Chapter 1: Viral Detective
The bedroom was dark except for the cool, blue-white glow from the phone in her hands. Maki Harukawa shifted against the pillows, a low grunt escaping her as the weight in her belly settled uncomfortably. Eight months. It felt like carrying a smug, lazy bowling ball that kicked her ribs for fun.
She scrolled absently through a local news feed, her crimson eyes scanning without interest. Crime statistics. Weather. A missing cat. Pathetic.
Then the video auto-played.
It was a public safety announcement from the city police department. ‘Nighttime Security Precautions.’ The production value was laughable. The backdrop was a cheap vinyl banner. And there he was.
Shuichi.
He stood stiffly in his uniform, the fabric looking a little too broad on his shoulders. He cleared his throat, his eyes darting momentarily away from the camera before finding the lens again. “Um, hello. It’s important to, ah, ensure your doors are locked after dark, even if you’re just stepping out to take out the trash.” His voice was soft, hesitant, but earnest. He managed a shy, encouraging smile that didn’t quite reach his anxious eyes.
Maki snorted. “What a pathetic public service announcement,” she muttered to the empty room. “They couldn’t find someone who doesn’t look like a startled rabbit?”
But she didn’t stop watching. She watched him shuffle his feet slightly. She watched him gesture awkwardly with his hands. She watched that terrible, endearing smile.
The video ended. Her thumb hovered.
Against every instinct screaming that this was beneath her, she tapped the comments section.
It was a flood.
‘OMG who is this shy bean?? I would let him investigate my door locks any night!’
‘Husband material alert! He looks so sweet and responsible!’
‘A precious cinnamon roll in a police uniform! Protect him at all costs!’
‘That little smile at the end? I MELTED. I want to give him a hug and a blanket.’
‘Single? Asking for a friend. And by friend I mean me.’
Line after line. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Women cooing over him. Women calling him adorable. Women wanting him.
A cold, sharp stillness settled over Maki. The irritable heat of pregnancy morphed into something else, something crystalline and lethal. Her grip on the phone tightened. The plastic case let out a faint, warning creak.
Shuichi was hers. Her pathetic, useless, soft-spoken detective. Her awkward husband who blushed when she criticized his tie. Her weakling who brought her tea without being asked every single night. Hers.
The bedroom door opened with a soft click, a sliver of hallway light cutting across the floor.
“Maki? I brought your tea. Decaf, like you… asked for.” Shuichi slipped in, holding a steaming mug carefully in both hands. He was still in his work trousers and a thin t-shirt, his hair slightly mussed from a long day. He looked tired, and kind, and completely unaware.
He set the mug on her nightstand. “Is your back still—“
The pillow hit him square in the face.
It wasn’t thrown with her full, former-assassin strength—that would have taken his head off—but it had enough force to knock him back a step. He stumbled, making a confused, “Oof!” sound.
“You useless idiot!” Maki’s voice was a low snarl, cutting through the dim room. She sat bolt upright, the comforter pooling around her large stomach, the phone still clenched in her hand like a weapon.
Shuichi stared, wide-eyed, the pillow at his feet. “W-what? What did I—“
“This!” She thrust the glowing screen toward him, illuminating his baffled face. “What is this garbage? ‘Nighttime Security Precautions’? You look like a lost child playing dress-up!”
He peered at it, recognition dawning with a flush of embarrassment. “Oh. That. The Chief said everyone on the roster had to do one. It was really embarrassing, they made me do twelve takes because I kept stammering…” He trailed off, sensing the true storm wasn’t about his performance. “Is it… that bad?”
“It’s not the video, you spineless moron!” She scrolled down viciously, jabbing a finger at the comments. “It’s them! Look! ‘A precious cinnamon roll’? ‘Husband material’? Who do these miserable women think they are? Do they think they can have you? Do they think you’re some… some community resource?”
Understanding, slow and painful, washed over Shuichi’s face. This wasn’t about the video. This was about the comments. This was about her. His Maki. A faint, dangerous flicker of warmth sparked in his chest, immediately buried under a wave of practical fear.
“Maki, they’re just comments on the internet,” he said, his voice placating. He took a cautious step forward. “They don’t mean anything. It’s just… people being nice.”
“‘Nice’?” She practically spat the word. “They aren’t being nice. They’re being predatory. They see a weak, soft-looking man and they want to pat him on the head and take him home. You’re not a stray puppy, Shuichi! You’re a… you’re a…”
“A pathetic detective?” he offered softly, the ghost of a smile touching his lips.
