WARNING: this chapter contains mentions of murder; the victim was a young child. There's no explicit description of the body but there are references to the death being bloody and violent. If you don't want to read that, skip the paragraph in which Conan starts /

Format stuff: For added clarity, stuff in single quotes 'like this' is texted; there weren't enough texts to really separate them from the narrative paragraphs this /

Also, Kid disguises himself as female, so I've intermittently used she/her as the thief's pronouns in this chapter, hopefully it's not too confusing.


"Yo, Chibi-kun!" Kaito greeted cheerily as he answered his phone.

"Are you busy?"

"Oi, oi," Kaito scolded lightly, "Didn't we talk about this, already? No one's forcing me to talk to you."

"Eh? No, I meant do you have time to come to meet me? In person?"

"Sure," Kaito glanced at the time: late enough Mouri-tantei would be convinced Conan was asleep but not late enough for the man himself to be in bed, "Sneaking in again shouldn't be too difficult."

"Um…I'm not actually at the agency right now."

"Tantei-kun?" Kaito thought the detective sounded slightly guilty; had he snuck out? He hoped Conan was somewhere safe and not on another moonlit rooftop.

"I'm at the Rikugien Gardens," there was a pause and Conan's next words sounded strained; "We got kicked out of a case."

Kaito nearly tripped in surprise. He'd thought the police were used to the tiny tantei's help by now; what could they have sent him away for? Wait— "We? Were the Shounen Tantei with you?"

"Yeah, they all got sent home, I don't think they saw much of it."

A chill ran down his spine as he realized the detective sounded relieved. "I can be there in twenty minutes, which part of the park are you in?" He was already moving before he finished asking the question; he wasn't sure he wanted to know what kind of case could make Tantei-kun so upset, but he wasn't about to leave him to deal with it on his own.

"There's a looped path, if you go left from the main entrance there are some pagoda trees."

"Please tell me you didn't climb one of them." The silence was telling, and Kaito half-asked, "There has to be a reason your response to stress is climbing something."

"You already know, ridiculous thief. No one looks up."

"Stealing my tricks, Tantei-kun?" He sniffed dramatically into the phone, "I'm so proud, you'll be a real magician soon!"

Conan dryly responded, "I'll pass, thanks. One of you is more than enough."

Kaito smiled slightly as he did a final check of the disguise he'd thrown together, "Right, I'll be there soon." He grinned as he got an idea to keep the detective distracted, "I wonder if you'll be able to spot me before I find you?"

"Challenge accepted, Kid. When I win, you'll owe me coffee."

Reassured that the detective would be fine until he arrived, Kaito taunted, "I'll be careful not to startle you out of your tree when I get there."

Conan replied, "I'll text when I see you," before the call ended.

~C~

Conan was scanning the flow of people on the brightly lit path below, distantly grateful to Kid for the distraction as he catalogued each person as they walked into his area of vision. Noting and quickly dismissing each couple (Kid might try to throw him off by chatting with a complete stranger, but all the couples he could see were being actively sappy), he focused instead on individuals. Kid hadn't given any hints to his disguise, but Conan knew the thief would be looking for him; he just had to find the one who was looking a bit too closely at the trees. An elderly man made his way slowly through, but he was only looking at the artistically lighted miniature garden, not the darkened trees framing it. A woman coming in from the opposite direction he'd mentioned to the thief was walking too briskly to be able to look for him, a teenage girl posing for selfies, a middle-aged businessman—wait. The teenager pulled her phone closer to check the pictures just as Conan looked back, making a face at her phone before taking a few steps to the right and posing again. Yes, that was it: with the phone angled that way her face wouldn't be in the picture at all; she could be photographing her outfit, but then why pose with her arm near her face? A swift mental calculation and Conan smirked: the camera on the back of her phone would photograph the top half of the pagoda tree next to him.

Pulling out his phone, he sent a simple 'found you' to the thief's number, slightly impressed when it buzzed with a reply without the girl visibly breaking her pattern. 'So sure, Tantei-kun?'

He sent a brief deduction as his reply: 'Not selfies, wrong camera angle.' Conan grinned as a few seconds later the girl pouted dramatically down at her phone as she started typing her reply.

