About a year ago, KID had gotten shot at a heist. While getting shot at was not an abnormal occurrence at KID's heists, Shinichi had not known at the time. When he saw the glider go down, he ran over as fast as he could, intent on finding and helping, if necessary, the fallen thief. Just as Shinichi found him, Kaito exchanged his white suit for street cloths. Leaving Shinichi to see his face. This was, understandably awkward for them both as Kaito would have prefered to not be arrested and Shinichi would have prefered not to be put in the situation where he felt obligated to arrest his sort of friend.

"I just got here." Shinichi had blurted out. "I was following KID and found an unrelated person bleeding in an alleyway."

"Wha-?" Kaito began.

"My house is close by. I have bandages and first aid training. You should let me wrap that for you. And if anyone asks, I did question you because this is suspicious, but determined that you are not, in fact, KID."

By this point, Kaito had figured out that he was not going to be arrested. "Thanks for the offer, but I need to get home."

Shinichi gave him a look. "I am not letting you go until you let me wrap that for you."

And so, though suspicious, Kaito had let Shinichi lead him back to the house and bandage his injury. After his following heist, he stopped by to drop off an excessive bouquet of roses and a bag of Shinichi's favorite coffee.

They'd been friends ever since.

Now, a year later, It was hardly a surprise when Kaito stepped into whatever room Shinichi was in through the nearest window while Shinichi was at home. This particular Saturday morning was no different.

Shinichi sat up abruptly as his blankets were rudely removed.

"'Morning, Shinichi!" came a voice Shinichi was painfully familiar with.

"Darnit, Kaito. You're going to give me a heart attack some day." Shinichi glanced around for the clock, shivering slightly. Why was his room so cold?

He sighed in resignation as he found the time. Seven am.

"Why are you always up so early?" What time must he have gotten up to be here this early?

"Aoko," Kaito said, grimly. "She has made it her mission for the past three years to wake me up ridiculously early on the weekends." He grinned, suddenly. "So I've decided to extend the same favor to you!"

Shinichi sighed. This was going to be a long day.

"Alright. Enough of that. Out of bed now." Kaito made a shooing motion with his hands.

Indulging himself in another sigh, Shinichi got out of bed.

Kaito skipped out of the room, holding a box that Shinichi hadn't seen earlier.

A few minutes later, Shinichi walked into the kitchen to find Kaito, two pieces of charcoal in the shape of toast, and a chocolate muffin. He took one look at the toast and snatched the bread out of Kaito's hands as he was about to sacrifice more to the toaster.

"Out," was all he said.

Kaito pouted, but left.

After making another two pieces of toast (on the respectable setting of 3 instead of 5) and a pot of coffee, Shinichi joined Kaito in the living room, where he was messing around with the TV.

"Kaito… What are you doing?" he asked with trepidation.

"Setting up a Wii," he stated simply.

"No."

"Oh yes. We've know each other for a whole year as of two weeks ago and have still never played Mario Kart. You're playing with me," Kaito demanded.

Shinichi thought that that was probably a fine thing to have never done. "Maybe let's play a board game instead?" He'd done everything he could to not let Kaito find out how terrible he was at video games. He'd never live it down. Ever. That went double for his singing ability. But that was not the problem at hand.

"We can do that too." Kaito agreed readily.

Shinichi subtly unplugged the TV. "I'll go get Clue, or something." He stated before leaving.

He went to his parent's stash of board games that they never played and grabbed all the ones he thought he wouldn't be terrible at. Hopefully this would be enough to distract Kaito from Mario Kart. He knew it wouldn't be, but he was allowed to hope.

He returned to the living room, arms filled with games.

"Why do you keep your TV unplugged?" Kaito asked.

"No reason." Shinichi sighed yet again.

Kaito came over to look at the games Shinichi had brought. "Of course you would have the collector's edition of Clue." He gave Shinichi a disapproving look.

Shinichi shrugged defensively. "These are my parents'." He carefully indicated every game but Clue.

It was Kaito's turn to give Shinichi a look. "Uh huh. Well fine. The sun's at the wrong angle anyway and it'll make it hard to see TV. We can play Clue."

Five minutes into the game Kaito declared it was Mr. Green with the rope in the library. He was correct. "He looked suspicious." Kaito shrugged. "We can play again if you want."

