(Quick note: I changed all the dates up so they would match the anime, not the novels. For instance, Oreki was originally born in 1984, but the anime adapted it to 1996, so that's a 12 year gap!)

Tokyo, 2017

A phone buzzed against hard wood until the young man felt annoyed enough to pick up. He yawned as he threw a searching hand from underneath the covers, the frigid air of his apartment against his bare skin immediately making him doubt his decision (he wondered why he slept shirtless during cold, harsh February). Before he clicked the green button on the screen, he took some time to check the white numerals above the name of his caller. "… Who dares to die at 5 am?" Sleepy green orbs narrowed at the thought. He decided to take the call before the sound of his phone bugged him longer.

"Detective Ore-" He couldn't have helped yawning if he had tried. He hadn't. "Oreki here. You have exactly 3 minutes." Everyone knew how grumpy he could get when shoved out of dreamland.

"Sir, we know this must be a bad time for you, but do pay attention for I will not repeat my words." He heard the woman on the other end of the line say. "A call has just arrived reporting a possible murder. We'll be sending you the address via text message as soon as we possibly can. Your partner, Liv Kurosawa, has already been notified and-"

"That's all I needed to know, thanks. Send the address and tell my boss I'm on the way." With a touch on the screen, the young detective finished their conversation. Before he was given time to fall back to sleep, the text message came with another anxious buzz.

"Another day, another murder. Isn't the modern world just wonderful?"

Oreki Houtarou had a simple and average life – he didn't fit a busy city like Tokyo at all.

The first time he had arrived in the city, he was eighteen and just barely out of High School. Moving out was something he was personally unfamiliar with, having lived his whole life in Kamiyama, so getting used to his new environment took him quite a few months. Oh, why did his parent's find a better job in the city? The streets were loud, far too loud, even during the night. Looking up at skyscrapers while trying to find the clouded sky above was useless and gave him serious neck ache. Neighbors weren't as amicable as they were back in his home town, and the same can apply for any shopper and customer around the city.

Houtarou was absolutely sure that Tokyo had transformed him into an even more closeted person. He didn't smile to the elderly, he didn't like to converse with his own friends as much. Maybe looking at dead people every day didn't help his situation.

Yes, Houtarou was now a detective. Who would have guessed? Nobody, really, aside from Oreki Tomoe, his infernal older sister, who set him up to it without telling him a word.

For months he had showed great disinterest in the job she had gotten him, thinking that it was too troublesome for someone like him, but attended every work day nonetheless (if not only for the generous payment at the end of every month).

After training for extensive periods of time every day (his muscles were about to deflate, at some point, he felt) and learning how to properly shoot his firearms without hurting himself, Houtarou showed the incredible power of deduction he had been hiding the whole time under a mess of brown curls (his sister probably already knew this would happen). He would often help in simple cases of thievery or drug dealing, mostly because: "Even a child could crack them." he said once, not even aware he had just insulted every agent from those two divisions.

Houtarou's boss, a much older woman who could make snakes fear her, noticed how useful his skills of deduction had proven to be, and assigned him to the murder division as a detective. "We don't have many agents working here, and I think you'd be perfect for the job." Of course, he hated the idea, but still accepted. That woman was really terrifying.

That same year, he moved out his parent's house.

It's worth telling that Houtarou wasn't a complete loner, though he didn't enjoy having company as much as he did when he was in his teens.

Ibara Mayaka, his friend since earlier middle school years, had also moved to Tokyo around the same time he did, in order to pursue her dream career. She wasn't as famous of a Mangaka as she'd probably prefer to be, but she did have a few popular works published.

Satoshi – Houtarou's best friend – had stayed in Kamiyama until 2016, when Ibara asked him to come to the big city live with her. They have only been dating for 2 years, but since they've known each other for so long, it barely feels odd that they are already this serious about their relationship. Those two were absolute sweethearts, and they fit each other like two souls separated at birth. The three would sometimes hang out together.

His other friend (and crush of many years), the intelligent beauty that was Chitanda Eru, had gone to an expensive university outside of Kamiyama where she studied business for a few months. She was getting excellent grades as expected, from what Ibara (the only person who still spoke with her on a daily basis) told the boys, but was apparently forced to stop when her dad fell victim to a disease that would completely deprive him of any movement. Houtarou felt bad for her, really, even so far from the girl. She was single handedly managing a business she didn't like, or even really knew much about, but she was giving it her all. It was her family business; she was supposed to make her parents proud of their heiress!

His love for her had only grown more over the years, really, but what was he supposed to do now? The two hadn't spoken to each other in so long… How was Houtarou supposed to tell her how he felt? How was he even supposed to enter her life again? She had so much on her mind already. She was destined to stay in Kamiyama, and who knew if she was even still single?

Houtarou often remembered her breathtaking eyes, her smooth locks of jet black hair and her delicate and womanly figure, and fell in love with her, all over again. He tried to hide his feelings even from himself, but just thinking about them brought up so many memories…

The sirens of police cars echoed in a familiar way. Houtarou parked his car somewhere nobody could ever find it and stepped out, his nose reddening as the wind hit him.

He looked from side to side; as he approached what he could only assume was the house of the victim, he spotted a blonde female who was already taking some personal notes. That was most definitely Liv, his partner. The originally American woman (who moved to Japan when she was 12) was only three years older than Houtarou, standing at exactly twenty-four, but she actually looked younger. Her hair, long and curly and always in a ponytail, was blonde like the sun light, and her eyes were almost as green as Houtarou's, just a shade or two above. Her nails were always painted with a cheery color of orange and her huge smile was usually glossed with a soft color that gave her the mature look she so desired.

