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“Listen, I get what you’re trying to do and it’s very nice of you, but you can’t just rent out the entire aquarium for the day.”
Poe tilts his head, looking confused at Ranpo’s horrified expression. “…Why not?”
Ranpo forgets, sometimes, how wide the gap between the Guild’s resources and those of the Armed Detective Agency are. Were. Used to be. Anyway, with how unassuming Poe behaves, it’s easy for Ranpo to forget that he and all his former coworkers are stupidly rich. “Literally nobody will believe Shachou did that for us. He doesn’t have that kind of money just lying around.”
Poe frowns. “But you had that party on the ship—”
“Yeah, that was a gift from your old boss.” Ranpo sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just…just buy us tickets, if you want to do it so bad. We’ll say they’re from a grateful client and then the only other person that’ll be able to figure it out is Dazai.”
“…Dazai-san terrifies me,” Poe confesses.
“He’s just as scared of you as you are of him,” Ranpo says dismissively, patting Poe on the arm. “Besides, he’s too busy trying to get the Yumeno kid functional again to really do anything about you buying us aquarium tickets.”
“Right,” Poe says quietly, and Ranpo watches him bite his lower lip as he tries to pretend he’s not doing this half for the new kid’s sake anyway. The Guild is the reason they lost their ability, after all.
“It’ll be fine ,” Ranpo says, tossing himself onto Poe’s lap to shake him out of his thoughts. He’s not expecting the sudden contact, but he only tenses for a moment before relaxing. “Hey, we should go get ice cream while we’re talking about it.”
Poe laughs at that, a hand finding its way into Ranpo’s hair. “We weren’t talking about ice cream at all. Besides, there’s some in the refrigerator.”
“We were talking about buying things!” Ranpo protests. “And no there’s not, you ran out yesterday.”
“You finished it already?!”
“Alright,” Kunikida says, “Everyone have their ticket?”
Atsushi turns around to look at Kyouka and Kenji, who hold up their tickets obediently. He turns back around to face Kunikida. “We’re all good.”
“Q has theirs too,” Dazai sings. Q holds it up with the hand they’re not using to cling to Dazai’s coat.
Kunikida nods. “And remember, if anything happens—”
“We come find you,” Kenji finishes, Kyouka nodding her agreement.
“ Before taking action,” Kunikida emphasizes. It’s probably a silly thing to be worried about – by all means today should be a normal day at the aquarium – but there’s no way this many members of the Armed Detective Agency can gather in one place and not expect a problem.
“Right,” Atsushi nods. He’d been unofficially put in charge of the kids, but he didn’t seem to mind. He gets along well with Kyouka and Kenji. “We’ll go on ahead then!”
“Don’t forget Q,” Dazai pipes up, lightly nudging them forward so that they’re standing in front of Atsushi’s group. They turn to look at him with a face of utter betrayal, eyes wide and horrified. They would probably look less angry if he’d simply stabbed them.
Atsushi gives Dazai a look, too, but it’s closer to the face he makes when he’s partnered with Akutagawa, saying I would rather die than do this, but I know I don’t have any choice. He resolves his face back into a smile admirably quickly and says, “Come on, Kyusaku-kun, I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”
Q smiles at Atsushi, then, but the edges are knife-sharp. “Call me that again and I’ll see how well your healing factor works when you’re missing organs,” they threaten cheerfully.
“Careful, Q,” Dazai warns, “if you spill blood in the aquarium the sharks will smell it and eat you.” Q’s eyes widen, but Dazai takes a step back out of arm’s reach, so they end up clinging to Atsushi’s arm.
“I wanna go home,” they mutter, looking down at the ground.
Atsushi gives Dazai a withering glare that makes Dazai very glad he ingratiated himself to Atsushi early. “It’ll be fine, Q-kun,” Atsushi tries to reassure. “Just stay close, okay?” Q doesn’t respond.
Kenji steps forward, all untouchable bright optimism. “Q, let’s go look together,” he says, tugging Q away from Atsushi and towards the nearest exhibit hall without waiting for a response. “Look, they’ve got penguins! Have you ever seen a penguin before? They’re cute, but I’ve never seen one in real life!” He keeps chattering away, pulling Q by the hand.
