Chapter 1: Assassin’s Affection: A Pregnant Bully’s Embrace
The kitchen clock ticked, a slow metronome counting down the seconds until Shuichi’s key scraped in the lock. Maki’s grip tightened on the ceramic plate in her hand. It was a plain, white thing, cheap from a department store. The miso soup simmered, a low, comforting rumble from the stove. Sunlight cut across the floor, illuminating drifting motes of flour in the air.
The front door sighed open. There was the predictable shuffle of dress shoes being toed off, the thud of a heavy briefcase hitting the genkan floor, a quiet, weary exhale that was uniquely his.
Maki’s lips curved, not into a smile, but something sharper. She listened to his footsteps pad down the hallway—hesitant, always hesitant, as if he were an intruder in his own home. Just as his shadow fell across the kitchen doorway, she let her fingers go slack.
The plate hit the linoleum with a catastrophic crash. Shards exploded outward, skittering across the floor like startled insects.
Shuichi flinched, a full-body jolt. His hand flew to his chest. “Ah! Maki—are you okay? Did you cut yourself?” His voice was tight with instant concern.
She turned slowly, leaning back against the counter, her rounded stomach prominent. She wiped her hands on a towel, her expression one of bored annoyance. “Oops.” The word was flat, deliberate. “Clean it up, stupid. You’re tracking police station filth all over the place anyway.”
He stood frozen for a second, his grey eyes wide behind his bangs, taking in the carnage of white ceramic. Then his shoulders slumped, the familiar resignation settling in. “Right. Sorry.” He didn’t ask why she’d dropped it. He never did.
He moved to the cupboard, his movements careful, and pulled out the dustpan and brush. The bristles whispered against the floor as he knelt, his detective’s focus now narrowed to the simple task of gathering every last fragment. The sun warmed the back of his neck.
Maki watched him. The careful way his fingers picked up the larger pieces, the slight frown of concentration on his face. Her ‘useless,’ ‘pathetic’ detective. The man who could untangle a web of lies from a crime scene but couldn’t figure out how to avoid her verbal traps. A strange warmth coiled in her chest, vicious and tender all at once.
She moved silently. Her socks made no sound on the floor.
He was focused on a sliver near the cabinet leg when her hand closed in his hair. It wasn’t gentle. Her fingers tightened, fisting the dark strands, and she yanked his head back just enough to make him gasp.
“M-Maki?”
Without a word, she forced his face forward, not towards the broken plate, but against the soft, stretched fabric of her sweater where it covered her belly. He stiffened, his hands bracing on the floor. She held him there, his cheek pressed firmly against the curve of their child.
The world narrowed to the smell of laundry detergent on her clothes, the faint, quickened rhythm of his own breath, and the solid, warm reality of her pregnancy beneath his skin.
“Listen,” she commanded, her voice dropping to a murmur that vibrated through him. “You’re lucky, you know that?” The words were sharp, but her other hand came to rest lightly on the back of his head, her touch contradicting her tone. “You’re so completely worthless. A good-for-nothing who’d probably trip over his own feet if I didn’t watch you. But you’re mine.”
Shuichi’s breath hitched. He didn’t try to pull away. His hands, still holding bits of ceramic, relaxed slowly on the floor.
“You come home to me,” she continued, the words pouring into his hair. “Only me. You solve your little crimes and you wear your stupid tie and you always, always come back here. To this. To me.” She gave his hair another small, possessive tug. “You’re lucky I love such a worthless man.”
The confession, wrapped in an insult, hung in the sunlit air. He could feel the kick then, a soft, insistent thump against his cheekbone. A tiny protest, or an agreement. He wasn’t sure.
A long moment passed, filled only with the tick of the clock and the simmering soup. Finally, she released him, shoving his head away with less force than she’d used to pull him in. “Hurry up. The food’s getting cold. And you’re kneeling in the dust.”
Shuichi sat back on his heels, his face flushed, his hair mussed where her fingers had been. He looked up at her, his expression dazed, a little awestruck. “Yeah,” he breathed, the word almost lost. He looked down at the dustpan, then back at her stomach, a soft, awkward smile touching his lips. “Sorry.”
“You’re always sorry,” she scoffed, turning back to the stove to stir the pot that didn’t need stirring. She hid her face from him, but her ears were tinged with pink. “It’s pathetic.”
