A/N: Phew, this is the last chapter of second file. Nagano arc is over and after that... well, comes characters you surely have been waiting for. I have some questions for you guys but I think I put them to the note on the bottom of this chapter so I won't distract you from the story. ;) I hope you'll like the way I handle the situation with Kai's death and aftermath.

Now shh... Shugo is waking up.

The second file: Changes in life
Sub-file six: Too much

It had been days since Shugo emerged from the forest and the boy was still to wake up. Villagers were anxious to hear from the boy especially considering that he was most likely the only person where Kai was. It was a small relief that he was alive and recovering slowly but his condition had also ignited a new spark of worry. The search continued even more frantically. But there had been no sign of Kai or his horse anywhere.

Yamato wrapped his jacket tighter around himself. The wind was picking up and getting chillier. A typical October weather really.

He still didn't know what had happened with the knife. As soon as he was able to leave Shugo's bedside without raising suspicions he'd gone and hidden the knife. Dug a hole on the ground near the tree at the backyard and placed it into the roots before filling the hole again. Thankfully the soil had still been soft after the strong storms on the days preceding the competition so there was no change to be detected. What had bothered Yamato though was the blood in the knife. He had wiped and bleached the thing carefully and remove all the evidence but the thought still made him uneasy. What had Shugo done? And why? What could have drove him to do whatever it was? Yamato was scared for the boy.

The hospital was small and quiet. Not many patients were up yet. Yamato had been admitted in though it wasn't the visiting hours yet. He made his way to Shugo's room where some cop was in the case the boy happened to wake up. All clues were needed now. It had already been a week since the competition.

Yamato knocked on the door. It was Yui who opened it.

"Ah, Ishikawa-san. Good for you to come. Shugo-kun just woke up." The woman smiled in relief.

"He did?" The blonde was surprised. And relieved. He'd visited every day when he had time from the searches but Shugo had remained unresponsive on those times.

"Yes. He gave me information about what he remembers and…"

"Go. Kai-san is a good friend of yours. Find him." Yamato bit down the dreadful feeling he had about the other man's fate and just smiled reassuringly to the woman.

"Arigato." And the young police officer was gone. Yamato sighed and stepped into the room. Shugo looked so pale and tiny and fragile on the hospital bed. Like he was several years younger.

Moments before

It was warm. And dark. It felt safe. Where was he? He felt so tired. What was going on? He hurt. Why?

Whiiist… Bang!

"Neigh!"

Bang!

Shugo's eyes flew open and the boy drew a breath in panic. There was scraping of a chair against tiled flor but he barely registered it. But he did notice someone coming up next to his bed and holding his hand. The one that wasn't in a cast.

"Easy, Shugo-kun. Easy…" A female voice soothed him and laid another hand to brush his hair away from his face. Only then Shugo finally realized where he was and who was next to him.

"Y-Yui-san?" The boy croaked. His throat was dry again. He felt tired and dizzy and hurt.

"You've been sleeping for a long time." Yui explained and took a small cup of water from a nearby table. "Do you think you can drink a bit?"

Shugo just nodded while trying to gather his thoughts and assess the most likely scenario. With Yui's help he drank water in small sips and felt his throat being less sore after that.

"Where is Kai-san?" The boy asked. Yui's hand froze for a moment before continuing to place the cup back on table.

"We haven't found him yet. I was hoping you could tell me… Anything you remember will help."

Shugo swallowed. His recollections were shaky.

"Two bangs… Then Yukari went down. We all fell."

"You fell?" Yui prompted gently.

"Yes… When I woke there was a lot of leaves and no sun." Formless like dark… "I climbed up. Kai-san told me to get help. I walked to… to…" Where had he found himself again? Shugo only remembered walking and Yamato and…

"Hide the knife."

The widening of his eyes was the only sign Yui got that the boy was about to panic again. She laid a hand on his shoulder and looked into the grey blue eyes seriously but reassuringly.

"Shugo-kun, calm down. It's alright. This was already great. You did well. You don't need to tell anything else if you feel like you can't."

"There was so much blood…" Shugo whispered.

"I… I know. But none of this was your fault." Yui tried to smile but she'd seen the clothes boy had worn when found. It had both his own and Kai's blood. A lot. And not all of it had dried completely yet.

"Kai-san shielded me when we fell. He was so hurt… Yukari wasn't moving either."

"Shugo-kun. We will find Kai-san. I promise you. And you have been a great help."

There was a knock on the door. Yui went to answer it while Shugo remained staring at his hands. She spoke with someone there but the boy didn't listen. Moment later the door closed.

"Shugo." It wasn't Yui. It was Yamato. Shugo didn't look up.

"He is already dead." The boy stated.

"Most likely. It has been a week already." The man answered.

"Not that… Not… I…"

"I hid the knife. And cleaned it."

"…Good."

"May I ask why?"

"It was either that or starvation."

"I see."

"Do you?" Shugo looked up sharply.

"Yeah. My brother was prepared to do so too… To kill me if it seemed like the Organization was going to… educate me more creatively." Yamato shrugged and walked to the window. He pushed the curtain aside, letting the sunlight stream into the room.

"Oh."

"As long as no one finds the knife, you should be fine. Even if they determine the age of the wound around the same than when you were found, they can't prove how long you wandered in the forest. It could've been a third party too."

"Not to mention that I'm going to wipe records of the real cause of death as soon as I can get my hands on my computer…" Shugo muttered.

"That too." The blonde man stated. "Are you going to be alright?"

"I don't know. I guess. Eventually."

