The helping hand
(Trigger warnings: dead body - in the criminal case -, cursing)

~

The tall male with brown-ish hair opened the door of his old house.
It has been a while, has it? Over five years now... The house looked exactly the same as it did on the day he left. Well, almost exactly the same if you don't count the spider webs all around the place and thick layer of dust. You could see the dust particles floating in the air, reflection of sun in it's golden hour reflecting on it.
The writer waved his hand slightly, unintentionally lifting even more dust. This mistake caused him to sneeze.
"Achoo!" he covered his mouth and nose with his palm quickly. This fast sudden movement clearly disturbed the fluffy animal that was sitting on Poe's shoulders.
The raccoon jumped down at the ground with a huff. The writer crouched and furrowed his eyebrows in apologetic way, patting raccoons head to try making up for his action, even if it should not be even considered all his fault. The raccoon leaned in the pat, forgiving his owner. Poe smiled at that.
"I'm sorry again Karl. The dust is annoying, isn't it?" the writer said with his silent voice. Karl gave him some kind of nod.
"We should get to cleaning up now, before movers arrive." Poe suggested. It was more of a mental note to himself than to the raccoon, but he noticed he thinks better out loud. Besides, it wouldn't feel so lonely that way. The Raccoon he named Karl was his only friend for past years, if there wasn't him, Poe would probably loose his mind in his thoughts he couldn't let out in form of writing short stories that started forming novels in progress.
Poe sight when he saw the van that belonged to upper mentioned movers.
It felt kinda weird when he thought about it. Moving his mostly new belongings that carried memories to a place that carried completely different and older ones felt kinda strange to him. But that was part of the change, right? The change he moved back here for. Or at least half-change.
The reason he moved back to Yokahama was to get rid of the bussy life he lived in America and was so terribly sick of. Yeah, he couldn't have this change in the first place if he didn't go through that harder lifetime before that, but it still didn't make his life in America less exhausting and opposite of what he wanted and always desired - peaceful and chill life in one place without too much social interactions that sometimes even terrified him -.

The amazing Edgar Allan Poe had moved to America in age of twenty two and decited to start studying architecture, since his hopes to become detective as he previously wanted left him. The architecture study was a great success, making him very famous, andmired and successful architect who's name knew basically almost everyone in America.
This job made tons of money, but also drained most of his motivation. At first it was enjoyable, but after some time, it started to feel dull and every design seemed the same. It felt like his imagination was fading away and he had no way to express himself the way he wanted.
He was never good in social interactions, so his only living company became the thrash panda with refined appetite. Even if he could tell Karl basically anything he wanted, he still wanted to express his thoughts in some kind of artistic way. In some way that could be seen. That's when he rediscovered his liking for writing from his past years. He used to write stories for his past friend, Ranpo, alot back in the day.
When he published his first novel, it felt amazing, but also made him feel even more burned out than ever before, because people were hungry for sequels and this hobby of writing started to feel like a second job.
This is the breaking point when Poe decided to turn the page once again.
His job as an architect made him lots of money and the writing made some too, it was enough to move to different country and have some nice life there for quite some time. So that's why he had decided co come back to his past, chill and relieving life in Japan. Even after the event of detective competition, he didn't want to lose hope that he and his rival could start over.

But that fantasy was next to impossible.

What mattered now was to successfully move back to his new house, so the most important part would be done. But it couldn't happen just by snap of fingers, could it?
"New era, Karl..." he thought outloud as the raccoon rubbed his head against Poe's leg. Poe smiled at that act. Karl truly was the light in his dark world.
'I wonder how is Ranpo doing...'

-

Ranpo woke up, but his eyes couldn't see anything.
He felt something fluffy covering them. It felt a little too heavy to be a towel or pillow and movement upwards and downwards in regular intervals clearly meant that it was alive...
Ranpo growled as he figured out what fluffy ball had mistaken it's bed with his face.
"Dad! Haruno-chan! Get your stupid cat off my face!!" Ranpo exclaimed.

Fukuzawa approached his angry child and carefully removed the cute fluffy cat with pointy ears from Ranpo's face. He sight at Ranpo's first words, after waking up whole day after Yosano's treatment at the day of incident with one of local gangs. Not even mentioning how disappointed Fukuzawa was about his son not being remotely as big cat person as he himself was.
But that wasn't important right now. What was important however, was that Ranpo was finally awake and seemed to be acting the same way as always. Same old Ranpo Edogawa...
"Why are you looking at me like that? Is something wrong?" Ranpo asked. Fukuzawa's expression didn't change even a tiny bit, but after over twenty years of living with the cat lover, Ranpo taught himself how to recognize Fukuzawa's emotions, even if his expression never changed.
"Well, I am just glad that you are okay. I was worried." Fukuzawa answered his question. Ranpo nodded.
It was pretty reasonable, considering that he hasn't shown any signs of life beside breathing for the whole day.
Now the sun was setting again, however it wasn't the same day Ranpo last remembered anymore.
"Did any cases appear when I was... unavailable?" Ranpo asked and pat head of the cat that layed on his face few moments ago.
"Fortunately, there weren't any. But now you should eat something and go back to rest. You still must be exhausted." Fukuzawa stated. Ranpo nodded and managed to get up from the bed in Yosano's nursing room.

