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lisatelramor · 1 year

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Crossing Borders Ch3

Sorry for not posting on wednesday. My computer got broken irreparably on monday and i've spent all week getting a new one and transferring files over. Today involved almost 3.5 hours of driving because the store is 45 mins away give or take a bit on traffic. T_T I had to go back because I got home and couldn't find my files. Turns out for some reason the new microsoft system defaults to cloud--including desktop--and wasn't bringing any of my files up when I searched either -_-;;; I have had very high cortisol levels this last week. Sigh. Anyway, enjoy this chapter, guys!

There were few things Lan Zhan disliked about being a cultivator. He enjoyed the fulfilment he got from training, the pleasant burn of well-used muscles and the peace of a long meditation session. He enjoyed the challenge of a night hunt and knowing he was protecting people. He enjoyed his sect’s musical cultivation and the creative outlet it gave him. He even enjoyed, to some extent, the myriad of rules, because they gave life structure—even if by this point in his life he also had come to the conclusion that some rules were more worthwhile than others.

What Lan Zhan did not enjoy was dealing with people. Unfortunately, being a cultivator could occasionally require a lot of that. While he had grown to have some satisfaction in teaching, distraught, anxious, grieving people were not a demographic he ever found easier to deal with.

“What do you mean he’s dead?” Wan Haoran, one of the victim’s friends asked, his face not as upset as Lan Zhan would have expected considering he just received news of his friend’s demise. “He was just with us in the pottery hall less than two hours ago.”

“Unfortunately,” Lan Zhan repeated, “there was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” Chen Xinyi asked. She, at least, looked properly upset. Her face was pale and pinched with anxiety. She had been dating the victim, if he remembered correctly.

“He fell off one of the cliffs off-trail,” Wei Ying said bluntly at Lan Zhan’s side. “Do you have any idea why he might have been wandering in the mountain alone and far from the walking trails?”

Chen Xinyi shook her head, tears building in her eyes that she didn’t let fall. “I. No… He was. He was upset. Needed to go on a walk, he’d said, but. He was planning to join us for dinner and never showed up.”

“I guess now we know why,” Li Zihan said, the last member of their group sitting on one of the corner beds in the room. She looked tired, resigned, like bad news was one more thing on top of many bad things. “I thought he just needed more time to cool down. He feels things—felt things… strongly, you know? Sometimes he needed to go on his own for a while until he evened out again.”

“He always tried to follow what he said he’d do though,” Chen Xinyi said. The tears spilled over, sliding down her cheek uninhibited.

“Did something trigger his poor mood?” Lan Zhan asked. “The monitors in the group activities you were present in did not notice anything unusual with his behavior during the program.”

The group collectively hesitated, and Wei Ying clearly honed in on it, leaning forward.

“So something did upset him,” Wei Ying said. “During or after the activities?”

“…After,” Li Zihan grunted. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have mentioned some things.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Wan Haoran argued. “It’s ridiculous to act like nothing happened and just forget—”

“Forget what?” Wei Ying said, frustration making his voice sharp.

None of them could look them in the face. Chen Xinyi twisted a handkerchief, its edges already wet through.

“About a month ago, one of our friends died,” Wan Haoran said after a long moment. “They were really close. Shen Ming knew him from before college, and of all of us I think he was taking the death the worst. It’s actually why we decided to come here. Everything we read said this place was good for calming strong emotions and finding peace. We thought…” He trailed off.

“I shouldn’t have brought up Huang Fang,” Li Zihan said. “It’s just… he was looking calmer and I didn’t even think… It was a good memory of him. We should be able to remember the good without focusing on the tragedy.”

“People do not recover the same way, or in a straightforward manner,” Lan Zhan said. His own grief over his parents—his mother’s death, father’s neglect, and his father’s eventual death—had taken a long time to process. Presumably, Shen Ming could have recovered over time. Instead, he’d been killed before he could finish working through those emotions. It was sad, but also a little worrisome; their victim had more reasons than his murder to hold resentment past his death.

“May I ask how your friend died?” Wei Ying said, remaining focused on the important things even as Lan Zhan let himself be distracted. “I know it’s probably not something you want to think about…”

“He…fell,” Chen Xinyi said. “Not off a cliff. But.”

“He suicided,” Li Zihan said heavily. “Or at least that’s what it seemed to be. Shen Ming was there. Couldn’t talk him down.”

“You don’t think it was suicide?” Wei Ying asked, catching her wording. “Do you think Shen Ming pushed him?”

