Kaito Kuroba 黒羽快斗 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whiteofcrime) wrote2018-02-01 10:52 am
whiteofcrime) wrote2018-02-01 10:52 am
Entry tags:
[portes] Canon update: Cycle 2, Day 25 (prose)
Smell, they said, was one of the strongest memories the human mind retained.
Kaito fell asleep to the soothing musk of Walter's shirt and the lighter scent of Tanny's hair, clutching their shared blankets for warmth. He sank fitfully into the sea of dreams and floated with his back to the abyss as dappled images played over his subconscious. Their smiles, their touch, their heat: all dashed away somehow by a looming figure he could not run from. The thief who flitted so sprightly now had legs of iron weighing every step, and the shadow knew this and laughed.
He sucked in a sharp gasp and woke with the memory of its mockery echoing against the walls of his bedroom.
Gradually, he blinked the ceiling into focus and swallowed. He was alone: a window with the curtains drawn to one side and the dark hollow of his room on the other. The clock on the table glowed "04:14".
With a shaky hand, he wiped his forehead and kicked away some of the sweat-soaked sheets. His skin still smelt like ash and fire.
...That's right. The Sunflowers.
The magician slowly sat up, feeling every muscle ache from the strain of his last-minute escape with the young detective, Conan. Conan was...safe, he thought. It took a few puzzled moments to remember why he thought so. Then he nodded. Yes, Conan was safe.
Instinctively, he looked to his left and felt a pang in his chest when his gaze fell upon empty space. He pawed the sheets back, as if expecting his two lovers to be sleeping there, hidden somehow in the shadow of his quilt. Pangs of loss assaulted him as the removal hit home. They were gone. He was gone. He might never see them again.
For a long hour he cried into the mattress. Kaito had known it might happen someday but he never thought that day would come. It wasn't fair: he had left so many things unsaid, so many things undone. Thinking he had all the time in the world, he had told himself "some other day".
It was never the things one did that one regretted; it was always what one didn't do.
Kaito pulled himself together as the clock blinked past five AM. Through blurry eyes, he squinted at the character in the corner of the clock and hauled himself away from the bed. It was too late to fall back asleep and hope to be ready in time for school. Might as well mask his grief and try and fall back into his former routine.
Days, nights, weeks flew by so much quicker compared to the dream. It always took him by surprise when he saw the sky darken, bright blues darkening to saffron then umber, until the cold lights of Tokyo outshone the sun. Kaito took the long way home from school one night, lost in his own thoughts until he spotted a suspicious man bumping into the person ahead of him. His keen eyes picked out the moonstone plucked by their light fingers.
His eyes narrowed. The magician made sure to collide into their shoulder as they tried to hurry past, performing the same trick they had pulled - only better. He jogged up to the unknowing victim and tapped them on the shoulder, the moonstone held up between them by its chain.
"Hey, isn't this yours?"
The way the man's eyes lit up, the shy, grateful smile he directed at Kaito as they chatted about the stone caused the magician's chest to squeeze tight. A symbol of true love, the man said. For his wife. As Kaito held the precious stone up to the moon and beheld its soft, natural blue luminescence, loneliness struck another hard blow. When the man finally took back his necklace, Kaito was desperately missing his significant others once again and returned home with heavy steps and a heavy heart.
He didn't expect to hear about the stone again. Yet a month later, what should he see on the news but another challenge from old man Jirokichi, daring him to open a fiendish puzzle box by Kichiemon Samizu. Inside: the moonstone, Luna Memoria.
Kaito chuckled humourlessly to himself as he folded the paper up and tossed it aside. Well, he didn't need to steal it because he had already checked it. And while he would have gladly tried his hand at anything Kichiemon had made, he wasn't about to walk into such an obviously baited trap either.
Except-- and that traitorous little voice in his head decided to speak up now - there was something about this case that smacked of similarity to the Iron Tanuki. A plea for help. It was written in the challenge: to find the solution to the box or its written instructions. Kaito's reluctant fingers did a little more research online and he discovered that the current owner of the Luna Memoria was a recent widow. That man's wife.
