Archive of Our Own

then

“Tell me what you're thinking,” Rei said, nudging Hiro's hip with the side of his foot.

They sat in the outdoor parking lot behind the crematorium, a hole in the wall owned by the syndicate and which saw more unmarked bodies dumped into its incinerators than paying clients. Hiro sat on the asphalt, elbows propped on his knees and a cigarette between his fingers. Next to him, Rei stood, back resting against the wall.

“I’m thinking,” Hiro said, with a vague hand gesture that wafts up a thin thread of smoke, “you know. What now?”

It took eighteen months to find and kill the man who murdered the Morofushis.

During those eighteen months, Furuya Rei did the best work of his life.

Rei wore Bourbon like a fitted suit.

And his life was electrifying, in a way few things in Rei’s were. There was something thrilling in the job, in assembling plans and watching them unfold, in walking away unscathed from close calls. In approval.

What now? The question tossed Rei’s mind somewhere it hadn’t visited for a long time: the orphanage. It was a stupid thought; he was twenty now, an adult, he never had to go back. But it was all he knew — his shared room, his part-times, his haunting of public spaces like a ghost, unseen and unknown. He knew that — the old, outworn version of himself — and he knew this: the Crows, dinner invitations, Rum’s heavy hand on his shoulder.

The thought of going back made him want to puke more than anything he saw in the last year. More than the clean-ups, the collateral. More than the buildings crumbling, the smell of fear-drenched sweat in the cargo holds of hijacked boats. More than what was happening in the basement labs of their pharmaceutical companies. He could take a splatter film far better than he could take becoming a ghost story.

He knew the ugliness and the wreckage, the injustice, should be sobering, but he could rationalize it, before: it was for Hiro. And now…

What now?

He’d earned this, he was good at this.

“We can do anything you wanna do,” Hiro added in front of his silence, craning his neck to look up at him. “What do you wanna do, Zero?”

Rei peered down at him. “Why hurry?” he huffed, crossing his arms. “You’ve wanted this for so long, at least wait until he’s fully ashes before moving on to the next thing.”

Hiro fell quiet, and Rei looked away, his eyes falling on the lit-up green exit sign. What he wanted to do, huh?

A hissing sound hooked his attention, and he looked back down, eyes widening. Hiro was pressing the tip of his cigarette against a knuckle, watching dispassionately as the orange spark branded his flesh.

“What are you—” Rei dropped to his knees, snatching Hiro’s wrist away with an alarmed look. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

Hiro let him confiscate the cigarette without resistance, wrist limp in his grip. “It doesn’t feel real,” he admitted. “None of this feels real. It doesn’t feel like it happened.”

“It happened,” Rei confirmed dryly. He angled his head, seeking his gaze, “You were there. So was I. This is real. Do you need me to slap you? I will.”

Hiro let out a half-hearted laugh, shaking his head as his lips curved upwards. Satisfied, Rei held eye contact, studying him for a moment until, thoughtfully, his eyes fell down on the cigarette he himself was holding. Hiro’s gaze wandered down as well, to Rei’s neck and then his chest.

“Since when do you smoke?” Rei wondered.

“Since when do you dress so fancy?” Hiro asked in return, losing some of the vacancy in his expression to the furrow in his brow.

There was a pause: a stalemate that didn't need to be broken. The answer was in the air, evident as the curling after-smoke that wound around Rei's unbothered nostrils.

Somewhere over the last eighteen months.

The same answer. When did Scotch get that scar on his hand, right below his brand new burn? When did he let his beard grow out to scruff instead of shaving it clean every morning?

“I bought the ashtray in the kitchen,” Rei said aloud, a blank realization.

“Obviously. It's the same color as the countertops.”

“And… I own a cloth steamer,” Rei thought. “Since when?”

“Since you kept clicking your tongue every time you needed to get the ironing board out,” Hiro said with a roll of his eyes, tugging at the collar of his rumpled hoodie. “I fixed it.”

They fell into silence again.

Somewhere over the last eighteen months, Rei had lost track of Hiro completely. And now, in the face of this Hiro who had finally killed the specter weighing his footsteps since he was a child, Rei felt unsure about what to say next in a way he hadn't since they'd met.

What do you wanna do, Zero?

Bourbon knew what he wanted. He knew Hiro would stay, if Rei asked. But was Rei happy like this? Was Hiro happy, like this?

A cigarette burn, on the knuckle.

How much had Hiro changed? Was there a means to make him happy any other way?

A kid by the river, voice coming out in coughs from months of disuse. A bright grin on his face as he called Rei's name.

…Was Rei still the kind of person who could make Hiro happy?

“Did you ever find mention of her?” Hiro said suddenly.

Rei blinked, tumbling out of that line of thought. “Who?”

“Your lady. Elena.”

No, was the honest answer. But he hesitated to say it. Because the Elena in his memories had been kind and patient, but most notably she'd been a doctor. And a kind doctor in the organization was either dead or not very kind at all.

“All right,” said Hiro, reading Rei's silence. For what, he had no idea. “Then we'll find her. That’s what you wanted before, right?”

Rei stared back at him, holding onto the past tense. “Okay.”

“We’ll stay until then,” Hiro said.

“Okay,” Rei nodded.

“And afterwards…” Hiro stood up with a heave from his crouch, reaching to pull Rei up as well. His brows had relaxed back into blankness, but his grip and his gaze held Rei as steady as ever.

“Afterwards, I'll ask you again.”

.

.

now

All of Rei’s endless contemplation aside, he finds himself more or less twiddling his thumbs. No more obsessing over a conspiracy, no more working through denial or grief or denial of grief. So while Hiro scopes out the Kudous’ residence, instead of sitting in the sting of his humiliation, Rei does the only thing he can think of doing.

He pisses someone off.

“If this is a joke, I’m not laughing,” says Gin’s flat tone through the phone speaker.

“If this was a joke, don’t you think I’d try it on a different audience?” Bourbon smiles even though it can’t be seen. “I’m serious.”

“I am not,” Gin pronounces very clearly, “a fucking chauffeur service.”

“And I’m not in the business of calling chauffeurs. It’s a one-way ride to pick up my car, and then I’ll be out of your hair. Think of it as…” He pauses, brief. “...A personal favor.”

Gin is perhaps the only agent in the entirety of the organization that Rei is comfortable saying this to. Any other person, from Vermouth to the lowest of grunts, would be snatching a favor from Bourbon in moments. But the great thing about Gin is that even if he didn’t hate asking for help, he definitely hates Bourbon, so all Rei hears from the other end of the line is a scoff.

“Ask your fellow rat.”

“He’s working,” he dismisses disinterestedly, tamping down on his reaction. “Something I figure you’re doing very little of, considering your sole specialty is shoot-outs.”

Another great thing about Gin is that he's also extremely aware Bourbon can talk circles around him, and consequently avoids getting into conversations with him longer than two orders and a piece of intel. It's just easier to give in.

“I was going to murder you,” Gin tells him somewhere on the way.

Bourbon looks away from the window, a little surprised at the topic. Small talk with Gin, how lovely. “When I dressed as Akai Shuichi?” he guesses.

“Dumbest thing you ever did,” Gin shifts gears, and the car rolls slowly to a pause before a light. “You were two seconds away from your brain painting the pavement—I had you on the scope.”

“Colorful,” Bourbon sniffs. “Well, I'm grateful for your self-restraint. It comes so rarely, after all.”

“Well?”

“Hm?” Bourbon tilts his head, blinking. “Well?”

“Is he dead?”

“Shouldn’t you know that best?”

“I did,” Gin gives him a disgusted side-glance. “And you didn’t agree.”

Bourbon smiles. Figures that Gin would take his investigation as an insult to his capability rather than chalk it up to any sort of… unfinished business. “There’s no need to take offense. If anything, wouldn’t it be Kir’s loyalty that I questioned?”

“Cut the crap.” Gin digs into his dashboard pack for a cigarette. “Did your moronic venture give you an answer, or not?”

Bourbon reaches inside his coat for his lighter, flicking it open and meeting Gin’s hands halfway across the seats. He debates a moment as Gin blows out the first plume of smoke, before he decides on the words.

“Yes.” He looks away, propping his elbow up on the car window. “No issue.”

Gin scoffs, “and after all that.”

“And after all that,” Rei echoes, smiling idly.

Gin clicks his tongue, irritation clear, but doesn’t reply. Which is good—Rei’s getting sick of talking about Akai.

It’s a long moment before he speaks again, long enough that Rei starts debating whether or not to turn on the radio. “The other one,” he says flatly, “Heard he offed Sherry.”

“Did he?” Bourbon shrugs. Gin’s obsession with Sherry was a weak spot so widely exposed there was no merit in knowing about it. “Why?”

“She was working with someone, that woman. Scotch get them, too?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t really tell me anything.”

“I want a name, Bourbon.”

Hmm… it’d been Conan’s plan, hadn’t it? Rei slants Gin a sideways look, not liking the direction this conversation is taking. “I have no idea what happened on that train,” he repeats.

“Get me the fucking info, then, isn’t that what you’re for?”

Rei smiles. “I love the way you ask for my help.”

“She was working with someone,” Gin declares through a tight jaw, fingers clenching around the wheel. Rei feels his fingers stiffen against his knees, “Someone good. The same level as that dead FBI dog.”

Rei has a sudden, nonsensical mental image: Conan, all of three feet tall, standing before Gin with that determined—naive—look in his eyes. Gin, crow’s cloak, looking right down with all the sharp intention he usually aims at Akai Shuichi.

He swallows down the nausea, wets his lips. “Sherry wasn’t exactly known to be social, was she?”

“They bugged my car. Sherry isn’t that stupid. She doesn’t give a shit about bagging us, but I found a strand of her hair that day. She's with someone."

“Bugged your car,” Rei repeats, incredulous. “Do you still have the bug?”

“Why the fuck would I still have the bug?”

Anything you can trace can be traced back to you, he thinks, barely missing saying it out loud. It wouldn’t be for Gin’s benefit anyway, the sound of it frustrated and furious even in his own head. Don’t you know that, Conan-kun?

Outwardly, he only offers a vague smile and another shrug, earning himself a disgusted eye roll. “Souvenir?”

Gin’s lip curls.

Bourbon tilts his head, smile in place. “‘Please, Bourbon,’ are the words you want.” he recites mockingly, before rubbing his fingers together in a universal gesture. “Or, seeing as you’re not one for words: a number.”

Gin looks outright murderous now, eyes flashing warning like the spark on a flintlock pistol.

Bourbon just waits.

Narrowing his eyes, Gin turns back to the wheel. “I’ll save my breath.”

“Got it in one.” Rei relaxes back into his seat, consciously turning towards the window again to prop up his elbow. “If Scotch didn’t see a loose end, why would I listen to you?”

“Siamese bastards,” Gin scoffs, rage returned to his usual simmering irritation. “Should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

“How orientalist of you,” Rei hums, but it’s more of a throw-away shot than anything, and Gin doesn’t deem it worthy of a response.

It’s quiet, then. Rei doesn’t chance a sigh, but he’s conscious of the relief in his chest as silence fills the car. He supposes he should be grateful for Gin’s grudge blinding him. He’s uncomfortably aware of how uncharacteristic his response was — not that there have been many, but Bourbon’s never turned down any of Gin’s requests before. Life is simply easier when Gin doesn’t have it out for you, and Rei’s never had much reason to complicate his own by attracting his sadistic ire.

The thought of giving Conan up, though… it… makes him feel–

“Why would he think that?”

“What, that you’re one of the good guys? Why do you think?”

–gross.

Rei still doesn’t chance a sigh, but he swallows, heavy.

It’s a moment later than Gin finally speaks up again—probably having managed enough deep breaths to fight down the murderous urges, at least for the time being.

“You’re still not getting a vacation,” he says tightly. “If you’re throwing this one back at me, you’ll have no problems taking my other assignment, will you?”

It’s a rhetorical question. “When do I ever?” Bourbon laughs affably.

Gin doesn’t do anything as juvenile as rolling his eyes, but Rei senses it anyway. “We got a tip. Ogata’s planning on running.”

“Oh?” Bourbon raises an eyebrow. “Your newest pet informant? I thought he was doing pretty well.”

Scoffing, Gin wrinkles his nose. “Stupid rat spooked after the business in Busan.”

The business in Busan. As Rei remembers it, Gin had skinned half a face before giving up on the whole ordeal with simple bullets to seven, upside down heads. If Ogata somehow had the misfortune to witness it all, Rei can’t say he’s surprised.

Informants always run the most often. It’s easy to simply talk, justify your role as casual. Impersonal, until blood splashes to your cheek and you realize it was all because of your own loose lips.

“Think of it,” Gin is continuing, voice derisive. “As a favor. A chance to kill off some of your competition.”

“Competition,” Bourbon repeats, a tad incredulous. Is that supposed to be an insult?

Gin doesn’t answer him, but when Rei glances over he spies the corner of his lips stretching into a hint of a smirk.

Bourbon does roll his eyes. Just a bit. “Thank you,” he offers, making sure every letter drips sarcasm. “Last sighted in the country, I presume?”

“Shinjuku,” grunts Gin. And that’s it.

