DAY 45: LIBRARY

[byname_bynature]

Even before he got sick, Sean had enjoyed reading. His teachers had always said that he read 'ahead of his age group', but he figured that was just because he read more than most kids his age did. He liked everything: fantasy, science fiction, biographies, journal articles... There was just something satisfying about holding a book--something

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[flashyaudacity]

[Worshiping Lupin was half the problem! It gave Kyle terrible ideas... :(]

Breakfast could have gone better. Kyle hadn't gotten to apologize for what he'd really needed to apologize for ("Sorry, Hartwell; I've been lying to you a lot because I thought I was a famous thief, but now it doesn't matter because I realize that I just made the whole thing up; please forgive me?"), and... Well, it just could have gone better.

When his nurse escorted him to the library, Kyle nearly groaned. Of course, the very first person he spotted just had to be the other person he'd lied to repeatedly: Kudou. Or... whatever his name really was. He wasn't actually sure he'd heard it.

His nurse had turned to go, but Kyle stopped her, pointing towards 'Kudou'. "That guy, the one who looks kind of like me... What's his name?" he asked her.

The nurse smiled warmly, obviously taking his interest in the name as a some kind of signal, and shuffled him over towards the other teen before Kyle could protest that no, he didn't particularly want to go over there. "Kyle, you remember Jimmy," she said before picking a book off the shelf and pressing it into Kyle's hands. "You two get along, alright?"

With that, she was gone.

"Uh... hi," Kyle said, turning the book over in his hands. It was something by Dickens, and he was pretty sure he'd read it for school before. At least it wasn't a Lupin story; that would have probably counted as regression.

[meitantei]

Shinichi was well engrossed in his book by the time that Kaito showed up, but he was perfectly willing to tear himself away from Holmes' exploits for a friend. He looked up and smiled, giving the other boy a little wave. "Hey Kuroba," he said absently. "What's up?"

He stretched, cracking his back. "You doing okay?"

[flashyaudacity]

Great, another person calling him 'Kuroba'. It made sense that they would--he'd wanted to be called that, and the idea of being 'Kaito' (or thinking that he was) was more appealing than he really wanted to admit. If he still blindly believed it, he wouldn't feel so terrible about everything he'd done...

Kyle took a seat near Jimmy, setting the book in his lap.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, studying the other boy for a moment. They really did look rather similar... He'd thought before that the idea of a relation between them was ridiculous, but he'd also thought at the time that Jimmy had been masquerading as a pint-sized brat before he'd been admitted to the Institute. Next time he saw his dad, he'd have to ask if maybe he had any cousins he'd never known about...

He glanced at Jimmy's book. "Sorry I interrupted you... What were you reading?"

[meitantei]

"Hound of the Baskervilles," Shinichi replied, holding up the book. "It's my favorite Holmes novel...but picking favorites among Holmes stories is like picking among my children, seriously." He laughed. "And you're not interrupting. I've practically got this book memorized."

He leaned against the book cases, feeling slightly more relaxed. It was still mildly unsettling to see (and hear) how similar he and Kuroba were, but even that had become pretty normal in the time he'd been here. Already, it had been...a week, right? Or close enough to one. The days really ran together here.

"What'd you end up with?"

[flashyaudacity]

"Great Expectations," Kyle said, shrugging. "Not really interested in Dickens; reading Conan Doyle would be better... though I was always more of a Maurice LeBlanc fan, myself."

Reading anything (especially LeBlanc--regression, he reminded himself) didn't exactly top the list of things he wanted to do today, though. Honestly, Kyle just wanted to curl up in a corner where he wouldn't have to deal with Harley or Jimmy and feel guilty about how he'd treated them--he hadn't managed to come clean to Hattori, but maybe he could... No, no; 'Kudou' had been at odds with 'Kid' even more than 'Hattori' had. Jimmy would just tell Harley, and if Harley got angry that Kyle hadn't told him himself...

[meitantei]

Shinichi grinned. "Fan of Lupin, then?" he asked. "You just like the novels, or are you into the anime, too?" Lupin III did have quite a following. Especially among the homicide detectives in Tokyo, weirdly.

The detective still hadn't noticed that there was anything out of the ordinary about his friend, though he did think it was a little weird that Kaito was being so...small talk-y (and yes, that was now totally an adjective). After fighting freaking zombies together, among other things, it seemed a little odd that he'd be so distant.

"Hey, you upset with me or something, Kuroba?" Shinichi asked suddenly. "Is it because Hattori and I didn't let you in on the murder case?"

[flashyaudacity]

"The novels," Kyle said with a fond smile. "I used to read them all the time... the crossovers with Holmes, too. 'We may talk, shake hands, nod to each other, but the fence remains. You will always be Sherlock Holmes, the Detective, and I, Arsène Lupin, the Gentleman Burglar'..."

