Disclaimer: Detective Conan is not mine. This fanfic is a translation.
Enjoy Reading!
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06:00
After taking Jinpei to the infirmary to disinfect and bandage his wounds and then helping him back to his room, it was already close to 2 a.m.
To avoid anyone discovering that the rooftop door had been picked open, Ritsu even went back upstairs to erase the traces of the lock-picking.
After finishing all that, he strangely no longer felt sleepy.
Yet the moment he heard the instructor's voice echo through the hallway speakers, the drowsiness suddenly hit him while he lay on his bed resting with his eyes closed.
Suppressing his sleepiness, Ritsu forced himself to get dressed. He left his room without waiting for the others and headed straight to the shared washroom on the third floor.
He opened his personal locker with a key, took out his toiletries, and began brushing his teeth and washing his face at the sink.
After finishing, he had to put everything back neatly. The locker couldn't be locked, this allowed the dorm instructor to inspect it. If things weren't arranged properly according to regulations, the punishment was fifty push-ups.
"Morning, Ritsu."
"Morning, Hiro. I'll wait for you guys outside."
Standing outside the washroom and leaning against the wall, Ritsu felt like he could fall asleep at any moment.
In his half-drowsy state, someone pulled him along. When he opened his eyes again, he realized he was already on the training field.
"Form three columns! Morning roll call, count off!"
"One! Two! Three! Four…"
Standing in a row within Instructor Onizuka's class formation, Morofushi glanced at the bandages on the faces of the two people beside him and smiled faintly.
Ritsu looked half-asleep, his eyelids drooping. Hearing Hagiwara yawn beside him made him want to yawn too.
Only their class leader Date, standing at the far right, looked completely different from the rest of them. Full of energy, he shouted loudly.
"Onizuka Class—Attention!"
Everyone instinctively straightened their backs. It was a frightening conditioned reflex.
Standing in front of them, Instructor Onizuka noticed the injuries on two students' faces and frowned.
"Matsuda and Furuya, what happened to your faces?"
Jinpei flashed a mischievous grin and squinted.
"You really want to know?"
Completely unfazed, Onizuka leaned his face closer to Jinpei's without anger.
"Yes. Please tell me. And make sure it's the truth."
At that moment, Ritsu desperately wished someone would stop them from talking. If their fight was exposed, they would definitely be punished with who-knew-how-many laps around the field.
Just as Jinpei was about to tell the truth, Date suddenly answered with a cheerful smile.
"Actually, a bunch of cockroaches ran out of my room last night. So I asked them to help kill them. But they were so focused during the extermination that they bumped into the desk, and the upright bed frame even fell over. It was really rough."
How did he come up with such a simultaneously reasonable and unreasonable lie in such a short time?
Knowing that explanation alone wouldn't pass, Date didn't even wait for Onizuka to respond. He suddenly started running forward while shouting:
"Even so! As punishment for damaging school property, Onizuka Class will run one extra lap! Move out!"
"Yes, sir!"
He had completely cut off anything Onizuka was about to say.
Date had executed a perfect, textbook-level defensive maneuver.
Onizuka sighed helplessly.
What kind of terrible luck did he have to end up with a class like this? Every single student had a strong personality.
Beside him, the gentle-looking Instructor Ino walked over with a chuckle.
"Onizuka, you've got quite the troublesome batch of students… and six of them all at once."
"Yeah," Onizuka replied. "My future looks pretty bleak."
While running in formation, Hagiwara laughed and slapped Jinpei lightly on the back.
"Hey, Jinpei, what happened to your face? Such a handsome face, totally ruined now."
"You're so annoying, Kenji!"
Seeing Jinpei bare his teeth, Hagiwara burst into laughter.
"Ha! You even lost half a tooth? That missing tooth look is hilarious. Let's go get you a fake tooth this weekend, I'll go with you!"
"Shut up."
"But seriously, that Furuya guy is pretty impressive. Your pro-boxer dad trained you, right? Yet he still managed to fight you like that. So… Jinpei, who won in the end?"
"Well obviously it was—"
"Me!"
Jinpei and Rei answered at the same time.
The moment they finished, they glared at each other and started arguing like two stubborn grade-schoolers.
"What?! You take too many hits to the head or something? Obviously I won!"
"Are you dreaming in broad daylight? Maybe you should go search Tokyo Bay for the brain you lost!"
"You saying I've got no brain? Blond idiot! Same time, same place tonight!"
Before Rei could answer, Ritsu suddenly sped up and ran ahead, throwing out a sarcastic remark.
"I'm not carrying you two to the infirmary every night. If you want to fight, figure out how to crawl back yourselves."
"What?! Kids shouldn't interfere in a duel between adults!"
Ritsu's mouth twitched.
What he hated most was being lectured about his age.
He shot Jinpei a cold glance and ran ahead even faster without another word.
Morofushi quickly caught up. Jinpei, realizing he might have upset someone, touched the bandage on his face.
"I only said one thing. What's wrong with him?"
"He doesn't like being treated like a minor all the time," Rei explained. "Try not to say that in the future."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"I know. He's not really mad."
Jinpei sighed and quickened his pace to catch up with them.
But every time he got close, before he could even say anything, Ritsu would suddenly speed up again.
After this repeated several times, Jinpei turned back and glared at the snickering Rei and the others.
'This is what you call not being mad?! He's clearly mad!'
Meanwhile, Ritsu secretly glanced at Jinpei struggling to keep up behind him.
A hint of mischief flashed through his eyes.
He really wasn't angry.
He was just doing it on purpose.
"Hey! First—uh, I mean… Sasajima!"
"What?"
"Just pretend you didn't hear what I said earlier. I… that's all."
Jinpei's expression was awkward.
He almost never apologized to people. That was just the kind of person he was. After hesitating for so long, this clumsy statement was the closest thing he could manage to an apology.
At that moment, Ritsu seriously felt like pulling out a phone and searching what kind of personality someone like this had.
If he did search it, there would only be one answer.
Tsundere.
"Oh. I'm not mad."
Jinpei eyed him suspiciously.
For a split second, the normally expressionless, cold face seemed to show a smile.
He rubbed his eyes, but the smile had already disappeared.
'Must be because I'm too tired. Tonight I really need to get some proper sleep.'
The morning breeze brushed against their faces as the young cadets ran, sweating with the energy of youth.
Ritsu quietly turned his head to the side. The corner of his eyes lifted slightly, and a gentle warmth rippled through his azure gaze.
A smile slowly spread across his face,
though no one beside him could see it.
Slowing his pace to blend back into the formation, Date wiped the sweat from his forehead and asked,
"Did Instructor Onizuka say how many laps we were supposed to run?"
"?"
Now that he mentioned it… it seemed like he hadn't.
What they didn't know was that the instructors, in order to train the cadets' endurance, would never tell them how many laps to run.
Nor would they tell them how many laps they had already completed.
The running only stopped when they reached their limit.
That was the essential morning run of the police academy.