Saihara knew his faults. He knew that he could be short-sighted, over-analytical, and obsessive at times. He'd lose himself for days writing in his notebooks, or reading about cases solved and unsolved alike. He'd drop everything in lieu for a project coming up, ignoring his basic health and hygiene at times. Worse was when he sometimes appeared stubborn or snappy at anyone who tried to drag him out of such destructive habits, only to realize they were right and apologize to them after the fact.

These days, it was his uncle and his friends—Maki Harukawa and Kaito Momota— who dragged him out of his house to make sure he got something to eat, or the like. Another friend, Kaede Akamatsu, also helped in this regard, although she was gentler than the other two and far more pleasant to be around.

Saihara knew he was difficult at times, though. So he thanked each of his friends and family members for being the way they were, and supporting him at times when he seemed cornered by his own deductions. He also apologized for every time he ran off ahead without thinking, because as Kaede put it, he's got that "detective's instinct" to go off running on his own and such.

That instinct came alive one day, when he watched the police try to take in the criminal that he caught earlier. After all, the deductions and mysteries were completely his job—actual apprehension of criminals and accomplices, however, were the police's duty. Yet, the cops were struggling to subdue the criminal in full, which was evidenced by the stray gunshots.

Shuuichi saw the culprit dashing down the streets as they blurred by the agency's front windows. It was then that he decided to join the chase, since his chasing skills were second only to his deductive reasoning. Of course, his curiosity reigned over all, and he dropped everything—literally—to run after the culprit.

In the end, things worked out, and Shuuichi found himself alone in the streets yet again. He sighed as he thought about the agency. Things were slow going these days, so maybe he could take the rest of the day off and look at cold cases. Or better yet, he could take his uncle out for an early dinner, and they could discuss cold cases together. Or even better yet—

"Shuuichi Saihara!"

Damn it. Why did people always have to interrupt his best thoughts? Even if he was just daydreaming for a bit, that didn't mean people had to look at his blank face and force him to interact with them!

Shuuichi turned to see the face of a complete stranger. Before the facial features, however, he noticed their height. They were quite shorter than Shuuichi—a good fifteen centimeters or so—and donned in a bright white outfit. It wasn't completely white, however, as mismatched buttons and a checkerboard scarf stood out against the monotony. The chains, zippers, and styling of the entire ensemble vaguely reminded Shuuichi of some sort of asylum, and he couldn't help but wonder if the deranged look was intentional.

If it was, then the messy purple-black hair matched perfectly. Shuuichi had seen ombre hairstyles before, but this stranger's perfectly meshed purple and black hair left a lot of questions to be answered. Was the original color black, or purple? How did they get the appearance to be faint yet striking, even in direct sunlight? The combination was impeccable.

When it came to the actual face, however, Shuuichi was surprised at the blankness of their expression. The face was still a bit rounded, childish, but Shuuichi had the suspicion the stranger was not a child. Their eyes were large, vibrant, and purple, framed by thick lashes that stood out against fair skin. It made them seem more like a baby doll, rather than an actual human being. The blank stare was transfixed on Shuuichi, and he felt unnerved staring into their eyes for too long.

When he finally managed to speak out, he was met with strange words, and an even stranger knife being thrown into the air towards him. He had to give him credit where credit was due, however. The knife managed to dislodge his hat and destroy any lasting barriers between them.

Then the stranger revealed they were sent with the intention of killing Shuuichi, and suddenly everything made sense—including the vertical gash in Shuuichi's skin, caused by yet another knife. He didn't waste any time after that and ran away, hoping his innate speed would put distance between them.

He was wrong. Every time Shuuichi looked over his shoulder, his heart sank at the realization that the stranger was still there, persistent in their intent to chase him. Most people gave up at this point, because Shuuichi was faster than he looked, but this hunter wasn't typical.

So he had no choice but to take to the skies, using the rooftops as his means of transition as no sane person would follow him across the city skyline.

And it was at that moment the hunter proved themselves to not only be atypical, but insane, as he continued the chase without faltering.

Desperate, Shuuichi cried out: "Quit it already! Leave me alone!"

