did you get lost again? ;u;

no, not at all! i'm sorry, akamatsu, but i botched a few things in the collage, i'll show up soon! forgive me, please

it's ok

Puffing a breath in malcontent, Kaede quickly deletes the message before it reaches Shuichi. She rewrites it and runs her fingers over the emoji keyboard. Then, she puts in a laughing kitty, removes it, puts in a small music note, removes, a flower, removes. Finally, she gives up and decides on a simple smiley face.

it's ok, shuichi-chan c:

No more than five seconds later, a notification about the text being read flashes in a vibrant blue. Kaede giggles quietly when, instead, she doesn't get an immediate reply. Truth be told, she thinks, hiding a smile behind her hand, I could've gone without the 'chan', he'd get flustered anyway. Maybe Shuichi told her a bunch of times that he finds such, as he put it, familiarities weird, but how many times Kaede has whispered his name into those few millimeters between their lips, and then has felt it when Shuichi has smiled.

Taking a small sip of what's left of her latte and glancing briefly at the crowded street, bathed in bright light, Kaede lazily reminiscences the last Tuesday. Harukawa-san had her lectures til late evening, so Shuichi and her had the small, two-room apartment all for themselves. They studied persistently for the psychology exam, the only subject they shared, and then, during a break for tea and snacks… Well. Fanning her suddenly flushed cheeks, Kaede meticulously doesn't think about those unhurried yet passionate kisses, his fingers tenderly combing her hair, her hands on his shoulder blades… She doesn't think about it!

" We're on top of the world, we're on top of the world , " rings out from her phone laying on the plastic table. Grateful for the distraction, Kaede unlocks the screen as she's betting against herself over the contents of the message. If it's abashment, she will help that slightly freaky but loveable punk singer with some melodies; if Shuichi finally gets over his poise and permits himself to call her 'Kaede-chan', then…

i'm almost there, forgive me for the delay!

Huh.

"And what am I supposed to do with you, huh?" Kaede says to the screen, rubbing her brow. "You're lucky I love you."

"Um…"

Oh.

Woops.

Whether she wants it or not, Kaede has to admit that Shuichi doesn't give the impression of a world-class detective right now, when he's staring at her with his eyes wide like saucers, and blushing vibrantly. Nevertheless, he does look very cute. For the first thirty seconds, then Kaede begins to feel a bit awkward, as her partner keeps standing like this above her with a confused face and his bag threatens to fall off his shoulder.

When the risk of a small earthquake grows too high, Kaede clears her throat and averts her gaze, casually hiding her scarlet cheeks under her loose hair. Oh, shoot, this isn't the same, isn't it, and those unfinished, breathless confessions, or messenger stickers with a business fish sending hearts, all of it, even if it's true, has another weight to it than… that thing just now. Oh, shoot. Kaede feels like heartily banging her head on the table. Shuichi, apparently sensing her distress, straightens his hat and mutters something about a coffee, tousled with the wind outside wisps of hair fall onto his eyes, and—

Shoot.

"Wait." Kaede gets up from her seat and gently touches the boy's wrist. "Maybe get a takeaway? We could go somewhere less public."

"Do you have any particular location on your mind?" asks Shuichi. "If I remember your words correctly, Harukawa-san intends to study philosophy for the entire evening, so your home… But I might be mistaken..." Even though he casts his eyes down, he turns his palm a bit so he is able to gently squeeze Kaede's fingers.

"You're not mistaken." The girl smiles softly and finishes her coffee. "But she didn't manage to find the best—" she emphasises that word, rolling her eyes at the same time "— textbook on the internet, so she's probably going to sleep in the library again. Or at Iruma's."

"I see." Shuichi helps her put on her coat in such a sweetly old-fashioned gesture. "In case you're interested, there's certain series I've found, and you might like it. Probably."

"This week there aren't any exams for me to study for, so we can watch." Taking advantage of the chaos by the doors constantly opening to let more students in, Kaede stands on her tiptoes to delicately peck Shuichi on the cheek.

"U-um…! Forgive me, I didn't think t-that you might be busy."

They step out of the pleasantly warm cafe into the wintry, shimmering from neon signs December air, straight into a crowd of people coming back from work. Traffic fumes blend with the stink of alcohol and the heavy smell of perfumes coming from the nearby store. Kaede mulls over putting on her gloves, then takes a look at Shuichi, who's still looking a bit sheepish. Instead of digging through her backpack, she hides their joined hands in her pocket. She gets an unsure smile as a reply.

"If I had a lot of schoolwork," she says at last, "I wouldn't ask you over. Studying together isn't something we always succeed at." When Shuichi doesn't reply in any other way than giving her a startled glance, Kaede grabs his hand tighter and decides to abandon that topic.

