The water for the shower seemed to be on for a long time, and every minute that passed with it still running Kaede kept asking herself if perhaps she should try checking in on the person who was supposed to be showering. He seemed like a nice enough guy that he wouldn't get too upset with her if she intruded on him with good intentions, but she also didn't want to ruffle any feathers when they were going to have to spend the night in much closer quarters than they ever wanted to. She'd almost religiously watched the news report on the weather situation until it started repeating itself, but she'd learned enough to know that there was no sense in hoping for a better outcome of things. They were trapped there at the hotel, and even if they decided to go out and see if there was anything else the town had to offer there was a chance that they'd just get stranded in the car instead.
"I wonder if they serve meals here," she mused, glancing at the clock to see the late hour and thinking about the coming morning's breakfast. They'd stopped for dinner before they'd gotten too deep in their trip, so it wasn't that she was hungry in that moment, but she knew that after a night of sleep (no matter how much or little she actually got), she would want to eat something. And if the hotel didn't offer breakfast, she wasn't sure if there would be much in the way of eating at all, due to the severity of the rainstorm that had opened up over the area. When reporters were calling for flooding of catastrophic levels, and they were within a kilometer of the nearby river, it was a huge recipe for disaster and they needed to play it safe and not leave.
Her attention was drawn back to the television when the program came back from a commercial break, immediately getting into a picture of the radar of the area, showing the heaviness of the rain that was falling. According to their data, there was a fair bit of lightning and thunder in the area, and Kaede found that hard to believe seeing as she hadn't seen nor heard a thing. Standing up from the spinning chair, she made her way to the window in the room, pushing the curtains open to see a brilliant light show out in the distance, which proved the broadcast correct and her own assumptions wrong. The thing that bothered her more than the actual presence of lightning, though, was how streaked with water the glass was, making it hard to tell how wet anything else outside was.
"I really hope everyone else made it to town okay," she said after watching the rain splash against the window for a minute or two. "I know they all wanted to fly to get there fast but I don't see how anyone's flying through this kind of storm. I thought we were being smart choosing to drive to get through it, but maybe their way will get them there faster after all, even if it's not right on time." She remembered the conversation she'd had with her manager when she'd called, explaining where they'd gotten trapped and being assured that there was no consequence to be faced regarding the situation. If no one was at the concert hall for practice the next day, it wasn't realistic to punish any one person for missing out on things. "I hate that this is happening, why did the weather have to do this today, of all days?"
"Because that's how the world works, you know." Hearing Shuichi say anything was surprising enough, but because Kaede hadn't heard the water turn off in the shower she was confused to hear his voice suddenly. She pulled the curtains closed and turned around to see him standing across the room, hair wet and flat against his head as he played with his hat in his hands. "I can't get through to one of the people I work with, who was supposed to be waiting for me to let her know I made it here. Funny how things don't go the way we need them to right when we need it most."
"I totally get that, but still, we both have places we need to be! We can't be expected to just spend all our time locked in a hotel room together! Not…like there's anything wrong with being stuck somewhere with you, it's just that you're a stranger and I don't know you well enough to know if being with you is a good thing or not." As hard as she was trying to save face, Kaede knew she'd misspoken and that she was going to have to deal with the backlash from it. "Please don't take that as me thinking you're going to kill me or something, I know that you're not going to do that."
He shrugged, setting his hat on top of his belongings so that it wasn't misplaced, before shaking out his hair and sending water flinging everywhere. "I didn't think you meant I was a murderer, especially since you know I solve crimes for a living, not create them. But I also get it, I don't know you much at all and here I am, being forced to share a bed with you just because it was that or drown in a flood, I guess."
"Yeah, I should've thought about that, if you really wanted me dead you could've run us through the police barricade and called it a day." Just thinking about how her life had been in someone else's hands like that sent a shiver down Kaede's spine, and she squished her eyes closed, trying to block the thought from lingering further. "I'm glad we were able to get this place, even though there's some problems with it," she said after reopening her eyes and putting a smile on her face. "I bet by the time we can safely leave, we'll be much closer to each other than we'd ever—"
"I'm really not interested in getting close with you, sorry." Shuichi's words came out harsh, and stunned Kaede into staring at him with her jaw hanging, her hands moving to rest over the top of her heart. He realized what he'd said and how he said it, but just like she had before he knew that he couldn't take anything back and had to just roll with it. "I don't make a lot of friends, and this feels like the world is forcing us together and I can't say I'm all for that, if that makes sense. Nothing personal against you, of course, but I wouldn't be happy even if I was trapped here with someone I am close with."
His clarification made what he said feel a little less harsh, but Kaede still felt a bit of a sting from hearing him say that he wasn't into getting close with her. "That's totally fair, no worries!" she managed to spit out, putting on a grin and heading towards where all of her bags were stacked, narrowly missing bumping into Shuichi before she started digging through her belongings. "I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable, just like you don't wanna make me uncomfortable, so everything's perfectly fine here! We'll get through this together, and then go back our separate ways, and call it a good time, right?"
"Something tells me that won't be the case, but we can be hopeful." While she was searching for whatever she wanted out of her bag, he made his way to the chair she'd been sitting in before, taking a seat and immediately feeling it try to spin underneath him. "You can shower or whatever now, I'm going to see what I can find out from the news and go from there. Hopefully someone back home will get to me soon with what they know, but there's no guarantee that's ever going to happen."
"Okay, so…that's fair too," she said under her breath, not watching what Shuichi was doing but also not particularly caring to do so. In that moment, she only wanted to get out of her dress, to let down her hair, and to curl up in bed and sleep the whole situation off, so she couldn't be bothered to care what he was doing because it didn't impact what she was doing. When she felt her small bag of personal belongings that was tucked deep within one of her larger bags she cracked a smile to herself, pulling it out and opening it to see that everything she needed was safe and dry inside.
Taking the bag with her into the bathroom, the first thing Kaede noticed was that everything in there looked like it hadn't been touched at all, other than the mirror being slightly fogged up from the steam. Shuichi had taken care to put everything as it had been when he'd come in, which she appreciated because it meant less work she had to do herself, but as she pulled her various soaps out of her bag to be able to use them, she did question how it was that he'd washed himself. It seemed like all he'd done was get in the shower to warm up, but that wasn't anything she was going to be able to do, not with all the makeup she had caked on her face and the tightly curled buns in her hair.