Q shoots Dazai one last terrified look, but Atsushi and Kyouka catch up with Kenji and they all vanish down the hall. Dazai snorts.
“Was that necessary?” Kunikida asks, once the kids are all out of earshot.
“Of course!” Dazai chirps. “Q’s never going to make friends if they’re clinging to my coattails all the time!”
Kunikida just shakes his head. “We might as well look around too.” He walks off down a different hall. Dazai follows.
They spend a while just walking through the aquarium. Kunikida actually looks at the fish, while Dazai mostly reads the informational signs and files away the information on them (though it’ll have no practical value). There’s a sign on one of the walls claiming that watching fish helps to reduce stress, and Dazai resists the urge to laugh at it as he points it out to Kunikida.
Kunikida snorts at it as well. “Maybe we should get fish for the office.”
“Ranpo-san would try to feed them sprinkles,” Dazai jokes. Kunikida laughs and shakes his head, tugging Dazai along by the arm. Dazai valiantly pretends the feeling of Kunikida’s hand isn’t seeping through his coat and shirt and bandages to warm Dazai’s skin as he follows quietly.
They reach the underwater tunnel and stop for a moment. A shark passes over their heads and Dazai cranes his neck to look at it, leaning so far back that he stumbles and lands against Kunikida.
Kunikida holds a hand out to steady him, as always. “Do you think Q has realized you were screwing with them yet?”
Dazai shrugs. “I’m sure I’ll hear all about it by the end of the visit.”
Kunikida shakes his head and says, “I can’t believe they fell for that.” As if he hasn’t fallen for equally ridiculous bullshit Dazai came up with on a whim.
“Well, that’s what happens when you’re locked up in a room for most of your life,” Dazai says bluntly, walking out of the tunnel with Kunikida at his heels. “Your practical knowledge ends up a little patchy.”
“And you take advantage of it as you like,” Kunikida says, clicking his tongue.
There’s no disapproval in his tone, just recognition of Dazai’s quirks, but Dazai feels as though he’s been pierced through anyway. “Not usually,” he defends, stopping in front of a seahorse tank and watching them swim to avoid facing Kunikida. “But circumstances called for it this time.”
“Ah, yes,” Kunikida says, “foisting them off on Atsushi-kun. I don’t think I’ve seen them look quite that angry in a while.”
Dazai folds his arms over his chest. “I’m trying to help them make friends. They can’t just hang onto me forever, Kunikida-kun, what if...” Dazai stops, then, because putting an “if” to the end of that sentence instead of a “when” would put words to too many feelings that Dazai cannot afford to name. Especially not in front of Kunikida.
Kunikida seems to understand anyway, because he always does when it’s most inconvenient for Dazai. “If something were to happen to you,” he says, “we would take care of Yumeno. They don’t have to be best friends with the other kids to earn that security.”
Dazai hums. “Hey, Kunikida-kun, let’s get ice cream from the snack booth!” he says, suddenly pulling away from the seahorse tank and making his way to the front again. Kunikida sighs and follows, as always.
Dazai makes sure he’s walking slightly faster than Kunikida until they get to the booth. He didn’t really want ice cream as much as he wanted to get out of the conversation – he’s not feeling well, if he’s being honest with himself. Releasing Q into a public space ties a nervous knot in his stomach, even if they can’t use their ability right now. But he has to buy an ice cream to sell the lie, so he gets a small vanilla cone (the most inoffensive flavor).
Kunikida comes up behind him. “I’ll pay for both of them,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “Go find us somewhere to sit.”
Dazai, to his credit, only pauses for a moment before singing, “Okay!” and flouncing off. He finds an unoccupied bench near the exit to the small water park outside and settles down on it, absently scanning the crowd. There’s a family on the other side of the miniature food court which seems to be in the midst of a dispute – the father seems mostly unaffected by whatever his wife is upset about, while the children just look resigned. They’re not an active threat to Dazai, though, and domestic matters have never held much interest for him, so he moves on after a moment.
