Notes:

hey guess what this story isn't dead

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...Apparently Yamamura-keibu saw nothing wrong with him saying he was talking to a ghost, and that really said something about the police force. But then again, they were familiar with Edogawa "Shinigami" Conan, so he guessed it wouldn't be too out of the question for some kind of...psychic...detective?...to turn up…

But, also, like.

Seriously?

He'd barely even questioned it.

He was a police officer.

Kaito suddenly had so much more respect for Nakamori-keibu. The only one who seemed even remotely suspicious of the random guy claiming to be psychic was the six-year-old kid (who was apparently sixteen, actually, and wasn't that a trip and a half), which was a little depressing for obvious reasons.

But, like.

He guessed he was going with it, so whatever.

He'd deal with the implications after he'd taken a nap, which...probably wasn't going to be for a while yet, since he was at an active crime scene. And the whole thirty seconds he'd been unconscious almost certainly didn't count. Being unconscious wasn't the same thing as sleeping, or so he'd been told.

"I...can't say that I was expecting him to buy that."

"Yeah, neither was I," Kaito muttered under his breath, because if Yamamura-keibu didn't think he was crazy at this point than he saw no reason to change that. Edogawa Conan, of course, actually did notice him talking to himself, because he was apparently a scary sixteen-year-old trapped in a six-year-old's body (because why not, whatever), and narrowed his eyes.

Clearly, this had been Kaito's intention. Obviously.

(He... might still be slightly off balance from the whole my-dad-is-a-ghost-and-I-can-interact-with-him... thing.

Because, yeah, Poker Face had not prepared him for that.)

He winked and Conan anyway, just for kicks, and his father laughed at him because he was such a help in this situation.

Conan scoffed and rolled his eyes derisively, but let it go. Probably because he assumed it was part of the whole psychic 'act.'

He was right, except for the part where it wasn't actually an act and that was pretty disconcerting, okay , because witches were one thing, but ghosts? Kaito suppressed a shudder.

If he weren't so sleep deprived, he probably would've talked to Akako by now. She almost certainly would know what's up.

Actually, no. He still had some self-preservation left.

(As infinitesimally small an amount as that may be.)

He was still kind of pretending that he couldn't see the ghost of the woman lying dead on the floor in pieces because he kind of didn't really want to know what she would say if she knew he could see her. And, like. If he didn't process her existence, she didn't exist.

That was how that worked.

Obviously.

Except…

She was very hard to ignore.

The ghost was kind of...spinning around in circles above her body, like she was in The Sound of Music , except instead of mountains and grass there were body parts and blood and oh wow Kaito just threw up in his mouth a little. That was an image he was going to be seeing in his nightmares, wow.

Then he realized that the ghost was talking, and he decided he should probably start listening, if only so this whole crime scene/material witness thing could be over quicker and he could go back to, you know, researching how to stop seeing ghosts. Or, like, sleeping.

Except maybe his dad. He could stay.

" - this was a terrible idea, wow, why the hell did I decide it was a good idea to take a drink from her. What the hell did she spike it with, LSD? Because this is a real trip, wow, it looks like there are two of me, and one's like, dismembered? Freaky."

...She wasn't very helpful.

"Hey, why aren't any of y'all listening to me? Man, if I were in an anime I'd be a background character that doesn't even get a fully detailed face, that's how insignificant y'all are making me feel. For shame."

She poked her foot through the body's torso and giggled as it passed right through. "Yo, dude, are you seeing this? I have the power of God and anime on my side - I can do anything!"

Okay, so. Clearly she hadn't realized she was dead yet.

Solid. That was. Great information, right there.

"Yamamura-keibu, we have the suspects," a uniformed officer called from outside the break room.

Kaito only remembered there being, like, two customers in the cafe other than him? So it wasn't like the suspect list was super long. He obviously wasn't a suspect, since literally the only competent detective in the room (who only looked like he was five, which...did not help the situation because, well, he looked five) was his alibi, so that left the maybe-two customers, the owner-slash-cook, and the two waitresses.

One of those customers was apparently her boyfriend, which was looking like a pretty good motive for murder - except Kaito couldn't really remember them arguing? But, like, then again, he'd also been very extremely focused on, you know, not freaking out about the fact that he could see dead people.

Or murder victims, at least.

And wasn't that trauma-inducing.

(He sure was lucky that he was completely ace at compartmentalizing, otherwise he'd probably be in a mental institution by now. Or, you know, dead.)

(...Probably dead.)

(That was depressing.)

