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Fukuzawa Yukichi was not a dad. In fact, he should not have been around children to begin with. He didn’t understand them. They didn't follow any sort of logic and made it impossible to follow anything they tried to say. Impossible to predict what they might or might not do. The only reason that he took in Ranpo was that the boy had nowhere else to go, and his intellect, his ‘gift’, made him perfect for what Fukuzawa wanted. To help people. Still, he proved to be a challenge of his own.
Ranpo seemed at first a total and complete enigma, but Fukuzawa quickly realized that there was a method to his so-called ‘madness’, even if it made no sense to anyone but himself. He preferred candy over regular foods because candy was reliable, there was no way the texture and taste would be wrong and he wouldn’t like it. Fukuzawa just had to learn how to prepare the few dishes he knew how to make and that Ranpo would eat the same way every time. That led to a lot of takeout when he was too tired to try and a lot of wasted food. He couldn’t navigate trains by himself because he would get overwhelmed too quickly. And when he became irritable he needed to find a quiet calm place.
Fukuzawa is not a dad. Even if he carried earplugs and spare yen for candies on him at all times it did not change who he was. No matter how hard he tried, the blood that tainted his past would never wash clean. The only thing he could do with hands that were expertly trained to kill was to stop people like him, and hope that the good he would do would atone for those sins. So he moved away from each hug, stiffened each time his hand was grabbed.
He should have known. He should have been prepared. Bodies had piled up in the course of a few days. None seemed to be connected and the most two out of the five gad was the same place they did their laundry. But one on Sunday and the other on Monday. It was easy to write them off as Mafia hits, and that's exactly what the police did. The Mafia fractured after the old boss’ death and the emergence of a new one. Fukuzawa knew the man well, and knew that it wasn't his work. He had carried on the tradition of the one before him. Their actual targets had their teeth stomped in on the curb and shot three times in the back. These victims were only shot once, a fatal one every time but a slow and agonizing death. They bled out in minutes with no one around to help, and their arms were placed over their chest, perfectly straight as if they were in a coffin. The killer waited long enough for them to bleed out, arrange their body, and leave before police arrived or any witnesses saw.
Ranpo had his eyes on the case the minute it hit headlines, but he wasn’t allowed to officially join it. They did not have enough repor with the police to invite themselves to a case and over half of the force despised their very existence. So the answer was no until the fiance of the newest victim came to them for help. Ranpo didn’t like her. Fukuzawa could tell by the way he stilled slightly when she walked in. However, he didn’t loudly announce his displeasure as he had always done in the past. Fukuzawa was actually proud. He shouldn’t have been too caught up in the potential that Ranpo had actually done what he said to notice that it wasn’t good behavior, it was a warning sign. Ranpo knew something he didn’t.
He should have known better. He should have been more prepared. He didn’t see the gun until it was too late. A gunshot rang out, a sharp crack through the tense air. The alleyway Ranpo had darted down at the scene of the newest body was dark, only vaguely illuminated by the street light and the full moon that shone above. Police had arrived right away, much faster than they had in the past. The body hadn’t been moved into place as his skin was still warm yet they arrived too late to save him. There was a sharp gasp next to him. He turned in horror.
Ranpo’s cocky smile was still on his face. Hesitantly he looked down and reached towards his stomach where red, thick blood seeped into his black shirt. His fingers pressed into the cloth and came away red. Then he collapsed.
Fukuzawa heard footsteps as the murderer, the fiance whose face he could barely make out in the darkness, but he knew without a doubt that it was her, ran down the alleyway. He didn’t try to follow. Instead, he thrusted his arms out to catch Ranpo before his head cracked on the ground below. Ranpo cried out as his chest was jostled from the sudden impact. Fukuzawa held him in his arms with a gentleness he didn't think he was capable of. He rested Ranpo’s head on the ground, using his hat to cushion it. Quickly, he cut away a large strip of cloth from his sleeve and pressed it against the wound. He’d have to get a new yukata but he didn’t care, it didn’t even cross his mind. Ranpo screamed like he had been shot again the second he made contact with the wound. Blood instantly soaked the cloth but he continued to hold it in place.
“Stop it! Stop, please, it hurts,” Ranpo begged as tears welled up in his eyes and his hands clenched into tight fists. Fukuzawa didn’t let up. With his free hand, he ripped more of the cloth which came away easily from the tear he had already created, and held it in place over the cloth now completely soaked in blood. Ranpo only screamed louder. Footsteps ran to the allway and he looked up to see two of the police officers who had been at the scene.
“Get an ambulance!” He ordered he didn’t wait to see their response. Instead, he looked back down at Ranpo. His chest heaved as he took in frantic, short, sharp breaths. He tilted his head up to look at his chest before he fell back down.