Kunikida rejoins him eventually with a cup of green tea ice cream. He must have caught Dazai looking around, because he asks, “See anything interesting?”
“Not really,” Dazai answers absently, taking a bite out of his ice cream. “The admission fee for an aquarium isn’t really worth the privacy of a crowd when you can get the same thing in a city square for free, and it doesn’t offer the same amount of vantage points as an amusement park either.”
“I see,” Kunikida says blankly. Dazai can see his fingers twitching for his notebook and hurriedly takes another bite of ice cream to stifle a laugh. “Were there any exhibits you still wanted to take a look at?”
Dazai looks up at the ceiling, pretending to be deep in thought. “I dunno,” he says. He can’t imagine any of the information here will ever be important, but Kunikida seemed to be interested in looking at the fish, so he doesn’t want to force him to leave. “What do you want to see?”
“I liked...” Kunikida’s voice trails off.
Dazai follows his line of sight and catches sight of Atsushi making his way back towards them, accompanied by Kyouka and Kenji. His eyebrow quirks up as they approach, Atsushi already looking panicked. “Atsushi-kun,” Dazai begins, keeping his tone light, “I think you’re missing someone.”
Atsushi flinches visibly.
“We lost Q,” Kyouka reports, staring Dazai down.
Kunikida’s eyes go wide. “You what ?”
Atsushi looks on the verge of tears as he finally speaks up. “I...It was crowded and I let go of them for two minutes because they wanted to look at the sea turtle and then when I turned around they were gone and I don’t know what happened and—!”
“Atsushi-kun, calm down,” Dazai interrupts, holding his hands up. His head is already spinning, contingency plans for “capture by enemy forces” and “sudden return of Q’s ability” and so on floating to the surface, but he keeps his voice calm. “They likely just wandered away, they’ve always been independent.” He gets to his feet, handing off his half-finished ice cream to Kunikida. “I’ll go look for them, you guys can continue your tour.”
“Are you sure...?” Atsushi frowns. “We can look too.”
“You’ve got two other kids to look after,” Dazai points out. “I’ll let you know when I find Q.”
“...Okay,” Atsushi finally says, pulling Kyouka and Kenji back the way they came.
Kunikida stands. “I’ll come as well,” he offers, but Dazai shakes his head.
“I won’t be long,” he says. “Just finish the ice cream, okay?”
Kunikida frowns. “If something goes wrong—”
“I’ll call,” Dazai finishes for him. “So stay here, okay?” Kunikida sighs and sits down on the bench again, and Dazai makes his way back into the aquarium proper.
The aquarium is huge, filled with winding halls of different kinds of exhibits. If Dazai just wanders, it’ll take hours to find Q, and he doesn’t want to leave the Agency alone that long — doesn’t want to leave Q unattended that long, Ability or not. But he doesn’t know what happened to Q, doesn’t know if they’re even in the building anymore. Maybe they went out to look at the water park, maybe they’re on the third floor walkway, maybe they’ve been abducted after all and Dazai’s going to find them tied to a wall somewhere again, tortured into activating their ability past the block their mind seems to have created for them—
He shakes his head. He’ll start his search with the best-case scenario, which is “they got annoyed at Atsushi’s pace and wandered further into the aquarium on their own”. If he can figure out where Q would most want to visit, he’ll surely find them there.
God, he wishes he could just go ask Ranpo and get it over with, but Dazai’s absolutely certain he’s dragged his Guild-traitor lover into buying inordinate amounts of sweets again and Dazai really doesn’t want to deal with the whining he’d receive for dragging him away from that.
He takes a quick glance at the map and heads down the halls, eventually making his way to the deep-sea exhibits. It’s dark here, the hallways lit only by the tanks, and the atmosphere seems to put a damper on conversation and bring voices down to a whisper. With the artificial bubble sounds playing through strategically placed speakers, Dazai can barely hear the other patrons at all.
There’s still no sign of Q, though, even when Dazai wanders farther in. Other little kids, standing in clumps with their faces pressed up against the glass to watch deep-sea fish swim, but not the one Dazai is looking for. He makes it almost all the way to the end of the hall before stopping in his tracks. With a frown, he turns around and heads back in.
