Chapter 4: Real Magic

...

...

What is reality?
I am a plaster doll; I pose
with eyes that cut open without landfall or nightfall
upon some shellacked and grinning person,
eyes that open, blue, steel, and close.
- Anne Sexton

"How can you prove it?" Hakuba asked with more than a little doubt. "You don't have any memories."

"Didn't. Passed tense. Walking into this house has brought some of them back."

"Kaito-kun's?"

Kuroba shook his head. "My own." He looked over at Kaito's mother. "When we were first dating your father had the fits over me. He said a magician was no one, that you couldn't make a living off of the pay of some common street performer. I don't remember, or think I would, share the information with anyone."

Kaito's mother was still as she watched her son.

"And if that information had somehow gotten out, the only other thing I can think of that this boy wouldn't have heard would be that," Kuroba used his fingers to tick off his list. "I have a strange distaste for carrots, I hate it when I accidentally put too much cream in my coffee – which I remember doing constantly –, I enjoy any form of entertainment including children's performances, and I have a strong affinity for western jazz."

Kuroba raised his eyebrows when the room stayed quiet after he was finished speaking. "I could name you my favor musicians if you wish."

"Kaito couldn't have known that," Kaito's mother whisper to both of them. "We've never talked about trivial things like that after Toichi's death."

"I still can't say that I'm myself yet." Kuroba clutched his clothing where his heart would be and met Kaito's mother's eyes. "But inside, I feel I'm right."

"Toichi-san, since that is you, how is that possible?"

Kuroba shook his head. "I'm not sure. I don't remember having a son and I don't remember much after marrying Chikage so it would seem that, while I'm not Kaito-kun, I'm still not completely myself without my memories."

"I don't understand this" Kaito's mother spoke up first. Everyone looked at each other in mutual agreement.

"So what do we do? How would we be able to get Kaito-kun back in his body?" I sounded like a madman, Hakuba thought to himself. When did I start believing in ghost?

Kuroba shook his head. "I can't control this." He waved a hand down at a body he knew wasn't his own. "I'm not even sure how it happened."

"I – I'm sorry Toichi but I want my son back." Kaito's mother spoke out fiercely in defiance to her husband's easy manner.

"I know," the magician's eyes flashed with a perceptive light. "I figured as much when you made no move to come close to me. You're afraid of losing me again." He closed his eyes, "Or losing Kaito-kun."

"Kaito's stronger than you think," she said as she stood up and came closer to Toichi, challenging what Kuroba had said about her distance. "If there's a way, he'll find it. I don't see why I shouldn't enjoy the time I have with you now until he does."

Kaito's mother walked right up to Toichi and a bemused smile crossed his face. "You know how tempted I am to kiss you at this moment?" He asked with humor. "I don't think you'd like the aftereffects of it when Kaito-kun's back or I would have done so already."

"How thoughtful of you. If you really are my husband though, why don't you remember our son? You were with him for eight years."

Kuroba narrowed his eyes and looked passed her. "I'm not sure. There are only four people coming to mind that I remember with clarity. That would be you, Ginzo, Kudo Yusaku, and I remember all my actions as Kid."

"Don't you remember Yukiko?" Kaito's mother frowned. "I didn't even know you knew her husband?"

"Yusaku-kun was married?" Kuroba looked authentically shocked.

"I think they were engaged at the time. Yukiko-kun used to come here all the time to learn your magic."

"I taught some else how to do my magic tricks?" Kuroba shook his head. "Why would I do that?"

"You didn't teach her much. If anything I think she came here for lessons in disguise for some movie role than for magic tricks."

"I don't remember her." Kuroba sat down at the table and Chikage followed him back. The magician eyed the both of them before steepling his fingers and getting settled. "I'd like to know everything that's been going on in this family since my death."

…

While Kaito's mother was able to fill him in on all the earlier stuff, Hakuba had an easier job of explaining Kid's actions since his return. Kuroba remained silent through the whole affair and only showed any signs of discomfort when Hakuba replayed the last night he'd seen Kaito as himself.

"There's one thing that must be done before this is sorted out. Ginzo is a determined man and if he suspects that Kaito-kun has gone missing he will act on it. I must go to school tomorrow then and play the role of him. After that I'll continue what I started and search for those men. I'm not going to give them a chance to get at my family ever again."

"Before you do anything, you have to fix your voice" Hakuba suggested. "You don't sound anything like Kaito-kun."

