Ran had cried every tear she had for Conan.
Gazing at the casket, imagining the motionless child that lay with, Ran wished she could shed another. She'd used them all up, like the selfish fool she was, and now, at his funeral, her bloodshot eyes couldn't produce a single drop of salty water.
After an extremely thorough investigation, the metropolitan police department had found the apartment complex, the floor, the room, from which the boy, someone who'd been all-but her brother, had been sniped. They'd found a man inside, a corpse, with his brains blown out. With bitter eyes and shaking voices, the metropolitan police department had declared the death an indiscriminate murder-suicide.
But something felt off.
It wasn't that the man hadn't shot Conan, eye witness accounts, fingerprints, and even Hattori Heiji pointed to him, it was that this was a random crime. To Ran it didn't feel right: she felt someone, something, was behind it, accomplices at least, but the police's search found nothing.
On that day, the day Ran relived every night, she and Conan had, like they usually did, walked home with Sonoko and the detective boys. Except it wasn't all the detective boys, Ai was missing.
As the group talked about their day at school, about what they'd do in the weekend, Ran felt a small hand grasp hers, Conan's hand. It was unusual, Ran was almost always the one who indicated hand holding, but she thought nothing of it and let him keep his hand in hers.
The detective boys told her, in great detail, about how Ai had slapped Conan earlier that day, how she stormed out of school and didn't come back. Ai was a mature child, one who always kept he cool, even in a life or death situation, so Ran could only wonder what Conan had done to upset her.
When asked, Conan didn't answer, just squeezed her hand tighter.
As the walked along the riverbank, they said farewell, one by one, to each of their companions. Ran could feet Conan's hand begin to tremble, heard the plod of his feet begin to slow until, eventually, as they neared the detective agency, he came to a halt altogether.
"Conan?" She so vividly remembered saying, worry seeping though her voice like a waterlogged carpet.
The boy's eyes softened; he smiled, a sad somber smile. "I've dropped my detective badge by the river, I'll just be a minute, wait for me."
There was a tone, a finality in his voice, that worried Ran. The way he'd spoke made her feel like he thought, knew, that they'd never see each other again.
Believing that she was being stupid, that she was overthinking things, Ran watched the boy leave, his back turned towards her. Once he was out of site, she waited, just like he'd told her to, telling herself that nothing bad would happen to a normal seven year old child searching for a badge sized walkie talkie.
Badge sized. Conan had been wearing his detective badge, hadn't he? Pinned it to his jacket. So what had he lost? His strange behaviour, his argument with Ai. Conan was hiding something. Conan hadn't been telling her the truth. Conan had been lying.
Ran's stomach dropped, she did exactly as her name told her to, she ran. Bolting across the car-filled road, sprinting towards the riverbank, only one thought crossed her mind. She wasn't going to let him leave, for god knows how long, after running off, barely with a goodbye, with his back turned.
When Ran finally got to the river back, caught up to the boy, she was greeted with a scene that would forever etch itself onto her eyes.
Conan's detective badge was pinned onto one of the flaps of his jacket, on the left side, precisely the spot where Ran remembered it being before the boy had run away. His jacket was drenched in a thick crimson liquid which pooled from Conan's head. The boy was trembling, lying in the bloodied grass, curled up into the tightest ball Ran had ever seen him had ever seen him in.
"Co-" Ran spluttered out, knowing before she spoke that she'd be unable to complete a single word.
The boy opened two wide eyes, Ran could see tears forming in their corners. She'd never seen Conan cry before. He looked so scared, scared for her sake, despite the fact that he was the one bleeding out on a river bank.
Ran knelt down beside him, smelt the stench of blood, felt his warmth as she cradled him in her arms, scoured her mind for something, anything, that could help him. Conan was too late for first aid.
With shaky hands, Ran fumbled open her bag, shifted through her school books, located her phone. Just as she was about to call 119, Conan choked out, "No."
His voice was horse, rougher than sandpaper, he was losing blood, lots of blood, but Ran listened to him, stopped dialling at the second '1'.
With the last of his strength, Conan brought his head towards Ran's ear, croaked two hoarse words in her ear. He went limp before he could say the third.
Ran couldn't remember calling the ambulance, couldn't remember blubbering her way through an emergency phone call, but, she could remember the howling sirens, could remember ambulance's glaring lights, so bright they made her eyes water.
Edogawa Fumiyo was screaming. Her expression twisted, warped in grief, as she howled. It was only the that Ran realised he was already burning, the coffin, in which he lay, going up in flames within the cremation furnace.
Her husband, a man who Ran had never known, held his wife back, hugged her tightly, but Ran could see that his hands were shaking too.
Okiya Subaru and Hattori Heiji spoke in hushed, serious voices with the rest of Conan's family. Ran wanted to go up to them, tell them that she was sorry, that it was her fault that Conan had died, that she hadn't been fast enough, but she didn't. Instead, Ran stared from afar, wondered why Shinichi and his family weren't among them, listened to Edogawa Fumiyo's broken voice pleading, "Not like this. Not like this. Not like this..."
Then everything clicked.
Why Conan had appeared that day, of all the days; why he was so smart, but chose to hide it; why he looked so familiar; why Hattori had always misnamed him.
The true meaning of Edogawa Fumiyo's words; Shinichi's absence; the hushed conversations Hattori and Subaru were having with Conan's family; Conan's final two words, to which she knew the third.
As Ran stared at the furnace, at the flames within; at the burning casket, imagined the body inside, Ran felt the corners of her eyes sting, felt tears begin to trickle down her cheeks.
Ran had cried every tear she had for Conan, but he hadn't been the only one that had died.