His hands faltered. Then clenched into fists.
Of course he accepted.
Over twelve hours later, the magician crouched at the top of Jirokichi's steel cage, watching Nakamori's men run themselves to exhaustion searching every nook and cranny of the library for him. The heist had been (mostly) a success. Everyone had gotten the happy ending they wanted and Kaito had been left with a curious puzzle of his own regarding the Kudous' live-in resident, Subaru Okiya.
Oddly enough, he was less fatigued than he thought he would be. But that didn't mean he wanted to be stuck where he was for another second. He glared over the rim of the cage and silently wished them all away. He was tired, hungry, and he was missing his bed.
Fast forward another couple of months and a fresh challenge was waiting for him in the form of a precious statue of Kannon, adorned with a rough-cut yellow diamond known as the Sun Halo. He was really slacking, Kaito knew, but he just hadn't been able to work up the motivation to pursue jewels on his own lately. What was the point? For the tiny chance that it might be the stone of eternity, Pandora? Revenge was a one-way road and he had no-one waiting for him at the end of it.
But Kid was obliged to show up, and so Kid did.
And because he was Kid, he knew as soon as he saw the statue in the museum that night that it was a complete and utter fake.
Irritated beyond words at having his time wasted, he forsook the promised arrival time he had sent in his notice and appeared as his alter ego HOURS before schedule. In hindsight, he should have known something was off. However, it wasn't the first time someone had tried to fool him with a fake jewel and he was having none of that tonight.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans. The floor beneath the statue's display case suddenly opened. A dark, gaping pit yawned. Kaito quickly shot his grappling gun at the ceiling and managed to lodge it there, but Aoko, caught on the edge of the trap, began to topple towards the hole. Cursing, he fell in after her, only to realise too late that the pieces of the shattered case were waiting for them.
A shard of agony pierced his side. He bit back a scream and nearly blacked out, Aoko's dead weight against his chest and the jagged glass their cradle. The pit's opening shut, plunging them into absolute darkness. He heard an engine rumble to life. They began to move. Not once did Aoko stir so Kaito assumed she was unconscious.
Where were they being taken? He shut his eyes, trying to concentrate through the haze of pain clouding his thoughts. The route was unfamiliar to him. A lot of starts and stops like city traffic, and then the winding roads of a more rural area. They were ascending...and then they were descending.
The container they were in tipped up and slid them into a chute. They tumbled and rolled and landed less painfully in a stark, white room to a shower of glass. Kaito was grateful for the material of his cape, thick enough to ward off the worst of it. He cautiously emerged from behind it when all had gone quiet.
There was a card on the floor.
"If you want to know the truth, make it out of here," he read aloud. Kaito sighed. Whatever was going on, he would have to escape first before he got answers.
He turned to take care of the glass case first. His side throbbed with each step he took towards it. He could barely kneel down to spray the bloodied patches with a neutralising agent. In his pain, he didn't notice Aoko stirring behind him. Instead he settled on his haunches and stared at the floor. Spotlessly clean except for the dust between the tiles. Did that mean--?
Before he could finish the thought, he felt his hat shift. Stiffening (wincing), his hand flew to his hat brim and he twisted around. Too late - Aoko had whisked the hat away, revealing the finer features of his face to her.
There was no denying it was his face. He hadn't bothered with a mask before making his appearance. He saw the confusion, the denial, the anger rush across her face. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought the game was up.
"Aoko knew... Aoko knew all along..." Kaito braced himself. She clenched her fists, raised her head and glared. "Aoko bets you disguised as Kaito to make her upset! But Aoko's too clever to fall for this!"
She lunged for his face but he caught her wrists out of reflex. "Jeez, just take off this ridiculous disguise already and show your true face!"
His stomach was flip-flopping between shock and nausea and a long-embedded instinct to lie, lie, LIE. The words spilled out of him without thinking.