She turned the water on and carefully ran a hand underneath the stream to feel the initial temperature, before pulling her fingers out and running them across her face, bringing some of the makeup off with them. It was ridiculous how much she had to doll herself up to look presentable when she had to be out in public, unless she wanted to receive scorn from the media for her nude face, and she almost wished that she didn't have all that attention on her all the time. It would have been very nice to be able to live a life where she didn't dress up constantly, or at least where she could have some piano performances for groups of students and not need a makeup crew to get her ready.
First it was taking off the makeup entirely, using some of the wipes she had stored in her bag, followed immediately by pulling all of the pins out of her hair and making the buns she'd been wearing fall into wild waves over her shoulders, hitting her back halfway down her shoulder blades. She thought she was much cuter when she wore her hair down rather than up, but her manager insisted that she keep it up as much as she could, and so the obnoxious hairstyles were something she'd reluctantly gotten used to. "What a pretty woman underneath all that fake stuff," she remarked, getting a glimpse of her bare face and natural-enough hair before getting her dress off, ready to take her shower and feel refreshed after the day she'd had.
However long she was in there, it didn't feel like long enough, but her time being alone with the scalding hot water was cut short when the water went from her perfect temperature to ice cold within seconds. She yelped at the change, thankful that she wasn't covered in soap when it happened, and got herself out of the shower as fast as she could, grabbing a towel off of the rack only to find that it was clearly the one that Shuichi had used before her, as it was still wet from when he'd showered. That wasn't as big of a problem as the water changing had been, even though her teeth were chattering until she was able to wrap herself nice and tightly in a dry towel. As she dried herself off she found that she was spending a lot of time thinking about the fact that she'd screamed and no one had bothered to check on her, which felt somewhat insulting and she somewhat wanted to call Shuichi out on it.
That changed when she finally got dressed in her pajamas (keeping on her bra underneath the sheer top because it felt too awkward to do anything else but that), and she stepped back into the main part of the room. It turned out that Shuichi hadn't checked on her when she screamed because he simply wasn't there; he hadn't even had the decency to leave her a note on the room's notepad to let her know where he was. "That's rude, whatever," she grumbled, eyeing the bed with a newfound sense of disdain and uneasiness towards the sleeping situation. "I guess I call dibs on whichever side I want and he just puts up with it."
Feeling like that decision was the right one to make, she sat down on the left side of the bed and fluffed one of the pillows against the headboard, her uneasiness making her stomach begin to feel unsettled. How she was going to manage to sleep through the night in this situation, she didn't know, but if her unwanted roommate had made himself scarce for the night that would make things a little easier to swallow. After the pillow felt fluffed enough she pushed the blankets down to the foot of the bed, kicking her legs up onto the mattress top before covering them back up, and laying down almost right away. The bed left much to be desired, even with her laying there alone, and she was only dreading how things would feel once someone else was there with her.
Her eyelids felt heavy as she got comfortable in her spot, but falling asleep before Shuichi was back would just mean him waking her up when he got into bed, so she had to stay strong and keep her eyes open as long as she could. Thankfully for her, he wasn't gone much longer, coming into the room with a couple bottles of water under one arm and his phone in his other hand, typing something carefully on his keypad. "Oh, you're already going to sleep," he said when he saw that Kaede had gotten into bed. "I figured you'd still be awake and wanting to fight about the sleeping situation, but if you're good, that's fine with me."
"I can fight again if you want," she replied with a yawn that she couldn't manage to stifle, the power of her exhaustion too much to combat in that moment. "But really, I'm just super tired and want to sleep before, like, the power goes out or something."
"That was why I left the room, actually." His face going neutral, lips tightening into a line, it had sounded like Shuichi was amused but his expression came off completely different, although Kaede wasn't sure if that was what he intended or not. "I wanted to check with the front desk if there were any backup generators here, which the man up there says there is one, but he doubts it'll be needed for any reason. Then, when I was about to come back up, a family staying somewhere else in the hotel offered me these waters and I took them, just in case the water supply here gets tainted or becomes boil-only."
She yawned again, snuggling in a bit deeper to the blankets that felt so foreign compared to the plush ones she was used to using. "Sounds like you did a lot of big-thinking stuff that I wouldn't have ever thought of," she told him, hoping that she made him think she was impressed with his decisions. "I'm so glad you're here for this, you have all these thoughts and ideas that are actually useful. I just wish…"
"What, we didn't have to share a room? You didn't have to be trapped in a low-budget hotel with a stranger?" When he spoke he spoke quietly, as if he didn't actually want Kaede to hear what he was saying or have any responses to it, and she could tell that if she did in fact reply to either accusation she would catch him off-guard. To save them the trouble of rehashing points that had been made when they'd first had to get the room, she chose to stay quiet, keeping her wish to herself as she stopped fighting against the coming sleep.
She was jolted right back awake when Shuichi got into the bed next to her in the now-darkened room, him initially sticking socked feet against her legs and making her curl up a bit tighter. He apologized for the contact and adjusted how he was laying so that he was under one less blanket than her, to give them more of a barrier between them so a similar incident didn't happen again, but his words fell on ears that couldn't be bothered to listen. Even with the barrier she could tell that he was right there, that if either of them rolled over they'd be on top of their unlikely bedmate, and she was hoping and praying that no such thing would happen.
But she knew she wasn't a delicate sleeper, and that if anything was going to go wrong while they were in bed it would be because of her thrashing, and the fear of making an enemy out of the detective beside her kept her awake much longer than she wanted to be. The sounds of the rain hitting the window at full force and his breathing kept her mind running, and yet she was unwilling to speak up and ask him if he was still awake. As her eyes adjusted to the darkened room she realized that their sleeping situation had sounded doable out loud, but in practice it wasn't going to work, but as she thought about admitting that she heard him clear his throat. "Kaede, I don't know how to say this without coming off as rude, but can you possibly share the blanket?" he asked in a whisper, his own exhaustion apparent in how he was talking. "It's freezing in here, and we don't even have the air on."
"Oh, yeah, sorry about that." She could agree that it was very cold, hence why she'd taken more of the blanket than she was supposed to, and as she relinquished some of it back to him she could feel the room's bitter air beginning to hit her again. Were people not supposed to be able to share the beds at that hotel platonically? Were they expected to be on each other for warmth to make it through the night? "I wish there were more blankets we could use, this isn't going to be fun to try to sleep through."
