The Gods Are Fighting Over Me - Chapter 11.1
Lin Jianyue held her breath. She didn’t dare breathe heavily until the two of them were far away.
She didn’t run into anyone else for the rest of the way. The extreme emotional fluctuations had drained her of all her energy. Lin Jianyue sighed, and a wave of exhaustion climbed from her toes to her temples.
Lin Jianyue rarely went out late at night, but in the anime, she always saw Ran Mori easily hailing a taxi at any time of the night.
But now, when she needed one, the taxis in Tokyo were like a school of shrimp startled by a predator, all hiding in the shadows under rocks, nowhere to be found.
A pair of headlights appeared behind her again.
Lin Jianyue turned back with hope, and a car stopped next to her.
The window rolled down, revealing Kenji Hagiwara’s smiling face. He winked at Lin Jianyue. “Need a ride? I’ll drive you back.”
His smile was so natural that it was as if her fleeting eye contact with him at the Kudo house was just a figment of her imagination.
Lin Jianyue glanced at her walking directions on her phone, swallowed her refusal, opened the door, and got in the passenger seat.
The lessons she had learned since childhood wouldn’t allow her to sit in the back and treat Kenji Hagiwara like a taxi driver.
Lin Jianyue bent down to buckle her seatbelt, not noticing the flash of surprise on Kenji Hagiwara’s face. His eyes lit up with countless stars, and his body tensed.
By the time Lin Jianyue looked up, the man who was personally praised by Gosho Aoyama as “the best driver in the entire series” had stiffly placed both hands on the steering wheel, as if he were a beginner taking his driver’s test.
After she gave him her address, the white sedan slowly drove toward the Tokyo Tower under the moonlight.
Lin Jianyue lived near the Tokyo Tower, in an expensive mid-to-high-rise apartment from which she could see the tower from her living room and bedroom windows.
She had originally just wanted to rent a normal apartment with convenient public transportation, but her brother had yelled, “Japan is a place that discriminates against Chinese people, and it’s full of perverts,” and had taken it upon himself to decide where she would live.
The clouds had cleared, and the moonlight was bright, seeping into the car. They drove in silence.
Lin Jianyue didn’t hide the fact that she was flipping through the manga in front of Kenji Hagiwara. The only sound was the occasional subtle turn of his steering wheel.
His beautiful purple eyes kept glancing at the rearview mirror, trying to make out her profile through the small, thin glass.
In the book, Conan Edogawa had just taken his first step up the stairs to the Mori Detective Agency when Ran Mori pulled him into her car to go to a crime scene.
She flipped back to the scene at the Kudo house half an hour ago. When Conan Edogawa first saw Lin Jianyue, he stared at her, scanning her up and down. A thought bubble appeared behind him:
‘This woman looks like a harmless person with no fighting skills. How could she be an accomplice of those two men in black? I must be overthinking things.’
A harmless person…?
Lin Jianyue couldn’t help but wonder what Conan would think if she were to show up at the Mori Detective Agency tomorrow, lean down, and say, “Shinichi Kudo, I know Gin’s real name.”
Would he still think she was harmless?
But she didn’t plan on doing that.
Lin Jianyue was only interested in the vast network of people behind Conan Edogawa—it seemed like all of Japan’s top talents had or would have a connection to him—but she wasn’t very interested in the Black Organization.
As she was thinking, the car arrived at its destination.
“We’re here.” The car slowly came to a stop. Kenji Hagiwara pulled the handbrake and naturally turned to smile at Lin Jianyue, but his hands were still stiff on the steering wheel, as if he didn’t know where to put them.
Lin Jianyue nodded, thanked him, and unbuckled her seatbelt.
“Jianyue.”
Just as Lin Jianyue opened the car door to get out, Kenji Hagiwara suddenly called out to her. Their eyes met, and Kenji Hagiwara’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously again.
He took a business card from his wallet and handed it to her. “Although I don’t want to admit it, if you get into trouble, calling me will be more useful than calling the police or a detective.”
Lin Jianyue took the card and said softly, “Okay.” Then she got out of the car.
As she got out, she didn’t look back, so she didn’t see the flash of surprise in Kenji’s eyes or how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel.
Kenji Hagiwara sat in the car, his eyes fixed on Lin Jianyue’s back, greedily watching her disappear into the apartment building.
He was a little jealous of Ran Mori, who had been able to exchange phone numbers with Lin Jianyue so easily.
Kenji Hagiwara wanted to do the same. He had even prepared several different things to say, and even had a plan for what to do if she said no.
But when he called her name and saw her still-red eyes, he backed down.
What he handed her, along with the business card, was his willingness to give up control.
He was willing to be Lin Jianyue’s last option. If she really didn’t contact him, he would stay in the shadows, quiet and honest, just as she wanted. He would disappear for a while, or maybe forever.
The moment the thought popped into his head, a sharp pain gripped his heart.
Kenji Hagiwara held the steering wheel with both hands, his forehead resting on the backs of his hands, his knuckles white from the force. Regret washed over him like a tide, threatening to drown him.
All of this was his fault for acting without her consent.
Why did I do it?
Wasn’t it better just to meet in dreams?
At least that way, they could be as close as they used to be, whispering to each other, sharing what they had seen and heard that day, doing the intimate things that lovers do.
Kenji Hagiwara even had a dark thought: even if she met someone she wanted to marry in reality, as long as she was asleep, the time in her dreams would still belong to him.
But then Kenji Hagiwara’s eyes widened in horror, disgusted with himself for thinking such a thing.
Kenji Hagiwara let out a helpless, defeated laugh. “What are you doing, Kenji Hagiwara? You’re a police officer. You’re thinking of becoming a homewrecker.”
But just the thought of her walking down the aisle with another man, her wedding dress trailing behind her, a bright smile on her face, made his sanity crumble bit by bit.
No.
Absolutely not.
He should have asked for her number.
How could he have given her all the control? What if she lost the business card, or just put it somewhere and forgot about it, or what if she really didn’t contact him?
He would not let go.
Absolutely not.
Ding.
It was a text notification.
Kenji Hagiwara’s pupils shrank, and he frantically fumbled in his pocket.
The screen lit up, and a strange Tokyo number popped up. The message was a single, short line:
I’m sorry, Kenji. I said something really awful to you today. Can you forgive me?
He stared blankly at the screen for a few seconds before he finally came back to his senses. He leaned back in his seat, his arm covering his eyes, a laugh rumbling from his throat, getting louder and louder.
He immediately called Jinpei Matsuda, his joy completely unrestrained.
“Congratulations,” his childhood friend said after hearing the story, his voice also rising at the end.
After he hung up, Kenji Hagiwara started the car, the smile still on his face. The moonlight shone through the car window, illuminating the light in his eyes, a fallen star.
Upstairs, Lin Jianyue was standing behind the bedroom curtains, holding a corner and looking down.
She was on the 16th floor. From this high up, Kenji Hagiwara’s car looked as small as a white plastic model.
It wasn’t until the white sedan’s lights came on again and it disappeared around the corner that she let the curtain fall and threw herself onto the bed.
She buried her face in the pillow, silent as if she had fallen asleep.
After a long time, a soft, nasal mumble escaped from the pillow. “You’re amazing.”
This is great.
You’re still alive.