February 2nd, 1996

Even dropped pen could have been heard in the first division's office. All the officers not out on an investigation or a stakeout were glued to their paperwork, crawling through the daunting amount as silently as possible. That one poor guy just transferred from a downtown police box was sweating tremendously under the environment way too austere for his liking while labelling the files of an attempted murder dating back only a couple of days ago. Despite being in charge for a while, it had been still a shock to have a full insight on the true magnitude of criminal activity in the capital. And those were only the crumbs and bits happening to end up in his hands for assessment.

His old boss intended to make the promotion a reward for his hard and efficient work, coupled with a pat on the back. While he was thrilled to see the true colours of his chosen profession, he was nervous about the socialization. In retrospect, he should have been even more nervous.

Once there was the inspector, staring daggers into the door from behind his desk, his chin resting on his interlocked fingers. Looking at his perhaps permanently furrowed brows, he was certain that the plump man was thinking about some pressing matter. As for what that could be, he could only take guesses. Turning his ears in the right direction during the afternoon coffee breaks fed him some information, most of which left him perplexed if not disturbed.

Because that seer-like person predicting bloody crimes all around the country could only be an urban legend, right?

Scepticism hardly stood its ground when ranking officers, detectives and all sort of law-associated people were giving the knob hand-to-hand to speak with the inspector, who was apparently member of some special task force, on a daily basis. The grave seriousness everyone was taking even the tiniest signs pointing towards that particular urban legend, in addition with a number of recent crimes only being attempts and the miniscule amount of information actually making its way to the regular officers, not to mention the shut-out of the media made him reconsider his lack of belief in supernatural occurrences, or at least in conspiracy theories. It stirred both his curiosity and precaution.

His head snapped up for a short notice when the door was promptly opened. It was one of the regular faces, though nobody he could recognise. Not like the chances of that were particularly high for someone dropped in only a couple of weeks ago. To save his pride, he was familiar with two other of the regulars.

Mouri-san was a private detective and from what he could put together an old acquaintance of the inspector voluntarily aiding the investigation. While taking care of impression, he turned out to be surprisingly upbeat and easy-going. Whatever prestige his name held was slightly shaded though when he had started flirting with an important witness who happened to be a famous idol openly enough to make the inspector cringe. He wished not to delve into the details of his married life to put it lightly.

Then a teenage boy opened the door on them who was, in fact, the high-school detective Kudo Shinichi.

He was an experience. When they first met, he had trouble finding the proper way to address him. Kudo-san or rather Kudo-kun? How to call a teenager doing full-fledged police work with men three time his age was beyond him. There was definitely more to him than he let on though, and not only because he had seen him accidentally guzzle assistant inspector swan's* impossibly bitter black coffee in one go. Everything about him was simultaneously mind-blowing and utterly terrifying. Intellect sharper than razors blades was a dangerous combination with such a cold determination. It made him that kind of person you pray thanks to have on the right side of the law.

His peers were proud to help old folks to the other side of the road. He was a different league.

He scooped up the documents from the table and stuffed then into a manila folder. Whilst the uncanny mysteries and strange individuals somehow tied to the metropolitan police department gave enough daydreaming material to make paperwork less discouraging, it did nothing reduce the actual amount. It was the multitude of what he had to tackle in the good old downtown police box, though that much was expected. He still needed time to adjust himself to the pace.

And his desk while he was at it.

"Ah, sorry. I'll clean it up in no time."

There was a nervous chuckle back in his throat as he got on hands and knees to gather the scattered papers from the floor. Leave it to him to try putting the documents to where he thought the drawer was but not where it actually was. Good grief, everyone was going to see him as the clumsy guy on the team.

Seeing a chewing gum stuck to the bottom of his drawer, he might was late to come to that realisation. So that the inspector would not chew him out for keeping mess under his desk, he decided to clean it up, even though it turned out to be stickier than a regular chewing gum. When he finally scratched it down, it made a strange screeching sound, albeit so faint that he doubted that it had been there in the first place. He took a second to examine the sticky object, which really looked nothing more than a normal chewing gum. In the end, he just shrugged and threw it into the bin together with his paranoia. The papers were of more concern.