"It wasn't going to be fun anyway. Good night, Kaede."
Such short words with her, and yet she didn't know how to respond to them. "Y-yeah, good night to you too, Shuichi," she finally decided on saying, trying to settle into the bed now that she had less blanket that before. Somehow she made it work and was able to finally fall asleep, hoping that when morning came there would be good news and positive changes in the world around them.
Instead, she woke up to a still-dark room, her phone softly ringing where it sat on the bedside table, and Shuichi managing to stay asleep despite the distraction. She poked her arm out from under the blanket and grabbed her phone, checking to see who was calling her and finding that it was her manager. It was too early to justify trying to have any conversation with her, and so Kaede ignored the call, put the phone on silent, and set it back down, intending on falling asleep for a little bit longer. But just knowing that her manager, the person in charge of her career and several aspects of her life, was trying to check in on her made her mind feel uneasy. There was the chance that some other development had taken place overnight and that she was in danger where she was, but by choosing to ignore the call she wasn't going to find out until it was too late.
She had to be mindful about where she was and who she was with, and she was certain that if it was a serious matter, Shuichi would have also been being contacted by people concerned for his well-being. It wasn't clear how many friends he had, but he definitely had coworkers that he cared about, and at least one of them knew where he was because they'd been the one to arrange him driving her to her concert in the first place. He had to have a bunch of connections among the police and other detectives in Kibou, as well as surrounding cities, to get him in his current position, and yet no one was trying to reach out to him, which she used as a point to settle her racing mind a bit. Whatever her manager had wanted couldn't have been super important in that instance, and with that decided she was able to drift back off, intending on the next time she woke up to be at a much better time of morning.
It was still incredibly dim in the room when she was awake for the second time, but she didn't have the feeling that there was someone in bed next to her when she woke up, and that was when she rolled over to see Shuichi gone once again, without having bothered saying he was leaving in the first place. With the extra space in the bed now hers to use, she stretched out, her body sore from how she had been curled up to keep herself in check while sleeping. His side of the bed was cold, which was to be expected given that he was up and about somewhere outside of the room, but she didn't realize that she'd find it odd how cold it already was.
"Oh geez, I hope I didn't bully him out of the bed," she said to herself, mentally drafting an apology she could deliver to him if she was, in fact, the reason he'd already gotten up. "I warned him about how I sleep, but he could've told me that I was bothering him. I mean, I woke up once in the middle of the night and he was still there, he could've woken me up himself too."
Her thoughts almost immediately drifted to what had woken her up the first time, and she checked her phone to see if any further developments had been made in her sleep. The only missed call she had was from her manager, but there were several messages that were given urgent titles and that asked her to reply right away. The one that bothered her most was the one from her father, who she didn't regularly talk to and must have meant business if he was trying to contact her. With trembling fingers she opened that message first and saw that it was merely him asking her where she was and how she was doing, because he'd heard about the people being stranded in various places due to the storm and he had no idea if she was impacted by anything.
Sighing in relief, Kaede replied that she was in a small town (she couldn't even remember the name of the place) and that she was stuck there because of flooding issues, but that she was alive and staying at a hotel. She left out the part where she was sharing a room with a detective she'd only met the day before, not because her father would disapprove of her sharing a room with a stranger, but rather because she knew how he felt about detectives in general due to personal reasons. He didn't respond immediately but that was fine by her, because it gave her time to reply to everyone else asking her if she'd made it to her destination and where she was if she hadn't, and so when he messaged back that he was going to keep her in mind and to be safe, she was prepared for it.
After seeing his message and knowing that he'd been told a half-truth at best, she wanted to rectify her deceit and tell him the truth, but as long as he was content with things there was zero reason for her to cause any issues. Her father cared about her deep down, he was incredibly proud of what his little girl had become, but he wouldn't be able to say anything positive if he knew about Shuichi and the bed and the sleeping under the same blankets despite being strangers. Hell, she could barely keep things positive about that particular aspect in her mind, and she wasn't the one who had deep-rooted issues with detectives and police as a whole. "Once I'm out of here I'll never have to think about any of this again," she reminded herself quietly, trying to slow her racing mind. "I'm doing what I have to right now, but this isn't going to be what happens forever."
Next to where her phone had stayed overnight was the remote for the television, which she turned on after sitting up and adjusting how her top was sitting on her shoulders, covering up the straps to her bra after her rough night's sleep. The channel was the same as it had been the night before, which made sense but she was a bit surprised that Shuichi hadn't gone through looking for something else to watch to learn about their surroundings. It was a different reporter than it had been when she'd first watched, but in the background she could see that familiar face looking tired and ragged, almost as if her shift as the person on screen had just ended.
The man giving the report now was a lot more stern-voiced about the situation, barking out all of the information he had at a steady pace. "If you are anywhere close to a body of water and you can get to higher, safer ground, do it now," he said, slamming a fist into his other open hand with every word. "This is not a drill, it is do or die now, people. Places across the country are flooding rapidly, and until the rain lets up we cannot give you any estimate of when they'll stop flooding. Rivers, creeks, ponds, lakes, if it's water it's going to double, triple, even quadruple in size before this is over."
The seriousness in his voice made Kaede's stomach tighten more than it had already been, due to her having just woken up and having not eaten anything yet that morning, but she couldn't turn her attention away from the reporting, especially not when it shifted to pictures that viewers had sent in of damage in their area. A lot of the images came from places that she'd heard of but never been to, small towns and places along highways that wandering travelers stopped in, not anywhere that famous musicians ended up, but seeing them was still punches to her already-shaken core. Then came a picture of what was labeled as a missing bridge and she first thought that it was the bridge in the town she was currently in, but then more, different bridge pictures appeared and it became apparent that the flooding and raging waters had taken out a lot of bridges across the country.
When it cut back to the reporter, she had no idea if she'd seen anything for the area surrounding the hotel, but she did know that she'd seen a lot more flooding and destruction than she'd ever imagined she would, and to know that she was somewhere in the middle of the chaos was a lot to wrap her mind around. Perhaps her father wasn't quite at ease about knowing where she was as she'd assumed, if things really were as bad as everyone was painting them to be.
