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Iwaizumi blinks away from the news and looks at Kyoutani, eyes wide. He’s ground to a stop in the middle of the cafe, apron still smeared with flour, drawing the eyes of the handful of customers hanging around on a Wednesday afternoon.
Death of Lonely Tourist Oikawa Tooru , the headlines scream. The photo of a young man wearing a lobster bib squints down at them, caught in the act of blowing a raspberry to the person behind the camera.
The cherry tarts Iwaizumi’s holding drop to the floor, glass from the pan skittering under the booths and tables around them. It looks uncomfortably like blood spatter. Even Kindaichi, blatantly playing phone games at the register, cranes his neck for a better view.
“We’re fucking closed!” Kyoutani sweeps Tobio up from his basket on the floor, away from the shattered glass. The dog wuffles and glares at Kyoutani, sticking his wet nose in Kyoutani’s ear just to be a jackass. “Take your shit with you and get out, nothing to see here!”
“This is why everyone thinks you’re yakuza,” Iwaizumi says, distant, as Kyoutani chases out the last of the stragglers. “No goddamn manners.”
Kyoutani jabs the hand not cradling 30kg of black lab at Iwaizumi. “If I were yakuza I’d wear uglier shirts. Sit down before you fall down.”
Iwaizumi nods, distracted, gaze firmly locked on the TV in the corner. The reporters are outside a ratty-ass apartment interviewing two of Oikawa’s friends. The caption at the bottom of the screen reads Hanamaki Takahiro and Matsukawa Issei: Manly Mermaid Mermaid Men Swim Team.
“-prepared to offer a reward for information regarding the death of our friend Oikawa, ” Matsukawa is saying on screen. Hanamaki is letting him do all the talking, his eyes red, their hands clasped desperately together. Kyoutani jots down the information hotline number that appears on the bottom of the screen because he knows what’s coming the minute the newscasters cut away, and Iwaizumi turns to him and says, “I need you to take this case.”
“Of fucking course you do,” Kyoutani sighs. “You knew him.” It isn’t a question, and Iwaizumi doesn’t do him the disservice of pretending he doesn’t know what Kyoutani’s talking about.
“Yeah, I know him. Knew him.” His voice wavers on the correction, and god Kyoutani is so absolutely fucked. They don’t take personal cases as a rule. It makes Iwaizumi’s job more difficult, and brings unnecessary complications. Kyoutani knows Iwaizumi though, better than anyone else in the town full of idiots that is Hananohana, and he’s got that particular set to his jaw that means he’s not taking no for an answer. He’ll take this case with or without Kyoutani, and it’s in Kyoutani’s self-interest to tag along and minimize the damage. God knows they could use the reward money; he can’t remember the last time they got a case this big.
“Can you still--” Kindaichi emerges from behind the cashier’s desk with a mop so Kyoutani has to settle for wiggling his fingers to describe the scope of fuckery that happens when Iwaizumi touches dead people. “If you knew him, this is gonna suck.”
“Oikawa and I have unfinished business,” Iwaizumi says. He looks Kyoutani square in the eyes, the way suspects do when they really, really want Kyoutani to believe they’re not lying to him. “It’ll be fine. I’ve got it handled.”
This is how Kyoutani became sole keeper of the Iwaizumi’s secret: Kyoutani, in his fourth-ever case as a private detective, chased a robbery suspect across six alleyways and a rooftop only to watch him 1) fall from a height of two stories onto a dumpster 2) knock over an unsuspecting cafe worker with his limpid corpse 3) manage stand up and start running again, in a bold act of defiance against god, nature, and physics 4) collapse once more as the cafe worker abandoned the large sack of burnables he was carrying and tackled him to the ground.
Kyoutani recruits the man as soon as he can convince Iwaizumi that Kyoutani isn’t going to turn him over to the police for witchcraft. Murder cases are much easier to solve when you can ask the dead who killed them. And if Kyoutani gets free pastries and joint dog custody and possibly a best friend out of the deal, well. Freelancing is rough. He’ll take what he can get.