"Geez, Takagi, did you really have to do that–?"

Trying to keep his voice low so as not to disturb the history lesson, a student in the middle-back of the classroom had to speak up on behalf of his recently destroyed tap and his consequently assaulted eardrums. While the most the unsuspecting officer could have heard was a faint screech, he received a banshee shriek at full volume on the other end. It took all his might not to wince loudly. To his luck, his classmates were paying their attention to the teacher and not to the faces he made.

He let the receiver slide into his sleeve. While the gathered information was not nearly as much as he wished, he had to be careful with the locations he chose. Unlike many overly nosy groups of agents, he did not have an endless amount of taps on storage in case of them being found and destroyed. He also wanted to avoid drawing more attention towards his person by fumbling with office furniture, not to mention dealing with the increased chance of the professor suing him for re-establishing slavery.

The past two weeks were the time of readjusting. Acting according to his expectations, every party involved in his meddling had been preoccupied with gathering information that, for obvious reasons, could be spared on his end at least for now. Not like the time earned by that loophole went to waste. While trying to break out of his distraught mentality and catching up with the bits and pieces of his life as a famous teenage detective with many alive friends and acquaintances, he initiated plan to acquire all the necessaries, including a good variety of spy equipment, mostly at the expense of the professor's resources and sleeping hours.

Maybe he should offer some help in exchange of the batch for his next target place and for replacing the destroyed one. He had been complaining about his Beetle for some days, maybe it needed to be taken to the service. No matter what, that batch was particularly important in light of the upcoming cases.

He sensed someone watching him. He made eye contact with Ran on accident.

"Kudo-kun, would you convince Mouri-san to pay attention?"

Even though the teacher was too busy chalking up a sentence to the board to look back, the strict voice made both of them avert their attention back to their textbooks. Not like something that he already knew back and forth could keep him interested for long. When he had assessed his situation after his arrival, he accounted for academical trouble as it had been literal decades since he received age-appropriate education, if high school curriculum still counted as such that is.

Much to his luck though, his eidetic memory had taken his part, saving him from the time-consuming schoolwork. With his schedule packed even without being a time traveller, it was good news. Time management could make or break his very plans, especially on call days.

A glance at the clock. Only some hours left.

The door burst open. "It happened again?!"

After kicking the door on the task force for the hundredth time during the week, a certain private detective started to disregard the unruly slips in his appearance. His suit looked wrinkled and worn, not a bit better than how things were at home, and he no longer wasted time with attaching his visitor card. Not that there was a point in doing that anymore. Him promptly storming in had grown into a regular occurrence to such extent that the receptionist acknowledged his presence by just looking at him each time, knowing that he would always grab a visitor card to honour the rules. Said card was left in his clenched fist supporting his figure on the doorframe this time.

The inspector whipped around. "Mouri-kun! You were fast again."

He pocketed the visitor card while rounding the desks. "Where was it now?"

"Beika Art Museum, a little past the second district." The inspector fetched his notebook. "Am, there was an exhibition on display involving the whole collection the museum had, it earned quite a reputation downtown. It was not public, but the building was planned to be demolished for a casino to be built in its place, as the previous curator had sold the property to a businessman to solve financial problems. However, the current curator strongly disagreed with that decision and planned to murder the businessman to prevent it from happening, framing a staff member who harboured similar feelings in process."

An officer stepped in front of the whiteboard. A photo of the old curator was entangled in the web of assumed connections regarding the future predicting incidents. "He thought of a fairly messed up way to go through that plan. After removing all the paintings in the room he intended to make the crime scene to protect them from the spilled blood save for one and arranging a meeting with the businessman there, he hid himself in the suit of armour on display to execute his target medieval-style when he arrived."

"Fortunately, none of that happened in courtesy of our mystery person." Added the inspector.