Bourbon hums absently, pulling out his phone and flicking the slide lock open so he can remote into his digital archive. The file on Ogata isn’t particularly long, but more out of lack of need than lack of information. It takes Rei barely a few minutes to get through everything he has on him, and barely one more to conclude that he can have Ogata dead within three days.

No training. No recorded kills. He probably won’t even fight.

How dull.

Rei clicks his phone locked again.

The silence persists right up until Gin pulls in in front of the mechanic’s, and Bourbon doesn’t bother with a parting quip. He opens the door, but right as he’s about to hop out a hand clenches around his arm. Rei turns his head, takes care not to tense.

“I still need that name,” Gin says, voice as even and indifferent as when he’s announcing his intention to go in. “Stay out of it if you want, but tell me one thing. Was Vermouth there?”

“Yes,” Rei shrugs off the grip. “Or so I’ve heard.”

Worst case, he can blackmail her into shutting up, but the thought makes him feel unbelievably annoyed. It would cross him from passively to actively obstructing fellow Crows. Inaction at least doesn’t require self-justification.

Gin’s only acknowledgement is to pull back, letting Rei shut the door behind him, just a bit rattled.

The window slides down an inch: a slit for sound. “Don’t call me again,” Gin says, before a smile twists his lips. “Fuck around with your tourist shit alone.”

The wheels screech as the car rolls out like it couldn’t do it fast enough. Rei blinks, brain taking a few extra seconds to catch up to the instinctive blazing rage in his chest.

“Tour—I grew up here, asshole,” he mutters through his teeth, and swallows his inner fifteen year old’s urge to flip off the fading car, settling for a sincere, “I hope you die, shitty bastard.”

A low whistle breaks him out of his thoughts, and he startles round to see Matsuda Jinpei crouched on the sun-baked driveway, rice ball in hand. “What’d your Uber driver do?”

Rei sighs, shoulders sagging. “Talked.”

“Hear that,” says Matsuda sympathetically. “At least they made up for it with a hot car.” He jerks his chin in the direction Gin left. “Of course you’d end up with the vintage Porsche.”

“Trust me, not worth it.” A disturbing thought occurs to him then, and he nonchalantly adds, “If you ever spot that car, you leave it alone.”

Matsuda shrugs, finishing the last of his rice ball with a lick of his thumb.

“It’s just you today?” Rei raises an eyebrow, looking around. “Is my car in one piece?”

Matsuda rolls his eyes, straightening up as he brushes off his knees. “Yeah, yeah, your baby’s safe. Like Hagi wouldn’t know I messed with it even from the other side of the city.”

Rei feels himself grin. “Hagi has taste, unlike the person who asked if they could put wings on it.”

“It’s the ‘fighter plane’ of the RX series,” Matsuda argues, complete with air quotes. “It oughta look the part!”

Rei waves him off, shoulders shaking with bubbling laughter. “Let’s not get into this again. I’m just here to pick it up.”

Matsuda leads him with a huff into the open garage. Sure enough, his teenage dream of a car gleams under the work lamps, white paint waxed to blinding.

But of course, cosmetic work aside, the true value gets counted off on Matsuda's fingers.

“We sorted the clicking you were hearing in the gear shaft, replaced the ignition coil, windshield, some of the spark plug wires, and,” he hmphs under his breath, corner of his mouth twitching upwards like he can't hide his pleasure, “then I did some other stuff to stop that annoying-ass stall in the middle of the rev. You're welcome.”

Rei blinks. “I didn't realize there was a stall?”

“And that's why this is my career and not yours.” The hint of a hint of a smile goes away to be replaced by a stink-eye. “Rev should be going like this,” Matsuda draws a smooth exponential curve in the air with a finger. “Yours was going all,” a vague, wiggling line, “every other time.”

Delivered by perhaps any other mechanic, Rei would take this conversation as a sneaking mass of hidden fees. But somehow, when it's Matsuda talking, disinterest in society wrapped around an intense, underlying passion, Rei can't even begin to worry.

Sometimes he wishes he could fly out the pair of them when he's working abroad, too. It's nice, worry feeling impossible.

All this to say Rei only hums his acceptance, leaning down and cocking his head to better admire the work. “I'll take your word for it. Do you have an invoice? I have a shift at the café now.”

He straightens again to find Matsuda glaring at him over the car roof, arms crossed and a near-imperceptible shake to his head.

Blinking, Rei retraces, trying to figure out where he's misstepped, but then:

“Café shift, huh? Still sticking to that story?”

Rei smiles back, amused again. “You’re always welcome there, if you’d like to verify for yourself.”

“Yanno, might just take you up on that. Would love to see what you deal with that makes you punch your windshield out.”

That pulls a surprised laugh out of him—Matsuda really never holds back. “These are dangerous times to work retail.”

Matsuda scoffs, tossing him his car key. “One day I’ll find out what you really do for work.”

“I’m fairly certain I left my spare apron in the back seat?”

“Please, no part-time waiter could leave tips like yours.”

“Maybe you ought to value your own work more,” Rei tilts his head. “Or maybe I just like you. Have you considered that? Have you considered that I might like you?”

Matsuda makes a face, giving the car one last tap on the roof before he makes his way back around. “You're such a dick. How long you in town?”

Rei pauses at the non-sequitur, a little wary. “Haven’t decided yet. Why?”

“Relax, Hagi told me to ask you to drinks seeing as he couldn’t be here today. Doable on a waiter’s schedule, no?”

“Oh,” Rei doesn’t even find it to react at the dig, flattered. “Can I bring Ryo?”

“I figured that was implied,” he shrugs, shoving his lunch wrapper in a pocket so he can reach for his pack. “For what it’s worth, I don’t buy he’s a guitar tutor either.”

“Ah— please refrain from smoking in front of him. He’s trying to quit.”

Matsuda groans, throwing his head back as he shoves the unlit cigarette back in. “Then he better share his goddamn patches.”

“Tonight?” Rei checks, already readjusting his plans.

There’s a pause instead of a ready response, Matsuda’s mouth conspicuously shut as his brows furrow.

“No good?”

“No, that’s not—” Matsuda scrubs a hand through his hair. “You’re not a waiter, yeah?”

The insistence feels different all of a sudden, and Rei draws back, discomforted. “I am.”

“No, yeah, you are, but—” With a frustrated noise, Matsuda continues, “that’s not all you are, right?”

Rei wonders where he’s going with this, but with some hesitation adds, “I’m also a P.I. In my spare time.”

“A P.I.” Matsuda repeats. “You ever work with cops?”

“I’ve run into them when I got dragged into their investigations, but nothing else.”

He nods, looking like that’s the answer he needed. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, that’ll work. You up for a commission?”

“Oh.” Rei doesn’t quite relax, but the direction of his concern abruptly shifts, refocusing on Matsuda’s fingers, fidgeting where he’s dropped his pack back into his pocket. That familiar restlessness, the clearest picture of worry where someone wasn’t ready to admit to being worried. And it’s suddenly all too clear that Matsuda’s questioning isn’t about Rei at all, but rather…

“I have some time,” Rei smiles. “How can I help?”

.

.

The first thing Rei sees when he comes out of the employee room, hands washed and apron smoothed over his sweater, is Conan sitting next to Matsuda at the Poirot counter.

He gives himself exactly one second to think, it’s going to be that kind of day, huh, before he walks up behind the counter to smile at them both.

“Thanks for waiting,” he says to Matsuda first, not addressing Conan just yet. He still doesn’t know what to do about Conan. Suddenly he’s so aware of the taxi receipt in his wallet that it could burn a hole through the leather. Conan’s cry for help, sent to Rei specifically.

Rei… doesn’t know what to do with that kind of faith.

“Finally,” Matsuda lets out, eyeing his apron in a way that told Rei he hadn’t quite believed him until now. “Kid was about to steal your case.”

“I wanted to meet Amuro-san's friend!” Conan pipes, not even bothering to look sheepish as he answers Rei's question before he asks it. Before Rei can even open his mouth, he turns his attention back to Matsuda, leaning both forearms on the counter. “Do you know Ryo-niisan, too?”

“Shindou?” Matsuda yawns. “Yeah, he’s cool.”

“Matsuda’s my mechanic,” Rei says casually, like he can’t see the gears spinning at mach speeds behind Conan’s forehead. He understands the appeal of a new variable to poke at—but unfortunately for Conan, Matsuda’s really just a guy who likes cars. “He asked my help for what I assume is something personal…?”

Conan ignores the blatant hint to beam. “I could help too!”

“Ah, I’m not sure if—”

“Sure, why not.” Matsuda shrugs. “As long as it’s not a fucking cop.”

Rei barely refrains from snorting at the unintentional fuel to the fire, at the way Conan’s eyes zero in on his (normal, civilian) mechanic in an instant.

“Why, are you a criminal?” Conan asks bluntly.

Rei bites back a grin. What a handy thing it is to be a child.

Matsuda scoffs. “Does it make a difference?”

Huh. Rei finds himself matching Conan’s blink, before they both share a curious glance. That was… a little too much venom to pass off as casual.

“Evidently, Conan-kun isn’t police,” Rei defuses for the time being. “Why don’t you tell me what your situation is?”

Matsuda’s fingertips roll on the table for a second before he simply says, “hit and run. Not me.” Matsuda waves an impatient hand when Rei's eyebrows raise and he looks at him up and down. “And not Hagi either, before you ask. One of our regulars—got his car towed over to our place after it happened. Not that there was much of a car left, but parts are parts.”

“Is he okay?” Conan asks.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” he replies, knee bouncing up and down. “High as a kite half the times I’ve visited and asleep the rest, but he made it.”

“And you want to track down the person responsible,” Rei says, “For… a regular?”

His face falls into a grouchy scowl at the question. “Yep.” At the longer look, he reluctantly adds, “He teaches judo and kendo at the center. Hagi ‘n’ I’ve taken a few classes. Got drinks together here and there.”

“So you’re friends,” Conan comments innocently.

Matsuda scrunches his nose. “Look, can you help or not?”

“I already said I would, didn’t I?” Rei says mildly. “Tell me more.”

“Like what? His car’s the only one that crunched. And seeing as no one’s shown up in his room begging not to be sued, Date's stuck paying his own co-pay. It just ain't right.”

Rei raises a hand to his chin. “Timeframe? Location?”

“8 PM, two nights ago. It was in Shinjuku, couple blocks off of the Crowne Plaza hotel, you know the street under the overpass?”

Rei hums, painting a mental picture. “Cameras?”

“There’s CCTV coverage there,” Conan informs.

“Clearly not good enough for a license plate number, though, if they haven’t made an arrest.”

“Unless they dumped it,” Conan crosses his arms. “And it was stolen.”

Rei nods his concession. “No paper trail.”

“What, like a planned thing?” Matsuda asks, looking offended at the idea. “But everyone likes Date!”

“We can’t really deduce anything unless we know if the police found a car or not,” Conan says. “But if it really was an accident, then it’s weird they didn’t find them. Right, Amuro-san?”

“Cause for suspicion the longer it takes,” Rei agrees.

Matsuda stares at them with a disturbed frown, seeming like he never entertained the idea that it could’ve been anything other than accidental.

“...Of course, they might have just preemptively settled it with money through his next-of-kin,” Rei adds, before he reaches over the counter to ruffle the kid’s hair. “But Conan-kun’s right in that we need to know what the police already found before we draw any conclusions.”

“And if it is that, we talk to Date-san!” Conan agrees cheerfully, hopping out his stool. “I left my phone upstairs, I’ll go call Agent Yumi to see if she’ll tell us anything.”

Rei watches him go, before his gaze settles back on Matsuda. “What do you think?” he asks, voice coming clear and straightforward in a way Amuro never allows him.

If Matsuda notices the shift, he doesn’t comment. “I think you’re a shitty waiter,” he tells him. “You didn’t even ask if I wanted a drink.”

Rei realizes this belatedly, glances down at the empty counter between them. “I meant about Conan-kun,” he specifies. “He’s bright, isn’t he?”

“He seems to think I’m some kind of criminal. Yet still pressed me for details when he found out I was here to talk to you about a problem. Not even in a nosy way, it was impressive.”

“He likes to help people,” Rei agrees fondly, before he adds, “As for the criminal part, well, you didn’t do much to clear your name.”

“Y’know, half of the suspicion came when I said I know you.” Matsuda raises an unaffected eyebrow at him. “You wanna start there?”

It should feel threatening, but for some reason Rei’s smile only widens. “I was thinking I’d start with coffee. And a slice of shortcake? And then you can tell me why you hate the police so much.”

Matsuda considers him, fingers drumming along the side of his face, and then his gaze slides to the side. “You sure you wanna hear it?”

Rei hums and looks down at what his hands are doing, flickers of a pleasant warmth pooling around his stomach. Not a moment of hesitation. In that question, Rei hears, I’ll tell you if you want.

For all that Matsuda can’t know something as basic as Rei’s name, he likes him. The man’s predominant emotions seem to be boredom and disinterest, which mesh well with Rei’s secretive nature. He’s trusted Matsuda with his cars for nearly eight years now, and the most they’d exchanged were pleasantries, mocking jabs and a couple of punches.