“He wouldn’t!” Chen Xinyi said immediately, eyes wide and horrified at the mere thought. “He was so devastated after! They were like brothers…”

To the side, Wan Haoran shifted, uncomfortable. Lan Zhan studied the pinched tension in his face and jaw. Remembering the event? Or something else entirely?

“Either way, the result is the same,” Li Zihan said. “They’re both dead now… Did. Did Shen Ming… Did it look like he…?”

“I do not think he went out there intending to die,” Lan Zhan said as gently as he was able. Wei Ying was better with sympathy, but he’d been told in the past that sometimes a calm, even tone could be just as helpful.

“An accident then,” Chen Xinyi said, sniffling. “He must have slipped…”

Lan Zhan exchanged a glance with Wei Ying, neither of them offering the true cause of death for the moment. There was still the uncomfortable look on Wan Haoran’s face, and too many questions to say that these people weren’t also involved in some way.

“Oh yeah,” Wei Ying said, like a thought had only just occurred to him. “We found an odd wooden bead on him; would you know anything about that?”

Recognition. Chen Xinyi’s hand twitched toward her chest—right about where a pendant would be—and her two friends also twitched.

“The bead was Huang Fang’s,” Wan Haoran said after a moment. “He had a bracelet of prayer beads his grandfather gave him that he wore everywhere. When he died, most of the bracelet was ruined, but we each kept a bead. To remember, you know?”

Lan Zhan resisted the urge to pinch his brow and sigh. Prayer beads that were emotionally significant to their owner, that had been worn regularly, and then died with him. That would definitely be enough for a ghost to latch onto. Although, why only Shen Ming had been affected was unclear. Now at least one bead had two deaths in its existence, and could possibly be on its way to a resentful artifact if they were unlucky.

“Huh,” Wei Ying said, leaning forward. “Would you mind showing me one?”

“That’s a little insensitive,” Wan Haoran said, one wrist pulling close to his body where he must have his bead. He looked at Wei Ying, cold and accusative. “Our friend died, so soon after another, and you want to look at a bead?”

“Ah, sorry, sorry.” Wei Ying held up his hands apologetically. “It just felt significant.”

“Well it’s not.” Wan Haoran shifted in front of his friends. “Unless you’re going to let us see his body, I think you should go now.”

“Of course,” Lan Zhan cut in with the slightest of polite nods. “You will be informed when his body can be visited.” He and Wei Ying retreated, the door closing on the sound of Chen Xinyi’s tears starting up in earnest again.

Wei Ying sighed as they left the room behind them. “Well. That could have gone better.”

“Hm. The beads?”

“Probably how that spirit got in. If it’s their friend, there is the question of why he’s targeting them.”

Lan Zhan hummed speculatively. “Perhaps anger over not preventing his death?”

“Or something… Wan Haoran was kind of shifty, did you notice?” Wei Ying’s fingers drummed absently on his crossed arms. “There’s something we are missing about the friendship.”

“I do not think Wan Haoran will reveal what that is.”

“Same.” Wei Ying sighed before nudging Lan Zhan. “If we play Inquiry, do you think our angry spirit will answer? Or should I go plant a spirit trap?”

“First we should add extra warding to the dormitories,” Lan Zhan said. “After… Perhaps Shen Ming’s spirit would remember what occurred at his friend’s death.”

“…Do you think I can get away with some of my specialized talismans?”

Lan Zhan’s lips tipped up at the edges. “If Wei Ying places them very carefully out of view, no one will know.”

“Are you encouraging me to be heretical?” Wei Ying asked, delighted.

“To take all the possible care in protecting our guests,” Lan Zhan corrected.

“Yeah, well your uncle would still skin me if he knew. Ah, I’m such a corrupting force on you!” Wei Ying swooned dramatically.

“Are not.” Lan Zhan let their shoulders bump together gently. “You still have not eaten,” he said into the companionable silence that followed. “Eat, then set talismans.”

“Or I could set talismans, then eat.”

Lan Zhan looked at Wei Ying patiently, knowing he would cave to Lan Zhan’s desire to ensure he was cared for.

“Ah, Lan Zhan, you’re spoiling me again.”

Lan Zhan hummed, content. There might be a crisis going on, but he wasn’t going to let Wei Ying neglect himself if he could help it.

*O*O*

Conan was going to break something. Preferably something on a certain someone. Kid, with his usual level of charisma, had managed to put Ran and Mouri in a good mood with card tricks, four games of poker, and a bunch of random stories that flowed seamlessly into one another, keeping everyone entertained. It was annoying because if it hadn’t been Kid, Conan might have actually found it entertaining.

