Noticing

A Detective Conan one-shot: Hattori Heiji and Toyama Kazuha

Author's note: I embrace Heiji's tactlessness. I also embrace crack. This is its love-child.


When Heiji was a young lad, he could not understand the differences between girls and boys. He could not quite grasp why his other classmates would squirm, whining that girls had cooties and you have to get shots for said disease. ("Circle, circle, dot, dot: Now I got my cootie shot!") But what were cooties? It sounded like a bug, if you asked him, and he had seen enough girls to note that they didn't look infected. If a person had a fever, a cold, the flu or anything of the sort, symptoms would manifest on the outer surface such as heated skin, runny nose, strained voices and whatnot. All diseases were like that, Heiji thought, so this "cooties" disease was either a silent virus or a figment of his male classmates' imagination. He was leaning towards the latter; he was in the constant company of Kazuha, a girl apparently, and he never caught these cooties. They had even shared drinks and bed covers, so he knew for a fact that if he were to get these cooties, it would have shown its ugly face by now. And so, because he never caught this supposed cooties disease, he assumed it didn't existed, therefore girls didn't have cooties, and in conclusion stated there was no real difference between girls and boys.

Heiji was logical like that at five-years-old.

If anything, he thought, those who claimed to be girls traditionally had longer hair and couldn't hit. But that's about it. Other than that, there were no real differences.

But, Kazuha was his prime example to the exception. She claimed to be a girl, and it seemed so. She had a long collection of hair that was tied together with a ribbon. She loved bright flowers, stuffed animals and the color pink. Boys don't like pink, so she couldn't be a boy. However, she could sucker-punch like any other boy on the playground, often leaving young Heiji confused to what her gender was.

But as he got older and wiser, Heiji accepted that his best friend was in fact a girl. He had learned certain body parts were the key differences, but since he had never seen them up close and personal, he trusted his teachers' words. Therefore, he accepted the fact blindly and believed that Kazuha was indeed female.

It really dawned on him one day, in his 16th year of life, that his childhood companion was a girl, growing into a woman. Heiji and Kazuha were in the kitchen, both in front of the sink. While Heiji washed the dishes, Kazuha dried them and stacked them neatly in a nearby drying rack. As he handed her a teacup, Heiji noticed how obscenely bright her yellow tube top was. Then, he began to wonder what kept the garment up; it had no straps to secure it. His thoughts logically concluded, because he was always a logical boy, that it must be some sort of structure to keep…

His eyes fell at her chest. Her front-side, to be more specific. Her chest was occupied by twin protruding round mounds of flesh, and the fabric allowed a glimpse of the valley between them. Heiji stared, wide-eyed, as thoughts began to formulate in his genius mind. "Those aren't what I think they are, are they?" to "When did those get there?" followed by him releasing a breath of "Bwuh?"

"Heiji, what's wrong?" Kazuha noted his exhale, all while placing the cup down.

"Oh my god, they're moving as she moves!"

"Heiji, what are you looking at?"

The Detective of the West began to spew grunts that sounded like a strangled giraffe getting punched in the gut; he continued to stare at his female friend's assets.

But, Kazuha was such a clever girl and followed his line of sight to her chest. "Heiji, you're staring at my breasts, aren't you!"

His dark skin colored to eight different shades of red. "Wha- Urg- Erm- Bwu- Ru- N- No, I'm not!" he cried, eyes glued, staring at said body part. One second. Two seconds. Five seconds later, his eyes finally moved up to her face.

"Yes, you were! I saw you!" Kazuha hit her palm on the counter, causing a small clatter from the dishes.

"Yeah, right!" he refused again with more vigor, eyes trying with all their might to stay at her face. It was a losing battle.

Just then, a gentle breeze made its way through the open window in front of the sink. A shiver momentarily trapped Kazuha, causing said mounds to gently jolt due to the action. Heiji craned his neck, noting there were two gentle shadows of tiny peaks that poked the fabric covering her shivering chest. Before Heiji could stop himself, a grin erupted on his lips. He was soon greeted with Kazuha's jaw dropping to the floor, which was closely followed by her right hook.

It was then that Heiji knew for a fact that Kazuha was a girl. That could hit hard. Really hard.

The end.