Takagi was a very careful man.
A natural tendency to be cautious, hang back and observe and protect himself had always been in his nature, and helped him excel at a work where careful deductions and sample gathering was needed. Of course, he still had his moments of needless male bravery and stupidity - possibly caused by that acrid stuff Satou-san made and insisted was coffee. But he usualyl realised them as foolish later on, and had the grace to reprimand himself and go back to his careful lifestyle.
He treated much everything as if it was behind a thin, fine layer of glass - he wanted nothing to imede his progress, but he also didn't want to shatter that fragile wall. Whether it be carefully working a lock from the other side of a window in one of the Sleeping Kogorou's deductions, or treading around the invisible glass of unspoken emotions between him and Satou-san, or trying to search for the truth in little Conan-kun's bright blue eyes behind a pair of flimsy (and yet strong, he'd never seen the things break once...) glasses...everything was glass to Takagi, and he handled it as such.
Chiba had once told him that he was too careful, that sometimes you had to break the outside to get to the goodies inside, like a pinata or those strange little chocolate balls filled with American candy that Yumi liked.
Takagi had replied that he wasn't quite sure he wanted the goodies just yet.
Oh, when it came to murders, he'd break the wall happily enough - to catch a murderer and expose justice. It was one of the few times he could break that glass - when he could run after a criminal and not worrying about treading on glass shards.
He couldn't break the wall between him and Satou-san. He was too scared to find out if behind the wall really held those goodies like Chibi said, or if it held a much worse surprise, like that silly snake-in-a-can that even Satou-san had ambushed herself with.
Likewise with Conan-kun. Takagi sometimes really didn't want to know what lurked behind those thin walls of glasses that served as visionary aids - he halfway suspected they were fake and Conan-kun didn't need them - didn't want to know what secret the small boy held. And he didn't particularily feel like going to the afterlife just yet, which was the only place the boy would tell him willingly.
It was a dilemma. He wanted the prizes. But he didn't want to hamr the walls, destroy them, and maybe even find out there hadn't been any prizes at all.
So Takagi sighed, slid on his gloves and the infamous Sleeping Kogorou gave him another set of instructions - this time dealing with a delicate glass vase, it was always glass - and left the glass walls intact.
He didn't want to jinx his own walls by breaking others.
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