Mikau: Hey guys! Happy Thanksgiving to all of those celebrating! I've got another one of the daily prompt things for you. The words this time are: formula, star, snore, fairytale, and jealousy! Also, I've got a new collection of shorts. This one is called HakuShin: Reality. Kaito's managed to worm his way into all of the ones I've written so far too, so some of them are actually HakuKaiShin while in others Kaito just makes a nuisance of himself. Anyway, give it a try. I've never really written that pairing before, but hopefully the shorts are enjoyable anyway. As for this one…this one's interesting. I think I was half-awake when I wrote it too, so… Before I forget, thanks a bunch to all my reviewers from last short: Miss Emotion, Guest, and Bunnyz-chan!
Disclaimer: If I owned it, I'd really like to have a Hakuba-centric arc maybe involving his family and backstory and stuff. Only, I like my headcanon backstory for Hakuba more than I think I'd like anything that Aoyama-sensei could come up with, so maybe things are better the way that they are.
…
Phantom on a Winter's Night
Insomnia. It plagued him on Friday nights whenever there had been gunshots at a heist. In fact, his battle with sleep dragged out through the entire weekend until Monday morning when he saw Kuroba bounce into the classroom, thus assuring Saguru of the thief's safety.
But tonight was such a Friday night, and so pleasant dreams would allude him until Monday. In the meantime, he'd be seeing dead, bloody magicians whenever he did happen to drift off.
So while Saguru waited for the sun to rise, he busied himself with recalling as many decimal places of pi as possible. He then listed the chemical formulas of common compounds and followed that up by reciting as many nursery rhymes as he could in as many languages as possible.
He moved out onto the balcony to look at and name the constellations, and, eventually, he ended up singing a demented-sounding version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, half in Japanese, half in English.
"Kira kira kira kira," he repeated drowsily until it turned into "Killer killer killer killer."
He blinked, snapping awake at the sound of someone snoring. He glanced around but found that he was alone on the balcony.
Saguru sighed and then shivered as a particularly cold breeze lashed out at him. He looked up at the clear winter sky and muttered, "Starlight, star bright…first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight." He closed his eyes and whispered, "Let him live."
A familiar chuckle broke the silence of the night. "You know, if you tell someone what you wished for, Tantei-san, they say it won't come true…and that sounds like a pretty important wish to me."
Saguru's eyes flew open to find the Kaitou Kid sitting on his balcony railing, wiggling his fingers in greeting and smirking like a deranged jester. Saguru just stared blankly in surprise for a minute, half believing himself to be dreaming. His lips opened and closed, but no intelligent sounds came out.
Was Kid really sitting there just a few meters off? On his balcony railing of all places!? On Hakuba Saguru's balcony railing? Sitting there, perched comfortably like one of his doves…or Peter Pan from the stories. No. More like one of the fey. An incubus or some other fairytale creature.
Kid sat there patiently, chuckling and smiling, looking all ethereal in the pale moonlight as Saguru tried to determine if he were truly there.
Finally Saguru spoke, "Why have you come?" Because the question of if the phantom was really there or not was immaterial. Saguru was either seeing the genuine article or else some hallucination, and what mattered most at the moment was why he was beholding the thief.
Kid shrugged, hopping down and holding out a gemstone that had been cut into the shape of a rose—the target of that night's heist. Kid took several careful steps towards the detective. "Why? I just came to see my favorite detective, of course. It's come to my attention that you don't sleep very well on nights where shots are fired."
Just as Saguru reached out and took the jewel, that blasted pink smoke emanated from the thief's cuff. Saguru crumpled to his knees as the sleeping gas took effect.
Kid chuckled softly as he helped ease the detective's descent, "I'm perfectly fine, Tantei-san. You can rest easy."
Saguru awoke the next morning wondering if it had all been a dream…but then there was the fact that he'd woken up tucked snuggly into his bed with the rose-shaped Promise of Eden in a vase by his bedside.
He smiled even as his cheeks turned crimson. Just think of all the fans that would kill him out of jealousy should they ever find out that their idol had given Saguru a precious gemstone and then lovingly put him into bed. Saguru chuckled to himself as he slipped away into dreamland.