Aoko: jolts awake at the insistent rapping on her window, heart pounding as she peers through the curtains. The moon silhouettes a figure in white clinging to her balcony, one gloved hand pressed to his side. Her voice drips with venom. "Kaitou Kid? Here to mock my father again?!" She slams the window open, ready to shout—until he collapses forward, bloodied monocle clattering to the floor. His weight sends them both crashing onto her bed, the metallic tang of blood soaking into her yellow duck-patterned sheets.

Kaito: chokes out a laugh, breath fogging his cracked lens as he clutches the bullet wound weeping through his once-pristine suit. "N-nice… pj’s, Ahoko…" His gloved hand brushes the strawberry-patterned sleeve before falling limp.

Aoko: scrambles backward, knees digging into his ribs. Her nightshirt rides up, exposing the scar on her thigh from when he’d "accidentally" set off fireworks too close at twelve. "Don’t move! I’m calling—" Her threat dies as his hat tumbles off, revealing familiar spiky bangs plastered to his forehead with sweat. Her fingers fly to his mask, tearing it off with a sob. "K-K…Kaito?!"

The room spins. Blood pools around them, staining childhood memories—the rose pressed in her dictionary, the math test he’d doodled card suits on, the music box playing their song. Her hands move on their own, ripping his shirt open. The bullet’s entry point mirrors her father’s old injury from a bank robber, but this… this is him.

Kaito: writhes as she pours hydrogen peroxide into the wound, his usual grace reduced to animalistic thrashing. "S-stop… police… coming…"

Aoko: slaps him hard enough to leave a red handprint, tears splashing onto his chest. "You idiot! You let me hate you! You sat there eating my omelet rice while I… I…" Her voice breaks as she threads a needle with shaking hands, recalling Chikage’s patient lessons over miso soup. "Three years ago! The aquarium heist where Dad got stabbed—were you laughing backstage?!"

The needle pierces his flesh. He doesn’t flinch—not from pain, but from her tears hitting his collarbone.

Kaito: grasps her wrist, smearing blood across her freckles. "Wanted… to tell you… after Tropical Land…" His thumb brushes her pulse point, a ghost of their almost-kiss under the fireworks.

Aoko: yanks free, suturing faster. The ruby pendant he’d "won" at the festival dangles between them, glinting like fresh blood. "Liar! You stole this, didn’t you? All those ‘gifts’—just stolen goods!" She snaps the thread with her teeth, bandaging him with torn sheets. "Get out. Before I… before I…"

Sirens wail below. Ginzo’s voice booms through the apartment door—"Aoko! Open up! Kid’s on this block!"

Kaito: stumbles to his feet, leaning heavily on her desk. His blood-soaked glove leaves a print over their third-grade photo. "The gem… in your pencil case… destroy it." He limps toward the window, white cape fluttering like a surrender flag.

Aoko: blocks his path, arms spread. The girl who’d once handcuffed herself to him during a flu now trembles with rage. "Why? So I’m your accomplice?!"

He reaches into her hair, retrieving a blue rose—thorns and all—from behind her ear. The same trick he’d used at six years old to stop her tears.

Kaito: presses it into her palm, fingers lingering. "So you’re… safe."

He vaults out into the storm. She slams the window shut, rose clutched to her chest. When Ginzo bursts in, she’s staring at the bloodstained math homework on her floor—problem #1412 circled, his shaky doodle of a mop-wielding girl in the margin.

"Otou-san…" Her voice doesn’t crack. The rose’s thorns draw blood. "Check the roof. I heard glass breaking."