Because it was Kid, he kept waiting for the other shoe to fall. There had to be something more going on here.

“—field full of bunnies,” Kid said, shuffling cards for a new game—blackjack now as poker had become frustrating. “I admit, I was pretty surprised to see them since this place has all kind of rules against bringing in pets and vegetarianism as the norm, but apparently, they were wild rabbits that became domesticated from people sneaking to feed them or something, and eventually the higher ups caved and made them official protected animals. That was before they got added as part of the therapy program, I think. Fuzzy animals are actually really good for soothing the spirit. Good on the newer generations for thinking outside the meditative box, right?”

Conan huffed. He would love to escape and go looking for clues, but there was no way to sneak off. Even with Kid keeping them entertained, Mouri and Ran were on high alert after Conan snuck off earlier.

“What are you here researching?” Ran asked Kid, taking the cards he dealt comfortably. Conan took his cards grudgingly; he’d tried backing out of games only to be dragged back by Mouri because it would ‘keep him occupied.’

“Ah.” Kid’s smile never faltered. “You know, there’s a huge library here, full of a lot of interesting topics. It’s well-known in certain circles for its obscure texts on the supernatural.”

“So you’re here researching, what? Legends and ghost stories?” Mouri muttered, with a frown at his hand of cards.

“Legends in part,” Kid said, dealing another card when prompted. “It probably seems silly, but legends have fueled humanity’s progress. Chasing better medicines, better weapons, better technology and methods… I ran across a legend in Japan, and was having trouble tracing it. A friend recommended trying here since their records are so comprehensive.”

“It’s also all in Chinese,” Conan said drily. And who knew what dialect or how simplified some of those documents were.

“I can read enough to get a sense of if I have the right topic,” Kid said, “and then there’s several individuals who are more than happy to help me on my research.”

Conan narrowed his eyes. “Was one called Wei Ying by chance?”

“You must have been by the library.” Kid dealt Ran another card at her gesture, then Mouri, who grimaced hard. He had a terrible poker face.

“He looked like he lived there.” Reluctantly, Conan gestured for another card as well. The three he was dealt brought him to twenty; a decently good hand.

“Oh, he basically does. Well, in the library, in the bunny field, or glued to his boyfriend’s side depending on his mood. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he’s actually one of the leading minds of his generation in paranormal studies.”

“Great, so he’s a genius with ghost stories,” Mouri said sarcastically. “Sounds real useful for a career.”

“More like exorcisms, warding, and demonic identification, if I’m getting the translation right,” Kid said cheerfully like he’d missed the sarcasm entirely. “He has some fascinating thoughts about the search for immortality.”

Conan might never live down the moment that he shares a commiserating look with Mouri.

“Any more cards?” Kid asked, still cheerful. “No? Well then…” He laid out his cards. Blackjack. Again.

This was the third time in six rounds.

“You’re cheating,” Conan said as he showed his hand. “You’ve won five of the rounds.” This one included because Ran had nineteen and Mouri had busted, going seven over twenty-one. Kid had to be cheating.

“I could be counting cards,” Kid said, returning the hands to the deck, “but I’m not. And I’m not palming them, or cutting the deck in my favor. I just have Lady Luck on my side.”

“Well share a bit of it around because this is getting boring,” Mouri grumbled. “Are they going to keep us here all night, or what?”

“I’m sure they have good reason,” Ran said.

Conan had a twinge of guilt because he hadn’t told them about the murder yet. If he did, Mouri would probably try to swan in on it without even being able to speak to anyone clearly, and muddle everything up even more. He could feel Kid’s glance like a weight as cards shuffled endlessly. Some kind of tic probably.

“I’m sure we’ll be allowed out in the morning,” Kid said.

“Oh, so now you’re inviting yourself to stay the night, too?” Mouri said. “Well, there’s only three beds, so you’re out of luck.”

“I can share with Conan-kun,” Kid said with a friendly grin. “If it comes down to that anyway.”

“I don’t think the beds are big enough to share!” Conan cut in. The idea of being crammed in with Kid onto a cot of a bed was nightmare fuel.

“You’re not that big,” Kid said. “I could take the floor too if sharing is asking too much, but I’d like to save my back if I can.”

“Conan-kun, you can sleep with me,” Ran said.

It was meant to be kind. No one would think anything of a child sleeping beside them. But. Conan felt himself freeze. Sleep next to Ran? With her pressed against him? Just the two of them? “I can take the floor,” he blurted, face probably fire truck red.