At the other side of the room, the door's lock unlatched and the door was pushed open, Shuichi walking in with his hat partially over his eyes and another outfit meant for investigating on his body. He'd gone down to the lobby to scope out what other guests were up to, and had found out roughly the same things that Kaede had just by watching the news, albeit at the cost of a lot of social interaction he never wanted. "You should see how many people are here right now," he said, as Kaede turned to greet him with a small, acknowledging nod. "It's kind of insane how many people came here to get away from the water, even though we got the last room."
"Is the flooding bad around here?" she asked, remembering that they were near the river but not recalling how close they were at all. "The guy on the news said to get to higher ground, so if this is the higher ground, I guess that would make sense, right?"
"This would, in fact, be the higher ground in the area, and yes, the flooding is pretty bad. That area we were stopped in because of the bridge being gone is completely underwater, and it's only getting worse." He grimaced, thinking about the homes and businesses that were submerged because of the rising waters, but reacted by pulling the brim of his hat down a bit further over his eyes. "We aren't in any danger here, but it may get to the point where this is the only place on this side of the river that isn't flooded, and since you can't leave town because of the road washing out…"
"We're not opening up floor space for more strangers to sleep on." Her response was decisive, and she wasn't even sure if that was what he was going for, but Kaede had let the guilt of sharing a bed with a detective go to her head and she wasn't going to make herself feel worse. "Sorry, but I can't handle having to awkwardly meet more people than just you on this trip."
His whole body shook for a second, as if her words sent a shiver down his spine that he couldn't stop, but he gave a firm nod once he'd collected himself. "Naturally. There are homes around here that have opened their doors to their neighbors, and those are above the potential flood level as well so people will have places to stay that aren't on the floor here. I was more worried about eating with all of these mouths and not a lot of food to fill them with. The management here thinks they've got about three days' worth of meals for this half of the town available to them, then things get a bit sketchy."
"Just what I wanted to hear, we're going to starve to death in a small town during a historic flood. Exactly the way I wanted to go." Her words were sarcastic, and she hoped that Shuichi could catch that, but one of Kaede's favorite things to do when she wasn't performing was to have grand meals where she could eat whatever she wanted, at someone else's expense. She'd already convinced herself that having to eat rationed meals where she didn't get to choose her food was okay, given the situation, but now that she knew she'd only get a few days to eat before she'd have nothing she was beginning to internally freak out. "I didn't even pack any kind of snacks in my bags to bring with me. Mostly because I forget I have them and then they get smashed and melted and…it's better if I just get things wherever I am, and now there's nothing I can even get?"
"Calm down." Two words, said loudly like a demand but timidly like he was scared of how she'd react to them. She looked at Shuichi and saw him taking his hat off as he fully came into the room, revealing that underneath it he'd snagged a couple of individually-wrapped muffins, and he took those and tossed them towards her. "I may or may not have done some research into who you are before I agreed to drive you, and I learned some things that you might not be proud to know are online about you."
"Honestly, whatever you found doesn't scare me," she replied, having caught the muffins and was already in the process of unwrapping one of them. "It's not like I do anything illegal or inappropriate in my spare time, and I don't have anyone to send nude pictures of myself to so those aren't a thing or anything like that."
Even though he was beyond flustered at her mentioning him having potentially seen naked images of her, Shuichi had to finish explaining what he'd started. "Yeah, uh, as it turns out…there's a lot of people out there who like crudely taking pictures of you playing piano and turning them into pictures of you trying to touch different food things inappropriately. Is eating something you talk about during concerts or something?"
"Not really, no." She had just been about to bite into the first muffin, but hearing him bring up such an absurd mental image made her set it down onto its wrapper and not want to try eating it again. Of course there were people out there doing that to her, she didn't fit the "traditional" image of what someone famous looked like and people had constantly criticized her for being a bit rounder around the edges ever since she'd found fame from her piano-playing talent. "Sounds like you stumbled upon some rude people's fat jokes and bought right into them, so, like, thanks for that."
"Whoa there, I didn't say I bought into anything about them. The muffins came from me reading a blog post someone made about you and things that you looked like you'd like. They were the only thing I could find downstairs in the lobby that was on that list." Shuichi's attempt to save the conversation from where he'd accidentally sent it seemed solid, but the way that Kaede glared at him and put both muffins on the bedside table told him that he hadn't been successful. "Come on, Kaede. Eat them."
"Why, so you can make fun of me for eating when you're not?"
"Listen, I already ate while I was downstairs. Bowl of oatmeal. Nothing special, but I didn't want to risk you not liking it if I made you one as well. Now please just eat so I know you're not starving all morning." His pleas sounded genuine, as did his reason for why he didn't have food of his own, but the whole idea of him finding people's posts about shaming her for her curves and using them as research was not sitting well inside of her. But she was hungry, and denying herself food made no sense when it was right there for her, so she ended up eating the opened muffin and saved the second one for later.
Once she'd eaten she expected that they'd get on with their day, but Shuichi did not seem to have anything in mind for them to do, not even talking about what else he'd learned down in the lobby. That led to awkward silences between them, her not having forgiven him for what he'd said and him not sure where there was to go after telling her about what he'd seen online. Eventually they decided on just sitting in the room watching the news and hearing about the destruction that the storm was causing all around them, with the only disruptions coming when they'd get up to stretch their legs, or when she got up to change into clothes less revealing than her pajamas. It was while she was coming back from doing that that she decided to look out the window, to see how hard the rain was still coming down outside.
The landscape she saw from that upper-floor hotel room was soggy and rain-drenched, and looked nothing like anything she'd seen before. The river was swollen, flooded far past its normally beautiful banks and calling all of the surrounding land its new home, and she could see rooftops of houses forming islands in the raging waters. The road—which she assumed was the one they'd driven into town on the night before—disappeared into the water on their side of the river and she couldn't see where it emerged out in the distance, due to how far the water had risen. Looking down into the hotel parking lot, she was happy to see that there wasn't much water that had collected, but there was enough that it was splashing up the sides of cars here and there.
"If you walk out the front door, there's some dry spots in the parking lot, but where it dips lower you can get puddles as high as, say, my knee," Shuichi said, noticing what Kaede was doing and how, exactly, her head was positioned, assuming where she was looking correctly without any questions. "I managed to get out to the car without too much in the way of flooding stopping me, and it's up on a bit higher spot in the lot so it'll be fine, but there are some unlucky people here whose cars will be water-damaged or destroyed."
