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alt_pantheon

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"I'll call Granny; she can pick us up here. I'll give you a lift home." He pulled out his cellphone.

"That'd be awesome, thanks!" Kaito said, grinning. "We make a good team, when you're not accusing me of felonies."

Hakuba ignored the jibe as he talked to the old lady he called "Granny."

They ate in silence, too deep in their thoughts to chat. After fishing out the last of the noodles from the briny broth, Kaito broke the silence.

"I think you should drop this case," he said quietly.

Hakuba's eyebrows rose. "Which case? I thought we just solved it."

Kaito rolled his eyes. "I know you're going to try to track down the people who poisoned Kudou."

Judging from Hakuba's silence, he was right. He continued, "Kudou is a terrifying guy to have as an enemy. These people have evaded capture for an entire year with him as their enemy."

The noodles Hakuba was clumsily trying to stuff into his mouth with disposable pine chopsticks escaped again. Glowering, he bit back, "Like you have?"

"Don't start that again," Kaito muttered.

"Then again, you're pretty harmless in comparison to people who try to murder teenagers. He probably doesn't see you as a priority."

"I'm leaving." Kaito walked back to the cart and dropped off the bowl still holding a cupful of steaming, salty liquid.

Hakuba made one last try at fishing some noodles out of the broth, then ran after Kaito. "Wait! I wasn't trying to upset you."

"No, you're just trying to get me arrested, even when we're trying to help out a mutual friend in an absurdly dangerous situation, which you seem to have no comprehension of."

He caught up, breathing heavily. "I DO comprehend it. I've never been the focus of Kudou's attack, but I've seen him in action, and I studied all of the police reports of his battles with you. I understand that he's really intelligent, and that he's basically treating you like a catch and release thief for his own amusement, and you mentioned something about him putting you in the hospital multiple times. I'm not going to try to arrest you while we work on this case, okay?"

Kaito stopped and spun around. "Then stop telling everyone we meet I'm Kaitou KID."

"Then I won't." he crossed his arms and looked down his long nose. "I'll swear I won't investigate Kaitou KID anymore, and I won't help or harm your Kaitou KID operation in any way... IF you admit to me that you're Kaitou KID right now."

Kaito stared up at Hakuba, confused. "Why?"

"The point of it is to solve the puzzle, not ruin peoples" lives. That's something I learned from Kudou, by the way. He's not as bad as you make him out to be."

He considered this. Hakuba didn't seem to be lying. When he was lying or manipulating, he usually had a much smugger expression, and he hadn't spotted any of Hakuba's tells. Kaito took a deep breath, looked around to make sure they were out of earshot or in any surveillance cameras. "I'm a Kaitou KID copycat who's fooled the people who killed the last Kaitou KID into thinking that I'm him, and if I were ever unveiled, I'd probably end up at the bottom of the river wearing concrete shoes."

"Well," Hakuba said, stepping back, looking the way they'd come. "Let's go meet Granny. We still need to contact Hattori, if you're willing to see this through."

Kaito gaped at the sudden, inconsequential change of topic. "You're really just going to drop this?"

Hakuba clenched his fist. "Of course I shan't!" His voice didn't sound at all prissy or annoying, more like something he'd seen in an old Samurai movie. Maybe that's where he'd picked the phrase up? Coming from an angry 190 cm giant, it was actually kind of intimidating.

Seeing no response from Kaito, he went on. "You're not stealing anything ever again, because I'll be forced to turn you in if you do." He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a single strand of hair in a plastic evidence bag, carefully dated and stamped. "I took this sample this morning. It's of your hair. All I have to do is submit it for testing, and the DNA will be a perfect match for the hair I yanked out of Kaitou KID's head last year."

Kaito made a swipe for it, snarling.

"I've collected over thirty samples of your hair already. You won't be able to find them all."

"Why haven't you done anything about it?" Kaito just about howled. "Did you just want to blackmail me like Kudou does?" Something ugly twisted in his gut, made him want to hurt Hakuba somehow, no matter how petty. "You really are just half the detective Kudou is, at least he was honest about it from the start."

Hakuba's fist snapped out and in a moment, Kaito was lying on the pavement, trying to shake the bells out of his ears.

"Are you done?" Hakuba's voice came from above. That jab about his half-Japanese status must have sent him over the edge.

"Done." Kaito struggled to his feet. The tall young man scowled down at him, massaging his fist. Something tickled Kaito's upper lip. He licked and tasted blood. His blood was on Hakuba's clenched hand too. "How's that for a DNA profile?" he grumbled. His head was still spinning a little, and he felt a hand on his shoulder suddenly grab him and keep him from tipping. Of course, it was Hakuba again.

"I'm sorry," Hakuba said, his voice weirdly hoarse and restrained. "I just got really mad all of a sudden, I don't usually..."

"Fuck off." Kaito batted away Hakuba's helping hands. "I'll get home on my own."