“It is going to be ok,” Fukuzawa said quietly but he didn’t know which one of them the words were directed towards. It felt sick to call the boy lucky, but somehow the bullet managed to avoid an artery. By the thick, slow blood Fukuzawa knew he had more of a chance. If the bullet had hit an artery the blood would have sprayed out, what happened to all of the other victims. Victims, that's what Ranpo was. But he couldn’t dwell on that any longer. Ranpo must have caught her off guard, as she didn’t have enough time to line up the shot perfectly.
Fukuzawa tried, but for the life of him he could not understand why she would have done it. While he was intelligent, it was Ranpo who solved the crimes. He was there to protect him. He had never failed a job as a bodyguard before. The theater didn’t truly count as it was much more complicated than his normal jobs. But the one time it really counted, counted more than any rich CEO or political affiliate, he failed.
“Each one of the victims bled out in a matter of minutes,” Ranpo whispered. His cries had lessened, and while that calmed his nerves slightly as the cries only made him more worried, he also knew what it meant. Ranpo hated pain. He threw a fit over each minor bruise, each paper cut. He had been banned from the kitchen due to the one time he tried to make himself breakfast and ended up with a long cut down his leg from where he had dropped the knife, too distracted by all the steps he had to follow. Fukuzawa made sure they didn’t run out of easy or instant foods to make after that. So, for him to become calm, it meant that he couldn’t feel the pain any more.
“That was because there was no one there to stop the bleeding and she hit an artery each time.” He tried to keep his voice as steady as possible. Ranpo always knew how to pick up on the slightest changes to his voice that no one else could. “There is an ambulance coming.”
“The average response time for an ambulance to arrive is nine minutes, and the ride to the hospital is forty-five minutes and forty seconds,” His words were cold, detached, like he spoke of his death sentence.
“Ranpo, stop thinking,” Fukuzawa ordered. He held down the cloth on the wound with one hand as he moved the other hand up and brushed it gently through his hair. Blood streaked across Ranpo’s face and into his hair but still the boy leaned into his touch and shut his eyes gently. "Where panic and endearment would once be, Fukuzawa felt only dread.".
“Keep your eyes open,” He ordered as he tapped Ranpo’s head.The boy groaned as he peeled his eyes open and looked up at Fukuzawa. There was something wrong with his eyes, a sight Fukuzawa never wanted to see again. Something he had only seen after he slapped the boy who then clung to him and cried. No matter what, there was always a sort of spark in his eyes. A life to them that Fukuzawa hadn’t seen in decades. No matter the citation, a murder scene at the dinner table, those eyes were always bright. But now they seemed dull, they seemed hopeless.
“Tell me about the case. How did you know it was her?”
“It was obvious,” He said with a small frown on his face. Was it the best idea to have someone discuss the person who had just shot them? Probably not, but anything to keep Ranpo talking. He couldn’t risk him closing his eyes.
As Ranpo began to explain when he first noticed the case when the fiance, the murderer, came to the agency. Fukuzawa heard footsteps rush towards them. The police officer from before carried a hefty fire aid kit and two more officers followed. The man placed the kit next to him, and instantly Fukuzawa began to rifle through it.
“The ambulance will be here soon. They were already on route to collect the body,” He said, as Fukuzawa pulled out packs of sterile gauze and bandages and placed them on top of the box so they wouldn’t touch the filthy ally floor. He took one of the small, yet sharp, scalpels and cut away the fabric of Ranpo’s shirt from the bottom up to the wound.
“Ranpo, I need you to stay very still. Do you understand?” He asked firmly. Ranpo looked up at him and swallowed before he nodded. He directed one of the officers to take over pressure on the wound as he bunched up the thickest bandages he could find into a cylindrical shape. Ranpo’s hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve. Gently he held the boy's hand as he looked at the police officer who nodded in return.
The officer pulled the cloth bandages away to expose the small, deep hole burrowed into Ranpo’s abdomen. He held the gauze in one hand and gently pressed it against the skin, or, rather, where the skin should be. Ranpo held the other in a death grip.
“Breathe,” He orderd and Ranpo took as deep of a breath as he could. On the exhale Fukuzawa pressed down and inserted it into the wound. Ranpo’s entire body tensed as he let out a loud, blood curdling scream. The gauze rubbed at the sides of it as he packed it deep beneath the skin. It instantly became soaked in blood. His fingers were slick as he continued to press it in until only a small section of it remained outside. The wound was much deeper than he originally thought but he didn’t want to risk it going any further. There was already a risk that it would push the bullet further but that was a problem for the surgeons. He couldn’t get to them if he bled out. The bandages bulged underneath the skin in a truly horrific sight. In all the times he had to pack a wound, which was much more than people realized after living a life of bloodshed, it was still one of the only things that made him uncomfortable to look at.
