Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.

Pairing: KaitoxShinichi

Chapter Rating: T

Warning: None

Collection Summary: No matter where or what they are, their lives are always entwined. KaiShin stories in fantasy settings.

Chapter Summary: Being a resourceful demon, Kaito knows just how to secure what he wants. A tale from Shinichi's previous lifetime.

The Thing About Contracts

[Demon Verse]

He saw the child sitting beneath a tree in a modest house's back garden, reading a book. It was the cowlick that caught his attention. He had been taking a morning stroll on the winds, invisible to the human eye, familiarizing himself with this new city where, Akako had promised him, his beloved would be reborn.

And there Shinichi was. Kaito would know that cowlick anywhere. And those large, sparkling blue eyes more beautiful than any sapphire were exactly as he remembered. He would have dropped into the garden and introduced himself right then and there if it weren't for one thing.

His Shinichi was only six. Any intelligent child—and his Shinichi was always intelligent—would not react favorably to a strange man suddenly dropping uninvited into his home.

It was a pure, spur of the moment whim.

Kaito landed just outside the garden's back wall and set to work altering his appearance. Though he had grown very accustomed to his usual manifested form of a tall, roguishly handsome young man with unusual, indigo eyes, he was still quite skilled at the art of shape changing. And so, between one blink and the next, he had become a six year old version of himself.

Thus prepared, he used his magic to create a hole at the foot of the fence, careful to make it look natural like something a burrowing animal might have made. That done, he changed his clothes to those commonly worn by the young boys who were always running around this small city and crawled through the hole.

-0-

Turning the page of his rather hefty novel, Shinichi settled himself more comfortably against the tree and tried to concentrate on reading. It was a good story, and he was enjoying it even though he had already read it several times before. Or he would be if he could concentrate. Normally, he would be delighting in having this time to himself to enjoy the book again at a time when his parents were unlikely to interrupt him. Both his parents had left the city yesterday to go on a tour with their performing troupe. They had told Shinichi that such young children couldn't come along because no one would have time to watch them and having children underfoot often led to unnecessary delays. Well used to these explanations, Shinichi had nodded and waved farewell to the two as they left him in the empty house with instructions to go to their neighbor if he needed anything.

He liked it when they were gone, or so he told himself. It was quiet and peaceful when they were gone. His mother wouldn't bug him about how he should go out and play with the other local children. Nor did he have to put up with her dressing him up like he was a life-sized doll. Nor did he have to put up with his father's patronizing attitude whenever he didn't fully get something in one of his books. Seriously, life was easier when his parents were somewhere else.

But…

The house really was very empty when he was the only one home.

Determined not to dwell on that odd feeling of abandonment that he knew he couldn't really be feeling, he had retreated to the garden with one of his favorite books and tried to lose himself in literature.

That was when the head of messy dark hair popped out of the bushes by the fence and grinned at him.

"Hey there!"

Shinichi nearly jumped out of his skin. Clutching his book to his chest like a mother protecting her baby, he leapt to his feet. "Who are you? And what are you doing hiding in my garden? How did you even get in here?"

The head laughed before it eased forward followed by the rest of a human body. The boy stood up, brushed leaves off of his clothes, then held out a hand to Shinichi.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you," he said. "My name is Kuroba Kaito. My family and I just moved to the city, and I've been exploring. I saw this hole in the fence, so I thought I'd take a look."

"So you just came into my garden without asking?" Shinichi asked flatly. "You realize that that's trespassing."

"Oh come on. I only came to say hello. Like I said, I'm new here. I was hoping to find someone who'd show me around. How about it?" He held his hand out to Shinichi more insistently. "I'll treat you to lunch if you do."

"You mean like right now?"

"Why not? The weather's great. It's perfect for exploring."

Shinichi supposed the strange boy had a point. He mulled over the idea a little longer. Normally, he would have declined, but for some reason he felt drawn to this stranger. There was something almost…familiar about those intelligent, indigo eyes though Shinichi was sure that they had never met before.

And so he found himself agreeing. After all, he reasoned, this neighborhood was a safe one, and he felt like he could trust this strange boy despite the suspicious way he'd made his appearance. Shinichi wanted to know why that was.

So he went back into the house to put his book away then followed Kaito out through the hole under the fence (making a mental note to block it up later. If the strange boy wanted to visit again, he could knock at the front door like a normal person).

-0-

Kaito visited Shinichi every day the following week. Shinichi had filled in the hole under the fence, but Kaito still managed to get in every time without ever knocking. Shinichi thought with some exasperation that the mischievous boy must be scaling the fence.

"Just don't start picking my locks," he warned. "It's creepy."

Kaito only laughed, which Shinichi did not find at all reassuring. In spite of all that, Shinichi found that he liked his odd new friend.

Kaito was easy to talk to, and he knew a whole lot about a variety of things that Shinichi had never even heard of before. For Shinichi, who delighted in learning new things, this made Kaito the ideal playmate.

Well, in all honesty, he was pretty much Shinichi's only playmate—his only companion even. Kaito noticed this fact rather quickly.