The facts of the case were these: Oikawa Tooru, age 25, was a Hananohana native and some sort of sports prodigy, until a knee injury pushed him sideways into the glamorous life of entomology and beekeeping. Oikawa rarely left his office, which made his travelling alone on one of Pleasure Cruises’ Pleasurable Cruises something of an oddity. Two days into the cruise Oikawa stepped outside late at night for reasons unknown, was overpowered, strangled with a plastic bag, and dumped overboard. A crew member discovered him in the water an estimated ten minutes after the body had been discarded, though discarded by whom seemed like a question only Oikawa Tooru could answer. Nothing in his room had been touched. Nothing from his home had been taken--though Kyoutani privately suspected this was directly related to the frankly creepy number of dead bugs Oikawa kept than anything else. Oikawa Tooru had been too charming to have enemies, and too boring for a criminal history. According to the paper trail of his life Oikawa simply wasn’t interesting enough to warrant the unusual circumstances of his death. The police had hit a dead end.
Enter Iwaizumi.
“Oh joy, you brought a friend.” Yahaba gives Iwaizumi a disdainful once-over. “You do realize you don’t get a group discount?”
“Fuck off, he’s a friend of the family,” Kyoutani says, manfully resisting the urge to knock the tower of paperwork on Yahaba’s desk onto the floor and stomp on it.
Yahaba rolls his eyes.“Yeah, okay, sure, and bringing family friends on a trip to the morgue is definitely not suspicious.”
“No you asshole, I meant he’s a friend of the dead guy we’re here to see--Oikawa Tooru.”
“Is that any way to talk to the man about to break a million rules to let you creeps have a party with a dead body?” Yahaba holds out his hand expectantly. “Pay up.”
“I’ve only got a fifty,” Kyoutani grumbles, digging through his wallet.
“Tough shit.” Yahaba settles back in his chair. God, Kyoutani has a lot of feelings about that smug smile, none of them appropriate for a morgue. And people have the nerve to think Kyoutani is yakuza.
“...I brought cake?” Iwaizumi pulls a cooler out of god-knows-where, and lets Yahaba rifle through it, emerging with double fistfulls of rare cheesecake and mont blancs.
“I like you,” Yahaba decides, peeling the wax paper off a cherry tart Kyoutani honestly hopes was one of the batch Iwaizumi dumped on the floor. “So I won’t tell you that Oikawa Tooru was taken out to Shiratorizawa for the funeral service about half an hour ago. And I definitely won’t mention that if you hurry you can probably make it to the wake.”
Iwaizumi pales. Kyoutani already has his bike keys in hand. His battered old Honda takes three tries to start and makes an awful choking sound, but thankfully doesn’t embarrass Kyoutani by dying in the morgue parking lot.
Lonely Tourist Oikawa Tooru is resting in a suit so perfectly pressed it has to be new. His hands are folded across his chest and someone has mercifully removed the lobster bib, and he looks almost handsome like this, a fairytale hero waiting for their prince. With Iwaizumi next to him ready to wake him, Kyoutani nearly believes it.
Iwaizumi isn’t crying. It’s almost worse, the reverent way he touches the casket, and there really aren’t words for how much Kyoutani does not want to be here to witness this.
“One minute,” Iwaizumi says, undoing the strap of his wristwatch and handing it to Kyoutani. Conversations with the dead, Kyoutani has learned, must last exactly one minute, no more and no less, or the consequences are fatal. Death does not give freely. If someone is kept alive after their time, someone else must die before theirs. It’s a tricky needle to thread.
Iwaizumi’s hands flutter over Oikawa’s body, indecisive. Usually he taps their interviewees on the shoulder or the hand, somewhere safely impersonal. With Oikawa he’s second guessing himself and Kyoutani can see the wheels turning in his head, the careful negotiation of boundaries between personal and too personal.
“Make it count,” Kyoutani says and watches Iwaizumi brush his fingers over Oikawa’s cheek, more the ghost of a touch than a touch in its entirety.
The effect is immediate: Oikawa gasps, color flooding back into his cheeks. His eyes flutter open, and he claws at the wood of his casket, Iwaizumi’s jacket, with the all desperation of a dying man.
“Tooru, Tooru calm down --” Iwaizumi is panicking, trying to keep from touching him. If he touches Oikawa, or any of their interviewees, for a second time they return to being dead and refuse to be woken.
Oikawa looks at him then, really looks at him, and Kyoutani can feel this whole interview rapidly going to shit.