"That's horrible, I feel so sorry for those people!" Shaking her head as she tried to imagine just how high that water really was, and how it would go a little bit above her knee if she were to step in those puddles he'd referred to, Kaede wished that something could be done to help everyone who was going to lose their car in the rain, but she knew that there were far too many people in that boat even for her to help. "I'm glad that your car isn't going to end up like all of theirs, you're gonna need that to get us out of here."
"Uh, yeah, about that, I don't think I'll be driving us out of here anytime soon, as bad as that is to have to say." He was fidgeting with the end of his hat again, a nervous tic that Kaede had noticed was one that he frequently had when he was talking about anything that wasn't simply kind and gentle. "They're saying it'll take weeks for the flooding to go down, and with all the damage that's taken place due to the rain, there's no telling when they'll be able to get the roads usable again. The bridge problem is bad enough, but there's been multiple landslides over the road going the other way and…you get it, I'm sure."
What he was trying to tell her made perfect sense in her mind, but she did not want to have to believe a word of it. "No, I don't get it. Shuichi, you can't be telling me that I'm stuck here, with you, for longer than I was even gonna be out of town doing shows! By the time we get to leave, it's gonna be time for be to go back to Kibou and plan my next tour and I don't want to do that yet, I want to do my shows I already agreed to play!"
"I didn't say we were going to be here that long, calm down!" Speaking with a laugh, Shuichi could obviously hear the rising panic in Kaede's voice and wanted her to know that things were nowhere near as bad as she was making them seem. "It's going to be just long enough for them to be able to safely fly into the area to pick people up. The general idea is that they're going to wait until the rain is completely out of the picture and the river isn't getting worse, so that they can bring in supplies for those who need them, and to start getting people out. Since you're easily the most famous and popular here, you'd probably be one of the first ones airlifted."
"That's good for my fans," she said, letting the panic subside in her chest a little. "I can't disappoint them by having to cancel everything for the coming months. Sure, there are tons of people who can play piano, but there's only one Kaede Akamatsu who can do it like the classical pianists of old!"
He didn't know if there was an appropriate way to react to such a bragging statement, so Shuichi chose to shrug it off and move on. "So you'd be first out, along with any sick people or families with children, and then they'd get everyone else who wants or needs to get out, which means I'd be around longer, but that's not a huge problem." His hands came off of his hat and began picking at the front of his black shirt, still anxiously moving about something or other. "It's not like my reason for needing to go anywhere will still be there when this is over. Your fans will still exist, my crime scene won't."
"Right, but maybe detectives who are in the city will have been able to look it over for you? I mean, it's not like you're the only detective in the world." She smiled at him, hoping that her pointing that out would help him accept what was going to happen.
That was not in the cards, though, and he proved that with his response, which came in an exasperated breath. "I'm not the only detective in the world, but I'm the one that they think could piece any of the wild stuff about this crime spree together! I'm failing everyone in the country by not solving this crime, we've got a dangerous criminal prowling the streets that I can't stop because I'm here with you, not looking at yet another thing they've done!" By his last words his voice was cracking and she could tell he was almost in tears, and her reaction was immediately to go and hug him, but he pushed her off and rejected the physical display of care. "No, don't hug me, this is why I'm not good enough to work on my own. Every time they put me in a position of authority I go and screw it up."
"I don't think anyone could say you screwed a thing up about any of this," she quietly said, giving him an air-hug in lieu of a real one, just to be mindful of how he felt. "You didn't ask for the rain to fall like it did, or for the bridge to collapse, or any of that. It just kind of happened to you."
"I'm the one who chose to drive in the first place! I could've just flown the distance, gotten there before the storm got bad, and I'd be at the scene right now looking it over. And you…you could've flown too, and that would've solved your problems as well." Tears were brimming in Shuichi's eyes, his frustration with the situation reaching a level that he could no longer contain. "It was a dumb choice to think driving was the way to go with this, and now we're both stuck accepting that we screwed up."
"No, that's not true! If we'd screwed up, we'd be dead in the water trying to jump the river or something last night. We did what we needed to do with the choices we'd made, and no one was expecting any of this to happen." Pressing a finger to her lips, Kaede could still faintly smell the muffin she'd eaten on it but she couldn't let that distract her from trying to be inspirational. "And might I remind you that flights weren't going yesterday because of the weather? So we wouldn't have gotten there anyway."
"That's true, but I'd rather be stuck in the airport at home than in this hotel room." The words with you were lingering on Shuichi's tongue but he felt he'd more than driven the fact that he didn't like being stuck with her into her skull. She was plenty nice, if a bit disillusioned with the way the normal world worked, but he didn't know her and he felt like any attempt at changing that would just end in frustration. "At least if I was home, I could call on a friend or two to come spend time with me while I waited to leave."
She knew that changing Shuichi's mind on the matter was not really going to work in her favor, and upsetting him was the least favorable thing to do in her position. "Well, you may not have any of your friends, but you've got me, and I'm sure I'm better than nothing."
"Honestly, being alone would be preferable."
It stung to hear, but was acceptable coming from him. "I can understand that. You totally seem like the stoic, loner guy who doesn't want to talk to people unless you start the conversation. I'll keep that in mind for the rest of the time we're here together. That is, unless you're gonna tell me you found somewhere else to stay."
"No, I'm here with you in this room as long as we're calling this hotel home." Shuichi let go of his shirt and wiped his eyes, the tears coming off onto the back of his hand with ease, and he dried his now-wet hands on his pants. "I'm sorry, this is just a horrible situation for us to be in and I'm trying my best to handle it but it's hard, you know? I don't do well with people and yet here I am, stuck trying to make things work with you."
"If it makes you feel any better, I don't do super well with people either. Not because I don't like people, but because I spend so much time touring with my piano and my show that I can't really keep in touch with others easily. I've got friends, but most of them I haven't seen in a long time and…yeah, I get not doing well with people." She was speaking the truth, as far as she believed it to be, and she could only hope that her honesty would help him out a little. "I did see some of my friends while I was in Kibou for the past couple weeks, squeezed in between rehearsals and shows and meet and greets and all that. It was really nice to play catch-up with them, but at the same time it wasn't."
"Sounds like a famous-person problem to me," he mumbled, not wanting to come off as rude for thinking it but also not wanting her to miss out on learning that her position was not at all one he connected with. "My friends see me all the time because I work with them, because we all need money to get by and most of us have talents that the police force in town could make use of."