Kid snickered, covering the expression innocently when the others looked. Conan scowled at him, not that scowling ever seemed to do anything. “I couldn’t kick you out of your bed,” Kid said, almost convincingly sincere, the bastard.

“I insist,” Conan said, hating him.

“Ah, I have a travel pillow,” Ran said, accepting the change in plans easily enough like she always did. “And there’s a spare blanket… Conan-kun, do you mind using a few towels as a mattress?”

“That’s fine…” Damn Kid, this was a defeat for Conan this time. Next time he’d definitely win though.

The card game was wrapped up and bedding distributed with little discussion after that. Conan grumpily curled up on his ‘mattress’ of towels and uncharitably wished Kid an unpleasant sleep and a crick in the neck.

*O*O*

When the alarm started ringing, Wei Ying was horribly tempted to shove a pillow over his head, burrow closer in Lan Zhan’s arms, and go back to sleep. Unfortunately, this wasn’t their morning alarm clock alarm, but the emergency bell. Again. At—Wei Ying squinted at the soft glow of the alarm clock—four in the morning. Not even the Lan woke at four in the morning.

Naturally, there wasn’t actually a choice in going back to sleep. There certainly wasn’t any burrowing back into Lan Zhan’s arms, because he was already sitting up and reaching for a shirt.

“Why?” Wei Ying asked rhetorically.

Lan Zhan paused where he was slipping on his earlier-discarded socks. He gently tucked a strand of Wei Ying’s bird-nest, slept-on hair behind an ear, hand lingering on Wei Ying’s face. “You do not have to get up.”

Lan Zhan was sweet. Really. As much as Wei Ying wanted to go back to sleep and blissfully leave whatever problem was happening now in someone else’s hands, that wasn’t really an option.

“They might need me,” Wei Ying said forcing himself upright. Ugh. Too early. He was going to have an awful headache, like a sleep hangover. “Want to bet it’s the ghost no one could find earlier?”

Lan Zhan scoffed. “Obvious.”

“I dunno. Could have a couple murderous spirits by now. You never know.”

Wei Ying got yesterday’s pants to the face as Lan Zhan started gathering up clothes for Wei Ying too.

“Peh. Thanks, I wanted dusty denim to the face first thing in the morning.”

“I will grab you coffee later,” Lan Zhan said. He already looked like he hadn’t just rolled out of bed. Wei Ying was wildly jealous of how easily his boyfriend went from ‘disheveled’ to ‘could be in an office or a fashion runway’ with seemingly zero effort. Wei Ying felt lucky if he didn’t look like a bum in the same amount of time.

Shoving his limbs haphazardly into clothing, Wei Ying staggered toward the door. “Wait! No, talismans, talismans…”

Lan Zhan handed him a stack and Suiban at the same time.

“Oh. Thanks.”

His boyfriend took a moment to smooth Wei Ying’s hair out of his face because he was the functional one between the two of them, and then they were hurrying out into the night. Day? Night; the sun wasn’t up yet so it wasn’t morning in his book.

Outside, disciples were poking their heads out or hurrying by, some still in sleep clothes. Unfortunately, the guests were too, and they didn’t look like they were going to cooperate in returning to their beds this time without some sort of explanation.

Wei Ying scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Sure enough, the child from before was wiggling to the front of the group, probably trying to see what was going on. What an annoyingly nosy child. Hadn’t he heard of listening to adults? (Not that Wei Ying had ever been good at that himself, but it was the principle of things.) Add a probable curse to the mix and the kid had the potential to be a danger magnet.

Lan Zhan, much less distractable, caught someone heading from the emergency bell’s direction. “What is happening?”

The girl had a harried look of someone on a mission, but she stopped because Lan Zhan was one of the heirs to the sect. “The body is gone and another guest is dead.”

“Well shit,” Wei Ying said. He was not awake enough for this. “Who died now?”

“Chen Xinyi,” the disciple said, shifting in the way that said she’d be walking away already if it was polite to.

Lan Zhan nodded in thanks. “We won’t keep you longer,” he said, and the girl hurried away before he got all the words out.

“Chen Xinyi is…?” Wei Ying asked, drawing a blank. He wasn’t good with names and faces at the best of times, let alone just after waking up.

“The first victim’s girlfriend,” Lan Zhan said.

“Oh.” Well, double shit then. “Nothing should have gotten past the talismans we set last night.”

“Hm.”

Ugh. Either they had a human hand working in all of this or someone had messed up somewhere with the first corpse. “And the first victim, what, walked off? Killed his girlfriend?”