The exhibition in question was the one his daughter planned to visit in some days. Swallowing the not so pleasant but professionally irrelevant thoughts, he moved closer to the whiteboard with his chin held in his hand. "I take you found no relevance to any of the other cases, right?"

At that police meeting two weeks ago, he would have never thought that the phone call he had received at that kidnapping case could land him in such a deep swamp. Pride was all he felt that his name was associated with a big hit in the good way. What Superintendent Kuroda had foreshadowed left concerns in his mind, most of which he dismissed with his casual nonchalance until there was no other opportunity than to face the facts and acknowledge that someone was out there predicting the future.

Okino Yoko was only the start. Thanks to an anonymous call, several mafia members responsible for a robbery were rounded up in an abandoned building by some officers at the resident police box, who also managed to retrieve the stolen money and free the child hostages, who considered it a good idea to try cracking the mafia's coded map to the stolen goods while running around the city at night. According to the officers, the person on the phone gave direct instructions on how to handle multiple criminals simultaneously and even knew of the children, whom he requested not to be punished too severely. It seemed like even he had a soft spot for something.

The media craved for a resolution, however the police could hardly explain something they were unable to make heads or tails of. At the suggestion of the higher-ups, the media was shut out of the investigation until they had solid facts under their hands. When a mysterious case almost turned into murder was prevented by the same individual, it became clear that no comment gave more material to the media than any speculation they could threw at them. Theories started arising about the police hiding something.

It was not limited to the capital, even though the calls preventing three additional murders and one theft in other prefectures were significantly less detailed than the ones around their jurisdiction. Everyone tried their best to make sense of that tiny anomaly with no prevail. Including Kudo.

Rumours spread like wildfire. No matter how they tried to hide that the law enforcement the citizens trusted to maintain order was outsmarted and turned into a puppet by some mysterious individual popping out of nowhere, the people started to catch on hidden truth. Some started worshipping the mastermind as some superhero who had the police as the extension of his arms to carry out his whims. It was not only about the embarrassment. While it was certainly annoying that they appeared incompetent, the real problem was the loss of trust. The higher-ups soon had enough and threw the bones to the specifically created task force and the secret police to chew on.

Unable to sit tight, he requested a position in the task force. He was granted one, as he had been involved in one of the early cases.

So was Kudo, for similar reasons.

The inspector stepped besides him while his eyes rested on the whiteboard, as if mindless staring could help making sense of anything. "I mean no offense towards your personal life, Mouri-kun, but can you really manage this much? Each time we send you an update, you find a way to get up here immediately. While your dedication is appreciated and we most certainly need it, we have an entire task force backing this case up. You have responsibilities towards your family too."

An incoming message saved him from admitting that he had been living off the support from his wife since day one.

It was his daughter, telling him about the dinner.

Just the perfect example on how wrong the inspector was about who was taking care of who. He enjoyed spending his days in his family of strange dysfunction and support. Even if he sometimes regretted how things had turned out with his wife, what he really cared about was his own comfort. He always drank away their low income for passing pleasure and robbed his daughter from being a teenager by burdening her with running the entire household all by herself. The inspector had a point. Before sticking his nose into the big picture, he should look around his own house, even if had no idea what he could do to remedy the situation after all those years.

Another incoming message interrupted his thoughts. His eyes bugged out at that one though.

Miracles were real. If not, she was eager to hear a better explanation on how could her father get along with her childhood friend by the table. Being totally unprepared for such a request on his end was underestimating the situation. As if their outing did not satisfy him, he wanted to have dinner with her and her father. It could be deducted in seconds that if happened, it would be the most embarrassing moment in both of their lives. Despite being the smartest person she knew, his recent decisions were beyond her understanding. Almost as if he actually wanted the people to get the wrong idea about them. No, they were just friends.

Her fingers curled around the cup of hot tea over the cold soba laid on the table. It was a comforting contrast to the darkness outside. When the lone street lamp shining through the cold winter night flickered for a moment upon her gaze, she quickly snapped back her attention to the other two fighting over the second helping.