“Don’t you dare use my words to try and calm me down!” But the edge in her voice had shifted, just a fraction. The molten jealousy was cooling into a hard, possessive alloy. She glared at him, her sharp eyes tracing the lines of his face—the face thousands of women had seen and wanted. “You are not allowed to look that cute for other women. Do you understand me? That smile. That hesitant, stupidly gentle voice. That’s for here. For this room. For me.”
He stood there, absorbing her tirade. The insults, as always, were just the packaging. The message inside was as clear as it was terrifying: I saw them want you, and it made me want to erase them from the earth. He found it wasn’t fear he felt, but a staggering, humbling sense of being claimed.
“Okay,” he said, simply.
“Okay? What does ‘okay’ mean, you weakling?”
“It means I’ll talk to the media liaison tomorrow. I’ll ask them to take the video down.” He meant it. If it bothered her this much, he’d do it.
Some of the tension bled from her shoulders. She sniffed, looking away from him and back to the phone. The video was paused on his face. “You’d better. I won’t have my husband paraded around like some… adorable public utility.” She thumbed the screen. “And you’re buying a new case. This one is cracked.”
She had gripped it that hard.
“I’ll get one tomorrow,” he said. He bent to pick up the pillow, placing it gently back on her side of the bed. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.”
He turned to leave, to give her space to cool down, when her voice, quieter now, stopped him.
“Shuichi.”
“Yes?”
“Promise me. No more videos.”
“I promise.”
She gave a single, sharp nod, satisfied. The door closed behind him, leaving her again in the phone’s glow. The comments still screamed up at her, a chorus of imagined rivals.
Her finger moved over the screen, swift and precise. She navigated to the video’s save options. Delete from history. Confirm.
Then, she opened her private, password-locked cloud storage—the one not even Shuichi knew about. A folder labelled ‘Case Files’ sat empty except for one item. She downloaded the police safety video. It appeared as ‘PSA_Revision12.mp4’.
She tapped it, and his shy, soft-spoken face filled the screen once more. Her thumb gently brushed the curve of his pixelated cheekbone.
“Mine,” she whispered to the silent, dark room. A faint, utterly possessive smile finally touched her lips as she placed the phone on the nightstand and reached for her tea. “All mine, you pathetic detective.”
“All mine, you pathetic detective.”
The words hung in the dark, a satisfying seal on the night’s turmoil. She took a final sip of the now-lukewarm tea, made a face, and set the mug down with a decisive clack. The weight in her abdomen seemed to shift, a slow, liquid roll that made her breath catch. Eight months was a special kind of torture, one her former training had never covered.
From the bed, Shuichi watched her.
He was already under the covers, lying on his side, head propped on one hand. The soft glow from the streetlamp outside filtered through the blinds, painting silver lines across the comforter and illuminating the quiet intensity of his gaze. He watched the way she braced her hands on the nightstand to push herself up, a slow, graceless manoeuvre. He watched the slight wince she tried to hide, the way her free hand went instinctively to the small of her back. He said nothing. Offering help too early was a sure way to get a decorative throw pillow hurled at his head again.
Maki shuffled to her dresser, each step a small, wide-legged waddle she absolutely despised. She caught his reflection in the dark window—his eyes, soft and tracking her every move. “Stop staring at me like a concerned puppy. It’s annoying,” she muttered, yanking open a drawer.
“I’m not,” he said, which was a lie.
“You are. Your ‘worried detective’ face is even more pathetic than your ‘shy PSA’ face.” She pulled out an oversized t-shirt, one of his old, soft ones that had been stolen years ago. It smelled faintly of their laundry detergent and, underneath, just like him.
The simple act of raising her arms to pull her current top off became a logistical nightmare. The fabric caught under the swell of her stomach. She twisted, grunted, and felt a dull ache spread across her back.
A sigh left her, sharp with frustration. “Useless husband. Are you just going to lie there all night? Get over here.”
He was moving before she’d even finished the sentence, the covers thrown back. He crossed the room in three quiet steps. “What do you need?”
“What does it look like I need? This is stuck.” She gestured irritably at the hem of her top, still tangled. “Your child is already proving to be an obstructionist.”