"Yes, he's right. Make your voice higher and stop using such formal words."

"This is going to be difficult but very well." Kuroba swallowed before think of how much higher his pitch should be. "Acting like a teenager again shouldn't be hard."

"You're still stressing your words too much. Kaito's voice is always easy and flowing."

"Right, but I really don't know what it is I'm supposed to be saying while I try this out."

"Good now quit acting your age," Hakuba put in.

"No one's ever told me that before," Kuroba laughed.

Hakuba watched as Toichi and Chikage continued to talk to one another to make sure that the magician annunciated the right words correctly. His eyes stared to close again and the detective wondered what time it was. It was Sunday so he could sleep in but he wasn't going to bed here. It would be too invasive.

"Hakuba-kun."

The voice and a poke to his shoulder woke the detective up. He rubbed an eye with the back of his hand and tried to pretend he hadn't fallen asleep.

"Go get some rest; I'm going to bed too."

"I can't -"

"Go," Kuroba picked him up off the floor but the back of his shirt and pushed him towards the stairs. "You can sleep in Kaito-kun's room. I don't feel comfortable there. I'm going to be in the main room if you go looking for me."

"You still talk too formal," Hakuba mumbled through half-lidded eyes as he made his way up the foreign staircase.

"I'll work on it."

Though his detective instincts were telling him to look around the room while he had the chance, he was too tired to act on them. Kaito's bed lay in front of him and Hakuba half-way collapsed on top of it before instantly falling asleep.

…

The noise from down the stairs could not be ignored forever and Hakuba decided it was time to get up when he wasn't able to fall back to sleep after the first few minutes.

It took him a moment to become familiar with his surroundings. Kaito's room was a unique shade of blue with a short trimmed white carpet and a wooden closet imbedded into the wall in front of him. There was a large balcony that led outside near a lamp on the other side of the room and a stereo set on the ground.

What interested the detective the most was a large portrait of Kaito's father that hung on the wall adjacent to the balcony.

Hakuba looked it over with the scrutiny of an art lover. It was well made and not done in the usual oil based paints but something thicker. The detective had never seen the magician's father and the picture filled in some similarities. They both had the same shade of hair, where his mother's was lighter, and the same eye color. Everything else about them was different. Toichi's eyes were narrower and his face squarer where Kaito's wasn't as defined and his eyes were wide. The senior magician's hair style was similar on top but balanced between unruly and purposely styled where the younger magician's was more chaotic.

"I can't believe I'm actually starting to miss Kuroba-kun." Hakuba smiled to himself as he walked out of the room and deliberately made some noise so that the others would know he was awake and not snooping around their house.

The image that came to him when he reached the kitchen was decisively strange. Hakuba was hit with the thick smell of coffee as Kuroba sat at the table with a cup in his hand and a newspaper in the other. The newspaper wasn't anything new but the coffee was. Hakuba shuddered at the though of Kaito on caffeine.

"I want to try and get that diamond back," Kuroba announced and looked up to meet the detective's eyes. "I'd appreciate your cooperation on that matter. If it's important for – what I need," he paused "I can not give it back to you. If not, it shall be duly returned."

"You're still hurt though, aren't you?" Hakuba asked as he accepted a cup of coffee from Kaito's mother.

"Yes," Kuroba lowered his eyes and pushed a hand into his shoulder with force to judge how badly he was still injured. "I can get by fine and I'm interested in this gem enough that I could really care less about my wellbeing."

"Kaito-kun's wellbeing you mean." Hakuba tensed up his hands but relaxed when Kuroba looked discomforted at his response.

"You're right. I still think that I must go after it. I'm not sure how to get it out of the water but," he closed his eyes. "I have a suspicious feeling that it's important that I do."

"Are you going to tell the police?"

Kuroba nodded. "If– those people have a chance of showing up, I would like to take the opportunity to stop them. I was going to talk to Ginzo about arranging some way of taking them down with me."

"You can't do that? What do you think will happen to Kaito-kun when you do? You'll have to tell him – not everything but a lot."

"I'm aware of that and I don't think Kaito-kun would have any problems with it."

"How would you know? You don't even remember him." Hakuba could feel how angry he was getting. Only the magician could ever pull any hostility out of him when he was trying to hide it. "You can sit there and plan things out because they won't affect you in the long run, be a third-party representative who doesn't have to face the consequences, but you don't know what Kaito-kun would want. As kind as Nakamori-keibu is, I doubt that would stop him from putting Kaito-kun in jail if he found out."