(But, like. That's what he got for purposefully making a target of himself, dressing in white at night and stealing jewels and getting shot at and wow that really was his life now, wasn't it.)

(He should...probably get some therapy. Like, a lot of it. All the therapy.)

(...Who would be a good therapist for phantom thieves, though?)

Conan and Yamamura-keibu stepped out into the hallway to question the suspects, and Kaito followed them mostly because he didn't really want to be left alone with a cadaver and its ghost reenacting...it looked like she'd moved on from The Sound of Music to High School Musical ? Talk about a genre jump.

The owner-slash-chef of the cafe was named Hagane Yuki. She was a stout woman, about fifty-four (Kaito was very good at guesstimating ages), with graying black hair scraped back severely into a bun and held in place by what looked like almost as much hair gel as Conan - or, Shinichi, he guessed - used. Or, at least, the amount of hair gel Kaito had to use to tame his hair when he was disguising himself as Shinichi. Hagane-san was wringing her hands in her apron, looking increasingly worried - partially about her cafe, since Kaito assumed that not a lot of people wanted to eat at a place where someone had been murdered, but mostly about the victim. "W-who is it?" she asked, voice trembling even as she held herself like her spine was made of steel.

The waitress who'd found the body was called Yoshikawa Emiko, twenty-six. She was a slight woman with light brown hair drawn back in a ponytail. She wore flowing clothing under her half-apron - as much as she could, given the cafe's guidelines for health and safety, which Kaito had apparently read at some point? He didn't remember reading them, which was a little disconcerting, but, like, not as much as the whole ghost thing, and he had priorities, okay - and was currently shaking like a leaf. Kaito didn't blame her. Crime scenes were scary as a rule, but this one was - well, it would fit in well as the star attraction of a haunted house. "I-it was - it was Sawada-san, I - um, I think," she said, and Kaito was pretty sure she was going into shock. He muttered something along those lines to one of the officers nearby, who took one look at the suspect and agreed. She went off to find a shock blanket or something helpful.

"Hana-chan?!" exclaimed the only male suspect. He'd been a customer, sitting at the same table as the victim. "I thought she was just taking a long time in the bathroom. It had only been - what, maybe ten minutes…?"

His name was Takayama Sensui, about nineteen, and he looked like your generic student council president type - bowl cut, glasses, the whole shebang. He was also still dressed in his school uniform, even though it was probably about 20:00 by now. Yet, somehow, he'd apparently been under the impression he was on a date with Sawada Hana, the victim. Or, maybe the appearance of a date…?

"Women don't take ten minutes in the bathroom," said Ayuzawa Shouko, the waitress who'd made Kaito a fresh pot of coffee earlier. She was dressed in a drably-colored dress, not particularly distinctive, and had one of those ageless faces that seemed like she might be thirty or maybe sixty, or anywhere in between. Kaito honestly couldn't tell.

His father, though, having had more life experience than Kaito at his tender seventeen years of age, could - apparently she was thirty-sevenish. He'd been unusually quiet up until this point, which, like, Kaito was kind of glad about? It was very nerve-wracking to go from not being able to have a conversation with your father (because he was, you know, dead ) to being able to hold intelligent conversations not only with your father but also with other murder victims (also because they were dead).

Kaito still wasn't entirely sure this wasn't just a vivid hallucination.

Anyway.

...What about the second customer? He remembered there being a second customer.

Oh, right.

She was dead.

Damn, he'd circled right back to the whole I see dead people ...thing.

"Hey, hey, Yamamura-keibu! Don't her nails look weird?"

….Aaaaaaand Conan was over by the body again. Of course. Why was he not surprised.

Yamamura-keibu hrmm ed and crouched down to pick up one of the hands with his handkerchief and wow , Kaito was not cut out to be a detective.

Some of her fingernails were covered in long, floral-patterned acrylic nails. They were almost claw-like, which made the whole image that much more unnecessarily macabre. Her first two fingers - the index and the middle - were bare, though, and Yamamura-keibu's brow was furrowed as he tried to figure out what was going on. "Hm, maybe there was a struggle?"

Conan looked like he was about to agree, which, no?

"They're lesbians, Harold," Kaito's mouth said before his brain could say , no, bad!

Bad brain.

"I thought she was American," Conan muttered under his breath automatically, then looked appalled at himself.

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Notes:

so i just...randomly got a burst of inspiration for this story? neat the most recent chapter of tmq was super late because of my bnha server mini-bang fic which was about ten times longer than i expected it to be so that's...fun (no actually i'm really proud of it y'all should read it)

and this story has *never* had a consistent update schedule so. sorry, i have literally no clue.