He finished cleaning, disposed of the shards, and washed his hands. When he sat at the small kitchen table, she slammed a bowl of miso soup in front of him, rice and grilled fish following with similar force. He picked up his chopsticks. “Thank you for the meal,” he said softly.
“Don’t thank me. Just eat.”
They ate in a silence that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. The afternoon light began to soften, painting the kitchen in deeper gold. Shuichi sneaked glances at her profile, at the fierce line of her brow, the way her long brown hair fell over her shoulder as she ate. He saw the knife block on the counter, the handles all perfectly aligned. He saw the subtle strength in her wrists, the careful, economical way she moved even now.
“The Tanaka case,” he said suddenly, the words stumbling out. “We closed it today. Got a confession.”
Maki looked up, her eyes sharp. “The one with the forged ledgers? I told you it was the wife three days ago.”
“You did,” he admitted, a faint, proud smile on his face. “You’re always right.”
“Obviously.” She looked back at her bowl, but a flicker of something—satisfaction, maybe—passed over her features. “Your job would be easier if you just listened to me the first time.”
“I know,” he said, and he meant it.
Later, after the dishes were done and he was digging through his briefcase for paperwork at the low kotatsu, she walked by. She paused, and for a second, her hand rested on the crown of his head, her fingers sliding through his hair in a touch so fleeting he might have imagined it. Then she was gone, padding down the hall toward the bedroom, one hand resting on the side of her belly.
Shuichi sat in the quiet living room, the ghost of her touch still tingling on his scalp. The house was peaceful, warm, safe. He looked at the clean, empty spot on the kitchen floor where the plate had shattered. He thought of her hand in his hair, the hard press of her stomach against his face, the venomous, comforting words.
Outside, the ordinary neighborhood settled into evening. A cat yowled somewhere. A bicycle bell chimed. Normal sounds.
Inside, Shuichi Saihara, detective, lifted a case file, his heart a tangled, devoted knot in his chest. He did not think about the extraordinary precision of the plate’s breakage, how the pieces had exploded outward with a force that seemed beyond a simple drop. He did not wonder why, sometimes, when the phone rang late at night, Maki’s voice became cold and flat, a language of quiet, clipped syllables he wasn’t meant to understand. He simply turned the page, content in the strange, quiet sanctuary of her love.
In the bedroom, Maki stood by the window, watching the street lamps flicker on one by one. Her hand wasn’t on her belly now. It was resting on the windowsill, her fingers tapping a slow, silent rhythm against the wood—a rhythm that matched none of the peaceful sounds of the coming night, but something else entirely, something old and practiced and deep within her bones.
It was resting on the windowsill, her fingers tapping a slow, silent rhythm against the wood—a rhythm that matched none of the peaceful sounds of the coming night, but something else entirely, something old and practiced and deep within her bones.
The rhythm found its echo every weekday at precisely 12:05 PM.
The landline phone in the kitchen would jangle, a harsh, mechanical sound in the quiet apartment. Maki would let it ring twice, sometimes three times, before picking up. She’d never say hello. She’d just hold the receiver to her ear and listen to the faint static of the police station’s line.
“Hey.” His voice was always a little breathless, as if he’d run to the phone. “It’s me.”
“I know it’s you. Who else would it be?” she’d snipe, leaning against the counter, staring out at the same slice of sky she always saw. “Did you buy that overpriced egg salad sandwich again? I told you it’s a waste of money. You’re useless with a budget.”
“I, uh, I brought leftovers today. The chicken you made.” He’d sound so pleased with himself.
“It’ll probably be soggy. You packed it wrong.” But a familiar, tight warmth would bloom under her ribs as he described his morning, the trivial gossip from the station, the mind-numbing paperwork. He never spoke of the real cases, the dark ones. He saved those for whispered conversations in the dark of their bedroom, where she would dissect them with a clinical precision that sometimes made him go very quiet. These lunch calls were for the mundane. For her.
And she loved them. She loved the absolute certainty of them. She loved that while other men might be in a crowded breakroom laughing at dumb jokes or planning weekend trips, Shuichi was in a sterile corridor, his back to the wall, speaking softly into a phone, connected only to her. It was a tiny, daily tether. A lifeline he didn’t even know he was clinging to.
“You should try talking to someone else,” she’d tell him sometimes, stirring a pot of something for dinner. “Make a friend. It’s pathetic, a grown man calling his wife every day like a homesick child.”
