Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sawamura Daichi didn’t feel at all ready to start his day, least of all with a murder. He’s had quite a long night behind him and he had, quite frankly, hoped to catch up on paperwork from the big, gruesome case they had finished the day before, and to pass out on his desk from boredom and exhaustion.

But no such luck.

His hands itched for a cigarette again as he approached the murder scene. It had been so long since he held one in his hand, but the habit of fondling something with his fingers as he did his work never quite left.

There was a dead body at a coffee shop—Had seemingly died over night. No witnesses to the crime, no murder weapon on the scene. He hadn’t had the time to read much more of the report yet—he hadn’t even expected to require his concentration today after all. He needed a coffee.

The beauty of the café had him stop in awe for a moment.

The place was very small, with big windows, pastel colours and dark, wooden furniture for an interior, flowery themes and lots of intricate designs throughout, the sign showing the name in elaborate cursive.

“Sanity”, the place was called. Daichi wondered how much he would keep once he took this case. His headache rising with the sun.

He ducked under the police tape and almost smacked his face against a cup of take-away coffee that was in his way.

God, it smelled amazing.

“Kiyoko, you are a blessing,” he said, accepting the coffee from his partner. It tasted as amazing as it smelled.

“Do I want to know why you look more dead than the victim inside? I thought you were gonna take it slow last night and just play some sort of farming simulator to celebrate the concluded case.”

“Took a bit longer than expected,” Daichi mumbled into his coffee, averting his gaze.

Kiyoko’s face was passive as usual, but the judgment rang loudly from her eyes.

“…Don’t tell me you pulled an all-nighter with your farming simulator.”

“There is more to Stardew Valley than just farming,” Daichi mumbled into his coffee again.

Loud cheering and singing rang out inside. From what Daichi could see through the glass door, there were people dancing on tables.

“Do I want to know what’s the cause for such celebration at a crime scene?” he asked, pointing at the table dancers.

Kiyoko sighed with more emotion than Daichi was used to her showing.

“The people that found the body had been drinking excessively until early in the morning, and the alcohol hasn’t quite worn off.” Behind Kiyoko, one of the guys on tables pulled his shirt off and waved it over his head like a lasso. Kiyoko pulled a face. “Or worn off at all it seems.”

Daichi’s cup was half-emptied already, he felt more awake as well. The cup bore the logo of the shop. It was simple but adorable in a way, it bore flowery themes and the same gorgeous font that the shop sign had.

“Ready to dig into the mess?” Daichi asked. 

Kiyoko’s face turned more displeased as the yelling inside got louder.

——

There were only two visibly drunk people in the shop, but Daichi had the dreadful feeling in his stomach that they should have called for back-up, because there seemed to be no containing them.

The second the bell over the door rang though, both heads turned to him with a predatory calm and intensity. Daichi swallowed thickly for a mere moment before the cheers started again.

“Ooooooiiii! The sexy police officer lady brought a sexy police officer friend!!” Incoherent cheers following that.

Daichi approached the smaller of the two as Kiyoko approached his blond companion two tables down.

“Sir, I will need you to come down from that table so I can take your statement.”

“Sure thing, hot officer daddy!” the small man said, winking and saluting at him, Then trying to step off the table with too much vigour and slipping pretty unfortunately. The loud sound of a body colliding with the floor and the worrying thud of some sort of bony body part hitting the table, which was followed by him doing a roll over the ground that was probably supposed to soften the fall, and probably would have been smoother and more impressive if he wasn’t drunk. 

The guy got up quickly though. “I’m fine!” he assured, saluting again. he sat down at the table and looked at Daichi like an eager puppy awaiting orders.

And bouncing on his seat quite energetically.

Daichi sat down as well, and tried his best to not show his impending migraine.

“My name is Detective Sawamura. From what I understand, you were the first person on the scene and I will be needing to take your statement for that. First of all, I will need your name, age, occupation and all that.”

The small man nodded eagerly like someone who wasn’t aware that they had already nodded enough.

“Sure thing, my name is Nishonoya Yuu but you can call me Noya, everybody does that. I’m 24, and I opened this place two years ago with a few friends, like Yuuji who is over there getting interviewed by your sexy police officer lady friend.” He pointed at the taller, blond man with an undercut who seemingly tried to, unsuccessfully, hit on Kiyoko as she tried to take his statement. 

“And we were out drinking ‘cause Yuuji got ditched and I was like ‘it’s fine Yuuji, we can drink the pain away tonight and still make it to work I swear!’ And because I’m a good boss, we actually made it, but we weren’t even actually the first because Tetsu was already here and he was bleeding like a little and messing up the place so I called the paramedics 'cause that’s what we had to do when we went to that playground that one time and he fell off the… climby thing and hit his head open on that stone that was there and the paramedics said they would come and now they’re here and now you’re here and this place smells weird do you smell it too?”

Daichi took a very, very deep breath. So much for hoping that he could ward off the migraine. At least the witness was willing to talk, Even if it was too much and too fast and borderline nonsensical. But talk is talk.

“One thing after the other, please. First of all, you said your name was Nishiya Yuu?”

“Nishinoya Yuu, but you can call me Noya,” He said with a suggestive wink. Daichi chose to ignore that.

“And you said you are 24 years old and own this place.”

“Yes!” Nishinoya said with a lot of enthusiasm. “She is my baby and I will die with her!”

Daichi highly doubted like, half of what was said there. While the speech wasn’t slurred or in any other form incomprehensible, the speaker was very fast, very bouncy in his seat, and constantly distracted by things happening around him.

And Daichi wondered if he was aware that there was a dead body.

“First of all sir, can I see your ID?”

“Sure thing!” The guy declared again, and pulled various things out of his pockets until he found a wallet and, to Daichi’s surprise, pulled out a driver’s licence.

He then leaned over the bench he was sitting on to pick up the various things he had thrown onto the floor in his search.

To Daichi’s surprise the driver’s license was valid, the picture matched, and the name and age all agreed with what Nishinoya had said.

Honestly, going by the behaviour, babyface, and general flair, he had guessed him not a day older than 16 and had prepared a speech about safe drinking and lying to a police officer during an investigation.

So Daichi stood corrected.

“Uhm, sexy police officer sir?” Nishinoya said from under the table. I gave you my name, you know?   “Can you help me up? I’m stuck and the room is spinning.” Definitely drunk then.

Daichi pulled on the lost and seeking hand and got Nishinoya back onto his seat.

“So you founded this place?” Daichi continued. Nishinoya nodded with a big smile. “Care to elaborate?”

“So I don’t really do well in dead-end jobs or doing office work or something and I also didn’t want to go full professional with volleyball you feel? So I needed to do something of my own and with my hands not brain and I like sweets a lot so I was like ‘I should open a bakery’ and Yuuji was like ‘ya bro you should’ and then Kenji helped us since he’s the business major and Shohei just wanted in don’t ask me he’s just like that but they’re all gold and I couldn’t do without them.”

Two glasses of water were put on the table in front of Daichi and Nishinoya.

“Thought you may need some,” Officer Tanaka said.

Daichi nodded at him thankfully and Nishinoya said “Cheers bro” and chucked it all down in one go.

“And Tetsu was my roommate then, and he laughed at us but also said we should do it because ‘god can’t strike down so much chaotic force’. His words. And honestly, this little girl has her issues but she runs steady and I’m proud of her.”

Nishinoya made to drink out of his glass again before noticing that it was empty and made puppy dog eyes at the officer that had brought them the glasses in the first place. And, since Tanaka had always been weak to looks like that, the glass was refilled.

“Thank you!” Nishinoya said with the sweetest smile and then turned to Daichi again.

“We called it Sanity because when Tetsu laughed at us, he said that would be the last thing we’d find here and honestly he was right. Say do you smell that? I need to get this place cleaned. I don’t know that smell it’s new and I don’t think it was here yesterday.”

Daichi honestly struggled taking all the notes down with the speed that the damn guy was talking at. After a few moments, though, he got to the key questions, having finished the lore part apparently.

“So what were you doing all of yesterday afternoon and night?”

There was a sudden focus in Nishinoya’s eyes that honestly startled and vaguely scared Daichi a little bit.

“Tetsu was acting weird. He gave me my mixer back, said he was doing spring cleaning since ‘it’s spring in Australia’. He took the little girl with him when he moved out, said it was his not mine, we had a full-on custody battle over her, and he only won because he can say very smart things very fast. It confuses you and suddenly your most expensive kitchen utensil is his.”

Huh, curious. Looks like he made last arrangements, like a goodbye. Could he have known that he was about to die?

Nishinoya shook his head, seemingly sorting his thoughts again.

“So we close at 8pm every night, and after that I was getting Yuuji out of his sulk over a broken heart by saying we could go drinking—and then we hit town and then at 4am when all the clubs closed, we went to a 24 hour diner and inhaled some food there and talked about life and Yuuji didn’t like her that much anyway he’s just bitter over her because of high school still and is upset that he was bested again ‘cause she got a boyfriend even after he asked her out so much and then it was 6am and I said we could still make it to work on time and then we got here.”

Daichi really needed someone to take notes for him because this guy was HARD to keep up with.

Also, he may need another note pad.

“Then we saw that Tetsu was already inside, which makes sense since he has a key because he’s my best bro and all that so he needs a key, but he was just lying on the table and bleeding a lot and Yuuji and I said ‘concussion’ like on the playground as I said so we called paramedics and left him be because last time they said not to touch him.”

Nishinoya got quiet then. Very quiet. Like understanding was passing through him.

Daichi, despite himself, wanted to ride the train of excessive information flow so he asked, “And what relation do you have to ‘Tetsu’?”

Nishinoya’s face immediately lit up.

“He’s my best bro! I know him back from high school ‘cause our teams played against each other but he was from Tokyo and I was from Miyagi, so we didn’t see each other that often or were overly close or anything. but when I came to Tokyo, I was looking for a place to live and funnily enough so was he, and honestly it was chance alone that we ended up rooming together for four years but we’re inseparable now but he moved out last week to move in with his girlfriend and Yuuji moved into the place instead ‘cause I can’t afford rent alone and they’ve been going steady and in love and I don’t wanna hear them fuck all the time even if I support them so yea I love him he’s great.”

Daichi wondered when this guy would run out of energy. He was like a damn self-charging battery or something.

“And lastly,” he said to soothe himself more than his opposite, “can you tell me ‘Tetsu’s’ full name?”

“Yea, it’s Kuroo Tetsuro.”

“Looking exhausted, Detective.”

Daichi could never quite tell if Ennoshita was earnest with comments like this, or if he was making fun of Daichi. Ennoshita had a consistently calm and tired tone that made you double guess everything he said to you.

Especially things that had a little cheek to them.

“Chatty witnesses have their downsides. What do you have for me?”

“Male, about mid- to late-twenties, 180-190cm tall but I’ll have to measure that more properly in the lab later. Fit, I’d say he does sport regularly. Died about 3am last night. Now here is where it gets weird:

There is a bullet wound straight through his head, clean shot. We found the place where the bullet landed in the wall over there, but we didn’t find the bullet. No sign of a fight or resistance of any kind, which is weird because he must have been sitting upright when he was shot and looked the shooter in the face. We saw no signs of a blindfold or anything either, so that is a riddle for me.

The lack of fighting and the fact that there is a used coffee mug on the table as well as his jacket on the hook by the door suggests that he was calm in this final meeting of his, but tears streaks on his cheeks and the imprint of nails on the inside of his hands from clenching his fists are signs of stress. And another thing, have a sniff.” Ennoshita held the coffee cup that the victim had drunk from towards Daichi’s face, who smelled it.

Sweet, familiar.

“Is that Bayley’s?”

“Yea I think so too. So apparently he drank coffee with Bayley’s in it at about three a.m. with someone he was casual with but nonetheless feared.”

“Actually,” Kiyoko chimed in, “Terushima mentioned something like that.” She skipped through her notes; apparently, she had gotten a similar amount of word vomit from her witness that Daichi had gotten from his. “Apparently it is tradition in their group of friends to put a shot of Bayley’s in their coffee as a form of celebration.”

More signs point towards a meeting with a good friend.

“So in conclusion, he must have sat here with his murderer, having some sort of casual cup of coffee, and looked him in the face but did not resist as he was being shot point-blank. The second cup of coffee is missing as well, though we found a dent in the bloodstain that matches a regular-sized coffee cup from this place,” finished Ennoshita’s findings.

Daichi’s head was spinning again. Damn migraine would probably end up permanent at this point.

“Honestly, it doesn’t make sense to me either,” Daichi started, “you have a gun to your head from someone you have seemingly shared a casual, celebratory coffee with, and it stresses you out that they are about to kill you but you don’t do anything about it either.” Daichi rubbed his temples. 

“I’ll look into any sort of blackmail that could be held against him in case he would have fought for his life.” Daichi looked into his notes. “Apparently he had a girlfriend, so maybe the issue was her life or his. But we would still have to find a motive in that case.”

“Well,” Ennoshita said, taking his gloves off and packing up, “I don’t envy your job. Hit me up if you want me to dig into any leads.”

Daichi nodded and vaguely regretted it, since that was affecting his headache now, and picked up Kiyoko from where she was talking to Tanaka about what to do with the witnesses.

He had the tense feeling that this was going to be a long case.

Damn his process on Stardew Valley.

“Did you see where the body was?” Kiyoko asked on the way to the precinct.

“I did indeed, but I assume you mean something in particular regarding that.”

Kiyoko nodded quietly, not even looking in Daichi’s direction. “It was right next to a window. A big one even, he wasn’t hidden at all. Yet somehow he was hidden in plain sight to the world at large as he was shot straight through the head.”

Daichi furrowed his brows. “Ennoshita said the time of death was three a.m. There is not a lot of people around at that time. Even in Tokyo. If you were going to kill someone in public of all places, three a.m. would be a good time.”

Kiyoko looked at him sternly.

“But still, I’m sure there would have been noise. So much so that if it's three a.m. and you are in deep sleep you hear a gunshot going off three blocks away and you wake up and possibly report it.”

Daichi shrugged.

“Looks like we’re going to have to ask around the neighbourhood.”

Daichi’s migraine worsened as he entered the precinct.

There was a fight going on again. Officer Hinata and Officer Kageyama were at each other's throats, officer Sugawara with a coffee cup next to them and amusing himself wholeheartedly.

“Alright boys, break it up,” Daichi said, separating the two. “what’s gotten into you two this time?”

“You are a mistake of a human being and you should feel sorry for it!” Kageyama yelled over Daichi’s shoulder to Hinata.

“You just have crappy taste in movies that’s all!” Hinata yelled back.

Daichi looked at Suga desperately.

“They’re arguing about the quality of a movie,” Suga said with glee.

Daichi gave them both an absolutely done face. “Really? That’s it?” They at least had the decency to look ashamed of their actions.

Daichi stepped back.

“Go on, elaborate.”

Hinata’s eyes immediately lit up. And Daichi mistakenly had thought that moe sparkle was an anime exclusive and not a real-life feature.

“You see, it’s because in ‘The Little Giant’ there is this cop and he works on this new case and all the suspects are familiar and they’re from his first case, so he looks into it again and turns out the guy he put in prison ten years ago was actually innocent and a straw man set up by the Yakuza to take their fall for them, and now they have their fingers in this new case and he chases them down but in the end they are too many and too smart for him and there is this last shot of him bleeding out on the ground and the leader saying that he was a good cop and way too close to them and that they respect him and then they walk away. And the little giant is bleeding and too sick so he can’t say anything.

