me hold your hand for a bit. Just for tonight. Only for this short while. I drank too much—that’s all. Tomorrow I’ll forget everything. Once tonight is over—even if it’s just until someone comes and finds us—I’ll accept this reality.” The man sitting on the bench lowered his head, his bangs hanging low and shadowing his beautiful eyes. He clutched the hand curled into his palm as if using all his strength. Even if it was actually a hook sharp enough to cut a throat, it was tempting enough in this moment to make someone die for the cheese on it.
“After that… you can go and hold someone else’s hand without worry. But no matter what, I don’t want to bless you.”

Kuroba Kaito sat there, the cold wind and the metal bench perhaps already numbing his body. But at this moment, he didn’t want to let go. Even if the great detective would turn away in disgust the next second, he didn’t want to wake up the next day with nothing at all left to remember.

“…Then do you want to ask it? That second question you kept rejecting.” This time, the detective didn’t follow his instruction. But then again, he wasn’t holding that toy gun anymore.
Kuroba Kaito lifted his head to look at the detective who had turned around to face him. Those eyes were calm and gentle—so gentle that it felt like anyone who made a wish before them, even one worth no more than a five-yen coin, would have it granted in full.
The white king held position; the black queen made her move.
The hand he was holding was no longer as cold as before. If he loosened his grip just a little, he could feel the raised veins beneath the skin. Kuroba Kaito blinked as the great detective’s face stopped right in front of him, the streetlight before the snowfall casting a translucent halo around his skin. Only then did his alcohol-numbed mind belatedly grasp another layer of meaning.

“Then, Kudo… is the person you like here right now?”

Before he could finish speaking, his vision was taken from him. Kudo Shinichi covered his eyes with his free hand, while the place where their fingers were intertwined never loosened. Then, in less than half a second, a warm touch carrying a trace of alcohol landed on his lips—sweeter than the cheese set on a hook.

“Here.”

A dragonfly-light gentleness, the taboo of a kiss that stopped just at a taste, the familiar scent of the detective’s shampoo in his breath—one he would remember even if he swallowed all the foam in an entire wheat field and let his brain soak in it for ten years.

Checkmate.

The moment the detective pulled back, Kuroba Kaito chased after him and wrapped his arms around him, catching those still-glossy lips in his own net without hesitation. The force of the movement bent the detective forward, yet he still didn’t push him away. Distant headlights flickered at the edge of the park, turning the detective’s face into a blurred silhouette. Kuroba Kaito couldn’t see it clearly—only that it felt like a little mermaid about to turn into foam.

“Is this a dream? Will you forget what you said tomorrow, great detective?” Kuroba Kaito asked urgently into the shifting light, more desperate for the answer than anyone else in the world.
“If you don’t forget, then neither will I.”
“And if you do forget? If tomorrow you suddenly regret it and say everything you said last night was just a joke?”
“I won’t. Even if I forget, you’ll remember.”

—and perhaps, I like you a little more than you think.

Maybe it was the day he warned him, risking their relationship regressing, because he was afraid he would be recognized as the phantom thief. Or maybe it was even earlier—some night without order, at a moment I hadn’t foreseen myself, when a sudden, overwhelming curiosity toward you took shape, an urgent desire to know the name of the person beneath that white-clad phantom thief.
And once that fire was lit, it would never go out again, burning the entire winter red.

Fin