He turned away and trudged down the street, back to the Ramen shop. Pulling out his cellphone, he plopped down.

"You alright?" the shopkeeper asked, peering out the door, looking for the assailant.

"I'm fine; it's nothing."

The shopkeeper grabbed a first-aid kit from behind the counter, and pushed it into Kaito's face. "Are you sure? I can call the cops for you."

Kaito accepted the box, but shook his head. "I'll be fine. It was my fault, anyways." On his cell, he found the icon for speed-dialing Jii. What a great night this had turned out to be.

On the last bus of the night a tall, slender man sat in the seat next to the doors. The bus’s tire hit a pothole with a loud CRACK, and the man jumped from his seat, reaching into his baggy coat to a hidden inner pocket on his left side.

"You might not want to bring that out in here," the bus driver said, one eye on his suspiciously jumpy passenger.

"It’s just a fountain pen," the man said, pulling it out. His hand trembled, and he quickly returned it to its pocket. "Sorry, it was a bad day at work."

The bus driver smiled knowingly. They pulled into another stop. The bus driver’s eyes lingered on the tall man’s pale gray scrubs. "You a doctor?"

The man shook his head. "Nurse."

"Wanna unload while we wait? This is a timed stop, so we can’t leave for another five minutes."

The nurse sat down, taking a few deep breaths. "Sure. I need to calm down before I get home anyways. I don’t want my daughter seeing me like this."

The bus driver slipped his baseball cap off, used the rim to scratch an itch on the back of his balding scalp. "So what happened?"

The nurse took a few more deep breaths and rubbed his sweating palms on his scrubs. "A colleague of mine, someone I’ve worked with for years," he paused to blink very hard. "She became an angel of death."

The driver cocked his head, not sure what to make of the term. "A what?"

"It’s what we call someone who starts killing their patients."

A minute of horrified silence settled over them.

At last the bus driver spoke. "Well, that sure as hell beats any of my bad days, and I’ve been robbed at knife-point twice."

The thin man rubbed his sunken eyes, and the driver did his best to not notice.

When he’d caught his breath again, the man said, "Usually I can leave work at work, you know?"

A chime went off. "That’s my cue," the bus driver said. He reached into his pocket, pulling out his smartphone. "My name is Yusuke. If you wanna get a beer sometime and unwind."

The man reached into his pants’ pocket to find his own phone, then stopped. "I don’t have my phone with me. May I?"

"Sure," Yusuke said, checking the traffic before easing the bus back onto the road. At a stop sign, he turned on the screen and opened up the "new contact" window. "Just enter your name and number here."

The man accepted the battered phone and typed his name in big blocky Katakana, and after a moment of thought, entered a phone number. He handed it back.

Yusuke’s eyes briefly scanned the phone before returning to the road. "Kuroe? That’s an unusual name."

"Nice to meet you Kuroe. Wish your daughter sweet dreams and take a nice long soak. That’s what I usually do."

He gave a polite smile at the advice. "Nice to meet you too, Yusuke." He looked out the window as they rounded a corner. "Let me out at the next stop."

"You got it," Yusuke the bus driver said. He kept an eye on Kuroe. He was relaxing in his seat. Good.

The bus driver could’ve sworn he heard his passenger muttering as his rested his head on the window, utterly drained. He couldn’t make out the words clearly, but it sounded like, "I’m charging that bastard Higure double."

A raccoon. That's what Kaito's face looked like. Hakuba, that git, had broken Kaito's nose, which had given him two black eyes to match. From the look of it, you'd never guess that the fight he'd gotten into had ended with its first and last blow.

But, there were more important things to worry over than his face.

He hadn't gone home. Hakuba had finally tricked Kaito into confessing that he was KID, and he had no idea what or who could be waiting for him. Instead, he’d ended up at Jii’s dingy pool bar in the middle of the night. The old man had taken one look at Kaito’s battered mug and ushered Kaito up to his little studio apartment over his bar. The space was incredibly cramped, and Kaito hadn’t believed at first that anyone could actually live there. The majority of the room was taken up by a hand-carved work table. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, Jii had pulled on what appeared to be a simple rack of oven mitts and the table folded itself up into the wall. He had laid out a futon for Kaito beside his trundle bed, filling the small space again.

All this meant that there wasn't room for Kaito to sleep all day feeling sorry for himself. So he'd gotten up, and now was staring at his pitiful reflection, thinking about how his world was probably ending.

Aoko's heart was going to break when she heard. Did she already know? If she didn't already know, she would by now. It would be all over the news. He'd have to go into hiding, be lost to all of his friends who probably hated him now, be lost to the teachers that already hated him, be lost to the rivals who just wanted to use and expose him.

He meandered downstairs to the empty poolhall. It opened at noon, so he'd have to be gone by then. Jii was looking at something on his tablet, flicking through it with an intent look on his face.

"How bad is it?" Kaito asked, not sure if he wanted an answer.