They did. With the same result. The third time, Shinichi caught Kaito look at the cards. He should have known not to pick a game that had cards of any kind.

"I guess I'm partly at fault for not noticing." Shinichi stated. Kaito just laughed. "Shall we play chess instead?"

"Sure!"

At least when Kaito tried to cheat at chess Shinichi could catch it very easily. After a while, Kaito stopped trying and played seriously. Shinichi won, but only just.

"Aw…" Kaito complained. "Let's play again," he all but demanded.

Shinichi nodded, trying to look less pleased than he was.

They played four more times, with Shinichi winning three of the four.

"Arg! You're too good at this," Kaito groaned. "Okay. I think it's time for Mario Kart now."

Casting around for a reason to delay the inevitable, Shinichi's eyes caught on the clock. "It's lunchtime," he stated quickly as Kaito was fitting two remotes with joysticks. They might not have been called that. Shinichi didn't know. He didn't know anything about video games. The only time he'd ever beaten a video game was during a case when lives were at stake.

Kaito sent him a suspicious look. "You never want to eat. Why are you suggesting lunch?"

"Because you get upset if I don't eat?" he tried.

"Hmmm…" Kaito held Shinichi with his suspicious glare for long enough to make Shinichi uncomfortable. Then, he brightened. "Well. Good thing I made lunch plans, then!"

It was with a mixture of resignation and relief that Shinichi followed Kaito out the door.

Despite his reservations, Kaito had picked a surprisingly normal place for lunch. Just a sandwich shop. The sandwiches were fairly good, too. Once they'd both finished eating and Shinichi had approached the door, however, Kaito revealed the real reason for going to that particular shop. They had chocolate cake. And Kaito bought a whole cake. The whole thing. Three layers. Shinichi put his head in his hands and sighed again, for what felt like the millionth time that day.

Kaito walked back humming. Shinichi walked back questioning his choice in friends. It would have been one thing if the cake was to share, but Shinichi knew the the only one eating that cake would be Kaito.

Back at the house, Kaito skipped to the fridge and shoved Shinichi's things out of the way to fit

the far too large cake.

Kaito turned slowly to reveal a grin Shinichi would have described as evil."And now, my dear Shinichi, you can escape no longer. It's time for Mario Kart."

Kaito skipped into the living room, grabbed a controller for himself and one for Shinichi, which he shoved into Shinichi's hands as soon as he was within reach. He then plopped onto the couch and started up the game. Shinichi reluctantly sat down next to him.

The character's cheerfully announced the name of Shinichi's destruction.

"So what do theses buttons do?" he asked.

"Okay. So press A to go, B to stop, Z to use an item, and C to look backwards. Oh. If you have already stopped, B will make you go backwards," Kaito explained.

"...And how do I turn?"

Kaito stared at him. "The joystick."

"Oh. Right."

Kaito stared at him for a few moments longer before turning back to the screen.

He easily navigated through the menu, selecting two player and quickly picking a small child in orange.

Shinichi didn't know any of the characters, so he picked at random, choosing a large spike-y turtle. At least, he thought it was a turtle.

He was then told to pick a vehicle. Kaito chose an angry looking motorcycle with arms. Deciding to pick whatever Kaito did, since Kaito knew what he was doing, Shinichi looked for the same motorcycle. It wasn't there.

"We have different vehicle options?" Shinichi asked.

"Yeah. I picked a small character and you picked a large character."

"Oh. I see." He did not see.

He decided on a four wheeled vehicle which would be presumably easier to steer. It was called the Jetsetter. That sounded fast and wasn't speed the point of the game?

Next came the question of automatic or manual. Kaito chose manual. Shinichi hesitated before doing the same.

"Since it's your first time I think an easy track would be best. We'll try the first one." He selected a mushroom(?) with eyes(?) and a track with a name starting with L that was gone too quickly for him to read.

"Oh yeah! If you push A before the timer ends you get a speed boost," Kaito added quickly.

Ok. Shinichi could do that. The countdown started and he held A. When it reached zero, Kaito's character raced off as did the other computer characters. Shinichi's car exploded.

"What?"

"Pressed the button too soon," Kaito explained unhelpfully.