“I don’t really… it’s fine. I like calling you,” he’d mumble, and she could picture him scratching the back of his neck, looking at his shoes.
“Suit yourself, stupid.”
This fragile ecosystem crumbled on a Tuesday evening.
They were eating dinner. Ginger pork stir-fry, rice. Shuichi was pushing a piece of carrot around his bowl with his chopsticks. He hadn’t touched his water. He kept glancing at her, then away, his shoulders tense in a way that had nothing to do with the long day. It was a nervous, coiled energy. She felt it like a change in barometric pressure.
She watched him. The slight tremor in his hand. The way he chewed his lower lip. A cold thread began to weave through her gut.
“Just say it,” she finally said, her voice cutting through the clatter of her own chopsticks. “You’re fidgeting like you’ve got ants in your pants. It’s irritating.”
He jumped, a little. His grey eyes met hers, wide and guilty. “It’s… it’s nothing, really.”
“Talk.”
He swallowed. “Remember… you know, how you’re always saying I should… try to make friends? To hang out with? At lunch?”
The cold thread turned to ice. Her heartbeat, usually a steady, controlled drum, stuttered and began to pound against her ribs. She set her chopsticks down with a precise, quiet click. Her face felt perfectly calm, a porcelain mask. Inside, a siren was blaring.
“Yes,” she said, the word flat.
“Well,” Shuichi took a deep breath, a small, bracing smile touching his lips. He looked so hopeful, so pathetically eager for approval. “I did. I mean, I talked to Kaito and Kokichi from Forensics. They’re… they’re actually pretty nice. Kaito’s always going on about space, but it’s kind of interesting. And Kokichi makes these jokes that don’t really make sense, but they’re funny anyway.”
Every word was a nail. Maki kept her hands in her lap, fingers laced together so tightly the knuckles blanched white.
“So,” he continued, buoyed by her silent attention, “they asked if I wanted to grab lunch with them tomorrow. Just, you know, at the noodle place around the corner. And then, Kokichi mentioned they’re having a sort of… department bowling night on Saturday. He said I should come. I thought… I thought it might be good. Like you said.”
The silence that followed was volcanic. The simmering pot on the stove seemed deafening. The tick of the clock was a detonation counting down. Tomorrow. No call. Saturday. He would be gone. In a noisy, public place with people who didn’t matter, with people who would take him from her for hours. They would laugh with him. They would see his shy, awkward smiles. They would claim a piece of his time, his attention, his life. They would introduce variables. Unpredictability. Danger.
This was the worst-case scenario. It was happening right now, over ginger pork and rice.
A numb, buzzing panic seized her. It wasn’t a fluttering feeling; it was a concrete slab settling over her lungs, a hyper-clarity that sharpened every detail of the room—the grain of the wooden table, a single crumb near his bowl, the faint sheen of sweat on his temple. Her carefully controlled world was tilting, and she had to wrench it back. Now.
“No.” The word came out cold, clear, and absolute.
Shuichi blinked. “No?”
“You will cancel it.” She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping into a register that was low, smooth, and left no room for argument. “You will call them tonight and tell them something came up. A family matter. You will tell them you are not available for lunch tomorrow, or for bowling on Saturday. You will call me tomorrow during your lunch break, like you always do. You will be here on Saturday night, like you always are.”
She watched his face, watching the confusion dawn, then shift, then settle into something else. He didn’t look disappointed. He didn’t look chastised. He stared at her, his food forgotten, his chopsticks lying abandoned. His eyes searched hers, and she let him look. She let him see the uncompromising, ferocious certainty there. This was not a negotiation.
A slow, soft pink colored his cheeks. His lips parted. He saw it. He saw the panic, the possession, the raw, unvarnished need behind the command. And instead of shrinking away, he seemed to… soften. To melt into his chair. His shoulders relaxed completely, the anxious tension dissolving as if she’d sliced it away with a knife.
“Okay,” he said. Just that. His voice was quiet, terribly fond, and utterly yielding.
He looked so happy. So genuinely, radiantly happy that she was the one who wanted him. That her demand was proof of her need. That her cage was where he chose to be. The pathetic, lovely fool.
A flicker of warmth fought back against the icy panic in her chest. She picked up her chopsticks again, her movements crisp. “Your food is getting cold. Hurry up and eat. And don’t slurp. It’s disgusting.”