Rei… mostly returns the favor by not prying as well, but such a deep disdain in someone usually so disconnected is simply too curious to ignore.

“I do,” he says, mild.

Matsuda doesn’t need any more than that. “I punched the superintendent.”

Rei offers a low whistle. “Did you injure him?”

“Y'see, that shit right there.” Matsuda jabs an accusing finger at him. “A normal person would ask, 'what did he do to deserve that?' or 'are you stupid?' or something.”

“Asking what the police chief did to deserve being punched is a moot point,” Rei says dryly as he carefully pours from the steaming pot into a cup. “And you're many things, Matsuda, but you aren't stupid.”

Matsuda pauses, hand still raised, fixing him with a deeply annoyed look.

“So?” Rei puts the cup down in front of him with a light clink.

Matsuda sighs as he reaches for it. “I broke his nose.”

Rei hums as he crouches down to pull a slice of shortcake from the display case. He wonders if he should just leave it at that. But when he rises again, Matsuda is staring at him over the cup, one brow raised expectantly.

Taking it as permission, Rei asks. “Was it personal?”

“Yeah,” Matsuda confirms bluntly. “He ruined my family's life when I was a kid.”

“Ah.”

Lips quirking amusement at that awkward reaction, Matsuda lifts his cup slightly in a mock-toast.

“Worth the assault charge, then?”

“Hagi was hiring.” He shrugs. “And by that point I’d sort of resigned myself to never being able to work with anyone else, anyway.”

Rei ignores the mildly self-deprecating undertone to nod. Thinks about Hiro. Says, “Compatibility is important.”

Which makes Matsuda scoff. His eyes narrow suspiciously as he stares at Rei for a long moment, before he ventures, “Yakuza?”

Fighting back a grin, Rei makes a point of looking over his shoulder.

That is when Conan chooses to waddle back, phone clutched tightly in his hand. There is a furrow in his brows that tells Rei he’s gained new information, but the focus there lifts slightly when he looks up at the both of them, an unexplainable confusion replacing it.

“Hm?” Rei smiles.

“Did something happen?” Conan asks, gaze darting back and forth between their faces.

“That’s our line,” Matsuda huffs, pointing at the red phone. “What’s up?”

Conan stares a moment longer, and visibly shakes it off. “Well, Yumi-san said they did find the car, but it was stolen. The owner reported it missing from the mall's lot on Wednesday.”

Matsuda's brows furrow deeply as Rei asks, “Footage?”

Conan nods, bouncing a little on his heels. “Of the car being driven out, yep. No shots of the driver—one possible witness, she said, but no one they've been able to call in—” His phone buzzes in his hand, and his expression brightens. “Oh! She sent it.”

Rei and Matsuda both immediately lean in to peer over the kid's shoulders as the grainy footage plays.

It's the lot's exit—a dark Camry pulls out and drives away, the windows tinted too dark to make out the driver. About thirty seconds later, a woman jogs up the pedestrian exit and walks away as well, in the opposite direction. Her face is fully visible to the camera, but…

“Well, that's no one I know,” Matsuda dismisses, sounding irritated.

“Me neither,” Conan agrees, sounding put out as he scrubs back to pause over her face again. “She was almost definitely in a position to identify the culprit, too.”

Rei says nothing, lip curling as Vermouth's latest disguise stares at him in low resolution.

.

.

"What a crazy coincidence that Amuro-san knows this woman," Conan exclaims, in what he thinks is a subtle manner.

"Why are you sitting here and the adult man is in the backseat?" Rei asks, sincerely.

"He called shotgun," Matsuda says.

"I called shotgun!"

Rei sighs. "It is an odd coincidence," he concedes. He wonders what he's missing here. Is Matsuda's friend involved with the organisation? He's never heard of a Date in their ranks, so it can't be anyone important. "But I can't say I'm surprised."

Conan perks up. "Oh?"

Rei smiles, teasing. "Things always work out when you're around, Conan-kun. Perhaps you're my lucky charm?"

His smile widens when no answer comes; he chances a brief glance to his right, and sure enough, Conan's clearing his throat, faint pink on his cheeks.

Compliments, huh?

"So where are we meeting this lady?" Matsuda asks.

"I know a bar she likes to frequent. I sent her a message to meet us there."

It's only because Rei's checking the rearview mirror that he catches Matsuda's expression: brows furrowed, pinched in confusion. The closest thing to incredulity he imagines this guy can show. “So lemme get this straight. It's two PM on a Friday and this woman's free to get drinks with you on fifteen minute notice?” Matsuda pokes his head in between the headrests, “I'm only asking 'cuz Hagi isn't here to do it, but does Shindou know about this.”

"I know her through the neighborhood association," Rei barely refrains from rolling his eyes, and instead presses a hand flat on Matsuda's face to push him back into his seat. He's got enough on his hands with Conan's routine interrogations. "I don't know what she does for a living that she's free now—we're not that close.”

He pauses, then: “And what does Ryo have to do with this?”

“Question with question, huh.”

“Clarify yours, first.”

Matsuda slumps back, squinting at him through the mirror again. “Just saying. If this woman ends up losing me my bet—”

“What bet?” Rei presses, a little exasperated at how much he’s had to echo him.

“On whether or not you're—” Matsuda pauses for a second, abruptly looking at the passenger seat directly in front of him. Conan’s hair doesn’t quite reach the visible gap between the seatback and the headrest, and Rei has a sneaking suspicion that Matsuda had momentarily forgotten he was there.

“...At drinks,” Matsuda concludes.

Raising both brows, Rei allows it. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Impatient at being excluded, Conan cuts in, “Does Ryo-niisan know her?”

…Does he? He's not sure when Conan could ever follow this up, but considering his knack for coincidences, it's better to be safe. Has Hiro worked with this disguise of Vermouth's before?

“No,” he decides, a little later than he likes. “He was away when we met.”

“Right, yeah, away,” Matsuda mutters, shaking his head. “You even hear yourself?”

.

.

Rei has been thinking about her lately. Ever since Hiro came back from the Bell Tree Express, it’s been in the back of his mind. That strange little detail.

Sherry’s dead.

It’s a shame you had to see Vermouth be happy about something.

She didn’t seem to be, actually.

Chris Vineyard is a woman of many secrets; her hatred for Sherry is not one of them. Apart from Gin, Vermouth was the one most set on hunting her down. These were two undeniable facts.

Here is a third one, as of yet unconfirmed but just as undeniable: somehow, Miyano Shiho survived Scotch.

Rei has been thinking about her lately. He takes all of these facts in, but no matter how many times he assembles and reassembles them, conclusion he lands on is incomprehensible, incapable of being reconciled with the woman he knows. It makes him wonder, beyond her hidden motivations to protect Sherry, how wrong he’s read Vermouth.

There is no human being capable of living without interest. Rei utilizes this fact—sometimes as a crutch, sometimes as a weapon. The fewer things a person appears to be interested in, the more potent their obsession with the things in which they are. And if a person appears utterly detached, if they are truly without a single interest, then their obsession has to be with their own self, because it is simply impossible to live disconnected from the world unless one decides they are the world.

Through all his years of working alongside Vermouth he'd sort of concluded that, like many others he'd met in their line of work, she counted among those who were self-obsessed as reason for living. That she'd made it to her position because she resonated with the boss's ambition on a fundamental level—she wanted to live forever, plain and simple.

What this fallback doesn't explain: Sherry is alive, the organization doesn't know, Chris Vineyard does, and this is detrimental to her in every way.

People who act in ways detrimental to themselves are either insane, self-sabotaging, or—

"Thanks so much for meeting with us, miss!"

Vermouth quirks one side of her latex lips in amusement, her current disguise making the expression more motherly than usual. "I'm thrilled to help such an eager young detective."

—Compromised.

Bourbon smiles.

Not a particularly nice smile. More of a grimace.

He isn't blind to the way Conan gathers people. For the most part on purpose, but it still takes a certain quality of person. An earnest, but open-eyed core to appeal to people begrudgingly holding on to a few scruples in an otherwise shadowed life. Akai Shuichi, Rei himself. And…

There is something distinctly horrifying about confronting what he has in common with Vermouth.

And, worse still, that feeling has come back. The one that made him queasy at the thought of giving Conan away, the one that makes him want to pull on the back of the kid's collar so he's a few feet further from the woman in front of him.

Rei glances down. Vermouth's wearing bright red pumps, like blood pooling around her ankles.

“Well, I certainly don't read plate numbers, but…”

“It's alright! It's just the one car, and just a description…”

If Sherry really is still alive, then it's clear that Vermouth's ire is a relatively safe thing to hold. Her favor, on the other hand—untested. Dangerous.

"Ah," Vermouth hums, fingers around her chin, "the Camry, yes. I remember him quite well. He's involved in a hit and run, you said?" She leans back against the counter, crossing her arms, "You know, I can't say I'm surprised. When I saw him, a week ago, I think? We were on the elevator together at a mall in Shinjuku. He was… twitchy, I guess, would be the word. I mean, I'm used to nervous energy, what with my sister, but this was beyond. The man was paranoid, like somebody was chasing him. I thought he'd dabbled in the wrong sort of thing, I was so concerned seeing him get behind the wheel."

"Not enough to stop him, evidently," Rei can't help but slip in.

"I don't get involved with men I don't know," she shrugs, manicured nails tapping against her elbow. "Anyone can be a psychopath these days, a woman has to mind her business. For what it's worth, I did tell him to be careful when he tried to speak to me."

"You talked?"

"Briefly. He seemed irrational. It was so strange, he kept asking me where to go."

Here, she looks at Rei with a knowing, playful squint, crow's feet around her eyes. Rei frowns at her interrogatively.

"I think he said his name was Ogata."

Hm. Well, that certainly simplified things.

"Ogata," Conan repeats, puzzled. "He asked you where to go?"

"Right? You understand why I thought he was on drugs. I didn't know what to say, I told him to go home."

"Why do you think he approached you?" Rei asks, genuinely flummoxed.

If Ogata was running from Gin, if he'd wanted to quit the syndicate, what made him think Vermouth of all people would be of any help?

Vermouth looks at him, raising her head slightly, and the movement frees her eyes from the locks of hair framing her face. Cold, amused eyes. She smiles, "I guess he must have thought I was nice."

"Was he on something?" Conan asks.

She raises a finger as if about to speak, then pauses as though with sudden realisation. "You know, I did get that impression, but when he talked to me, he looked quite sober. Lucid. Must've been all nerves."

The picture's starting to clear up. In what must be the biggest character misread since you're an enemy right, Ogata had gone to Vermouth for help, and she must have said something that only made him feel further trapped, rattled him enough to immediately do something drastic right out of the elevator—steal a car, and… and what? How does Matsuda's friend factor into this?

"What do you think?" Conan asks him as soon as they step out.

“A twitchy, paranoid man behind the wheel,” Rei summarizes. “It could be an accident. Now that we have a name, we can simply ask the victim if he knows him. That will clear things up, as far as intent. Let's go to the hospital after this,” he checks his watch, “as soon as Matsuda's finished in the restrooms. What are you thinking?” he asks when Conan doesn't interrupt him, staring instead through the window, inside the bar.

"That woman, you said she's from the neighborhood association. That means she's from Beika, right?"

"I think that's a safe deduction."

"I've just never seen her before," Conan remarks, but before Rei can parry that, he turns away, "but it doesn't matter."

Rei feels his eyebrows raise in surprise. "It doesn't?"

"For now, I want to know why Ogata-san was so panicked. He was running from something," Conan says, thinking out loud. "He asks her where he can go, then he steals a car. He wasn't thinking clearly. I think he got involved in something bad."

Ogata-san, Rei notes, the way he would a discordant chord. He doesn't know why it snags. Ogata. Gin's pet informant. If memory serves, Ogata-san was a public prosecutor.

"Yes," he hums, distracted, the name and honorific playing around in his head like a cat with a ball of yarn, "it's really a toss-up on the hit and run, isn't it?"

"You know, Amuro-san, I've been that scared before, too."

Rei pauses.

"I really want to help him, okay? Can we go see Date-san now?"

Rei tilts his head. He doesn't know how the boy could have possibly surmised the full scope of the situation from the past fifteen minutes — maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it's just a feeling he's having, one currently on full display—the worry, the determination. The wariness. Conan demonstrated time and again that he has an acute intuition when it comes to syndicate affairs. The kind of instinct you grow when your life depends on it.

Could they go see Date together? Would it be kinder to part ways here?

Rei stares into wide blue eyes looking up at him, waiting for his reply, and he thinks—

"Amuro-san?" Conan calls out, uncertain.

Rei huffs out a breath. "Let's go talk to Date."

—what a grave mistake it'd been to ever think of this development as things being simplified.

.

.

“You go ahead,” Rei still hangs back once in the hospital lobby when two pairs of eyes look back at him in interrogation. His car keys make a jingling sound as he waves them off. “I need to use the restroom.”

“Kay. It’s Room 504,” Matsuda tells him, “Fifth floor.”

Rei ignores the look Conan shoots him before he follows suit, watches them make their way to the elevator area. The lobby is busy enough that even a foot away becomes too noisy for him to hear, but from the attentive look on Conan’s face, Matsuda must’ve resumed his detailed explanation of the state of Date’s car post-accident.