“We will find out,” Lan Zhan said, as composed as ever.

“Lan Zhan, Wei Ying!” a young voice called. Oh look, there was their cursed child. He elbowed past people’s legs, hurrying over, the guy here to research alchemic immortality behind him looking like he’d rather be somewhere else. Like asleep.

Wei Ying related. “Hey kid. Didn’t we say you should stick with your guardians?”

“Good luck getting him to do that,” the man—ah, what was his name again? Kuroba, right? Kuroba Kaito, jeeze Wei Ying needed caffeine—said. “Edogawa has a reputation.”

“Mr. Kuroba, Edogawa Conan,” Lan Zhan said.

“This brat is going to give Mouri-chan a panic attack, but obviously it’s more important to find out who died now.”

“Shut up!” Edogawa said with a truly impressive scowl.

“Huh.” Wei Ying glanced between them. “I didn’t know you knew each other.”

“Oh,” Kuroba said with a long-suffering look, “we’ve definitely met. So, who’s dead now?”

“What makes you think someone is dead?” Lan Zhan asked, his natural blank face keeping any hint of his thoughts at bay.

Kuroba, who could have just as good of a blank face as Lan Zhan, gave him a deadpan stare. “It’s always someone dying when Edogawa is around.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Edogawa snapped. He looked like a different child than the one Wei Ying met before, but maybe he was just less polite and more aggressive toward people he knew well. “There are plenty of times no one dies. You make it sound like I have corpses falling from the sky when I’m around.”

“Didn’t that happen?” Kuroba said.

“Falling out of a building doesn’t count.”

Oh wow, Wei Ying was getting more concerned for this child by the second, but he really couldn’t even start digging into that problem until they’d done something about the current one. “Yeah, there is someone else dead,” Wei Ying said softly, hoping no one overheard.

“Who?” Edogawa demanded. “Where was the body found? Cause of death?”

Wei Ying looked to Lan Zhan because he really was too tired to deal with this.

“Another from the same group,” Lan Zhan said calm as could be. “We have yet to learn the particulars.”

“I can help,” Edogawa said.

“Oh hell no,” Wei Ying said. It came out in English even though he was thinking it in Mandarin. “We already had this conversation. You’re a child. Children shouldn’t be interacting with corpses.”

“Thank you!” Kuroba said. “I’m so glad someone said it because it’s really unnerving.”

“Oh, come on! You’ve helped me solve cases before!” Edogawa said, glaring up at Kuroba.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to solve them! Other people can figure things out!”

Edogawa shot into a furious sounding mess of Japanese that had Kuroba grimacing and rolling his eyes.

Wei Ying was losing patience with this. “Look, you just. Stay. We need to find out what the hell is going on.”

Kuroba grimaced again. “Actually, can we tag along? It’s probably safer than him sneaking out.”

“I thought it was his guardian that was the detective,” Wei Ying said to Lan Zhan in Mandarin. “If this didn’t involve ghosts, I’d say drag him along.”

“It would be better to keep an eye on Edogawa,” Lan Zhan said slowly. “His curse might be part of what is happening.”

“You think? I thought it seemed pretty clearly a spirit with a grudge.”

“Mm, but perhaps the curse has a side effect of boosting resentment. If that were the case…”

“Ah. It would tip a scale from a mild threat to a serious one.”

“And perhaps be enough to lead to people near him to commit murder if they were already contemplating it.”

Well, that was a terrifying thought. It made him want to ask how big a range the deaths this kid ran across. If it was concentrated around where he lived, then there could be a plottable range of a curse’s effects. And it could be cumulative, the longer someone was in the range, the more likely they’d reach the conclusion that murder was the solution to whatever their problem was.

Who the hell even came up with something like that??

“Lan Zhan, I don’t think I’m qualified enough to deal with that level of a curse,” Wei Ying said, exhausted.

“Mm, set it aside for now. One problem at a time.”

“Right.” Just a ghost and maybe a fierce corpse that shouldn’t have been able to become a fierce corpse, and a dead girl and a missing corpse. And a child who might be escalating things by accident just by existing. Lovely. On the other hand, Kuroba had abnormally good luck, finding things in the library that Wei Ying hadn’t even known existed that actually related to what the man was researching. With any luck, maybe some of that good fortune would cancel out some of Edogawa’s and they wouldn’t have any more corpses. “You two,” Wei Ying said, switching back to English to point at the two guests so insistent about tangling themselves up in this mess. “You’re staying with each other at all times. Kuroba, you’re his impulse control. And no one is walking around without a partner.”

