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Ranpo was seven when the question finally occurred to him.
It wasn’t that it had never crossed his mind, but he usually had more important things to dwell on, like snacks and puzzles that were still too easy. But that day, his mother had wanted to sort through old photo albums and being a good son, Ranpo went to help her.
There was one album dedicated entirely to his mother’s pregnancy. He watched her smile at the pictures, tracing over the bump that grew bigger as the pages were flipped, finally ending with a picture of her in a hospital bed giving a thumbs up at the camera, though her smile was strained. Then there was a second picture where she seemed exhausted but was still smiling at the baby bundled in blue that she cradled in her arms.
He had seen these pictures before but now that he really thought about it…
“Mom, how did I get here?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, knowing what he meant and hoping that she was wrong.
“I mean, you told me I was growing in your tummy and then the doctors pulled me out when I got too big, but how did I get there in the first place? Why was I growing in your tummy anyway? And how come the doctors had to pull me out? And I see ladies who look like that in the store sometimes too, are they also growing babies?”
His mother smiled, though internally, she was cursing her husband for being away. Not that she couldn’t handle it herself, but he needed to face the awkwardness with her. Oh well. They knew this day would come and had prepared a lie for it.
“Well Ranpo, when a husband and wife decide they want a child, they have to make one. And they do that with a special ceremony. At the end of it, a special seed is created and the mother ingests it. Like how a seed absorbs water and sunlight in the ground, this special baby seed absorbs nutrients from the food the mother eats. It grows and grows into a baby, but eventually, the baby gets too big for the mother’s stomach. You know how apples fall from trees? Like that, but with a baby.”
He nodded, believing every word. If he really thought about it and focused, Ranpo could have poked holes in the story but why would he? Babies weren’t a topic he was especially interested in and this was told to him by his mother. His mother, the smartest person in the whole world. If she said so, then it must be true. So instead, he asked something else.
“If babies fall out, how come the doctors had to pull me out?”
“Because you weren’t in the correct position to fall. You were ready to, but you just couldn’t, so the doctors had to cut open my stomach and pull you out. I still have the scar,” she said proudly, pulling up her shirt a bit to reveal the horizontal scar that stretched across her lower stomach.
Ranpo had seen it before but it still amazed him to think that she got cut open like that and was able to hold him so soon after. His mom was really cool!
“Okay, I get it now. All those ladies I see in the store are also growing babies then.”
“Yes, that’s right. Now come on, I want to finish up another album before I have to get started on dinner,” she said, distracting him from asking any more questions.
She smiled at her oblivious son, internally swearing that her husband was going to be the one to tell him the truth when the time came. All by himself. Well, maybe she’d help a little. But it was mostly going to be him!
(Neither of them got the chance to tell the truth.)
Years later, Ranpo would help create the armed detective agency.
One year in and he quickly solved all sorts of cases, in all sorts of locations, usually the streets or people’s houses. This was one of those occasions, made interesting that the man had gone missing inside the house. Not gone somewhere and never came back, but missing while never leaving the house.
The suspects were the man’s wife and son, who was living with them while attending college. The wife had been the one to call the police, claiming that her husband had gone on a walk and never returned. A routine search revealed nothing, and the police had noticed that there was security camera footage of the man entering the house after work but none of him leaving that night, nor the next day. Obviously, that meant the man was imprisoned within the house somewhere (seriously, how stupid was the city’s police) and Ranpo had been asked to come along with the police to search the house.
The wife and son hovered nervously as Ranpo and Officer Yasui poked through the kitchen, bathroom, office, and living room, finding nothing.
“Now for the real fun!” Ranpo said, going towards the master bedroom.
His hand was smacked off the doorknob. He rubbed his hand and glared at the woman, who looked a mixture of angry, worried, and… Was that fear?
“You can’t—”
“We can,” Yasui interrupted, holding up the permit, “We are legally allowed to search every inch of this house. If we cause damage, you can sue, but you can’t stop us from searching through the bedroom. If you continue to be in the way, we also have the legal right to detain you for the remainder of the search.”
She huffed and stomped to the side, taking her anger out on the son by ordering him to his room. He backed away by a few steps, but clearly wasn’t going to miss the search.
Ranpo opened the door to find an ordinary master bedroom. A vanity dresser, a regular dresser, a king-size bed and a closed closet door to the right.
He didn’t do anything right away, just walked around, wiping his finger on a few surfaces, noting how the woman relaxed or tensed while the son stood in confusion and anticipation. The wife definitely did it, and the key was in the room, the only question was finding it.
He threw the closet doors open, noting her small jump through his peripheral vision. He slowly made his way from the right end, to the left, noting every detail. When he got to the other wall, he noticed something about the seams connecting it felt off. When he pressed slightly, he could feel it give way. He shoved it open to reveal a dark stairway down, as he thought.
The house was sitting on a hill and appeared to be one-story from the outside, but there was definitely space to dig beneath and build a secret basement.
“Ooh, secret room,” he said, running down before anyone could stop him.
He paused once he got to the room and turned on the lights, for on the bed was a dead body. The body of the missing husband.
He stopped smiling in the presence of the dead, noting the finger-shaped bruises on the man’s neck. Right on cue, the wife came huffing down with Yasui and the son on her heels.
“It’s not what you think! I can explain, it was an accident, there’s—”
Ranpo held up a hand to make her pause, taking his glasses out. “Of course there’s a reason. A motive. And with these glasses, I can figure all that out and more. Special Ability: Ultra-Deduction!”
He could almost feel the bright kanji that appeared when an ability was used pouring around him when he put on the glasses. Those tended to be pretty bright though, so he always closed his eyes until he was sure they were gone. He opened them again, feeling the pieces fall into place. Some very confusing pieces.