He turns and walks into the narrow, side corridor overlooked by the green W.C sign. Before anything else—he checks the inside of both his sleeves, his collar, and the hems of his pants. Then he pulls his phone. It buzzed in his pocket during the drive here, had stopped for about five seconds before going off again until it was sent to voicemail.

He calls Hiro back.

“Did you know Okiya Subaru is studying maritime engineering?”

Rei leans back against the wall next to the entrance for the men’s restrooms. “Yes,” he says, keeping his voice low. His brows pull into a frown. “You’re keeping an eye on him, then? Right now?”

“I am currently sitting a class at Todai, yes. Just… boats…everywhere. I can see his laptop screen and he’s shopping for clothes. Lots of earth tones.”

“And you called to tell me this…?”

“Professor stepped out for a smoke,” Hiro says, the vocal equivalent of a shrug in his voice. A faint popping sound tells Rei he's chewing gum. “What’re you up to? What do you wanna eat for dinner today?”

“I’m at the hospital—Beika General. Actually—”

A woman spills out of the restroom to his right then, wiping her hands as she passes in front of him, and Rei watches her go. As if Hiro sensed the unwelcome presence as well, the line momentarily falls silent.

“Actually,” Rei resumes once he’s alone again, glancing at his watch. “It’s good you called. There’s–”

“Why are you at the hospital? I thought you were picking up your car.”

“Ah, I’m with Matsuda. Something came up. He asked me to investigate an accident his friend got into.”

“Hagi?” Hiro says in alarm. “He okay?”

“Not Hagi. Another friend of his.”

“Oh... He’s got more than one?”

Rei snorts. “He seems reluctant to admit it. Anyway, I have it handled. More importantly, I need to talk to you.”

“Sure, you have six more minutes before I have to get back to the boats. What’s up?”

Rei grimaces. “It can wait until tonight, it’s not exactly a phone thing. But while I have you—Gin might try to reach you, I need you to dodge his calls for as long as you can. In fact, it would be helpful if you didn’t talk to anyone until we get our stories straight.”

He’s met with silence, which Rei expects. He waits him out, lips sheepishly pursed like he’s eleven and accidentally dropped Hiro’s phone in the mall fountain again.

“So we’re doing this? We’re covering for him?”

Rei inhales, tense; Hiro’s tone is unhappy. “I thought that was established.”

“I never agreed. I heard you out, but I never agreed to anything.”

Wincing slightly, Rei doesn’t know what to say. He’d made Hiro a clear promise that night at the cafe, and he didn’t even realise he was breaking it until this moment. He’s about to open his mouth when Hiro speaks again.

“You said you were clear-headed.”

Despite the accusatory words, Hiro’s tone is anything but—there’s a specific blank surprise in it that makes Rei’s fingers twitch around his phone. The tone of someone finding a bomb where there shouldn’t have been; the tone of trust being proven wrong.

“I know,” Rei says again, because he doesn’t know how else to apologize. “I guess I might have… rationalized.”

Another pause. He wishes he could see Hiro’s face.

“Zero, I’m kind of scared.”

Rei blinks.

“I’m scared,” Hiro repeats, “So you have to be sure this is what you want. A hundred percent. We could be—I mean, you've seen what happens to deserters. You really wanna risk it for him? I know he was our friend, but isn’t this a bit…?”

Hiro trails off, and Rei wants to know what word he’s thinking of, his own mind supplying some candidates— hasty. Senseless. Idiotic.

“It’s not just about him.”

Hiro sighs. “What the kid said got to you, didn't it?”

Unsurprisingly, Hiro manages to find the right and wrong answer at the same time. Because it did, Rei won't deny it. But not only for the reasons Hiro thinks. Because if Conan, full of the paranoia that comes from protecting someone, looked at Bourbon and thought ally, then…

Another life is possible.

“Sort of,” Rei says.

There's another pause.

“I need to hear more,” Hiro says, and it's somehow not as exasperated as Rei expects it to be. “Not just about what he is to the bastard. What is he to you? What are you thinking?”

What do you wanna do, Zero?

The echo in the phrase forces Rei to swallow. “Let's talk about it later tonight, okay? I need to go.”

“...We’re eating nikujaga.”

Rei feels a weak smile stretch his lips. “That’s fine. See you–”

“Excuse me,” a distant, pleasant voice interrupts.

Shock zips through Rei at the sound of it. He blinks, stunned into silence. Faintly, he hears Hiro swear under his breath.

“Could you plug this in for me?”

“Uh, y-yeah, sure, hang on–”

Rei hangs up halfway through Hiro’s response. As he lowers his phone, finds himself staring at his home screen. He smiles, more from nerves than anything.

With effort, he pushes the phone call out of mind, taking the stairs up. He knocks twice on his chest, right where his heart had tripped, like slapping the side of a malfunctioning machine. For a simple voice to have such an effect was a little…

When he finally steps inside his client’s room, he finds Matsuda perched carelessly on the corner of the bed, Conan standing on a chair.

“—and then what happened?” He hears once he’s tuned in.

He closes the door behind him to approach the bed. A large man is lying there, an IV line leading to one hand as he blinks heavily at Conan’s question.

“And then all I could think about was—” Rei makes it to the edge of the mattress, and a pair of hazy eyes turn to meet him, then, before widening in surprise, “Natalie!”

Rei glances over his shoulder in confusion, but even as he does, he feels fingers brush clumsily at his bangs. He flinches back around, and finds Date staring at him in what seems to be deeply drugged fondness as he cups his cheek with his palm.

“You came,” Date sighs with satisfaction. “I thought you had errands to run today?”

“Um.”

Rei has no idea how to handle this situation. He glances around him for help, but Conan simply stares back with wide, incredulous eyes. A small frown knits his brows as he gives Rei a troubled once-over, like he’s seeing him for the first time.

He couldn't be taking this seriously!

Oh, come on, Rei thinks, more plaintive than exasperated, trying to communicate that with a look. I’m not Vermouth!

“Oi, not every blond person is your girl,” Matsuda tells him, poking Date’s leg and somehow being more reasonable than the other detective in the room. “Refocus, idiot. That’s your P.I.”

Date squints. “I thought the toddler was my P.I.?”

“Oh my god.” Matsuda drops his face into his hand. “Just—keep going. What happened.”

Rei reaches up to wrap a hand around a bandaged wrist, gently moving it away from his face and back on the bed. “My name is Amuro Tooru,” he tries for a more business-like tone even as he coughs lightly into his fist. “Conan-kun’s assisting me today to find the person who did this to you.” He turns to shoot Conan a smile. “Right?”

“Right,” pipes Conan, even as he looks mildly disgruntled at being referred to as an assistant. “So who’s Natalie?”

Date pushes out a longing sigh. “My fiancée. We’re in love.”

Matsuda’s hand drags down his face as he rolls his eyes up to the ceiling.

“She teaches over at Ekoda High, because she’s the smartest woman in the world, and she’s got these eyes that—”

“You said she was running errands today?” Rei cuts in.

Date frowns, visibly recalibrating. “Yeah, bank stuff. Paperwork. She said something about groceries? I wish I could go instead. She always hates the lines at the bank…”

His forlorn sigh trails into more energetic (and aimless) praising of her resilience, even as the frequency of Matsuda’s eyebrow-twitches steadily climbs. Rei keeps half an ear on it, but then Conan tugs at his sleeve.

“Ogata-san isn't one of his students,” he says when Rei leans in.

“No?”

“He’s a prosecutor. A few days ago, he came to his house for a private meeting.” At Rei's blank look, Conan goes on to explain, “Date used to take smaller bodyguard positions, but he rejected his request.”

Rei's pen pauses, momentarily amused. Did Ogata really think a judo master would save him? It's true that Rei would roll anyone he hired from his stint with Gin—no bodyguard contact from his time in the organization would listen to Ogata over Bourbon, after all—but surely there were better avenues than finding anyone who might have shot a gun once.

A hypothesis comes to mind, shapeless. Rei tilts his head, eyes turning back to Date, “Why did you turn down the job?”

“Um,” his hand reaches up to scratch at his cheek, nail scraping against stubble, ‘cuz I’m getting married.”

Matsuda frowns, flicking a hand out interrogatively. “Fuck that got to do with anything?”

“Timing?” Rei tries politely.

“Naw, we’re having a winter wedding—you're all invited—but Natalie didn’t want me to do it ‘cuz the guy looked like he was involved in some shady business.” Date squints, like he’s trying with all his might to focus on the memory. “He was sweating like crazy, I'm talking moist, the man was stressed outta his mind. Clear as day that someone,” his gaze drifts idly to Rei, “was looking for him. I felt for him, but Natalie didn’t want me in that kind of danger.”

He sighs out, looking marginally more lucid. “And she was right, anyway, because he completely freaked out after I said no.”

Conan’s eyes sharpen. “Freaked out?”

“Yeah, I was gentle about it too—offered him a drink for his nerves. Had a pretty good selection, too—umeshu, clear sake, that bourbon Natalie got for her birthday—”

Ah.

“—But then he just shot up, knocked over the teacups, started yelling all kinds of nonsense about how I wouldn’t get him that easy, and took right off.”

“Dude’s brain ain’t right,” Matsuda dismisses with a scoff, “If it was shitty konbini vodka or something, I’d get it. Hell, I’d scream too, but a good bourbon? What's his problem?"

Conan presses, “He freaked out when you offered him bourbon?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

There are currently two blue eyes boring into the side of Rei’s skull, and despite their threat Rei finds himself needing to press the side of his hand to his mouth to stifle his smile.

(Hiro’s going to die laughing.)

“Huh,” is all Conan says, deadly serious.

In any case, the last piece has slotted into place. Clearly, in his paranoia, Ogata had started seeing shadows where there were none, and Date’s unintentional namedrop had been the final straw. Realizing he’d unintentionally made contact, then revealed his location and plans with ‘Bourbon’s agent,’ he’d attempted to kill off the loose end.

And failed. This guy is not the sharpest knife in the block. Rei closes his notebook decisively. “Then it looks like we’ve got enough to call in a tip,” he says, satisfied.

Matsuda shoots him a sideways look. “You think this is enough?”

“It’s enough for the police to take him in as a suspect,” Conan pipes.

“Yeah, well,” Matsuda’s mouth flattens into an unhappy line, “is it enough for us? S’not like the cops will check twice.”

Conan pauses, brows furrowing. He glances at Rei, and Rei catches it only because he’s looking, curious as to Conan’s reaction to such a statement.

“Shall we go meet him, then?” Rei suggests, light.

Matsuda blinks, then pins him with a considering look. “Yeah?"

“At this point, it wouldn’t be difficult to find him. I'm good at this part. Right, Conan-kun?”

“I…" Conan hesitates, "I think it'd be best if we just tell the police about him."

“It's not like we're gonna beat him up,” Matsuda huffs. “Probably. Maybe. Whatever, let's just go check the guy out.”

“But I'm tired,” Conan says.

Matsuda rolls his eyes. “Jeez, fine, then you go back and take your nap, and I'll go with—”

“No!”

At the yell, Rei and Matsuda both pause, no longer looking over Conan's head. The emotion in that tiny face clicks—panic.

Rei swallows down the instinctive are you alright, Conan-kun? because there is coy and there is insulting. He rifles through the cabinet of words in his head for the best reassurance, but the files come up empty, because… what is he looking for, exactly?

What is Rei planning to do? This whole time he’s been thinking idly of how to make it look like a suicide.

“What’s up with you, kid?” Matsuda crouches down, annoyance clear on his face but not his voice. “Got a stomach-ache all of a sudden?”

“I just,” Conan glances up at Rei again, which probably doesn’t help—Rei’s face is blank. “Ogata-san doesn’t know who we are.”

Matsuda blinks slow. “Be kinda freaky if he did.”

“So that’s… scary, right? If we suddenly show up to talk to him?” He gathers steam. “Like how Date-san and Hitomi-san said. He’s already paranoid.”

Snorting, Matsuda puts a hand on his head—less comforting, and more to emphasise his height. “You think you’re more intimidating than the police?”

Conan’s eyes flash. “But he crashed a car. He might at least be expecting the police. He won’t be expecting…”

He bites his lip. He doesn't look up at Rei, this time.

“...Us.”

You.

The silence echoes, Matsuda frowns, and Rei does what he's been doing far too much lately—he listens to an impulse, and makes a decision.

“Conan-kun’s right,” he announces.

This time, it’s Matsuda looking skeptically up at him. “He is?”

“Mhm,” Rei joins them both in a crouch, putting his hands on his knees. “Police do represent a kind of safety to most people. Even if he’s struggling to recognise who’s out to get him, he might at least recognise that.” He doesn’t let himself pause for too long, having expected the curl of Matsuda’s lip. “But Matsuda’s right too.”

Almost eye-to-eye, Conan stares him down. “He is?”

“You’re a good detective,” says Rei, and it’s not too hard to make a smile. “You have a way of putting people at ease, you know? I think it’d help if you heard him out first. Besides,” he jabs a thumb at Matsuda, “Matsuda’s easygoing. He just wants to talk because he doesn’t like being mad.”

Matsuda raises a brow, but doesn’t interrupt.

