The Name Game

AN: This is meant to be both silly, humorous and semi-serious at the same time. I hope it works.

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Shinichi should have known from the moment he woke up to his alarm clock that it was going to be a very trying day. Unfortunately, all that struck him was that it was a Thursday, and that he never had been able to get the hang of Thursdays. He had a sneaking suspicion that the day upon which that fated Tropical Land trip had happened had been one, too.

But then again, if you forgot what the alarm clock had said, which Shinichi had, then it had started out as a normal day. No screams yet, no ring of the telephone, he was able to get to the washroom before Occhan, all was good. There was the smell of something cooking in the kitchen, which meant that Ran had already gotten dressed and was making breakfast. All was right with the world. (Except a few little things, but this was ignoring those few irritating things.)

It was only when she was serving up the food onto plates at the table that something just started to feel odd – Ran could be seen taking a deep breath before speaking to 'Conan', for one thing. It was probably nothing, though.

"Say, Shinichi – how much of this do you want?"

'Conan' spluttered, almost spilling his drink, and the old man blinked twice at Ran, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head, going back to the races section of his paper.

"I – I – but, Ran-neechan, I'm Conan, remember?" he laughed nervously, pointing one definitely child-sized finger at himself, all the while cursing and wondering what it was that he'd done recently to set her off again.

"Of course you are, Shinichi, but you didn't answer my question. How much do you want? Say when?"

Shinichi stared at her, eyes wide, mouth open, but Ran didn't seem to see anything wrong or act at all differently.

"Uh- yeah. . ."

It wasn't a confession. He was just playing along.

It ended up that he had to keep playing along a bit longer than he'd expected, however – Ran was still calling him Shinichi on the way to school, and it was only made worse by the fact that Sonoko was walking with them. Nothing could make her stop, and the blond walking mouth that was Ran's best female friend used every available opportunity to make fun of 'Conan' for it. And there were plenty of opportunities.

For the first time in a very long number of months, he found himself breathing a sigh of relief at reaching the gates. Upon which she had called back to him to have a good day, but instead of using Conan's name, had again used Shinichi. Right in front of everyone in the school who was there and cared to listen.

Which basically meant that he was in a deep amount of trouble if the wrong person had heard.

"Oi... Conan?"

It was later in the day, and he and the Shounen Tantei were having lunch. Shinichi turned a flat eyed stare in Genta's direction, carefully guarding his still mostly uneaten lunch.

"What?"

"Hey, what's with that look, anyway? I was only gonna ask a question!"

Shinichi rolled his eyes and twirled his chopsticks, specifically taking the sushi from his bento that the bigger boy had been eying. It was his lunch, not Genta's.

"Ne, Conan-kun, Genta-kun was just going to ask why Ran-oneesan was calling you by Shinichi-niisan's name. You didn't need t be rude."

...Which was the only reason necessary for both of the boys to start glaring at Conan, to the point where he waved both hands in the air in a mock-surrender form of apology.

"Sheesh, I'm sorry, all right? I don't know why she's been doing that. She won't stop, though. I think it must be her idea of a joke or something, because I can't seem to get her to stop."

"Or maybe," said the cool voice of Haibara Ai, "she thinks that you truly are Kudo Shinichi for some reason, shrunken to the size of a child."

O- oi, oi, that's a little too close to the truth for these guys, isn't it?

"Yeah! It coulda been some kind of machine built by some mad scientist and that Kudo guy got caught up in it!"

"Or he came from the future somehow, but it de-aged him in the process!"

"But that'd be really sad, wouldn't it? If Shinichi-niisan was right there under her nose and she was missing him, but he couldn't say it was him because it was the wrong him? Wouldn't that be sad?"

Oi, oi, OI!

"But Ayumi-chan, wouldn't that mean that there are two of him at the same time?"

The little girl thought hard.

"I suppose... they've got to be careful not to be in the same place?"

'Conan's' head fell straight onto the desk, narrowly missing his bento box. He moved the box, then proceeded to bang his head lightly against the table several more times. By the time he'd done, he found to his annoyance that several pieces of his lunch had gone missing, and that the others were looking like they were trying not to laugh while Genta looked stupidly pleased with himself.

Later, when he had the chance, he cornered Haibara.

"What did you have to go and do that for? I thought you didn't want people finding me out!"

Haibara's reply was to smile secretively, looking more than a little amused at his plight.

"Perhaps," she said. "But then again, who would believe a child? Especially when their imaginations blow things so completely out of proportion. I think that they started to call you a miniature James Bond, didn't they?"

He snorted.

"Yeah, one who's from another planet and shoots lasers out of guns and my feet really are that strong."

"You see," she said, turning to walk away, "it's nothing to worry about. No one's going to take any of it seriously, after all."

He supposed that her arguments held some amount of weight, but not enough to stop him from twitching every time one of the three told sensei that he was actually 'contacting the mothership' every time he spaced out. If nothing else, then it was irritating.

Things came to a climax of embarrassing when Ayumi told Ran, when she'd come to pick him up from school, to make sure that Shinichi-niisan knew that Shinichi-niisan was all right next time she heard from him. Although at that, even Ran was confused, which was something at least.

The walk home was almost as hard as the walk there had been, except for the fact that Sonoko had chosen to go off somewhere else with some of the other girls, thus leaving him and Ran by themselves.

This was good in that at least he had one less thing to have to cope with. Bad, in that he was finding it harder and harder to just not react to her calling him by his actual name and still be Edogawa Conan. He'd even noticed himself slipping into more adult tones a couple of times before stopping himself short.

The phone call he'd had from Hattori hadn't helped matters at all either. Where the other detective usually floundered over his assumed pseudonym, this time, however. . .

"Yo, Conan-kun!"