…Yes, he did hear correctly. Passing the comb jelly tank, the fake bubble sound cuts out nearly entirely, as if something is blocking the speaker. Dazai frowns and leans forward.
Q has somehow managed to wiggle their way into what looks like an uncomfortably small gap between the fake decorative rock lining the walls and the glass of the tank, contorted out of the sight of passerby. They’re now leaning their head against the glass, watching the comb jellies swim with a neutral expression. They’re leaning against the speaker, clearly, but they don’t seem to notice or care. They do look up when Dazai pokes his head in, though, studying his face to figure out why he’s there.
Their face finally spreads into a wide, innocent smile. “Oh, have I been gone that long? I hope I didn’t worry everyone…” Their voice is dripping with honey, belying the lie in their tone to anyone who listens – if Kunikida had come along, he would have surely been furious at what must have been a deliberate attempt at causing trouble. But between the way they looked at Dazai and the fact that they brought it up at all, they must honestly regret it even if they won’t say so.
This is why Dazai has to be Q’s keeper – he’s the only one who can tell what they mean to say, because he’s the one that raised them to wrap their words in so many layers of lies.
“It’s fine,” Dazai assures them, sending Atsushi a quick text before leaning against the false rock shelf to watch the jellyfish float. “You gave Atsushi-kun a bit of a shock, but he’s easy to scare and just as easy to pacify.”
Q hums and turns their head back to the jellyfish.
“They’re pretty, aren’t they?” Dazai tries again.
“I guess,” Q murmurs. There’s a few more moments of hesitation while they try to decide how much information is okay to share, until they finally offer, “I like how they’re colorful.”
“Mm, and the way they glow in the dark like that?” Q nods and Dazai smiles at them. “I agree. This exhibit is quieter, too. You found a good spot.”
“Are you staying?” Q asks.
Dazai can’t tell if that’s a please leave me alone or a please don’t go, so he just answers honestly. “I’m going to head back upstairs to Kunikida-kun soon. I left my ice cream with him.” He doesn’t miss the way the mention of ice cream sets Q’s eyes sparkling. “You can come along if you’d like, I’ll get you some.”
Q turns red and looks resolutely away again. “Maybe later,” they mutter.
“Alright,” Dazai says. “See you around then.” He backs away from the tank and starts walking back to Kunikida, not pushing the matter in the face of Q’s embarrassment. It pays off, because he’s barely made it out of the hallway before Q catches up with him and latches onto his arm.
Dazai ruffles their hair, accepting the punch in the side it earns him, and they make their way back to the snack area.
In his absence, Ranpo and Poe have returned from their own exploration and are sitting next to a beleaguered Kunikida on the bench. They’re up to their usual idiot couple antics, and Dazai almost feels bad for abandoning Kunikida to it. “Good,” Kunikida says when he catches sight of Dazai with Q at his side. “You’re back.”
“Q just ran off, that’s all,” Dazai says. “I went ahead and let Atsushi-kun know.”
Kunikida nods and glances over at the other two, then back to the single empty space left on the bench. “Are you staying? We might have to move.” He seems grateful for the excuse to escape.
Ranpo swallows his spoonful of ice cream and says, “You don’t have to leave. I’ll just share a seat with Poe-kun—”
His attempt to shift into Poe’s lap is tragically cut short by Poe himself, holding Ranpo back by his face. “Absolutely not,” he manages, face an impressive shade of red.
Ranpo reaches up and pulls Poe’s hand away from his face. “But Poe-kun, we—”
“Are in public, Ranpo-kun!”
Q watches the back-and-forth with increasing curiosity, and Dazai pinpoints the exact moment a spark sets their eyes alight with the opportunity to cause mischief. They open their mouth and Dazai hurriedly slaps a hand over it. “Q can share a seat with me, it’s fine.” He pulls them away before the argument can go any farther.
In the snack line, he says, “You cannot instigate fights between Ranpo-san and Poe-san, even if they make easy targets out of themselves.”