And then it cuts to him in the hospital bed and the nurse wants to take his vitals but he doesn’t respond and just looks out of the window.

And anyways, that’s exactly what I want!”

Daichi massaged his temples, the headache stayed though. He had heard of that movie—the writing sounded decent even from Hinata’s narration, but apparently the production value was quite low, and the non-optimistic ending didn’t give the film a good reception.

“So you want to put innocent people in prison, be bested by the Yakuza, and be beaten into a hospital bed?”

“No!” Hinata’s eyes sparkled in that moe anime girl way again. “I want a destined rival and an epic battle!”

“The Yakuza isn’t a fun and romantic adventure, dumbass!” Kageyama yelled from a bit away where he had been sulking near Suga.

“The topic hits quite close to home for you,” Suga said in a gentle voice, “doesn’t it?”

Tense silence from the audience.

“My mom was a straw man once,” Kageyama eventually shared. “All the evidence pointed at her, but we didn’t even know the guy that had died. If it wasn’t for that one police officer that worked really hard to prove her innocence, I would have lost my mom at six years old.”

Tense silence from the precinct.

“Well then,” Suga continued because he was an angel, “how about we all share our favourite movies. Kageyama, you go first.”

Kageyama immediately looked up into Suga’s face.

“Tokyo Gore Police.”

Really? All this fuss about morality and in the end your favourite movie is a cheesy splatter flick?

“Oh yes,” Kiyoko shared, next to Daichi, “Ruka-chan gave an… awakening.”

“About wanting to be a policewoman?” Daichi asked.

“Yea that too, I suppose.” After a moment she added. “My favourite is Bitter Blood.”

“Wow,” Daichi responded, “honestly coming from you I should have expected something that dark, but it still came out of left field.”

“What’s yours then, Daichi?” Kiyoko shot right back at him.

“Sherlock Hound.”

“Daww,” Suga said from the other side of the precinct. Daichi didn’t like the teasing tone though.

“I love Sherlock Hound!” Hinata added with what must be a trademark sparkle.

“Daichi-kun,” Kiyoko teased, “you are such a soft murder investigator.”

“Sherlock Hound has all of my favourite things,” Daichi said defensively, crossing his arms, “detective stories, dogs, beautiful music, and Miyasaki animation.”

“Personally,” Suga added, “I like Ryuzo and the seven henchmen. Old, retired Yakuza guys get screwed over by younger Yakuza guys and struggle with their old age but learn that through the power of fuck you they can do anything.”

“That’s gonna be you when you’re older,” Daichi commented, “isn’t it?”

“Yea exactly.” Suga said with glee.

Daichi’s laugh turned into a sigh halfway through. Time to find out who the victim had any sort of relationship with.

Chapter Text

Noya woke up with the biggest headache—he tried to move but it was basically impossible.

After a few moments of nausea and migraine, he slowly made to get up. He saw someone in his side vision, half expecting it to be Tetsu, but he made the mistake of moving too fast and worsened his headache. He then collected himself and looked in that direction again. Place was empty.

Dread rose in Noya as he realised something, something that he should have realised yesterday, but didn’t quite process. He didn’t want to process it now either.

He slowly got up and left his room. In snail tempo he made it through the flat.

To Tetsu’s old room.

Yuuji slept there, on top of the covers, looking like an absolute mess. Still fully clothed, arms spread, one leg hanging off the bed, his limbs were twitching lightly and there was drool coming out of his mouth.

Then he made off into the kitchen. It took him a while to focus on the clock on the oven but he found out it was four p.m.

He poured himself a glass of water.

And then another.

And another.

Then he went to pee for what felt like half an hour.

Then he made food. Some slices of that pork roast they had two nights ago in between two slices of bread to form a sloppy excuse for a sandwich.

He went to sit on the couch and turned the tv on.

And immediately had to mute it because it was too loud.

He put it on super silent and ignored everything that happened on screen as he half-heartedly chewed on his food.

He is dead.

I found his body.

I found his body and reported it to the police and gave them my statement.

He barely remembered anything he said to the nice and patient police officer, but he groaned in a small voice as he remembered how much of an ass he made of himself, and at the crime scene of my best friend’s death.

Another person appeared in his side vision.

He turned around, faster now than the first time. But there was still nobody there, not even Yuuji.

To be honest, he still prayed for Tetsu.

Noya didn’t know how much time had passed—a few days at least. After his initial hang-over cure he hadn’t quite felt the strength to look after himself again.

He laid in bed a lot of the time, went to the TV to watch something or play video games. Occasionally he made food that he didn’t touch, sometimes he stepped into a shower fully clothed and didn’t wash himself, just waited in the warm water until it turned cold.

Earlier that depressing week, probably about the following day of the incident, Yuuji had come into his room and had asked about his well being. Noya hadn’t given him an answer, not sure what to answer.

He hadn’t really seen Yuuji since, just passing through every now and again—eating real food and taking real showers and living a busy life.

Occasionally he would remind Noya to eat or to get some fresh air to which Noya hummed non-committedly but otherwise ignored.

What's the point?

It must have been close to a workweek later that Noya was bored enough at home that he had a look at the outside world.

He knew, even in his deepest slump, that he had to look after his little girl. He vaguely remembered the police giving him the number of a cleaning company that specialised in post mortem cleanups, and the table and bench in Sanity must have properly soaked by now. That would be hard to clean, possibly permanently damaged. He’d have to replace them.

Noya hid himself under loose clothing and the biggest hoodie he could find and made to seek out his little girl.

Which was buzzing with life.

Wait what?

Confused by Sanity running without him, he went inside to see what the commotion was all about.

He squeezed himself through a throng of people to see the cash register manned by his trusty staff.

Yuuji, as hyper as ever, took people’s order, always a witty line on the lips and always a wink for the most attractive customers. And old ladies would tip him well for flirting with them.

Kenji was yelling and handing out orders, waving the serviced customers goodbye and putting on that well trained, fake smile of his that convinced everyone but his closest friends that he was a good and well-meaning person.

Shohei, behind the counter, was serving food and making drinks faster than Noya’s exhausted eyes could keep up with. Not saying a word, not showing any emotion, but working more efficiently than any machine.

Noya approached the counter, sitting on one of the bar stools there that provided for REALLY QUICK customers.

“What’s happening here?” he asked his staff.

“Boooooss!!” Yuuji said with enthusiasm. “You’re with us again! Wait a sec, I have a customer.”

Noya was bamboozled by it all, couldn’t quite keep up with the turn of events.

“LARGE ICED COFFEE TO GO!” Kenji yelled next to him, before turning to address him directly. “We knew you were in no fit state to get Sanity running again, so Yuuji called us together to call that cleaning company and get everything back on track. We have a new ridiculous sale every day to keep the customers distracted from the murder that happened here. GLUTEN-FREE SALMON BAGEL AND AND SMALL BLACK COFFEE FOR HERE!”

A large Burger and a large Iced Tea was put in front of him. 

“Please eat something, boss,” Shohei said, his calm voice somehow carrying over the buzzing that happened around them. Then he sniffed. “And take a proper shower when you can.”

Noya felt close to tears. he hadn’t cried since, well, since he had his hangover on Monday probably, and if he wasn’t wrong it was Thursday now.

As he shoveled food into himself and flushed it down with iced tea, he could feel the tears coming for real.

He was so lucky with his friends, so lucky and so grateful and so, so blessed.

“Yes, I know, we are amazing,” Yuuji said, suddenly appearing in front of him. It seemed he had given his cashier duty over to Shohei, “no need to thank us and no need to make that face.”

Noya, with almost a workweek of no sleep and no personal hygiene, tears running freely down his face and a mouth stuffed full with food, wasn’t quite certain what sort of face Yuuji was referring too.

“You’re working again tomorrow, but I don’t want to see you again behind the counter before you haven’t had a proper dose of sleep and a thorough shower.”

Noya tried to say ‘thank you’ but the words died in his throat.

“Most of us have already given our statements,” Yuuji continued on, not waiting for Noya to be free to talk. “The police people seem nice and competent, so I think they’ll find the culprit in no time.”

“Are you sure we want them to be found?” Kenji said, appearing right next to Yuuji. “CHEESE AND HAM SANDWICH AND LARGE TEA TO GO!” A man squeezed himself next to Noya, took the order, and left. “After all, who would have a reason to just kill Kuroo like that? What if it’s someone we know? How would we deal with that?” He proposed, before turning around and leaving them, as if statements like that could just be proposed into a room and left hanging like that.

“Are we sure it was a murder?” Noya asked, before digging into his Burger again.

“There was a bullet straight through his head,” Yuuji answered since Kenji had to go back to work. “So it’s safe to say that it was murder. The police aren’t giving us any details though.”

“TWO CRUMPETS, A LARGE COFFEE, AND A LARGE TEA FOR HERE!” Kenji yelled next to them. The order was taken by the appropriate customers again and Kenji turned to them. “Man, these busy days are terrible for my voice. I’m looking forward to normal business next week.”

Yuuji turned back to Noya, “Do we even know anyone that has a gun? Let alone someone that wants to see Kuroo dead?”

Noya thought for a moment, slinging down the last of his Burger. 

“He has lots of rivals from high school, but all of us did. And I think the only person I can see with a gun in his hand is Kenji.”

“I swear I did nothing!” Kenji assured with a shocked look on his face. “SMALL LATTE MACCHIATO AND REGULAR BLACK COFFEE, TAKE-AWAY!” Kenji turned away as the order was taken.

“You’re up and running again,” a small voice said next to Noya, both takeaway orders in his hand.

“Kenma,” Noya responded, “how are you holding up?” Kenma was even closer to Kuroo than Noya ever was, having grown up with him and all, if anyone was shaken by the events it would be him.

Kenma shrugged, after a pause, he said, “I still see him sometimes.”

God yea, me too.

“I’m surprised to see you here again so soon,” Kenma said, looking at Noya with that intense look of his. The sort that gave Noya cold shivers sometimes.

“It’s no good just sulking in my room. I have to see how my girl is doing.” Noya grinned a little. “Turned out she was doing fine, even without me.”

Kenma nodded acknowledgingly and averted his eyes again. Noya was somewhat grateful for it, in all honesty. 

“It must be hard for you too though, and you’re here as well.”

Kenma jumped lightly at the remark.

“I’m here with Mika,” he pointed at where Tetsu’s girlfriend sat, bawling her eyes out. It was her usual seat, directly opposite of where Tetsu had died. Noya wondered if she was aware of that fact.

“She’s been a mess since Monday,” Kenma continued, “and then she found out who the biggest suspect is for the murder.”

“Wait,” Noya said, “who is it?”

Daichi sighed with vigour.

No real suspects.

No motives no intentions no bad blood NOTHING.

There was one person with a good motive. Daichi looked at his folder again, read through the information again, just to be absolutely certain of every detail.

The issue here was that this person was the ex of the victim’s girlfriend, a good enough motive as it was. The only issue was the alibi, since he wasn’t in the country at the time.

To be exact, he had been two hours away from Japan.

In an airplane.

Everything, absolutely everything pointed in his direction. Old text messages to the girlfriend, old text messages to the victim, history with the victim as well.

All except for the fact that he didn’t have the opportunity to kill him.

“Ready to go in?” Kiyoko asked.

Daichi rubbed his neck and got up from his desk to go to the questioning room.

“He’s a textbook perp. It all fits so well, except for…”

“He couldn’t have done it.”

“Yea, he couldn’t have done it.”

“Don’t worry, Daichi, we’ll find out how it happened.”

They opened the door. The suspect looked up at them.

“About fucking time—this room is cold and I’m thirsty do you guys know nothing about hospitality? I KNOW that I have rights.”

“Daishou Suguru,” Daichi started, “from what I can tell you and the victim had history.”

Daishou rolled his eyes.

“Yea, Kuroo and I were sports rivals in high school, but that doesn’t mean—“

“And he was dating your girlfriend.”

“EX-girlfriend. We were already long history when they got together, and I—“

“—Was against it, from where I’m standing.” Daichi countered, sliding screenshots of past conversation across the table. Messages discouraging Mika from going out with ‘the skeezy cat’.

“Well yea, I didn’t like him, but that doesn’t mean—“

“That you would kill him out of jealousy?”

“Man,” Daishou started, raising his hands defensively, “listen. When I went to study overseas, I knew I wouldn’t be back for five years. I couldn’t do that to my Mika, so we broke things off on good terms and gave each other freedom to explore and even date again. Something you probably also stumbled over, in your little digging mission.”

He was right. Their break-up seemed to be on good terms, and while they exchanged messages about missing each other and there were even some quite romantic notes and declarations, both parties seemed to encourage each other when finding new love.

“But then came Kuroo,” Daichi countered.

“No that’s not—it’s not quite like that,” he responded, pulling on his hair. “I never liked Kuroo, but I said she could do better is all.”

“You said she had terrible taste in men, and called him an ‘asshole’,” Kiyoko contributed, flipping through the screenshots of the most conversations, “and she responded with ‘seems that I have a type then’, to which you took personal offense.”

Daishou giggled silently, looking at the table in silent glee. His voice was quiet, and the look on his face seemed private. Daichi almost trusted him, but he was still their strongest suspect.

“It’s not that I didn’t think that Mika didn’t know what she was doing,” he said in that quiet, private voice of his, and with a degree of fondness in it. “Kuroo is a good choice when you want to know someone is in good hands. He is a very supportive and loving person, so honestly, she could have done worse.” He looked at the Detectives again. “The damn cat just rubs me the wrong way, and she knew that. When she first proposed the idea, I thought she was making a joke at my expense, so when it turned out to be for real I didn’t want to believe it at first. But they were going steady, and he made her happy, so what more could I want, really?”

Daichi had to suppress a sigh. Even his best leads were leading into nothing. The whole ordeal with the airplane alibi didn’t help at all.

And there was another thing that none of them had brought up so far, the one thing that would make this whole motive fall into the water.

‘Let’s try this’.

Most recent messages, between all three parties involved, and exchanged just before Daishou’s flight back, suggested attempts in making a three-way relationship work.

If they were earnest about this and intending to make it happen, there was nothing in Daichi’s hand anymore that had any value.

Kiyoko looked at him. They had run into a wall. They’d had to get out and regroup and discuss a new battle plan.

Daichi got up. “Well, thank you for your time. we will be getting back to you.”

They left through the door and waved their strongest subject a courtly goodbye.

“Hey, can I go home now? I need to go home, I have things to do!”

The door shut.

Chapter Text

“From what I can tell,” Kenma said, “they have all the usual suspects. Close friends, family, acquaintances. It’s quite early in the investigation, though, so they won’t have too many leads into any direction.”

Noya made big eyes from where he was stuffing his face with the complimentary fries from his Burger and the last of his ice tea.

“And you got that from being at their precinct once?” Yuuji asked with wonder.

Kenma shrugged and avoided eye contact with them both.

“I asked for their help with something but they weren’t there yet when I arrived, so I had a look at the folders on their table. All the usual suspects; all of us have our place in the investigation. Suguru was right on top—I think he’s their favourite suspect because of their history. Doesn’t look good for him. There was one name though that I didn’t know: Azumane Asahi.”

