Warnings: Shiho has a potty mouth, implied sex I guess, canon typical violence, you know what's coming, I know you do.
Chapter Four - Fractals
She doesn't quite mean to take his first kiss, but Akemi realizes that at some point, there's no such thing as a certain order to things.
She also doesn't mean to take it while his best friend's back is turned but she does and he sputters a little when she's done.
Ran looks at him oddly, her with narrow, concerned eyes. She's such a good person, Akemi thinks. So caring and concerned and open, the world could do with more open hearted women.
"I'm fine," he says as he smooths over where she'd grabbed his jacket in a fit of pique. "Just fine. Just nearly tripped."
"His pant legs are getting long," Akemi tells Ran cheerfully. "I'm not good at sewing, we should practice on his bad clothes together."
Ran nods in return, all smiles and joy at the thought of teasing him (and touching his clothes, likely, she's a teenage girl the same as Shinichi is a teenage boy). "Sounds like fun! I'm sure he's embarrassed himself a lot by now."
"Oh don't worry, I've got details." She winks at her and the girl positively beams.
Shinichi sulks his way out of the room, but she winks at him when Ran's turned around. He flushes again, but says nothing as they go. Nothing at all.
"You are so disgusting," Shiho grumbles as she exits the shower.
"At least I can iron."
"Challenge accepted."
Thankfully, Shiho irons their sheets, not his, whose he'd already folded up neatly before departing and she manages it while not burning them to a crisp.
Akemi fakes applause and gets a pen to the nose for it.
For a few hours they're normal girls in a big house. They abuse the privilege and Shinichi comes home to Akemi giggling so hard on the floor that it hurts and Shiho upside down in his father's chair, skirt riding up and a thick textbook in her grip, also upside down.
"If you look, you're an asshole!" Shiho calls without looking.
Shinichi grunts, cheeks pink. "Then I'll accept being an asshole you anime trash fire."
"I am so offended my hair is turning white."
Shinichi makes to say something but Akemi interrupts him with a smile and a hug. "Welcome home."
The meaning doesn't escape him, because he lights up like a brand new bulb, cheeks alight and joy in his eyes. Oh her heart aches. His parents are alive, how can he be so happy to hear those words if they are alive? "I'm back, thanks."
"How's Ran-chan?"
Shinichi shrugs. "Her dad wants to kill me for taking business, she hates that I get fanmail-"
"Who in their fucking right mind sends you fanmail?"
"Exactly," Shinichi snipes back without missing a beat, gods they're so cute, Akemi wants to shove them together instead just because. "And everyone's looking at me funny so she's been guard doggy lately. I keep telling her not to worry." He waves a hand. "People will notice if I disappear. I dunno if they'd care, but they'll notice."
"We would," Akemi tells him and it's too earnest, she thinks because his eyes narrow. But she doesn't care, she barrels forward anyway. "Who else gives an honest paycheck, a free library, and casual space?"
"Who else keeps not yanking her skirt down?" Her voice has undertones of a catcall and it makes Shinichi snort into Akemi's forehead. Your sister, he mouths at her.
"Shiho I swear to god," Akemi groaned. "We were having a moment, a moment!"
"Have your moment in bed where I don't have to see it!"
"You can join too," Shinichi offers in the driest voice imaginable.
"Fuck off, the last thing i want to see is my sister's bare chest."
Akemi snorts, losing her ire in a matter of seconds. "Anyway, that's Shiho for "I care, you absolute dunce now stop being morbid and do something else'."
"Such as…?" He's honestly baffled and it's ridiculous.
Akemi grins and pulls him out of the room, laughing over the sink and then the tv broadcast.
"Don't you like the fame?"
Shinichi shrugs, a little proud, a little dismissive. "It's opened doors, but that isn't much. I'm still in school for a reason. I'm still seventeen. I feel like an adult when I'm there, dissecting the crime, the smartest person in the room. But I'm still a kid to them, wet behind the ears. They're just tolerating me because it's faster and I happen to be ri-" he stops, musses up the sheets she's folding as the radio plays. "Sorry. You're like, out of college or something. You have better things to hear about."