It had started pretty much according to her expectations. Shinichi and her father sitting by the opposite ends of the table, staring at each other with enough intension to summon comical sparks. Her father reacted to her message even worse than she had expected, probably because of the realisation that he had no time to mentally prepare himself for the ordeal. However, even though he was acting grumpy, she saw something in him that was willing to make a change.

Despite both of them being detectives and working on a case together, they had nothing to share with the other. Both had their own personal agendas and neither wanted to pry, while their only professionally common ground being classified did little to help the communication between them either. Shinichi probably sensed the silence growing too painful too, as he politely excused himself to the toilet, while her father just turned on the television in exchange. Giving up at that point, she joined her father. A mystery show was on about a detective-like samurai that her father regularly watched. It was quite good, sometimes she ended up following the plot too.

As it turned out later, Shinichi was also into Detective Saimonji.

Whatever peaceful television watching was planned in their mind soon turned into a full-blown detective battle between the two real ones about how the episode will end. Shinichi won it so easily that her father accused him for somehow watching it in advance. When it came to his favourite episode, her father excavated his collection of television recordings from behind the massive amount of discs at record speed. Forty minutes later, they were nearing the end of both the episode and the dinner.

Her father turned to them when the credits started rolling. "So, how was it? This has to be the best episode in the series!"

"The scene where the lord saves the servant from drowning in the lake was so heart-warming."

Shinichi folded his arms critically. "While it had a healthy amount of drama, the plot was predictable. It was obvious from the start that the lord was in love with the servant and if you paid attention, essentially she was the one to confirm his alibi when the case happened. Even the police would question the credibility of the situation."

"It takes place in the Heian period, moron. The lack of police procedures is part of the historical representation. Until the very end, everything pointed to the sister of the lord who had a motive to kill her future husband and had no alibi for the time of the crime, so unless you can come up with a better sad backstory than a forbidden love triangle revolving around such a cute servant, you should stop calling this absolute masterpiece predictable."

"Ah, I start to see why this is your favourite episode."

Watching their friendly bickering, she felt as if a huge burden was lifted from her shoulders. Whether it was to be thanked to their willingness to make peace with each other, the coincidentally found common ground or the combination of those, she was happy to see the ice cracking. Not once since her mother had left had she seen such honest happiness under their roof. Her father used to be disapproving of pretty much anyone she held close to her heart, be it her friends or even her mother after they separated. Not like he was particularly controlling or overprotective. He just handled people who were not pretty women in his often misunderstood and unique way.

Yet the person he used to dislike the most was the first to make a good impression on him. Perhaps it had been his plan after all.

Her gaze hung on his features. His ebony bangs were unusually unruly, as they had been recently. Not that she minded it. It gave his confident posture and sharp eyes a lighter vibe, making him less intimidating. She always found him that at least a bit, a side effect of working as a detective in his teens. Being his childhood friend, she knew what he was really like. Protectiveness laid behind the pride, a quality that she had enjoyed since kindergarten. Before she could realise, she was drawn to him. However, while she knew how to take opinions with a grain of salt, her father picking on him dealt a blow to her confidence when it came to their friendship.

Seeing those two talking, not necessarily agreeing but still talking, liberated her caged thoughts.

Shinichi turned to her. "Do you have a favourite episode, Ran?"

"Ah, I have just seen a couple of them. I remember the one where his rival was introduced though, that was really good."

"Right? That's actually one of the highest rated episodes." A cassette with two men clashing swords on its cover was snatched from the box of recordings. Its sight was nostalgic. It was included in the limited package her father actually purchased for better quality instead of simply recording it from the television. For once, she had to admit that it worthed the money. "It came out on the anniversary of the series. There are rumours that the studio actually hired a detective to write the plot."

Shinichi fanboying over a normal television show was an amusing sight. "I take that's your favourite too?"

"Well, actually no." The cassette was slowly placed back to the box. "I prefer episode forty-one."