Empty looks from the audience. Kenma continued,

“I’m sure I heard the name somewhere but I can’t pinpoint it. But he was the only name I didn’t know, and when the cops came back they were loudly complaining about him and how he rubbed them the wrong way.”

“You know Kenma,” Yuuji said from where he avoided his working duty, “the conclusions you get to with minimal information is really scary sometimes.”

Kenma shrugged awkwardly and mumbled something or other.

“What were you asking their help for anyways? LARGE LATTE MACCHIATO!” Kenji asked, and then immediately backed away again.

“I’m taking over matters with the funeral. Kanoka is a mess, which is understandable, and since that woman raised me like one of her own, I’m doing her a favour by burying her son. I went to the police to ask them to supervise the funeral, since I’m still nervous with a murderer on the loose. Keep your dates free though—the wake is the day after tomorrow. If you want to say something, you are invited to.”

Noya gaped at Kenma in awe.

“You are incredibly strong, Kenma. He must be like a brother to you and yet you manage to take over the most gruesome responsibility here.”

Kenma shrugged, avoiding eye contact again.

“You’re incredibly strong too, Yuu, all of you are. I don’t think I could work here if this is where he died.”

That sealed it—Noya had a new goal, a new reason to get out of bed and continue living.

“Kenma, can you find out who that Azumane guy is?”

Kenma looked him straight in the eyes with that scary look of his.

“I can.”

“Great, because I have a plan.”

“You’re gonna clog your arteries with that, you know that?”

Kiyoko, across from Daichi, just shrugged non-committedly as she stuffed more chashu ramen into her face hole.

Daichi, for his part, ate some real food with actual nutritional value as they went over all their suspects again.

They had pictures and summaries of every suspect lined out between the two of them on the ground. Since they had absolutely no clue where to start, they decided to call for drastic measures and brainstorm as they fuelled their brains with food. Or impending diabetes in Kiyoko’s case.

“I like him the least,” Daichi said, pointing at the rough outline they made of Azumane Asahi.

Their schools had been in the same area and been part of an area wide-union of schools playing volleyball at camp together a few times a year. While as students the two barely ever talked, as adults the two of them frequently applied for volunteer roles as adult supervisors at said camp. Kuroo had been chosen over Azumane more often than not, so Daichi grasped for the straws of a motive.

“You just don’t like him for personal reasons,” Kiyoko said with her mouth full of food. “Give me one good reason why it was him other than ‘I have a gut feeling’.”

Daichi had… well, Daichi had nothing. Well, it was not like Kiyoko had anything with solid footing to show, either.

“Who’s your best guess then, since you won't follow my lead?”

Kiyoko pointed at the case file with Daishou Suguru’s name on it. “Most solid motive.”

“They have a long-gone school rivalry and a recently resolved love rivalry.”

“Polyamorous relationships are possible,” Kiyoko said, looking at Daichi, “but rare.”

“Okay, okay,” Daichi said, “what about uh, what about this one?” He pulled the profile card of Kozume Kenma closer to himself.

Kiyoko laid her head sideways, as if to read the card upside down. “I like him. He seems serious about organising the funeral and he seems genuinely nervous about having a murderer in his friend group. Why did he come to mind?”

Daichi took the card into his hand.

“He just... kept averting his gaze when he talked to us, and he was so nervous the entire time.”

Kiyoko shrugged.

“He just reads like a socially awkward autistic person to me. Don’t be allistic, Daichi.”

“I’m just taking from the ‘how to spot liars’ textbook,” Daichi said in his defense.

“That text book is garbage,” Kiyoko argued. “Look at me.”

Daichi barely dared to look at her because she was sure to rip him a new one, but he knew there was no getting around it.

With a straight face, Detective Shimizu Kiyoko said, “My name is Sawamura Daichi. I like my coffee blond and sweet and I enjoy farming simulators and movies with dog protagonists. I am a softie with a sweet spot for romances and I have a secret box of adult—”

“Okay, okay, gee, you proved your point,” Daichi said, his face burning red. “Let’s do this again.” He shuffled the cards on the ground around. “Maybe we’re starting at the wrong end. What if, well, what if…” He pulled closer the profile cards of Nishinoya Yuu and Terushima Yuuji. “What if it was a meet-up between friends but two of them were severely drunk and things went wrong and after one of them died the other two cleaned up and faked innocence?”

Kiyoko hummed in thought.

“They both seemed quite out of it. They may not even remember the events if they were drunk enough, especially if it was an accident and not in a bad manner. Chances are their brains are tuning it out.”

Daichi’s brain handled the information and then immediately called bullshit on it.

“All proper evidence was removed. The second cup of coffee, the murder weapon, and the bullet. That wasn’t done by an insane man, least of all such drunk ones.”

“They could have been tipsy at the time, and then continued drinking more after the clean-up to forget what happened ‘cause they couldn’t deal with it. They may not even know themselves that they did it. I’ve had a look at their school report cards, Daichi. Nishinoya isn’t very promising but Terushima was in college prep classes and with good grades. He has more brainpower than he lets on.”

Daichi didn’t like that theory, but also couldn’t argue against it, so he continued on. “So they had said they were grieving heartache on Terushima’s part. I checked with the girl in question they identified and she agrees that Terushima has been asking her out unsuccessfully for quite some time, that she just got a boyfriend, and that Terushima was quite bummed out about that. So the story checks out on that end. Now we need to match it up with Kuroo.”

Daichi took the profile card of Kuroo and put it in between the cards of Nishinoya and Terushima.

“What brought you into this place and under those circumstances?”

“He says goodbye to all his friends,” Kiyoko said, pointing at their clue card with the note ‘ returns long-withheld items, tells people he loves them ’, “goes to his best friend’s workplace after hours in the middle of the night—” She pointed at the clue card with the words, ‘ time and place of murder ,’ “—has a celebratory drink of midnight coffee with a friend, possibly friends—” She pointed at the clue card ‘ intimate details ,’ “—and gets shot through the head after the celebration.” Her last hint was the clue card ‘missing bullet, removed from wall’.

“It almost sounds like he was planning to run away with someone… shouldn’t he have packed bags for that? Did we have a look for those?”

Kiyoko shook her head.

“We found nothing that suggested that he was planning to leave. And mind you, he had plans to meet up with Daishou and Yamaka later that week to sort out their relationship.”

Daichi shuffled the profile cards closer to himself.

“Maybe she’d had enough of him and got rid of him under the pretense of waiting for Daishou to enter Japan as a surprise, but then the surprise was a bullet through his head and now she has her ex back for herself and doesn’t need to deal with Kuroo anymore.”

“I found no tensions in their relationship,” Kiyoko said, pulling the victim and girlfriend’s profile cards to herself, “no major disagreements, no fights, no issues. They talked well and thoroughly about moving in together and looked for places together. AND the move was fresh when their relationship was already collecting anniversaries. And it’s not like she didn’t know what she was getting herself into—she has known him for years after all, even if mostly over Daishou.”

Daichi felt the urge to pull out his hair, all the clues lead to nothing. “Well, at least we know that it has to be someone close to him, because of the Bayley’s.”

Kiyoko shook her head. “Terushima said the idea was spreading through their circle of friends at a rapid rate, most people do that now.”

Daichi sighed. “Well, at least that excludes his family.” He looked at the profile card of his mother, Kuroo Kanoka. She had been wailing so hard he still heard it in his ears sometimes.

Kiyoko looked at the card for a long moment, worryingly long and worryingly concentrated.

“Oh god, please don’t tell me you have bad news for me, Kiyoko.”

She looked at him.

“Unless he made the coffee.”

“For both parties.” Daichi added, his soul slowly leaving his body.

“Then the other person could be anyone and their relationship to Bayley’s is absolutely irrelevant.” Kiyoko concluded.

Daichi groaned again. He held up the Kuroo Kanoka profile card up. “At least tell me it isn’t her, you have seen her cry.”

Kiyoko shrugged with one shoulder. “Remember my first case? I’ve seen women wail genuine tears of grief for children they have killed themselves. My first case; and it messed me up, man.”

Daichi remembered that case—it had happened just after he had joined the force. It sounded gruesome. No wonder Kiyoko didn’t trust mothers and excessive exhibitions of emotions at a dear person’s loss.

“Well, if they were meeting Kuroo there, at least that means that they must know Sanity enough to know about the wonky backdoor that can be broken into easily if enough force was applied to it.”

Kiyoko gave him that look he didn’t like again.

“Please, Kiyoko, just let me live.”

“Unless they came in with Kuroo since he had a key.”

Daichi groaned for real this time. Then another thought hit him.

“Oh god, Daichi—I don’t like it when you make that face.”

“It seemed like he was saying goodbye, right? And he was having one last celebratory drink with a friend. But after all is said and done, all the evidence is gone.”

Kiyoko groaned into her hands. “Please don’t say, please don’t say that; every time we don’t know how something has come to be.”

“He was part of a cult.”

Kiyoko pointed her finger at him accusingly.“If I’m not allowed to distrust every grieving mother I meet, you are not allowed to jump a cult-centric conclusion every time a case is vaguely hard.”

“Listen Kiyoko: he was celebrating his death.”

Kiyoko was silent for a very long moment. “I hate that you have a point.”

And all Daichi had wanted to do was to get married to that pretty teacher in Stardew valley.

Chapter Text

Futakuchi Kenji sat in the witness seat of the police precinct and squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.

Daichi and Kiyoko had already planned to call in some close friends of the victim to follow up something that Daichi called a lead, and Kiyoko had called a wild guess. However, Futakuchi hadn’t been one of the people they had intended to call in; instead, Futakuchi had come to them himself, saying he may have valuable info regarding the case.

If he ever came around to opening up his mouth that is.

“Last year, when uh,” Futakuchi started, still nervously playing with his hands and avoiding eye contact with the detectives, “when Sanity was still starting out, we had uh—we had a rat problem.” 

Daichi didn’t know what exactly it was, but somehow he started to dislike this Futakuchi guy.

“And,” Futakuchi continued, “we weren’t that big on finances at the time ‘cause we were still just starting out and all that, and the rat problem made everything worse not only because of the extra finances but also because our reputation dropped significantly and we uh, we really couldn’t have that because we were still starting out you see?” The witness closed his eyes, breathing in shakily. Daichi crossed his arms, not knowing what to make of him yet.

Futakuchi breathed out and opened his eyes again, not looking at the detectives, though.

“Because we were in a really bad spot and I really didn’t want Noya’s dream to die I uh, I borrowed some money from some shady people.” Uh oh. “And honestly I couldn’t repay it all in the time frame they wanted it back, but at one point when I was the most nervous about it all, I got a call from them that it was fine and I didn’t have to pay them back anymore.”

Daichi raised his eyebrows. All this was very unlikely.

“I asked them why but they said not to worry about it, but obviously I am worrying about it, especially now.” Futakuchi looked at them then, the first time ever since entering the room. “I told no one about it, but after what happened to Kuroo I can’t help but fear that he was either a warning or collateral damage. What’s more,” Futakuchi looked away again, scratching his arm nervously, “I’m more of a night owl than the rest of the staff is, so I usually close the store. But I often stay for longer to eat the leftover food and make coffee and do homework or study for tests. The cafe has a nice atmosphere and you just can’t quite get the same sort of calm and quiet as you do in a cafe after you locked the front door yourself.”

Tension left Futakuchi’s body as he uttered his following sentences. Not like someone that was at peace, but like someone who was holding in so much dread they didn’t know how to deal with any of it, so they just shut down completely.

“I fear now that Kuroo was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That it should have been me that was killed, but it hit him instead because of an unlucky coincidence. Or worse, that his death was just a message to me, and that more is to follow if I don’t do something about it.”

Daichi and Kiyoko looked at each other for a moment, then they turned back to their witness.

“Thank you for your statement,” Kiyoko said. “We will have a look into that lead and give you an update on it. Please refrain from telling anyone else for the time being. You are free to go now.”

Futakuchi nodded and got up, leaving the room without properly looking at them even once.

——

“What do you think?” Daichi asked his partner.

“It’s wild is what it is,” Kiyoko answered.

“And unlikely,” Daichi continued.

“You borrow money from some loan sharks,” Kiyoko said with a skeptical look, “and out of the blue they stop asking for repayment?”

“And a year later a reasonably close friend dies at your workplace in the middle of the night.” Daichi concluded.

“It’s weird.” Kiyoko stated again.

Bokuto Kotarou sat in his seat like a normal person. Not avoiding eye contact, not nervous. Lost in thought maybe, and more mellow than what he had been described as by the other witnesses, but nothing out of the ordinary.

“Can you tell me if Kuroo Tetsuro was part of a cult?” Daichi asked the witness. He could feel Kiyoko judging him from next to him, but she could screw herself.

The witness looked at him, startled. “Uh, no, not that I know of. But uh, I remembered something that may be important.”

Daichi and Kiyoko leaned closer—anything could be a clue, anything.

“When we were in high school—so like, when we were uh, 16 or something—Kuroo and I walked in on a gang fight.” Now THAT sounded interesting and important. “It was like two handfuls of people at most, and Kuroo and I just got distracted going to the gym during summer vacation, and we walked down this alley we never walked in before and we saw these two groups fighting.”

Bokuto adjusted his seat. he made some motions with his fingers as if he was trying to find the right sort of words, and after a moment continued.

“We were startled at first. I was ready to either fight or run, but they just stared at us, but then one of them recognised Kuroo and said ‘eyyyyy, Tetsuuuuu’ as if they were friends or something.” Bokuto leaned closer to them then. “And this is where it gets weird: Kuroo knew them too. I remember clearly, he said ‘hi Yato’ like they’re friends or something. Then they shared a bro first and that Yato guy introduced Kuroo to the others as if knowing Kuroo was something cool that only happened to the most important of people. They let us go and I was super confused by it all, but my first thought was that it was good we didn’t get into a fight against, like, ten people.”

Daichi’s gears were spinning overtime in his head; he assumed the smoke they were creating working overtime was visible from the witness’s side of the table.

“Later, I asked him who that was and he said ’Toshinuki Yato’, and I remember because that’s not the sort of information you just let yourself forget even ten years later. I asked him how he knew the guy but he just avoided the question and it was never cleared up or mentioned again.

“I let it be because it never became an issue or a theme again, but now I wonder if it’s the reason he... That he...”

“That is enough,” Kiyoko assured the witness. “Thank you. If you are finished, you may leave now. We will call you if we need anything else, thank you.”

Bokuto nodded and left.

——

“Does that name seem familiar?” Daichi asked his partner.

“Yes,” Kiyoko answered, “very.”

She sat down at her desk and pulled out a folder.

“Toshinuki Yato. I often take him in for possession and petty thefts. He is part of the Royal Snakes, a gang who often fight with the Gorilla Kings over territory—” She squinted at her folder. “—or something. They reign in the Nerima ward which is where…” She pulled the Kuroo Tetsuro folder closer to her, and after looking at it for a moment continued saying, “Yep, just as I thought. That’s where Kuroo’s high school was, so Bokuto’s story checks out. I often talk to Toshinuki about gang-related matters and can give him an easier sentence because he is easy to work with, so it will be child's play to get to talk to him about Kuroo.”

Daichi looked at the time on his phone and the impending appointment of the next witness they had to call in for re-questioning. “I do hope the next guy can help us. Maybe we can find out something valuable about their relationship before we seek out Toshinuki.”