"In your dreams, Saihara! Just give up and it'll be much easier on you, I promise~"

Why did he sound so pleased, like this was some game and not a game of life-or-death tag? Why did he even know Shuuichi's name? Of course, he was a detective, and his uncle's agency had some acclaim to its name, but he couldn't understand how a random vampire hunter could have gotten to him so easily. Shuuichi hadn't hurt humans before, nor had he broken any rules. Why was this happening to him?

The next time Saihara turned around to look, he saw a dagger flying in his direction. He was impressed that the hunter lasted this long, but also scared that the hunter lasted this long. He dodged the worst of it, but in trying to dodge the knife, he got pierced somewhere else.

He cried out as the silver pierced his shoulder blade. The blood splattered onto his clothes at first, until the initial blow was dealt, and the rest of the blood leaked out obediently, as if it was always meant to be this way. Together with the dark red shades of blood, a strange pink color appeared, which was a vampire's natural reaction to anti-vampire silver, one of their few weaknesses.

It was such a potent weakness, that even an injury in a minor place like the shoulder was enough to debilitate. It felt like the knife was in his chest, instead, and Shuuichi almost collapsed on the rooftop he was on. He was usually much more smarter and composed than this, but not even he could deny the fact that the pain was too distracting—to the point where he couldn't keep up with the hunter's stride.

He was pinned down in a moment's notice. There were thousands of thoughts racing through his mind, but there were a few he kept repeating. Who was this person? Why were they so insistent on hunting him down? How had he even learned of his presence, when Shuuichi was one of the most peaceful vampires out there? How was he able to keep up with him after all this time?

How?

"My name is Kokichi Ouma." The way he said it didn't sound like a lie so he assumed that for now, he was telling the truth. Then Kokichi went on to rant about how stupid Shuuichi was, and how he should have just shoved him off the buildings when he had the chance. While that certainly was a possibility, unlike Kokichi, Shuuichi had no intention of hurting him.

The accusation that he was just another thoughtless, reckless, dangerous vampire hurt Shuuichi almost as much as the silver knife in his shoulder blade did.

More words were exchanged between the two of them, and it was strange. Usually, when someone was lost in thought, they had some sort of emotion to their face. Kokichi, on the other hand, was entirely blank and emotionless as he pondered the possibilities of this encounter, and debated Shuuichi's statements with his own apprehensiveness.

If Kokichi seemed like a doll before, he definitely looked the part now.

"Huh? What the hell are you talking about, Saihara?" It was a momentary lapse in the execution, but that small pause was enough to give Shuuichi a chance to escape.

So he took it.

In his head, he apologized to both himself and Ouma, right before proceeding with the plan. Even though his words were laced with fear, they became soaked in a power and presence that, while subtle, was not impossible to detect. It was a blank despair. It was a disparate wish to stay alive. No matter what, there was something strange in his words, and Shuuichi wasn't even sure how he'd explain this to Kokichi, should the need arise.

Himiko called it "casting a spell" on someone. Shuuichi highly doubted that.

"You heard me, Ouma. I-I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know you," Shuuichi admitted this part truthfully, preparing himself for what came ahead. Kokichi's face wore a look of ignorance this time, so he played off of that. "S-So what's going on? Why is this even happening? Y͟ou ̨sh̡o͞u͝l͡d ̕e͏x̧pl̴a͘in ͡t̕hi̸s͏ ́to me b͜e̛c̶a̢us͞e̵ ͟I͢'͢m re̸al͏ly͘,̢ r͏e͠ally co͟nf̨u̕s͞ed̨. ͟Íf͝ ͞you͟'̢r͞e͞ ̕ac̷t̢uąll͜y gơing ̨to ̨kill͘ m̀e̢ ͏lik̕e̵ ̛y̧ou ̧s͢aįd҉,̷ t͟hen͡ ͢I wa̡n͠t that͝ tǫ bȩ ҉my ̶final͢ ̡wįsh̨."

Please work, he begged internally. This is my only chance to escape with my life, so please, please, please work.

