"Just what made you suspicious?"

The question whispered inside the four walled hospital room bounced into one of Aoko's ears through the other, each echo quivering from the vibration of Kait's voice that kept her awake until the next morning; another day passing by when Aoko had gained nothing other than debts in her sleep department, and a growing list of arguments she constructed after having spending hours upon hours debating with an imaginary construction of her best friend of ten years.

Considering the slipperiness of Kaito's verbal dexterity and gifted skill to turn any conversation on its head, Aoko wasn't surprised she had lost a quarter of the imaginary arguments she has had, mostly because she had the tendency to debate herself into a corner whenever she had argued for his side. Without knowing his motives, Aoko had no choice but to throw in the towel.

However, throwing the towel was an action Aoko absolutely hated to do.

Whilst she was aware that there was no other alternative, conceding defeat to Kaito was a matter Aoko absolutely hated. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have minded counting her loses, as competitive as she was, she knew when to fold. However, now that her opponent was Kaito, and not some random person that has signed up to an arranged game held at a summer fair, Aoko didn't want to give in nor hold back, especially since he hadn't been pulling his punches either throwing ten years into oblivion – ten irrecoverable years that spanned the time she had gotten to know him as much as she had gotten to know herself, or at least so she had thought.

Her cheeks still hurt where the truth had smacked her.

As much as the factual concept of Kaito being Kid still bothered her, Aoko had no qualms shoving that that problem aside in favour of this bigger problem – a problem larger than that sizzling flame in her chest that urge her to tear Kaito apart with her own bare hands, inciting anger in her far greater than her hatred for Kid with an intensity far more complex than her lexicon could fathom.

Had it been anyone else Aoko would have already taken the scissor and cut them out of her life. She didn't need anyone wandering around the perimeter of her life directing her any ill will. But stamping their existence out of her life would have been easier than cutting out Kaito. That boy had become such intricate part of her life that Aoko wasn't entirely sure how to cut the string knotted around their lives into an incorrigible mess, and yet knowing she should have expected that anyway. It wasn't as though left a clean mess anywhere he went and the bullet she took attested to that, even though she still couldn't entirely believe it happened, the marks were there, right underneath the plaster. . .

(And Aoko still found herself awake at night, thinking how the boy with the earth in his hair and the skies in his eyes, who carried such friendly smiles and caring eyes could have been the reason that her loved ones would have found her six feet underground…)

Had anyone ever told her that the same person she had engraved in her heart as part of her family would turn around and stab a pair of scissors into her chest in hopes to cut her loose, she would have probably laughed at their faces at the sheer stupidity – for Kaito to turn out anything other than Kaito was ludicrous at best. Or so she had believed for so long, even though this ludicrously was slowly becoming her own reality.

That person, who remained by her side, cheering up the spaces of her home that had long been as empty as his own, after his mother had vanished with a suitcase and her passport, and her own father vanished inside his office days at a time.

Even though Aoko didn't know how it started, (frankly she didn't even think it mattered) but since she remembered it had always been her and Kaito, orbiting the surface of their homes, sharing each other spaces and eating meals together, transferring the transcending lost that they both felt into the healing rhythm of familiarity and nostalgia as they kept up the semblance of a family.

If anyone were to ask her what exactly she and Kaito were, Aoko wouldn't exactly know how to answer. They had long since passed the grounds of friendship and touched into the domestic familial lifestyle most platonic relationship wouldn't enter. From that alone she knew Kaito was more than a close friend, and yet something a bit different than family – well, whatever it was, Aoko had reasoned that it was special. Something unique she had to watch over, carefully, lest it disappeared much like her parents did.

But as watchful as Aoko was, she couldn't stop it from disappearing. And as much as she had guarded it, and kept plugging the widening holes that kept pushing them apart as the weeks went by, and these widening holes casted an unreachable long shadow that stretched far away as the sea where Aoko could barely recognise it at the horizon, and at its end floated none other than a smoke of a person, who may or may not have been Kaito.

The same Kaito, who kept an entire existence out of her reach even though she had shared every crook and cranny that captured the debris of her short life. That thought alone welled an anger in her that Aoko didn't know she could possess. It was this anger that drove her to vow ever since she first woke up on an unrelentingly uncomfortable bed that she would smack the truth out of his hands that he tried so hard to keep from her.

When Aoko finally managed to bend down without aggravating any of her injuries any further and pull out the crutches she had hidden underneath her bed, she was relieved to know that this pretend play of feigning sleep could finally come to an end.

(Although, it was still a little strange that neither her nor Kaito had an inkling that she might have been awake, but since it worked in her favour, Aoko wasn't questioning it much).

With rather much more difficulty than Aoko liked to admit, she finally arrived at her destination, seemingly more fatigued from yesterday's rehabilitation exercises than she had thought as she strained herself to walk, prepared to smatter ten years into oblivion as much as Kaito had when she glanced at the detective, who was seemingly more well than she had initially thought as Hakuba sat on his bed with files of reports surrounding him, busy typing away on his laptop until he noticed her.

"Hey," she croaked, her voice rusted from lack of use. "I guess, you're surprised?"

"No," Hakuba said, even though he very much was from the way he was staring at her as though he couldn't quite believe she was there. "But I didn't expect to see you so soon. What made you change your mind?"

"Well, I didn't get the answer I was looking for," Aoko said as she spared another glance at the neatly stacked files that most likely pertained the recent heist. "And if you're serious about catching Kid then you'll need my help, don't you?"

Hakuba stilled and after a moment he nodded as though within seconds he understood everything that led her here. "You have a point there. But are you prepared to face the consequences?"

Aoko nodded, even as she still stood at the edge of the door, hesitating even though she knew she shouldn't. Ever since she first woke up on an unrelentingly uncomfortable bed, she had vowed to unravel that mystery Kuroba Kaito was, and if it meant she had to cast their remaining ashes into nothingness then so be it.

It wasn't as though they were anything else anyway.