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The child took one look at him and grinned. Dazai tried to replicate it, but it felt foreign to him.
“You’re like me too, even though I’m obviously smarter!” The boy made an even bigger smile. Dazai grimaced.
The boy had a black hat on and an equally dark coat. He was in some form connected to a police academy, but had ran away or something, because he clearly wasn’t with them anymore. He had spiky black hair and never opened his eyes, oddly enough. There was something about him though, something which made him different not unlike his own self. But he was human, to which Dazai could not say the same. After all, he was not human, just like the name of his ability.
“Kid, would you stop spacing out?” The boy huffs, irritated.
“If I’m a kid, then you are too.”
“Hey! I’m the world’s greatest detective, Edogawa Ranpo! You can’t talk to me like that, I’m way more superior than you, plus I’m older! Respect your elders kid!”
Great, just what Dazai needed. Another petty brat to deal with. He focused on the main issue at hand. Food.
“Since I’m younger, you elders have to look out for me. So why don’t you give this poor starving child the last piece of bread the grocer gave out?” Dazai asked pitifully, in a way to gain some sympathy,
“Nope!”
Dazai sighed, his last attempt at gaining food failed. He supposed this was the end for him, pathetically dying in a lone alleyway between a garbage bin and an arrogant boy. He welcomed sweet death into his arms and embra-
“We can… share instead. I guess.”
Dazai turned to look at him with barely concealed disbelief.
“W-what? If you want I can just let you die…”
Dazai quickly shook his head and the boy broke the loaf of bread into two. It was dry and musty, but it was still precious food that Dazai would never waste. He savoured every bite, carefully chewing every piece and eating every last crumb.
Ranpo ruffled his hair as soon as he had finished gulping the last bite. “Heh, you were hungry, weren’t you?
Dazai immediately moved from the touch and looked at Ranpo warily as he ate his piece too. Ranpo laughed and extended his left arm.
“Truce, dummy?”
Dazai, shuffled, deep in thought before eventually grasping Ranpo’s hand with his own. The two did a firm handshake with the wrong hand, but they couldn’t care less. Their truce, their bond, their story, intertwined and twisted their paths of life at that very moment. History in the making.
And it all went unnoticed on a normal Friday night.