Kozume Kenma sat in his seat somewhat uncomfortably. Not quite at home, but by far not as nervous as Futakuchi had been earlier that morning.

“Can you tell us if Kuroo Tetsuro was perhaps part of a cult?”

Kozume sat stock still in his seat then, back straight and eyes wide open. “Not that I know of.”

Well, Daichi’s idea led to nothing. He made a stinky eye at Kiyoko just to find her sitting stock still like someone trying very hard not to laugh.

But whatever, they had a new lead to follow anyways.

“Alright then, have you ever heard Kuroo mention a ‘Kuro Neko’ or ’Toshinuki Yato’?”

“No, he never mentioned him before.”

Damn, even that lead to nothing of value. Well, they would just have to talk to the man directly. Kiyoko had mentioned that she often talked to him to be an informant on cases involving the Gorilla Kings or other gang matters, so that wasn’t too big of an issue.

He flipped through his notes.

“Your other friend, Bokuto, said that he and Kuroo had met the young man during a gang fight before and that the two of them seemed to be on friendly, even first name basis.”

Kozume was subtly, if nonetheless still visibly shocked at that.

“He never mentioned any Toshinuki’s or black cats to me,” Kozume answered, shaking his head.

Daichi nodded, looking through his notes again. Damn it all, at first there were too little issues—now there are too many. Well, at least there was hope for the future now.

Daichi closed his folder and realised he was still nodding.

“Thank you, that will be all,” he said, dismissing his witness and made to get up with Kiyoko.

“Wait!” Kozume said, shooting out of his seat with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “I have another question.”

Daichi and Kiyoko sat back down. This could be interesting. Kozume was Kuroo’s closest friend, and therefore their most valuable reference.

“It’s about one of the names of your suspects, Azumane Asahi—“

Well…

“We can’t tell you anymore than absolutely necessary—“

“I know, I know,” Kozume assured quickly, “it’s just—” The witness averted his gaze again, as he had done many times before, playing with his hands, “—I saw the name on your list before, and it rang a bell, but I wasn’t quite sure ‘cause like—“ the witness took a deep, thought collecting breath, before looking straight at Daichi again, “—I remember Kuro complaining about him.”

That was EXACTLY what Daichi had been hoping for when Kozume had asked for details. 

“If I just remembered who he was, maybe I could remember what exactly he had complained about.”

Daichi and Kiyoko exchanged a look. From what he could tell they both agreed, this could be a lead.

“Okay, so here is what we can tell you.”

——

Well, that one was a bust. Kozume remembered the name “Azumane” from the camp Kuroo would volunteer at, but other than he didn’t remember much about him.

A solid lead dropped in water again.

Kozume seemed to be as upset about the lack of leads as the detectives were. He had mentioned nerves about being alone with the killer before, so the lack of leads probably did nothing to mend that fear.

“What now?” Daichi asked his partner.

Kiyoko put her phone down and said, “Lunch break. I just organised a meeting with Toshinuki for afterwards. Eat a lot, you’ll need your energy.”

Daichi groaned, but he was keen on this break.

On the way out they saw a familiar face, though.

“Kozume?” Daichi asked befuddled. Honestly, after letting the witness go before, he had not expected to see him again until the funeral tomorrow, but evidently he had been engaged in a conversation with Officer Hinata on the way out of the precinct. 

Just as the detectives had intruded on the scene, Officer Hinata was enthusiastically talking at Kozume. Meanwhile; Kozume tucked strands of hair behind both ears shyly, a subtle smile on his lips and a slight blush on his cheeks.

A young crush?

“Detective Sawamura!” Officer Hinata said with enthusiasm, waving at him. Kozume nodded at him but avoided eye contact.

“What’s going on here?” Daichi asked, slightly bemused. Well, it's not like he was indulging himself in a middle school romance happening on his precinct.

“Kenma and I became friends and are having a movie night tonight! We’re gonna watch The Little Giant ‘cause it’s the best movie ever!”

Daichi couldn’t help himself—he smiled gently.

In all honesty, he was starting to like that Kozume guy. He seemed shy and nervous, and he would have to deal with the loss of his oldest friend, the fear of a murderer on the loose, and the self-inflicted responsibility of organising said funeral on top of it all. That guy really deserved a break; a sweet movie night with a young crush the day before what must be the darkest day of his life seemed like just the right thing for that.

“I wish you both a good night then,” Daichi said in all earnesty. Somehow, that development made Daichi feel more refreshed like he now had the energy to dig deep into this case, and be able to solve it so that the grieving loved ones could get a chance to move on with their lives.

“Thanks!” Hinata said beaming, and Kozume said the same thing significantly more quietly, and more into the general direction of the floor more than anything.

Well, that surely was something to keep a close eye on.

For self-indulgent reasons.

Noya got a text from Kenma.

He’s coming.

Noya got oddly excited about the prospect. He hardly considered that any of his close friends had killed Tetsu, so it had to be the one person that was an outsider.

The Azumane guy.

Noya sat in what used to be Tetsu’s usual seat. He felt as if Tetsu was sitting right next to him, grinning in that tilted way he usually did, also ready to await the possible murderer. Face them directly, make them confess or crumble, either way, coming out on top.

A person sat down across from Noya. He was tall, he had brown hair in a bun, and a little goatee. He looked about as intimidated as Noya should probably feel, but Noya felt strong and sure of himself.

“Are you the, uh, Noya guy?” asked the tall bearded man, very unsure of himself. “I only have this, uh, note to go on so I don’t actually know what’s going on.”

The bearded man held up a handwritten note, with the current time and their location on. The note had been given to him by Kenma, to bring Azumane to Sanity and into Noya’s grasp.

“You are suspected of the murder of Kuroo Tetsuro,” Noya said with a big smile on his face.

The man swallowed and nodded, then he tried to speak but the words seemingly died in his throat.

“It’s fine, the murder happened this week, so a lot of us are still on the suspect list. The thing is, though, all the other suspects are friends of mine—people I have known for a long time and hold dear—so I strongly disbelieve that they had anything to do with it. So the only real suspect in my personal view is the outsider. That is you, Azumane Asahi.” Noya leaned close to him then, invading his personal space. “So I have decided to make myself a picture of you, Azumane.”

A plate was put in front of his guest, a big and smug grin was on Yuuji’s face as he served the food.

It was Yuuji’s greatest work, pancakes cooked in a rice maker, which made them so thick they could be used as pillows. A small amount of butter and a generous amount of syrup was slowly melting all over the pancakes, giving them an almost pornographic look with how good they were.

Not to speak of the fact that with Yuuji’s magic hands, they were heavenly smooth and delightful.

Noya heard Azumane’s stomach grumble. He was glad the big, massive grin was all part of his image at the moment.

“Don’t forget your drink,” Kenji said, replacing Yuuji as a server, and serving a big glass of their finest iced coffee to their guest with the same sort of smug grin Yuuji had worn before. He bowed overly politely and moved back behind the counter as well.

Azumane became more and more distressed. Noya was truly celebrating just how obvious the other was showing his emotions.

“Go on,” Noya said overly politely, waving his hand over the food presented. “it’s on the house; you are my guest.”

Azumane’s stomach grumbled so intensely that Noya could feel sympathy hunger cramps in his own stomach.

“I—I can’t eat this,” Azumane said in a tiny voice.

“It’s fine,” Noya said still grinning widely. “I am not here to interrogate you—I am here to get to know you.”

“No I mean—I mean I have celiacs disease.” What?   “I can’t eat any of this because I am severely allergic to all of it.”

What?

Azumane bowed politely to the best of his ability while sitting at the table and looking away shyly.

“It all looks very delightful, though. I don’t mean to be impolite.”

“I, uh,” Noya started, suddenly very uncertain of his actions.

“And I can’t have any coffee either, really. I’m very sensitive to caffeine so I usually avoid it unless it’s in really small doses or it’s a special occasion.”

“Well, I uh,” Noya tried and failed to get a grasp on the situation as a whole.

“It’s all very beautiful, though, and the place you chose as a meeting spot is also very beautiful.”

“I, uh, yea, thanks.” 

Awkward silence over their scene as Azumane sat in his seat uncomfortably and Noya had to re-evaluate all his life choices.

Inside his head, Tetsu’s ghost was sitting next to Noya, laughing maniacally at his expense.

“Well and uh,” Azumane continued after a very long, awkward silence from their table, “I can understand why you see, or even want to see me as a suspect. The Detectives don’t like me because Kuroo and I often applied for the same volunteer job at the summer training camp in our high school area. I really need the experience to become a coach like how I want to be, but Kuroo got the job acceptance far more often than me, so the Detectives think I was angry enough at him to, well, to put an end to him.”

Azumane raised the glass of iced coffee to his lips, took a sip, and then pulled a face of regret and put his glass back down.

Within a moment, Yuuji appeared at the table with a tall glass of water that he replaced the iced coffee with, winked at Azumane for some reason, and then sped away again.

Azumane looked at the action befuddled but then went back to topic.

“To be honest though,” he continued his story, “I barely knew Kuroo. I heard great things about him at camp though, so I assume he was a good person, and I am sorry for your loss, I truly am.”

Noya didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to deal with ANY part of this very awkward and unpredictable situation.

“Thanks,” he said very quietly though. God, he wasn’t used to being uncertain about things.

The plate of thick pancakes that some butter and syrup were slowly soaking through and making the scene sort of disgusting were replaced by a plate with two truly delightful looking cinnamon rolls.

Azumane tried to wave Yuuji off, but Yuuji didn’t give him a chance to.

“I couldn’t help but overhear, but my gluten intolerant cousin is visiting me next week, so I have been experimenting with recipes, and I would like for you to taste test if you would be so kind. So that I don’t poison her on accident.”

“You don’t really need me to—“

“No, I insist, please.” Yuuji winked at Azumane again. “I enjoy cooking for cute customers.” Then he bowed at them and left the two of them alone again, leaving them even more confused than they had been before.

Hesitantly, Azumane took a bite from one of the roles. He seemed to approve of it but seemed hesitant to show any sort of opinion on it.

Noya had to make an opinion of it himself, so he took the other roll from the plate and bit into it.

It was delightful . Yuuji truly had a magic hand in the kitchen, Noya was lucky he got to hire him.

He should really dig into this option more. 

No really, it was time for a change.

Chapter Text

She asked me, "Son, when I grow old

Will you buy me a house of gold?

And when your father turns to stone

Will you take care of me?"

It honestly had been a while since Daichi been at a funeral.

Or a wake, really.

He and Kiyoko were in their formal police uniforms. They dropped their condolence money (It was only 3000 yen each, since they weren’t part of the family, and wouldn’t be staying for long) at the reception and went inside.

They entered the room that the wake was held at. It was gorgeous and surprisingly extravagant. They lit some incense, bowed to both tables of the grieving family, and then looked for Kozume.

Who wasn’t there.

“Let’s ask the mother where he is.” Kiyoko said, always a step ahead of Daichi.

They walked over to one of the tables, where Kuroo Kanoka was holding Bokuto Koutarou’s hands, talking to him in a quiet voice, both of them looking like they had been crying and possibly sleeping terribly. Behind Bokuto, barely noticeable, stood Akaashi Keiji, hands on the other’s waist and barely moving. From what Daichi remembered of both their characters’ charts, Akaashi had been close to Kuroo, but not quite as close as Bokuto was. He was, however, in a relationship with mister Bokuto for quite some time now, so if he wasn’t here for himself, he was probably here for his partner.

Daichi and Kiyoko bowed to the small group. “My condolence,” Daichi spoke out. “We don’t mean to interrupt your grieving. We were ordered here by Kozume-san, and cannot find him.”

Miss Kuroo sniffed and nodded. After collecting herself, she said, “He told me already—I was expecting you. He is with Tetsuro.” She pointed at a secluded room with a curtain for a door, presumably the one holding the body. “I would join him but I don’t think I can. Not yet.”

Daichi bowed. “Thank you for your help. We will be out of your hair now and let you grieve in peace.”

Miss Kuroo nodded. “Thank you for your service, please do right by my son.”

The detectives went over to the room and pushed the curtains aside to enter. Right as they did so, they were hit by more drama than Daichi had expected at a wake. 

“I think it’s time you watched your words a little, cousin Asahiko.”

“I think it’s time you stopped pretending you’re actually part of the family, Kozume.”

Daichi and Kiyoko did their appropriate greetings to the corpse, while Kozume stood up from his seat and bowed to them.

Daichi turned to him. “We are just dropping by as we promised. We will be there for the full funeral tomorrow, but today is not the time for this.”

Kozume nodded eagerly.

“What are cops doing at Tetsuro’s funeral?” a young man asked, from where he was sitting next to the corpse.

Daichi didn’t remember him from interrogations. He had short, black hair, a displeased look on his face, and seemed slightly taller than Kozume. Daichi presumed he was the ‘Cousin Asahiko’ that couldn’t quite watch his tongue.

“We were ordered here by Kozume-san, who seems to be feeling uncomfortable lately.” Daichi answered him.

The young man on the ground pulled a grimace in Kenma’s direction. 

“What do you need cops at a funeral for, Kozume? they have no place here.”

It wasn’t often that Daichi strongly favoured or even favoured an involved member of an investigation at all, and it was not like he hadn’t been wrong about the people he favoured before, but seeing this cousin of the dead person—that the wake was held for—show such obvious displeasure for the non-family member—who’s actually holding the wake and trying to grieve—made something very protective in Daichi come up.

“Kuro was shot point-blank,” Kozume snapped at the rude cousin before Daichi could throw all guidelines and experiences to the wind, “and unlike you, I don’t think it was a drunken college party mishap. The murderer is still free and it could be any one of us, so excuse me for being a bit nervous with the people around me and wanting to feel a bit of protection.”

Snap! Daichi thought, despite himself.

“So, well,” Daichi said, coughing into his hand to not show the proud look on his face, “we just came by to check in with you and say our condolence, as we mentioned, we will see you tomorrow at the funeral, Kozume-san.”

Kozume nodded and bowed. as he did so he dropped something that he had held in his hands before. 

Daichi picked it up for him. It was a charm of a little white teddy bear holding a heart that said “I bewueve in u”.

“That’s adorable,” Daichi said, giving the charm back to Kozume.

“It’s a present from Shoyou,” Kozume answered, blushing lightly and averting his gaze. “I went to see a movie at his place last night, and he said he was proud of me for pulling this together today.” The blush on Kozume’s face deepened, and a smile graced his features. “So he got this to cheer me on.”

Daichi couldn’t help himself—he cherished this little middle school relationship, evidently blossoming into something solid right before his eyes. Or, well, in the privacy of their own homes evidently, but every now and again they would grace him with the insight into what was sure to become the most delicate and precious little flower of romance that Daichi would ever get to face.

Every time he got insight into that blossoming flower of a relationship he felt new inspiration to get this case closed.

He laid a hand on Kozume’s shoulder. “I promise you we will find whoever did that and put them in prison.”

Kozume made big, beautiful eyes at him from under long lashes, and nodded appreciatively.

Someone else entered the room then. It was Nishinoya from the coffee shop.

“Yuu!” Kozume exclaimed with more glee than seemed to be appropriate for the circumstances at hand, caught himself though and blushed a little.

Nishinoya finished paying his respects to the corpse, then nodded at Kozume and said, “I heard you were in here and wanted to check in with you.”

