Bungo Stray Dogs - Headcanons x Reader - First Meeting (Part 1)
The chapters will also be published in English on Quotev: https://www.quotev.com/story/17454371/Bungo-Stray-Dogs-Headcanons-x-Reader/2 And in French on Wattpad: www.wattpad.com/Asuna_Orihara?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_profile"
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Chūya
The Tsukikage smelled of old wood, cold tobacco and cheap whiskey.
Not unpleasant. Just honest. The smell of something that didn't try to be anything other than what it was. The walls were dark planks that the years had turned almost black in places, the hanging lamps cast a low amber light that made everyone look a little more tired than they did in daylight, and the solid oak counter bore the marks of decades of glasses set down, moved, set down again. A few notches here and there that Kenji (l/n) had never seen fit to have repaired. Those notches were part of the furniture.
No lit sign outside. No board. Just a wooden door between a fabric shop that had been closed for years and a hairdresser whose neon lights flickered one night in three. Those who knew where the Tsukikage was, knew. Those who didn't had no business being there.
(y/n) (l/n) had grown up with that logic. Kenji (l/n)'s niece, and that was enough to have understood, very early on, that there were questions you didn't ask about customers. No names. No jobs. No lingering looks at hands or scars.
Her uncle had his own way of summing things up :
"You serve, you keep quiet, and you forget what you heard on your way home."
(y/n) was a medical student. She had an excellent memory. The irony hadn't escaped her.
That evening, tying her apron behind the counter, she was mentally reciting the arteries of the upper limb — anatomy, tomorrow morning, eight o'clock — when her uncle had called her early that afternoon, his voice tense. Back locked up since morning. Unable to stand for more than ten minutes.
- I need you tonight.
She had said yes. Because the bills for her university residence didn't wait, and her uncle was the only member of her family who had never kept count of what she owed him.
He had left her his notebook before she left. A spiral-bound one covered in cramped handwriting, organized in his way, which is to say not really. Names, habits, warnings scrawled in the margins. Most entries were unremarkable.
Toward the end of the notebook, a different entry. Fewer details about preferences. More space left for something else.
Nakahara Chūya. Executive, Port Mafia. Comes when he comes, leaves when he leaves. Pétrus if the bottle is open, Burgundy otherwise. Don't ask him questions. Don't make conversation. Serve him properly and leave him alone. That's all you need to know.
(y/n) had read the entry twice. Then she had watched the buildings of the port district file past through the bus window, thinking that her uncle wasn't the type to underline things unnecessarily. If the entry was shorter than the others and yet took up more space, there was a reason.
Port Mafia. Executive.
She knew the name. Everyone in this neighbourhood knew the name, even those who claimed not to. The difference between (y/n) and most people was that she knew what to do with that information.
Absolutely nothing.
***
The room had filled slowly as the evening began.
The Tsukikage had its own rhythm. Slow, steady, without jolts. The regulars arrived without hurrying, settling at their usual tables with the quiet regularity of people who had nowhere else to go, or who had chosen not to go there. The amber light made everything a little blurry at the edges, softened faces, blurred the details that nobody wanted to see too clearly anyway.
(y/n) now knew the exact sound the old floorboards made under the weight of each regular customer. A dull creak toward the table at the back, two different notes near the window. She knew the smell of the room that changed as the hours passed : first the wood and the cleanliness of the evening cleaning, then the tobacco and alcohol rising slowly, then toward midnight something heavier, more settled, that (y/n) couldn't have named but now recognized as the smell of the Tsukikage truly in motion.
She was rinsing glasses, the steady sound of water, the mechanical gesture, when the atmosphere changed.
Imperceptible for someone who hadn't been paying attention. A slight shift in the noise level of the room : conversations dropping a tone, not all the way to silence, just below. A man who straightened his position on his chair. Another who turned his eyes back to his table.
(y/n) looked up.
The door had just closed.
