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One of Hakuba's hidden hobbies was that he rather enjoyed sewing.

Not embroidery or knitting or those strange little circle-thing women all seemed to adore, but just taking a piece of clothes and fashioning an article of clothing out of it was a sastifying experience.

It wasn't a hobby he admitted to the public - Kuroba would never let him live it down, for one - but he enjoyed it nonetheless.

Hakuba was also rather dense. It was a fault he recognized in himself, and always tried to fix. Despite his booksmarts, however, he knew he had problems thinking outside his box, in being creative. He got stuck in a rut of certain ways of thinking, and was a creature of habit. It was definitely a fault - hadn't he been completely wrong in that one murder case because he was so used to Kid's techniques he had assumed the murderer had used them as well?

He wasn't all that creative. He was fairly dense. Compared to the other two detectives on Kid's trail - that small Edogawa boy was a detective, it couldn't be missed, not with that steady gaze and intensity and hadn't he been the one to name the real murderer in that case? And the missing Kudo Shinichi...you'd have to be blind to not notice the way Kuroba's muscles tensed when that name was mentioned at the name of the one detective to corner him. Kudo made Kuroba nervous. Edogawa Conan got the same reaction.

Compared to them, Hakuba wasn't even a threat to Kuroba. It was in the casual way Kuroba treated him, dismissed him, the blatant disrespect he gave him. It was in the gaze the other boy too often levelled towards him - flat and cold, a gaze that said nothing but "You can't touch me, you're not on my level"...

Hakuba would wipe that look off Kuroba's face one day, he was sure of it. He would become the boy's equal.

Creativity was the key. Hakuba was no slouch, and had decided to investigate the detectives Kuroba did respect, to see what set them apart from the others. Both Edogawa and Kudo enjoyed writing and drawing, it was rumored. Even that arrogant Kansai detective Hattori had a habit of singing to himself - a trait Hakuba had been ready to strangle him for during the one case they shared.

So Hakuba had to learn creativity. In his dogmatic mind, it was simple. Learn creativity to understand how Kid thought. Nevermind that creativity was a talent - Hakuba didn't waste time on things like "inborn talents". Hard work would overcome all.

Or so he thought.

He'd tried to attempt writing and drawing first, the traditonal creative arts.

Kuroba had laughed him out of the classroom at his first attempt. To be honest, Hakuba couldn't recognize what he'd been trying to draw either. Perhaps a bird...or a cat...or a tentacle monster from the depths of space, which is what it ended up resembling.

Kuroba had sat down then, smoothing out the paper and picking up his pencil, had quickly sketched out something next to Hakuba's drawing with quick, graceful movements of his pencil, before smirking and handing the paper back to the British teen. A fairly accurate, if cartoonish, Watson glared back at him from the paper. So he had been trying to draw a bird, then.

Writing went no better. He just couldn't write stories - they all ended up reading like reports or some other scientific drabble. Singing...well, let's just say that the entire class had threatened dismemberment, decapitation, and castration no him all at once if he attempted to sing again. He hadn't thought he'd been that bad...

And so, Hakuba had, in a fling of desperation, picked up sewing.

He wasn't bad at it - his precision was good for one thing, and that was measuring clothes and making the tiny stitches in just the right spot to make quality clothes. It was just the patterns he had problems with. He used the same ones over and over, and when he tried to do something different, he ended up staring at the roll of fabric in his hands, a complete blank as to what he should make.

Hakuba supposed that's what a lack of creativity meant. He was never able to come up with anything new.

And it led to other problems. Like now.

He had been working with a black material which had random red scattered over it. For the most part, due to the pattern of the shirt he was making, the black had been on the seams, so he'd used black thread. Simple.

But now, as teh red boldly emblazoned the front, he was faced with a dilemma. Use the black thread, and have the threads stand out like small ants marching up the red parts? Or use the red thread and end up looking like fresh cuts lined the black?

It was frustrating, and irritatiing, and Hakuba supposed this was why he'd never catch Kid. He just couldn't solve problems creatively, come up with new solutions all his own.

It was a slightly bitter experience.

Until, out of nowhere, a thought came to him.

Why not use both?

Dropping the colors of thread he'd been holding, Hakuba turned to dig through his fancy thread basket. Finally finding what he'd been looking for, he pulled the spool out and examined it.

It was multi-color thread - read and black, of course. It would be different, and unexpected to use it on seams...something never done.

But perhaps that's just what it needed. Something different.

With a small smile, Hakuba threaded his needle and began stitching up the front of the shirt.

Perhaps he wasn't so hopeless, after all.

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