Chapter Text
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
One
The fingers around her throat close and it hurts so bad.
It has to be a joke, she thinks, again and again, while her lungs run out of air. Daichi is looking down at her, there’s so much hatred in his eyes and she needs to breathe –
It’s a joke. Its’s a joke.
Her lips have opened on their own accord, gasping for air uselessly without her conscious control. But no oxygen reaches her lungs, and her chest cramps, her diaphragm stiff as if about to burst. It hurts and she doesn’t understand. Why is he doing this? What happened between them? Why won’t he let her breathe breathe breathe –
He’s saying something, but there is swooshing in her ears that drowns out his voice. Maybe he’s explaining the joke because it has to be a joke, a joke.
The panic makes her heart beat painfully when it sinks in. It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke and she needs to breathe.
There are black spots dancing in her eyes. She sees them even though the night sky is so dark – when had she lifted her head to look at the sky? Since when is she lying on the grass?
It’s not important. She needs to breathe –
When she picks them up at the station, Kazuha is visibly mad. Ran hugs her, Shinichi greets her with his best “Onee-chan, I’ve missed you!” and most winning Conan-smile (he did miss her, after all), and she forces a smile at them. It’s not as bright as her usual smiles are, and Shinichi knows what this has to be about – she’s mad because she worries. While there are many layers to Kazuha’s anger, it has one source and one source alone.
“Where’s Heiji Nii-san?” he asks, thus. Their Osakan friends usually pick them up together.
Predictably, Kazuha rolls her eyes. “He’ll join us at the restaurant. The idiot’s trying to get in trouble again.”
Shinichi has been looking forward to seeing Hattori again, and this is a serious downer. They’ll only stay in Osaka for a few hours and it’s been a while since they talked. With Ran and Kazuha around, they can’t speak openly, and most often they allow themselves to fall back for some privacy on the way to their sightseeing destinations, restaurants, attractions, when the four of them get together.
Prompted by Ran, Kazuha only mumbles that Heiji has had some breakthrough with a case he’s been working on for a while. Apparently, he’d even ditched school recently – and right now, they should be concentrating on their mid-term exams.
This leads their conversation to school and their upcoming college plans, and Shinichi tunes them out. Ran and Sonoko speak of nothing else right now; they’ve entered their last phase of high school and each and every grade will affect their diploma and their chances of getting into a good college. It’s super stressful on all the teenagers, but frankly, Shinichi’s beyond jealous. He should be thinking about colleges right now. He should be super stressed about grades. Instead, he’s doing basic multiplications and it’s so, so boring.
(Okay, so Shinichi never had to worry about grades or getting into a good college. It’s about the principle of it all.)
On top of it all, there haven’t been any breakthroughs concerning the Organization. For weeks, Shinichi keeps coming up empty. No new clues, no new deductions, no new intel. Haibara is still working on the antidote, but there haven’t been any developments. He’s been stuck in a child’s body for ten months now and he thinks that he’s slowly losing his mind. Just yesterday, he played Go Fish with Mitsuhiko for an hour and caught himself having fun.
That’s why he had been looking forward to a normal, grown-up conversation with Hattori. Even though he’s an idiot and doesn’t know anything about soccer or good crime fiction, it’s always fun to hang out. Hattori has never once underestimated him, never once shied away from the truth or telling Shinichi exactly what he needed to hear. It’s just not the same with Ai and the Professor, with whom he talks freely, but there’s always a certain distance between them. Ironically, Shinichi thinks it’s the age – both Ai and Agasa Hakasa are technically older than him (technically? Theoretically? Factually?). They’ve been at vastly different stages in their lives than Shinichi’s teenage glory. They wouldn’t be his friends if the Black Organization’s shit show hadn’t ruined his life.
He thinks it’s different with Hattori – they’d befriended with or without Conan Edogawa. He’d treat him exactly the same, as 7-years-old Conan Edogawa or as 17-years-old Shinichi Kudou. He can’t even say that about Ran.
In short, he had been looking forward to seeing Hattori today, though hell has to freeze over until he tells that to the overenthusiastic idiot.
The man who opens the door is older, but that’s what two decades do to a person. Heiji still recognizes him immediately.
“Nagota Daichi-san?” he asks, voice carefully neutral.
The man blinks at him. “Can I help you?”
“Maybe you can explain the joke,” Heiji smiles joylessly, and hands a manilla envelope to the man. He plants a foot in the door inconspicuously when Nagota-san grabs it, and waits.
It’s Miko-san’s file. Next to the thorough report of the forensic pathologist, there are a lot of photographs. They all show various angles and details of Miko-san’s corpse, focusing heavily on the dark fingerprints on her neck, marks of the hands that literally squeezed the life out of her.
The paperwork falls to the ground as Nagota-san lets it slip through his fingers. He stumbles a few steps back and Heiji follows him into the flat, stepping over the photographs. The new fingerprints on the documents would match the ones listed in the file, but the murder happened twenty years ago. It’s past the statute of limitations, so there won’t be a prison sentence or any other legal consequence if Heiji were to report the man.
It’s kind of a shame, but there are still ways to get justice.
Nagota-san has stopped retreating, there are tears in his eyes. He will talk, and part of him will be glad someone found out at last. He’ll find out sooner than later that confessing will still not rid him of the bone crushing guilt the teenager in front of him unearthed.
