This will just be a one shot. It came to my mind and I wanted to try it out.
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"Hey daddy? What happened?" I remember asking my dad while we were out on a walk at the park. Mommy was at the mall shopping, so we did not need to worry about rushing home. It had been a perfectly normal day, until a loud scream spread through the park and drew all surrounding people to the noise. A body lay in a puddle of its own blood, empty eyes open in a constant state of pain.
"Someone died again son. I'm going to need to look into it before we go home, alright?" Dad had asked me, giving me a small smile that was as dead as the look in his eyes.
"But why? Why do people keep going to sleep and not waking up around me? It shouldn't happen this often, right?"
"All of us would like to know the answer to that question... Would you like to see how to conduct an investigation?" I followed, barely able to walk but practiced at maneuvering through murder scenes.
The man was fairly ordinary. The case was solved relatively fast. Nothing exceptional at all, except that it was the fifth murder I had run across just that week.
"Daddy, I don't like it when people stop waking up…" I, the boy with a curse of death, told my dad with a determined clench of my small fists, "Is there anyone who can stop it."
"Well, there are detectives. They can't always stop the crime from occurring, but they can make sure those people never hurt anyone again. And when they are able to figure out if a crime will occur they have the opportunity to stop it." Based on what dad said next, I guess my eyes must have lit up at that, letting me give a smile that would put the sun to shame. "Well, don't you seem interested. Is there anything else you want to know about detectives?"
"Say, daddy… if I were to become a detective, then could I help all the people who don't wake up. Could I make sure that they're happy, that no one else will end up like them?" I gazed between the ground and the street ahead as my dad carried me away from the murder. I think a cold gust of wind flew by, making me curl up closer to dad.
"I suppose so, but being a detective does not immediately mean that you are going to even try to save everyone. It depends one what you want to do."
"What do you mean?" the road ahead started to turn scarlet under the pastel sunset on the horizon. I remember that I started watching the ground change the black asphalt to oranges and reds, finally landing on a red-ish pink.
"As a great detective you have the ability to see almost everything about someone, the ability to discover someone's intentions and understand how something happened with only the smallest amount of clues. But if you choose not to try and notice that or choose to not do anything when a murder might occur then nothing will change. Being a meitantei only gives you the tools to save people, not the motivation." My, perhaps, trauma from the memories of crimes started being replaced with curiosity as I watched the shadows on the ground change from a pebble to a mountain depending on when you looked at them.
"But being a detective means I might be able to save people from falling asleep, right? If I can do that then everything will be worth it. I don't like it when people don't wake up, even though it happens all the time. If I were to become the world's greatest detective it would never happen again, right?"
I suppose Dad might have been a bit put off by the 'happens all the time' comment because he did not say anything for a moment. After a period of silence I think he responded with something like,"I suppose if you were to become a meitantei capable of seeing anything you could save everyone before someone else made it so they would not wake up." I do remember clearly, however, deciding that day that when I grew up I was going to be a detective, the sooner the better.
Not just one that solves murders, but one that prevents them.
Clutching dad's hand, I made the rest of the way home with a new goal in mind. I finally had a way to stop it. I have never cared about anything as much as I cared about that, looking back on it, I suppose that might be part of why I always stop murderers from killing themselves, guess I'll never know.
