Notes: I originally posted this fic under an old account on September 7, 2009.
Faded Colors
-x-
"You're late, Saguru."
-x-
The detective tightens his grip on his pocket watch as he braces himself for the crime scene. Corpses do not faze him – he has examined too many; it is a childhood memory that he wants to shut out.
He nods in acknowledgement to the officer standing guard outside the victim's apartment and enters the living room, where a body is lying in a dried pool of blood on the wooden floor. The victim is the second high profile government official murdered this month, and many people fear this is only the beginning of a chain. Saguru's gaze trails to the unusually large gunshot hole in the victim's forehead, and he narrows his eyes.
He read about the first case in the newspaper at school nine days ago, when the front-page article grabbed his attention and caused him to snatch the paper away from Kuroba Kaito. The culprit had fired six rounds of bullets into the victim's forehead, each bullet entering through the hole made by the previous one. Although Saguru holds little interest in the dead government officials, the modus operandi is identical to the one that killed his mother eleven years ago.
"You must be Hakuba Saguru," a plump officer addresses him. "I'm Inspector Megure. The Superintendent General has told me about you." He gestures to the person hunched over the corpse and introduces, "That's Kudo Shinichi, a high school detective like you."
"Savior of the police force," Saguru mumbles and chuckles softly when the other detective lifts his gaze in response to his title. "This case is yours, as it has always been," Saguru declares. "I only came to confirm something." With a gloved hand, he picks up a picture frame atop the display table next to him and glimpses at the photo of the victim's family before setting it down again. "But I believe I'm still steps ahead," he adds with a faint smile.
Shinichi furrows his brows and turns his eyes to the floor near the corpse. "I have no problem with that," he says with a shrug. "There is only one truth. What's important is that we catch the culprit."
-x-
"The weather's really nice today. Why don't you go outside and play, Saguru?"
-x-
He was five, and she was thirteen.
A gentle breeze brushed against his cheeks when he returned from the playground that day and came face-to-face with his older sister on the doorsteps of their house. "You're late, Saguru," she uttered in a light and cool voice, her expression unreadable.
Hakuba Chie had always been particularly sensitive to time, and her brother was sensitive to this fact. Saguru shrank backwards, clutching his sand toys, and began to apologize profusely until he spotted their mother's lifeless body in the hallway behind Chie. His eyes widened in horror.
His sister walked past him, bringing with her another gentle breeze that mixed their mother's favorite lavender perfume scent with that of gun powder. Saguru tossed his toys to the ground and rushed into the house, tripping over a broken clock covered in splattered blood. For the first time in his life, he remembered time to the seconds precision.
Hakuba Chie disappeared after that.
-x-
"If you're the detective, I'll be the criminal!"
-x-
"Culprit," Saguru repeats, his soft smile fading away as he watches Kudo Shinichi moving about and inspecting the crime scene. He folds his arms and looks toward the window, peering into the distance.
"Inspector Megure!" An officer accompanying an elderly man enters the room and salutes, catching everyone's attention. "We found a witness. Kurosaki-san here is the victim's neighbor, and he thinks he saw the culprit leave this apartment last night."
Nodding eagerly, the elderly man is about to elaborate on his claim when he pauses in surprise and points at Hakuba Saguru in disbelief, turning other people's heads as a result. "You... It's you." He hesitates. "But I was sure it was a woman. It was dark, but she was wearing perfume. Lavender. But you look exactly like her..."
Saguru blinks and then, ignoring other people's stares, lets out a soft, bitter laugh. "She's back," he whispers and throws an irritated glance over his shoulder when he realizes that Shinichi is sniffing at him.
"No perfume today," Shinichi remarks. "But..." His expression darkens. "Where were you last night between 10pm and midnight?"
"Sleeping," Saguru says nonchalantly, well aware that his alibi is as good as none. "I won't disappear. If you discover that the culprit has to be me after some investigation, come arrest me. Until then." Taking no notice of Megure's request for him to stay, he waves and heads for the door, stopping briefly before the neighbor Kurosaki. "Thank you, sir."
-x-
"Why do you want to be a detective? They're never on time."