“Ranpo-kun, are you alright?” Yasui asked worriedly. The man sometimes felt more like a caring uncle than a police officer he worked with.
Ranpo nodded, trying to push away the thoughts. He was a detective at a case! He couldn’t dwell on those realizations.
“The killer was you!” he said, dramatically pointing to the wife. Honestly, it was so obvious he didn’t even need the glasses, but they were handy for helping him figure out the method and motive.
She denied it of course, but he continued. “It was an accident, or so you think. That passive-aggressive chore chart in the kitchen, you were down here to punish him for not doing the dishes for three weeks straight. It was supposed to be fun and a little painful, but you were truly angry with no other outlet. You went too far, snapped his neck, panicked, and decided to pretend he had gone missing, thinking the police would waste their time searching the streets and declare a cold case, then you could bury him without worry.”
The woman was trembling now while her son watched in quiet horror.
“N-No, you have no proof—”
“You did just say it was an accident, meaning you confessed to doing it, but if you need more proof, I bet the bruises on his neck match your fingers. Not to mention, your DNA would be all over his body since you were the last person to interact with him.”
The woman leaped at him but didn’t get close before the son grabbed her and held her back. The woman was screaming denials while the son cried and asked how she could do such a thing while Yasui took out the handcuffs.
Ranpo knew why she could, but he understood what the son meant. The two had been married for twenty years, and even if she didn’t consciously want to kill him, she’d subconsciously wanted too. After a child and twenty years of marriage. How could she do such a thing indeed.
As she was being lead away by some of the backup officers Yasui had requested, Ranpo spoke to her one last time. “You hid his body because you were afraid of the repercussions. It’s funny, if you had just called an ambulance right away and claimed insanity, you would have gotten a lesser punishment.”
He left her to stew in her shame and anger while he went to the son, who was gasping and crying on the grass of the lawn. He sat next to him and offered him a card.
“This is from Officer Yasui. He said he’ll help you with everything that comes after.”
The young man, twenty, took the card and nodded. Then paused. “W-Wait, which one is Yasui again? I’m sorry, I can’t, I—” He gasped again, grabbing his chest and Ranpo was ready to call an ambulance.
“Yasui is the one standing next to the hydrangea bush. Don’t worry about him, he might look tough, but he’s actually really nice. He’ll do his best to help you, I can promise that.”
The young man nodded, sniffling. “Okay. I-I’m sorry for breaking down like this, it’s just a-a-a-a lot,” he wheezed, the card in his hands creasing from the grip.
Ranpo couldn’t relate to the exact situation, but he knew what it was like to lose parents that had loved and cared until their deaths, so he (reluctantly) handed over a lollipop he had in his pocket. It was one of the weirder flavored ones anyway.
The man took it and gave him a watery smile. “Thanks. Hah, feels weird crying like this and being comforted by someone younger than me.”
“Well, I’m not just some kid. You’re being comforted by the world’s greatest detective, Ranpo Edogawa! So, really, you should feel honored.”
He snorted for some strange reason and began unwrapping the lollipop. “I’m sure I’ll feel honored later, when I’m not digesting the fact that my parents were really kinky and that my mom’s a murderer and my dad is—” He bit down on the lollipop. “Thank you for the candy.”
Ranpo gave a quick “You’re welcome” and walked back to where Yasui was waiting in his car already, also digesting some information himself. From the position and state of the husband’s body, he’d been able to deduce where the woman had been sitting and what they had been doing. Then a sudden memory of his mother had come back to him and he’d realized the biological purpose for such a thing.
He thought back to all the times his parents had requested he play outside without them for an hour, or when they were slow to wake up and their bedroom door was locked, or when he went to them after a nightmare and found them already awake and out of breath—
Ranpo quickly took off his glasses and stuffed them back into his pocket. Nope. Nuh-uh. Nope, no, no. Not his parents. His parents definitely didn’t that.
His mother didn’t lie, he was in fact created through a special ceremony because he was too smart to not be. He wasn’t created in the same way all the other dummies in the world were. Yep. And his parents definitely never did that at all.
He got into the car with Yasui, unusually quiet for the drive back to the agency.
11 Years Later
Ranpo had easily beat yet another novel and Poe was in despair. He stayed up for a week straight to finish that one too!
Ranpo patted him on the back. “Don’t feel too bad. For the world’s greatest detective, it was a worthy challenge. Though no one can measure up to someone who was created to be a genius!”
“Created to be a genius?” Poe repeated, wondering what that meant. Was he some sort of escaped lab experiment? Oh, that could be a good start for a novel, he thought, quickly scribbling that down.
Ranpo went on, knowing he was still listening. “Yep, I’m not like all the other world’s dummies. My parents were really smart and through their genius, they came up with a special ceremony…”
He explained the rest of the story as Poe sat at his desk in shock. Did— Did he really not know? Was Poe going to have to be the one to explain it to him? Wait no, that couldn’t be right. Ranpo had made sex jokes before, even outright saying he should add some more - ahem - erotic scenes to his books. He definitely knew what it was and how it worked. So why did he believe that obvious lie?
Poe cleared his throat. “Apologies dear, but I believe you might be mistaken about that…” He trailed off, unsure of how to continue to explain something he clearly knew but was pretending not to for some reason.
Ranpo gave him an open eyed glared and he knew he messed up.
“No. Absolutely not. My parents never did that. Never. Not even once. I was created through a special ceremony. Understand?”
Ah. “Yes, Ranpo.”
“Good,” he held out his arms for Karl to jump into, holding the raccoon close and petting him, “Now come on, I want to watch that new movie that just came out and order takeout.”
And by watch, he meant criticize every dumb decision the protagonist made. Poe often did the same thing when watching movies, but it was much more fun to do it with someone else.