“And as for myself…” Rei takes a breath, easing his jaw. “I’m a detective learning from the great Mouri Kogoro. I’ll be following the example of my senior apprentice, yes?”

“What does that mean?” Conan’s expression doesn’t soften, brow furrowed tight. Where Rei’s only been seeing another job to tick off the list, he’s seeing a person’s life hanging in the balance.

“I’m going there only to talk,” says Rei, plain. “As a detective, just like you.”

He’s met with obvious suspicion, Conan still unconvinced, but he looks down for a long moment, as though weighing something.

“Amuro-san,” he begins slowly. “Did you know? When I asked you if we could go see Date-san together?”

Rei doesn’t think twice. “Yes.”

Another few moments, and then Conan raises his chin again in one, solid nod.

“Okay,” he says simply. “Then let’s go see Ogata-san together, too.”

Conan turns away, tension slipped from the slope of his shoulders like he’s comfortable in waiting for him to follow. And Rei…

He’s not sure if he can call this emotion shock, exactly. Not sure what he was expecting, dreading, or wanting. He only knows that it wasn’t this, the odd empty space left behind by something completely and utterly unpredictable.

Blindsided. Rei’s been blindsided again.

As he reckons with the fact of that, Rei rises to his feet to meet a child’s trust.

And a warm punch to his shoulder. “Knew you weren’t no damn waiter,” Matsuda grins.

.

.

Predictably, Ogata doesn’t answer his doorbell.

“Hmm.” Rei’s already reaching into his pocket. “Conan-kun, will you overlook this for a…”

He trails off, blinking a bit in surprise. In front of him: his own hand, holding a small set of hairpins. One foot to the right: Matsuda’s hand, holding the exact same thing. Below them both: Conan’s hand, also full of pins.

“Ha,” Matsuda stuffs them back in his pocket. “Yeah, sure. Your show.”

Conan stares at them both, then silently puts his away as well.

Rei chuckles under his breath, and goes to pick the lock. Some moments later, he reaches for the handle, pushes it down, and—

“Stop!”

Rei freezes—Matsuda’s hand has slammed down over his like a trap, tight with tension.

Conan’s brow furrows. “What was that second click, just now?”

Matsuda’s mouth presses into a grim line. “Don’t move. Keep the handle down.”

Very slowly, he lets go of Rei’s hand, watching carefully for insurance. Rei gives it to him, eyes following him as he backs away but every other inch of him as still as stone.

Matsuda steps away from the door to the small window a few feet to their right, cupping his hands over the glass to glare through. Conan lifts to his tiptoes, trying the same.

“What the hell?” Matsuda snarls. “Dude’s rigged up a bomb! What the fuck's his damage, man?"

Rei blinks, a steely calm filling from the chest out. The shape of Ogata in his head—scared, pathetic, out of his mind—shifts. For all his incompetence, this is Bourbon: caught. Where this would’ve usually forced his respect, now there’s only an anger that spikes when he looks to the people at his side.

Conan’s face, most of it obscured by how closely he’s pressed to the glass. Matsuda’s eyes, momentarily wide, have already begun to narrow again.

Rei takes a short breath. There will be time for fury later. “What does it look like?”

“There’s an end table that’s been dragged in front of the door,” Conan explains, palms coming up to press against the window next to his nose, “and wiring coming out of it… That’s probably what’s hooked up to the door handle. But the bomb itself…” He trails off, squinting. “I don’t recognize it.”

“Looks homemade. They never bother with casings. I can prolly get it.” Matsuda’s already grasping the window frame with both hands. “Dumbass left this unlocked, at least.”

Why would it be—?

Rei has his answer a second later, when the window jams a foot up.

“Shit,” Matsuda growls, continuing to yank futilely at the unmoving window. “I can’t get in like this—”

“I can,” Conan cuts in.

Before either of them have a chance to react, he’s already through—tumbling in with one hand gripping the frame and the other braced against Matsuda’s elbow. Rei’s hand tightens sharply around the handle as he barely stops himself from moving.

“Oi, oi, oi!” Matsuda yells, poking his head through the gap. “That’s not a toy, get back here!”

Tension pulls Rei’s mouth into a grim smile. Experience has already told him there’s never a point in pulling Conan backwards, only in trying to guide his steps. “Conan-kun,” he calls out a little louder, “can you defuse it?”

Matsuda shoots him an incredulous look. “He’s four?”

“Seven!” Conan calls in a way that Rei thinks is supposed to be reassuring.

Then, a heavy silence.

“...Conan-kun?”

“Give me a second.”

“Conan-kun, what’s—”

“Just give me a second!”

Rei stops, blinking at the roughness of his voice. “I don’t think he’s seen this before,” Rei says softly, addressing Matsuda.

Matsuda pulls his head out of the window, giving him an evaluating look. “But he’s seen others?”

“As I’ve heard it, yes. Remember the stadium bombing around half a year ago?”

Matsuda blinks, slow. “Forty C4s, only twenty-three detonated? That was him?”

Conan’s voice finally comes out again, smaller. “I’ve never— Hold on, okay, Amuro-san? I need a bit longer.”

“No you don’t.” Matsuda pokes his head through again, and wiggles his other hand out at Rei. “Zero, gimme your phone.”

Rei raises a brow, but obligingly pulls it from his pocket, swiping in the code and tossing it to Matsuda's waiting palm.

“Kid, call it. Video.” Matsuda gives the sill two impatient smacks.

“What's your plan?” asks Rei.

“Baton-passing from the prodigy to the expert. My show now.” Matsuda jabs the hand with the phone towards himself, head still stuck through the window. “C'mon, show me what we're working with, kid. You can be my hands.”

For the second time in the space of five minutes, Rei finds himself reformulating his understanding of a person. “Since when are you the expert?”

“Toasters come apart, cars come apart, bombs come apart.” Matsuda sounds as impatient as he ever does. “Trust me.”

A moment.

“You have done a bomb before, Matsuda-san?” asks Conan, composure seeping back into his voice. At the same time, Rei sees an incoming call light up his phone—he gets a brief peek at Conan’s look of consternation before the camera flips and a half-ransacked living room fills the screen. “This isn’t a toaster!”

“I got this,” Matsuda says, voice already dropping lower as he squints at the screen. “Zoom in a little, lemme see it up close. You have anything sharp on you, kid? Scissors, pliers? Otherwise, look around.”

“I have scissors.”

“Good.” Matsuda pauses a moment, before glancing at Rei again. His lips purse, then he mouths, you sure?

Rei, still gripping the door handle, nods.

“Matsuda-san?”

“Alright, listen up. You miss anything, you ask twice.” He pauses again, this time to let his eyes flick back and forth over the image. “You see that section up to your right? Pin the foil to the right with a bobby so you’ve got space to work. Not against the wires, but to the— yeah, like that.” He scrunches his nose. “Jeez, what a piece of work. Where the hell does a prosecutor pull this from?”

“A different job,” answers Conan with a surety that sounds reflexive. “Can you still do it?”

Matsuda makes a mildly offended noise. “From the top, start with that grey one—the one twisted around the copper plate. Make sure you pull it apart from the red one it’s tangled with, but be careful not to tear either out. Put the phone down while you do it. Both hands.”

Matsuda continues through his straight but surprisingly thorough instructions, a no-nonsense efficiency in his voice that stops either of them from questioning his suddenly-revealed expertise. For his part, Conan asks only short clarifiers, once again demonstrating his usual age-inappropriate reliability.

Rei rests his head against the door, watching Matsuda as he keeps the handle down.

“...Alright, you’re almost there. Next…” Matsuda trails, brow furrowing sharper. “Don’t do this yet. Just listen. You see the tiny lever to the left? Don’t touch it!” He pauses, as if to sink it in. “Okay, look. In a second, you’re gonna cut the blue wire. When you do that, that lever’s going to try and spring up—don’t let it. Catch it before it does, then chop the white one.”

There’s a brief second, before Conan asks with anticipation, “Should I untangle it first?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever makes it easier. Just watch what else you’re touching.”

More seconds. Rei continues to breathe.

“...I’m going to cut the blue one now,” Conan announces.

Matsuda just nods. “Yeah. You got this. Count yourself in if you gotta.”

Seventeen defusals, Rei reminds himself. It’s Conan-kun.

“Don’t rush, okay?” he still says.

He hears a deep inhale from the other side of the door, then silence, then—

An explosive exhale.

Matsuda immediately pulls his head out of the window, striding back over with a wide grin. Rei barely has time to blink at him before he’s shoved forward, door finally swinging open with him.

Conan’s on his knees in front of a tangle of cut up wires, scissors and phone both discarded on the floor. His eyes are a little wide as he blinks up at them.

“Nice work, kid!” Matsuda bends down to give a hard muss of Conan’s hair, still grinning.

Joining him on the ground, Rei pats Conan’s shoulder, the gesture as much for himself as for Conan. “Good job, Conan-kun,” he says.

Conan exhales one more time, mouth finally shaping a relieved smile. His eyes immediately fall over Rei’s shoulder. “It was all thanks to Matsuda-niisan!” he says, “How do you know so much about bombs?”

Ah, back to business, it seems. Quick to recover as usual. Rei feels himself finally smile, which he has to cover with a crooked finger when Matsuda makes a dismissive noise. “Eh, lifelong hobby of mine. Fun, wasn’t it?”

Conan stares at him, before turning away. “...Anyway, we should probably look around, see if there’s anything that can help us find him.”

“Right, yeah! We gotta find this guy. What’s his problem, trying to bomb his own place? It’s a hit and run, not a presidential assassination. Date didn’t even croak. He's that scared of two years in the slammer?”

“Our witness did tell us he seemed quite serious about running, which Date confirmed. Likely he was targeting whoever he believed was after him.” Rei tilts his head. “We were unlucky to get caught up in it, I suppose.”

He tries not to meet Conan’s glance, but Matsuda’s isn’t any less unimpressed.

“What’s that, two counts of attempted murder? Yeesh.”

“Fleeing the scene is a separate charge,” Conan adds absent-mindedly, before disappearing into the bedroom.

Matsuda gives Rei another baffled look. Rei only offers an amused shrug, taking the study.

For its size, the apartment is rather sparse. It doesn’t take them long before they’re reconvening in the living room again, settling back where Matsuda’s dismantling the remainder of the bomb, cross legged on the floor and bobby pin between his lips.

“Any clues in there?” Rei pokes curiously.

Matsuda shrugs, pulling his eyes up back to them with what seems like great reluctance. “It’s just a cool bomb. If he wasn’t an asshole, I’d wanna pick his brain. You find anything?”

A smile tugs at Rei’s mouth just as Conan walks out of the bedroom. “A legal pad, though it’s blank.” He passes it over to him, anticipatory. “What do you think, Conan-kun?”

It’s in Conan’s hands for only a second before he’s running his thumb over the leftover indents Rei’d noticed. He frowns, then pulls a pencil out of his pocket, rubbing the flat side over the page without a second thought.

Sure enough, yellow letters fade to the surface under the graphite.

hainan
rgnt/adra/explr
mk rsrv: 15h35

“MK,” Matsuda reads over Conan’s right shoulder, “that’s a taxi company. And Hainan like the airline, right?”

“We have Ogata’s name and his booking time,” Rei adds over Conan’s left shoulder, “perhaps we could call them and check if he went to the airport?”

“Do they give that stuff out that easy?”

“Let me worry about that,” Rei smiles. “It should be simple, over the phone.”

“Simple, he says—”

“Shh.” Conan traces his finger under the first three words, tapping a few times on explr.

“Oi, don’t shush me,” Matsuda says, poking the side of his face, “what about those three words? Those airlines, too? He probably went to one of the airports then. We could split up… or I guess you can call and do your thing and find out which.”

Conan has obviously stopped listening, rummaging through his pocket before pulling out a large, emptied candy box. Gingerbon, it reads.

“You run out?” Matsuda wonders.

“We’ll get you more later,” Rei adds, amused.

Just as he’d thought, Conan shakes his head. “These aren’t mine. He left them in his bedroom, and I think I know why. Regent, Adora, Explore. They’re all–”

“Cruise ship companies,” Rei chimes in.

Conan nods. “Ginger helps with seasickness.”

Matsuda tilts his head in bewilderment. “Three ships and a plane? What kind of wild cost-cutting scheme is that? I thought he had a cushy job.”

Rei snorts. “Wouldn’t you, if it meant half the price?”

“Comfort’s got no price,” Matsuda declares confidently. “I keep having to tell Hagi that.”

“Not and. Or!” Conan turns to aim them both with an exasperated glare. “He left a bomb and ran, remember? He wants to obscure his tracks, so he booked several trips to cover up where he was really going.”

“Oi, oi, that’s way overkill. That bomb was packing enough heat to clear three floors,” Matsuda says, dropping that particular bomb almost carelessly. “No way whoever’s after him would’a survived that, so who’d be left to run from?”

Hiro, Rei thinks, with a passing moment of warm heartbreak.

Conan narrows his eyes. “Maybe he was running from a group of people. Or an organization.”

“What, like the yakuza?” Matsuda elbows Rei in the side playfully. “We should ask the young kashira over here.”