She recognized him. Not because she had a photo, but because nothing in this room looked like that. The black coat worn over his shoulders as if actually putting it on would have been a concession he wasn't prepared to make. The tilted hat, the fine chain catching the amber light. The bright orange hair, almost shocking in this lighting that rendered everything else brown or beige or grey, as if the light had decided to treat him differently from the others.
But it wasn't the hat or the hair that changed the room.
It was the way he moved.
Not hurried. Not searching for something with his eyes. Nakahara Chūya crossed the room with an almost deliberate slowness. The kind of slowness that wasn't nonchalance, but something more fundamental. Someone who hadn't had to wonder whether a place would be made for him in so long that he'd forgotten the question could exist. He wasn't looking at anyone in particular, and yet (y/n) had the impression that nothing escaped him either.
(y/n) noticed it in her own body before she could put it into words, a slight shift in how she held herself behind the counter, imperceptible, like a reflex. Not exactly fear. Something more instinctive than that. The physical equivalent of paying attention.
He knows exactly what he is, she thought without quite forming the thought. And he's never had reason to doubt it.
He settled at the end of the counter. His stool, evidently, since nobody went to sit on either of the two on each side. Nobody seemed to find that remarkable.
(y/n) put down her glass, wiped her hands on her apron, and approached.
The distance between them reduced. Two metres, one metre, the counter between them. Up close, the thing that had shifted the atmosphere of the entire room was there, concentrated, fifty centimetres from her. (y/n) kept her hands occupied, her gestures steady. That was the advantage of having something to do with your hands behind a counter, they gave something else to look at besides the situation.
- Good evening, she said.
He didn't look at her immediately. His eyes were still scanning the room. A habit, checking known faces and angles before giving attention to anything else. Methodical. Quick. Then he turned toward her.
A direct gaze. The kind that took note in a second with the quiet certainty of someone who had learned to read people very quickly and had rarely been wrong.
- You're not Kenji, he said.
His voice was low, with that slightly dry tone of someone unused to having their time wasted with unannounced details.
- No. His back locked up. I'm covering for him.
He looked at her with an air that made it perfectly clear this kind of surprise was not part of what he'd come looking for tonight.
- Since when does he have a replacement ?
- Since tonight.
- Convenient, he said, with that slightly cutting tone of someone who didn't need to raise his voice for the irony to be perfectly audible.
He turned back toward the counter. Not with hostility, just with that way he had of closing off what no longer interested him. As if the conversation had had its allotted time and no more.
(y/n) took that for what it was. He hadn't left. She turned back toward the bottles.
Pétrus if the bottle is open. Her uncle had one open, set aside. She found it, took a stem glass, came back to him.
She poured without comment.
He looked at the glass. Then the bottle. His gloved fingers settled slowly on the stem of the glass. And something passed across his face, brief, barely visible, but there. A smile that wasn't quite a smile. The corner of his mouth lifting slightly, with something satisfied and slightly predatory in it at the same time. Like someone who had just confirmed that the world was working in the right order.
It disappeared as quickly as it had come.
- He left you his notes, he said.
The tone had shifted by half a degree, still flat, but with something in it that resembled a point conceded. Not generously. Just noted. Like an obvious thing that was simply his due. As if she had just passed a test she hadn't known existed.
- Yes.
- Good, he said simply.
Not a compliment. The quiet, slightly condescending assessment of someone who appreciated things being in their place, and who considered that the bare minimum expected.
He picked up the glass. Held it up to the amber light for a second — a habit, evidently — then drank a sip with the slowness of someone who did things at his own pace because that pace had no one to answer to.
He said nothing else.
She went back to her glasses.
***
The evening moved on.
The Tsukikage had that gift. Making time pass differently. Not faster, not slower. Just differently, with that particular quality of places where nobody checked the time because time wasn't really the point.
(y/n) served the tables, gave change, recited her arteries between orders. Radial, ulnar, anterior interosseous. The floorboards creaked under her steps at the same spots as before. The smell of the room had changed : more tobacco now, more bodies, less clean wood.