She inhaled sharply, wanting to correct him about how what he was saying wasn't true and that plenty of people had problems like she did, but once again the thought that upsetting him wasn't the best choice crossed her mind and she had to back down. There had to be another way to approach things that would work with him, and after giving it a moment's thought she figured she had something to attempt. "Okay, that's fair and all, but can I ask you something? Move to a different topic, kinda?" His blank, empty stare that he gave her was his only answer, but she took it as a positive and moved on. "You work for the police in Kibou, obviously, because that's why you're here with me, but you're a detective, so doesn't that mean you work with Kyoko Kirigiri?"
"How do you know who Kyoko is?" he asked, surprised to hear his informal boss' name in conversation with Kaede, of all people. "She works with me sometimes, but her place is at the main headquarters and not at the station I'm in charge of."
"I know her through some people, I'm not super familiar with her but I could definitely pick her out of a crowd. Like, a crowd of people, not a crowd of fans, that'd be weird to do." Kaede almost wondered if it would be worth explaining how she knew Kyoko, but the way that Shuichi seemed curious, looking at her with his head tilted slightly to the side, it was clear that it was what needed to be done. "There's someone she hangs around with outside of work that I know, and then there's someone else she's friends with that I've got a mutual friend with. Sure, both of my contacts are rich or famous, but it's something, and it's how I know your detective leader there in Kibou."
"Hm, I suppose it's something." Shuichi didn't sound amused by her revelation, but he also didn't seem like he was bothered by it, even though his initial surprise had definitely worn off now that he knew the truth. "She does have a rather prominent name and a background that would allow her to rub elbows with people who are much more famous than she is. Having the headmaster of a prestigious school for a father would do that, even though…well, I'm sure you know how that situation is."
"Not particularly. I know her father was the headmaster for Hope's Peak Academy, but that's about it." She was speaking the truth, and Kaede almost regretted bringing Kyoko up in the first place, now that she was making it obvious that she didn't know much about her at all. "I knew of the school before that too, they once sent my parents a letter trying to recruit me but by then I was already dedicated to my current path and they weren't going to strip me of my dreams just to go to a good high school."
His insides tightening hearing what she had to say, Shuichi wanted to have the strength to put her in her place about that sort of selfishness. He'd heard of the school as well, long before he'd met Kyoko and known about her connections there, but he hadn't been given the opportunity to attend such a well-to-do school. "That was nice of them, you've really made a career out of being a classical pianist," he said, even though he didn't know the extent of her piano-playing skills and if he was actually being genuine with his praise. "You wouldn't have wanted to attend anyway, from what I understand. The place was crawling with weirdos and other unsavory people."
"As if either of our professions keep us away from those kind of people." All Kaede could think about were the creeps she'd encountered before and after her shows, guys asking her to marry them and girls wanting to show off their assets to her because of their love. She could only assume that Shuichi's life as a detective had him going up against some real crazies as well, on top of the criminals he was investigating. "But I wouldn't have done well in actual classrooms by that point, all of my tutoring got done at pianos so that I could practice playing every chance I had."
"Whereas my learning happened in under-funded classrooms with far too many students, yet another major difference in the lives we've led." Now he was beginning to sound annoyed, even though Kaede didn't think that talking about her special brand of schooling would be something he could get upset about. She apologized for talking about things like she had and hoped they could move on, and move on Shuichi did, by turning his attention back to the ever-present television broadcast. "I hope that things clear up ahead of their schedule, I don't want to be stuck here with everyone for weeks."
She hadn't seen the potential crowd of people down in the lobby, which made her interested in knowing why he felt that way in particular. "Do you mind if I go downstairs to see how everyone's doing?" she asked, watching him jolt upright and shake his head furiously. "Oh, wow, you do mind that I do things. What, do you not want to lose me or something? I promise I won't be gone long."
"Kaede, as long as we're together you're my responsibility, and with how many people are down there I don't know if you joining them is the safest option. The last thing I want is for you to get mobbed when people realize there's a famous pianist here and that she could play music for them." He covered his mouth as soon as the last words left his lips, and hearing her gasp as she caught what that meant let him know he was doomed. "I mean, there's a piano down in the lobby, someone was trying to play it while I was there and I…thought of how you'd appreciate knowing it's there."
"I don't care about my safety if there's a piano here," she told him, completely serious about how she felt. "I'm going to entertain the masses, maybe calm them down a little, make everyone happier with the fact that they're stuck here. Come on, Shuichi, let's go show everyone what real music sounds like!"
He continued shaking his head, before heaving a sigh. "No, I can't stop you if that's what you want to do. I'll go with just to make sure everyone keeps their hands off of you, because I do need to make sure you stay alive, but I can't stop you from doing what you wish." His eyes falling onto her, he gave her a quick once-over, checking to make sure that she was appropriately dressed for going into such a large crowd. "I think you're decent enough to make this happen. Perhaps people won't even recognize you, without all your makeup and fancy clothes and whatnot."
"Oh, they'll recognize me the second I start playing music," she assured him, knowing the level of her own talent and how she was much better than any amateur pianist could claim to be. "Let's go down right now so I can show off, my fingers are itching to hit the keys!"
Despite the fact that he was much lither than she was, she was able to get to the door before he was, excitement pulsing through her veins and coming out as her being unable to quite stand still. They left the room together, him making sure he had the key to get back in on his person so that they could return when she was done having her fun, and once again she beat him to their next destination. Exactly like he'd said, there were many people crowded into the lobby, but none of them seemed to be noticing anyone joining them, although Kaede's loud yelp when she heard the badly-played piano music did draw some attention. "Don't do anything brash," he warned, reaching to grab her arm but stopping himself because he wasn't sure how the contact would go over. "It's on the other side of the lobby, but get over there carefully and patiently, please."
She disregarded exactly what he'd said and pushed her way through the crowd, using her shoulders to knock people to the side as she looked for the piano to save it from its currently horrible player. The culprit turned out to be a small child, with a beginner's book of sheet music spread out in front of him, but Kaede didn't care that the kid was trying to learn. "Hey, uh, do you think I can play?" she asked him, watching him stop indignantly and turn to look at her—and have his jaw drop when he saw that it was a trained pianist talking to him. He snatched his music and slid off the bench without any fuss, letting Kaede sit in his place (although after having to push the bench back a bit, to get her legs in between it and the base of the piano). She cracked her knuckles, put a big smile on her face, and set her fingers to the keys, taking in the fact that she was going to get to play in such an unexpected place before she started hitting notes that she had committed to memory for years.