Her father looked pale. "You mean the worst piece in the history of movie production?"

"That's the cursed thirty-eighth. I count the fillers too."

Unbeknownst to them, the sounds coming from the living quarters little above the streets caught the attention of the neighbours. Not that the noise came as a surprise from that direction, one of the inhabitants was used to drinking himself to the yellow ground and exposing the neighbourhood to noise pollution by blasting pop songs in the mornings after all, but this was different. While the locals booked it as an unusual house party of some sort, that one person munching on a hamburger in the yellow Beetle parked in the canny of a nearby alley observed the light shining through the upstairs windows with a strange kind of happiness.

The clock ticked past eight in the evening. "You should go home soon, Kudo. I would rather not have your kidnapping on my conscious."

"That sounds like concern towards my wellbeing. It's not needed though, I asked the professor to give me a lift."

After expressing his gratitude for the dinner, he swiftly draped his coat over his shoulder and stepped into the staircase. Light coming from the door opened to a gap rolled down the stairs in a straight line for a spur moment only to vanish when he closed its source behind himself. Not even a second later, it happened again when she went after him while getting on a sweater. Even if she knew he only came to dinner, she wished him to stay. When he stepped to the street and turned around, she halted as well.

Never before had their eyes meet like this. It took this much to see him older than ever.

Another flicker in the street lamp. "Ittekimasu!"*

"At half past two today afternoon, the police rushed into Beika Art Museum to find the curator, Ochiai Shigeru, age sixty-six, in middle of setting up the planned murder of Manaka Takeshi, age forty-five. The investigation revealed a motive tied to an ownership debacle between the two. Even under pressure from the reporters, the authorities insisted on not making an official statement about the police assistant who tipped them information about the incident beforehand, giving more base to the–"

The professor turned off the radio when he hopped into the seat next to him. "By any means, listen to it."

"There was nothing interesting in it anyways." A hamburger paper was crumpled. "You sure took your time planting those taps though."

While reaching for the seatbelt, he took a look at the backseat to find evidence backing up his suspicions. Three large sacks with the logo of a nearby fast food restaurant on them were laying neatly next to each other, still letting off a characteristic scent that was a bad combination with the small interior. One of the sacks had been torn open and obviously lacked some of its content. As for where that had gone, he could guess by the wrappings hastily stuffed into the accumulator on the bottom of the door. With a deadpan face, he proceeded to fasten the seatbelt. "It looks like you also found a remarkably healthy way to kill time."

"You were staying so long that I got hungry. You should have told that you planned to stay the whole evening."

After a few coughs, the engine started up and they were on the road.

As much as he had grown to despise deceiving his friends, having an accurate view on what was going on in the detective agency was of absolute necessity. It had been his base the first time around, he encountered many cases and important people through using the private detective business the old man had established. As beneficial as his acting had been then, the less it was since he landed in the past. It was hard to predict where the cases that they had received would go now that the old man was no longer a countrywide renewed detective. Some of them would certainly end up with others in the profession, and he wanted to know who got involved.

It was not a problem until it was about regular cases, on the contrary, it provided him more mediums to call. Only the crow-related cases were troublesome, especially if the poor detective who had one of those thrown at them happened to be less ignorant towards the details than the old man had been. His aim was victory with the smallest possible death count, which meant depending solely on his own memories was not manageable. Screwing up the timeline was step one, but not the only one.

Eventually, he would need to know how the change was going.

While it seemed to be something too early to worry about, creating an information network capable of substituting his future knowledge for the time the divergence went too far, which point was most likely going to be the key moment of his entire plan, was not a job that could be done overnight. Bugging everyone who could possibly have connection to his activity, starting with the police and the detective agency, was the basic of underground investigation.

Placing one of the receivers the glove compartment had is stock to his ear, he tapped on it a couple of time for better sound quality. Future design or not, the professor only had late twentieth century material and technology to bring its kind to reality. It worked though, picking up some muffled sounds from upstairs.