Kozume nodded eagerly and looked around himself. “Let me get you some sake, wait—”

“No thanks,” Nishinoya said, waving him off and looking sick, “not after what happened last time…” He held his stomach, gazing at the corpse.

An abandoned idea rang through Daichi’s head.

“What if it was a meet-up between friends but two of them were severely drunk and things went wrong and after one of them died the other two cleaned up and faked innocence?”

“They both seemed quite out of it. They may not even remember the events if they were drunk enough, especially if it was an accident and not in a bad manner. Chances are their brains are tuning it out.”

“Have some tea then,” Kozume interrupted Daichi’s unsettling thoughts, “and come sit with me, I could use some pleasant company.”

Nishinoya accepted a cup of tea offered to him and sat down next to Kozume’s seat.

Kozume nodded at the Detectives and they bid each other farewell.

——

After they politely declined the departing gifts leaving the wake, Daichi thought about what to do next.

“We should tell the weekend shift about that rude cousin,” Kiyoko said, speaking out of Daichi’s soul. “We should be able to tell if he makes for a valuable suspect by tomorrow.”

Daichi nodded. Hopefully this would be a good lead, for reasons other than personal prejudice.

But mainly because of that exact reason.

“Oh what a shame it is, that such a spry young life is taken from us when the rest of us get the gift of living on,” Kuroo Ayata said, as she leaned against the casket of her grandson one last time. Then she turned away, went back to her spot in the small crowd. 

The sound of a clicking tongue echoed through the room. Daichi turned to the source of said noise, which was the unpleasant cousin from the day before. Asahiko if Daichi remembered correctly.

“You must know,” Kozume said, leaning into Daichi’s personal space to share family details like they had intended to for the funeral, “Asahiko and Kuro were rumoured to inherit Grandma Kuroo’s money when she dies. Asahiko always said that Kuro had the upper hand because he spent all his time living with her, and he kept mentioning the inheritance at the wake yesterday.” Kozume looked away sheepishly, a coy smile on his face and a slight blush on his cheeks. “That’s why I went off at him yesterday. If he is going to be celebrating, he could at least wait until after the funeral for that, so the rest of us can grieve in peace.”

Daichi really struggled with not favouring Kozume under all circumstances.

The sound of a vibrating phone reached Daichi’s ears. Kiyoko took her phone out, looked at her screen and said “Iwaizumi” as a form of explanation before leaving the room.

Kuroo’s parents approached the casket then.

“After Kanoka and Daisuke got divorced,” Kozume said, leaning in again, “Kanoka lived alone, and Kuro and Daisuke moved to Daisuke’s parents, next door to me. Kuro was always quite close to his mother though, and he even spent a few months living with her after he graduated.”

Daichi nodded and took down the key points of that story.

The father went over to his own parents, showing his support to them, the mother went over to Daichi’s little group of spectators and folded her hands, as she talked to a startled Kozume.

“Thank you,” she said, taking Kozume’s hands into her own. “I know I have said it a lot, but thank you so much for everything you have done for us and for him.” She released his hands and stepped next to him. “I can’t believe you pulled all that together,” she added in awe. “It is beautiful, better and more than I would have even hoped for. It must have been expensive.”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Kozume assured. “I have contacts in the funeral home—” He pointed to the employee with them in the room—an older man with a constant, gentle smile on his face, “—and I can’t have anything less than the best for my best friend.”

Miss Kuroo nodded a lot and smiled earnestly through the wet eyes.

“I had already given up on having him in the family tomb,” she said. “It’s so expensive to get a spot like that these days, and no one ever leaves the big city to visit the deceased anymore.”

“He should be with his family,” Kozume agreed.

Kiyoko came back.

“Iwaizumi from the day shift,” she explained, before pocketing her phone again. “He dug into that cousin, and he was in a night club with a live feed of him dancing drunkenly at the time of the murder, he was not seen in town again until three days later,” Kiyoko sighed, “Iwaizumi said he drinks espresso exclusively, and that he had no idea what the whole Bayley's in coffee issue was about.”

Damnit, that gave him the most solid alibi out of the lot of them. “Thank you, Shimizu,” he said and turned back to the casket.

Two more people approached it—the owl-like man Bokuto and his partner Akaashi.

Bokuto laid a full bouquet of flowers next to Kuroo’s face, crying bitterly. Akaashi laid a small handful of flowers in it, but was most predominantly preoccupied tending to his crying boyfriend.

“Could either of them have done it?” he asked Kozume quietly.

Kozume thought for a long moment, looking at his friends. Daichi had almost given up on a solid answer when he said, “No. No, neither of them could have done it. They were too close to Kuro; they wouldn’t have been able to kill him.”

Daichi took note of that too.

Nishinoya stepped up to the casket then, his suspicious friend from the cafe close behind. He laid a handful of flowers by his shoulder, and talked to his friend, silently through tears.

Daichi eyed him suspiciously, even if the tears were real, even if the flowers were earnest, if the old suspicion that it was a drunken accident rang true, it would be hard to find the guilty party, unless they were eaten up by their guilt and confessed or made a fatal mistake, or too much evidence pointed in their direction.

At least Nishinoya seemed earnest in his tears, so if he had done it there was always the chance he would confess.

“I don’t know about Yuu,” Kozume said next to him, sighing. “I have known him since high school, and I like him a lot for being such a loud and enthusiastic guy, but I barely ever see him. Most I know about him is from hearsay of Kuro’s stories.”

Well, that wasn’t a definite answer or particularly helpful.

Futakuchi stepped up from behind Nishinoya, trying to steer him away to let others say their goodbyes. Nishinoya nodded and turned away.

Futakuchi stayed for a moment longer though. He produced a ukulele from the inside of his jacket, looked at it for a moment, then put it on Kuroo’s chest.

“I’m sorry I never gave it back to you,” he said quietly, though not as quiet as the others. “I never even played it—I never quite got into it as much as you did. And when I saw you play, I got jealous and didn’t know how to deal with it, so I kept it. Until now. But that won’t do either of us any good now, will it?”

He bowed slightly and was about to turn away when something caught his eye. He approached the casket again and slightly leaned over the dead body.

“Isn’t there supposed to be a bullet wound in—“

All of Daichi’s fight instincts reacted immediately. He was about to yell at the suspect to step away from the corpse immediately and restrain him if necessary, no matter what sort of scene it would cause.

“No!” rang out next to them. “It’s just makeup. The wound is still there, you just can’t see it,” Kozume assured.

Everyone relaxed, and Futakuchi followed his friend back into their line-up.

Kozume leaned over to them then, and explained in a quiet voice, “The reason I chose this funeral home specifically was so I could make use of my family friend Yusufumi—” He pointed at the elderly, employee with the gentle smile. “—who has experience as an FX make-up artist for movies, so he can make Kuro look decent again, even if his face has taken quite the damage. I didn’t want his mother to see any of that.”

Daichi nodded.

The last person stepped out of the crowd.

More specifically, out of the tight hold of her ex-boyfriend’s arms. He struggled to let her go, but let her be nonetheless to be with Kuroo.

“Maybe she’d had enough of him and got rid of him under the pretense of waiting for Daishou to enter Japan as a surprise, but then the surprise was a bullet through his head and now she has her ex back for herself and doesn’t need to deal with Kuroo anymore.”

She leaned over the casket and talked to the corpse in a quiet voice. She caressed his cheek, and tears fell on his face as she said her goodbye.

Conclusively, she kissed his folded hands, then stepped back into Daishou’s waiting arms.

It was quiet for a moment, before Kozume said, “If that is all, we will be burning the body now, you may leave if you like.”

Daichi turned to him.

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to the body?”

“I already said goodbye to him last night, so today is everybody else’s turn.”

Last night? He must have spent the night with the body. Daichi had expected the parents to do that maybe, but he was truly a marvel every time he got an insight in how integrated Kozume was in the Kuroo clan.

Kozume gestured at the employee by the oven, who gave a single nod before pushing the coffin inside.

The room emptied.

——

Dachi caught up with Kiyoko, who walked much faster than him, as usual.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

“When I die,” she responded, looking ahead, “I want that many people to genuinely grieve for me.”

True that. Daichi had been to funerals where only the children of the deceased cried genuine tears, as well as other funerals where no one cried at all. It was rare that he was at a funeral where ever single person present actually cried about the dead person having left.

“He must have been a truly good person,” Daichi said in response.

Kozume looked like death incarnate.

“What happened to you?” Daichi asked.

Kuroo Kanoka walked past them with the urn of her dead son in her arms, somehow looking more lively than Daichi had seen her all week.

Nishonoya appeared next to him, looking Kozume up and down.

“Is all the attention getting to you?” he asked.

Kozume stretched his entire body, really feeling what must be the tension of the last few days.

“Sorting your best friend’s bones does a number on you,” Kozume said. Daichi could imagine that. He hoped he would never have to do that. “But you are right. When all this is over I could sleep for a week.” He cracked his neck. “Let’s talk about something else, I need a distraction.”

They turned around and walked right into what must be some sort of storytime group.

“When I was a first-year in high school, I had just started volleyball,” a tall boy with high, light brown hair said—must be a teenager. “So I was still really bad at it and I didn’t take to it as easily as some of the other guys did. And my teammates told me that I was lucky that I was so tall, because I didn’t have the talent or the brains for it, so at least I had that.

I get told that a lot so I wasn’t offended. That’s just what everybody else tells me. I told Kuroo-sensei about it, and he took the afternoon off to teach me about second-grade chemistry. He taught it really well and it was the first time ever that I felt smart.”

Awed gasps rose from the crowd of children that listened attentively.

“Those,” Kozume said, leaning over to the Detectives, “are Kuro’s students and cousins. That boy that just shared that heartwarming story is Inuoka Sou, a high school second year at the school that Kuro and I used to go to. Kuroo took him under his wing at training camp and evidently left an impact. His audience are Kuro’s cousins. Kuroo Hisashi, Ayumi, and Ai, and Sou Haruhi and Takenaka.”

Daichi nodded and turned back to the storytime scene.

“One time, I was in a tube home,” a different boy started, much smaller than the other, and with dark hair that framed his face, “and some stranger talked to me and kept asking me for my name and address and very personal questions and wouldn’t leave me alone. Out of nowhere, Kuroo-sensei leaned over me and asked the stranger the same questions until he left.”

More awed gasps from the crowd of children.

Kozume leaned over to share more details. “That’s Shibayama Yuuki. He’s in the same grade and in the same school as Sou. They have a similar relationship to Kuro, as you can see.”

“One time,” a little girl from the crowd started, standing up from where the kids where sitting on the graveyard grass, and making a determined face as she told her story, “I told Cousin Tetsu that I was bullied in school, and he told me that bullies really don’t like it when you yell at them and bite them. Now when I get mean boys talking to me I tell them to back off and if they get too close I bite them. That makes them shut up.”

The other kids nodded and agreed, and Daichi shared a look with Kiyoko. An idea formed in Daichi’s head.

The heroic stories, the lack of actual enemies, the fact that he had allies in gangs apparently. Even Toshinuri had admitted to knowing Kuroo, even genuinely liking him for being a good person.

All that may tie together.

If he was some sort of vigilante hero.

Daichi didn’t know if Kiyoko had the same thought in her head, but it was certainly quite prominent in Daichi’s.

“One time I tripped over my own open shoelaces and fell flat on my face, and Kuroo-Sensei laughed at me so hard he farted. Drinks?”

A very tall young man, holding a tray of glasses, had snuck up on them. Daichi had to crane his neck to see him properly.

Kozume and Nishinoya took a drink each, thankfully, Daichi took one as well after he caught himself.

“This is Lev,” Kozume introduced the giant with the big smile. Daichi couldn’t remember if they had investigated him or not. But his presence was so overwhelming, so chances were they wouldn’t forget if he was interviewed. 

“He has a similar story to those other students,” Kozume continued, “same grade and school and all. He took a liking to me more than Kuro though, for whatever reason. I don’t even really attend the training camps anymore—I just drop by to annoy Kuro every now and again.”

“Kozume-san is very smart!” Lev said gleefully. “He doesn’t visit often but he always teaches me very clever and interesting things.”

“We actually also know each other through extended family,” Kozume picked up for him, “which is the real reason he likes me I think. But most importantly, he has been a big help these last few days; I don’t think I couldn’t have pulled any of this together without his help.”

Daichi nodded. He still didn’t quite know how to compartmentalise that one. He was huge and imposing.

And kinda odd.

“Cousin Kenma,” a small girl pulling on Kozume’s elbow said. She had short, light brown and curly hair. She seemed like the kind of kid that knew that she was adorable and used it to her advantage when she could. “Is it hard to live without your boyfriend now?”

Kozume looked at her, flabbergasted for a long moment. “What boyfriend?”

She made big eyes at him, definitely the sort cute girls made for the intention of being cute and getting their way. “Well you and Cousin Tetsu have been dating for so long, and now he’s gone. Is that hard for you?”

Kozume squinted at the girl. Nishinoya barely contained a snort.

“Kuro and I weren’t dating.”

“You weren’t?”

Another barely hidden laugh.

“Are you sure about that, Kenma?” Yamaka Mika said, from where she was getting cuddles and comfort from her former boyfriend at her current boyfriend’s funeral. Daichi still wasn’t certain of them; they had a good motive.

“Oh come on, Mika. You of all people can’t betray me like this,” Kozume protested.

For the first time ever, Daichi saw her smiling. She stepped out of the protective hold she was in and continued, “Well, I admit that throughout all of high school I thought you guys were an item. So I was really blindsided when he asked me out, and I asked him if something happened between you two.”

Kozume squinted at her disapprovingly.

Daishou stepped up to her, leaning so much of his body weight on her with one arm, and that she stood tilted.

“That explains why he wouldn’t react to it when I teased him about it during high school.”

Cold shivers ran through Daichi.

“Polyamorous relationships are possible, but rare.”

All Daichi could think was: they could have made it .

“Don’t set your hopes in me,” Nishinoya said defensively, to a Kozume that looked at him with squinty eyes, “I thought you guys were an item until I moved in with Tetsuro.”

“First his mom last night and now this?” Kozume grumbled under his breath.

“I always knew you were never dating Kuroo Sensei,” Lev said as if he was fishing for brownie points.

Kozume scoffed at him and turned away.

Miss Kuroo got their collective attention.

“We will be putting him in the tomb now,” she declared. “Have him be with his family.”

“Nooo!!!” The child cousins yelled at Miss Kuroo, startling her with their reactions.

“He can’t go into the ground!”

“He needs to save people!”

“Cousin Tetsu needs to teach us things!”

“You can’t put Cousin Tetsu in the ground, he has so much to do!”

The kids were wailing, utterly distressed with it all.

One girl pulled on Miss Kuroo’s dress, another child held her legs in protest, the smallest boy dropped to the floor, letting the tears and wails run freely.

Miss Kuroo leaned down to them, a reassuring smile on her lips. She was amazing, truly; Daichi could do nothing but admire her.

“Tetsuro will be with his ancestors, teaching them things and looking out for them now.”

The children calmed down and nodded. Truly amazing.

“But why can’t Cousin Kuroo teach us things?” one of the girls asked.

“Because his time here is up,” Miss Kuroo declared. “He did his job here. Now he does his job with the rest of the family in the afterlife.”

The kids nodded again, some still crying, but they seemed to understand the situation better now.

They set the urn into the tomb as the sunset over the graveyard. It was quite a striking view, all of it.

