please see profile for important note!
Missing one eye sucks.
Kansuke isn't even going to try to deny it – the only real benefit to this mess is how he can intimidate everyone with at least one working eyeball just by looking at them. Even when he's just thinking about what to have for lunch. Or whether to take a nap.
(Which, okay, he'll admit is a pretty significant upside in his book. He doesn't even need to grab people's collars that often anymore.
Not that it's stopped him from doing it, of course.)
Even after a whole year, Kansuke still sometimes forgets that he needs to turn his head like a bloody owl to see anything at all on his entire left side – blind spot doesn't cover it by any stretch of the word. It's irritating, to say the least.
Anyway. Point being, he notices the loud hum of a car approaching unusually slowly along his morning rehab route way before he sees it.
Kansuke scowls.
The cringe-inducing splotch of pink stays stubbornly at the edge of his vision.
He walks faster.
Koumei's stupidly fancy car refuses to disappear – if anything, it speeds up a little, just enough so that he can see it without turning his head at all. (Which he isn't going to do. Obviously.)
...he can't walk any faster than this, not if he actually wants to complete the entire route without straining something. That damn Koumei had definitely been spying on him. Ugh.
The car window rolls down on the wrong side, because Koumei just had to have a ridiculous foreign car, because why not, apparently.
"Good morning, Kansuke-kun."
Kansuke doesn't break his stride. "You're wasting petrol, Koumei, go away."
"Oh?" (Kansuke doesn't bother looking over – the raised eyebrow is already quite loudly implied.) "I didn't know you were so environmentally conscious, that's quite the new development. But I chose a hybrid car for good reasons, so don't worry about it."
"Reasons?" repeats Kansuke, finally turning to glower at Koumei. It has disappointingly little effect. "What, like stalking people?"
"No, like going for leisurely morning drives," comes the deadpan answer. "So, my sources tell me that you've made up with Yui-san? I must congratulate you on handling matters maturely for once, Kansuke-kun."
Kansuke mutters something wholly unprintable.
Koumei smiles.
"Sod off," Kansuke says, louder this time.
The smile only widens, if anything.
...Koumei, Kansuke decides, is the absolute worst friend ever – no, the bane of his existence – and should be ignored at all costs. For the sake of his own continued health and well-being.
(Maybe this was exactly the kind of 'strenuous activity' his doctor had been nagging on him to avoid all along. Kansuke would happily comply, in that case.)
"Don't act like you're so above everything yourself, Koumei," he grumbles, with a sudden newfound longing for the ability to exit a conversation by striding off. "And don't say 'sources' when it's just Yui telling you things, it makes you sound like an dumbass."
"Well, I did corroborate with several other informants. Yui-san has a known tendency to be overly generous when it comes to you, after all, and I'd rather not leap to conclusions based on insufficient evidence."
Kansuke snorts. "Would it kill you to use shorter words for once? And if you're so free over there at Arano, I'll tell dispatch to send everything your way!"
Koumei sounds disappointingly unperturbed. "Well, as you keep saying, us local police should stay within our jurisdictions. I wouldn't want to infringe on our prefectural headquarters, now would I?"
"You can infringe on your old office all you like, Koumei, literally no one wants to take it. Must be all that uncomfortable furniture."
"That's odd, I would've attributed it to your constant yelling from next door."
"Ha ha, very funny, Koumei. Bet you won't be laughing if you drop by on another unexpected visit next time."
Koumei drums his fingers lightly on the steering wheel. "Dare I ask what you did to my office, Kansuke-kun?"
Kansuke grins, very sincerely. "Well, let's just say you might find a couple of surprises if y– what're you doing?"
"Contacting Yui-san, of course, I'm sure she'd have something to say about that – "
"You put that phone down right now, or I'm gonna arrest you for texting while driving, and we'll see who has the last laugh right here – "
END
stop these children, yui, they should not be left without adult supervision