Ladies and gentlemen! I humbly welcome you to the fifth chapter of this story!
Please enjoy and review!


The day started as usual, at least according to class 3-B standards, which arguably should be considered chaotic by any other group of people. There, however, a stampede of girls chasing one boy who suddenly vanished in a burst of laughter and white feathers, was just considered every other Friday. Teachers of this class might even argue that it was a relief, since one Kuroba Kaito being calm and quiet was usually a sure sign of him planning something particularly distracting that made teaching that day impossible.

The girls, with provisional weapons in their hands, like brooms and mops, waved off the feathers and started looking around for the menace.

"If I get my hands on him…" growled one of them and looked in confusion at her friend, who dropped her broom and reached out for a white bird. "Kaede, what are you doing?"

Other girls looked curiously towards her as well. Kaede in the meantime straightened up and beaming with happiness showed a dove in her hands to the others, "Look how cute it is~" The bird cooed in response, as if confirming her words.

The first girl glared at the dove. "It must be Kaito-kun's…" she growled, but then her face lit up, "Hey! We could use it as a hostage to get him out!"

Kaede gasped and held the bird closer to her chest. "You can't be serious, Hina! It's not the dove's fault his master is a jerk!"

Hina wasn't happy about her friend defending the bird and argued back. Some of the other girls dispersed from the crowd, while others stayed around to watch. All seemingly forgetting about Kaito, who disguised as a bespeckled teenage boy, simply passed them and went to his desk to sit down and get ready for class.

Aoko, who was already at her place, looked up at the unfamiliar guy who sat in her friend's place and raised an eyebrow. "And when are you going to take that off?"

The teen's face split with a shameless grin, as he turned to her and spoke up in Kaito's voice, "Oh~? Shouldn't we at least go on a date before you ask me to undress, Aoko~?"

Technically they did go once on a date, when Aoko tried to prove that Kaito wasn't KID (blessed her heart). It was, however, an awkward topic for both of them, so most of the time they chose to not mention it.

Her eyebrow twitched, betraying her annoyance and she stuck her tongue at the disguised teen. "As if I would ever want that, Bakaito!" she growled but then asked curiously "What did you do this time anyway?" she turned to look at the arguing girls, who seemed to not have noticed Kaito's disguise yet.

He glanced at them as well and shrugged "Nothing much," he snorted seeing her disbelieving look, "I'm hurt Aoko! How can you not believe me?"

"Because I know you?" she shot back, utterly unimpressed turning to him again and sighed, dismissing the topic, "Glad to see that I was right about idiots not getting sick at least."

It was his turn to glare at her in annoyance. "Yeah, thanks for your lack of concern," he mumbled while taking out his books.

In reality he wasn't feeling great but just didn't want to worry anyone. His back was better but it was still sore making him feel stiff, which was why he opted against using any acrobatics to get away from the girls earlier. He was tired as well since he got little sleep yet again. He didn't have the time to take care of his doves in the morning yesterday, so they were feeling neglected by the time he finally went to them and had to spend extra time with them. Because of that he had to get up early to make sure he could at least feed them this time before he left for school. Some were still feeling kind of clingy and he didn't want to risk them getting anxious, so he took them with him, despite that it was kind of frowned upon by the teachers. The things he did for his birds… He smiled softly at the thought.

"So?" Aoko spoke up, interrupting his thoughts and making him look up to her again. "When are you going to show me the new trick?"

Ah right, he chose that as his excuse for his yesterday's condition. "Tomorrow? We could go to the park too."

It wasn't exactly to his liking, as he still had a lot of research to go through but then again, a little break would do him good. Last night, after he was done with his chores and homework it was pretty late, so he only had the time to look up some legends about winged dragons (because as it turns out, dragons came in all shapes and sizes) and history of the emerald, he stole two days ago. None really bore any fruit.

The emerald's story seemed to really start in the year 1498, where it was said to be found and fixed into the form of the pendant it held today, as a present for some lord. While there was some death involving its owners, none held any supernatural element to them. Just plain and simple murders. There were no tales of any other suspicious occurrences like significant luck or misfortune befalling its owners either. The only interesting thing about the gem was its size, which was the reason why Kaito targeted it in the first place.

As for the legends about dragons, there was even less. The only thing that seemed to interest the fabled lizards were treasures, princesses and destruction. Sometimes all of the above, sometimes just one or two of the things. Which didn't really fit what Kaito knew about Saguru. So either the stories were grossly exaggerated, misunderstood or dragons, just like humans, had individual goals and stories that went down the history just involved the more brutal ones. So it was a dead end.

Kaito didn't have high hopes for his research about Japanese supernatural creatures either.

Aoko's lips twitched as she tried to hide her smile. "So you want to show off to a broader audience? Fine, I can tag along… I just hope that it will be worth it," she said, trying to sound casual and disinterested but failed to fully banish fondness from her tone.

Kaito chose not to call her out on it and shrugged casually. "I need space to show it properly and I can't really do it on the street outside of your house."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You need space for a trick, you were practicing in your house?"

He had to admit that she was sharp, which is why he liked her so much. She couldn't get him this time however. He grinned at her. "It's not a matter of whether it can be done in a smaller setting or not, but rather about the effect~ You'll see for yourself if you come~" Which meant that he had to do something grand, but since he already said that it was inspired by KID there shouldn't be a problem with recreating one of his heist tricks. In a slightly toned down version, obviously.

Aoko's eyes shone with poorly hidden excitement. "Big words, we'll see if you can deliver~"

Kaito held back a laugh and just smiled at her. Seeing her this happy was definitely worth taking a break from his research.

The day went on as per usual in class 3-B. There was a little chaos when the teacher was checking the list and the girls who Kaito wronged in the morning caused an uproar. The teacher, in turn, was outraged with the magician for bringing his birds with him but got appeased by him, as he suddenly showed up next to her, seemingly turned one of his doves into a plushie and gifted it to her with a charming smile. After that everybody was told to sit back in their seats, so the lesson could continue. During the break Kaito made sure to keep away from sight, so he wouldn't be mangled and he kept that up until the end of lessons when everybody could go back home.

Surprisingly enough, Saguru did not show up for the whole day and Kaito wasn't sure what to make of it.

Hope to see you next chapter *bows*