“Leave me alone, please stop!” Ranpo begged, nearly incompressible through noises that were half screams and half desperate gasps for air. Yet each breath was shallower than the last and he began to wheeze slightly. Fukuzawa wiped the blood that coated his free hand off on his yukata and placed his hand on top of the officers who instantly pulled away.
Ranpo was very clear when he wanted touch. When he did he would practically beg for it, throwing himself at Fukuzawa any opportunity he could. The only kind of physical touch the military school would give was punishments, something Ranpo had mentioned on an off hand one day. And he was careful to stay away from anyone on the streets, there was no one safe enough for him to even be within a few feet of. Strangers would look at the way Ranpo clung to him and see a child who never really grew up and out of their clingy stage. But Fukuzawa knew better, he was simply a child who hadn’t been touched since his parents death.
But on the days he didn’t, he let the entire world know. Those were the hard days. Fukuzawa changed the way he thought quickly. They weren’t those hard days for him having to ‘deal with’ Ranpo, they were much harder for the boy himself. Everything was too much. Lights too bright, sound too loud, everything too overwhelming. He’d flinch before Fukuzawa could even get close enough to make contact, and Fukukzawa knew better than to try and push that. He wasn’t good at touch either. The only thing his hands brought was pain. Something he swore he would never cause to the boy, but he knew the day would come. He knew logically that he was helping, ensuring that he would live long enough to avoid touch again. He used to be able to focus on logic. But that all changed when he took Ranpo in. He couldn’t help but feel guilty for the pain his hands caused.
The sirens seemed to have taken their time. By the time he heard them Ranpo’s face had lost all color, a slight sheen of sweat glistened on his face. The slight wheeze had grown, and there was a loud rattle in each breath. Fukuzawa didn’t want to think about what fluid in his lungs could mean. He was moved aside as two men lifted Ranpo up and onto a stretcher.
“He was shot one time in the abdomen,” Fukuzawa reported as he followed next to Ranpo as the men wheeled him out of the alleyway. “It didn’t puncture an artery but did veins. I packed the wound which slowed the bleeding, but not by much.”
One man climbed into the truck and helped lift Ranpo up and secured the stretcher in place. Fukuzawa tried to follow to the empty seat next to it but one of the men held their hand out to stop him.
“Who are you to him?”
“I am his…guardian,” A title he had used before but each time it paused on his lips. It made it seem real, an acknowledgment of the legal papers he had to fill out to have Ranpo in his care.
“Well, you can’t sit back here. You need to move to the passenger seat,” Fukuzawa didn’t want to leave Ranpo. He wasn’t entirely sure if he could. Even though he knew time was of the essence he still froze. After a moment he came to his senses and began to walk away and to the front seat.
“No!” He turned back quickly as he heard Ranpo scream. He had somehow managed to sit up despite the paramedic's attempt to get him to sit back. “Don’t leave me! Please, Dad!”
Dad. He didn’t hesitate to climb into the back and the paramedics didn’t try to stop him. Ranpo layed back down when he saw him, a look of relief in his eyes with a small smile. He reached out for Fukuzawa’s hand. His dirty hands that are physically and metaphorically coated in blood. Too ruined to hold something as important and as precious as Ranpo. Ranpo’s face turned to a small frown and that was all it took for Fukuzawa to clasp his hand on his own and hold it tight.
They sat like that the entire ride to the hospital which was much longer then he would have preferred. The only time he let go was when he was in the way of the paramedics. They inserted a needle into Ranpo’s left hand, his veins were too small to start an IV. He held Fukuzawa’s hand tightly as the skin of his other hand was punctured and the needle rested underneath. It seemed to take forever, but he was kept busy by their questions and by the boy who always looked larger than life looking so small on the stretcher.
“No, he has no blood-borne illnesses.”
“O blood type.”
“No, no allergies.”
All things he would likely have to repeat to the doctors, but it helped to keep his mind occupied and avoid the spiral that started each time he had a spare moment to think.
The rest was a blur. They rushed Ranpo out of the vehicle to where a few medical professionals stood in wait. They rushed him into the building and turned down a long hallway. He tried to follow and got halfway down it before a woman cut in front of him and directed him away to the waiting room nearby. The chairs were uncomfortable hard plastic, but he settled in anyway. The woman brought him a clipboard with pages upon pages he had to fill out of patient information, medical history, and a police report. They were the only ones who could place her at the scene of the crime, and Ranpo the only victim, only person, who survived while Fukuzawa was the only witness.
“Do you have anyone who could bring you new clothes?” She asked kindly and he looked down at his blood soaked clothing which had large chunks ripped away. Quite out of place among the scrubs and casual clothing from the two other people who were in the same agony as he was. There was only one person he could call, and the last time he heard from him he was in Yokohama. He could only hope that he still was. He was his only hope, and when he went straight to voicemail Fukuzawa felt something deep inside him deflate.