From time to time, without really deciding to, her eyes returned to the end of the counter.
Nakahara Chūya spoke to no one. He drank slowly, eyes unfocused or resting on his gloved hands flat on the wood. He didn't seem bored. He didn't have that wandering gaze of people searching for distraction. He just seemed... present. Completely where he had decided to be, without needing it to be anything else.
What struck (y/n), watching him intermittently, was that particular energy he gave off even still. Not restlessness, something different. Like a natural tension, a way of occupying space that was never quite at rest. His shoulders were set in a way that wasn't rigid but wasn't relaxed either. The difference between a coiled spring and a ready spring. Subtle. Real.
And then there were the gloves. Black, impeccable, never removed. On the stem of the glass, on the wood of the counter. (y/n) wondered briefly, then pushed the thought away. That wasn't her business.
A Port Mafia Executive, she thought, setting a clean glass back on the shelf.
The same thought as before. She drew no more from it than the first time. Just the slightly strange awareness of the thing, that someone could walk into a room and shift its temperature without saying a word, and that it seemed normal to him, and that it probably had been for a while.
She pushed that away too. That wasn't her business either.
When his glass was empty for the third time, she came back with the bottle. He didn't ask. He didn't need to. She poured. Started to move away.
- When does Kenji come back ?
- Thursday, normally.
He made a brief sound through his nose, not a laugh, something shorter and drier. The sound of someone who had just heard the word normally and had a very firm opinion on that.
- His back. It's not the first time.
- No, said (y/n).
- He should see someone.
- I'll tell him.
A silence. He was looking at his glass, slowly turning the stem between his fingers.
- He won't listen, he said. Final. Not a question. The conclusion of an observation someone like him had made enough times to no longer be surprised by it.
- No.
- People never stop before they're forced to, he said, with the quiet detachment of someone who had watched enough humans function to have drawn his conclusions, and who no longer wasted time being surprised by them. Him included, probably. He had the look of someone who never did anything halfway, which also meant never stopped halfway.
(y/n) didn't answer because he was right, and adding anything would have been superfluous.
He looked up at her. A fraction of a second, no more. As if he'd noted the absence of a reply. As if that too conceded him something he hadn't planned on distributing tonight.
Then he looked away.
That was all.
***
Midnight passed.
The last customers left in small groups, with their discreet ways and barely sketched goodbyes. The smell of the room had changed again : heavier now, more settled, the amber light that seemed even lower with fewer people in it to justify it.
(y/n) began the closing gestures. Chairs lifted up. Surfaces wiped. The cloth on the wood of the counter, the notch under her fingers, the muffled and steady sound. Bottles recapped. She was calculating mentally : first bus, six twenty, class at eight. Not enough sleep. The answer was always not enough.
The sound of a stool being pushed back.
Nakahara Chūya placed a few notes on the counter, without counting them, without looking at them, with that particular offhandedness of people for whom the amount wasn't really the point. (y/n) glanced over. Double the price. She made no mention of it.
He retrieved his coat, draped it over his shoulders. Always that same gesture, clean and definitive, like everything he did.
He headed for the exit.
(y/n) kept wiping the counter. Customer leaving. End of the evening.
The door opened.
- Hey.
His voice from the threshold, not loud. Just enough. The tone of someone who didn't repeat themselves.
(y/n) looked up.
He hadn't turned completely around. Three-quarters only, his gaze over his shoulder from beneath the brim of his hat. His blue eyes fixed her with that direct, unguarded expression he'd had since the beginning of the evening. The look of someone who saw no point in pretending not to look.
- You have a name ?
Brief. Direct. Like the question had been decided and he wanted it done now that it was out.
- (y/n), she said.
He didn't repeat it. Didn't nod. Turned back toward the door with the same economical movement he put into everything else. But in that brief instant before the door closed, (y/n) thought she saw — or perhaps imagined — that same fraction-of-a-second smile. Not warm. Not mocking either. Just that particular expression of someone filing something away somewhere with a satisfaction he didn't quite see fit to conceal entirely.