At once, with the sound of her technical skill filling the room, everyone quieted down and began looking for the source of the music. Shuichi was in awe of how the entire atmosphere had changed in a split second, but he too found himself looking at where the music was coming from, seeing Kaede in her natural state with her speed and accuracy of hitting her notes. He was able to get to her side fairly easily now that everyone was standing relatively still, and once he was there he was turning around looking at all of the staring eyes facing back in their direction. "How in the world are you this good?" he asked quietly, not wanting his voice to overshadow the music that he was being treated to. "This is otherworldly, you really sound like a classical pianist."
"That would be because I am one, silly!" Her answer was whispered, and if Shuichi hadn't been so close to her he wouldn't have heard it. She was completely at ease playing, to the point that she could talk and keep playing even without music in front of her, and the people there in the lobby were slowly beginning to recognize her. When the song finished a roar of applause filled the air, and Kaede turned around to smile at everyone who'd been watching her; a chant started up for her to play another song and she followed the demand, turning back around and beginning a much sadder-sounding piece that had everyone silent in seconds once again.
Shuichi wanted to continue playing bodyguard for her, but at the same time he was using his vantage point to look around the lobby and see what was happening. Almost everyone's attention was on Kaede, people taking full advantage of having such a famous person in their midst to get a free concert from, but there were a couple back towards the front desk that weren't paying any attention to the music. He tapped Kaede's shoulder gently once, to let her know he was moving away, before setting off through the crowd, his destination to see what was going on with those few people.
"You really weren't kidding when you said that there was a pianist here," the man standing behind the front desk said when he saw Shuichi coming towards him, crossing his arms in front of him. "Between you and the brat up here last night, I should've known you were telling the truth but anyone can claim to be a pianist, y'know?"
"I'm glad you can believe me now, since she's down here playing her music for everyone and taking all our minds off the rain for a moment." It would've been a lie if Shuichi said he hadn't expected Kaede to rush downstairs the moment she learned there was a piano in the lobby, and he'd wanted her to do it so that he could have this exact conversation. "Now that you know I'm being serious about Kaede Akamatsu being at the hotel, can you please do us a favor and get her a room of her own? Someone famous like her needs their own space."
The man laughed, shaking his head as he leaned over to a woman leaning against the counter, who was watching Shuichi with a smug smile. "Wish I could do that, but I'm sure you've heard that the place is fully booked. What am I supposed to do, expect someone to give up the room they booked to accommodate her? There's nowhere she can go aside from staying with you, unless you wanna shove her into someone else's room."
"No, I couldn't do that to her." Glancing back over the crowd to where Kaede was still going through her second song, Shuichi felt a bit guilty for continuing wanting to get out of sharing a room with her, but he needed his alone time. He lived alone for a reason, he worked relatively alone for a reason, he did most investigations alone for a reason, and this experience was shoving him far out of his comfort zone in that regard. But even though she was still a stranger to him, he couldn't push her out of his life when he'd agreed to let her be in it for a little while, especially when she'd done nothing wrong.
"You're a lucky fella, I hope you know," the man continued, side-eyeing the woman he was close to as he spoke. "Most men your age would kill to get to share a bed with someone famous like her, and here you are considerin' giving her up for some reason. Don't take what you've been given for granted, detective. You'll regret it if you do." The woman nodded along with his words, before turning to kiss the man, and it was while they were in the middle of their romantic embrace that Shuichi decided he should go back over to Kaede to continue protecting her.
When he returned to standing behind her, the first thing he noticed was that people had started putting money down on the bench next to her, tipping her for her musical service. Everyone had to have known who she was, it wasn't exactly normal for someone to be so talented at the piano, yet they were still showering her in money, as well as loud applause every time she paused to change to a different song running through her mind. In spending the time listening to her play there, he could understand why people wanted to see her in concert so badly, and why she'd been elevated to the level of fame she'd attained in the music world in the past few years. He made the mental note to ask her about some of her favorite songs sometime when she abruptly stopped playing, her hands curled up into tight fists that she drew in closer to her body. "I can't keep going," she mumbled, knowing that Shuichi was right there to hear her. "My fingers are locking up, I didn't stretch them before playing and I can't risk damaging them."
"What do you want me to do about it?" he asked her, as the crowd began chanting for her to continue. "I'm not loud enough to tell everyone that message. You've got to do it yourself."
She huffed, before standing up from the piano, knocking some of the money onto the floor without realizing it. "Hey, everyone, I'm super sorry but I can't go on right now, I'll come down and play again tonight for you all if that makes it any better, but right now I've got to…" She waved her fists around, narrowly missing knocking Shuichi in the back of the head with one of them. "I've got to make sure I don't hurt my hands. Sorry again!"
The little boy from before, who'd been using the piano as his personal practice area, walked in front of her and looked up with stars in his eyes. "Miss Akamatsu, can I try playing again?" His question was innocent and pure, and she smiled at him before gesturing for him to take the bench, letting him resume what he'd already started, but now as a follow-up to someone that he clearly recognized and adored.
They went back upstairs to whispers from people asking who Shuichi was, or from people so shocked to see Kaede there at their hotel that they didn't know what to do. "That's totally going to end up on every news station everywhere, but I think it was worth it to make that kid's day," Kaede decided when they got back into their room, the door tightly latched and secured after entry. "I sure do love having such young fans, everyone wants to pretend that classical music is for old folks only but that kid just proves that wrong."
"Yeah, you really seemed to please him by existing." Some of the whispers he'd heard as they were leaving the lobby had finally started to linger in Shuichi's mind, but he didn't know how to deal with any of them beyond dwelling too much on them. He'd heard him get called some mystery man, or some illicit lover, and neither of those titles fit him in the current situation but he had no way to change people's perception of him. As far as anyone was aware, he was there to hook up with Kaede and that was the extent of their relationship, which could put them both in gossip magazines for ages until something else scandalous happened, and just the thought of being newsstand fodder made him shudder. His professional image could be damaged by those sorts of rumors, to the point that he could lose his job and credibility, all for a complete misunderstanding.