"I was fifteen when I did my first kill. You aren't even twelve yet."

"Mentally I've lived til seventeen plus four years. That makes it twenty-one."

"No one is ready to kill. Not until they are desensitized to death." Yamato retorted.

"Well. Good for me then. I'm the boy who sees Death."

It was Uehara Yui with her colleagues who found the body of Kai Kuroto below the cliff. The wind that had blown the whole morning had brushed leaves aside and revealed what had been missed. Poor woman cried her eyes out.

"I would be more worried if she hadn't cried." Yamato had stated in a way that was typical of him. Envious. He couldn't muster any feeling towards the dead anymore so he was jealous of anyone and everyone who could. "I doubt I'd be able to cry even if it were you, who'd died. Angry, yes. Upset, definitely. Sad, I guess… But would I cry? No."

Shugo hadn't commented. He'd only hacked the electrical files of the autopsy and altered the results. Yamato had done the same for the hard copies. The coroner who'd done the autopsy had left for extended vacation after winning in lottery a couple of days later. That left only one person aware of the result that wasn't made public. Everyone thought it as starvation. But no one blamed Shugo for fainting and thus not immediately telling where Kai was. He was just a kid after all. But one person knew something else had happened at that.

That person was Yamato Kansuke.

And now the man was sitting in the same hospital room with Shugo. The boy was yet to be released. Naturally. He had been close to coma just week before. And Shugo wished he still were unconscious. Anything to get out of that silent gaze. Two eyes, not one like six years from now on. Or five and half years. But Shugo was sure lack of one eye wouldn't diminish the intensity the man packed behind his expressions.

And one gaze is enough to tell Shugo that Kansuke knows. The man isn't at the hospital to interrogate him. No, Shugo has given enough statements already and all of them are in the record. He is labelled as traumatized kid and considering what the police already know, the case is close being labelled as an accident. So in a sense there is no reason for Kansuke to be with Shugo unless it is something off the record.

"I see you are healing well." The man stated. Shugo looked down at his lap where his hands were clutching the sheet.

"Yeah… The doctor thinks I might be able to leave next week."

The silence fell again. Shugo fidgeted uncomfortably. He was sure he was going to get a cabin fever at this rate. There was literally nothing for him to do. Yamato had smuggled in his computer for hacking but taken it away then. And all the books in the hospital weren't anything special or interesting.

Eventually Shugo spoke.

"Are you going to tell Yui-san?" Unspoken words told more than what was said aloud.

"No."

"Are you going to question me?" Where is the knife? Why did you do it? What exactly did you do? Was Ishikawa Yamato part of this? How was he? There was a lot of questions Shugo was expecting.

"No."

"Why?" The boy frowned.

"Plausible deniability." Was the simple answer.

"Oh…" Kansuke was protecting him? Shugo swallowed uncomfortably. How much damage was he going to do to the people around him by this rate? What would the ripples of this event cause? "I'm sorry." The boy choked out.

"…Your hand was forced."

Was forced. The sentence implied that there was someone else in the works. The one who flipped the switch. The first culprit. And Kansuke knew it too.

Shugo shifted so he could hug his knees through the comforter. He didn't say anything. The man next to him didn't either.

Shugo had visitors in the form of Yamato, Yui, once even Morofushi and also Tatsuo Akira and Ayaka. None of those visits were too cheerful. Just get better wishes and lamenting Kai's fate. Ayaka didn't want to meet Shugo's eyes for obvious reasons. Well, obvious for only the two of them but the woman didn't know it. Only Yamato's visits were slightly happier but not much. The man had adopted a distant façade in front of everyone. Even Shugo. The boy hoped it would go away. The man wasn't present much. He was taking extra shifts. He and Shugo both had a feeling that they'd be needing it soon.

And yes, they did. After Shugo was released there was the funerals of Kuroto Kai. From them it took about a year until the boy begged the man that they'd move. He had finished elementary school finally and wanted a change of scenery. Things had remained too same and morphed too different. There was pitying glances, empty platitudes. There was a new cop taking care of the village's police box. There was empty spot where Kai used to be. And there was still blood in his hands that only Shugo could see.

So the funds Yamato had saved ever since the boy had been hospitalized came to use when the duo moved back to Osaka.

This time it was Tatsuo Akira who had their contact information.

A/N: Dun dun dunn... Get get to Osaka! Yay! Shugo will become yet another detective sidekick. And we'll meet Eisuke too. And... there will be spoilers about the newest mangachapters... Sera! And... what else? There will be other references to canon.

And I'm sure you noticed from here that the events in with the Nagano cops won't change. Yui will look for Kai's murderer and she already hears about the two shots to later piece together that there was someone else than the fire-work quartet to target Kai. Kansuke in the other hand will still go after the parole jumper and get caught in avalance and... yeah.

Oh, now is the time for my questions. Who would you ship with Shugo? It is still a long time ahead from being relevant. I'm not like Gosho who puts romance on the characters since they are preschoolers. Uh no-ho. But I do think it will be something that the connection is established when he is yoiunger and later it grows from there. This far I've been tossing different ideas around and some of the characters include... Sera(currently the leading pair), Aoko(more likely to end up with Akako since Tsukiko is with Kaito), Hakuba(crack pair more likely), Eisuke(he was sort of cute with Tsukiko but...) and Ran(not romantically necessarily but more like the best friend to lean on when Shinichi is gone and who doesn't bring up the romance crap all the time). So basically both males and females go.

But bye for now. I'm off to write chapter 63 for Dream or Not. :D