Q squints at him. “Just because Ranpo-san doesn’t have—”
“You don’t know that,” Dazai cuts them off. “Don’t mention it around this many people. Anyway, you’ve seen how he gets when Poe-san cancels a date. If they were to actually fight, he’d be insufferable.”
Q considers arguing with this, but their objections dissipate when they reach the front of the snack line. They order a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of vanilla and carry it back to the bench, where they settle with only minor grumbling into Dazai’s lap.
While they’re eating, Dazai feels his phone buzz against his chest with a text message. They cast a glance down at Q, but they’re thoroughly distracted watching Ranpo try to wheedle Poe into spoon-feeding him what’s left of his ice cream. Kunikida looks torn between turning Q’s attention away or just buying Ranpo more ice cream so he’ll quiet down. Dazai pulls his phone out and checks the message.
[Atsushi]: Would it be ok to get q a doll? Or is it dangerous?
Dazai blinks down at his phone screen. Certainly, Q can’t activate their ability without a doll, and they haven’t gotten their hands on one since they were left to die on the Agency’s doorstep, but…
Dazai remembers being sixteen and burning their doll in front of their eyes while they shrieked and cried as if he was holding their hand in the fire instead. The next day, he’d come back to find the doll back in their arms and a new look of distrust in their eyes that had never quite faded.
[Dazai]: Should be fine.
[Atsushi]: Ok cool!
Dazai sighs and puts his phone away, tapping his fingers absently against the bench. Things are, well, improving with Q now, but… Kunikida shoots him a concerned look, but he waves it off with a smile. Q must also notice him tense, though, because they lean backwards until their back is pressed into his chest. He barely manages to stop his next exhale from shaking.
Atsushi finally reappears with a bag from the gift shop, the other two kids trailing behind him. “Ah, Dazai-san and everybody!”
Dazai waves to them as Q hurriedly jumps out of his lap and onto their feet next to him. “Have fun?” he asks.
“We did!” Kenji cheers. Kyouka nods. “They had a tank that was open at the top, so we got to pet stingrays!”
“Sounds like fun,” Kunikida says, getting to his feet. “Are we all ready to go, then?” Dazai blinks at him – he thought Kunikida still had places he wanted to visit, once they managed to get Q settled down again.
“I’m ready,” Q says, shifting from one foot to the other with their empty ice cream cup in their hands. They’re probably worn out, Dazai realizes, spending so much time in such a crowded place after growing up alone in a small room. Dazai then realizes that Kunikida must have figured that out already and revised his own plans for Q’s sake.
Even though Q is a nuisance to the Agency at best and an unnecessary risk at worst, the other members are kind to them. It leaves Dazai watching in shocked silence as Kunikida untangles Ranpo from his overwhelmed boyfriend and herds the group out the aquarium doors.
When they’re halfway back to the office, Atsushi stops. “Oh, Q-kun, I got you a present,” he says, clearly trying to play it down even as his stiff posture betrays his nervousness. Q freezes, watching Atsushi open the gift shop bag and pull out a stuffed shark that’s half Q’s size. “It’s, um, it maybe wasn’t your favorite exhibit, but I know you were scared of them and then when you actually got to see them you figured out they weren’t so scary after all, right?”
Q takes the shark into their hands with a hesitance even Dazai barely notices and offers Atsushi a bright smile. “I love it!” they tell him. “Thanks, Atsushi-san!”
Atsushi smiles, relieved and excited. “You’re welcome,” he says, before rushing to catch up with Kyouka. Q immediately turns to stare Dazai down.
“It’s just a present,” Dazai tells them. “He really was worried when you vanished on him. He nearly cried.” Q nods, but the suspicion on their face doesn’t fade, so Dazai continues, “He got Kyouka a stuffed rabbit when she joined. There’s no price tag on it.”
“Okay,” Q says quietly, still looking down at it.
“I can carry it home if you want,” Dazai offers.
Q skitters back out of his reach. “It’s mine, don’t touch it,” they snap.
Dazai laughs. “Well, in that case, let’s hurry and catch up with the others. Kunikida-kun gets mad if I lag behind too long.” He starts to walk again, and Q trails behind him.