Hattori indeed arrives just when they take their seats half an hour later. He hurries through the restaurant to greet them, and immediately, Kazuha relaxes visibly – which is a bit exaggerated, honestly, even for the two of them.
“Where have you been?” Shinichi asks in a convincing Conan-voice after they all said their hellos and shifted to accommodate for one more person at the tiny table they managed to save. Apparently, Hattori had forgotten to make a reservation.
Heiji just grins at him over the edge of the menu and shrugs, recommending some Osakan dishes instead of answering. While food is possibly the only thing Heiji is more invested in than bragging about his crime solving faculties, the gesture still strikes him as out of character.
While Conan waves to a waiter to the get the food-issue out of the way, it’s Kazuha, surprisingly, who gets the investigation rolling. She had eyed Hattori carefully, as her Tokyo friends noticed, but she ignored Ran’s subtle nudges and winks. Something’s definitely off about the Osakans today.
“You’re wearing the same clothes you wore yesterday,” she says, wrinkling her nose.
Heiji grins at her good-naturedly. “So do you.”
“It’s called a school-uniform, idiot!”
And just like that, the two of them are engulfed in one of their usual arguments. While Ran sighs and focuses on her drink, Shinichi zooms in on Hattori and the fact that he is, indeed, wearing casual clothes.
It’s a Friday afternoon. Kazuha mentioned Heiji’s school-skipping tendencies, but as he looks closer, Shinichi’s notices that Hattori’s shirt is crumpled. His whole appearance, now that he actually pays attention, is a bit worn down – his hair is even more of a mess than it usually is, no sign of his trademark baseball cap, there’s a thin film of sweat on his forehead. Shinichi hadn’t thought much about it since Hattori had hurried inside and had probably run on his way here, but there’s also a thin line of dried, yellowish sweat on the other’s shirt collar.
“What case did you solve, niisan?” he asks at last, breaking up the bickering couple-but-no-couple.
To his utter surprise, Hattori just waves the question away dismissively. The waiter brings the food and that could have settled it, but Shinichi literally stares at Hattori like the other just grew a second head. Hattori never, never shies away from an opportunity to recount a case, especially if it had been a complicated one. Sometimes Shinichi thinks he only loves detective work because he can brag about it later.
Hattori squirms under his stare. “It really wasn’t anything special. A jealous boyfriend, the usual type.”
Kazuha groans. “Is Dad going to be in trouble again?”
Ran and Conan perk up, but Heiji stubbornly cuts his food without looking up. “No.”
“Statute-barred?”
Hattori sighs and nods slowly, as if he knows what’s coming. Next to him, a storm is brewing indeed. “You faced him alone, did you? Heiji!”
Ran and Conan look from the one to the other, cluelessly. Kazuha explodes and it’s like watching a war movie, but with a real dinner instead of popcorn.
Kazuha is still fuming by the time they leave the restaurant to head back to the station. While Hattori is off to fetch his bike, Kazuha stops grinding her teeth and sighs, turning towards Ran and Conan.
“I’m so sorry you guys had to watch us argue all evening,” she says in all honesty.
Shinichi is pretty sure that he and Ran are thinking the same thing (not much difference to their other visits), but Ran, ever the perfect company, waves Kazuha’s worries away. “No, no, don’t be sorry. Heiji-kun did seem a bit out of it, though.”
“Probably didn’t sleep much,” Kazuha rolls her eyes as Heiji appears around the corner, pushing his bike towards them. “And still uses that bike, I could kill him.”
Shinichi doesn’t doubt that last part, and even though it’s not exactly rare for Kazuha-chan to fantasize about murdering Hattori, something about it is different today. Despite their bickering all evening long, Shinichi hasn’t really figured out why Kazuha was so stressed out in the first place – lord knows Hattori gets in trouble more often than not. He didn’t understand that question about Toyama-san, either.
Well. To make a long story short: Mystery detected. Shinichi’s interest is peaked. In its usual fashion, his brain zooms in on it.
Meanwhile, Hattori catches up to them. He grins (as usual), Kazuha glared at him (as usual), and after a few snide comments, they fall into their usual walking patterns – Kazuha and Ran hurrying along in the front, elbow to elbow, whispering and laughing in a world that only consists of the two of them, and Heiji and Conan walk a few meters behind them, carefully holding a distance.
“Hattori,” Shinichi says, casually, arms crossed behind his head in Conan-typical fashion. “You still haven’t told me about that case, I’m interested.”
Heiji rolls his eyes. “I did tell you. It wasn’t interesting. A jealous ex-boyfriend.”
“Then why was Kazuha-chan so worried?”
Out of the corner of his eyes, he watches how Heiji grips the handles of his bike harder. “She always worries.”
“Who did you face alone? You didn’t seriously talk to the ex-boyfriend all alone, did you?”
“Dude, drop it.”
“What did she mean when she asked about her father?”
“Kudou,” Hauttori warns, loudly, and Shinichi flinches so bad he stumbles. Hattori doesn’t slow down.
Flabbergasted, Shinichi regains his balance and watches how Hattori picks up speed – speed he knows Shinichi can’t keep up with the legs of a child – to catch up with the girls.
They’re not even that far away from Kazuha and Ran. Heiji isn’t the best person at keeping secrets, especially not his secret, but this. This wasn’t an accident.
What the hell.
Something’s going on.
Shinichi’s interest is peaked.
tbc