"A-as expected of Inspector Nakamori's daughter. Such amazing powers of observation," he interrupted, pulling on what he felt was the weakest smirk he had ever smirked in his career. Aoko seemed to buy it though, yanking back her wrists huffily. She continued to glare at him as he picked up his hat and settled it once more on his head. That spike of adrenaline helped him to temporarily forget his wound.
"Let's focus on the matter at hand," he suggested.
He managed to wheedle her cooperation through to the next room. There, his wound began to catch up to him. He landed heavily while trying to scale some pillars, the room tilting to a disturbing angle as he lay on the floor, trying to breathe.
Aoko had to get them out of that room. She followed his directions and then supported him as they hobbled to the third room. When they arrived, Kaito couldn't hold on any longer. His knees buckled and he collapsed on to the zabuton in the next room. When he came to, he saw a hazy vision of Aoko before a wall of locks. He rummaged in his pockets and dry-swallowed a couple of painkillers. Then using the wall, he managed to stagger upright and began to approach. Locks, after all, were his forte.
She was already starting on the top corner. He heard a quiet snick.
His eyes widened. He dove for her, snatched her around the waist and used his own dead weight to drag them backwards. The wall of locks became a bristling wall of needles in an instant. Had he not pulled Aoko away, she might have been impaled.
To add insult to injury, a tiny flag popped out of the top with the kanji 'punishment' emblazoned on it.
"If you open the wrong keyhole--" he began laboriously.
"--it's dangerous. Y-yeah, Aoko understands," the girl said shakily.
Kaito swayed in place. Too much blood lost. Too much evidence left behind. Had he cleaned up after himself? Every smear, every drop? Forensics were amazing in this era. The magician found himself chuckling oddly and abruptly stopped when he saw Aoko's funny look.
Well, the solution was simple. He had been conscious enough to hear her read out the riddle. Kaito knelt by the bottom row of locks and began to work, only to see double visions of the lock before him. The magician's head thudded against the wall as he sagged. It was no use. The painkillers wouldn't kick in for a while yet.
Aoko spoke up, asking if he was all right. He exhaled noisily. "Y-yes, I've managed to open the lower half. But I'll need you to support me when I try to open the top half. I'm...not certain I can do it by myself," he panted.
She ended up propping him up while he worked. It was impossible to avoid certain tells at this proximity. He wasn't looking, but he could feel her eyes on him. Eyes silently weighing each breath, the twitch of his expression, the contours of his masked face. Didn't she know that one couldn't sweat through a mask?
When the final lock clicked open, wonder of wonders, he felt his pain finally begin to ease. He hated what he was about to do, but it was the only way to escape.
"I'm sorry, Aoko..."
Without warning, he collapsed on top of her.
She struggled for a few seconds, but a lungful of gas quickly put her to sleep. He switched their clothes, made a few last minute adjustments, and rose from beneath the mantle as Aoko Nakamori. Feigning concern for 'Kid', he made sure to affect surprise when the door before them - and behind them - opened.
"Wonderful. I've always believed that you would be able to open this door, Kid," came a familiar female voice. The priestess from the exhibit.
It was a farcical scheme. She gleefully confessed to her plans to him, expression rapt at the thought of all the riches that would flow to the temple's coffers with the treasure Kid had unearthed. Kaito had nothing but scorn for her and her lackeys. Money. It was always money. Fame. Regard. What was so good about any of those things that made it worth killing for? He had no regrets about the trap he had set for her, nor for putting the men trying to haul him away to sleep.
The scroll was a useless piece of mould anyway, worn down by time and insects. He tore down the walls of the priestess' ridiculous charade, switched back his and Aoko's clothing, and fled on his glider once Nakamori's shouts began to echo from the other room. The painkillers wouldn't last forever.
Wouldn't even last him the flight home, as it turned out.
Jii patched him up as best he could, but they had to resort to one of the old man's contacts to pluck the glass from Kaito's wound. It had gone too long without treatment, all the clotted blood having to be cleared anew in order to remove every last trace. As Kaito swam in and out of feverish nightmares about fragments of silica being sealed into his skin and burrowing through flesh, he also dreamed of two faces that seemed to grow ever distant the longer his former life dragged on.