“My hair color’s natural, Matsuda,” Rei says mildly. “If you find any clan who’d accept that and my introduction, let me know.”

“So if you could, you would?”

“Can we take this seriously?” Conan grumbles. “He left twenty minutes ago. The airports are out, but both ports are only forty minutes away. We don’t have a lot of time left. Amuro-san—”

“Yes, yes,” Rei says, already dialling and clearing his throat. One ring later, and an operator picks up. Pitching his voice a notch lower: “Good afternoon, this is Ogata Takeshi speaking. I made a reservation this morning?”

“Oh, Ogata-san! I hope your car arrived with no issue?”

“It did, no worries at all. It’s just that I've been in a bit of a panic all day, you see, and your driver has been so kind and patient through a rather long drive… May I leave my compliments?”

“How thoughtful, of course! It’s good to hear things are going well. The traffic is always difficult on the way to Yokohama at this time of day.”

“I guess I’ve been very lucky,” Rei smiles. “Thank you so much, have a good day.”

His phone clicks as he hangs up to find Matsuda squinting at him. “You’re such a freak, man.”

“Both Adora and Regent depart from Yokohama Port today,” Conan adds, eyes on his own phone. “Regent’s leaving first, at four-forty. We should make it.”

“We have our destination. And a much more reasonable means of cross-city travel.” Rei raises his commuter pass with a smile. “If we leave now, we’ll beat traffic.”

.

.

Ogata Takeshi is a plain-looking man with black hair and black glasses. In all of his pictures, both online and in his apartment, he’s wearing a black trenchcoat. It doesn’t take long poking around Yokohama Port to find him—after confirming that he isn’t lining up for the Regent departure, they circle back to the portside stores where Rei spots him sitting at an outdoor terrace.

Rei narrows his eyes—focus shrinking to the singular point of his target. Without hesitating, he walks forward and joins him at his table.

“Ogata Takeshi,” he greets with a pleasant smile. “You’re a hard man to pin down.”

Ogata blanches, frozen, paper cup in the air. Before he can react, though, Matsuda and Conan come up to the table as well. When his eyes land on the child, his fear stutters into incredulity.

He stays still, still afraid but remaining careful, eyes flicking between the three of them. He is a smarter man than Rei’s initial impression, after all.

“Hi, Prosecutor Ogata-san!” Conan chirps, hopping on the seat directly next to him. “We’ve been looking for you.”

Ogata slowly, slowly puts his cup down, the tremble in his fingers near-imperceptible. “It seems you have me at a disadvantage. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

Matsuda drops himself into the chair next to Rei, propping his elbow up on Rei’s shoulder, which forces him to slouch a bit under its weight. “I’m Matsuda, the friend of that guy you hit with your car and left for dead.”

To his credit, Ogata doesn’t flinch. Rei spies courtroom composure. “Excuse me?”

“You—car.” Matsuda points at him with his finger. “Date Wataru—hospital. Ring any bells?”

Ogata frowns. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend, but I’m afraid I don’t know who you’re speaking of.”

“Ah le le?” Conan tilts his head in confusion. “That seems strange… I just met Date-san today, and he said he had a meeting with you a week ago. You went to his house and asked him to be a bodyguard.”

Ogata swallows.

Rei leans slightly back, hands on the table, content to enjoy the show.

Swallowing again, Ogata hums. “A-Ah, Date… Date Wataru, I see. I saw quite a few potential hires last week, so I must’ve lost him in the sea of names.”

Matsuda glares at him in disbelief. “You can’t be fucking serious.”

Rei puts a hand on his elbow, just brief enough that Matsuda shoots him a glance. He meets it with a placating smile—just watch.

“I never followed up, you see. I only met him the one time.” Ogata makes a show of a sympathetic look. “But I truly am sorry to hear that happened to him.”

“Oh,” Conan perks up, “then you’d be happy to know we found camera footage of the car crash. The car itself was stolen, but we also found video of when that happened at a mall parking lot.”

“CCTVs are notoriously unreliable evidence, and parking lots are dark. Were you able to identify the driver’s face?” Ogata asks, all professional legal curiosity.

Conan shakes his head. “Unfortunately, no. But what we did identify was a witness!”

Something jumps in Ogata’s throat. “And you were able to track them down?”

“We got lucky,” Conan chirps. “Amuro-san happened to know her.”

Rei waves.

“Know her?” Ogata stutters.

“Yes! From the Beika neighborhood association.”

“Y-You know her?” Ogata repeats, eyes stuck on Rei’s placid face.

A smart man, indeed. Rei smiles, remaining silent. Should he wave again?

“Then, she told us you introduced yourself to her. You shared the same elevator at the mall.”

With what appears to be painstaking effort, Ogata drags his gaze back to the child accusing him. His expression begins to shift into something Rei can’t recognize yet, but he doesn’t like where it’s aimed.

“She confirmed it was you, Prosecutor Ogata-san,” Conan completes, “who stole that car, and who was in it not even half an hour later, when it hit Date-san.”

They all hear the gavel strike its conclusion. Ogata’s eyes drop momentarily to the table in familiar capitulation, and he finally relents:

“I had run short of options,” he admits. “You may not understand, but for a man in my position, it could only have been him or me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You think Date was out for you or something?” Matsuda slaps a palm to the table. “He’s a good guy! He teaches community self-defense, and he’s getting married next month! You make bombs, man—he’s got nothing in common with assholes like you!”

His tirade doesn’t appear to pierce Ogata exactly, but the confusion that had remained near constant in his eyes is beginning to clear. He stares at Matsuda, regaining focus.

“Date Wataru is your friend,” he says, with the slow, evaluating cadence of an attorney testing for a reaction. “You’ve come to me because I hit your friend.”

Matsuda throws up his hand in frustration. “Obviously! Hired this damn P.I. and everything!”

“P.I,” Ogata echoes thoughtfully, then turns his gaze to the seat next to him, “and you? Who are you?”

“I’m Edogawa Conan, a detective.”

“I see. It’s a pleasure to see civilians taking such strong initiative.” And now his eyes are solely alternating between Matsuda and Conan, and this Rei really doesn’t like. “You mentioned something involving a bomb?”

“The one you left at your apartment,” Matsuda says gruffly. “We defused it before it could do any real damage.”

“You found a bomb at my apartment.” Ogata puts a hand to his mouth, shutting his eyes for a brief moment. “Perhaps we may understand each other after all.”

“And that’s supposed to mean…?”

“That I’m currently in a tricky position. I’ve made some difficult enemies, you see. And you’ve witnessed yourself the lengths they will go to get me.”

Matsuda squints. “Are you trying to say you didn’t build it?”

Ogata shakes his head, holding out his hands palms-up in elegant supplicance. “I take pride in my expertise, but manufacturing explosives doesn’t fall under it.”

Nor mine, Rei holds back a frown as the implication lands.

Pinning the bomb on Bourbon… not a bad strategy. Matsuda and Conan clearly outed themselves as uninvolved with the Crows, so likely Ogata believes Rei— rather, Bourbon has manipulated himself into this investigation. However, Bourbon is notoriously averse to public spectacle and civilian suspicion. If Ogata can negotiate the two into sympathising with him enough to let him go through with his plans to leave, it will be difficult for Rei to disagree.

Not a bad strategy at all, were it not for one key flaw—it all rests on the deeply mistaken assumption that Conan can be fooled.

“Prosecutor Ogata-san,” Conan says, “whoever’s after you, we can help with that, but you have to tell the truth.”

“I am,” Ogata insists.

“So you didn’t build that bomb?”

“I've made that clear! Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because you knew they were coming,” Conan answers easily, “you prepared for it. We were in your apartment. I found a lot of receipts in your room, and Matsuda-niisan says a lot of what you bought matches what you’d need to build that bomb. You set it up, and then you climbed out the window. That’s why you were forced to leave it unlocked, but you still jammed it by wedging rubber bands into the gap with something thin, like your credit card, so no one could get in in any way aside from the door.”

“Seeing as the bomb was attached to the handle, it’s clear why you went to the trouble.”

Matsuda whistles, impressed. “Way to go, kid.”

But Conan’s brow stays furrowed, mouth unsmiling. “Tell us the truth, Ogata-san. We can help.”

Ogata stares at him for a long moment, clearly astonished. Something in his mask dislodges, shoulders minutely slumping.

“Edogawa-kun,” he says, tone shifting to something quieter, more insistent. “If you truly wish to help me, you will do so by letting me leave.”

“That’s not a solution,” Conan counters. “It won’t do anything.”

Ogata shakes his head, unmoved. “I will be a damned man if I am to remain here.”

“You would be protected here. You’re a prosecutor!” Conan straightens further. “You’ve probably protected witnesses yourself. They can do the same for you!”

“Stop trying to dodge your responsibilities,” Matsuda interjects, crossing his arms. “You owe Date that much.”

“There is nothing in this country that could protect me.”

“But Ogata-san please—”

“If I could propose something,” Rei interrupts, leaning forward.

Ogata pales, eyes jumping to him. Clearly, he’d been extremely confident in his interpretation of Bourbon’s personality. Or perhaps he’d grown so tense he’d honestly blocked out his presence. It doesn’t really matter—Rei can see them going in indefinite circles. It’s time for him to step in.

However obliquely he did so, he promised Conan he’d help.

“If, hypothetically, I were the kind of enemy you needed a bomb to take out,” Rei props an elbow up to rest his cheek in his hand, faux-thoughtful. “I don’t think something as small as national borders would make a difference. Whether it were Shanghai, Taipei, Manila,”—Regent, Adora, Explore— “Los Angeles,”—Hainan Airlines— “or even Buenos Aires…” Likely his chosen final destination, given a flyer in his desk. He’d probably expected it to burn up in the explosion.

“I would make sure to be there, at each one. Greet you before you could even put your bags down.” Rei keeps his smile placid, staring carefully into Ogata’s terrified eyes. “If I were that kind of enemy, there’d be nowhere in the world you could hide from me.”

He holds his pose for a few moments, before leaning away again with a slight shrug. “I do agree that it seems safer to stay. But then again, Conan-kun would know better than I would.”

The air remains suspended, as though his words are taking their time to crash. Never mind simply being open—Rei has never laid all his cards on the table quite like this.

Once again, Conan’s eyes bore into the side of his head. He’s impossible to ignore: eyes wide, lips pursed like there is something he desperately wants to object to but can’t find the words.

Matsuda, on the other hand, seems to have relaxed into something different, skipping past the shock to blink directly into steady, focused evaluation.

As for Ogata, he may not understand how twisted Bourbon’s motives have become, nor the true meaning of his words. But with all his exit plans tugged out from under him, he does understand defeat.

“Truly?” he asks, voice tremulous.

Rei smiles, bright and guileless.

Ogata closes his eyes, and gives a single, trembling nod.

.

.

When Rei makes a climactic decision, he usually proceeds with the follow-up in one of two ways. The easier one is to relax—with the appropriate prudence, of course, but relax nevertheless. If he’s solved a problem, he ought to breathe.

Alternately, what follows is closer to what he imagines a surgeon might go through when the crux of their operation is completed. The transplant has been made, the new heart is beating, but there the patient still lies. Ribs pried wide open and blood glistening for spectators until Rei threads the needle and closes what remains into something suitable for life to go on.

The first stitches are simple: the police collect Ogata within the hour alongside Rei’s written affidavit, neatly stamped with Amuro Tooru’s hanko. Next, he takes the subway back to collect his car, drops Matsuda back off at the hospital to tell Date the good news. Conan insists on accompanying him through each of these steps—unsurprising. It’s not any of this that prevents Rei from relaxing.

No, what disqualifies relaxation here is not Conan’s presence, but his uncharacteristic silence. Even now that they’re stalled in the hospital parking lot, alone in Rei’s car after a case well-solved, Conan continues to tap his chin like there’s something he still needs to work out.

It’s a sentiment they have in common—Rei’s honestly not sure where to start either.

“Shall I drop you with the Mouris, or the Professor?”

“The agency’s fine,” says Conan. Then, without any preamble, “How long had you been chasing Ogata-san?”

Rei hums, and pulls away from his car key. He supposes that’s as good a place as any. “Since this morning. Maybe about fifteen minutes before I met with Matsuda.”

“Matsuda-niisan is an ex-convict,” Conan declares, then frowns into the windshield, “but he really is just a mechanic now. It was really all just a coincidence?”

Rei can’t help his chuckle—it figured that the day couldn’t end without Conan having found out the truth. “We’ve run into stranger coincidences together, haven’t we?”

Conan’s quiet for a moment.

“What’s on your mind?” Rei asks, curious. “I would think you’d be happy with how things turned out.”

“If Ogata-san hadn’t been the one to hit Date-san’s car, were you going to kill him?”

Rei taps a few times on the steering wheel. “Fifteen minutes isn’t long enough to decide much of anything, don’t you think?”

“Amuro-san.” Conan’s gaze, when he meets it, is insistent, lips pursed.

Blowing out a soft breath, Rei stops tapping, instead resting his arms over the wheel. He lets the silence sit for some moments as he thinks.