“...Iwa-chan?” Oikawa releases his a fistful of jacket and reaches out a shaking hand. Iwaizumi leans away from his touch, and Oikawa’s face crumples. Iwaizumi looks like Oikawa’s just gutted him, this was a bad call.
“You’re not--you can’t be?” Oikawa starts, horrified. Kyoutani doesn’t think he can do it, but Iwaizumi manages to pull himself together and says, his voice fraught with emotion, “I’m not dead, Shittykawa.”
They’re at forty-five seconds. “Ask him who killed him,” Kyoutani says helpfully.
Oikawa looks from Iwaizumi to Kyoutani, then down at the coffin he’s half-risen from. “Oh. Oh, fuck.”
There’s a knock on the door, because of course there is. “Thirty seconds,” Kyoutani hisses, and leaves them to whatever crushing emotional revelations they can manage before Iwaizumi has to kill him again.
“You done in there or what,” says Ryuusuke, the squirrely manager of the funeral home. “I got like fifty people out at the gravesite waiting for the hearse.”
Kyoutani knows for a fact that Ryuusuke spends half his time stealing shit off people’s dead grandmothers, and the other half at the pachinko parlor. His sympathy for what the man wants is limited.
“Relax, he’ll be done any minute now,” Kyoutani says, which is of course when Ryuusuke keels over on the ground at his feet, dead as a fucking doornail.
Kyoutani finishes dealing with the police, and walks back into the cafe just in time to see Kindaichi drop a piece of cake on the floor, dust it off, and serve it to a man who looks suspiciously like an alive version of Oikawa Tooru.
“Thinking about setting someone on fire doesn’t mean you really want to set someone on fire does it?” Kyoutani mutters to Kindaichi. “It’s only for a second and then you feel sort of bad about it, but that one second is a lot of fucking fun.”
“Are you thinking about setting someone on fire?” Kindaichi says slowly, looking from him to Oikawa.
“...no,” Kyoutani says through gritted teeth, and stomps over to the booth.
“Look, Kyoutani,” Iwaizumi starts guiltily, which, good. At least he comprehends the magnitude of the fuckup he’s just dragged Kyoutani into.
“Excuse us,” Kyoutani says to the badly-disguised Oikawa, who’s wearing overlarge sunglasses and a trench coat indoors, cuddled up to Tobio and devouring a small mountain of milk bread.
“Hey, quick question, what the fuck is going on?!” Kyoutani hisses as soon as they’re out of earshot.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Iwaizumi says, looking not at all sorry and very much like a man who absolutely do it again. “I just, I couldn’t lose him a second time.I couldn’t be the one to send him back.”
“Yeah I can see that! It’s just so shockingly stupid I have a hard time believing you did it! And now Ryuusuke’s dead, and I just spend two hours being grilled by the police, who want to know why a perfectly healthy man keeled over for no apparent reason.” Iwaizumi makes a pained noise, like he’d forgotten the price of keeping Oikawa alive or, more likely, pushed it firmly aside. Kyoutani could scream. “He was a business associate of mine! Who do you think hooked us up with your corpse bride in there? Not to mention you’ve made me an accomplice in his death.”
“--do you name all your dogs Tobio-chan?” Oikawa says, popping up behind Kyoutani and making him jump. “His name’s even spelled the same as the Tobio-chan you had when we were kids.”
“Yeah,” Iwaizumi says, rubbing the back of his head. “About that…”
“So he’s--and I’m--” Oikawa sputters pointing at Tobio who whuffs softly. “You seem to do this a lot Iwa-chan.”
“No, it’s really just the two of you,” Iwaizumi says, the tips of his ears going red.
Oikawa looks shrewd. He turns to Kyoutani and asks, “would I be alive right now if I’d known who killed me?”
Kyoutani freezes.
“Iwa-chan wanted to know, so that ‘justice could be served,’ and I believe that he meant it,” Oikawa says, soft. “But it’s all over the newspapers that Kirakira Travel Kirara! is offering a reward of five hundred thousand yen for any information leading the arrest of my killer, and I can’t help but wonder if justice doesn’t take a back seat, or at least a side-car to that kind of money.”