- Hmph.
The door closed.
(y/n) didn't move right away. Not paralysis. Just the time needed for something in her shoulders to release slightly, something she hadn't noticed she'd been holding.
The Tsukikage recovered its usual silence. The one after closing, deeper than the one before opening, weighted with the evening that had just ended. The wood creaking slightly as it cooled. The smell beginning slowly to dissipate.
Hmph.
She didn't quite know what to do with that. It wasn't a goodbye. It wasn't a thank you. It was just a sound. The minimal sound of someone who had registered a piece of information and filed it somewhere without seeing fit to show it any further.
She put away the cloth. Turned off the lights one by one. The amber disappearing progressively, the bar becoming just a dark space between two facades again. Checked the bottles, locked the counter, retrieved her coat hanging behind the door.
Outside, the air of the port district smelled of salt and wet asphalt. Somewhere in the distance, the low rumble of the port that never really slept.
(y/n) headed toward the bus, trying to pick up the thread of her arteries.
She didn't manage it right away.
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Ranpo
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Yokohama, 6:23 PM, a Thursday.
The sky had that undecided colour of late autumn afternoons. Not quite grey, not quite white, just a flat, tired light that made the buildings a little duller and the people a little more hurried. (y/n) (l/n) crossed the hall of Bashamichi station at a mechanical pace, her bag too heavy pulling at her right shoulder, her earphones pressed firmly into her ears.
The day had been long.
Long in the clinical sense of the word. The kind of day that starts out badly because the morning coffee is too hot, gets progressively worse because three urgent files land on the desk at 4 PM, and concludes beautifully because her direct superior had seen fit to point out, in front of the entire team, that she had forgotten to staple two pages together.
Two pages.
(y/n) had gritted her teeth, nodded, and spent the next forty minutes staring at her screen with the expression of someone calculating how many years remain until retirement.
Now she just wanted platform B, the line for Kannai, and silence.
That reasonable plan collapsed at the main departures board.
***
- It's a disaster. An absolute disaster. Who designed this ? I'd like to meet them to explain personally in what way it's a disaster.
(y/n) pulled out one earphone.
Standing in front of the large departures board was a young man. The first thing (y/n) noticed was the brown cape, full, falling over his shoulders with disconcerting gravity, matched with a wide-brimmed hat of the same colour and three-quarter-length trousers of the same shade that stopped just below the knees, revealing long, immaculate white socks above plain black shoes. Beneath the cape, a dark grey blazer, a neatly buttoned white shirt, a tie. The whole ensemble could have belonged to a detective novel character from the 1920s. Except that detective novel characters from the 1920s generally didn't have a lollipop tucked into the corner of their mouth.
He was holding a route map at arm's length, eyes nearly closed, or giving that impression at any rate, since his eyelids were so lowered that it was hard to tell whether he was really looking or just dozing on his feet. Short, slightly messy black locks poked out from under the brim of his hat.
He looked deeply offended.
- Platform A, platform B, platform C, he was muttering, brow furrowed. And then ? Nothing. We're supposed to assume people can figure it out. It's absolutely absurd.
He was visibly not addressing anyone. He was commenting to himself, or perhaps to the board, which had clearly gotten everything wrong.
(y/n) was about to put her earphone back when the stranger turned abruptly around. His barely-open eyes swept the hall with the calm of someone looking for a tool in a toolbox.
They stopped on (y/n).
- You.
(y/n) looked behind her by reflex. There was no one there.
- Yes, you. The line for Kannai, is it platform A or platform B ?
(y/n) looked at him for a second. The lollipop shifted to the other side of his mouth.
- ...Platform B, she said.
- Obviously, he said immediately. I knew that.
He turned away and set off with sovereign steps toward platform B, the crumpled map already forgotten under his arm, as if he had never consulted anything or commented on anything out loud in front of thirty people.