'Are you joining me for your victory coffee or should I keep looking?' He considered for a minute; coffee would be good, but realistically he didn't think he could deal with people at the moment. Getting scandalized looks for drinking coffee would be a worse reminder than usual right now. Since he'd already won, there was no point to keep hiding from the thief.

'Watch the trees.'

Pulling up his phone's camera, he turned the flash on and waited until the thief was looking in his direction to take a picture. The flash of light would show through the foliage much better than any movement Conan could make to signal his location. (True, he could have just texted which tree he was in, but you couldn't live with his mother without picking up some of her love of theatrics.) He watched as the girl casually walked over to his tree and waved when she craned her neck up to look at him. She shook her head at him and jumped up to catch the lowest branch, easily pulling herself onto it before nimbly climbing to perch on the branch in front of Conan.

"How did you even get up here?" the thief questioned (while using a female voice), "Even your crazy shoes wouldn't let you jump that high."

Conan thought of the Agasa-enhanced suspenders he'd taken to rolling up and shoving in a pocket and deadpanned, "I climbed the other side."

"Those branches aren't any lower!" Kid huffed when Conan smirked silently in reply. "Well, reality-bending aside—"

"Look who's talking."

Pointedly ignoring the interruption, the thief continued, "Are you all right, Tantei-kun?"

Startled by the abrupt return to Kid's usual voice, Conan blinked at the thief for a few moments, before closing his eyes and leaning back against the tree trunk. "I'm really not," he managed to answer.

The silence stretched a little, and Kid questioned delicately, "You mentioned you got kicked out?"

"Yeah," Conan winced as the image of the scene flashed behind his closed eyelids, hurriedly focusing back on the thief. Seeing the open concern in her expression, he managed to continue, "If it had been any other case I would be more upset about that."

He didn't react as she shifted closer to put a comforting hand on his knee, glad Kid wasn't pushing him to talk about the case. The silent support as he took the time to just breathe helped him stay anchored in the moment, instead of drowning in his emotions.

When he tried to speak, the words caught and he had to force them past his suddenly clogged throat, "She—she looked like Ayumi." Conan's eyes blurred with tears and he heard Kid gasp softly. He flailed a bit as he felt himself move before the thief spoke up.

"You're safe, Tantei-kun, I've got you," the thief murmured, and Conan relaxed slightly as he realized Kid was hugging him. "No one can see you," Kid added soothingly, "you can let it out."

The next thing Conan knew he was bawling into the thief's shoulder, hiding his face as he finally released his hold on the last shreds of his calm façade. He was good enough at compartmentalizing that usually the state of a body didn't distress him (he had to be—any sign he was affected by it and Megure-keibu would ban him from investigating without a second thought), but this—Conan was intensely relieved the kids hadn't seen it. He had never really understood why people would choose to kill, but attacking and killing a child was truly sickening. It happened; he knew that—every kidnapping ransom case was a race against time for that very reason—but he'd never seen it. That child—she had been so small, and the violence had made it hard to distinguish features—but her clothes (what wasn't covered in blood) had looked like something Ayumi would wear (he was going to have nightmares for months, he knew it)—and all he could think was how could anyone possibly want to kill someone so innocent? What kind of sick person could be so violent, so hatefully angry that they would—would kill—Conan's thoughts fragmented as the raw grief mixed with incomprehension and horror until his entire body was shaking with the force of his sobs.

By the time the storm of emotions had passed, Conan was exhausted. His eyes and throat felt sore, and his face (and Kid's shirt) was a mess, covered in tears and snot. If he'd cried all over anyone else he might have been embarrassed, but Conan was too tired to care, and he trusted that Kid wouldn't think of him differently (as 'just a child') after seeing him break down. At some point Kid had started humming and rubbing gentle circles on his back; Conan didn't recognize the tune, but it sounded peaceful and he was content to stay where he was for a while and let his friend comfort him.


A/N: *dramatic gasp* Two chapter posts in a month? It's a miracle! Apparently writing Kid cuddling with Shinichi in 'Entrusted to Your Hands' spurred my inspiration for this one...hopefully y'all enjoyed reading :)

Rikugien Gardens is an actual park in Tokyo with a looped walking path, and the site I found it on specifically mentioned it was seasonally open at night. I've never been there so I have no idea if it has pagoda trees, but when I looked up tree pictures I thought pagoda trees would be good to hide in.