Daichi turned to Kiyoko again.

“Any thoughts?” He asked silently.

“I said it once and I’ll say it again,” she responded just as silently, “when I die I want a funeral just like this.”

Chapter Text

“Good morning, sunshine,” Daichi said to his partner entering the door, “are you ready to bust the killer of our favourite vigilante hero today?”

Kiyoko, two coffees in her hand and looking like death this particular Wednesday morning, stopped in her step.

“Did you find anything good?” she asked.

“No,” Daichi answered, less enthusiastic now, “but we can’t give up hope now, can we?”

Kiyoko nodded and set one of the coffee’s down on Daichi’s desk. He picked it up and turned it around to look at the intricate and beautiful flowery design.

“Is that from the murder scene?”

“It is. I really hope it wasn’t them—their coffee is really good.” 

Daichi was inclined to agree.

He drank his coffee. Something about it made him feel more settled in his soul. The impending day didn’t seem quite as hopeless anymore. More manageable.

“I’m going to leave earlier today,” he told his partner. “My mother is going to the vet with her cat today, and she fears it’s something serious and needs moral support.”

Kiyoko nodded absentmindedly. “Do that, do that.”

——

“Man, this is so good,” Asahi hummed in a tantalisingly low voice. “I usually don’t even like these.”

“Well thank you, it’s good to have a taste tester such as yourself to eat all my creations,” Yuuji said with an ever present grin.

“I told you it’s not really necessary to have a coealic’s per—“

“No, it IS necessary,” Yuuji interrupted, “for authenticities sake.”

Noya could understand the mindset, wringing his dish towel out with all his might; he had tried himself at more allergy friendly food as well. But his own creations ended up burned or over seasoned and generally inedible. He didn’t quite have a hand for it the way Yuuji and Kenji did.

Man he was even jealous of Kenji, and Kenji wasn’t even working today.

“I don’t think breaking the towel’s neck is going to sooth your sorrows,” Shohei said, materialising into the thin air next to Noya.

Noya sighed and dropped the towel into the sink next to him.

“I know,” he said, “I’m not used to feeling so bad about being a worse baker than Yuuji. Usually I am happy when Yuuji and Kenji bake something good and impress the customers. That means more customers. The throat bile is new.”

Shohei hummed.

“You see, your issue is that you are completely misinterpreting the feelings that you have, let alone why you have them.” Shohei said. “And also why Azumane-san keeps coming back every day.”

Noya raised an eyebrow.

“Is there something about his motives that you know and I don’t?”

“I asked him yesterday why he keeps coming back when he seems apprehensive to do so. He said that he can’t decline direct invitations because that is a form of direct confrontation he is not comfortable with.”

Noya giggled. What a weak willed man.

He looked over at where Yuuji was avoiding his work duties to directly feed Asahi with more of his creations. Asahi looked vaguely uncomfortable and overwhelmed, but evidently didn’t stop him.

Apparently to avoid direct confrontation like how Shohei had said.

This weak willed of a man could not have killed Tetsuro, yet the reason they met was because Noya, for the sake of his own comfort, thought so.

This, however, opened room for the old fear that one of their friends had done it.

The shop door opened and someone very tall and familiar came in.

“Lev!” Noya and Yuuji cheered simultaneously.

“Heya.” Lev waved at the group of them.

“Haiba?” Asahi asked in confusion.

“Azumane-sensei, you here?”

Yuuji and Noya’s heads turned to Asahi in confusion.

“H-Haiba is one of the kids at the volleyball summer camp I sometimes volunteer at to get work experience,” Asahi answered upon their inquisitive looks, even if a bit startled. “I taught him how to do a jump serve.”

Lev nodded. “And he keeps eating the Russian food I offer him even though he obviously hates it.”

“Wha—? No that’s not, I just—“ Asahi tried to defend, startled. Lev showed a big grin, and the crew of Sanity laughed at Asahi’s expense.

“What can I get you?” Yuuji asked, finally releasing the spot in front of Asahi, which, Noya was only slightly ashamed to say, was immediately taken for himself.

“Kenma-san has a fever from overworking. He texted me to get him some food, so I’m using my lunch break to do that.”

Yuuji nodded. “One care-packet for one Kozume Kenma, coming up.”

“The stress from the funeral really got to him, huh?” Noya observed in concern.

“Yea, he has been out cold for a few days now,” Lev said in his constantly too-upbeat tone, especially considering the subject manner.

Yuuji gave Lev the paper take-away bag that their place really shouldn’t have but did anyways and declared, “one Kozume care package to go.”

“It’s on the house,” Noya jumped in since Kenji wasn’t here to stop him. “Wish him a good recovery from us.”

“I shall,” Lev said, saluting them as he turned out of the door.

“Haiba-kun actually gave me a good key-word—my lunch break is almost over too.” Asahi emptied the last of his iced tea and and made to go as well, stopping for a moment to leave money in the tips jar since the staff (save for Shohei) refused to charge him.

“Wait—“ Noya interjected, “will you be back later?”

“Uh,” Asahi visibly started sweating, “I’ll just drop by after my shift.”

Noya tried not to fist pump too visibly.

“Okay, see you later then!” he called after the exiting man.

“Well, well, well,” Yuuji said, leaning all his weight on Noya like the annoying brat that he was. “The man keeps coming back. Now we only need to find out if it’s because of you or because of me. It can’t be Kenji since he isn’t here today.”

“It’s not like that,” Noya said, pushing Yuuji off him. “He has his own reasons.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Yuuji said with that smile of his that Noya could identify as being layered but not decipher enough to know what it meant.

“Don’t you have some work to do?”

“Sure, boss.”

——

Daichi had a stiff neck. A lot of digging, a lot of seeing. No success. Ha hated days like that. He wishes a lot of investigation was more puzzle pieces fitting together. Has had a look at the watch, he should leave and bring his mom to the vet. Hopefully it wasn’t anything bad.

He said goodbye to Kiyoko and startled her out of deep concentration.

“Found anything interesting?”

“I’d hate to say it, but I think I found our guy.”

Hate to say it? After this entire day of being unsuccessful ?

Daichi wanted to lean over Kiyoko’s shoulder to look at her screen, but there was a crow call in the room. A text notification from his mom. She was getting nervous and consequently impatient.

“Do you need me to stay and help?”

“No, go be with your mother. I think I will need a bit more time and quiet for this. But rest well—one of us needs to be onto it for the questioning tomorrow.”

Daichi was confused and curious, but he had known this cat for eight year and damnit he was attached and worried too, and he’ll discover that answer tomorrow anyways.

On the elevator down he saw Hinata.

“Where are you going?” Daichi asked.

“I took some time off to meet Kenma-san. He fell into a fever coma after the funeral, and I am an expert at getting people out of fever coma’s.”

Daichi’s soft spot for romance made his fragile little heart speed up, but he needed to be a responsible superior officer.

“Shouldn’t you be prioritising your work?”

“Our latest case is closed. We just filed away the evidence and wrote our report. The captain has the report and allowed me to go.”

Daichi knew that what those two lacked in brain cells, they make up for in tidiness, effort, and respect for their work. They valued the unglamorous parts of being a cop as much as the glamorous ones. Their paperwork was probably of higher quality than Daichi’s.

Well, if the captain said it was okay.

“Have fun on your little sick date.”

“I will,” big smile and blush.

Daichi couldn’t help but blush a little himself. What a good note to end his workday on.

——

Asahi was in the middle of talking about that one time when he had observed a group of students pulling a prank on a fellow teacher and he was about to intervene but consequently decided against it because the teacher honestly deserved it when the front door opened again. A rare occurrence this close to closing time.

“Kenma!” Noya and Yuuji yelled at the same time. After the news of the fever, the both of them were glad to see him at their shop.

Kenma didn’t seem keen to be here anymore and quickly turned on his heel to make out the door again.

“Noo!” Noya yelled. “Don’t leave! I’m sorry!”

With a bemused smile, Kenma turned back around again.

“Heya,” Kenma said, and then upon noticing Asahi, “Azumane-san?”

“Kozume-san,” Asahi answered. The both of them sounded awkwardly stiff and stilted in their greeting.

“Kenma is fine,” Kenma mumbled in this shy way of his.

“How are you feeling?” Noya burst out, now that the polite formalities were put aside.

Kenma shrugged.

“More alive than I had been all week. In all honesty—“ Kenma visibly choked on his words, but after a moment of failed attempts he eventually shared. “—it’s hard without Kuro.”

Of course it would be. To Kenma it would be like losing a brother, like a piece of flesh even. Noya leaned over his counter to take Kenma’s hand into a firm grasp.

“I understand,” he assured.

Kenma’s hand twitched in his, probably uncertain about the physical contact. There were only a few people that were allowed to touch Kenma on a regular basis. Tetsu had been on that list of people. Noya usually wasn’t.

After a moment though, without pulling his hand back, Kenma looked up with more glee. A delightful sight in times like these.

“Shoyou dropped by though. He made me food and forced me to shower and—“ Kenma stopped abruptly, eyes wide and cheeks reddening quickly. What an interesting sight.

“And?” Noya urged, already smelling a good story.

“You only get your Chai when you tell us what ‘ and ’ is,” Yuuji pressured, holding a wonderful cup of Kenma’s favourite tea under his nose and then taking it back.

Shohei appeared behind Kenma, the broom he had used to wipe the floor in his hand. Noya had all but forgotten about him.

“What ‘ and ’?” Shohei asked as well.

Kenma turned redder by the second, looking around the room to find a way out. Sadly for him the place was small and his friends quick.

“AndIkissedhim.” Kenma shared as one word.

“What?!” Yuuji and Noya yelled. Kenma? With romantic feelings? That was a first!

After it had become evident that Kenma and Tetsu had been, albeit close, nothing more than platonic, Noya had given up on Kenma ever showing up with a romantic interest, but it seemed the cards had turned.

“It was just a kiss on the cheek,” Kenma assured. “He was so nice to me and went out of his way to go to my place and he cleaned my place and did my laundry and he didn’t give me a chance to say ‘thank you’ and then he was about to leave again and it was all very sudden and I couldn’t quite put into words how grateful I was for him so I pulled him back and kissed him on the cheek and kicked him out again.”

There it was, a real romance! Kenma, who was probably suffering the most from all this, had found a love conquest after all! A beautiful delicate little flower of love!

Yuuji and Noya were squealing like little girls but neither of them cared.

Shohei wrapped his arms around Kenma from behind, who was startled for a moment but soon snuggled into it. Unlike Noya, Shohei had free reign over Kenma whenever.

“We’re happy you found someone that makes things better.” Shohei took Noya’s words out of his mouth.

Kenma pulled his shoulders up then, evidently slightly uncomfortable again.

Then he smiled though, the gentle and soft smile he showed so rarely.

It was kind of a bit like the sun was rising.

“Well, it’s about time for me to go,” Asahi declared, getting up.

No! “No—“ Noya spewed out, then caught up with his odd desperation, “I ah—it was nice having you here, you can come again tomorrow.” Noya felt oddly awkward, like he had never been before. 

Asahi first looked at him, then at Yuuji who fucking WINKED and then said “Well I’ll be seeing you tomorrow but I need to get home” and then sped away.

He got held up by Kenma, still in Shohei’s embrace, who said, “Azumane-san.”

Held back by social conventions and politeness Asahi stumbled over his words and his steps and stuttered, “Kozu— I mean Ken— Kenma-san— just Asahi is okay.” Then he nodded at the bundle and made out of the door, Shohei and Kenma giggling at his expense.

Once he had left Noya deflated and sighed from the depth of his heart. He felt oddly wrung out now.

“So you and Azumane?” Kenma asked, now sitting in Asahi’s previous seat, right in front of where Noya had squeezed his face into the countertop, smug cat grin hidden behind the cup of Chai that Yuuji must have given him.

Before Noya could figure out how to interpret that question, Yuuji came over to them and used Noya as a rest quite similar to how Noya was using the counter top.

“We’re all fighting for Asahi-chan’s attention,” Yuuji explained. “So far Noya and I are winning, since he came back today and Kenji wasn’t here. Shohei just wants to make him nervous.”

“It’s very easy,” Shohei provided from where he had continued wiping the floor.

“So the one of us that wins,” Yuuji continued, “will be the princess that the trusty knight in shining armour will take to the ball.” Yujji made a grand gesture with the arm that wasn’t wrapped around Noya’s shoulder.

Noya wrung himself out of the grasp, no, this was all wrong!

“What— no, I—” I what?

Kenma took his hand.

“I’m just glad you found someone that makes it all easier for you,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Oh screw you,” Noya said, pulling his hand away. “I’m never being nice to you again.”

Kenma and Yuuji laughed at his expense.

He really had the worst friends in the world.

Chapter Text

It was 7:07 am on a Friday morning and Detective Sawamura Daichi squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.

One would think he was the one about to be interviewed by the police about a recent murder, but no, he was the police about to interrogate someone about a recent murder.

He just didn’t know why Kozume Kenma of all people sat in front of him.

Shimizu had called them both here, saying she had made a massive breakthrough in the case and needed them both there.

She was late.

Kozume looked like a tired and disgruntled cat, and Daichi had to suppress the urge to apologise for the inconvenience.

The door banged open and Shimizu, seeming quite mentally and physically through the wind, burst through.

She seemed out of it enough to have forgotten what she wanted for a moment, but then banged quite a lot of files on the interrogation table between Daichi and Kozume.

“Kozume Kenma, you are associated with the Yakuza!”

Kozume’s eyes shot open briefly, as if the remark caught him off guard, but otherwise didn’t show much of a reaction at all. After a tense moment, he looked through the files though. No movement on his face.

Shimizu pushed some stray hair out of her face and proceeded, “Your mother, your father, your entire family tree is Yakuza, and see,” she pushed a file right under his nose, “Even your little funeral helper, ‘Nekomata Yasufumi’ is Yakuza. I have not personally arrested him but had you given me his last name I would have recognised it. And I think you are hiding more than just your family tree, I think you are hiding certain crimes—“

Kozume stood up with a start, pushing his chair over in his hurry.

“I barely talk to this side of my family BECAUSE they are Yakuza. We do not talk to each other because we do not get along, and I DO NOT appreciate being put in the same pot as them!”

He picked up the Nekomata file.

“The Yakuza also has gems like Yasufumi. He worked as an FX department for the Fever Dreams Production company, working on classics such as Tokio Gore police,” Shimizu flinched back at that, a rare outside reaction from her usually stoic face. Daichi remembered her saying that it was that movie in particular that got her into police work. Or something like it. “Sue me if I want my best friend's face to look somewhat decent on the day of his funeral, so his family and loved ones can grieve properly. I know Yasufumi and I know what he is willing and not willing to do, and I deem him a good friend!”

Kozume took a deep, shaky breath, preparing for a second round, and Daichi had to hold back on not doing the same.

“Yasufumi jumped in as my grandpa that read stories to me on holidays, and got me gifts for my birthdays. We go fishing every summer. My real grandfather was too busy for me, because he had territorial fights with gangs and other Yakuza families. It is because of him that I always feared for my life, because of personal pettiness or ransom, so please excuse me if I chose to not see him as family, but instead prefer the man whose biggest criminal activity was money laundering for the Saomoto clan.”

Kenma sat back down, somewhat unsteady and disoriented. His face was red and his hair a mess. He was out of breath and shaking badly. 