“I don’t want it,” Iwaizumi says, and his voice breaks a little under the weight of it. “I don’t want any of it, Tooru-- ”
“I’m going to be so pissed if you’re lying to me,” Oikawa says, but he’s rocking on his heels, like he’s preventing himself from falling back into Iwaizumi’s orbit by sheer force of will. “I will poop on your desk. I will fill your shoes with legos. I will--”
“I’m not lying to you,” Iwaizumi says, earnest and raw. “Don’t terrorize the cafe, please. Kindaichi is easily traumatized.”
He and Oikawa share a look that makes Kyoutani want to throw a bucket of cold water on them.
“Well!” Oikawa says, remembering there are other people in the room. “What do you say we catch my murderer and collect the reward ourselves? I think it has a nice karmic symmetry to it.”
“I thought you didn’t want the reward!” Iwaizumi says.
“Nope,” Oikawa says, smacking his lips noisily. “I wanted you not to want the reward. Five hundred thousand yen is a lot of money.” He turns to Kyoutani. “How do you feel about doing a 30-30-40 split?”
“You’re shitting me,” Kyoutani says, turning to Iwaizumi, who looks just as gobsmacked.
“It’s only fair, I did die for it,” Oikawa chirps.
“Exactly, you’re supposed to be dead!” Iwaizumi says, glaring at Oikawa. “You can’t let anyone know you’re alive, it would raise all sorts of moral issues, not to mention legal repercussions and whatever unnamed prison hole they put people who can raise the dead .”
“You can’t just go around touching people’s lives, Iwa-chan. You have to take responsibility.” Oikawa says, quietly. “I won’t tell. But people see what they expect to see. They went to my funeral, they watched my coffin get lowered into the ground, I’m dead in their minds. I can wear a disguise if it makes you worry less, but people won’t expect to see me up and walking around, so what they’ll see is a stranger with an uncanny resemblance to that poor guy who got offed traveling alone on a discount cruise.”
Iwaizumi opens his mouth, then shuts it. Oikawa retreats in the direction of Iwaizumi’s apartment, his arms laden with milk bread.
“See, this is the type of whack bullshit happens when you mess with the dead,” Kyoutani says, pointing at Iwaizumi. “Karma.”
“Remind me: how much bad karma do you get with a thirty percent cut?” Iwaizumi tosses back, and just for that Kyoutani takes an entire tray of chocolate croissants with him when he leaves.
“I...I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” Oikawa says the next morning, cornering Kyoutani and Tobio in one of the back booths of the cafe while Iwaizumi is off doing something manly like beating rye bread into submission with his bare fists. Oikawa comes bearing coffee, which is why Kyoutani graciously allows him to slide into the seat across the table despite the fact that Oikawa’s wearing a full-length fur coat, a pair of opera gloves, and fuck-off huge sunglasses, his hair tied back in a silky scarf. Kyoutani spares a thought for the glamorous divorcee he clearly mugged for that outfit.
“The cruise I was on,” Oikawa says, pushing the coffee towards him, “it was a devil’s bargain.”
“And who was the devil, exactly?”
“Akita Kirara, the manager of Kirakira Travel Kirara! He got me on one of Pleasure Cruises’ Pleasurable Cruises for zero cost. All I had to do in exchange was pick up a package for him and bring it with me to Okinawa.”
Kyoutani spits his mouthful of coffee on Tobio, apparently the only true innocent in this shitshow. “Holy fuck, are you a drug mule?!”
“No, Kyouken-chan, and stop interrupting me, it’s not cute at all. I’m more of a...tanuki mule. Well, if one case with two, astonishingly ugly plaster tanuki, could be considered a mule.”
“You died for a pair of plaster tanuki...” This right here is why Kyoutani keeps his hair buzzed. Every word out of Oikawa’s mouth is somehow stupider than the last, it makes him want to rip his own hair out.
“Kirara said they weren’t worth much, their value was just sentimental.” Oikawa has the gall to sound defensive.
“Those were some emotional fucking tanuki,” Kyoutani says, because seriously?
Oikawa sniffs, and puts his ludicrous third-wife sunglasses back on, indicating that the conversation is over. “Well I’d love to ask Kirara about this, I’m very curious to see what he has to say.”
If Akita Kirara had hoped a five hundred thousand yen reward would catch a killer before they caught him, he’d ended life on a disappointing note.