"Walter... Tanny..." he mumbled. And then he knew nothing more.
Kaito fell asleep to the soothing musk of Walter's shirt and the lighter scent of Tanny's hair, clutching their shared blankets for warmth. He sank fitfully into the sea of dreams and floated with his back to the abyss as dappled images played over his subconscious. Their smiles, their touch, their heat: all dashed away somehow by a looming figure he could not run from. The thief who flitted so sprightly now had legs of iron weighing every step, and the shadow knew this and laughed.
He sucked in a sharp gasp and woke with the memory of its mockery echoing against the walls of his bedroom.
Gradually, he blinked the ceiling into focus and swallowed. He was alone: a window with the curtains drawn to one side and the dark hollow of his room on the other. The clock on the table glowed "04:14".
With a shaky hand, he wiped his forehead and kicked away some of the sweat-soaked sheets. His skin still smelt like ash and fire.
...That's right. The Sunflowers.
The magician slowly sat up, feeling every muscle ache from the strain of his last-minute escape with the young detective, Conan. Conan was...safe, he thought. It took a few puzzled moments to remember why he thought so. Then he nodded. Yes, Conan was safe.
Instinctively, he looked to his left and felt a pang in his chest when his gaze fell upon empty space. He pawed the sheets back, as if expecting his two lovers to be sleeping there, hidden somehow in the shadow of his quilt. Pangs of loss assaulted him as the removal hit home. They were gone. He was gone. He might never see them again.
For a long hour he cried into the mattress. Kaito had known it might happen someday but he never thought that day would come. It wasn't fair: he had left so many things unsaid, so many things undone. Thinking he had all the time in the world, he had told himself "some other day".
It was never the things one did that one regretted; it was always what one didn't do.
Kaito pulled himself together as the clock blinked past five AM. Through blurry eyes, he squinted at the character in the corner of the clock and hauled himself away from the bed. It was too late to fall back asleep and hope to be ready in time for school. Might as well mask his grief and try and fall back into his former routine.
Days, nights, weeks flew by so much quicker compared to the dream. It always took him by surprise when he saw the sky darken, bright blues darkening to saffron then umber, until the cold lights of Tokyo outshone the sun. Kaito took the long way home from school one night, lost in his own thoughts until he spotted a suspicious man bumping into the person ahead of him. His keen eyes picked out the moonstone plucked by their light fingers.
His eyes narrowed. The magician made sure to collide into their shoulder as they tried to hurry past, performing the same trick they had pulled - only better. He jogged up to the unknowing victim and tapped them on the shoulder, the moonstone held up between them by its chain.
"Hey, isn't this yours?"
The way the man's eyes lit up, the shy, grateful smile he directed at Kaito as they chatted about the stone caused the magician's chest to squeeze tight. A symbol of true love, the man said. For his wife. As Kaito held the precious stone up to the moon and beheld its soft, natural blue luminescence, loneliness struck another hard blow. When the man finally took back his necklace, Kaito was desperately missing his significant others once again and returned home with heavy steps and a heavy heart.
He didn't expect to hear about the stone again. Yet a month later, what should he see on the news but another challenge from old man Jirokichi, daring him to open a fiendish puzzle box by Kichiemon Samizu. Inside: the moonstone, Luna Memoria.
Kaito chuckled humourlessly to himself as he folded the paper up and tossed it aside. Well, he didn't need to steal it because he had already checked it. And while he would have gladly tried his hand at anything Kichiemon had made, he wasn't about to walk into such an obviously baited trap either.
Except-- and that traitorous little voice in his head decided to speak up now - there was something about this case that smacked of similarity to the Iron Tanuki. A plea for help. It was written in the challenge: to find the solution to the box or its written instructions. Kaito's reluctant fingers did a little more research online and he discovered that the current owner of the Luna Memoria was a recent widow. That man's wife.
His hands faltered. Then clenched into fists.
Of course he accepted.