-x-
A warm breeze greets him when he exits the apartment building, reminding him of the gentle breeze eleven years ago. The weather's really nice today, he thinks sadly as he looks toward the cloudless blue sky. His gaze falls onto the apartment building and lingers for a moment before he turns and heads toward school. Pulling out his pocket watch, he notes that he'll have missed the first two lectures by the time he arrives in the classroom.
As he watches time pass second by second on his palm, he finds himself calculating and reciting, "Eleven years five months eight days thirteen hours..." His murmur breaks off, and he comes to a halt on the sidewalk, slightly dazed. "Forty-eight minutes," he continues while his voice fades away, "and twenty-seven seconds ago." He snaps his pocket watch shut and tucks it away, resuming his walk.
Hakuba Chie never relied on a watch.
His mother's murder and his sister's disappearance have never been been officially solved. The police conjectured that the murderer had kidnapped his sister and possibly killed her as well, but since her body and clues about the culprit never surfaced, the case became cold despite the controversy at that time because his father was a rising Superintendent Supervisor.
Saguru clenches his fists. His mother was shot six times, each bullet entering through the hole made by the previous one. Whenever they played with toy guns, his sister always had a perfect aim. She often teased him about his inaccuracies, but when he asked her about her technique, she gave a strange answer, "It's easy if you focus on the time over there. Can't you see it?"
The detective halts his footsteps and yanks out his pocket watch. When he told Chie that he wanted to become a detective when he grew up, his sister was surprised at first but soon started to devise numeric codes for him to solve. Furrowing his brows, he recalls the date and time of his mother's death as well as the dates of the two recent murders. His eyes widen as he strings together the numbers.
-x-
"Why? Because I can see the flow of time. But... You don't understand, do you, Saguru?"
-x-
The maze-like floor plans of the Hakuba Research Institute have always intrigued Hakuba Saguru, but this time, they frustrate him as he tries to search for the building and room indicated in his sister's code – if it is a code at all. Most people shake their heads when he asks for direction, citing that the building is either being constructed or currently undergoing renovation and that he probably shouldn't go near it.
Waving off the cautions, he makes his way to the basement of that building, which is deserted although tools, buckets, and ladders are scattered everywhere. He stops before a door marked with the room number of interest and studies the lock. One can enter a pin or a swipe a card. His fingers tremble as he inputs the last four unexplained numbers remaining in his sister's code, and his heart begins to race when he hears the door click open.
Pushing the door open and flicking the light switch, he finds himself in a dimly-lit laboratory. Test tubes and pipettes sit neatly on various lab benches. Something flutters in a corner, and he turns, taken aback by the sight of a hawk perched, with one leg chained, on a stool. He stiffens when he feels a gun pressed against the back of his head and raises his hands as a universal gesture of goodwill.
"Chie-senpai?" a female voice laced with incredulity comes from behind him after a beat.
"You know Hakuba Chie?" he asks carefully.
A moment of silence passes between the two of them. "Who are you?" she demands, her voice colder and more alert now.
The detective frowns. "Her brother," he replies. "Hakuba Saguru."
"Hakuba...?" The gun lowers, and she tells him, "Turn around. What are you doing here?"
When he turns, he sees that she is quite a bit shorter than he is and seems to have a hair color similar to his, a sort of strawberry blonde. The lighting is bad, so Saguru can't identify it for certain, but he takes note that she is quite pretty. Her gaze is sharp and wary. "How do you know Hakuba Chie?" he asks in return.
"You really look like her," she remarks quietly. Sighing, she turns sideways to lean against a lab bench and unloads her gun. "How did you find this place?"
Saguru raises a brow. "My sister left a code," he decides to answer.
"Oh?" She shoves the gun into a pocket of her lab coat and meets his gaze. "What are you doing here?"
"Do you know where Hakuba Chie is?"
A small smile creeps onto her face as she looks past him and toward the hawk. She shrugs. "She disappeared about ten days ago." She pushes herself away from the lab bench and opens the door, where she pauses. "Take your sister's hawk with you. It doesn't like me," she says over her shoulder. "Don't come back here again. I doubt she'll return."
"Who are you?" Saguru shouts after her.
"Chie-senpai taught me how to shoot." She waves, and the door shuts.
-x-
"Nobody ever does. Nothing ever is."