He trailed off, and after a moment, he shook his head. "Nah, I'm not upset with you, Jimmy. I just had a bit of a fight with Harley at breakfast, and I guess it ruined my mood."

[meitantei]

Shinichi smiled. He'd found a fellow fan. Though this one tended to take more after a gentleman thief...almost like a certain gentleman thief--no. He wasn't going to go down that train of thought. He didn't like where it ended up.

And what Kaito said next put it out of his head entirely.

Jimmy. And Harley. It was like Yuffie (no, Hanna) all over again, though this time it was one of his friends. In spite of himself, Shinichi paled. He hadn't expected it to hit so close to home.

"R-right," he said, visibly shaken. "I'm glad you're not upset. Uh...what'd you and Harley have a fight about?"

[flashyaudacity]

"Oh, you know," Kyle answered, shrugging. "He thought I was crazy, I thought he was crazy, and it all kind of went downhill from there."

Kyle sighed. Jimmy would probably hear all about it from Harley later anyway, so there was no use keeping vague about it. "He got upset because I started using his real name instead of calling him 'Hattori' any more--and speaking of which, stop calling me 'Kuroba'. My name is Kyle. I didn't want to play along with him, things spiraled, and I may have insulted his accent a little bit along the way."

[meitantei]

"Yeah," Shinichi said, laughing weakly, "the accent's sacrosanct. No wonder he's pissed..." So Kaito wanted to be called Kyle, huh? The detective took a deep breath. He could do this.

He just wished it didn't sting so much.

"Sure, Kyle. Look, I'm sure Hat--Hartwell will calm down after a little while. He can fly off the handle sometimes, but he usually cools down pretty quick. Just...give him some space for a few hours, and then I'm sure he'll be fine again."

[flashyaudacity]

"Still, I should have probably kept my mouth shut about it," he said. Not the part about it being Canadian, but he could have skipped calling it 'godawful'... "I doubt it helped matters."

He ran his fingers through his hair. "You're probably right... I'll try to apologize to him soon, maybe before dinner? I don't have many friends here, and I'd really rather not alienate you guys if I can help it."

...Even if they were all crazy, and even if he had been lying to them. They just needed to all get better (and he could break the news about his imagined past to them gently, when they weren't so entrenched in their detective fantasies), and they could keep in touch afterward, maybe even visit each other. Canada wasn't that far away.

[meitantei]

Shinichi shrugged. "We can all be kind of illogical sometimes." Like Kuroba was being right now. The detective couldn't believe he was hearing the things coming out of his friend's mouth.

"Kyle" was scaring him.

"Yeah, we appreciate not being alienated." All right, so it was a gentle jab. Shinichi couldn't help it, really. Maybe he and Kaito weren't as close as Kaito and Heiji were, but he still considered the other boy to be a friend. One of few, in this place. Seeing Kaito like this, believing all these lies, made him feel physically ill.

[flashyaudacity]

Kyle's mood had steadily improved since his nurse had forced him to join Jimmy; he was actually a lot more agreeable than he'd expected from what his 'other self' had known (or thought he'd known) about 'Kudou'... Then again, the entire idea that they wouldn't have really gotten along was based on what Kyle had thought he'd known: that 'Kudou' was a detective and 'Kaito' was a thief, and that their relationship could, at the best, be like Holmes and Lupin. There was a forced distance there--a fence, as he'd quoted--that couldn't be crossed.

Maybe they could really be friends now.

Kyle gestured to Jimmy's book. "So are you into other detectives, or is it just Holmes?"

[meitantei]

"I like other detectives," Shinichi mused, glad for a subject that fell into decidedly less awkward territory, "but Holmes is my favorite. I've read a lot of Agatha Christie and Edogawa Ranpo, for instance, and enjoyed them (just not as much as Conan Doyle). I'm less fond of a lot of more recent mysteries, though." He laughed, leaning back against the bookcase. "This'll sound weird, but I think they're stupid. Unintellectual. You can figure out who the murderer is in two seconds, and then the rest of the book is gratuitous sex and violence. They read like bad screenplays. There are some authors who keep the true spirit of the mystery genre alive," like my Dad "but most of the other modern stuff is just...crap."

He grinned at "Kyle." "So, what about you? You like other gentleman thieves, or just Lupin?"

[flashyaudacity]

"Pretty much just Lupin. I've read some of the Raffles stuff, too, but I like Lupin a lot more. Detective stories are a bit of a close second; my dad's a ma-... a detective," he said, correcting himself after a brief pause. Why had he almost said magician? That was part of Kaito's life, not his... If he wanted to go home any time this century, he couldn't afford to slip back into confusion.

"He's a bit of a Conan Doyle fan, too, so he's got a nice collection. I've read all of Holmes, and a smattering of others. I kind of like the Father Brown stories."