He moved behind her, his hands careful and light. His fingertips brushed the skin of her lower back as he gathered the material, and she stiffened, though not from displeasure. His touch was always so damn gentle, like he was handling evidence at a crime scene. “Lift your arms a little higher,” he murmured, close to her ear.
“I am lifting them, you idiot. Do you think I’m not trying?” But she strained upward, and with a soft shhhhk of cotton, he worked the shirt up and over her head, carefully guiding it past her face and the messy dark ponytail she’d yet to take down. The cool air of the room hit her skin, raising goosebumps.
She stood there in just her maternity leggings and a bra, feeling enormous and cumbersome. His hands didn’t leave her immediately. They rested for a moment on her bare shoulders, his thumbs making absent, soothing circles against the tension there.
“Don’t get sentimental,” she warned, but her voice lacked its usual bite.
“I’m not.” His hands fell away. He picked up the stolen t-shirt, shook it out, and held it open for her like a servant helping a queen into a robe. It was such a submissive, domestic gesture that something in her chest twisted, hot and tight.
She turned and pushed her arms through the sleeves, letting him pull the soft cotton down over her stomach. The hem settled just above her knees. “There. A vast improvement over your earlier incompetence.”
He didn’t reply, just bent to pick up her discarded shirt, folding it neatly over his arm. “The ponytail?”
She nodded, turning to sit heavily on the padded bench at the foot of the bed. The relief of being off her feet was instantaneous. He stood behind her again, his movements practised. His fingers worked through the band holding her hair, letting the dark cascade fall down her back. He didn’t use a brush; he simply ran his fingers through the strands, separating them with a meticulous tenderness that made her want to both lean into the touch and slap his hands away.
“You’re being unusually quiet,” she accused, closing her eyes despite herself.
“Just tired.”
“From what? From stammering into a camera all day? From letting strangers call you a cinnamon roll?” The jealousy flickered again, embers in ash.
His fingers stilled for a second. “From missing you,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear it.
The words disarmed her completely. She had no sharp retort. He resumed his slow, combing motions, and she allowed the silence to stretch, filled only with the sound of their breathing and the distant hum of the refrigerator downstairs.
When her hair was smooth, he helped her stand again for the final ritual. She washed her face at the bathroom sink, him hovering nearby to hand her the towel. She brushed her teeth, glaring at him in the mirror as he leaned in the doorway, watching her with that same unbearable fondness. “You look like a creep,” she spat around a mouthful of minty foam.
“I know.”
Finished, she lumbered back to the bed. He was already on his side, holding the covers up for her. She climbed in with a symphony of grunts, settling onto her left side—the only marginally comfortable position—with her back to him. The pillow mountain she required for support was already in place. She adjusted, punched a pillow, sighed.
The bed dipped as he settled in behind her, careful to keep a respectful few inches of space. This was their usual arrangement. Her fortress of pillows, him in the cold outer reaches of the mattress.
The dark room felt heavy. The memory of those glowing comments, of all those unseen women coveting what was hers, pricked at her. The solid, living weight of their child turned inside her, a restless reminder of the profound, terrifying tether between them.
Her voice cut the quiet, sharp and clear. “Not tonight.”
He froze. “...What?”
“I said not tonight. Your usual lurking distance is unacceptable.” She shifted, an awkward, backwards shuffle. “Get closer. Put your arm over me. You can… you can hold me. But don’t make it weird.”
For a moment, he didn’t move, stunned into stillness by the unprecedented permission. Then, with aching slowness, he closed the gap. His body aligned with hers, the warmth of him seeping through the thin cotton of the t-shirt. His arm, tentative at first, came over her side, his hand coming to rest heavily on the curve of her stomach.
The moment it settled, the baby kicked—a strong, deliberate thrust against the pressure of his palm.
Shuichi gasped, a soft, wondering sound right by her ear. “Was that…?”
“Obviously. Who else would it be? Keep your hand there. It… it seems to calm the little beast down.” This was a lie. The baby was active regardless. But she felt him relax, his entire body melting against hers as he cradled the life they’d made. His nose brushed the back of her neck, and she could feel the slow, deep rhythm of his breathing begin to sync with hers.
“Maki?” he whispered.
“What now? If you’re about to say something sentimental, I will make you sleep on the floor.”
“Thank you.”
She scowled into the dark. “For what? You’re just a body pillow. A bony, pathetic body pillow. Now go to sleep. And if your arm goes dead and falls off, don’t wake me to complain about it.”