Over twelve hours later, the magician crouched at the top of Jirokichi's steel cage, watching Nakamori's men run themselves to exhaustion searching every nook and cranny of the library for him. The heist had been (mostly) a success. Everyone had gotten the happy ending they wanted and Kaito had been left with a curious puzzle of his own regarding the Kudous' live-in resident, Subaru Okiya.
Oddly enough, he was less fatigued than he thought he would be. But that didn't mean he wanted to be stuck where he was for another second. He glared over the rim of the cage and silently wished them all away. He was tired, hungry, and he was missing his bed.
Fast forward another couple of months and a fresh challenge was waiting for him in the form of a precious statue of Kannon, adorned with a rough-cut yellow diamond known as the Sun Halo. He was really slacking, Kaito knew, but he just hadn't been able to work up the motivation to pursue jewels on his own lately. What was the point? For the tiny chance that it might be the stone of eternity, Pandora? Revenge was a one-way road and he had no-one waiting for him at the end of it.
But Kid was obliged to show up, and so Kid did.
And because he was Kid, he knew as soon as he saw the statue in the museum that night that it was a complete and utter fake.
Irritated beyond words at having his time wasted, he forsook the promised arrival time he had sent in his notice and appeared as his alter ego HOURS before schedule. In hindsight, he should have known something was off. However, it wasn't the first time someone had tried to fool him with a fake jewel and he was having none of that tonight.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans. The floor beneath the statue's display case suddenly opened. A dark, gaping pit yawned. Kaito quickly shot his grappling gun at the ceiling and managed to lodge it there, but Aoko, caught on the edge of the trap, began to topple towards the hole. Cursing, he fell in after her, only to realise too late that the pieces of the shattered case were waiting for them.
A shard of agony pierced his side. He bit back a scream and nearly blacked out, Aoko's dead weight against his chest and the jagged glass their cradle. The pit's opening shut, plunging them into absolute darkness. He heard an engine rumble to life. They began to move. Not once did Aoko stir so Kaito assumed she was unconscious.
Where were they being taken? He shut his eyes, trying to concentrate through the haze of pain clouding his thoughts. The route was unfamiliar to him. A lot of starts and stops like city traffic, and then the winding roads of a more rural area. They were ascending...and then they were descending.
The container they were in tipped up and slid them into a chute. They tumbled and rolled and landed less painfully in a stark, white room to a shower of glass. Kaito was grateful for the material of his cape, thick enough to ward off the worst of it. He cautiously emerged from behind it when all had gone quiet.
There was a card on the floor.
"If you want to know the truth, make it out of here," he read aloud. Kaito sighed. Whatever was going on, he would have to escape first before he got answers.
He turned to take care of the glass case first. His side throbbed with each step he took towards it. He could barely kneel down to spray the bloodied patches with a neutralising agent. In his pain, he didn't notice Aoko stirring behind him. Instead he settled on his haunches and stared at the floor. Spotlessly clean except for the dust between the tiles. Did that mean--?
Before he could finish the thought, he felt his hat shift. Stiffening (wincing), his hand flew to his hat brim and he twisted around. Too late - Aoko had whisked the hat away, revealing the finer features of his face to her.
There was no denying it was his face. He hadn't bothered with a mask before making his appearance. He saw the confusion, the denial, the anger rush across her face. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought the game was up.
"Aoko knew... Aoko knew all along..." Kaito braced himself. She clenched her fists, raised her head and glared. "Aoko bets you disguised as Kaito to make her upset! But Aoko's too clever to fall for this!"
She lunged for his face but he caught her wrists out of reflex. "Jeez, just take off this ridiculous disguise already and show your true face!"
His stomach was flip-flopping between shock and nausea and a long-embedded instinct to lie, lie, LIE. The words spilled out of him without thinking.
"A-as expected of Inspector Nakamori's daughter. Such amazing powers of observation," he interrupted, pulling on what he felt was the weakest smirk he had ever smirked in his career. Aoko seemed to buy it though, yanking back her wrists huffily. She continued to glare at him as he picked up his hat and settled it once more on his head. That spike of adrenaline helped him to temporarily forget his wound.
