Title: The Curious Case of the Exhausted Eiji
Written for: MidoRin
(Frog-kun here! I hope Len-kun likes this fic. Ha ha ha.)
Pairings/Genres/Rating: Gen fic. But apparently, there is implied Dream Pair. Lol.
Beta: HaveYouNoMercy
Lightning rumbled amid a downpour of rain that threatened to flood the face of Japan. Heavy black clouds covered the sky, casting an ominous shadow over the Kikumaru house.
Not that Kikumaru Sousuke minded too much at that particular moment. The lights in the house were on, and twenty-year-old Sousuke – now a fully fledged adult in Japanese society – was reading Detective Conan.
It was a pretty epic manga.
While Sousuke was thus absorbed, his siblings were also in the living room. Kogure was slouching on the couch, texting on his cell phone. This was very typical of the shy and reticent Kogure. Even though he was twenty-three, he would just sit and do texting on his phone and then would smile at the phone as if it was a very pretty girl.
Miina was sitting on her stomach on the floor, writing into a notebook. A heavy world history textbook was opened up in front of her and she was taking notes. Miina was in her final year of high school and she didn't seem to enjoy it too much as was evident by how she always frowned whenever she opened up her books.
Then there was Michiko. Michiko was watching TV and sipping on a glass of lemonade. One never knew what this girl, supposedly a mature university student, would do next; one moment she would be watering the garden, the next she would be in her room listening to heavy metal music. And she always had a serene smile on her face, whatever she did.
The only one who was missing was Eiji.
After a while, this began to bug Sousuke. When he got to the end of his tankobon, he snapped his head up, looked out the window and wondered where his little brother was. Eiji was always off playing tennis. When Sousuke was in middle school, he was in the manga club; he didn't remember playing tennis. He did remember having to do baseball and sucking royally at it.
"He comes," Michiko randomly announced in a spooky voice before turning the channel to a rerun of Power Rangers.
And just then, Sousuke heard the doorbell ring.
He opened the door. It was Eiji.
"Oh, hey!" said Sousuke cheerfully.
But Eiji did not respond to the greeting. In fact, he looked so exhausted that he simply flopped on Sousuke with a feeble "Nya~"
"This is terrible!" Sousuke said, alarmed. "There must be a mystery behind this. Eiji's never this tired!"
Kogure looked at Eiji and then stood up and left the room discreetly.
Meanwhile, Miina sat and snorted. "It's prob'ly just his tennis."
"Does tennis poison your insides?" Sousuke asked while noting how very pale Eiji's face was. He knew from reading murder mystery novels when people were suffering from the effects of poison.
"Well, I guess there might be something else," Miina conceded.
"Then this is a mystery," Sousuke said, "and since I consider myself quite the armchair detective, I'll be in charge of this case."
"Whatever," said Miina.
After the exhausted Eiji was put in a comfortable bed to rest, Sousuke began to work on the case.
He decided first that he was going to check out that tennis club of Eiji's. Before he went to school, he was perfectly energetic and brushing his teeth with strawberry toothpaste. After school he was not so good, so school was probably the place to check out.
So he went there the next day, wearing cool sunglasses and a not-very-suspicious-looking large and brown hat.
He started taking notes at whoever he saw. He saw a seventh grader with a monobrow. Could he have been the poisoner?
Then he saw another guy taking notes just like him. He was wearing extremely thick glasses that covered his eyes. Could he have been the poisoner?
"Nii-chan, what are you doing here?" It was Eiji, looking as happy and as energetic as he had been yesterday morning.
"Who poisoned you, Eiji?" Sousuke asked severely.
"Poison?" Now Eiji was confused.
And so were the tennis players, it seemed.
"Was Eiji poisoned?" they asked among themselves. No one spoke in a more concerned voice than Oishi. Sousuke knew Oishi for a nice boy when he came over to the Kikumaru house. He liked his haircut.
"Eiji was poisoned," Sousuke announced, speaking directly to Oishi in a sonorous voice. "He was poisoned by a vile substance yesterday which he appears to have digested through swallowing!"
"I'm guessing that was Inui Juice," said a short kid with a hat.
"Lies!" insisted Sousuke. "That's far too simple an explanation!"
When people just stared at him, Sousuke explained:
"First rule of solving mysteries: the simple explanation is always set up deliberately to cast suspicion on someone else. Who made the Inui Juice?"
The guy with the extremely thick glasses raised his hand. "That would be me."
"I am sure you are an innocent man," Sousuke proclaimed solemnly.
The tennis players looked at each other with raised eyebrows. A tall boy with spiky hair started coughing into his hand.
Finally, someone spoke up. He was one of the ninth graders, a slim, brown-haired boy with a serene, very Michiko-like smile on his face.
"Well, isn't it true that the family is a good place to start when looking for suspects?"
"You're very smart. What's your name?"
"Fuji."
