Food for Thought

[madimpossibledreamer]

This isn’t where I thought the chapters would be broken up but it works better this way I think.

Main Points:
Death Mark/Shiin
Follow-up to How to Live
Chapter Summary: Mashita, unfortunately, is left to his thoughts while they eat.
Word Count: 650
Rating: Teen, ish, Mashita is all but dancing around the fact he has a crush
Spoilers: Post Good Ending, so identity spoilers, ending spoilers, general game spoilers...
Warnings: touching on game concepts (like the child predator implications and bullying/neglect implications) and generally for Mashita

         It’s Yashiki who looks vaguely embarrassed when he gets back, which probably means that Mashita’s educated guess about the delivery man was right on the money. He only lets himself be a little smug. It’s not as if he doesn’t know he’s good at his job.
         It seems, when the detective tastes it, like apparently the older man splurged on some fancy ramen. Not really his taste, but like hell is he turning the food down when it’d hurt the older man’s feelings—not that Yashiki’d need to know that, of course. Mashita’s definitely feeling himself sober up a bit as they eat. He hates it a little—the guy’s too attractive to be facing without some sort of distraction—but at the same time he’s probably not going to do something he regrets if he’s not drunk. Hopefully.
         Mashita hates the silence, but then, he generally hates wasting his time in general, always needs to be doing something. It’s companionable this once, as Yashiki tries to mind his manners but apparently forgot he was hungry too long. It’s weirdly endearing, but then, most things Yashiki does are. Like that weird ‘adventure game protagonist’ mindset where he’d just pick up anything and everything and somehow most of it would actually work out to be useful. At the time, Mashita had just thought the guy was a kleptomaniac, but just like with his hanging out with kids, he’d managed to seem so apologetically inoffensive that Mashita’s mind hadn’t jumped to thinking he was a predator, like it would have with any other adult man in such a situation. Knowing what he knows now, maybe that instinct of what would be useful is actually something to do with the Kujou powers.
         To pass the time, Mashita tries to think about what little he knew about the missing Kujou heir. Very little, honestly. This side of town with all this fancy façades wasn’t his scene (like anyone in the police force would let him work high-profile cases, with his blunt attitude), and he’d only vaguely remembered thinking to himself the one time there was an article in the paper about the guy that Kujou sounded like one of those rich assholes, the ones that have enough money to write off anything weird they do as ‘quirky’ or, the preferred term, ‘eccentric’. He’d definitely written off any mention of the supernatural, but it’s not like that was all that unusual with these old families, so it’s not like that stood out. He hadn’t bothered thinking about it since. He probably would’ve taken another look if they’d actually managed to include a picture of some kind, even if a lot of the weird unintended charisma would’ve just been lost in a photo.
         And the library, here—again, more evidence that Yashiki had gotten his memories back, because he remembers turning this place upside down looking for clues, and the books laid out now don’t look like the guy had to search very hard to find what he was looking for, even if they might not be giving the answers he wanted. He even made a little effort to tidy up a bit, though it looks like he’s a naturally haphazard person. Honestly, to look at Mashita, you’d probably think that he was the untidy one, and you wouldn’t be wholly wrong, but even his office is better than this place.
         Actually—and this thought hits Mashita and makes him grimace—there might be a darker explanation to Yashiki’s attitude, as indicated by what little he’d mentioned about Kujou’s childhood—he’d been trying to be inoffensive and unassuming so long it was second nature, so much so that he could default to it even without his own memories. Mashita’s seen that kind of thing more than he’d like, in his line of work. That’s kind of deeply tragic, but then, this whole family is, isn’t it?