"How is it?" The professor was surprisingly unbothered by the general lack of ethics of his actions.

"Just fine. There's not much to hear in the office at this hour though."

Neither said a word as he checked his other taps too, only to find silence each time. It was perhaps too late for a check-up test. Unless he wanted to listen to the old man taking a shower, it was aimless to occupy himself with spying any longer. Silence stilled on the outside too until they hit a red light.

"Will you tell them?"

Telling them meant involving them. Even though implicating more people than necessary screamed against his common sense as an investigator, his experience begged to differ. Had he decided to spill sooner in the future, things might have gone down an entirely different path. Given that his timeline seemed like the bottom of the ditch, it may have been a lot better. However, in a game where even a slightest bit of information could turn the tables, nobody would like to have unpredictable pieces on the board. While he knew more about that pair of father and daughter than they did about themselves, he could only guess how they would react to the truth. Risk outgrew benefit.

That is, if he saw them as pieces on the board instead of his family.

Even putting aside the mental haze the first days were, opening up to a trustworthy few would be advantageous. Without recruiting the professor, he would still be nothing but a sitting duck lacking the resources he needed to do something with himself. While the old man would be tempted to lay out his cards in front of the police, he would follow the plan so as not to make a target out of anyone. Whether he would be happy or planning his murder for involving them in his war was a different question.

Ran was a toss-up between love and hate. An unpredictable choice of the heart he loved.

"Not yet. I have to drop the big ones subtly or they will run straight to the police. I will though, when the time comes."

A snort came from the professor. "You sure sound like an old geezer."

"Please, I'm ten years too old to be a snotty teenager."

His face looked pale in the light of the refrigerator as he grabbed a cold beer. While his daughter would scold him for sneaking a drink in the middle of the night, she could hardly do so while being fast asleep. Resting during the nights as a good student should, she lent him those silent hours to be on his own. Unbeknownst to her, he tended to be up until late, minding his own business before he retreated to his bedroom at last. Despite his habits, he usually had nothing much to think about.

This evening was different, as different as it could have been in his books.

He surprised himself by not throwing the brat out of his house as soon as he saw him. It was likely respect towards her feelings, just as it had been on the occasions she tried to hook him up with his wife again and again. While knowing it would not succeed, both of them would comply to at least give her the illusion of a family. However, this time it was not a family member but a friend, a male one at that, an interest that should not stand surprising in light of her being seventeen. Even though, it annoyed him to no end that the boy she picked was that brat no less. He was a pain in the back on crime scenes, let alone in his house.

Perhaps it was because of him willing to make amends on her behalf or because of the brat deciding to be less bratty to make things work, but the time he expected to be torture turned out to be more enjoyable than drinking himself comatose, which was saying something. All thanks to television show.

Had he not watched his tongue, he would have invited him over for another evening.

Strolling out of the kitchen, his eyes fell on his box of recordings left there. Forty-one, was it?

Morning came fast. As the first sunrays appeared over the horizon to paint the city in its golden hue, a person wearing a long windbreaker stopped in the street by the detective agency. For a passing second, the brisk winds tore his hastily clad figure and long dark hair tied in a ponytail while his eyes made out the words on the windows under the glitters of sunlight. Thousand doubts were running through his head as he slipped an envelope into the mailbox.

Only he knew what that letter entailed, he was the evil to be caught after all.

It was he, Asou Seiji.

Published: 10/04/2022

Uh, deadline. I should just give up on that (or not start writing something without a solid plan in head). On the bright side, the plot construction has been done (more or less), so it hopefully gets off the ground soon if school doesn't butt in. (I can't wait summer...) There's not much to say about this chapter though. A kind of filler but not at the same time, the calm before the storm. (Here I am trying to be dramatic when everyone knows what's next. Well, you think you know.)

*Some explanations: 'Ittekimasu' is an expression used by the Japanese when the leave home. Also, in the first scene 'assistant inspector swan' is a nickname for Shiratori (see movie 15 and because his attitude suits a swan).