"Let's focus on the matter at hand," he suggested.
He managed to wheedle her cooperation through to the next room. There, his wound began to catch up to him. He landed heavily while trying to scale some pillars, the room tilting to a disturbing angle as he lay on the floor, trying to breathe.
Aoko had to get them out of that room. She followed his directions and then supported him as they hobbled to the third room. When they arrived, Kaito couldn't hold on any longer. His knees buckled and he collapsed on to the zabuton in the next room. When he came to, he saw a hazy vision of Aoko before a wall of locks. He rummaged in his pockets and dry-swallowed a couple of painkillers. Then using the wall, he managed to stagger upright and began to approach. Locks, after all, were his forte.
She was already starting on the top corner. He heard a quiet snick.
His eyes widened. He dove for her, snatched her around the waist and used his own dead weight to drag them backwards. The wall of locks became a bristling wall of needles in an instant. Had he not pulled Aoko away, she might have been impaled.
To add insult to injury, a tiny flag popped out of the top with the kanji 'punishment' emblazoned on it.
"If you open the wrong keyhole--" he began laboriously.
"--it's dangerous. Y-yeah, Aoko understands," the girl said shakily.
Kaito swayed in place. Too much blood lost. Too much evidence left behind. Had he cleaned up after himself? Every smear, every drop? Forensics were amazing in this era. The magician found himself chuckling oddly and abruptly stopped when he saw Aoko's funny look.
Well, the solution was simple. He had been conscious enough to hear her read out the riddle. Kaito knelt by the bottom row of locks and began to work, only to see double visions of the lock before him. The magician's head thudded against the wall as he sagged. It was no use. The painkillers wouldn't kick in for a while yet.
Aoko spoke up, asking if he was all right. He exhaled noisily. "Y-yes, I've managed to open the lower half. But I'll need you to support me when I try to open the top half. I'm...not certain I can do it by myself," he panted.
She ended up propping him up while he worked. It was impossible to avoid certain tells at this proximity. He wasn't looking, but he could feel her eyes on him. Eyes silently weighing each breath, the twitch of his expression, the contours of his masked face. Didn't she know that one couldn't sweat through a mask?
When the final lock clicked open, wonder of wonders, he felt his pain finally begin to ease. He hated what he was about to do, but it was the only way to escape.
"I'm sorry, Aoko..."
Without warning, he collapsed on top of her.
She struggled for a few seconds, but a lungful of gas quickly put her to sleep. He switched their clothes, made a few last minute adjustments, and rose from beneath the mantle as Aoko Nakamori. Feigning concern for 'Kid', he made sure to affect surprise when the door before them - and behind them - opened.
"Wonderful. I've always believed that you would be able to open this door, Kid," came a familiar female voice. The priestess from the exhibit.
It was a farcical scheme. She gleefully confessed to her plans to him, expression rapt at the thought of all the riches that would flow to the temple's coffers with the treasure Kid had unearthed. Kaito had nothing but scorn for her and her lackeys. Money. It was always money. Fame. Regard. What was so good about any of those things that made it worth killing for? He had no regrets about the trap he had set for her, nor for putting the men trying to haul him away to sleep.
The scroll was a useless piece of mould anyway, worn down by time and insects. He tore down the walls of the priestess' ridiculous charade, switched back his and Aoko's clothing, and fled on his glider once Nakamori's shouts began to echo from the other room. The painkillers wouldn't last forever.
Wouldn't even last him the flight home, as it turned out.
Jii patched him up as best he could, but they had to resort to one of the old man's contacts to pluck the glass from Kaito's wound. It had gone too long without treatment, all the clotted blood having to be cleared anew in order to remove every last trace. As Kaito swam in and out of feverish nightmares about fragments of silica being sealed into his skin and burrowing through flesh, he also dreamed of two faces that seemed to grow ever distant the longer his former life dragged on.
"Walter... Tanny..." he mumbled. And then he knew nothing more.