While it’s true that Conan has proven himself shockingly adept at surprising him, Rei’s learned plenty about him in return. Namely, his simplest, most prevailing belief: that once he’s acquired all the facts, he will know the ultimate answer. But they’re not working a case anymore—Conan is asking after this particular fact because he believes that with it, he will understand what Rei is thinking.

Rei, however, doesn’t. So what does he say to avoid being misunderstood? What does he say, if not the answer?

“You have to be more careful, Conan-kun.”

A sentence that’s been nagging at him for hours, days, weeks, finally let go.

Conan blinks. “Careful?”

“Do you understand what it means to work in an organization of this scale?” Rei ignores the way Conan’s eyes widen slightly at the open acknowledgement, his simmering mix of irritations and anxieties at last bubbling into his throat. “Do you understand that my ears aren’t always my own, or that you never know who might be listening? You asked if I was your ally. To my face. With no regard to the fact that you could have killed us both.”

He doesn’t wait for him to respond, bloody needle diving from one precise suture to the next. “Not to mention, this continuous bugging of Scotch, knowing well who he is. You’re very lucky he only finds it funny, and that he’s not interested in killing children. He’s identified and removed threats to us on far less.

“And any less-than-incompetent agent knows how to sweep their own car. If it’d been anyone other than Gin,” Conan’s mouth stutters apart at the name, “they might’ve tried to triangulate it back to you rather than crush it in their anger. As it is—”

Rei breathes out again, loosening the fingers that had slowly begun to curl. “You were lucky that his suspicions landed in my lap. Scotch and I are both known to dislike him—it’s not odd for us to withhold information. But I— it’s always a tricky position to work. A trade-off. You have to decide what matters, and what doesn’t.”

He stares into wide blue eyes, willing Conan to understand. “Protecting something will always mean losing something else. Don’t you know that?”

Conan closes his mouth, brow furrowing fiercely at the word protecting. “What were you trying to protect?”

Rei's words haven’t fallen on deaf ears—he can see it in Conan's eyes, the spooked line of his narrow shoulders. Yet despite the anxiety that must have spiked in him, he’s still fallen back on fishing for more information. Typical, really.

Rei laughs softly under his breath, and reaches out to rest a gentle hand in Conan's hair. “I wonder?” he says quietly, before letting it drop again.

Conan absently puts both hands to where Rei had touched his head, staring at him with a guarded expression.

Shaking his head, Rei sighs. “I’m not trying to frighten you, Conan-kun. I only want you to acknowledge that actions have their cost.”

Conan’s shoulders rise closer to his ears, stiff observation leaking slowly out of his expression to leave… Something a little different from his usual. A slight irritation, underlined with defensiveness.

“Tch. I don’t need you telling me that,” he clicks his tongue. “I know what I’m doing.”

Rei gives a disbelieving snort. For all that Conan is all of seven, his arrogance is undeniably teenage. Rei’s certain the facts have landed, but do they need to be colder?

“You once asked me if I was your ally or your enemy. Meaning you didn’t know. I didn’t answer you, meaning you still don’t know.”

“Because you keep contradicting yourself!” Conan throws up his hands. “You were after Prosecutor Ogata, but you still listened to me in the end. Why would you do that if you were my enemy?”

“The contradiction is your answer.” Rei flattens his hand on the dashboard. “The ways in which I can act as your ally will sometimes be indistinguishable from the alternative, because I am not simply a detective, a criminal, nor,” he smiles, “an ‘enemy of the bad guys.’

“If I’d killed Ogata,” he continues, emphasis on if. “It wouldn’t have been because I wanted to, or that I hated him. Would you like to know what motive I had?”

Lips pressed flat, Conan answers, “a trade-off.”

“Withheld information,” Rei repeats. “Gin. He wanted everything I had on Sherry and her potential accomplice. Scotch refused, and I refused, because we can afford to. In exchange, to reaffirm his reasons not to kill us both, he asked me to take care of his rat. Do you understand now?”

To Conan’s credit, if he feels rattled, he doesn’t show it. “But you didn’t kill him.”

“And it would be naive to think that choice won’t come with its own cost,” Rei tells him, cutting him a stern look. Then he answers the question he knows will come next, tone going soft, “but it was important to you.”

Which meant, however inadvisably, that it was important to Rei too.

Conan stares at him for a long moment, mouth opening. Rei prepares himself for yet another counter, but then—

“Thank you,” says Conan.

His face is wholly sincere; his shoulders finally relax like a sigh.

Momentarily lost for words, the steam leaks out of Rei all at once, leaving him completely disarmed. “...You’re very welcome, Conan-kun.”

Silence wells up in the car for a moment, uncertain and uncomfortable, but it’s… nice, Rei supposes. This. The warmth of it, of truths confessed bluntly and harshly yet met with understanding and acceptance, as reluctant as the latter is.

And relief, he realizes. Of being given something which he hadn’t fully expected to receive right up until just seconds ago.

At last, he turns the key in the ignition. “Let’s get you home.”

He only drives for about five minutes before Conan decides to speak up again. “Amuro-san, do you think I’m a good detective?”

Rei blinks into the windshield, mildly surprised. “Of course. Possibly the most remarkable one I’ve ever met. Is that not obvious?”

Unlike earlier, the praise doesn’t seem to phase Conan. “Then work with me,” he insists, serious. “I can do more than solve cases you don’t mind me solving. Let me expand your options, reduce your trade-offs—let me help.”

Rei has to smile again, reaching up idly to adjust the rearview mirror. This part doesn’t surprise him nearly as much. Presented with a problem, Conan offers a solution.

“And in exchange?” Rei presses, because this is now a negotiation.

Conan pauses for a long moment, crossing his arms over his chest as he hums under his breath until, finally:

“I’ll be more careful from now on,” he concedes.

.

.

That done, Rei drives back to the hospital to pick up his other passenger.

“Jesus dude,” Matsuda’s laughing, “I knew you were evil, didn’t know you were evil evil.”

In complete contrast to the last conversation he had in this car not even an hour ago, Matsuda sounds positively delighted by the idea.

“What a cruel thing to say. Didn’t I solve the problem?”

“You threatened to hunt him down and kill him!”

“It was a hypothetical,” Rei counters smoothly.

Matsuda cackles. “A hypothetical! Well, whatever,” he leans back against his seat and crosses his arms, popping a small bubble of the nicotine gum he’d found in Rei’s glove compartment. In preparation to meet up with Hiro tomorrow night, most likely. Matsuda’s such a thoughtful guy. “Not like he didn’t have it coming.”

“Is that so?”

“I mean, could’a been Hagi,” Matsuda tells him with a shrug, nonsensical. “Yanno? I kept thinking that all day.”

Rei blinks, retracing the last few sentences—what did he miss?

“Date was targeted for a clear reason,” he reminds him.

“Eh,” another pop, “Moot point now, but Date wanted work done on his—what was it, his windows? Doesn't matter. Point is, Hagi was gonna drop by his place anyway, so he offered to drive his car off the next day. Back to the shop, I mean.”

The dots, as far apart as they are, connect. Rei keeps his eyes on the road, but they widen slightly. “Ah.”

“And that damn— he was just aiming for Date’s license plate, yeah? So he could've. It could've happened.” Matsuda's fingers tighten on his crossed arms, indenting long shadows in his jacket. “And Date's built like a shithouse—course he was gonna walk away—but Hagi's a lanky fucker no matter how much protein he downs. So.”

His leg bounces up and down, blatant restlessness that hadn’t been there even in the face of a bomb. Unable to remain silent in the face of his friend’s mounting tension, Rei reaches blindly over to knock his knuckles against Matsuda’s shoulder. “No use dwelling on what-ifs.”

Matsuda's eyes flick to him in the rearview mirror, acknowledging, but when he speaks he ignores reassurance entirely. “Date's solid—I'd hate him hurt. Hated it, I mean, but it's not the same. I've got my tether to Hagi—the bastard’s basically my life. It’s just not the same.”

Boredom, and a thorough disinterest in relating to most things and people—that’s Matsuda all over. But after all, no human can live without interest. The fewer interests a person possesses, the more potent their few obsessions are.

It could have, reasonably, under different circumstances, been Hagiwara. And so—

“So,” Rei repeats, understanding, “he had it coming.”

That earns him a quirk of Matsuda’s lips, pleased with his agreement. “I know it cost you, doing that in front of your kid. But if we didn't pull him in then and there, I dunno that I could’ve just…”

Matsuda trails off, gaze sliding briefly away, before it comes back with a widening grin. “Well, now I know you’re definitely not a cop, I guess I can tell ya.”

“Hm?”

“I wanted that guy gone.”

Rei tilts his head, taking that in. Interesting. “I see.”

“Yeah,” Matsuda shrugs, “so thanks.”

Rei takes a moment to think, brows furrowing in pleasant surprise.

For the many things he has in common with Matsuda, he’d never really thought this would be one of them. The nagging itch to take care of every little thing that endangers Hiro even in passing is one Rei’s long grown accustomed to, carefully measuring out the times he can indulge. Matsuda, on the other hand, plays in a different ballpark—the thought of Hagiwara being in danger must be unfamiliar. Unwelcome.

To jump from that simple feeling to I want him gone, though. It’s a little extreme, a little heartless, and…

“You're welcome,” Rei smiles, understanding.

It seems like Matsuda’s happy to leave it at that, arms relaxing from their cross until his hands can drop to his pockets. Already his face is scrunching slightly, no doubt experiencing that particular blend of disgust and regret that comes in the immediate aftermath of such honesty.

“Besides, even if he hadn’t clipped Date or Hagi in another life, who cares about some government pencil pusher anyway?”

Snorting, “as civic-minded as ever.”

“I’m serious!” Matsuda laughs again. “Whatever, man. Between you or some rando we don’t like? C’mon.”

He says this incredible thing so casually Rei forgets to be speechless. “Really?”

Matsuda does a double take at the question, first with surprise then with faint, mocking amusement.

Shit. Rei didn’t mean to say that.

He clears his throat self-consciously, but before he can even attempt to save it, Matsuda’s already speaking, voice shaking with condescending laughter, “Yes, really, Zero,” he pronounces slowly, with the diction of a man enjoying how a gun’s trigger feels against his finger. “I like you best, I promise.”

“S-shut up,” Rei huffs, debating the merits of swerving into the nearest building.

“Don’t crash us, man. I know you’re not the best driver and all—”

“Excuse me?”

“—but I don’t really feel like dying after I literally defused a bomb today, y’know?”

Rei blinks. “You bastard, did you say something about my driving?” he wonders. “I don’t think I heard it right.”

“Oi, oi, you’re offended? Don’t you wreck your car every time you’re in the country? How about we compare the shape of your fist with the dashboard case I had to replace?”

Fuming, Rei turns the wheel, deciding to take the scenic route. One way or another, Matsuda will take that back. “I don’t see what that has to do with my driving.”

Matsuda cackles. “Is this seriously pissing you off? Aim for your windshield this time, I’ve been wanting to see how you did that. Wait, Hagi, too—”

“What do you—” Rei glances briefly at him out of the corner of his eye, then again, eyes widening. He swipes blindly for Matsuda’s phone. “Stop recording!”

“Eyes on the road! The road!”

.

.

Hiro comes home whistling. The familiar humming floats to the living room, where Rei's halfway through a sudoku grid. He looks up in surprise, curiosity piqued, and stands up to go meet him in the entryway. It's been a while since he heard Hiro whistle. After their earlier phone call, Rei had been tensely waiting to see in what mood Hiro would come home in—that's definitely a good sign.

Hiro’s bent forward to take his shoes off, a faint smile on his face. Rei takes one look at him and his lips set in an exasperated line, "You smoked."

Hiro looks up, wearing one sneaker. "I'm home?" he smiles sheepishly.

"Welcome home. You smoked, didn't you?"

"I wouldn't necessarily call it–"

"Come here, let me smell you."

“You're not smelling me,” Hiro huffs a laugh, batting him away. "Alright, yes, fine, but it was just one cigarette and it had ulterior motives, I swear."

“Okiya Subaru does not smoke,” Rei points out.

Hiro nods solemnly. "We're terrible for each other."

Rei rolls his eyes, more for show than anything. It's hard to get mad when Hiro’s in a good mood. "Caught up with him, then?"

“I mean, as much as you can when you're speaking through triple meanings. Death didn't change him much, really. He's somehow both super committed to that ridiculous act and yet so careless with it, I have no idea how but I gotta say—it works. You wanna eat out tonight? I don't feel like cooking.”

“Actually, I cooked.”

Hiro blinks, surprised. "You did?"

"Nikujaga,” Rei announces smugly.

Only to be ruthlessly torn down in the next second— “Oh, so baby’s first stove-top meal?”

Not a good sign, Rei notes privately to himself. Outwardly, he smiles. “You can still get take-out if you want.”

“Nikujaga’s good,” Hiro laughs. “Congrats, I’m proud of you.”

Rei presses his lips tighter together to hide his smile, sudden warmth catching him off-guard. Good sign? he thinks, daring to be optimistic. “You haven’t tasted it yet. Grab some spoons?”

By the time they’re all set-up at the table, steaming bowls before each of them, Rei’s starting to grow conscious of this last irresolution waiting for him. His first overture seems to have—maybe?—done some of the work, but he’s hesitant to—

“How did your business with Matsuda go?” Hiro asks, pulling together a spoonful of rice and beef and looking none-too-bothered. “Is his friend okay?”

