Mikau: Hi there! I wasn't actually going to post this, but what the heck. It's a silly piece, and I hope you have fun with it. I did it for the Poirot Café forum's Prompt Exchange 15. Sgamer82's prompt was: One of the high school detectives gets into Detective Noir. It should be noted that my understanding of the noir genre is based completely on my limited reading and viewing of Raymond Chandler, Humphrey Bogart films such as The Maltese Falcon, and Alfred Hitchcock. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: If I owned it, Hakuba would get more screen time. And a wardrobe assistant.
…
The Woman of Mystery
and the Cursed Gem
"Saguru-bocchama!" Baaya called from the foot of the steps.
In Hakuba's bedroom on the second floor, both boys froze, listening with dread to the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs.
"I thought you said no one would be home tonight," Kaito hissed, arching his back almost like an angered cat.
"She was supposed to be at the theatre until late," Saguru groaned, scrambling to his feet as Baaya slowly advanced down the hall to his room. "I don't want her implicated in this. She can't know I have an internationally wanted criminal in my room."
"Do I look like a criminal to you?" Kaito rolled his eyes and indicated his red plaid pants and cream-colored pullover.
Saguru paused in his mad dash to the door to bite his lip and snort, "The fashion police might have something to say about your ensemble, but—"
"—You ,of all people, do not get to invoke the fashion police," Kaito scoffed with a piqued glare. "Can't we just say I'm over for a class project?"
Saguru frowned. "This late?"
Kaito's eye twitched. "Okay. How about you're just having a friend over?"
"I've never had friends over. She knows I don't have any," Saguru muttered, coloring slightly at the admission.
Kaito drummed his fingers impatiently on the coffee table. "Fine. Tell her I'm secretly your lover. I guarantee she'll never bother us again."
Saguru's entire face flushed magenta, and he nearly tripped as he turned for the door. "J-Just…stay here," he stuttered. "I'll deal with it. Stay quiet, and don't. Touch. Anything."
"Touch everything?" Kaito snickered.
"Kuroba," Saguru intoned through clenched teeth, a warning note in his voice as his pitch rose on the second syllable.
Kaito shrugged in a "suit yourself" fashion, even though the door was already being pulled closed behind the detective. He waited patiently for nearly a full minute as he listened to Hakuba and Baaya's exchange. He noted the fake, soft quality that entered his classmate's voice when he talked to his caretaker. It took Kaito almost the same amount of time to consider the possibility that maybe this was real and the person Hakuba presented to the rest of the world was the imposter. After all, how well did Kaito know Hakuba in the first place?
Two minutes later, the sounds of Baaya and Hakuba's voices faded down the hall as the two made their way downstairs for some reason Kaito hadn't caught. That left him all alone in his former rival, now confidant's room with nothing to occupy himself. To his credit, it was another two minutes before he got up and started snooping around.
Too many bookshelves filled with nerdy classics, a library of DVDs, and video games still in their plastic. A desk, a minifridge, a Western-style twin bed, a couch, coffee table, and nightstand filled the room, but it all looked staged except for the desk.
Kaito started out innocently skimming the titles lining the shelves on either side of the flat screen affixed to the wall, but once he'd finished snickering over the fact that Hakuba was into nearly every geeky fandom possible, he moved on to the various piles of folders stacked neatly on the detective's desk.
Kaito bit his lip, tempted to open one up and flip through. The fear that they were case files full of gruesome crime scenes kept the temptation at bay. He was turning to go back to the couch when an open notebook full of Hakuba's neat handwriting caught Kaito's eye.
The top of the page read "The Beautiful Jewel Thief" with a neat line through it, and, below that, "The Woman of Mystery and the Cursed Gem".
Kaito frowned, spinning the desk chair around and taking a seat. He picked up the notebook and gave it a cursory skim. When it became apparent that this was the beginnings of a short story, Kaito chuckled fondly, "You write, Tantei-san?" and then wondered, "Are you any good?"
Kaito looked up from the notebook and listened closely for any sign of Hakuba's return. After thirty seconds of nothing but the usual old house sounds, he shrugged and began to read:
The Beautiful Jewel Thief
The Woman of Mystery
and the Cursed Gem
It was a sweltering July night, so hot the glue on the wallpaper was melting, oozing like marshmallow fluff, and settling in half-congealed globs on the oak wood floors.
I was at the office late, wrapping up a case, when a dame walked through the door. I knew she was trouble the moment I set eyes on her because: one, she moved so softly, not even my trained ears had heard her come in. Two, I was certain that that door had been locked. Three, she was resplendent in the moonlight, and beauty that bewitching always spelled trouble.
"Sorry for dropping in so late," she hummed with a soft chuckle, her voice deep and luscious like honey.
She wasn't sorry in the least.
"The trains were delayed on account of the weather. Is this the office of Detective White?"
I took in her long, white evening dress, clinging to her skin as if it were painted on. Her red lips stretched into a mischievous smile, looking like cloudy rubies against the bright backdrop of her stark white teeth. She knew I was sizing her up, and this amused her. Her grin brought to mind a vampire, lips stained with the remnants of a recent feast.
The thing that most struck me was the way her hat tilted so that the brim cast a shadow over her features, obscuring them. I couldn't get a good look at her eyes.
"I'm Detective White," I answered cautiously. "What can I do for you, Doll?"
"I don't know if you can do anything," she chuckled ironically, tossing her long, chestnut hair over her shoulder as she sauntered toward me. "But I'm desperate at this point, so I'm willing to try anything."