Personally, the young detective couldn't have asked for someone more capable, she was everything he wasn't and so they found a way to harmoniously complement each other's work.

Houtarou greeted his partner with a monotone voice. "Morning."

Liv turned to him and smiled knowingly. "Man, I'd almost say you look as bad as the poor sod over there." The wind was doing some awful things to his hair, and his nose was about to freeze off his face (he had always been more sensitive about the cold after getting stranded on that warehouse with Eru). The bags under his eyes were surely carving some kind of portal to another dimension.

"Great, then I do look as awful as I feel." He added with a sight. Houtarou was already bored to the bone with this case.

"Oh, come now, it's no biggie!" Liv, always grinning, stepped a bit closer. She tried to tame his curls with a trained hand, but they wouldn't do as commanded. "Just give them a good shove and-"

"-And they'll stay exactly the same way." Houtarou stopped her hand with his own, pushing it out of his head. The continued touch (or the cold perhaps?) caused Liv's cheeks to grow hotter, a red hue washing the whiteness of her skin. She jolted her hand to her side when she realized she had started to stare. Houtarou too noticed this and couldn't help his curious eyebrow from rising. "Are you okay?"

"Yes!" Liv shrugged his question off with a laugh. "Let's just talk about dead people! Then you can you go home right?"

Houtarou closed his eyes, breaking his poker face. "I'd absolutely love that."

"Great! Fantastic. So, just, follow me. The dead guy's over there." She motioned as she removed a small notebook filled with notes from her pocket. "I already talked with the person who filed the report. It was the victim's gardener. He was just leaving his shift – that, by the way, is awful, I mean, who cuts grass until 5 in the morning? – when he saw the body of the ground." Liv flipped through her notes. "He said he didn't see anyone or anything that might have killed him."

"This person's most definitely rich. Are there really no security cameras that you could have just… checked before you called me?"

"Hey, I didn't call you. The annoying lady from the station did, she was the one who called me as well." Puffed cheeks and stubbornly crossed arms – nobody would ever think she was the older one. "And, yes, mister I-was-promoted-to-detective-in-only-2-years, there are security cameras around the house, but not around here. The garden. I'm guessing whoever did this probably knew that."

Yet another sigh escaped the male's throat. "Is there any chance this is still just suicide?" He'd do anything to go back to sleep…

"You lazy ass." Liv smirked, amused green eyes narrowing to her side. "This is clearly not suicide; you will have to think about this one. Sorry, pal!"

The two partners finally reached the crime scene which was located in the backyard, where indeed laid a lifeless body. The scene was incredibly bloody, dark red overwhelming the cheerful color of the tiles on the ground. "Ugh. I should have gotten myself another job when I had the chance." The corpse hadn't been moved, so it was still the way the killer had left it: face down and with several stabbings showing off the back.

Houtarou began his analysis, as it was his job and it fit nicely with his motto of 21 years: 'If i don't have to do it i won't. If i have to do it I'll make it quick'. "Male, probably thirty-something, these cuts look profound, so they probably reached his vital organs. I'm guessing this is cause of death."

"Nice, now tell me something I don't know, please?" She only smiled.

The young man's frown, albeit venomless, was sharp and honest. "… This looks like it was made by a normal knife; see if any are missing in his kitchen. Though I honestly doubt it since you said nobody saw anything weird about the camera footage." He kept scanning through the clues, rubber gloves on. "This here looks like it could be a blonde hair, if it's the killer's, at least now we have DNA."

"Thanks." Liv wrote down this new information and called for two more agents, ordering one of them to look for a missing kitchen knife and the other to collect and analyze hair and other particles from the scene. "Anything else?"

"… Yeah." Something seemed off. As Houtarou tried to move the body, a message, written in blood, revealed itself from underneath. "71VV... If I've seen enough crime novels, all I have to do to crack this dying message is turn it upside down." The male detective tilted his head slightly. "There we go, JIM. This is going to be important, so write that down as well."

She nodded and obliged. "On to the things I can tell you: You were right about age, he is (was?) 31. I talked to the woman he was going to marry over there-" She pointed at a blonde pregnant lady whose face was swollen with tears. Next to her, another fair-haired, older woman, patted and massaged her back. "-a woman named Jimoujou Naoko. Their marriage was arranged, but apparently they loved each other quite a lot. I guess arranged marriages are a thing among rich families, huh?" Houtarou could only think of Eru, forcefully marrying somebody who she doesn't love and doesn't love her… Oh, why did he always make himself sad and frustrated?

Houtarou shook his head into reality. "Still don't know his name, Liv."

"Oh! Right. His name's Chitanda Yuzo and he works-"

The name hit his ears like an uncontrolled train on its tracks. Along with even more painful feelings related to Eru, it brought him memories and many, many questions. "What… what did you say his name was?"

"… Chitanda Yuzo. Aw man, did I mess up the order of the names again?! I've learned how it works ages ago but I can never-"

Houtarou cut her words again. "No! That's… not it." The only thing he could do was run his hands through his hair in a soon-to-be worried fashion. Was this person a close relative to Eru? What was he doing all the way here? Did Eru know about his death? Was Chitanda just that much of a common surname? "Liv, talk to the neighbors. I, uh… I have to contact someone."

He ran away from his partner without even waving or explaining his rush.

He needed desperately Chitanda's phone number, and Ibara was the only person who had it.

I'm known for writing multi-chapters I never finish, but I'll try to shy away from that! I have the next chapter basically finished already so you ain't got to worry. Thanks a lot for reading and be sure to leave a review!