Rei shakes himself out of it, eager to tell him. “He’s alright, currently recuperating at the hospital. The whole thing was… quite strange.” He pauses. "We met Vermouth."

“...What?”

“She knows Conan-kun.”

“Okay, does this kid just know everyone?” Hiro wonders, surprise cutting with admiration, “Why’s he more connected than us?”

“He makes the effort,” Rei retorts, blowing on his food. He means it to be playful, but it’s unintentionally a rough summary of what he’s been turning in his head for some time, and now that he’s expressed it, he can’t help the rest of his opinions from tumbling out, “He shows a genuine interest in people’s circumstances, no matter who it is, and he knows how to show it in such a way that it feels kind rather than intrusive. Without trying,” Rei adds, a small smile curling his lips, “His empathy is the furthest thing from calculating. Really, it’s a good quality for a detective to have, and he’s committed to being an excellent one.”

“Yeah?” Hiro doesn’t pause, spoon still moving, but he props his cheek up in one hand to keep his eyes on Rei as he does. “Doesn’t Vermouth kill excellent detectives?”

As always, Hiro always cuts first to the danger. This habit, turned towards Conan—good sign again?

“I believe she might… like him, too.”

Hiro does pause this time, squinting at him for a long moment. “Start from the beginning.”

So Rei does. Hiro listens closely as he retells the conversations he’s had today, from Gin to Matsuda to the one in Date’s hospital room. At some point Rei gets so caught up in the natural motions of telling Hiro about his day that he forgets about Vermouth, as they are both wont to do. In fact, they veer away from the main subject of Edogawa Conan entirely after Rei describes Ogata’s reaction to a mention of bourbon—Hiro chokes mid-chew, covering his mouth to cough through his laughter.

“Oh, wow,” he snorts, reaching for a napkin to wipe the corner of his lips, “That’s why he ran him over? He thought this Date guy was you?”

It should be less funny to Rei by now, but when Hiro laughs it's like the joke is brand new again. “Or sent by me.”

“Didn’t Gin only put you on him like, this morning?”

“He must have heard about me,” Rei says, “from his time with us.”

“Ha. What a moron.”

“How so?” Rei asks, curious to hear Hiro’s take.

“Gin’s a callous bastard,” Hiro says, taking a sip of water, “and from what I heard what happened in Busan was downright sadistic, anyone would spook. But he knows Gin, he heard about you, whose job is to track down traitors—in that situation, how does it make sense that your next move is to put yourself on that list? You’re that scared, you keep your head down and you stay put.”

Rei hums, finger tapping on the side of a bowl to allow the mental exercise.

“It makes moral sense,” he finally says.

Hiro blinks. “Moral sense?”

“Yes, he led Gin to Busan. He’s the one who gave up those names. He watched what Gin did to all seven of those people, and he couldn't deal with confronting the evil his actions had allowed. Not so directly.”

It seems rather straightforward to Rei, but Hiro’s frowning at him weirdly. His lips are also quirked into a disbelieving smile however, like he’s interested in his point despite his disagreeing with it. “Zero, he ran over a stranger because he happened to mention alcohol. Terror like that, there’s nothing beyond it. Sure as hell no morals,” he scoffs, like he finds the notion funny.

Rei shrugs. “I think you’re not giving Ogata-san enough credit.”

“Ogata-san?”

“He was remarkably more lucid than I was expecting when we spoke, though I can’t say what he’s really thinking. You’re right—he’s terrified. Until that eases some, I don’t think even he really understands what he’s thinking. But we’ve seen other people simply spook, and I suppose I sensed a difference.”

Hiro stares at him, at a loss for words. Then—

“Huh,” he just says, and shoves another spoonful into his mouth.

Rei’s losing interest in this tangent—for however much Ogata surprised him, it’s a passing curiosity at best. And speculative ideas about him certainly don’t warrant this much of his dinnertime with Hiro.

Rei clears his throat, eager to move back onto the part he does want Hiro’s thoughts on. “In any case,” he begins, and then stops.

Usually, this is where Hiro picks up his line of thought and completes his sentence for him, but now he just focuses on his food. The last of his cheer seems to have finally been used up, and now he resembles more what Rei had been expecting to greet when he got home.

“In any case,” Rei repeats, cautiously trying to tease his good mood back out, “has Gin tried to contact you today?”

Hiro chews. “No.”

Rei waits a moment, then frowns (internally) but continues, “I suppose that’s in line with how he thinks of us. You know he called us Siamese again today?”

“How orientalist of him,” Hiro remarks.

“I know, right?” Rei agrees, satisfied. He puts down his spoon and leans over in his eagerness, “I’d like to resume our conversation from this afternoon.”

“Hmmm…” Hiro leans back against his chair, looking at the TV screen in the corner of the room.

It’s not on.

A terrible sign.

“Hiro,” Rei sighs, then reaches over to tug at the short sleeve of his t-shirt.

Blue eyes settle back on him, theatrically bored. “Our conversation from this afternoon where I learned you failed to do any of the things you promised me you’d do and then you hung up on me,” Hiro says. “That conversation, you mean?”

Now it’s Rei’s turn to look at the TV, which is still not on. His reflection stares back at him, reluctant and decidedly not pouting.

Once, when he and Hiro were both twelve, Hiro had gotten so frustrated with him he’d stopped talking entirely. They went through an entire, unchanged school day: break together at the nearest vending machine, lunch together in the grounds, Hiro waiting after archery club for Rei to finish up with tennis so they could walk home together—all the while, Hiro refused to say a single word.

The threat posed here has already proven itself to be great—Rei’s truly run out of options. What is there left that he can possibly do?

“I can’t believe this,” Hiro mutters under his breath, then, louder, “Zero, just apologize so we can both move on! It can’t be this hard.”

Rei presses both his hands to his face.

“What is this? Do you need a script?”

“Hirooooo,” Rei decidedly doesn’t whine through his fingers.

“I’m serious!” exclaims Hiro, bypassing outrage to look genuinely shocked. “I’ve been home for an hour, you know? Are apologies paywalled now? 1400 yen a month, act now for twenty percent off?”

The snort fights its way out of Rei’s mouth despite himself, hands still over his face. “No, no,” he assures him, running his hands backward through his hair. “They’re still Zero.”

“Stupid puns aren’t getting you out of this! Not this time.”

Rei takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes to stop the inappropriate laughter from bubbling out of it. Then he takes his hands off his face to look at Hiro.

“I could have been more communicative with my thoughts,” he admits, thinking over his words for a moment, before nodding to himself twice, satisfied.

There.

Hiro stares at him for a moment. When it becomes clear that Rei’s finished speaking, he points his spoon at him and says, “I’m going to kill you.”

Rei doesn’t say anything, lifting his nose slightly—Hiro’s lips are already stretching into a grin.

“What kind of apology is that? What happened to ‘sorry’?”

“I could have been,” Rei emphasizes, more slowly this time, “more communicative.”

“Alright, fine. Fine!” Hiro rolls his eyes up to the ceiling with a disbelieving laugh. “Seeing as that’s the best I’m getting, start communicating, yes? So what, we’re switching sides now? You were talking about the kid.”

Rei had been talking about Conan, true. But he takes a little time to give Hiro another look, at the way he’s still huffing under his breath with play-shakes of his head, Rei’s own stubbornness taken into stride. Even switching sides—Hiro says it so smoothly now, given time to recenter himself. But there are certain things Rei can’t forget so easily.

So while his conversation with Conan seems like a logical starting point, there is something else, way more important than any of his own feelings, that he wants to address.

Zero, I’m kind of scared.

“I don’t think it’s quite accurate to speak of switching sides at this stage, seeing as we haven’t done anything yet.” Rei pauses, “I haven’t done anything that I can't reverse, at the very least, should you ask me to.”

Hiro’s eyes narrow, catlike. “Why would I do that? Are you in danger?”

“No, that’s what I mean. I haven’t crossed that point.”

Hiro frowns. “Whatever it is you’re planning, I never said I want you to stop. I said I wanted to hear more. Keep me in the loop, remember? I’m kind of getting sick of being blindsided.”

Blindsided. The word startles Rei a little, as well as the strangely tired tone of it. Something in it makes him realize—right, right, this… isn’t them at all. What’s happening here? What’s this odd caution, why’s he leaving Hiro out? Only telling him in hindsight, as an afterthought?

Go to Nagano.

What’re you calling me for?

Rei looks down at the table, not liking this thing Rye left behind in him. That death had turned out to be fake, so why’s he still—so pathetically—

“Since when do I stop you from making irreversible decisions, anyway,” Hiro grumbles a little, raising a hand to his face to dig his fingers around the press of his lips, like he’s trying to rub away the discomfort. “That’s how we’ve always worked. I just knew why, most times.”

Because that’s how they’ve always won. Because it’s always saved Rei to talk to Hiro. Because Rei…

…Could’ve been more communicative.

“I could leave,” Rei blurts. He shuts his eyes for a moment, exhales a breath, before repeating more reasonably, “I realized today that I think I could leave.”

“...Huh.” Hiro puts his spoon down into his empty bowl, tilting his head slightly. A few moments pass as he watches Rei, searching his face as if to evaluate every part of the meaning.

“We could’ve left any time,” Hiro says finally, prompting.

“I didn’t want to,” Rei concedes. Though they’ve never openly discussed it again after that time at the crematorium after killing the Morofushis’ murderer, it isn’t a secret, either. For all it came with its fair share of lows, he'd had a fun life, filled with the sort of challenges and rewards that set a high bar not much else outside the criminal world can clear.

He discovered some time ago that Miyano Elena has been dead for close to two decades— he’d neglected to tell Hiro that, never finding much reason to choose something else.

Hiro nods along. “But now?”

“Now I want to help Conan-kun,” Rei answers without hesitation, so determined to talk to Hiro without any filters that he foregoes thinking completely. “Earlier today he asked me to spare Prosecutor Ogata, and I was unable to tell him no. I like him quite a lot.”

Hiro blinks, unsurprised. The corner of his mouth lifts. “Of course you do. You like him needing you.”

Rei makes a face, a little put out. “You make it sound like—”

“It’s a good thing,” Hiro smiles, undeniably fond as he waves a hand. “Okay, you want to help Conan. So, what, are we calling Rye or something? That immunity deal he was talking about back then might still be on the table.”

Rei averts his eyes. “I'm not deciding quite yet.”

“What, still pouting?” Hiro rests his cheek in his hand, looking amused. “If it helps, his life seems pretty shitty right now."

It does help. “Thank you,” Rei says placidly, “but that’s not the issue. There’s still something I need to consider.”

“Which is?”

A guilty conscience is for a different person—Rei doesn't regret the things he used to want, and he doesn’t think he ever will. But the core of his life has always revolved around one thing, steadied and warmed by it in equal measure.

“You,” Rei answers.

Hiro frowns, confused. “I already told you, I’m not here to stop you. It’ll probably be a pain, but if this is what you want—”

“Is it what you want?”

Hiro stares at him, mouth open where he'd been midway through speaking. “Come on—”

“No, wait,” Rei cuts him off before they can turn the circle again. “What I mean is…” The words swirl his stomach, chest, throat, drying them out one by one in order to finally form. “Will you be happy?”

Rei has spent his twenties living to satisfaction and doing what he does best with his closest friend at his side. But, the way Conan looks at him in relief, like his help is a foregone conclusion.

It's fulfilling.

Rei swallows, digs painfully through his lungs to pull out a little more buried truth. “Even though it was…” he makes a vague gesture, unwilling to even put a word to it, “this last month still has been really… really rewarding for me. So I think I would be. I can leave now, because I know I will be.

“So… I need to know. Will you be happy?”

That’s the core of it, really, but now that the dam’s broken, it takes effort to pull back. Rei has to put his spoon in his mouth to make himself stop talking. He waits for the answer, expectantly, trying not to let his quickened pulse show on his face.

In front of him, Hiro blinks, looks down again at his empty bowl. Then folds his hands over each other, squeezing briefly before relaxing again.

“It'll be a sure thing that I never will be if you're not around,” he says gently. “Aside from that? I’ve already had everything I’ve wanted for a long time now. Don’t you think it’s your turn? I’m supposed to be your friend, too, you know.”

He taps on the table in thought. “You want to switch sides, we switch. We don’t even need all these half-measures, hm? You think Gin could screw us over, I’ll figure how to knock him off the board.”

Rei doesn’t reply, staring.

“Could find some more dirt on Vermouth in case she gets the bright idea to use the kid against you.” Hiro’s eyes slit again, blue going icy. “Get Rum next so he stops texting us all the damn time.”

Hiro: with him.

Maybe it should be alarming, but the calculation, the cold reach of it all—there’s something in it that’s so comforting at an elementary level. For once, Rei doesn’t calculate in return, taking instead a moment to bask. To appreciate the best thing he'd ever been given in a childhood of owning nothing.

It may be silly to verbalize fundamental truths, but even still—

Hiro’s eyes rise again, smile wry. “Point is, I want what you want, Zero. I’m with you.”

It doesn’t stop them from hitting.