(y/n) watched him walk away.
Then she gathered her bag and followed, because platform B was hers too.
***
The 6:25 PM train was packed as always.
(y/n) found herself standing in the central aisle, one hand on the rail, wedged between a man in a suit talking on his phone and a schoolgirl humming softly. She put her earphone back in and let the music reclaim its rights.
For two stops, no one spoke to her.
(y/n) began to relax. Her shoulders dropped a notch. She half-closed her eyes.
- You work in the legal field.
(y/n) opened her eyes.
The young man in the cape was there, to her left, less than a metre away. She hadn't heard him approach, or rather she hadn't noticed him, which wasn't quite the same thing. He was looking at the black window of the tunnel with the same blasé air he'd had in front of the station board, chewing his lollipop quietly, eyelids so lowered that you'd almost have thought he was sleeping on his feet.
He wasn't looking at her.
- ...Are you talking to me ? asked (y/n).
- To you, yes. There's a blue ink stain on the ring finger of your right hand.
(y/n) looked at her hand by reflex. The stain was there, indeed, small, almost invisible, at the base of her finger. She'd barely noticed it when washing her hands.
- That's not standard pen ink, he continued, still without looking at her. The colour is too saturated, the deposit too thick. A quill. The kind used for official documents, deeds, contracts. And not occasionally. The stain is old, the skin has become slightly tinted underneath. You've been drafting long documents by hand for months, regularly.
(y/n) didn't answer. She wasn't sure yet whether to be impressed or uncomfortable.
- Your shoes are clean but worn at the heels. Not the kind of wear you get from walking a lot outside. The kind you get from sitting for long periods and resting your feet a certain way under a desk. And your bag is pulling to the right because it's full of plastic sleeves.
He turned his eyes briefly toward her, a quick check, just a fraction of a second, just long enough for (y/n) to notice that his eyes were green, a forest green, quiet.
- Files. A lot of them. And you're carrying them home, which means you also work outside office hours.
He turned his attention back to the window.
- Legal. Administrative in parallel, probably.
A silence settled. The train vibrated softly. It took (y/n) a few seconds to realize he was done.
- That's... accurate, she said carefully. But why did you—
- That was a deduction of no consequence, he interrupted, with the tone of someone announcing that the sky is blue. I could do ten times more interesting ones with my eyes closed. Don't make a big deal of it.
(y/n) closed her mouth.
Opened her mouth.
Closed it again.
Around her, no one seemed to have noticed the exchange. The man in the suit was still on his phone, the schoolgirl still humming. (y/n) had the strange feeling of having slipped into a parallel conversation that the rest of the carriage couldn't perceive.
- You've had a bad day.
(y/n) tensed slightly.
- Your shoulders are drawn in in a very specific way. Not physical fatigue. Something you've swallowed down and are forcing yourself not to think about. And you have a slight redness at the base of your neck, the kind you get when you've been annoyed and made yourself stay calm. Someone above you in the hierarchy, probably. Recently.
(y/n) didn't answer.
It wasn't that she had nothing to say. It was that he was right with a slightly unsettling precision, and she wasn't certain she wanted to give him the satisfaction of confirming it.
- I'm right, he said, without any particular inflection.
- ...Maybe, said (y/n).
- I'm always right.
He said it very simply, with the same offhandedness he might have used to say it's cold or the next stop is Kannai. As if it were a long-established fact that no longer needed defending, or even really stating, if you thought about it.
(y/n) studied him from the side.
He had a young face, fair skin, fine features, something almost childlike in the roundness of his cheeks. The lollipop clicked softly against his teeth. His eyelids remained stubbornly lowered, as if the entire world didn't quite merit being looked at fully. Nothing in his appearance immediately signalled someone extraordinary, except this way of looking at things, even a black metro window, as if they owed him explanations.
- And who are you ? she finally asked.
He turned toward her. His brows rose by a millimetre.
