“What do you see?” Murmured a voice from behind. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t behind, nor was it in front. It was from inside of him, a rumble of words, his own voice but deeper. Smoother. Questioning, it urged him to look at everything closer, searching for more detail like the detective he was.
There was no point in answering when the answer was so obviously clear. There wasn’t anything to see, not now. Not yet. The Truth was lost to him, and now there was just emptiness. Only a cold void, a gaping empty maw of nothing where once there should have been answers. The want to know. A need.
Shinichi had never been very good at ignoring mysteries, at leaving a puzzle unfinished. Wasn’t that why he had Ran go on ahead, wasn’t that why he came here in the first place? He’d thought there was a puzzle and he couldn’t let it go and now—
“Nothing,” Shinichi murmured, when the silence started to weigh down on him further, the unanswered question starting to itch. “There’s nothing here.”
No answer. He hadn’t expected one—maybe because he knew that wasn’t right. There couldn’t only be void, there had to be something else, something more. Some kind of clue. Every encounter left a clue, Shinichi knew that, every interaction left a trace. And he could find it. He would.
Another step towards the police tape. And then another. Until he was close enough to brush his fingers against it, the adhesive of the tape catching against skin.
“There has to be something.”
He needed to know. To pry apart the mystery until all that remained was the Truth, until he could stare upon it and feel satisfied with the knowledge that he’d reached. That he’d learned the truth behind everything that had happened here—
“...Something must be here…” He murmured, and lifted the tape. “...I need… to see…”
It didn’t feel like he was falling, when he stood into the open void, but he was. Nothingness claimed him and dragged him down, tendrils of mystery wrapping around him until everything was uncertainty and illusion. Until even the truth of himself was hidden in the void, until he couldn’t even remember what Truth he was looking for in the first place—
He needed to taste the Truth for himself, to know what it was like, to—to—