After getting to the bus stop a few hundred meters away, Shuichi carefully observes the group of high schoolers hidden in the cloud of cigarette smoke and laughing in low voices, while Kaede closes her eyes to focus her hearing on the world outside. The jerky hum of cars on the street, an evening allegretto, further away she hears barkeepers crying out at each other, vivo, and the wind whistling through slits in the fence made of tin sheet, that's a gloomy, nasty lento. And so many other sounds. Was Kaede alone here, she could stay for almost an hour and just listen, catch fine strings of inspiration, write down fragments of melodies on a treble staff quickly sketched in the notebook for music history. And be late for her bus.

"What exactly happened," asks Kaede, opening one eye to peer at her boyfriend, "that you had to stay longer?"

"It's kind of my fault," Shuichi admits bashfully. He pulls his hat lower and sighs quietly. "My language group had an English exam. We were to split in two parts and write it in rounds, I ended up in the second one. I even tried to change groups not to be late. It didn't work."

"So, when did you leave?" Kaede raises her brows, looking at the clock above the timetable. Almost eight p.m. already.

"Half an hour ago."

"So you were at uni for… twelve hours? Without a lunch break? And after three hours of sleep?"

Shuichi only gives her a helpless look. Once again, Kaede ponders Tenko's offer. Maybe she should've accepted it, learn some aikido, just a few leverages, not much, truly. She'd throw her most beloved dork into a snowdrift right now, maybe it'd make him smarter. Or more self-confident.

"And you forgot the coffee…" Kaede frowns when the high schoolers get into a rickety bus while hollering at each other, then, making use of the temporary solitude, throws her arms around Shuichi's neck and pulls him in her direction until their mouths meet.

(Their first kiss, in the second-to-last year of high school, wasn't perfect. Kaede only had two partners before Shuichi, and those weren't long relationships. She never had the opportunity to learn how to kiss. And Shuichi was, as Kaito put it, a socially confused penguin. No experience. And no technique. He just froze in a place for a second. Like Kibo when Gonta patted him on the back too hard. For a moment Kaede was afraid of misreading the atmosphere, ruining everything, messing it up, the entirety of their friendship — and then Shuichi pulled her closer, his strong palms on her hips, she felt the taste of mint, the smell of inoffensive cologne, and cotton, and something else, bitter-sweet, something that was just Shuichi.

His heartbeat was the most beautiful melody she's ever heard.)

Momentarily, Shuichi stays still — and then tilts his head to deepen the kiss. With a soft mumble of satisfaction, Kaede frees her hands to put one palm on the boy's cheek and rest the other one on his shoulder. Her world shrinks for a few minutes, as if only the two of them existed, those quiet sounds, the softness, the sweetness. The togetherness. With a stifled sigh, Kaede tries to cling closer, and Shuichi's embrace grows tighter, she can almost feel his pulse in his chest—

And then they lose their balance and fall into a snowbank.

"Ouch," says Shuichi.

"Kasai-san wouldn't be proud of us," says Kaede.

She looks at Shuichi laying underneath her for a while, he's a black stain in the white, only his cheeks and lips burn in scarlet. Their eyes meet for a while, their smiles growing at the same pace. Kaede feels like saying she loves him for a while, saying it face to face, and, for that one while, their small, private infinity, she's confident Shuichi knows, and, oh shoot. Kaede physically feels herself falling deeper in love.

To resist the urge to cry, she simply leans down for another kiss. She only covers half of the distance, because he is waiting for her.

This time, it doesn't last for long. Without much conviction, Kaede curses her sensitive hearing that allowed her to hear the oncoming bus, and her sense of decency that made her stop the frolicking so Shuichi wouldn't have to be ashamed of his spontaneous lack of respect for social norms. However, when Kaede loosens her grip on his palm, he clamps her fingers tighter. Stay, he says wordlessly. Validating her ticket, the girl catches his eyes in the reflection in the window and nods. In any case, the bus to Harukawa-san and Kaede's home is never overly crowded, and now, a few minutes after eight p.m., there are only two people onthe bus beside them, a drowsing off worker from the local wasabi factory, and a red-haired woman nibbling an apple thoughtfully, and both of them are seated near the driver. Quite content, Kaede chooses her favorite place in the back, where she can stretch out her legs, hurting after the whole day of sitting at the desk. The muscles in her shins work until her knees pop. Shuichi drops his bag with a bang and flinches.

"What a sound."

"I can do the same with my spine," Kaede offers with an innocent smile, then leans against the boy and looks at streams of lights visible through the dull glass. The silence falling around them reminds her of a morning fog. Light, undemanding. Natural.