- You don't know who I am ?
- No.
A silence.
- Really ?
- Really.
He looked at her for another second, with the air of someone receiving a slightly incongruous piece of information and trying to figure out where to put it. Then something straightened in his posture — not much, just enough — and a slow, almost incredulous smile spread to the corner of his lips.
- Ranpo Edogawa, he said. The world's greatest detective.
The tone left no room for doubt. He was perfectly serious.
(y/n) waited for what would come next. A clarification, a joke, a sly grin. Nothing came.
- That's it ? she said.
- That's sufficient, he said, slightly put out.
***
The train slowed.
The automated voice announced Kannai with its usual mechanical neutrality. (y/n) picked up her bag and started moving toward the doors, and realized, with a slight delay, that Ranpo Edogawa hadn't moved.
He was looking out the window, hands in his pockets, with the perfectly relaxed air of someone with no intention of getting off.
(y/n) stopped.
- This is Kannai, she said.
- I know, he said.
The doors opened.
- You're not getting off ?
- I get off when I want to.
(y/n) looked at him. He was looking at the window. The door-closing signal sounded, a brief, merciless beep.
- Edogawa-san.
- What.
- The doors.
He looked down at the doors. Something crossed his face. Not quite panic — more the highly controlled and immediately suppressed version of a panic — and he slipped between the doors in a movement that fell about two centimetres short of dignified.
(y/n) followed him onto the platform.
Behind them, the doors closed with a hiss.
A silence.
- I knew that was this stop, said Ranpo.
- Of course.
- I was testing the door timing. It's an observation technique that great detectives—
- All right, said (y/n).
He closed his mouth.
***
On the platform, the air was cooler. (y/n) looked for the exit, stairs to the right, north/south sign, and set off toward the stairs.
She realized almost immediately that Ranpo was walking in the same direction.
Not behind her. Deside her, slightly ahead, eyes raised toward the directional signage with an expression that looked far too much like the one he'd had in front of the route map earlier.
(y/n) slowed.
- Do you know where you're going ?
- Yes, he said immediately.
A silence.
- Yamashita Street, he said then. North exit or south exit ?
(y/n) looked at him.
- You don't know where you're going.
- I know perfectly well where I'm going. I'm verifying the indications by method, it's a technique that great detectives—
- North exit, said (y/n). Stairs on the right.
He set off again without another word, stairs on the right, with the same quiet confidence he'd had from the beginning. As if he'd just found the solution entirely on his own, naturally, without anyone's help.
(y/n) exhaled through her nose and took the same staircase. Because the north exit was hers too.
***
The air outside was cooler, tinged with a faint smell of wet leaves. Streetlamps were beginning to come on along the road, casting cones of yellow light on the wet pavement. (y/n) tightened her bag on her shoulder and set off in the direction of home.
Ranpo Edogawa set off in the same direction.
(y/n) had barely noticed at first. There were enough people on the pavement for it to seem an ordinary coincidence. But at the first junction, he turned right. So did she. At the second, he walked along the shaded side of the road rather than the lit side. So did she. And he walked at a pace close to hers — not exactly the same, he had a tendency to slow imperceptibly in front of street signs to study them with suspicion before moving on — but close enough that they found themselves, without having decided it or even quite noticed, walking side by side.
- Do you live in this neighbourhood ? said (y/n).
- My affairs are my own business, he said.
- That was a way of noticing we were heading in the same direction.
- I know. I'd noted that.
He said it in a perfectly natural tone, without looking at her, eyelids still half-lowered, eyes on the next sign that had probably done something to him personally.
(y/n) decided to stop asking questions.
They walked in silence for an entire street. Not a particularly comfortable silence, nor a particularly uncomfortable one. Just a silence, with the sound of their footsteps on the pavement and the distant hum of the city around them.
It was Ranpo who broke it.
- Outrageous.
- What ?
He gestured vaguely at a directional sign screwed to the wall of a building.