She sat with a sigh on the edge of my desk, facing away from me with the brim of her hat still blocking my line of vision. "I need to find a certain gemstone before some men who are also looking for it."
Her fingers drummed repeatedly on the mahogany, like she was slowly picking out the same three notes on a piano again and again. "It could be very dangerous if that jewel falls into the wrong hands," she added in an undertone, seemingly half to herself.
"Why?" I frowned, leaning forward, getting pulled into her tale, the air of mystery surrounding her.
She was silent a moment before snorting softly. "This is the hard part to explain, and I don't think you'll believe me. Sometimes even I have a hard time believing."
"Try me," I urged.
She turned and looked me full in the face, so that I finally saw she was a classic Asian beauty with a bit of a French spin. Her sensuous, purple-blue eyes shimmered like tanzanite in the moonlight, and she smirked with the confidence of Artemis on the hunt.
"Do you believe in magic?" she challenged.
…
"All right. Where were we?" Hakuba sighed, closing the bedroom door behind him.
Kaito jumped, fumbling the notebook. He hadn't heard the detective come in.
In an attempt to hide the fact that Hakuba had surprised him, Kaito shrugged nonchalantly and quickly replied, "I think we were about to discuss strategy concerning the search for Pandora—likely candidates, how to check gems while simultaneously decreasing the number of heists necessary to do so."
Saguru caught sight of the notebook in Kaito's hand halfway through Kaito's reply and stopped listening as his face drained of color and blood began to rush in his ears. "Sorry. Is that my notebook?" He asked in a strangled, pinched tone.
Kaito looked at the book in his hand like he was seeing it for the first time and wasn't sure how it had gotten there. "Um…yes. Yeah, it is. Funny. I don't—"
"—Did you read it?" Saguru practically squeaked in mortification.
Kaito averted his eyes, trying to keep his blush down. "…No."
"Oh my God, you did." Saguru ran a hand through his hair, stopping midway to pull at it. He put his hand in a fist over his mouth, biting his index finger as he began to pace. "I can explain."
"I really don't want you to," Kaito groaned, letting the notebook drop into place on the desk where it belonged.
"No, Kuroba. It's really not what it looks like," Hakuba insisted, persisting in his attempts to clear up the matter. "I was never going to try to get it published. It's just an exercise that my therapist has me do to process events by fictionalizing them. She doesn't even get to read my entries, so you don't have to worry. Your secrets are safe. I haven't told anyone."
Kaito blinked, studying Saguru skeptically. "Okay, that makes everything worse."
"Pardon?" Saguru frowned.
"It didn't even occur to me to be freaked out that people might find out about me and Pandora," Kaito grumbled, still doing his best to avoid eye contact. "What's concerning is that that is you processing things, and I come out as some sexualized, bombshell, eye candy damsel in distress. Do my eyes really shimmer like tanzanite in the moonlight? Is that something you've actually noticed and spent time thinking about?"
"I…" Saguru pursed his lips, trying to discern the correct answer. This felt like a trick question. "…No?"
Unimpressed with Hakuba's ability to lie, Kaito rolled his eyes and sighed. "Great. Now, in the film version, am I played by Mary Astor or Ingrid Bergman? Lauren Bacall? You're obviously Humphrey Bogart. Do we end up together in the end?"
Saguru put a hand over his eyes and shook his head. "Kuroba, it's not like that. In fact, in the end, I imagine that she gets Detective White's partner killed and eventually stabs him in the back—not literally—but this isn't real. This in no way is a representation of how I view reality."
"Yeah," Kaito snorted. "I remember the whole event playing out much differently now that you mention it. I never came to you to ask for help. You're the one who dragged the story out of me when I was weak from blood loss and elbowed your way into my business. I never asked for your help."
"Yes, yes." Saguru dropped onto the couch, all the air having gone out of him. "Don't remind me. Finding you bleeding out in an alley has been making an appearance in my nightmares often enough these past two weeks."
The wounded, sore tone in Saguru's voice was enough to give Kaito pause. Hakuba sounded genuinely disturbed by the event, as if he really cared about what happened to Kaito.
The thought struck Kaito that maybe Hakuba really did.
Kaito took a deep breath and studied his classmate for a few moments as Hakuba composed himself. Eventually he broke the silence to ask, "So…why do I come through your filter as a hot chick in distress?"
Saguru winced but met Kaito's gaze. "The whole situation with Pandora and the syndicate and you fighting them…" He paused, trying to word it right. "It's all a very fitting background for some film noir. At least, I thought so. I, of course, cast myself as the detective, and that left you to be 'A dame walked into my office'. Nothing personal, Kuroba. I meant no offense."
"So you're not secretly crushing on me and coming up with fictional scenarios in which you ingratiate yourself to me so that I fall into your arms and sigh 'My hero!', right?" Kaito snickered, hackles lowering.
Saguru put his face in his palm and groaned. "No, Kuroba. You're a very attractive human being, but utterly not my type, thank you. It's all a trope, a parody. Besides, you cross-dress enough, that the roll of 'dame' wasn't that much of a mental leap. If you like, later on, I can include in the story that you were merely crossdressing when you met with Detective White and you're really male. Would that placate you?"
Kaito gave a snort. "I'd love to see the look on Detective White's face when he realizes the hot chick in his office is really a guy."
"I don't think I've seen that done before. It could be an interesting twist," Saguru remarked, beginning to consider the idea in earnest.
"Perfect." Kaito smirked, rolling his eyes as the detective made a note on the pad on the coffee table in front of him. "Now that that's settled, can we get back down to business, Sherlock?"
"Unless you want to help me map out chapter two." Saguru returned the grin, only half joking.
The
End