"If that is to be the result of arresting these men, then so be it." Kuroba's eyes were hard and the detective met his stare with an equally resolute one. Neither of them spoke.

"Enough of this." Kaito's mother slammed her hands on the table, making both of them jump. Kuroba hide his surprise the fastest, behind crossed arms and a turned head. She looked at her husband.

"You didn't tell me you were planning any of this."

"Because I knew you would be against it. You always were too kind and worried too much so I believed that it would be fine if I had this young detective on my side at the very least. It seems I've read him wrong."

"No you haven't." Kaito's mother moved to stand next to Hakuba and away from her husband. "If you've thought this up just now, then Kaito would have thought of it too. He didn't act on it so I don't want you to either."

"It's foolish to let these murderers go free." Kuroba sighed, "But I never could fight you honey. I'm sorry if I upset you. I won't go through that part of my plan."

"Good." Kaito's mother moved behind Hakuba and put both hands on his shoulders. "Because he can do it."

"What?" The two boys said in unison.

"Hakuba-kun's been working with Ginzo-san for a while now. He can convince him that the men coming after the Kid are more dangerous then chasing after you and should be arrested. When he does, it will be easy to help them from the shadows."

"A plausible idea but one with too many holes in it. The police could choose to go after me anyways and these men are dangerous. Take your eye off them for a second and you're dead." Kuroba smiled with the irony of it. "I should know."

"It'll work." Hakuba thought back on everything Nakamori had said to him last night. He seemed interested in these hit men to an extent and, if warned about them, should be able to put up some kind of ambush.

"First things first and you're going to school tomorrow. Plan the heist for the end of the week so that people don't think that Kaito's dead." Kaito's mother spoke and she walked out of the room.

"Yes, that would be smart." Kuroba eyed Hakuba with a playful smile he hadn't seen from the old man before and a raised eyebrow. "You wouldn't happen to know if there was any homework, would you?"

…

School the next day wasn't terrible. It could have been worse, but Toichi wasn't the best at acting like a teenager.

The teacher called on him a few times and he went to the board and answered her questions with grace. Hakuba and Kaito's mother had both described some of his pranks but the older man had told them he thought it was unnecessary to go that far.

Unfortunately it made the class so on edge, expecting something now that the magician had returned, that it was hard for them to focus on their lessons anyway.

Hakuba had thought Aoko would draw out the magician first, but Akako grabbed him just as lunch started and pulled him out of the room. Hakuba quickly put his things away and followed them.

"Who are you?" Their classmate asked with anger.

"Kuroba-kun," Toichi answered truthfully as Hakuba made his way beside him.

"You sure aren't Kuroba-kun. I can tell a spirit when I see one."

"Really?" Toichi asked with interest. "Do you have any idea how to get me out of this body then?"

"Not without destroying you. Dark powers aren't easy to control," the witch let a smile cross her face. "So who are you skin walker?"

"Kuroba-kun and that's all you need to know if you're unable to be of any help." The magician walked down the hall with a smile on his face and Hakuba followed.

"I don't believe in Koizumi-kun's magic, but if she knows something we don't then shouldn't we listen to her?" Hakuba asked. If she was able to tell that Kaito wasn't in his body then she had some powers, even if he didn't understand them.

"Just wait for it," Kuroba smirked. The magician put his hands in the pockets of his school uniform as he walked down the hall. When they turned the corner the magician went up the stairs, towards the roof.

"How do you know where you're going?" Hakuba asked him as they went up the two floors necessary to get there. Kuroba laughed at him.

"Stairs are usually position in the middle and edges of a building, more so in schools that are short in width and long in length. I figured to get to the roof I'd have to go up." He laughed lightly again when he finished his explanation, making his actions seem so obvious that a monkey could a figured it out. Hakuba noticed the criticism.

"I've had a lot of things that couldn't be explained happen around me recently. Forgive me for overlooking the normal when it comes to you."

"Me or Kaito-kun?" he asked with a smile.

"Both," Hakuba shot back.

Kuroba opened the door and Hakuba had to turn his head to the side as it blinded him. The magician didn't seem to have any problems with the light and walked out into the sunshine. Hakuba sighed, looking down at his long-sleeve shirt before following.