- That sign. Who decides on the character size in this city ? It's not legible.
- I can read it perfectly well.
- Because you're not used to processing complex information simultaneously. My brain operates on several levels at once. It can't focus on repetitive and mundane visual details like street signage.
- So you can solve any crime in a few seconds, said (y/n) in a neutral tone, but a street sign is a problem for you.
- I didn't say it was a problem.
- You'd been staring at it for ten seconds.
- I was analyzing it. That's different.
He said it with total conviction, resuming his walk as if the conversation had concluded to his satisfaction. The lollipop had disappeared at some point in the station, replaced by a bag of sweets produced from nowhere, into which he was dipping without looking with the regularity of someone who had turned the act into a reflex.
(y/n) watched him from the corner of her eye.
He ate his sweets with an applied and perfectly self-centred concentration, without offering, without even appearing to consider that anyone else might exist within a relevant radius.
- Have you been working with the police long ? she asked.
- Twelve years, he said without hesitation. I'm the best detective they've ever consulted. They wouldn't solve half their cases without me. Probably three quarters, actually.
- And you're modest about it.
— Modesty is a virtue of average people. I have no need of it.
He said it with total lightness. No arrogance in the hurtful sense. Just a kind of quiet, absolute certainty that wasn't trying to impress anyone. Like someone saying I have green eyes, a fact, nothing more.
Which was, in a certain way, even more disconcerting.
(y/n) didn't answer. She was looking straight ahead, trying to decide what she thought of all this.
She couldn't quite manage it.
***
Their paths parted at the Nakamachi Street junction.
(y/n) noticed when she recognized the orange sign of the corner bakery, closed at this hour, but a familiar landmark. She slowed naturally.
- This is where I turn, she said, without quite knowing why she was mentioning it.
Ranpo stopped too. He looked at her. Not for long, just a second, eyelids still half-lowered over his green eyes, with that particular angle that gave the impression he was mentally taking an inventory of something.
Then he looked straight ahead again.
- (y/n) (l/n).
She stopped.
- Your badge was sticking out of your outer pocket, he said. Since the metro. Your name was readable from outside. Anyone could have seen it.
(y/n) looked down at her pocket. The badge was there, slipped sideways, her name perfectly visible.
She tucked it back in.
When she looked up, Ranpo had already resumed walking. The brown cape beat slightly behind him with each step, the hat tilted under the yellow light of the streetlamps. He didn't turn around. He said nothing else. He simply continued straight ahead, hands in his pockets, at the same nonchalant pace he'd maintained from the beginning. As if this encounter had been, for him, one detail among others in his day.
(y/n) stood for a few seconds on the pavement, watching him disappear around the corner of the street.
She was thinking about the deductions on the metro. About the way he had listed the details of her day as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. About the signs that offended him personally. About the bag of sweets he'd eaten entirely without thinking. About the metro doors that had closed two centimetres from his cape. About I was testing the door timing.
It was irritating.
It was strange.
(y/n) decided it was both, tightened her bag on her shoulder, and turned left.
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Author's Note — First Meeting (Part 1) 📖
Two encounters. Two ways of entering someone's life without really deciding to.
On Chūya's side : I worked by subtraction. What he doesn't say, what he doesn't do, and what that says anyway. The final "Hmph" is the moment I reworked the most. Not a goodbye. Not a thank you. Just the minimal sound of someone who has registered something and doesn't yet know what to do with it. Neither does (y/n). She puts away the cloth, picks up the thread of her arteries and doesn't manage it. That's all. That's enough.
On Ranpo's side : the contrast was what I most enjoyed writing. Someone capable of reading an entire day in an ink stain, who doesn't know which exit to take at Kannai. That's not a contradiction, it's a coherence, entirely in keeping with who he is. I genuinely had a great time writing him.
Question of the day : Chūya's "Hmph" or the badge sticking out, which one made you pause ? 💕
Dazai and Akutagawa coming soon. ✨