"I'll remember that. Now to go off to investigate!"
And Sousuke walked off, whistling a random anime theme song.
"That was... interesting," Kawamura remarked once Sousuke was gone. Momoshiro burst into laughter. He had been fighting to contain it for so long.
"That's my older brother, nya!" said Eiji with an infectious smile. "He might be a bit overenthusiastic but he cares about me a lot, so I still love him!"
Hearing Eiji describe someone as 'overenthusiastic' was ironic, to say the least. However, the other regulars were pretty well-inclined to believe him, so nobody made any comments.
Meanwhile...
Sousuke sat on his armchair at home and thought hard about what he could recall about yesterday evening. He could picture the scene in the living room pretty well. Then Eiji came in and things started to unfold. Above all, he could remember his exchange with Miina but he could not be sure about Michiko and Kogure.
Currently, Miina was at school and Kogure was away. Michiko was ironing the clothes.
"Hey, Michiko, can you answer a few questions for me?" Sousuke spoke up.
"Very well," Michiko responded.
"You were there when Eiji came in sick yesterday, right?"
"Yes."
"Do you think any of us were acting suspicious?"
Michiko seemed to think. "Kogure left the room," she said. "He seemed embarrassed about something."
"Oh, really?" This was getting interesting. "What was he embarrassed about?"
"I know who he is dating," Michiko said randomly.
"That has nothing to do with anything!" Sousuke snorted. He wasn't even taking notes, for he had no notebook to sort out all his clues in. He could use his head.
"It does," Michiko said. "Kogure is dating Fuji."
Sousuke promptly passed out.
After tennis practice that day, Eiji and Fuji decided to walk home together. Eiji was very caught up telling Fuji all about his strawberry toothpaste. Fuji just smiled and nodded along to whatever he said, although it had to be said that Fuji genuinely enjoyed Eiji's company.
"Well, I'm here!" Eiji announced as he reached his front door. "See you later, Fujiko-chan!"
He opened the door and let out a frightened squeak. "Nyaaaaa! What's this? Nii-chan's on the floor! Is he breathing?!"
Fuji opened his eyes. He came over beside Fuji and peered at the fallen Sousuke. Sousuke was lying sideways, eyes screwed shut and chest heaving. He was obviously breathing.
He opened his eyes upon hearing Eiji's voice. He blinked. Then he noticed Fuji.
"Aaaaargh, stay away from me, demon!"
Fuji looked kind of hurt at that statement. The word 'demon' kind of reminded him of Rikkai's Kirihara, who he wasn't actually too fond of.
"Nii-chan!" Eiji rebuked sharply. "Fujiko-chan's not a demon!"
"He seduced my brother! He's the poisoner!"
"Seduced your brother...?" Here, Eiji looked incredibly confused. "You mean me?"
"No," said Michiko. She was in the room but thanks to the Sousuke drama, no one had noticed that she was sitting on Sousuke's favourite armchair. "It still wouldn't be recommended to lose your virginity the yaoi way. It might be painful."
Just then, Miina burst into the room. "Damn it, you freaks, I'm trying to study!" She kicked Sousuke, who was still flailing on the floor. "Get up and stop such being a drama queen. Kogure's dating a chick, not a boy."
Sousuke sat up. "Wait, how do you know this?"
"Isn't it obvious? He's always on the phone talking to 'Yumiko'. Don't you ever notice anything?"
"I'm a terrible detective," Sousuke said tearfully.
Just when it seemed like Sousuke was going to get very emotional about all of this, Eiji came up to him and hugged him very affectionately.
"You are a very good detective, Nii-chan. Remember when we were little and you always read out chapters of Detective Conan to me and you always solved the mysteries before me?"
"You're right," said Sousuke. "There's no need to mope about life. You're a good little brother, Eiji!"
And with that, Sousuke got to his feet and ran out of the house. Without putting his shoes back on. Fuji watched all of this awkwardly from the background.
"Where's he going?" Miina asked sourly.
"To find Kogure, of course," Michiko stated. "Now that the case of the Exhausted Eiji has been solved, we need to celebrate by gathering all the previous suspects and doing the reveal."
The others looked at her.
"That's what he would say if he were here," Michiko finished.
"Yes, but the case of the 'Exhausted Eiji' was never solved," Miina said with a snort.
"Was that what all of this was about?" Eiji laughed. "Nii-chan could have just asked me! Yesterday's Inui Juice was terrible. I felt sick all the way home."
"So it was Inui Juice after all," Fuji stated, in order to reaffirm the point.
"And what solution did Sousuke come up with?" Miina asked.
That was a very good question.
Meanwhile...
Sousuke was running around the streets of suburban Tokyo, looking around for Kogure and Fuji Yumiko.
"Aliens!" he exclaimed. "There can be no other solution. I've dismissed everything else, so my theory must be correct. Eureka!"