“He’s my impulse control?” Edogawa said indignantly.

“I didn’t catch him hanging off a wall to spy on a corpse,” Wei Ying said, “so yes, he’s your impulse control.”

Kuroba grinned. “Oh, I think I can do that. Hear that? I have better control than you, Conan-kun.”

“Do you like your shins? Because you’re going to be bruised all over them if you continue.”

Ignoring that sickeningly sweet threat, Wei Ying caught Lan Zhan’s hand. “C’mon. Your uncle is probably having an aneurism.”

*O*O*

Kaito was having a bad day. Morning? Morning. He was having a bad morning because 1, there was a murder. A second murder. 2, he had an annoying detective to keep track of (for multiple reasons of course). 3, he had slept terribly. 4, the inevitable chaos that followed Edogawa was playing havoc with his research time. And 5, he was on his way to see yet another corpse.

Yippie. Just what he wanted to be doing with his day, right? It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen more than enough dead bodies killed in violent ways in the last year since Edogawa showed up. Not even a year, really. How had his luck failed so badly that Edogawa Conan managed to show up in a remote, selective, semi-religious retreat in a whole different country?

Really, Kaito had been grasping for straws when he asked Akako about different flavors of immortality. He’d fully expected to be brushed off, but he must have caught her at one of her good moods since she’d written him a recommendation to get in here. They followed a different branch of magic, a different religion, and spoke a different language, but magic communities must all be pretty interconnected because when Kaito reached out, he’d gotten a response and permission to look through their library.

Where had Lady Luck gone to land Edogawa in his lap?

Kaito fully expected the disciples hanging around the infirmary to block their way, but a word from Lan Zhan and they stepped aside, letting Kaito and Edogawa stroll right in. If he hadn’t already known that Lan Zhan was the second in line for being the leader of this place—kind of archaic to have familial leaders, like tiny kingdoms, but who was Kaito to judge—then he’d have probably figured it out with that alone.

People respected Lan Zhan. The only truly surprising thing was how often that respect wasn’t extended toward Wei Ying as well considering how likely it looked that he’d be marrying into the family. Or whatever people did in places where gay marriage wasn’t recognized.

If it were Kaito, he’d hop off to America for a bit and get a legally binding Vegas wedding, but that was just wanting to have a legally binding marriage somewhere even if it wasn’t at home.

…Not that he was all that likely to have a gay marriage in the first place.

Anyway. Corpse! There was a freshly murdered—it was definitely murder; there were hand-shaped bruises on the neck—corpse was set up on an exam table like she was a patient. Except that she was very clearly dead. What with the bruises and the unnatural angle of her neck…

Kaito grimaced. At least this wasn’t a bloody sort of murder.

There was a sharp-eyed man watching over the body. He frowned when he caught sight of their group—or more specifically the people that shouldn’t have been part of it. Kaito gave a little wave, like this was just another part of his daily routine. It was honestly not something he was unfamiliar with by this time, which was a depressing thought.

Edogawa, as typical, zeroed in on the body and ignored everything else around him as irrelevant.

The man said something, a question, and Lan Zhan answered in a few curt words. Kaito was working on it, but his spoken and audial comprehension of Mandarin was still playing catch up to his reading skills. Either way, the man guarding the body didn’t stop Edogawa as the brat walked right up and started looking at the body’s throat.

“Is he always like that?” Wei Ying asked, not even bothering to be subtle as he nodded at Edogawa.

“Pretty much.” Kaito sighed. As Edogawa moved on to examining the woman’s wrists—there were a few bruises there too—Lan Zhan pulled a musical instrument from seemingly nowhere. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the people here bend spatial reality, but it was still made him twitch inside. The magician in him was a little jealous of that kind of technology; imagine the things he could pull off if he wasn’t confined to physical space! The rest of him, the part that prided itself on artistry was annoyed by magical cheats for the sort of thing he would have to pull off with sleight of hand and creative use of mirrors. “What’s that for?” Kaito asked nodding at the string instrument.

“Communication,” Lan Zhan said like that wasn’t the most uncomfortable response he could have had.

Kaito shivered. Yeah, talking to ghosts was now up there with finding a corpse at all.

“It looks like she was killed by someone’s bare hands,” Edogawa said, still focused on the body to the point where he hadn’t even noticed actual magic happening behind him. “You can see the individual finger marks here…” He touched her neck lightly. “But it shouldn’t have been possible to do this much damage. This is… I could expect a gorilla to have that kind of grip, but a human hand—and this was a human hand—shouldn’t have done that much damage, let alone broken her neck the way it did. Breaking someone’s neck bare-handed is usually just leverage. This is practically crushing part of her vertebrae.”