||Timeskip|| - The other day:

"Welcome back, Ranpo-san." Kunikida greeted Ranpo and sipped from his hot tea with honey. Ranpo nodded to him and plopped himself on his office chair once again.
'What dull day is it going to be today? Can those criminals put on a challenge for once?'
Ranpo thought and drank a sip from his chocolate milk.
Just then Kyouka put a blanket ever him. Ranpo turned around to face the young girl with two long loose pigtails. She gave him a blank stare. She finally said something after Ranpo gave her confused look in return.
"Yosano-sensei said you must be in shock. The blanket will supposedly help you calm down." the girl said.
"Then tell Yosano that it is LOAD OF BULLSHIT!!" Ranpo shouted out the last part so the female doctor in next-door room could hear him.
"Is it? Then why such a hysterical reaction? I wouldn't blame you though. Even I would be in shock if I got wrecked like that." Yosano sang out as she entered the office.
"Well I'm not, Doc. Ock! I'm only pissed off. Those fuckers didn't even let me finish my snack that I got for free! Besides, where are my glasses? Destroyed! One of those rats stepped on them!" Ranpo raged, shot at the smiley and wrapped himself in the blanket more while doing his childish pout.
"That sure is very drastic story, but I can assure you, that your glasses are getting repaired right now." Yosano said. Ranpo sight out of relief. He valued those as much as he valued his own life, so if they were broken forever, he found no point in continuing as someone he is now anymore.

Ranpo and Yosano would continue in arguing, but Jun'ichiro disturbed them from it by announcing that Ranpo has a new case to solve.

"Ranpo-san, you have a new case. A dead body of person in their twenties was found by the river this morning. It's something for you, the police is completely clueless." Tanizaki said.
"I see..." Ranpo giggled at thought that popped up in his head. It would be a strange coincidence if the body belonged to Mr. Double suicide himself.
"I heard that!" Bandage-squandering machine - Dazai Osamu - pouted in offended way from his couch, taking of his headphones. "Besides, the body belonged to a woman. Shame, she could have committed double suicide with me." Dazai frowned.
"Here we go again..." Kunikida hissed at thought that Dazai will fantasize about double suicide for another 72 hours.
"Alright, I'll take it. It could be a nice way of relieving from the SHOCK. Don't you think, YOSANO?" Ranpo accepted the offer to solve the mystery behind the dead corpse by the river, intentionally saying two words louder as a reference to Yosano's thought of him being shocked.
"Just keep it, you'll thank me later."

'What a stupid assuming, Yosano-sensei. Nothing can surprise me or drag me down that easily.' Ranpo thought. On the second thought about the incident, he brushed everything off and decited to get to work.

Ranpo grabbed his drinking bottle and filled it with sweet juice, put on his boater hat and gakuran, both matching in light brown color, and hopped to the front door.
"Kenji, you're going with me as a bodyguard." Ranpo ordered and threw the blanket around his shoulders. Could someone blame him on that? The temperature was getting kinda cold and more importantly, he was visibly in shock - doctor's orders -.
"Okay!" Kenji ran up to his older college and went by his side with a bright smile.

-

"A case? For me?"
"You heard me right. There is a possibility that our detective Ranpo Edogawa is still unavailable, but citizen of Yokohama still need to be safe. Would you take it then?" voice of older man around his forties described his offer to bigger detail from the other side of the phone.
"Hm... Yeah, I'll take it."
"Sweet. I'll send you a location and I hope to see you soon." the older man said and sent location to the other man.
"Me too, and thank you again for the offer."
"No problem, detective."
As they ended the phone call, the younger male giggled.
"You heard him, we have a case to solve." he said to the gray animal on his shoulders.

-

"So... where exactly are we going, Ranpo-san?" the blonde fourteen year old boy asked while swiftly walking by older detective's side.
"I was told the location is by the Tsurumi river, meaning... It's two blocks away." Ranpo replied with nose buried in the map. "Oi, Kenji. Would you mind stopping by at bakery to get some snacks?" detective suggested with a smirk.
"But isn't that case more importa-"
"No it's not." Ranpo cut Kenji off. "Well, it is, but I have priorities and needs to do before doing the main work. One being that I need at least one of those three things to think better: either my glasses from Fukuzawa-dono, food, or complete silence. Since the glasses are currently broken and second of piece is just impossible in presence of those dumba-...butt... Police officers and journalists, the only option left is food. Of course, there is alternative of getting some kind of weed or coke in my system, but I need to keep my perfect image in eyes of people all around the world, so the last one would not work." Ranpo explained as Kenji just nodded, since he couldn't find words to reply with.
"I see..." Kenji said when his confusion began to switch into realization.

