The Liar And The Detective

Chapter 3

Kokichi’s eyes widened, he opened his door completely and gestured for him to come inside. Shuichi stepped inside, his eyes instinctively scanned kokichi’s room, there was stuff everywhere, papers littered the ground and the trash bin was almost half full. Kokichi sat down on his bed and patted the spot next to him for Shuichi to sit down on. Shuichi begrudgingly sat down waiting for kokichi to say something.

“And what makes you think I would even want to teach you in the first place?” he asked Shuichi, his eyes locked onto the boy in front of him. Shuichi knew that Kokichi would ask something like that, there was no way he would just help him out of the goodness of his heart.

“Because it would make everything interesting” he replies, surprising himself with how little it disgusted him to call the killing game ‘interesting’ he knew it was the best way to make sure Kokichi agreed, and yet he didn't feel like he was forcing himself to say these things. “Imagine how surprised everyone will be, the one person they all trust. The person they rely on to solve the murders is now a liar” Shuichi said, the words rolling off his tongue so easily it worried him. He pushed those doubts aside, he needed to focus on the goal, he can worry about this later.

“Nishishi~ wow Shuichi, I never expected that from you! Are you sure you wanna be a liar like me? Kokichi said, getting in Shuichi’s face. Just as he was about to respond Kokichi leaned back, putting his hands behind his head “I’ll do it” he said easily.

“Please kokichi- wait, what?” shuichi said as he registered what Kokichi had said. 

“I said I’d do it,” he repeated. “I mean it must have been sooo hard for you to realize that you needed MY help, and besides, you managed to surprise me twice today, so I guess you deserve a reward for that.” Kokichi said, smiling. “It's going to be a lot of work but I think I can manage, I am the Ultimate Supreme Leader after all, and what kind of leader would I be if I didn’t know how to teach my subordinates anything?” 

“O-okay, thank you Kokichi” Shuichi says, giving him a grateful look. His mind once again wandered to the incident in the hallway earlier. “Oh, also I'm so sorry about what I said in the hallway earlier, I was really tired and my brain to mouth filler wasn’t really working-” Shuichi started apologizing to him.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Kokichi stopped him quickly. “First lesson, don't ever apologize for something like that, especially not when they can tell that you’re sincere.” he told the detective. 

“Um… why not?” Shuichi asked him, confused.

“Because then it's easier for them to tell when you’re lying because they know what you look and act like when you’re telling the truth, duh” Kokichi said like it was obvious, which to his credit, it kinda was. “Geez Shuichi, you should know this, being a detective and all” Kokichi said feigning annoyance. 

“Sorry-” Shuichi began.

“What did I JUST say” Kokichi cut him off for the second time. “Think of it like this, when you do a polygraph on potential suspects, how does that work?” He asked, trying to put the lesson into terms the boy could understand better. 

“Um, we ask base questions first so the machine can register the differences in the readings between a truth and a lie” Shuichi responded, beginning to get where Kokichi was going with this. 

“Exactly, people are the same, it's just that we don't realize it, the best way to pass a polygraph is to never give the machine a solid base to register when you lie!” Kokichi said, surprising Shuichi with how well he managed to put it into terms that helped him understand what he ment. 

“But I can’t really do that now, my chance to answer the base questions has already sort of passed,” Shuichi said.

“Ugh, you’re so slow I swear.” Kokichi says rolling his eyes. “While that may be true if this were a polygraph, it's not. Because unlike a polygraph, people are constantly taking in more information and changing their views and opinions based on the new information,” Kokichi said, looking at Shuichi expectantly, waiting for him to get what he was implying. When he didn’t show any signs of understanding Kokichi got annoyed. “What I'm saying is that all you have to do is lie to them every now and them when you make small talk, doesn’t have to be anything big of course because that’d be too obvious but just the little things that they’ll believe without question, the more you do it the less likely they are to catch on when you eventually DO lie about something big.” Shuichi’s eyes widened.

“Oh, okay. That makes sense… but I'm not the best at lying, especially to my friends, won't they notice?” Shuichi asked him, doubtfully.

“That brings me to lesson two,” Kokichi said with a flourish. “Tells- you know what those are right? If you don't I might just fail you right now.” He said only half joking. 

“Of course I know what those are, they’re little things that people subconsciously do when they’re lying, my uncle taught me to look for them in the people we interview, I'm not very good at it though” Shuichi says, rubbing his neck nervously. 

“Correct!” Kokichi says, giving him a pat on the head as a reward to a slightly confused Shuichi. 

“Tells are a liar's WORST enemy,” Kokichi says with an exaggerated pout. “So of course, all the best liars learn their tells so they can avoid doing them and giving themselves away. But that will come later, first you need to actually figure out what your tells are, no I’m not gonna help you find out what they are. You’re just gonna have to tell a few lies here and there to figure it out.