"Hey Shinichi," he asked the boy as they sat together on the garden porch with a chess board between them. "Where are your parents? I haven't seen them around at all. Are they out working?"

Shinichi frowned, never looking up from the chess board as he considered his next move. "You could say they're at work. I guess that's true enough. They're with Mom's performing troupe. Dad writes their scripts. Anyway, the left for tour about a week ago. It'll be a while before they get back. They take the troupe to all different towns and cities and things and basically live on the road."

"And leave you here?" Kaito asked, perturbed. Why was it that his Shinichi always had such terrible luck with parents? On the other hand, at least his parents in this life weren't trying to marry him off to some wealthy, arrogant duke just to increase their own wealth and status.

"I don't mind really," Shinichi told him, and today, Shinichi realized, he meant it. Because he wasn't alone anymore. He had Kaito now, and his parents' absence was nothing more than just another fact. It wasn't as though they spent much time with him when they were home anyway. And his mother couldn't force him into compromising costumes when she wasn't home. He would have put up with it for the company, but now he didn't have to.

"Don't you get lonely though?" Kaito asked, concerned as he thought of his Shinichi, still so young in this life, all alone in this house with no one to call if something were to go wrong. No one to talk to if he had a nightmare. No one to find him if he fell down the stairs.

"It can be a bit quiet," Shinichi admitted, but then he smiled at his new friend, a soft, genuine smile that had the demon's heart melting like chocolate under the noonday sun. "But now I have you. And my neighbor stops over sometimes. He and my parents go back a long ways."

Kaito made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and moved a piece on the board.

"What about you?" Shinichi asked suddenly. "What are your parents like?"

Oops. He'd walked right into that one, Kaito thought with some chagrin. For the first time in decades, he found himself at a bit of a loss. He had never run into this situation before. The topic of parents had simply never come up in Shinichi's previous lifetimes before he knew Kaito was a demon—at which point the question was quite obviously moot. But Shinichi was still a child in this lifetime and a rather young one at that. Now probably wasn't the best time for Kaito to divulge his true nature to him.

"They're still pretty busy with both the move and work and stuff," he invented quickly, making sure to deliver the lie in the tones of someone who found the matter both expected and boring. "The house is still a mess. I, uh, sort of broke something while we were unpacking, so now I'm just keeping out of Mom's way until she gets things straightened out."

"Was she really mad?" Shinichi asked worriedly.

Kaito laughed. "Nah. A little peeved, maybe, but it's Mom. She'll get over it and start yammering about visiting the local schools again."

He made a face then straightened abruptly, struck by sudden inspiration (or rather a very well feigned facsimile thereof). "Hey, what school do you go to? We don't know anyone here yet, so we haven't had anyone to ask for suggestions."

"I go to Teitan," Shinichi replied. "It's not a very big school, but it's all right. If you want to go there though, I think you'll have to hurry. Registration for next year should be closing soon."

Kaito made a mental note to drop by the school and insert himself into their student registry. "I'll pass the word along. If we're lucky, we'll be in the same class."

Luck wouldn't have anything to do with it, but no need to share that information.

Shinichi brightened. "I'd like that."

"Promise you'll show me around?"

"Of course. If you still want me to when school starts."

Kaito grinned. "Count on it. Oh, and checkmate."

Shinichi blinked then pouted. "I want a rematch."

"It would be my pleasure."

Later, they had dinner together as they had taken to doing more often than not. But eventually Kaito knew that staying any later would be odd.

"I…guess you have to go," Shinichi said more than asked when Kaito stood, blue eyes dimming. It was strange, he thought. He had always believed he was accustomed to being alone and that he didn't mind it. Since he had met Kaito though, he'd discovered that maybe he hadn't been quite as content in his solitude as he had thought.

Indigo eyes softened as Kaito smiled. "I'll be back tomorrow. Hey, I know, let's make a deal."

"A deal?" Shinichi repeated, confused. "What for?"

"As friends." Kaito reached into his pocket, conjuring a piece of paper there which he then pulled out along with a fountain pen. "I promise that, any time you need me, you can call me. I'll be there no matter what. And in return, you promise to spend time with me whenever I ask you to."

"Doing what?" Shinichi asked curiously.

"Whatever I want," Kaito replied with a cheeky grin.

"Nothing illegal," Shinichi said just to be sure. He'd read books about people getting coerced into committing crimes by making bad agreements. While he didn't think his strange new friend was a criminal even though he was awfully good at sneaking into places, it didn't hurt to make sure.

"Of course," Kaito assured him. "Nothing illegal. So? What do you say?"

"Aren't we already friends though?" Shinichi wondered.

"Well, yeah, Of course."

"So…why do we need to write it down?"

"Oh come on. Just humor me."

Shinichi still thought it was strange, but then again, Kaito was a strange person. Seeing no harm in it, he agreed.

And so Shinichi shrugged and signed the contract even though he wasn't sure why they needed a written contract for what amounted in his mind to a simple promise to be friends.

It wasn't until many, many years later that he learned that he had inadvertently signed a contract with a demon that day.

-End of Chapter-