Wei Ying raised an eyebrow in Kaito’s direction. Kaito shrugged. He didn’t really know how to say that Edogawa didn’t know anything about magic—real magic—and was a skeptic without leading to Edogawa having an argument about why magic couldn’t possibly be real with them.

“Anything else?” Wei Ying asked. Lan Zhan started playing, and aside from a glance at him, Edogawa seemed to assume that music was just part of death rituals here.

“She tried to fight, but it was a quick death. There’s a bit of skin under her nails and one of them broke, but most of her injuries seem to be confined to her neck.”

Edogawa frowned. “She shouldn’t have been able to get in here with everyone patrolling, let alone be killed. And then there’s the missing body of the first victim… What happened to him? He couldn’t have just walked away. Although if someone was strong enough to break a neck like that, they were probably strong enough to carry out a corpse single-handedly.”

Kaito and Wei Ying winced. Based on some of the things Kaito had been skimming, there was a pretty real probability that the corpse did in fact walk away. Kaito had never been more unhappy to hear that something like zombies existed, and he dealt with a witch that literally called upon Satan on the regular. It was all well outside Kaito’s area of expertise.

“Could you maybe not touch the corpse?” Wei Ying said, looking a little queasy as Edogawa took out a goddamn glove and started shifting clothing.

“I’m wearing a glove,” Edogawa said.

“…That is not the problem,” Wei Ying muttered under his breath.

“Just let him do his thing,” Kaito advised. “Creepy as it is, this really is normal for him.”

“Does he see a therapist? Because it feels like the sort of thing someone should see a therapist for.”

“You overestimate the willingness to seek out a therapist.”

“I know there’s stigma, but hell, you’re here aren’t you?”

Kaito snorted. “Yeah, we’re not here for the health benefits and you know it.”

“He might be.”

“Mouri-ojisan got free tickets from a lady at the racetracks,” Edogawa said, cutting into the conversation before they could get too off topic. “And the victim has an odd necklace…”

“Let me see,” Wei Ying said, leaning forward.

Kaito joined him. Wei Ying tugged down the victim’s shirt to show… a plain wooden bead that had been stuck on a fine chain. “That’s not the sort of necklace most young women would wear,” Kaito said. The chain was cheap, probably not even silver plated, and the bead looked worn. Paired with the otherwise normal outfit Kaito would expect from a college student spending time at a monastic-ish location—sleeves modestly long, clothing loose but flattering, wearing a simple patterned circle skirt—it was out of place. The victim’s earrings were far nicer comparatively; real silver with teardrop pearls.

How odd.

Wei Ying, however, didn’t appear to be surprised to see the necklace at all. “So she was also wearing it at the time she died,” Wei Ying muttered under his breath, thankfully still in English.

Edogawa jumped on the sentence like a terrier chasing a rat. “Too? Someone else had a bead like this?”

“The first victim,” Wei Ying said. “The beads are from a bracelet their friend owned, worn in his memory.”

Edogawa’s eyes burned with connections being made. “So it’s possible the deaths here are related to their friend’s demise.”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying said with a wry twist of his lips that meant whatever had done the murders was definitely of the supernatural variety, “I think it’s definitely related to that friend’s death.”

“Meaning the others in their group are either killers or the next victims,” Edogawa said, hand on his chin.

“If they stay where they’re supposed to, hopefully there will be no more victims,” Wei Ying said.

“I kind of doubt that’s going to happen,” Kaito said. Considering the track record with basically every time Kaito ended up around Edogawa.

“That’s pessimism talking,” Wei Ying said with forced cheerfulness. To the side, the sound of guqin strings faded to silence. “Lan Zhan. What’d you get?”

“The victim snuck out alone and slipped past the guards while they were changing shifts. I believe she merely intended to view the body of the first victim, but her presence seemed to have triggered resentment, and led to her death.” Lan Zhan reported this with a straight back and neutral expression. It was a little creepy considering he must have been communicating with the dead woman. Kaito suppressed a grimace.

“Thank you, Lan Zhan. Now we have to go tell the remaining guests about a second death…”

Edogawa frowned. “Wait. That’s all conjecture. There’s still no clear proof on who might have killed her, and if it was someone in her group, should we tell them we found her body?”

“Counter argument,” Kaito cut in, “if they’re the next potential victims, they need to know. Two dead friends are pretty convincing evidence that they have something to fear and everything to gain for not going anywhere alone.”