“Sorry,” he murmured, not sounding sorry at all. He picked up his own chopsticks, a small, unmistakable smile playing on his lips as he looked down at his bowl. He took a bite, chewing contentedly. The subject was closed. The plans were cancelled. The world was righted.
She ate her own food, the flavors sharp and clear. The crisis was averted. For now. But the event had illuminated a fragile fault line in her carefully constructed life. She watched him from under her lashes, this soft, shy man who belonged to her. The thought of someone else making him smile, hearing his awkward laugh, was unacceptable. It was a visceral, physical revulsion.
He finished his meal, and when he stood to clear the plates, his hand brushed her shoulder—a brief, warm pass of contact. She didn’t flinch. She allowed it.
Later, as he washed the dishes and she dried, the domestic rhythm restored, she knew what she had to do. The phone calls were not enough. His promised presence was not enough. She needed a better system. A more permanent guarantee. Her hand drifted to the curve of her stomach, feeling the solid, hopeful kick within. That was one. But she would need others. Layers of protection. Chains of affection he would never want to break.
She looked at his back, at the faint damp spot on his shirt between his shoulder blades from the dishwater. A deep, possessive fondness washed over her, so intense it hurt. She loved how he always called. She loved how he always came home. She would make sure it stayed that way. No matter what it took. The silent, practiced rhythm in her bones found its beat again, steady and sure.
The silent, practiced rhythm in her bones found its beat again, steady and sure. She placed the last dried bowl in the cupboard, the click of porcelain on wood a final note. Shuichi was wiping down the counters, his movements slow and methodical. The curve of his spine as he leaned over, the way his too-long bangs fell into his eyes—it was a posture so familiar it unspooled a thread in her mind, pulling her back through the years.
It was the slant of his shoulders that did it. That specific, self-effacing hunch. It transported her.
The rain at Hope’s Peak Academy had been a cold, relentless drizzle, misting the window of the empty classroom where she’d been cornered. Not physically cornered—she could have broken the boy in front of her in seven seconds flat—but emotionally ambushed. She’d been cleaning her tools, a private, methodical ritual, when he’d found her. Shuichi Saihara, the Ultimate Detective, a shadow in the doorway who smelled of library dust and nervous sweat.
He’d been a collection of sharp angles and poorly fitting clothes then, too. His uniform jacket always seemed a size too large, swallowing his frame. His eyes, the color of a gathering storm, were permanently downcast, as if the floor held the answers to every unspoken question. Pathetic. That was the word she’d used for him in her head. A useless, skittish creature who flinched at loud noises and whose most notable skill was deducing who’d stolen the last milk bread from the commissary.
She’d seen the crush, of course. It was pathetically obvious. The way his gaze would snap away from her the second she looked up. The stammer that overtook him if they were assigned to pair work. The careful, trembling distance he kept, as if she were a feral cat he was trying not to startle. Other guys had confessed. Bold ones, arrogant ones, ones who’d heard the title “Ultimate Child Caregiver” and assumed she was soft. They’d left with more than broken hearts. A sprained wrist for the one who’d tried to put an arm around her. A carefully administered allergy trigger for the one who’d sent overly perfumed letters. She’d made her policy clear: affection was a vulnerability, and vulnerabilities got people killed. Love was a liability her profession could not afford.
Yet, he kept lingering on the periphery of her world, this shy, awkward boy. He’d leave a packet of band-aids on her desk after he’d noticed a scratch on her knuckles from training. He’d solve a logic puzzle she’d been idly working on in a textbook margin, scribbling the solution in his terrible handwriting and sliding the book back to her without a word. Small, quiet intrusions that didn’t demand anything. They just… were.
That rainy afternoon, he’d stepped into the room and the door had clicked shut behind him. The sound had been final, like a cell door locking. She hadn’t looked up from her work, a familiar, heavy weight in her hands.
“H-Harukawa-san.”
His voice was a threadbare thing, stretched too tight.
She continued her methodical cleaning, the soft shick of cloth on metal the only sound for a full minute. Let him sweat. Let him regret coming here.
“I… I need to tell you something.” He took a step closer. She could smell the damp wool of his blazer, the faint, clean scent of his soap. “I know… I know what you do. To people who… say things to you.”
Her fingers stilled. So he wasn’t entirely stupid. Just stupidly brave.
“And you’re still here?” she said, her voice flat and cold, echoing slightly in the empty space. “Do you have a death wish, Saihara? Or just a masochistic streak?”