He made a small sound that might have been a stifled laugh, or maybe a sob. He nuzzled closer, his lips brushing her shoulder blade in the ghost of a kiss she would never acknowledge. His arm tightened around her, anchoring her to him.
And within the cage of his tender, clumsy embrace—within the fortress of her own creating—Maki Harukawa finally let her guard down, just enough to sleep.
And within the cage of his tender, clumsy embrace—within the fortress of her own creating—Maki Harukawa finally let her guard down, just enough to sleep.
The warmth of him was a drug. The steady rhythm of his breath against her neck, the solid weight of his arm across her, it all conspired to pull her under into a doze that was neither fully awake nor truly asleep. In that liminal space, the walls between present and past grew thin. The scent of his skin—laundry soap and something uniquely, pathetically Shuichi—became the disinfectant of Hope’s Peak’s hallways. The weight on her belly became the weight of her uniform jacket. The soft dark behind her eyelids became the specific shadow of a forgotten supply closet where she’d cornered a boy from the baseball team for having the audacity to wink at her.
The memories came not as a story, but as sensory flashes, sharp and vivid.
The reputation was earned, stitch by brutal stitch. She was the Ultimate Assassin, a title that hung around her neck like a warning bell. Boys at Hope’s Peak were, by and large, idiots. Their confidence was a brittle thing, forged in talent but untempered by any real understanding of consequence. They saw a pretty, quiet girl and mistook her silence for vulnerability. They saw a challenge.
She became a specialist in dismantling that confidence. Her methods were surgical. There was the Ultimate Botanist, who left a single, perfect white orchid on her desk. She had located him in the greenhouse, taken the flower, and without a word, slowly fed it stem-first into a shredding machine used for garden waste while maintaining direct eye contact. The grinding sound was punctuation enough. The Ultimate Team Manager, who’d asked if she wanted to “manage his heart.” She’d demonstrated four pressure points on his arm that caused temporary, excruciating numbness, citing it as a “managerial efficiency technique.” He’d fled, cradling his limp limb.
Words were her preferred scalpel. She could eviscerate with a vocabulary so cold it left frostbite. “You are a footnote in a meaningless book.” “The sound of your voice is the intellectual equivalent of static.” “If your personality were a colour, it would be beige, and not in an interesting way.” She left a trail of shattered egos and startled, hurt eyes in her wake. It was a perimeter she built daily. It was safe. It was quiet.
Then came Shuichi Saihara.
He was the Ultimate Detective, a title that somehow made him seem smaller, not larger. He was a shadow at the edge of every crime scene, a stammering voice during class trials that, against all odds, often pieced together the terrible truth. He wore his hat like a shell, pulling the brim down to hide his eyes. She’d noticed him, of course. Noticed how he flinched at raised voices. Noticed how he twisted his hands when nervous. He was weak. Pathetic. He did not seem like a threat, and therefore, he was beneath her notice. Just another part of the background noise of incompetent masculinity.
Which is why his approach was so monumentally, catastrophically stupid.
It was a Tuesday. She remembered because the sky was a flat, dull grey, and the air smelled of impending rain. She was in the courtyard, a solitary figure on a bench, ostensibly reading a manual on advanced poisons but mostly just enjoying the wide berth everyone gave her. The scrape of hesitant footsteps on the gravel path didn’t even make her look up. The footsteps stopped. A long, tense silence followed, filled only by the rustle of her turning a page.
She finally glanced over the top of her book.
He was standing there, approximately five feet away, which was already a violation of her personal space. He was in full uniform, his cap actually on his head for once, but his hands… his hands were destroying a bouquet of flowers. They were daisies. Cheap, grocery-store daisies with bright yellow centers and white petals, already wilting at the edges from the force of his anxious grip. The cellophane wrapper screamed in protest with every twitch of his fingers.
Her gaze traveled slowly from the massacred flowers up to his face. He was pale. His golden eyes were wide, glued to her, flickering with pure terror. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Swallowed so hard she saw his Adam’s apple bob.
“Harukawa-san,” he managed. The two syllables sounded scraped raw from his throat.
She lowered her book. “Saihara.” Her voice was flat, a door slamming shut. “You’re blocking my light.”
He flinched but didn’t move. “I… I wanted to… that is…” He took a shuddering breath, a man steeling himself for the gallows. He thrust the flowers forward, the gesture so abrupt and desperate that a few petals detached and fluttered to the gravel. “Wouldyoumaybe… consider… goingoutwithme?”