"Do I really have to spell it out for you? Killing you was supposed to be easier than this!" Kokichi sounded so sure of himself, and Shuuichi swore his heart fell out of his chest and onto the concrete below them.

Then, it worked. "Okay, so for convenience's sake, let's say that I'm seventeen years old right now. I'm really not, but like I said, convenience..."

Saihara had to resist the urge to sigh. Instead, he was forced to listen to Kokichi's horrific tale of youth, terror, and tragedy. As soon as Kokichi started, he wanted him to stop. The words were riddled with despair and hope alike, and Shuuichi wanted to scream, but he knew doing so would break the illusion and ruin his chances of escape. He had no choice but to listen, and some twisted part of him was genuinely curious to listen to Kokichi's story.

Except, the details of the story were totally unbelievable. Kokichi claimed it was Shuuichi who killed his parents all those years ago, but Shuuichi was certain that he never did something so terrible as taking a child's parents away from them. Not to mention that Shuuichi and Kokichi look to be the same age, so he'd have to be a six-year-old himself at the time. A six-year-old, killing two adult humans all by his lonesome? Impossible.

Though, he wasn't entirely alone, according to Kokichi. Some shadow-monster-abomination...thing was there, too, but Shuuichi had no idea what he could be on about. He was sure none of that ever happened, and yet Kokichi insisted it had to be true.

To Kokichi, Shuuichi was a killer and a liar. He truly, honestly, genuinely believed that Shuuichi killed—or at least helped to kill—his parents, and that he was the one who fled the scene of the crime over a decade ago. Yet Shuuichi was equally sure that he was innocent. He detested violence and murder, after all. He devoted his life to unravelling the crimes of liars and killers, so why would he align himself with their cause, if that were the case?

But if that were true, then what else could explain Kokichi's actions? He seemed smarter than he let on, so there was no way he'd go this far on a mistake. There was utmost resolve in his voice and in his eyes, so just as Shuuichi was right about being innocent, Kokichi was also right in his belief about his guilt.

His head spinned, and he knew he had to get rid of the damn blade if he was going to make any progress on this case.

"Stop it!" Shuuichi yelled. He finally had enough. "Kokichi you have to—no, you can s̙͖͜t͙̦͚o͓͔̝p̠̼̟ n̻͍͎o̙͚̘w͕̟̘."

His words were really the magic to break the spell, because almost instantly, Kokichi stopped talking, and he paused as if to process this. There was a momentary break in time where he tried to comprehend why the hell he'd indulge his enemy with his story. Why didn't he just kill Shuuichi as he laid there?

Shuuichi broke free from Kokichi's grasp while he was distracted. He wriggled free from his hold, and stumbled over to the ledge of the rooftop, where infinity awaited him. It was easy to keep running, but that meant Kokichi would keep chasing him, and that was far from what he wanted.

Instead, he took an alternate route. Eyes closed, Shuuichi sucked in a breath, and flung himself off the edge of the railing. Falling was easy, too easy. He shuddered to think that plenty of people had done the same thing as he did, only they did it on purpose and had no hopes of surviving afterward.

Despite making it seem that way, Shuuichi was not one of those people. Recovering from a fall like this would be easy from him, and it was the only way he could outrun Kokichi once and for all. If Kokichi was as dedicated of a hunter as he made himself out to be, then he needed to be alive in order to kill Shuuichi. As such, it made sense that he wouldn't follow Shuuichi off the edge of a building, just to give futile chase.

"As if! You can't hide from me now, Saihara!"

"You're really...difficult…" Saihara said hesitantly. He was surprised but also not surprised at all to see Kokichi right above him, diving off the skyscraper like it wasn't a death sentence for the human he was. The human Saihara was not. "Why did you follow me?"

"Because I'm not done playing with you! I won't let you leave me!" Ouma shouted, as miserable as they come. Saihara wanted to look away, but ultimately, he couldn't.

He couldn't just let Kokichi die like this. Any other person would easily let him fall to his death—as penance for his attempted assasination, if nothing else—but Shuuichi wasn't normal, either. He refused to let someone die in his presence when he had the option of saving them. But to save Kokichi in their free-falling position was difficult, which meant that if he was serious about saving him, he'd have to get closer.