It was over now and Shinichi's character had started to move. It sped up slowly and reached the first curve. He tried to turn a little and ran into the railing, losing all of his speed. He turned very slowly and ran into the railing again. When he'd finally made it around the curve, Kaito's character zipped by his. Then someone ran into him and he got a cloud. He'd only gotten around the first turn. He made it to a straight part again when the little cloud electrocuted him and he shrunk. He did not appreciate the irony. He'd lost all his speed again. It was almost a relief when Kaito crossed the finish line. Shinichi hadn't made it onto the second lap.

Kaito turned to face him slowly. "Shinichi." He paused. "You're awful."

"I know. This is why I didn't want to do this," Shinichi complained.

"Okay. We are starting over. And you are letting me pick for you," Kaito declared.

Kaito took the remote out of Shinichi's hands and removed the joystick thing. He then fitted the remote into a wheel.

"Now 2 is go, 1 is stop or reverse, B is use an item, and A is look backwards. If you want the speed boost, don't press 2 before the countdown reaches 2. Raise the remote towards you if you want a speed boost, but it'll get harder to steer." Kaito explained. He picked the one character Shinichi knew, Mario, a scooter, and automatic. "That should make turning easier. It's not super fast, but at least you can turn."

"Thanks," Shinichi replied.

"Let's try that again."

This time, Shinichi's vehicle did not explode, but when he tried to turn, the game started beeping at him and a yellow guy on a cloud with a sign showed up at the top of the screen. Shinichi ignored him and focused on not running into the the walls. He was halfway around the track when he collided with a character going the other way. It was then that he realized that he'd been driving backwards. He tried to turn around, got run over by a giant pink baby in a stroller and a white egg (ghost?) with a cloud knocked him to the side of the road. He was shrunk again. He appreciated the irony even less this time.

He almost made it to the second lap when Kaito won this time.

They continued to the next race. He just about gave up when he ran into the cows for the third time and then immediately got launched into the air by a mole after he escaped from the cows.

On the following one, he ended up going backwards again and drove off a cliff. Twice.

Kaito had to pause the game to laugh at him. This time, he avoided the a thundercloud and was very pleased with himself.

He made it to the moving platforms and he fell into the water trying to cross so many times that he gave up and stopped.

As the game informed them of the obvious (that Kaito had won and Shinichi had gotten last in every race), Kaito turned to Shinichi.

"I have never seen someone so bad at this," he stated sincerely.

"Gee. Thanks." Shinichi was definitely not pouting. He did not pout.

"And that includes Hakuba. Who tried to hold the remote upside down for the first race. He at least finished a lap before we told him to turn his remote over."

Shinichi was never going to hear the end of this.

"Okay, okay," Kaito began. "To make it more fair, I'll play upside down and with my non dominant hand. How's that?"

"You still want to do this?" Shinichi asked in shock. How could Kaito be so optimistic as to think that playing upside down would make them even?"

"We'll just do the first one." Kaito said, already starting it over again. Shinichi resigned himself to further embarrassment.

By driving as slowly as possible and by turning into a black thing that drove for him, Shinichi managed to finish a lap and get part way through the second lap before the person in 11th crossed the finish line. He avoided any thunder clouds this time.

"Hey! You finished a lap!" Kaito smiled at him.

Shinichi glared.

Kaito laughed and started the next race. This time Shinichi got into 11th during the first lap. He was proud of himself until lightning struck everyone except the one he'd just passed and he was shrunk again. He hated this game. Passionately.

After that he didn't even finish the lap. The third race went about as well as the first.

But on the fourth race it was Shinichi who got the lightning, and it was with spiteful joy that he used it. That time, he completed two laps.

Kaito once again laughed at him, though this time for pleased expression that Shinichi wore at the end. Kaito had gotten first, of course.

"Ok. One more race," Kaito told him.

Shinichi narrowed his eyes. From Kaito's expression this could not be good.

Kaito selected the last race from the last set of races on the top row.

Shinichi took one look at the track, with it's transparent roads, lack of railing, and the earth far below, put down his controller, and left the room.

Because there was no way.

After about three minutes, Kaito joined him in the dining room, where he sat.

"..." Kaito stared. "I am never going to let this go."

Shinichi dropped his head to the table where it hit with a painful sounding thunk. "I know."

Kaito took pity on Shinichi after that. They watched Sherlock Holmes movies until Kaito had to leave. The next time Kaito and the children were over, however, he was not spared the judging looks the kids sent his way or the condescending, amused ones from Haibara after Kaito told them what happened.