“God, it this how they found me?” Oikawa pulls the plastic bag off Kirara’s head, and makes a face at the giant pink rabbit on the front, emblazoned under bubbly font encouraging customers to LET’S ENJOY! “That’s so embarrassing.”
“How long has he been here like this?” Iwaizumi says with disgust. For a guy who runs around touching dead people in his spare time, he’s awfully squeamish.
“Fucking touch him and ask him already,” Kyoutani shouts from his lookout position.
Iwaizumi sets his watch. “Hey Shitty-kawa, turn around for this part,” he says, and even Kyoutani can see the back of his neck pink up.
"Aw, Iwa-chan are you embarrassed?” Oikawa coos, but he saves Kyoutani from having to watch the two of them flirt over a corpse by obediently covering his eyes as Iwaizumi reaches out and taps the man’s hands.
Kirara jerks violently back into life.
“Oh, it’s only you,” he sighs, catching sight of Oikawa. Oikawa throws him a peace sign. “Somehow I knew you’d be the first face I’d see down here.”
“Excuse me, did you know I was going to get killed?” Oikawa asks, offended.
Kirara grins, unrepentant. “Mmm, it was a distinct possibility, yes. Though to be honest--and really, why not at this point--if it were safe I would have done it myself!”
“For fuck’s sake, ask him who killed you,” Kyoutani shouts from his position at the door.
Kirara frowns. “Who are these people?”
“Well that’s--Kyoken-chan,” Oikawa says, and waving aside Kyoutani’s many and strenuous objections. “I don’t really know him that well. And this is Iwa-chan…” Kyoutani can hear both the disgustingly infatuated look Oikawa gives Iwaizumi, and Iwaizumi’s embarrassment loud and clear.
“Well, aren’t you a catch,” Kirara says, reaching out to stroke Iwaizumi’s biceps before any of them can stop him. His head drops back down onto the counter with a hollow thud that makes Iwaizumi wince.
Oikawa blinks. “That was...oddly satisfying.
“Great, we’ve got nothing!” Kyoutani says, torn between breaking something and leaving the minimal amount of fingerprints on an active crime scene. “Just that Oikawa was definitely killed for those fucking tanuki, which we already knew.”
“Wait,” Iwaizumi says, turning to Oikawa. “Didn’t you say that you’d locked yourself out of your room the night you were attacked?”
Oikawa nods. “I was on my way to get a replacement key from the front desk.”
“Right,” Iwaizumi says. “If they couldn’t get inside, then they might not have the case at all.”
Kyoutani turns to Oikawa,“if you get boat-murdered where do they send your things?”
“Ah.” Oikawa says, eyes widening. “Fuck.”
After a ten-minute tantrum that results in Kyoutani learning three new swear words and Oikawa resentfully agreeing to stay in Iwaizumi’s car and out of sight, Kyoutani and Iwaizumi roll up to the shared residence of Hananohana’s best, worst, and only men’s synchronized swim team, the Manly Mermaid Mermaid Men .
“Hi, I, uh, was a friend of Oikawa’s,” Iwaizumi says, holding a massive tray of cream puffs with one hand, and rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously with the other. “I saw what happened on the news and, well. I own a bakery--”
“--say no more,” Hanamaki says, sweeping them both inside. “You must be Iwa-chan.”
“Must I?” Iwaizumi says, strangled.
“Oikawa had so many stories about you,” Matsukawa says, appearing with guest slippers. There’s a weird swelling over his eye, like he lost a fight with a clothing iron. “It was obnoxiously cute--”
“--t ragically cute.”
“Disgustingly cute, really,” Matsukawa decides. “I mean--the mooning--”
“--like, a whole nudist colony full of moons,” Hanamaki insists around a mouth full of cream puff.
“--the constant sighing, the storage rooms full of stag beetles--”
“That sounds like like him,” Iwaizumi agrees. “Is your eye okay? That looks pretty rough.”
“It’s the bees,” Matsukawa says, as if this is a perfectly normal answer. Iwaizumi makes a face like he’s sorry he asked.
“Not that that isn’t horrifying,” Kyoutani says, “but have the cruise staff returned Oikawa’s belongings? Specifically a briefcase.”
“That’s not at all a suspicious question for a complete stranger to ask,” Hanamaki says, mild.