He reached his hands outward, and pulled Kokichi's body closer to his own. Curled up against his chest, Shuuichi sensed a faint warmth—a heartbeat slowing down after extensive overuse. He wrapped his arms around him and sighed, eyes closed against the crown of his head. "Sorry, Ouma, but it looks like you're in my hands now. I'll take things from here."

Ouma made a weak response, something in between a whimper and a sigh. Even if his breath was fleeting, the rest of him was pleasantly real and stable. Up close, Saihara confirmed that Ouma was just as small as he seemed, light as a feather if not lighter. It would be too easy to throw his unconscious body through a window, or even slam dunk him into the concrete early on, ending his hunter career at a sweet adolescent age.

Saihara didn't feel better thinking any of that. In fact, thinking those thoughts, while cradling an unconscious Ouma close to his chest, only made him feel worse.

He closed his eyes, the shadows of his being and his mind taking over. He was a vampire, alright—he never denied his true nature. But just as he didn't deny the truth, he didn't adhere to the lies that most vampires of his kind adhered to, either. He had literally been locked into battle with a hunter just now, and instead of retaliating violently at all, he let the lethality of the situation come to a peak, all before it came crashing down.

Before they came crashing down.

There were so many questions left to answer after this, too, but none of them would be answered if Kokichi were to die here.

So those shadows wrapped around them slowly and gently—shadowy limbs that looked like ghostly wrapping paper—as a black miasma manifested mid-air, engulfing them whole like a veil. They were trails of ink twirling in the air, ribbons of death that protected them from the outside world, obscuring their falling bodies from the human eyes and devouring them like monsters of their own creation.

They were swiftly blinked out of existence not a second later, and just like that, there was no evidence of their fight happening in the first place. There were no deadly dances between prey and predator, hunter and vampire—just an absence of life in what used to be a lively scene.

Only one small thing remained of the struggle: a red button came loose from a certain white shirt, tumbling from the air and onto the sidewalk below. From there, it bounced off the curb, and sunk deeper into the darkness of the city sewers.

The colors all faded into black.

.

.

"People like him are better off dead, y'know."

"Uncle," Shuuichi gasped. "You can't be serious!"

Shuuichi's uncle shrugged. "Completely serious. This kid made an attempt on your life, Shuuichi. That's not something that can easily be ignored."

"But he's not like other hunters. He knows something, and I—I have to find out."

His uncle frowned. "Right, you mentioned that he seemed to know you, which is strange considering you're not exactly the paragon of vampirism. If anything, you, together with those friends of yours—you're all anomalies."

Shuuichi sighed. He was seated at Kokichi's bedside, the two of them situated in the back rooms of the detective agency. It was dangerous to take Kokichi back to Shuuichi's home, so instead, he brought him to a public place—something that wouldn't be safe since you could literally search it up on the internet. At least here, there was no pretense about privacy to begin with.

Nevertheless, the fact that there was an unconscious body in his uncle's agency—and the fact that there was a vampire hunter in a vampire's room—was crazy by itself. Even if they frisked Kokichi beforehand, his possessions scattered to the various other rooms, they knew that didn't make him any less dangerous. Shuuichi considered all of this already, and so to hear his uncle's blatant statements was more hurtful than helpful, honestly.

"I can handle myself, Uncle. Please trust me."

He sighed. "You've always been the stubborn sort, Shuuichi. But fine. I'll leave it to you. I'll tell Momota and Harukawa that you're busy, too, since they stopped by earlier. Just don't—don't mess up the place, okay? We just had renovations in the back room, after all."

Shuuichi nodded, and with that, his uncle exited the room. That left Shuuichi alone with Kokichi, the latter who was passed out on the pull-out bed and snoring lightly. At least he wasn't injured (not like me, anyway), and at least he seemed to be resting well. There was no telling when he'd wake up, so Shuuichi resigned himself to the chair at the side of the bed, one hand under his chin as he awaited him.

I should've taken a Tylenol before this, Shuuichi thought vaguely. I can already feel the headache coming on and he's not even awake yet...