He was there in under an hour.
“You look like shit,” He looked up as a loud voice doomed. He hadn’t even noticed the door open and he had never been so happy to see him.
“Fukuchi,” He greeted the other man. His hair was slightly disheveled and by the casual clothes we wore Fukuzawa knew he had just woken up. He only felt slightly guilty for taking away from the rest the other man always needed desperately. In one one hand he held a bag he presumed held clean clothing and the other a large cup of coffee that he handed over. Fukuzawa’s hands shook slightly as he took the cup with a nod of gratitude. The coffee was bitter, likely instant, and he preferred tea, but it was what he needed.
“Go, get dressed and clean the blood off,” Fukuzawa hesitated as he looked over to the door and then back to Fukuchi. “I’ll keep watch and if anything happens I’ll go find you. Now go.”
It was easy to slip back into his old ways. He cleaned off the blood with stiff, almost mechanical motions. Pure muscle memory so he wouldn’t think about whose blood was on his hands. He was back in the room, fully cleaned and in the new clothes, in a few minutes. He had to stop himself from running to the bathroom and back but as he knew would happen, there were no updates.
They sat in silence, no need for words. That wasn’t what Fukuzawa had called him for anyways. He just needed someone to be there. They sat there for hours. Each time the doors opened every head in the room snapped up, desperate for news about their loved one. The doctors spoke quietly so the others could hear. One woman embraced the man, presumably her husband, tight as they thanked the doctor repeatedly and followed him out of the room. The other woman wasn’t as lucky. They watched as her face dissolved in shock and she stumbled out of the room. The second the door shut behind her they heard the screaming start. Finally the door opened one last time.
“Fukuzawa Yukichi?” He jumped to his feet and walked over to her quickly. A small smile on her face.
“How is he?”
“The bullet punctured major veins and his spleen. They were able to remove the bullet and stitch up the tears. He lost a lot of blood and is still in critical condition, however there is a very likely chance that he will have little to no future complications.” She said more but he couldn’t hear her. He felt a hand on his shoulder as Fukuchi said something to her. It was as if a massive weight had been lifted off of his chest, and finally the exhaustion that had been fought off by adrenaline started to settle in.
“Can I see him?” He asked and she gave him a small smile.
“Not yet. We are monitoring his condition until it improves. If you would like to go get food from the cafeteria or a vending machine you can give us a number so we can reach you when you are able to see him.” He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see Fukuchi next to him.
“I’ll get some food so you can stay.” He turned back to the chair and sat back for another agonizing period of patience.
By the next time that she came in, the small bowl of rice and miso soup Fukuchi had brought was gone and the cup of tea he had gotten was cold. It felt hard to keep anything down. He rose quickly and walked over to her.
“Can I see him now?”
“His condition is much better and he has been transferred to a room on the children's ward. And,” She paused to give him a smile as he led him towards the door to the waiting room. “He keeps asking about his Dad.”
“Thank you,” He said and he felt Fukuchi lay a hand on his shoulder once more as he followed him through the door but turned towards the exit.
“I’ll be in a more comfortable place here! And I better meet the kid when he feels better!” Fukuzawa nodded as he disappeared around a corner. The woman led him through a maze or doors and hallways until finally they stepped into a long hallway. On the walls were cute paintings of flowers that tried to distract from the harsh, sterile environment. She opened a glass door that had beautiful, delicate pink flowers on a small tree and he quickly stepped inside.
The room was small and mostly taken up by machinery attached to the wall and on polls. Many tubes led straight into Ranpo’s skin or disappeared underneath the blue gown he wore.
“Dad!” He cried out as he sat up quickly. Fukuzawa rushed over and caught him before he ripped anything or knocked anything loose. He was warm. Something so small that shouldn’t have mattered but it did. Warmth meant life. He studied his chest as it rose and fell with slightly shallow yet stable breaths. A wide smile was on his face as he blinked hard as he tried to focus his slightly dazed eyes. The leftover effects of the anesthesia and painkillers still seemed to muddle his perception of the world. He knew that once he woke up he would have pretended it never happened. He never called Fukuzawa that. They would go back to normal, with Fukuzawa as a weird legal guardian. Although, that's not exactly what they were anymore.
Ranpo reached out and grabbed his hand as tightly as he could, which concerned him by how weak it was. A wide smile was on his face as he blinked hard as he tried to focus his eyes. His first reaction was to pull away. His hands were not something to be held by something so precious and important. His hands had caused him so much pain only hours before. But he felt the way his fingers shook as he used what little strength he had just to keep Fukuzawa near him. So instead he pulled up a chair next to the bed and squeezed his hand back.
“I am here.”