Reluctant Hero

4. Kaito's abnormality

The difference between doing things out of good will and being obliged to do something was that the former was much more motivating to complete. If Kaito's lonely, 65 years old neighbour wished to spend his birthday with his grandson but couldn't because he had a security guard shift at a museum, Kaito was more than willing to volunteer his help. But if Shinichi asked him to disguise as a security guard for five minutes as a favour, Kaito needed at least a three days notice or there would be no room for discussion.

This context applied to many other things too.

"You want to what?"

Kaito squinted into the webcam. "I know you heard me. Your wifi is better than mine."

His mother frowned back at the screen and sipped onto her glass of wine on her patio. Kaito wasn't sure which house was that, but it got to be one of the three she had in Las Vegas. "I just want to confirm it again because it sounded ridiculous." She replied.

"It may sound ridiculous, but coming from you and all your other requests, what I'm asking is the bare minimum." He managed to say as a retort. "Don't worry, I'll return them back to you in a month's time."

Them, a.k.a the two Van Gogh's paintings he stolen six months ago.

Long story short, his mother asked Kaito to steal two of the owner's favourite paintings because of some old feud, and that the owner once had the balls to trick his mother before. Kaito got to take his hat off for that—to know that someone out there was still living and breathing after possibly tricking his mother out of anything—but that was exactly what went wrong in the first place. What the owner shouldn't have done was to land himself on the bad side of a woman who handled justice in her own ways, moreover when her son was a fantastic thief, too.

"I'm not worried about the two paintings; I couldn't care less about them. What I'm interested in is the reason for your request." His mother said, still eyeing him like she wasn't sure if he was the culprit who ran over her non-existent dog.

Kaito shrugged. "Nothing much."

Really, it wasn't anything much. Just for fun? For the tease? For the sake of nothing?

Bored?

His mother narrowed her eyes again. He was originally prepared for at least two hours of interrogation, but surprisingly, her face relaxed and she took another sip out of her wine. "Fine, seeing how you rarely ask for anything from me anyway."

"Okay. Thanks." Kaito managed to say without a heave of a sigh.

"I'll send the paintings over in a day or two." She informed, before proceeding to talk about how wonderful the weather was recently and that she wished she had a couple of grandchildren over to play. It wasn't hard for Kaito to fake believable excuses so that he could get out of the naggy reminders to get a girlfriend, but when he remembered the two paintings were still with his mother, and that he didn't want to risk her changing her mind, he stayed on to hear four hours long of her mother's stories/conversation.

The paintings arrived in three days as promised, and a couple of hours after clearing the evidence and fingerprints, Kaito sent them back to the owner. Like what he expected and hoped, the owner immediately celebrated his paintings' return by hosting an exhibition for it, just because he was rich and had all the time in the world to spare to do such things.

Two weeks later (while suffering from the intense curiosity to know what Aoko's reaction towards this entire news was), Kaito disguised as one of the guards who was on medical leave and loitered around the floor of the two Van Gogh's paintings. If what Aoko said was true, then it shouldn't be long before she—

Ah, there she was.

Ten minutes after the exhibition hall opened, Aoko was here, in her cute jumpers and clutching onto her phone elatedly as she wandered through the hall with tiny skips and excitement that belonged to a high school student in love rather than an adult of her age. Trailing behind her was a lady with spectacles, who was stifling her yawn every five seconds and trying to keep up with Aoko's enthusiasm. No wonders to that; this was way too early for anyone to be looking at paintings.

Anyone except Nakamori Aoko, apparently.

She was rather amusing to look at the entire time (which made a good worth to all the trouble Kaito went through); Her light giggles that echoed in the hall, her random oohhs and ahhhs when she spotted something interesting after staring at the painting for a couple of minutes… And sometimes when she walked to a certain spot and the ceiling lights made her eyes shine in some kind of spark that couldn't be found in the whole milky way, Kaito had to look away for a moment—

Just before he got pulled in too deep.

A/n: thank you all for the reviews! Hope you all are liking this dual POVs so far.. and yes! to the anon right there, I've seen the trailer to the new movie! Can't wait for it to come next year :')