The sentence came out as one mangled, pathetic word. He was trembling. Actually trembling. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his temple.
Maki stared. The absurdity of it was so vast it short-circuited her usual cold fury. This? This shaking, word-vomiting wreck was attempting to breach her perimeter? With daisies? A slow, icy smile spread across her lips. This would be the easiest kill of her life.
“Let me understand,” she said, her voice dropping to a soft, dangerous register. She closed her book with a snap and stood up. He recoiled a half-step. “You have observed my interactions with your peers. You have witnessed, firsthand, what happens to insects who buzz too close. And your brilliant detective’s deduction, after all that observation, was to… bring me dying weeds and garble a invitation?”
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
“You are the Ultimate Detective,” she continued, taking a slow step forward. He held his ground, a statue of fear. “So detect this. Look at my face. Read my expression. What is the probability, calculated to the nearest decimal point, that I have any interest in sharing oxygen with you, let alone my time? What clue led you to believe this would end any differently for you than it did for the botanist? Or the manager? Or the half-dozen other useless boys whose names I’ve already forgotten?”
A tear, traitorous and bright, escaped the corner of his right eye. It traced a clean path down his cheek. He didn’t brush it away. He just stood there, holding the condemned flowers, taking every word like a physical blow. The sight of that tear should have been the final victory. It should have tasted sweet. It was the point of the whole exercise—to reduce them to this, to prove their weakness, to make them regret ever looking at her.
But a strange, hollow feeling opened up in her stomach instead of triumph.
He was crying, but he wasn’t running. He was shattered, but he was still standing there. He hadn’t thrown the flowers down. He hadn’t called her a freak. He was just… waiting. Taking it. As if her vitriol was a price he had already accounted for, a cost of admission he was willing to pay.
Her insult hung in the damp air, its cruelty suddenly feeling cheap, rehearsed. She had called him weak, but this—this terrified, tearful persistence—was a kind of strength she didn’t have a category for.
“You’re pathetic,” she whispered, the heat gone from her words, leaving only a statement of fact.
He nodded, a tiny, miserable jerk of his head. “I know,” he choked out.
“A complete loser.”
Another nod. Another tear. “I know.”
“Those flowers are already half-dead. Did you steal them from a cemetery?”
“I bought them,” he said, his voice thick. “With my allowance. I thought… yellow seemed nice. Not too formal. I didn’t… want to pressure you.”
I didn’t want to pressure you. The phrase echoed in the new hollow space inside her. Every other boy had come with a smirk, a line, an assumption of their own deservedness. This one came with an apology pre-loaded into his offering.
She looked at him, really looked. Past the tears, past the trembling, to the raw, unguarded hope in his eyes that her brutality hadn’t quite been able to extinguish. It was a faint, foolish light, but it was there. He had seen her—the real her, the dangerous, sharp-edged her—and he had walked toward her anyway, daisies in hand, knowing full well she was made of knives.
The silence stretched. The first cold drop of rain landed on her cheek.
With a disgusted sigh that was meant to sound far more convincing than it did, she snatched the bouquet from his hands. The cellophane was damp from his sweat. “They’re ugly,” she stated, glaring at the blossoms. “And poorly arranged. And you’re an idiot with no sense of self-preservation.”
Shuichi stared, his breath hitching, the hope in his eyes flaring like a struck match.
“If you tell anyone about this,” she said, her voice low and deadly serious, “I will show you exactly where I hid the botanist’s body. Do you understand?”
He nodded, frantic, silent.
“Saturday. Four PM. Don’t be late. And don’t bring more flowers. It’s embarrassing.” She turned on her heel, the crushed daisies held stiffly at her side, and walked away without another glance. The rain began to fall in earnest, a soft drizzle that soaked into her blazer. She didn’t look back. But she held onto the flowers all the way to her dorm room. She put them in a glass of water. They perked up, just a little. She watched them for a long time, a confused, unfamiliar warmth coiling in her chest where only cold certainty had lived before.
In the dark of their bedroom, a decade later, Maki’s sleeping face, pressed back against her husband’s chest, softened. A faint, unconscious sigh escaped her. Her hand, which had been fisted in the sheets, relaxed. In her dream, or her memory, the scent of cheap daisies mixed with the scent of his skin, and the two became indistinguishable, became the smell of home.