Akemi laughs fondly. "I have worse too. I like hearing this. Now fix these sheets you goober."
"What the heck is a goober?" He pronounces the word like a taxidermy gone wrong and does what she asks.
"Figure it out and I'll make you salmon patties."
"You'll what?" But she's gone, laughing out loud to hide the pained expression in her face.
At least Akai Shuichi had been a mess of his own making, she thinks. They want this boy to fall. For no other reason that it will amuse them, or that they can make an example.
"You can't keep doing this," Shiho warns over text.
Akemi, spite and fury in her thumbs, texts back before she can properly control herself. "Then you do it."
She gets a "fight me" in response.
It hurts too much. Because she means it.
Akemi gets a call at the end of her report. A wheezing voice, a broken cry, the sound of hissing like a steaming faucet before it shatters all at once.
The video call from her boss ends too easily, too… irritably. And then she gets another call.
"They took my drug," Shiho is hissing with rage over the line, spitting, protective over her work as a mother is over her children, as a good mother should be at any rate. "Those idiots knocked me out and took my drug samples when they're not done I'm going to bash in their fucking skulls with their fucking car and see how they like it-"
"Gin has your drug?"
"Yes!" Akemi hears heels clacking, Shiho must be running. "They took the god damn samples because I said, so far it's working in an isolated environment and they heard "it's working" because they're busy fucking in the shitty coat closet and banging the-"
"Shiho, not the time, really not the time or place. I did not need to know that ever. Where are they supposed to be today?" She's already out of her chair, bounding across their apartment to be presentable. Her heart's in her lungs, her stomach dissolving in her kidneys in pieces.
"Somewhere overpriced and pointless for a money deal, that place all the money deals go, you really think i pay attention to that?"
Akemi grabs her coat. "Yes! Think harder!"
"Ask the genius to think harder, yes okay fine, see how you like it- Tropical Land or something? You know, where the creepy-cute mascot is?"
Akemi stops and shudders, drops her keys.
"Shiho," she says softly, remembering last night, remembering his mumbling through half a sandwich about going with Ran to celebrate something she hadn't thought about and going grocery shopping after. "Shinichi is supposed to be there."
Shiho goes silent for thirteen seconds. Then, very softly, "I am dashing those fuckers' brains against a god damn wall."
"Not if I don't do it first." Because she can and she will, gods she will do anything now for them. "Get to the nearest stop. I'm heading over."
"Break a few laws on the way." And the line goes silent.
Akemi is more than happy to, more than.
She floors it.
They find him, Shinichi had snuck passes into Shiho's wallet somehow weeks back when they'd been in the middle of a pillow fort contest or something inane and now they're running through the dark. Shiho had given up her heels for wearing and was deciding to use them as bludgeons if the opportunity arose, Akemi had never seen her this angry, this raw and hurt.
She hoped she'd never have to again.
Akemi sweeps the flashlight around and sees, something small, a pile of something and she makes a distinct sound of dismay because she knows what she's going to find-
And she's wrong.
There's a small body, a fragile looking body with blood trailing down one side of the face, trapped in clothes that are too big. And yet he's breathing, ragged harsh pants and small terror sounds.
Akemi looks at Shiho as she gets closer.
Shiho stares a moment, then she swears so fluidly a sailor at port is blushing.
"This is why I said it was experimental," she whispers. "And they didn't even bother to check. I am getting them fucking fired for this shit, I swear."
"Let's enjoy this stroke of stupidity while we have it," Akemi says, because her heart is still throbbing in her ears mixed with the guilt that only your own mistakes having consequences you have to deal with can provide. "Anyone asks, our little brother knocked his head on the bench and we're taking him home."
"Sounds like something he'd do anyway."
And they escape into the darkness as they always have.
But as they flee, Akemi can't help but think those days are steadily coming to an end.
Her real eye throbs.