He was brought back to reality by Kaede waving a hand in front of his face, making him blink a few times to re-orient himself there in the hotel room. "Hello, earth to Shuichi! I was asking you if you'd ever heard some of those songs played like that before, but you kind of spaced out and I couldn't tell if you were listening."
"Er, sorry about that. I hadn't heard anything quite like what you were playing, even though I know I recognized some of those songs. How did you do that without any music to read?" He didn't know much about how musicians worked but he knew that they tended to need their notes laid out in front of them, something that Kaede hadn't had, and she quickly dove into explaining her process and how she was so familiar with those versions of those songs that she could play them from memory. "Huh, that's really neat. Didn't know that people playing piano could do that."
"Most can't," she admitted with a smile, "but that's what I get for being the piano freak that I am. Just one of my many talents relating back to music, I guess." It was looking at her after that where he realized that behind the smile she was giving, her eyes were teeming with sadness, and he didn't know how to address that without coming off as prying. By the time she next spoke, the look was gone and she was back to being chipper as always. "I'm so glad that I could do that for those people, be such a bright spot in their kinda bad day, and honestly? Hearing them happy made me not so upset about all of this happening to us."
"I'm glad to hear it, can't say the same for me but it's something." Shuichi wished he could take even a portion of Kaede's optimism and positive attitude for himself, but he knew that he was not going to change his mindset on anything. He still wanted to be alone, he didn't want to have to keep being in the same space as her, but at least now they were talking without it being primarily negative things being said. As they settled back down into the room, the television on as background noise to keep them updated on the outside world, the thought kept crossing his mind to ask her more about what she was passionate about, but he kept pushing it out because he didn't want to have that conversation. Sure, things weren't quite as awkward between them as they had been before, but he didn't want her to start thinking he enjoyed her company.
They left the room several times that day, once to go down to the lobby at lunchtime and again at dinnertime, and then Kaede went down later in the evening for an encore at the piano, giving Shuichi the time alone he so desperately craved. It wasn't the existence they wanted to be leading but it was the one that they were having to take control of, and they were doing their best to make the most out of the poor situation. After she'd finished her playing, she came back to the room to see him sitting in the desk chair, watching the television with enraptured eyes that didn't budge when she'd opened the door, and rather than interrupt his focus she grabbed her pajamas and went to take a shower, preparing herself to tuck in for the night.
The moment the water turned on, she was leaning against the sink counter, tears bubbling from her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. "I can't keep this up," she sobbed, trying to stay quiet enough that the sound of the water would drown her out. "Especially not when my parents find out that I'm here with him, and that he's a detective, and that we're sharing a bed and…and…" Her next word never came, because she began crying too hard to speak, her sobs becoming wheezing coughs that ripped Shuichi's attention from the news report to investigate what was going on.
Without letting her know he was there, he leaned against the bathroom door to listen to what was going on, thinking that something was wrong with Kaede and needing to understand the situation before any actions were taken. "I know that he's here as a favor to me, but I didn't ask for this," she continued, his ears perking at the use of the pronoun that he knew was referring back to him. "I should've told them I could find my own way, or that I'd do the drive but not with a detective. This is just going to ruin everything and I don't know what to do about it. I'm betraying…no, worse, I'm stomping on your memory, and I hate myself for it."
He stepped back from the door, confused about what he'd heard because as far as he knew, he hadn't done a single thing wrong. Yet there Kaede was, crying in the bathroom about how being there with him was so harmful to the memory of someone. Curiosity began to overtake Shuichi's mind, but he couldn't exactly admit to having heard anything she'd said when she wanted her private time to let her façade break, and so he had to remind himself that he was a detective and that he could get to the bottom of things without being outright about them. As long as he was going to be there with Kaede, however long it really was, he could work to piece together whatever had her so upset and make her see that she didn't need to feel guilty about it. In the meantime, he'd work extra hard to make sure that their bed-sharing stayed completely separate and platonic, and that he overstepped as few boundaries with her as he possibly could.
Having heard what he had made things a bit more challenging when Kaede did finally come out of the bathroom, freshly showered and acting like nothing was wrong. He chose to address the issue by falling back into his stoic behavior, ignoring her in favor of the television screen even as she began making herself comfortable in the bed for a second night together. "Aren't you going to sleep sometime?" she asked him, no sign of any sort of crying evident in her voice, as well as a complete lack of acting like she didn't want to talk to him despite what she'd been saying to herself. "I'm going to fall asleep here soon and if you're not in bed when that happens, I'm going to end up waking up again."
"If you're asking me to go to bed now, just say it that way," he replied, earning himself a huffy rewording of her question that fit his mold. He turned the news off and hit the lights in the room, darkening everything except for the area around the window, where the ambient sound of raindrops kept its still-steady pace. As he tucked in beside her, their barrier of a single blanket still present and doing its job well, he wondered why she was pretending like nothing was wrong when he knew what he'd heard her saying.
It might have been her not wanting to cause issues while they didn't know how much time they'd have to spend together, but all Shuichi could think about until he fell asleep to the sounds of the rain and Kaede's gentle breathing was that she secretly wanted nothing to do with him, and everything that she'd said and done was a lie. He regularly rubbed elbows with liars, but they tended to be much more up-front about their lack of honesty; how much did she think she was going to get away with by lying about how she felt? She seemed like she had no intentions of giving him the truth, and he couldn't let her know what he'd heard, so things were going to be at an impasse until she said something she couldn't recover from.
That hypothetical moment didn't come in the following days, though, as they learned how to handle their current lifestyle and the strange quirks there were to it. The lobby never emptied and always seemed to be more bustling every time they went down into it, whether it was for meals or for Kaede to spend time playing the piano, and even after the rain finally cleared two days after the initial flooding it seemed that people were using the hotel as their safe rally point. She didn't seem to care about all of the extra attention and praise she was given with her impromptu performances, and he kept a close eye on her every time she played just to maintain his role as her guardian, but nothing out of the ordinary every seemed to happen to them during those first few days.
If being stuck sharing a room at a hotel with someone who'd been a stranger and who was withholding some kind of secret grudge against him could be seen as "nothing out of the ordinary," at any rate, but Shuichi was mostly glad that nothing else had gone wrong. As long as things managed to stay peaceful and calm, that was what mattered—until he was finally called back from his workplace and given some insight onto what kind of nonsense had been happening there.
A/N: I'm glad people are enjoying this so far!