“Besides,” Wei Ying said, “this is going to be a legal shit show already. We’re going to have to make up so many waivers going forward.”

“Didn’t we already have to do that?” Kaito asked. He distinctly remembered skimming a document in English and Mandarin, hoping there wasn’t anything he was missing that he was agreeing to on there.

“I didn’t sign a waiver,” Edogawa said.

“You’re a minor,” Kaito said.

“Mm, normal visitors don’t sign them,” Lan Zhan said softly. “The library is different.”

“Ah.” Magic secrets and all that. Yeah, that made sense.

“Lan Zhan, do you want to be on bad-news duty or corpse searching? Or finding your uncle, I guess…”

“I do not believe I will have much to add to Uncle’s legal efforts. Although perhaps, Wei Ying would be best suited for searching for the first body…?” Lan Zhan tilted his head slightly in question.

Something about the intensity in which he said ‘best suited’ made Kaito’s neck hairs stand on end. Kaito didn’t really know a lot about what Wei Ying was researching in the library. He’d gathered that it was controversial, but the specifics were lost to his limited reading ability.

“Corpse duty it is,” Wei Ying said with a sigh. He rubbed his neck. “Well, Kuroba, Edogawa, you should either go back or stick with Lan Zhan because wandering around isn’t a good idea right now.”

“You’re wandering around,” Edogawa pointed out.

“Yes, but I’m trained to take care of myself with this sort of thing.”

Kaito could practically feel the curiosity warring with confusion in Edogawa’s twisty little brain. Ugh. He almost wanted to go back to his room. But the best place to be to know what was happening was at Edogawa’s side. Or perhaps Wei Ying’s too… If Kaito didn’t think this would blow up, he’d suggest splitting up and letting Edogawa deal with the human aspects while he helped Wei Ying with the supernatural.

That said, things were definitely going to go wrong, and he was probably going to be needed for damage control. Staying with Edogawa it was.

“Then I guess we’re going to break the news to some unhappy people,” Kaito said.

Edogawa looked even more torn for a moment, clearly wanting to see out his curiosity about Wei Ying, and yet also needing to know more about the victims’ friend group. “Fine…”

“Aw, don’t be grumpy,” Wei Ying said. “You’re still not being tossed back in your room.”

“Stop treating me like a little kid.”

“Technically, you are a little kid,” Kaito pointed out.

Edogawa scowled.

“Only technically?” Wei Ying said.

“He has a brain of someone three times that.”

“We will go now,” Lan Zhan cut in. “Wei Ying, stay safe.”

“You too.” Wei Ying leaned in to kiss his boyfriend’s cheek. It was cute, Kaito thought absently. It was rare to see same sex couples openly affectionate in public. It was nice to know that here it was accepted enough to do that even if not in the country as a whole. For all that he was in love with Aoko… well, he’d seen men he couldn’t help looking at before. It was nice to imagine that under different circumstances he might be able to find somewhere or someone to be that way toward.

Edogawa, on the other hand, looked like witnessing this was like watching people make out instead of a kiss on the cheek.

“Are you homophobic?” Kaito asked, in Japanese.

Edogawa twitched. “What? No! I just feel uncomfortable with people kissing in public. It’s like, hey, we’re still right here!”

This was perhaps the most like an actual child thing Edogawa had ever said and meant to Kaito’s face. “Really. Kissing bothers you.”

“Yes!”

Kaito laughed. And laughed harder when Edogawa scowled harder at him than when Wei Ying called him a child. “You’ll—heh—you’ll get it once you—ha—go through puberty!”

“I am going to kick you somewhere painful.”

“Is there a problem?” Lan Zhan asked. Wei Ying had walked away while Kaito was distracted.

Just them, Lan Zhan, a body, and an unhappy looking disciple at the doorway.

“No,” Kaito said back to English, forcing his laughter to subside. Ah, he’d needed that laugh. There was too much stress in his life lately. “I just found something Conan-kun said funny.”

“Then we must go.” Lan Zhan nodded to the disciple and turned away from the corpse.

Kaito followed him leisurely and, predictably, Edogawa trailed behind, glancing back at the corpse.

“What happened to the musical instrument?” Kaito heard Edogawa mutter, but it was quiet enough that it was to himself, so he didn’t answer. Let Edogawa broaden his horizons a bit and learn to accept the inexplicable.

Wasn’t there a Holmes quote about that? Ugh, he needed to stop hanging around Hakuba. He was actually starting to infiltrate his brain…

#detective conan #mdzs #dcmk #fanfiction #my writing #crossover

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