“Zero out of five stars,” Matsukawa agrees. “You didn’t even try at all.”
He gets up and walks out of the room, abandoning them to Hanamaki’s tender mercies.
“Tea?” Hanamaki offers, with the tolerant amusement of someone who thrives on awkward situations. “It’s delicious with a spoonful of Oikawa’s honey. He used to donate it to the homeless you know."
“Actually I have a sudden burning need to use the bathroom,” Kyoutani says, and ducks out down the hall.
Iwaizumi throws Kyoutani a panicked glance over his shoulder, but unlike Kyoutani he’s been cursed with a parent who raised him right. Kyoutani makes it halfway up the staircase before he hears the dull thud of a body hitting the floor, and the soft symphony of a fistfight. He rounds the corner to find a trick-eye puzzle of pure batshittery: Matsukawa’s prone body lies in the doorway, a plastic rabbit-stamped bag over his head, while on the veranda Oikawa is locked in a catfight with a masked intruder, still wearing his enormous fur coat. The intruder appears deeply disturbed to be fighting someone he last knew as a corpse.
Kyoutani gleefully jumps into the fray. The masked man gives a yelp and lets go of the briefcase as Oikawa licks him, and Kyoutani gets in two good punches before he trips over a bottle of laundry detergent and gets a plastic bag over his head for his troubles.
There’s a shriek, and the sounds of scuffle. Oikawa rips the bag off Kyoutani’s head, and Kyoutani has a whole moment of being happy to see him before the idiot trips on the same exact bottle of detergent Kyoutani tripped on, and eats it hard on the washing machine. Kyoutani, still dizzy from a lack of oxygen, isn't strong enough to stop the masked man from grabbing the briefcase.
The man glares at Oikawa, whose dumb coast managed to cushion the worst of the fall. "You should have come to--" he starts, before Matsukawa is back with a right hook that has Kyoutani in awe.
“I can hold my breath a long goddamn time,” Matsukawa says, and the man crumples at his feet.
Kyoutani and Oikawa freeze. The jig was up; Matsukawa was looking directly at Oikawa, a man whose funeral Matsukawa had attended three days ago.
And, if he hadn’t lost a fight with a cloud of Oikawa’s bees and had two good eyes, he would have seen him.
"You okay?" Matsukawa asks, holding out a hand. "Yeah," Kyoutani says, to him, to Oikawa doing a shitty job of hiding behind a pair of jorts in the corner. "Yeah I think we're good."
“They’re so ugly,” Yahaba says, gleefully holding one of the tanuki up to the exposing light of the morgue. Its huge erection gleams in the lamplight. “I almost believe your bullshit story--I definitely want to kill whoever made them.”
Kyoutani takes a deep drink of sake and motions for Yahaba to get the bottle back out of the mortuary fridge.
“What are you going to do with them?” He makes a face. "God, why are these so heavy?"
Kyoutani shrugs. “As far as I’m concerned whoever wants them can have them.”
“Oh come one, you gotta keep one,” Yahaba gestures at the ring of bruises still horrifyingly vivid around Kyoutani’s neck. “You nearly died for it!”
“Are you kidding? This thing is an open invitation to be haunted.” Kyoutani’s got enough of that bullshit to deal with already; Oikawa’s become a permanent fixture in the cafe, making himself busy feeding Iwaizumi bits of cake off his fork, making up horrible nicknames for everyone, conscripting Tobio into being his and Iwaizumi’s feelings child, and generally making a nuisance of himself.
Yahaba rolls his eyes at whatever he’s found in Kyoutani’s expression, and pushes the fucking tanuki into his hand. “You’re already drinking in a morgue, I think it’s a little late to worry about that.” He takes the matching tanuki. “Cheers!”
“Absolutely the fuck not,” Kyoutani hisses, trying to snatch his hand back.
“Stop being such a baby,” Yahaba knocks the tanuki together with more force than necessary, and a small crack forms across Kyoutani’s tanuki’s belly. A small crack revealing a center of solid gold tanuki.
Yahaba stares at him, and Kyoutani stares back, thankful to the core of his bones that he can reach out and put his hand over Yahaba's, skin to skin, as they bring the second tanuki statue crashing down to the floor and drown the room in gold.