Daichi felt legitimate pity for him, but more than anything, a sort of bone-chilling fear that he hadn’t felt since he accidentally broke his grandmother's urn when he was 14 and his mother went off on him for it.

He coughed away the instinctual fear.

“Well as you…” Daichi coughed again, damnit, “as you may know, it is illegal to hinder a police investigation by withholding valuable information.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kozume said with a sneer, “I was busy throwing my best friend's funeral, as you know, who has been murdered, as you may also know, and I wasn’t keen on having the police at my throat when I would be busy planning that. It’s a big event and even tiny issues can throw everything into the water. Let alone being kept in holding because your family does some illegal shit and now your best friend is dead!”

He looked straight into Daichi’s soul then, causing Daichi to seek forgiveness from all the gods that came to his mind.

“And let's be honest, if you had found out early in the investigation that I was related to the Saomoto clan, had you looked in any other direction? Or had you assumed ‘oh, it was the yakuza guy’ and tried to find reasons it was me?”

Daichi opened and closed his mouth helplessly. He couldn’t really argue at the moment, since his blood seemed to have run cold. A side glance at Shimizu showed that she wasn’t going to argue either, but the glare she sent Kozume showed that she wasn’t wholly convinced either.

“I know what the Yakuza is capable of,” Kozume concluded, in a small and calm voice, “Why do you think I paid Kenji’s debt to them when I heard of it?”

Both Daichi and Shimizu breathed in in surprise. Well, that explained that.

And it fit so well.

Okay, back on track, back on track!

“Do you know anyone in the clan who could have done it?” The glare Shimizu now sent into his very soul showed him that this was the wrong question to ask, but Kozume’s big, glistening eyes made him not regret it.

This was a big lead, okay?

A bit startled still, Kozume started to scour through the files. He had about five in his hand and had looked through most of them when he mumbled,

“You don’t have the Haiba family in this.”

Daichi and Shimizu looked at each other. This was an unforeseen twist of events.

“Haiba, as in Haiba Lev, the boy that helped you with the funeral?”

Kozume nodded, a distinct memory of ‘We actually know each other over distant family’ came back to Daichi.

“Yeah, Lev and his sister and mother were originally Russian mafia property, but they were imported as ransom to the Saomoto clan here. Lev has only been here since he was ten, even if his papers state otherwise.”

Well that was… certainly… a twist of events. Daichi really had to pull himself together to proceed with the investigation.

“Well if that will be all for now.” Daichi said, looking at Shimizu, who emitted the calm quiet of a woman about to chew you out. She turned to Kozume though.

“Thank you for your help, Kozume-san.” Huh.

Kozume got up and politely bowed to them, then, at the door, he seemed to reconsider. He bowed deeply enough to almost his head head on his knees, and said,

“Thank you for putting so much hard work into it, it is truly appreciated,” then left through the door.

Daichi swallowed thickly after the door fell shut leaving him alone with a raging woman, and got as far as the count of five before Shimizu went off at him.

“What the hell was that about?”

“An investigation?”

“It obviously wasn’t, if you sound so uncertain about it.”

“We got a lot of good info out of it.”

“We got a lot of bull. Empty words and aimless suspects. He was stuffing us with information we want to hear and that lead us away from him. And you fed right into him. Why did you give him such an easy way out? Suggesting it was a random Yakuza member? We should have stayed on him!”

Despite the prominent charge in the air, Daichi got security in his words now.

“I don’t think it was him.”

“You are eating up his bullshit.”

“Everyone, from their closest family to their worst enemy, thought they were a romantic item.”

Shimizu was quiet at that.

“No matter what you think their relationship looked like from the outside, or what it was behind the scenes, they were evidently quite close. EXTREMELY  close. You don’t just kill someone you are that close to.”

Shimizu still didn’t talk.

“He gave us a list of suspects,” Daichi grinned, “and I know exactly where to start.”

Haiba Lev didn’t answer his phone. He never entered his class and was only seen leaving his home in his school uniform with his school bag.

Haiba Alisa, however, was keen to show up.

She sat before them, all poise, the very image of grace and beauty.

“We know that you are mafia ransom,” Daichi said, to catch her off guard.

She was, in fact, quite caught off guard.

“How did you find that out?” 

How did you ever keep anything secret if you break immediately?

“Kozume told us.”

Her face went through a short journey of confusion, a small smile, and thought recollection, before she looked at them again.

“I suppose you have questions about the subject matter,” she said, in that pretty and polite smile of hers.

“Start off by telling us the events that lead to this from your perspective,” Shimizu said, in a soft woman-to-woman voice. A rare sight, but a valuable one.

Haiba looked at the ceiling as if to collect her memory.

“I don’t remember much of it, let alone understand most of it. From what I know, our father owed to the Mafia, and we were traded in as ransom, and then, not long after, we were shipped off to Japan to live under the Yakuza here. We are their property and all wear the Saomoto mark.” Alisa pushed her shirt aside to show the tattoo of a sitting black cat silhouette on her shoulder. The eyes were empty yet somehow piercing.

Daichi knew that sign; it was the mark of the local clan.

Kozume’s family, the Saomotos.

“Do you think a member of your family would be capable of a murder?” Shimizu said, also aiming to catch her off guard.

Shocked eyes but no verbal response. Jackpot!

“Maybe your brother?” Daichi tried.

“I—“ Alisa broke off. Opening and closing her mouth a couple of times, trying and failing to make things better.

Eventually she gave up on her attempts and looked down at her properly folded hands.

“My brother is a very good boy and I adore him a lot. What he lacks in wits he makes up for in hard work and talent, and he has a bright future before him and he’s so ambitious that he—”

Could have done it but you won’t testify that because he is your brother.

She looked them straight in the eyes again.

“I hope Kuroo-san’s murderer gets caught; I really hope so and I trust you are chasing him to the best of your ability, but I really cannot help you any further than this.”

The word choice was too peculiar, handpicked and aimed like an archer would aim an arrow hitting its mark.

It was all very suspicious.

And so very, very exciting. Like a puzzle that slowly revealed an excellent motive, but also more pieces than originally estimated. Daichi got up.

“Well thank you for your help either way. We will be looking for your brother now.”

Haiba took Daichi’s hand in her own, looking at him with determined eyes.

“I will give you a call when I see him again.” With that, she politely bowed and made off. 

“They’re looking for Lev apparently.”

“Really? What for?”

A proper boss probably would have told Kenji off for being on his phone during work hours, but the breakfast rush was over and it had gotten boring, so who was Noya to abide by rules and regulations?

“It seems the police still have a few questions for him, but after he left his house for school this morning he just vanished off the map, and now the police are asking us all if we have seen him.”

Noya hushed a look at Kenji’s phone to see where he got that information from. A chat room with a mind spinningly fast influx of new messages showed him that this was the group Kenji had set up with basically everyone they knew. Noya rarely visited that group since the fast influx of messages required a god-tier reading speed skill Noya just could not keep up with.

Kenji grinned.

“It seems the more people they have to ask the less detailed the cops are getting with what they really want.” He looked at Noya, “They’re getting nervous.”

The dreadful thought ‘not someone we know‘ shot through Noya’s body in cold waves.

Then the door opened and a familiar and pleasant face walked through the door.

“Can I order a ginger tea here?” Asahi said with utter pain in his voice.

He looked like a messiah and a beaten-down mess in equal measures. The sun still stood behind him in such a way as to illuminate just him, and making him seem almost exclusively like a silhouette. Spotlighting his grace and poise as he strut through their door, Noya was so caught up in the sight that he said,

“Anything for you,” way too eagerly, getting some odd looks from Kenji and Asahi alike.

Well, what the FUCK was that about?

Noya decided to shovel up what was left of his dignity and say, “We can get you some ginger tea,” and then went to the kitchen of his establishment to actually put money where his words were.

“So what do you need ginger tea for at this certainly quite odd hour, you handsome man?” Noya heard Kenji ask. A look out of his peripheral vision showed him that Kenji was neglecting his work entirely in favour of leaning over the counter, right into Asahi’s personal space, with his sleaziest grin on his face.

Noya felt a strong urge to tell him off for it, but he couldn’t quite grasp at what reason he would have to do so, other than maybe to tell Kenji to respect the customers personal space, but it’s not like he hadn't been doing the exact same thing himself these last few days.

“My boss had a breakdown and went off at everyone in general because a system error erased a lot of valuable data, which obviously means he has to yell at us and close shop and all of us have to go home until IT fixed the issue. My stomach is upset from him yelling at us so I came here to get a tea.”

“D’awww, I know something VERY relaxing we could do that—“

“Here’s your tea.” Noya interrupted, far more bitter than he had expected to be.

Asahi looked at him somewhat surprised, and Kenji sent him a shit eating grin that he didn’t like.

“Thank you very much,” Asahi said, smiling very softly, and slowly lifting the cup to his face to smell at it. With the sun shining from behind him and the steaming rising off the cup he looked like an early morning tea advertisement come to life.

Exactly two gears in Noya’s brain worked over time to put two facts together that didn’t quite match.

“You don’t even like ginger. One time Yuuji made you ginger cookies and you spat them out.” Noya suppressed the thought, best day of my life, because he didn’t know what it meant or how to deal with it.

Asahi hummed softly in agreement before taking a sip.

“It is the best thing to settle my stomach though, and with food that I am uncertain about I know I can come here and try it out because I can trust that you will make it very delightful for me somehow.”

Noya transcended into an alternative life where everything around him was holy and he had been cleansed of every sin he had ever committed. God had spoken to him personally and deemed him worthy and all around him was angel choirs singing wonderful hymns just for him.

“Thank you,” He said in a broken voice.

——

Nervous energy bled through Daichi as he drove aimlessly through Tokyo, mentally revisiting every interview they took.

Haiba Lev was nowhere to be found, but each person they inquisitioned was eager to talk about him.

Some more vent than talk but words were words, and any faint hint was valuable.

The nervous energy came mainly from the fact that they could not find the boy in question.

Or Kozume Kenma for that matter.

Both had left their homes that morning in a normal manner. Haiba went to school, taking his school supplies with him and saying a regular goodbye to his mother, but never entered the school building.

Kenma had quite evidently come to the interrogation, but never returned home or checked in one of his regular visitation places or with any of his social contacts. He worked from home which meant he wasn’t missing from work per-se, but he was nonetheless unfindable.

Daichi took a left turn into an unfamiliar street, and noticed how Shimizu cowered in her seat, chewing her nails in a nervous motion she rarely showed.

“What’s eating on you?” Daichi asked, facing the street again.

“Kozume,” she answered, staring ahead, “He ratted the Haiba’s out to us and now not an hour later we cannot find him.” She turned to him with big eyes. “I think you might be right with your theory.”

Daichi tightened his firsts around the steering wheel so as to not lose his composure.

“Don’t worry, Shimizu, I still have a place in mind we can go.”

——

Asahi and Noya were in the middle of throwing peanuts at Kenji’s mouth (trying to beat regional champion, Yuuji, at the 28 peanut high record of peanut catching) when the police came in.

Noya quickly scrambled the peanuts away, feeling as if his parents had caught him being as incompetent boss in a scrappy establishment.

“Welcome, what can we do for you,” he said too quickly.

“Good morning, sorry for the intrusion,” Detective Sawamura said, “we just have a few questions.”

Kenji had that shit-eating grin on him that probably suppressed the comment, “So we’ve heard”.

“Have you seen either Haiba Lev or Kozume Kenma?” Police goddess Shimizu asked.

What, Kenma too now?

“Not since a few days ago,” Noya answered for the group, Kenji even shook his head. “Is something the matter?”

The police were quiet for a very long time, looking at each other silently.

“It’s nothing much, we just have a few questions,” Detective Sawamura said. “Please contact us when you see either of them.”

Noya nodded, “We will.”

With that, the cops bid their goodbyes and left.

Kenji turned to him with that big and excited face he had whenever he found good dirt or juicy gossip.

“So Kenma too now, huh?”

“Is that a good thing?” Noya asked doubtfully.

“I don’t know,” Kenji answered, “but I’m gonna make a shout out for him in the group chat.”

——

Shimizu sighed as she sat back down in her seat and strapped herself in.

“Something the matter?” Daichi asked.

“I do have one regret,” she answered, looking wistfully at the location they came from, “I really crave one of their coffees right now.”

“Should we go back?” Daichi asked, bemused.

“No,” Shimizu answered, “That would be odd now, let’s move on.”

——

No Haiba, no Kozume, nothing but dead ends, dead ends.

Shimizu had ended up falling asleep on her desk and Daichi had sent her home since she shouldn’t just do an over nighter again. Won’t make them any smarter.

Shimizu had only agreed to leave if Daichi were to leave as well.

Well, on the plus side he shared the elevator ride with Hinata.

“Working over time as well?” Daichi asked his colleague.

Hinata stretched aching limbs at the remark, and Daichi could feel himself smiling softly, knowing that even the young folks put this much effort into their work.

“My case was a wrap today, and I just wanted to finish the paperwork, mainly to be done with it. Took longer than expected though, and before I knew it it was night time. I really just wanna go home and see my cats.”

Daichi chuckled. It would take some time to get the whole time scheduling thing figured out.

But seeing as they were sharing an elevator ride it seemed that Daichi hadn’t gotten any good at it either.

Hinata got a call.

The voice on the other line was very soft, so Daichi could not identify what it said or who it was. Not intending on invading other people’s privacy either way he took his own phone out to check his messages. A message from Sugawara who had taken a picture of him falling asleep on his desk two years ago next to a picture of Shimizu earlier looking much the same captioned “in sync”.

Hinata ended the call and the elevator door opened.

“Good night,” Hinata said, suddenly much more somber. Confused, Daichi waved him off before leaving the elevator himself.

He looked at the time. Maybe if he made an instant dinner he could squeeze in some time to play Stardew Valley.

It honestly was a testament of his own workaholic tendencies that he ended up forgetting to plug his phone in with how tired he was.  He still woke up before his alarm would have rung, according to his oven clock.

He entered work a little out of it, still considering whether he should turn around and get coffees from Sanity when he realised that there was a commotion at the precinct.

“What happened here?” He asked the room in general. There were a lot of people in holding. Some familiar faces. A man he arrested five years ago?

Wait, a lot of these were the people attached to the files that Shimizu had presented yesterday.

The Saomoto Yakuza clan.

“Last night Hinata walked into a Yakuza raid and called for back-up and now we have a lot to do.” Shimizu answered for him, taking her jacket off, evidently having arrived moments before him. Damn workaholic. “I’m sure you have already noticed who these people are.”

Daichi nodded, recognising more and more faces, even those he had not personally met.

“The raid was incredibly weird,” Shimizu continued, “it was long over when Hinata arrived. Half the clan was dead and left to bleed out, the other was neatly tied up to be picked up by us. Some had bows in their ties, Sawamura, bows.”

Daichi really regretted his half dose of sleep and lack of coffee now, his head was certainly spinning.

“Wait, so where is Hinata now? He must be incredibly proud to have such a big bust this early in his career.”

“He got shot,” Shimizu said, shaking her head, “Nothing vital, but he is in the hospital getting his shoulder fixed, and he refuses to talk to anyone about anything. I don’t think he has eaten yet.”

Daichi’s head was spinning even harder.

“Sawamura,” Sugawara said from just behind him, covering his phone with his hand, “You are going to want to hear this, I already told Shimizu.”