Not even two minutes later, Ranpo was carrying his fresh-baked snacks with proud smile, meanwhile Kenji looked around to spot the red and blue lights of the police cars that signalise where the crime scene happened.
He didn't have to look for long. He spotted at least five cars and tons of yellow 'Keep out!' tape about block away from them. Kenji also noticed crowds of journalists and reporters that shoved microphones and cameras to everyone's face. The child tucked sleeve of Ranpo's shirt to let him know about it.
"Oh, there they are." Ranpo said, thinking out loud as the two headed in that direction.

"Oi! Isn't it my favorite police dumb-dumb Minoura-san?" Ranpo exclaimed as he walked up to the chief of police that gave him his ordinary grumpy look. The man sure didn't look too happy about Ranpo's presence.
"No manners, as always. What are you even doing here, Edogawa? This is not your case." Minoura hissed at the young detective that stuck a whole bagel in his mouth.
Ranpo raised his index finger as gesture to the chief, signalizing to give him a moment, clearly to give him some time to chew the bagel.
Ranpo cleared his throat when his mouth was empty again.
"I beg you pardon?! What do you mean 'not my case'?!" Ranpo exclaimed, clearly offended by policeman's words. Not only did he dare to speak up about Ranpo's manners, but taking cases away from him?! Who did he think he was?
"What do you mean 'I beg you pardon?' as if it was my fault that you are getting yourself into something that is currently none of your business." Minoura argued with the pouting detective.

"Then ask Sugimoto, he'll tell you who's case it is." Ranpo said and nodded in apprentice policeman's direction. Sugimoto rubbed back of his neck.
"Sorry sir... but you said call the-"
"I know what I said - we'll talk about that later -. But it appears you'll either have to pack your things or cooperate with the guy I called, Mr. Number one detective. " Minoura came to the conclusion. He really didn't want to waste his time with Ranpo. That feeling was mutual, yet Ranpo didn't care about losing time as much as about loosing his intellect from the dumb (and worse) aura the whole police crew gave.
"Too much words, no action. Were is that corpse, so we'll get this over with." Ranpo rolled his eyes.
Minoura pointed down at the riverside where supposedly lied the corpse.

Ranpo hopped down to the river side with officer Sugimoto right behind him.
There truly did lye corpse of a dead woman. Ranpo already deducted that she couldn't float in the river for longer than about a day. Her body looked pretty fresh, even if stay in the water did visibly damage it.
There however was one more person. Alive, but their skin was also dangerously pale, almost as skin of the corpse. The person was a tall male in his late twenties with brown-ish hair that had purpe shades in them, his longs bangs that completely covered his tired eyes. He wore not too standing out, yet fancy looking clothes, high boots with medium heels - in man fashion spectrum -. His shoulders were covered by black coat he let loosely rest on them. Most standing out part about him however was the raccoon that sat on his head.
Ranpo immediately knew who it was, which made his heart beat faster out of nervousness and slight fear.
'I thought I'll never see him again...'
Ranpo stopped when realizing that the other man might not remember him after those long years - or maybe even decited to forget about him on purpose -. Ranpo thought of way to find out which way they were on - asking him who he was and deciding how to continue depending on the male's reply -.
"Hey, who are you? Outsiders are not allowed to come to the place of a crime scene." Ranpo raised his voice when approaching the taller man.
"It is Ed-" Sugimoto whispered to him.
"I know who it is. But this is just between us two." Ranpo cut him off and stepped only about three feet away from the other man at the crime scene.
"I was called to solve it, acually. I thought you still remember that solving crimes is also my thing..." the male stopped before saying detective's name "...dear Ranpo Edogawa. Or did you really forget about me?"
Ranpo closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly away, trying his best to make it look playful and not nervous way. The male in front of him maybe tried to make his last line sound confident as much as possible, but Ranpo recognized hidden sadness undertone in his voice.
'Would he be acually sad if I said that I don't remember him?'
"Of course I didn't forget... dear Edgar Allan Poe." Ranpo said in mocking way, also making the dramatic pause and adding 'dear' before saying his old friend's name. A light smile formed on Poe's face.
"Right..."
"Left. Now let's solve this primitive case." Ranpo scoffed.
'Just like in the good old days...'

-

"Ugh-!" Minoura rolled his eyes while liting up the cigarette. He just watched the two detectives have more of a small talk than acually solving the case, meanwhile somewhere out there was family of the poor victim and those two sociopaths were laughing over her dead body. It grossed him out.
"Is this some kind of love story? What about the damn case?!" Minoura complained, watching the situation from far distance.
"I don't know." Kenji shrugged while trying to tame local shirts by feeding them leftovers from Ranpo's snacks.
"Seriously, who thought it was good idea to call Edogawa to the case? Or make him number one detective in general?!" Minoura muttered, not wanting to except the fact that their police career would be screwed if Ranpo wasn't there to do it for them.
"Hey Minoura-san! We solved the case!" Ranpo yelled at the grumpy chief from afar.
"You better impress me after that cliché 'Love at first sight' shit..." Minoura growled and blew out the gray smoke. Little did he know that the two had a long history with each other before this day, yet it didn't look so bright as it seemed from his point of view.

~

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