As he suspected it was smoldering out. The sun was left unhidden by any clouds and the news that day had said it would be in the high nineties. The black clothing of Hakuba's uniform seemed to make him ten degrees hotter than that and he showed little self-restraint when he removed his coat.

Kuroba seemed to bask in the warmth instead of being suffocated by it and leaned against the cement boundary that protected anyone from leaning alongside the fence a foot after it and falling through if it rusted. The magician put his head down and closed his eyes with a smile.

"What are we doing out here?" Hakuba almost didn't want to ask.

"We're waiting for the stubborn girl to decide that she likes seeing Kaito-kun more then some spirit. She's an obstinate one but she'll come."

Hakuba doubted it. Koizumi looked like someone who would sooner eat you than help you but Hakuba had only seen that behavior demonstrated around Kaito so he couldn't speak for her when it came to the others in the class. They didn't catch the girl's attention as much as Kaito could and Hakuba would have wondered if Aoko was going to have some competition if the magician hadn't been so advert to the idea of spending any alone time with her.

Less than five minutes later Koizumi was indeed on the rooftop with them and Hakuba looked at her with mild surprise.

"I win," Kuroba whispered to him so the girl couldn't hear before she walked over to them.

"This isn't a game Toichi-san."

"I know," the man said before getting up and sitting on top of the concrete border instead of against it. He smiled at the girl and Koizumi looked like she was ready to turn back around and leave. Instead she crossed her arms and looked Kuroba over for a minute.

"So how did it happen?" She turned her head to the side and glared at them. "It's not a simple matter to put a foreign soul into a person's body and I can't counteract it if I don't know what's caused it."

Hakuba and Toichi starred at one another before the magician shrugged and Hakuba shook his head. "We don't know," the detective explained to her.

Koizumi narrowed her eyes and watched the detective with unbridled worry and hate, glancing a few times at the magician. "This kind of thing does not happen by accident. There has to be magic involved for it to even be possible and I know Kuroba-kun's magic isn't real."

"Magic you say," Kuroba's eyes narrowed and he looked down, once again sliding the smile out of place in a way that seemed natural. "I don't know if it's magical or not but if that is the case -" The magician crossed his hands in his lap and tapped his foot on the boarder as he though to himself.

"So you have some idea of what it is that caused this," Hakuba inclined. "Would you please tell the rest of us so that we can understand as well?"

"I told you it would take a miracle to get it. That's what we need now and I hardly have the equipment for such an expenditure." He closed his eyes and kept his posture so unlike Kaito's that Hakuba caught something close to a miserable look from Koizumi before she hid it behind a frown.

"If it's strong magic, I can't interfere with it. The spell would have to be broken."

"I was planning on something of that nature in any case so it doesn't matter, but I can't understand how it made something like this occur. That wasn't what it was supposed to do."

"I don't know who you are but you shouldn't be playing around with magic you can't control!" Koizumi shouted at him and the magician was startled, physically losing his balance and falling into the fence.

"Do you mind?!" He shouted as he got back up onto the barrier. "I was trying to think. And if it's any of your business I was not playing around with magic that I couldn't comprehend. Magic should never deceive the one performing it and I don't fancy the black arts as anything more than philanthropy brought to an unrealistic level and turned against itself."

"So you think I'm a charlatan?" Koizumi asked when her pride was insulted.

"I do not think that." Toichi glared at her with his own style of serious and playful that was downright scary when used the right way, "I think that most people out there are but that there are phenomenon in nature, and thus in people, which cannot be comprehended and yet exists in any case. I do not believe purely in only what I can see or I would be a very narrow minded person."

"Ouch," Hakuba said sarcastically. "I think I was just insulted."

Kuroba smiled, "Yes that would have been an insult to you. I've seen how you still hardly believe in my own existence even as I speak to you. If it weren't for my ravishingly good vocabulary and manner compared to Kaito-kun's, you'd still be thinking in some logical way that I was a part of his psyche."

"You can't blame me for that," Hakuba said as he crossed his arms. "I'm a logical being."

"In any case I can't help you." Koizumi walked away, turning back when she reached the door. "Whatever transpires from here on out can't be stopped with my magic. I hope you can get Kuroba-kun back."

"I do too," Hakuba whispered. Kuroba looked down at his hands and started thinking again. "I don't know why, but we need to get that diamond back, don't we?"

Kuroba looked up and jumped off the four foot wall. "Yes we do, now let's go perform that miracle."