Daichi threw several looks back at the holding cell, positively overfilling with Yakuza faces, his head spinning ever faster on his head, the tumult around him seemingly getting more and more restless.

“What is it?” He asked his colleague to have some sort of holding on the world.

“More and more people are calling in saying that Haiba Lev has sought them out to confess to the murder of Kuroo Tetsuro.”

“Wait what?”

Asahi honestly didn’t know what brought him back to Sanity this frequently.

Sure, objectively speaking he had been restless that morning, waking up at his regular work hours but having nowhere to go since he was not allowed back yet. So after waking up he just followed the flow of his feet to Sanity, currently laughing as Terushima shared a story of his youth where his team, during training camp, collectively lost their impulse control and gave each other drastic and absolutely atrocious hair cuts.

It was refreshing, in all honesty, to hang out with these people.

Every single crew member of Sanity felt a lot like happiness and sunshine. Wild and lively and infectiously light hearted.

Particularly their unconventional but nonetheless imposing leader, Nishinoya.

Then Haiba Lev came in.

“Oh, Lev!” Terushima said, almost jumping over the counter in his near manic energy, “the police are looking for you!”

“Are they?” Haiba asked, sitting down next to Asahi and leaning on the counter. “I was gonna go there later anyways.”

Asahi swore an exclamation mark appeared over Nishinoya’s head as something came to his mind.

“They’re also looking for Kenma, have you seen him by any chance?”

Lev nodded.

“Yeah, I saw him last night. Did they say why they want us?”

Nishinoya shook his head.

“At least not to us.”

Futakuchi leaned in with the grin of someone that knew more than anyone else in the room and was about to share with the rest of the group.

“Supposedly, it’s about Tetsuro’s murder.”

“Woah,” Lev said, excitement sparkling in his eyes.

The police had also talked to Asahi yesterday. Though the nice Detective lady had done most of the talking while the less nice Detective man had mostly glared at him.

They had asked him about Lev in general. No matter how close you were to Lev —and Asahi wasn’t particularly close or even exposed to him— there was always a lot to say about him.

Asahi had seen him as a loud and about kid with a bright future if he got the right guidance to use his assets well. He just didn’t know what the questions were all about.

Was that really related to Kuroo’s murder?

Wait a second.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school right now, Haiba?” Asahi imposed.

Lev waved him off.

“I’m busy today and Watanuki-sensei doesn’t like me anyways.” The kid’s stomach grumbled. “Do you guys have Pampushki? I’m feeling homesick.”

“Wait, what even is that?” Nishinoya asked.

“Well unlike our good for nothing boss here, I know what it is AND made some last night.” Futakuchi snarled, shooting off to the kitchen.

“Wait no—” Nishinoya protested, “You had a head start, I have Google damnit!” With that they were gone.

It was just him and Haiba.

“I did it, you know?”

What?

“I killed Kuroo.”

Cold sweat ran down Asahi’s spine as he slowly turned around to face Haiba, a 16 year old child that he taught volleyball to in summers and every other holiday.

“Why.”

“He was in my way to Kenma, but that is not important anymore.” With that he turned forwards again.

“Have some!” Futakuchi and Nishinoya yelled at the same time, bursting back into the general space. “It’s gluten free,” Futakuchi clarified, “because I’m experimenting with recipes now, but I swear you can barely tell.”

Asahi could breathe again, but hardly so.

His own student.

“Thanks guys, this looks good!” Haiba said with all the cheer in the world, as if he hadn’t just confessed to a murder cold blooded. “Imma take these, got places to be.” With that he paid for the food, bid his farewell, waited a moment, turned back around to leave a generous tip in the tip jar, and left.

Asahi’s heart was beating over time in places where it was not beating at all before.

“Something the matter Asahi-san?” Nishinoya asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

How do I even say this?

His heart still beat irregularly and his airways tied up again.

Not good, not good, not good AT ALL!

“Lev confessed the murder to me.”

“What!?” Futakuchi and Nishinoya burst out simultaneously.

“I k— I know it sounds weird b-but,” God he was shaking, his hands were shaking so much. Had the room always been this unsteady? “When you were gone just then, he turned to me and said he killed Kuroo.” He looked at Nishinoya. “He said he was in the way between him and Kozume.”

Futakuchi and Nishinoya looked at each other. Oh God, he would get kicked out for making a bold claim. They knew Lev longer than they know him and Lev was a child, it would just be him and his wild accusations and—

Nishinoya took his hands in his own, a wave of calm overwhelmed him, making him see straight and breathe deeply again.

“It’s okay, we are here, don’t pass out on us, okay?” Nishinoya’s calm voice steadied a primal and terrified part deep inside Asahi, making everything more steady.

Out of the corner of his existence he heard Futakuchi asking to talk to Detective Sawamura on the phone.

“It’s okay. We are here. What happened?”

Asahi looked at their conjoined hands, the sole thing that kept him bound to earth, and not panic off into the atmosphere.

“He just waited for you to be gone, then he turned to me and said he did it. I believe it, I believe him. I think he did it.”

Futakuchi, now no longer on the phone, and Nishinoya, still holding his hands, looked at each other again.

Gone was the frenzy from before, gone the light and chipper atmosphere, they were much more serious and collected than he had ever seen them.

Then he realised that Nishinoya had recently lost a close friend in Kuroo, and that Futakuchi was one of three people that kept a business running despite the great loss.

“How do you do it?” Asahi asked in great awe, “How can you go through things like these and keep your sanity?”

Nishinoya looked at him flabbergasted. He looked at Futakuchi and then back at him, then at the ceiling and back at him. 

Then he grinned.

“The key is to not be sane at all.”

What?

“Sanity is the last thing you want right now,” Nishinoya said in his great wisdom. “Sanity is the thing that is making you panic right now. Sanity wants you to make sense of the things that happened. Sanity is wack and we don’t need it here.”

Nishinoya leaned closer to him, talking in a more private, and honestly bemused voice.

“The great, big joke of this place is that sanity is the last thing you find here. Tetsu came up with that. And when I lost him I was in big grief. My friends however were batshit crazy and kept this place running in my absence. If I didn’t have them I wouldn’t have this place, and if they had their sanity, this place wouldn’t be running.”

Asahi found a god-like strength and quality in Nishinoya’s eyes, so close to his own. His hands still having a tight grasp on Asahi’s, his entire presence being a mountain holding steady against a storm.

“You surely are incredible.” Asahi said in awe, meaning it, and being too caught up in the moment to be taken aback by the impact of the statement.

Nishinoya’s eyes widened as if in shock, his face increasing quickly in redness until he looked like a tomato. With a long string of unintelligible noises he face planted into their bundle of hands.

Asahi looked frantically between the broken man before him and Futakuchi grinning at him from the sidelines like this was all so bemusing to him.

“Easy tiger,” he said as if this was not worrying at all, “He’s just one man.”

“What did I do?” Asahi asked frantically. “What happened?”

“Don’t worry,” Futakuchi said with all the calm in the world, “He’s gonna be fine.”

Daichi knocked on Hinata’s hospital room door.

“How are you holding up buddy?”

He got no response.

Daichi sat down on the visitors seat, having a good look at his collegue.

Hinata sat upright in his bed, his shoulder patched up, his view and attention somewhere far away, out of the window.

“I heard you took some Yakuza hooligans head on. That must have been exciting.”

Hinata just continued looking out the window, not acknowledging Daichi in the slightest.

His face looked much paler. There were early signs of eye bags, and his somber look made him seem ten years older.

“A big bust like that is going to be good on your records, especially this early on, you will get a lot of recognition for this.”

No response from the other.

Daichi sighed. This was serious, and Hinata was still so young.

“If there was anything that could help us, anything that you have seen but didn't want to. You can tell us and we can help you. Even if you put it in code and we need to translate it, it’s fine.

No response from Hinata.

Well, Daichi had places to be and things to do. Hinata knew what he had to know, and he was adult enough to act on the things that were truly important if need be.

Daichi got up.

“You know where to find me, or anyone else if you need to. I wish you a good recovery. You are a valuable addition to the precinct.”

Hinata did not acknowledge any of that, and Daichi left to continue his chase.

Rook di goo, rook di goo!
There's blood in the shoe.
The shoe is too tight,
This bride is not right!

“Daichi,” Sugawara said in a tone not unlike he had that morning when he had informed him about the odd phone calls, “Your case is getting weirder.”

“Weirder, how so?”

Suga opened his mouth, then closed it again, then he said,

“Haiba Lev is in the interrogation room. He confessed to the murder and is ready to be taken away.”

EVERYTHING in Daichi’s head was spinning incredibly fast. Where just yesterday it seemed like a puzzle slowly solving itself, possibly with more nooks and turns than expected, everything today seemed more and more odd and out of context.

“Shimizu wants to talk to you, she is in the observation room.”

“Thank you, Suga.”

Daichi found Shimizu pacing up and down the observation room, chewing her nails much like she had done the day before.

He had never seen her this restless.

“I do not like this, I do not like this at all,” she said, pointing at a Haiba Lev, looking chipper as anything and calm as a clam in the interrogation room. Handcuffs tied him to the table, but he showed no indication of being in any way uncomfortable with any of it.

“He gave us everything. He confessed and gave the correct time and a good reason and everything he said matched with the crime scene and all the confessions he gave other people.”

She approached Daichi, almost too close for his liking, and looking like a spooked and frightened animal.

“He gave us the murder weapon with his finger prints on it and the missing cup from the crime scene and everything matches, absolutely everything.”

Daichi looked at her and the suspect in the interrogation room and then back at his partner and then back at the suspect.

He half expected to see a wagging tail when he looked at Haiba.

“It fits too well.” Daichi said.

Shimizu nodded frantically, chewing on her nail some more.

“It’s like we have it served on a silver platter.”

Shimizu nodded again.

“I’m going in there.”

Shimizu nodded more softly then, seemingly retreating back into her own head.

Daichi opened the door to the interrogation room.

“Good morning, Detective Sawamura.”

“Good morning, Haiba,” Daichi answered, being caught somewhat off guard at being addressed so warm heartedly.

God, where to even start?

“From what I understand, you are here to confess to the murder of Kuroo Tetsuro.”

Haiba nodded.

“I have already.” He said, as if he was expecting an A grade or a golden star sticker.

“Why now?”

Haiba thought for a moment.

“I have nothing else to do.”

Daichi breathed deeply.

“Have you seen Kozume Kenma recently?”

Haiba thought again.

“Yeah, I saw him last night.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

Haiba thought again. His actions were very calculated, but he also put no effort into hiding THAT he was calculating.

“I cannot tell you that.”

Uncomfortable goosebumps ran up Daichi’s arms.

Daichi bid Haiba farewell for the moment, who bid him farewell as well with a blinding smile, and went back to Shimizu.

She still chewed her nail, cowered into herself.

“I don’t know what he is, but he certainly is something.”

“But he isn’t our man,” confirmed Shimizu what Daichi had dreaded to say.

“He does not fit the profile in the slightest.”

“He is not very close to Kuroo,” Shimizu confirmed, “he is not the complex dichotomy of a person that would meet someone at an odd hour to drink coffee and shoot them in the aftermath. Being smart enough to take any and all evidence with him.”

Daichi looked back at Haiba, who still sat in his seat, seemingly expecting praise for a job well done.

“He gave us the murder weapon and the evidence and the motive.” He turned to Shimizu. “Wait, what was the motive.”

Shimizu rolled her eyes.

“Apparently he wanted to get closer to Kozume, but Kuroo stood between them and he got territorial and established his status by killing him cold blooded.” By luring him to common but neutral ground, treating him to a friendly coffee at three a.m. And shooting him point blank. “And apparently Kuroo did not fight back because he saw Haiba as ‘a child’.”

“It’s airtight.” Daichi observed, dreading that there was no way he could roll up this case again, and having to put it to the closed pile.

This was the first time he did NOT want a case to be solved.

“Captain said we can always pick the case up again if we find something that doesn’t match but…”’

“This case is solved.” Daichi confirmed dreadfully.

This boy was certainly guilty of something.

Daichi wasn’t sure what, but he was certain it was not this.

Not this.

But the case was solved.

The murderer, the victim, the weapon. Everything.

Everything fit so well.

Too well.

——

In handcuffs, they led Haiba away.

Daichi still didn’t like any of this. Not in the slightest.

“Alisochka!” Haiba called out.

Not too far off from them, Haiba Alisa, crying into a fabric tissue, flinched away.

“It’s alright, Sestra!” Haiba called out, a big smile on his face. “No one can hurt us! Everything’s fine!”

Alisa turned away from her brother, hiding her face in her tissue as she sobbed more audibly.

Lev stumbled in Daichi’s arms, “Ouch,” he said. To his credit he limped on through apparent pain.

Shimizu, on the other side of him, looked down.

“There’s blood in the shoe,” she said.

“New shoes are a pain,” Lev grumbled, but made no indication of stopping or using the blood or pain as an excuse to sit down.

They put him in the holding cell where he sat down on the bench there, taking his shoe off to reveal a genuine wound, as if the shoe wasn’t quite the right fit and had rubbed him raw.

“We can get you something for that,” Daichi said, entirely confused by everything, and by how civil Haiba was being about all this.

“Thanks, Detective,” Haiba said. He had a big grin, but not as illuminatingly bright as he had had in the interrogation room.

Daichi nodded and closed the door behind him.

He looked at Shimizu, just out of sight of the people in the cell, but leaning against a wall near it, shaking uncontrollably.

“Are you gonna be alright?” He asked her.

She looked at him with big spooked eyes.

Then she took a deep breath and collected herself, standing more upright and ready to face whatever this mess was head on.

“This is my job,” she said with certainty.

Well, there was a reason Daichi looked up to her so much, despite being the same age.

It had been a long time since Tobio had sat in a hospital room. He didn’t really know what to do.

In movies, they always peeled and sliced an apple, so he just did that as well.

He didn’t usually peel apples, he had heard the skin was the best part, so he didn’t understand the point of taking it off. It gave him something to do with his hands though, since he had no idea what to do with his mouth.

“You were right,” Hinata said out of the blue. His voice was so soft that Tobio almost missed the remark. 

“You were right when you said that the Yakuza was no fun.”

Tobio, previously enthralled by Hinata’s sudden urge to talk, looked down at his apple again.

“I wish I wasn’t.”

Hinata turned to look at him then, his eyes unreadable. Tobio offered him a slice of the apple, Hinata ate it.

Daichi opened his next file. The tension from the Kuroo case still cramped through his muscles, Haiba’s confession still running through his bones.

Daichi looked at his file. He saw nothing, his head wasn’t in the game.

He looked at his partner in front of him, also starring empty eyed into her case file.

“Earth to Shimizu, are you online?”

Shimizu woke out of her trance and looked at Daichi. Then she sighed.

“I don’t know. Mentally, I am still with our last case. I just feel like… Like we are not seeing the whole picture. You feel me?”

Daichi nodded, that put the tension in his body into quite the right words. He felt somewhat lighter, knowing his partner felt much the same as him, and it was not just him himself over thinking things.

“But that’s in the past and we have to move on and new work to do. What’s your new case about, Sawamura?”

Daichi skimmed through his new file.

“A man married the wrong woman.”

Shimizu made a —for her standards— very confused face.

“How is that possible? How is that a case?”

“Only one way to find out,” Daichi answered. Time to dig into the file.