Two stops later, the red-haired woman gets off, nodding briefly to the worker. On the next one, the man himself jumps out briskly. Five minutes after that, Kaede, as she stands on the muddy sidewalk, pulls her beanie over her ears and rearranges her scarf so it covers her mouth. The frost nips at her nose.

"Tea," she decides. "Harukawa-san bought one that's supposed to warm you up. It's in the teabags," she adds with distaste as they're turning to her street. Shuichi snorts with laughter.

"I don't really think I have the right to complain," he informs. "Thank you for your hospitality."

"Thank you for your help with math," answers Kaede playfully, opening the doors to the staircase and briefly checking her mail. For the past few weeks, she's been waiting for a new credit card, a one with her own print on it. Despite Kaito's whining about her getting a one with a screenshot from Mitarai's newest anime, she chose a very fabulous dormouse. To her friends' surprise, Kaede does love rodents. Some nights, she dreams about her small herd of hamsters that she left with her parents when she left for university.

As Kaede expected, Harukawa-san left the apartment, but there's a note pinned to their outdated fridge about her spending the night at Iruma-san's. Kaede shakes her head in amazement. To think they couldn't stand each other during the first week of high school, and now they commissioned Angie to make them friendship bracelets.

"Kaede?"

"Mm? Oh." She glances at the soaking jackets, carefully held by Shuichi above the kitchen tiles so the parquet won't be sodden. "Hang them in the bathroom, above the tub. Do you know where the hangers are?"

"Sort of."

While Shuichi is off on his mission, Kaede turns on the kettle and pokes about shelves in a search for pretty cups. For herself, she gets that one with a ladybug playing piano (a gift from Gokuhara-kun for her twentieth birthday), and for her boyfriend she pulls out that one with an Ace Attorney print, the one left by Kibo a few months ago. Can robots drink tea? Or maybe Kibo likes sipping oil?

This line of thought is so compelling that Kaede doesn't even notice Shuichi coming back. That changes only when she feels the touch of his cold nose on her bare neck and his arms wrapping around her waist. She can't hold back neither a shudder nor a silent moan.

"Sorry," says Shuichi nearly soundlessly, resting his chin on her shoulder. Kaede simply touches his cool hand.

"Tired?" she asks softly. The only reply is a breath. "I see. Let's drink some tea and then we can take a nap."

"I wouldn't like to impose myself on you," she hears. "Besides, you were promised this series…"

"If you insist. We'll see how the situation goes." Kaede turns around to study her partner. Barefooted, without his jacket and with his hair loose on his face, Shuichi looks so young and harmless that it almost hurts.

(She's falling deeper and deeper in love).

Blinking, Kaede comes back to reality and pours the boiling water into cups. A warm, spiced scent of ginger and cinnamon almost instantly fills the tiny kitchen. The duo raises the mugs to their faces, and smile at each other from behind aromatic clouds of steam.

"It's good we're not wearing glasses," says Shuichi thoughtfully. "Once, I investigated an interesting case. The key to its mystery turned out to be a pair of lenses that didn't fog. That's how it was possible to pinpoint that the most essential witness was lying."

"Really?" Kaede grins in surprise. Shuichi inclines his head in utter seriousness.

They sip the hot liquid, and Kaede lets her thoughts roam free. Finally she focuses on this sliver of melody she's found today. One, two, one-two-two, two-three, four-five-five… She got a couple bars, but she lacks a general idea, a plan, a strategy. Well, it can't be helped. The inspiration comes and goes. It's beautiful to be an artist, but being an ordinary human being is beautiful, too. Ha! Such a poetry, and at a relatively early hour, at that.

When empty cups are placed in the antique dishwasher, Kaede sets up a small kotatsu, lays her laptop before it and crawls under a delightfully heavy blanket. From there she watches Shuichi who's biting his tongue as he types in his Netflix password and pick the series. Before the distinctive jingle sounds out, he's already lying with his cheek resting on Kaede's outstretched arm.

Before they get to the half of the episode and most of the characters are named, his breath is slow and steady, and his eyes closed. Kaede strokes his hair in measured moves, still trying to focus on the persnickety yet engrossing plot.

We'll watch the rest tomorrow, she decides in the end, turns off the computer and fleetingly brushes her lips against Shuichi's forehead.

"Goodnight," she murmurs. "Dream beautiful dreams."

She cuddles into his side and, just before crossing the edge of sleep, adds almost mutely,

"I love you."

Briefly, she thinks she saw the long, dark eyelashes flutter, and the corner of the boy's mouth rise, but, right after that, she's asleep too.