He flinched, but he didn’t back away. He actually took another step, until the toes of his scuffed shoes entered her downcast field of vision. “I think… I think I love you.”
The words hung in the air, simple and devastatingly bare. They weren’t flowery. They weren’t a performance. They were a statement of fact, as if he’d deduced it through evidence and was now presenting his conclusion. The sheer, breathtaking audacity of it—the vulnerability of it—sent a hot, sharp wire through her chest. She finally looked up.
His face was pale, his knuckles white where he gripped the strap of his book bag. He was trembling, a fine, constant shake that betrayed the monumental effort it took to stand there. He looked utterly terrified. And yet, his eyes, wide and storm-grey, held hers. He didn’t look away.
The old, cold script rose to her lips. The insults, the threats, the clear, violent rejection. She opened her mouth to deliver it, to break this fragile thing in front of her and re-establish the safe, solitary order of her world.
But the words wouldn’t come.
Instead, she saw the band-aid on his own finger, applied crookedly. She remembered the solved puzzle, his quiet pride in being useful, not impressive. She saw the absolute, pathetic sincerity in his trembling form. He wasn’t offering her strength or protection or any of the empty things other boys had offered. He was offering her his fear, his awkwardness, his entire, shattering truth. He was handing her a piece of broken glass and trusting her not to cut herself on it.
A strange, terrifying feeling unfurled inside her, warm and corrosive. It felt like weakness. It felt like a flaw in her armor. And it was utterly, irresistibly fascinating.
She stood up, slowly. She was shorter than him, but he seemed to shrink under her gaze. She closed the distance between them, stopping only when she was a breath away. She could see the pulse hammering in his throat. She could see every individual eyelash, dark against his pale skin.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, her voice low and venomous. “A completely useless, hopeless idiot. You have no survival instinct. You’re confessing to someone like me? You’re pathetic.”
Each word was a slap. He absorbed them, his eyes glistening, but he didn’t look down. He just nodded, a tiny, shaky motion, as if agreeing with her assessment.
“You’re too shy to order your own food at a restaurant,” she continued, the vitriol flowing easily now. “You apologize to inanimate objects when you bump into them. You couldn’t intimidate a butterfly. You’re a detective who blushes when he solves a case. You’re everything I shouldn’t want.”
She reached out then, not to strike, but to fist her hand in the front of his damp uniform shirt. She pulled him closer, until their foreheads were almost touching. His breath hitched.
“And I’m accepting it,” she whispered, the words a stark contrast to the previous venom. “I’m accepting this… this pathetic confession. From you. Only you. Do you understand?”
The change in his face was instantaneous. It was as if someone had switched on a light inside him. The fear didn’t vanish, but it melted, transformed into a dazed, overwhelming wonder. His lips, which had been pressed into a thin line of anxiety, parted. A smile broke through, so bright and unguarded it was almost painful to look at. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated happiness, so vast and sincere it made her own treacherous heart stutter against her ribs. He looked like he’d been given the universe, and it was the most beautiful, stupid thing she’d ever seen.
“Yes,” he breathed, the word full of warmth. “Yes, I understand.”
She loved it. She loved the power of it, the absolute ownership of having caused that expression. She loved the danger of it, the catastrophic risk. She loved him in that moment, with a ferocity that scared her more than any target ever had. So she did the only thing that felt right. She kissed him, hard and claiming, a seal on the bargain. It was less a kiss and more a brand. And he kissed her back, clumsy and sweet and utterly his.
The clatter of a pot lid brought her back. Shuichi had bumped it, fumbling as he put it away. “Sorry,” he murmured to the cupboard, exactly as she’d remembered.
He turned, drying his hands on a towel, and caught her looking. His cheeks flushed that familiar, endearing pink. “What is it?”
She stared at him, this man her past self had decided to keep. This man who had somehow become the center of her fragile, necessary world. The memory wasn’t a nostalgic glow; it was a cornerstone. A reminder of the transaction: his pathetic, brave heart for her violent, exclusive protection.
“Nothing,” she said, turning away. “You’re just as clumsy as you were in school. Some things never change.”
He didn’t argue. He just smiled that soft, private smile, the one that still held an echo of that rainy-day happiness. He finished wiping the counter, the rhythm of his movements syncing with the steady, sure beat of the secret history only they shared.