The old man's eyebrows rose. "Six people dead, twelve injured."

Kaito blinked, uncomprehending.

Jii studied Kaito's face a moment, then went on, "Nothing about KID. There was an incident at a hospital. A nurse went on a rampage, administered poison in the IVs of a bunch of patients."

Relief flooded Kaito, followed by a hailstorm of guilt. He leaned on the counter, letting the emotions fade and waiting for his legs to stop feeling like jelly. "Nothing about KID at all?"

"You are correct. I don't think that Detective Hakuba has told anyone." He took down a chair from the table where it had been stacked. "Little Master, would you like breakfast? I can warm some leftovers up for you."

Kaito plopped down in the chair, nodding. As he watched Jii vanish into the kitchens, a sudden, horrible thought struck him like Hakuba's fist. "Which hospital?" he called.

Jii's voice echoed, sounding tinny from being echoed in the walk-in cooler. "Haido City Hospital."

His heart sank. Kudou's almost supernatural ability to end up right in the middle of things meant that he was likely one of the victims, or he had led the police to the killer. He better not be dead or injured. Kaito didn't know what he would do if Kudou died this way: murdered and under the wrong name. Kaito wasn't particularly superstitious and wasn't certain if he believed in ghosts, but something about being buried under the wrong name made his hackles rise. He shook off the image of Kudou's spirit doomed to wander forever, unable to find its own grave.

The microwave made a jarring DING, announcing that Kaito's meal was complete. A moment later, Jii was striding around the corner, Kaito's breakfast in hand. It was a simple soup, full of over-cooked vegetables and salted too heavily.

As he blew over his soup, trying to cool it down, Jii pulled up a chair beside him.

"When you're done, I want you to go to school. If that detective is there, you can figure out if he'll tell anyone, or convince him not to."

"You've really heard nothing?" Kaito asked.

Seeing that he needed to further soothe Kaito's fears, Jii elaborated, "It's not that I've heard nothing. According to the surveillance cameras in the police station, Detective Hakuba hasn't been in the police station since your fight. Inspector Nakamori's behavior hasn't changed, there's been no rise in activity in the Kaitou KID task force at all. That boy didn't rat you out."

Only the top portion of the soup had warmed, Kaito found. He stirred the rest of it together and drank it down, like the bowl was one large cup.

"Thanks," Kaito said. He meant it. He meant it with his every fiber. "You've helped me so much."

Jii stood up like he was twenty years younger, a smile on his creased face. "Your father did the same for me."

He arrived a period late to class, and received a crowd of stares and "Whoa! Didja gedina fight?" He glanced at Hakuba, but the guilty party looked away when their eyes met.

"It’s nothing," he said, making sure his bravado swagger was in full gear. "You should see the other guy’s fist!"

The girls giggled and the boys cheered like he was their conquering hero. Hakuba got up and stormed out for the rest of the break, so Kaito sidled up to Aoko, who was pointedly ignoring him.

"Getting into fights isn’t cool, dumbass," she mumbled after Kaito put his battered face in front of hers, only a few centimeters apart. She put her hand on his face and pushed him away. Her hand smelled like peach hand-lotion. He held back the urge to lick it. His face had enough purple spots on it. For now.

He leaned back in his chair. "Yeah, I know. And I totally lost the fight too. All this?" he waved his hand over his face. "The dude did it in one punch."

She raised an eyebrow. "So why did the guy punch you?"

"You know I’ve never been that great at keeping my mouth shut." He bit his lip and looked down. "Let’s just say I deserved it and leave it at that."

"So you learned your lesson?" she asked, arms crossed.

Hakuba reentered the classroom with the history teacher right behind him, and their conversation was cut short as they stood and bowed to the teacher.

The next break between classes, Kaito darted after Hakuba, ignoring requests from his classmates for a blow-by-blow version of the action. The long-legged guy was already at the end of the hall by the time Kaito have struggled past their classmates, and he had to run to catch up. Hakuba responded by sprinting up the stairs.

He called Hakuba’s name, but he was ignored. A final burst of speed and Kaito grabbed Hakuba’s arm, forcing him to stop. "I need to-" he panted, "talk about last night."

"I’m sorry," Hakuba said, his voice barely audible. He jerked his arm, trying to free himself, but Kaito held on fast. Hakuba’s shoulders slumped and his arm fell lax. "Fine," he muttered. "Let’s go to the roof, I guess. Let go of me before anyone gets the wrong idea."

Kaito released the arm, raising his own in a sign of submission. He followed Hakuba to the roof in silence.

Bitter cold drizzle and a sharp breeze ensured that no one else was there. Hakuba still wouldn’t meet Kaito’s eyes. He stood in the unpleasant weather without attempting to protect himself from it, as though he deserved it.  His eyes stayed fixed on the ground.

"I shouldn’t have hit you. I don’t know why I did, I just got really angry, and it just happened."

"You said something like that last night," Kaito said. "But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about."