He sighed, checking to see whether anyone else was about to hear him use his natural voice in this form that was the least like that of a child.

"Great, so you finally remembered my name. Well done, Hattori. Anything else?"

"Eh, what d'you mean, 'finally'? I've called you that for as long as I've known you, Edogawa."

No. OH no. Ran was bad enough, but Hattori? Had apparently either decided to play a sick sort of prank on him or had managed to somehow get his memory altered.

Going on the fact that it was Hattori, however, he was more likely to go with the former.

"Hattori. For once, so long as you're not going to get overheard after that, please just tell me that what you just said was all some kind of joke. Ran's already been going one up on that all day so far whenever we've been talking, and it's been driving me up the wall. I think the only thing that could possibly make this day worse is if there'd been a Kid heist planned for today and in my area. That – now that would've probably turned out a nightmare and driven me up the ceiling, knowing my luck today."

For a long moment there wasn't any sound from Hattori's end, and he could have almost thought that he'd hung up except for the small fact that there'd been no click to say that had happened.

"...Sheesh, Kudo. Spoil my fun, why don't ya. All right, so shoot – what's neechan been up ta?"

Shinichi tried not to make his sigh of relief too obvious, and covered it with a snort.

"She's only been calling me Shinichi at every given point during the day, Hattori. I don't know what she's been saying when I've not been around, but it's only been Shinichi this and Shinichi that whenever I've been in hearing range."

"You thought yet that maybe she's figured you out or something?"

"I've thought that, yeah. But she hasn't done anything! Usually, she does something. She hasn't."

"Eh, not actually anything I can think of that I could help out with on that one. And like I said before – maybe she's just waiting for you to say something."

"And how many times have I told you that that would be a very bad idea, Hattori? A lot. And I still mean it."

"Fine, fine. I was only sayin', Kudo."

"Well, don't."

There was the suspicious sound of a snicker from Hattori's end.

"Ah – gotta go. Kazuha's lookin' like she wants ta get back at me for earlier..."

And then, without explanation given for either his behaviour earlier towards Shinichi or in fact what Kazuha wanted to get back at him for, Hattori hung up, leaving Shinichi left staring at the cell phone in his hand and wondering when the world had gone crazy.

A few minutes later, when he went back into the office to see what everyone else was doing, he found that he was almost unsurprised to hear Ran still calling him Shinichi. Still rather more than unsettled – but less so than when they'd been outside where just anyone could hear – he answered her with as close an approximation of flat tones of disinterest as he could while still playing the child. Maybe if he just didn't react, and she didn't get any kind of reaction out of him, then she'd give up and get bored of whatever it was she was trying?

Time wore on, however, and she didn't show any signs of tiring of her ... game? Strategy? Whatever it was she was doing, and it he was getting to be at his wit's end. There had been enough close calls before school, and if those could be called close, the ones he'd had to talk fast around and bluff for his life about had been too close for comfort.

It was some time in the middle of the evening when Occhan had abruptly told them that he was going out to play mahjong with friends, and not to wait up for him. Ran had argued, and Conan had rolled his eyes, but it had been no good. The door had slammed firmly shut behind him, and Ran hung her head and sighed, trying to make it look as though things didn't bother her as much as they did.

"Ne... Shinichi?"

He forced himself not to react instantly. It wasn't all that easy, and he supposed that he should have been more worried if it wasn't. If that was the case, then things would have taken a turn for the Slightly More Complicated.

"Uh, oh, yeah, you're talking to me, right, Ran-neechan?" Nice one. Nice save, if he did say so himself.

"I was just wondering. . ." she was saying, sat at the table and head resting on her arms, "if maybe you'd like to play something. I'm bored – I know you probably are – you've probably finished all of your homework already, haven't you?"

"Uh, y-yeah."

That was not, could not have been, a narrowing in her expression as she said that. Was not possible.

"Ah, I know!" she said, jumping up and putting the fist of one hand into the palm of another. "We could play Clue! It's been ages since I've played that at all – you know how to play still, right Shinichi?"

"Uh, I think so? Shinichi-niichan taught me all about it ages and ages ago, but I think I remember everything..."

...And if I do, then the reason you stopped playing was because I always won, even ever since we were as little as I am now. I wonder what she's playing at? Then again, maybe she really did forget. After all, it has been a long time...

The set was brought out, and they played against each other for a few rounds. It wasn't exactly the most fair of games, to Shinichi's eye – two players instead of the usual three or more, and one of them was a real detective. Even if he was belittling his ability – pun not intended – in order to make the matches look more realistic. Still, he started soon growing bored, and it wasn't long before his head had drooped, letting itself fall onto the library and narrowly missing Miss Scarlet, who Ran had been playing.

Ran started giggling, and the sound woke him back up, thoroughly embarrassed.

The next hour or so was spent with Ran making them dinner and trying, mostly in vain, to teach him how to cook using whatever a seven year old could be expected to use. It all turned out all right in the end, though – at least the food was still edible, though if Shinichi had had much more to do with it than he had, he was quite sure it wouldn't have stayed that way.

The meal itself passed without any cause for concern. Or at least, he thought so. He didn't think that he'd done anything wrong.

Then he'd wandered tiredly in the direction of his – or rather, Occhan's, but he was sharing, no matter how much he didn't like the fact – room and futon.

He'd heard Ran's voice calling out to him just as he reached past the door, and had listened.

"Good night, Shinichi," she'd said.

And he, exhausted physically and mentally by the day's events, hadn't even called, just spoke, with a yawn.

"G-g'night. . . Ran. . ."

And somehow forgotten to add the 'neechan' back onto the end.

Somehow, she must have heard anyway, despite the fact that he surely hadn't said it loud enough to be heard out there still, because in seconds, she was there, and she wasn't looking completely happy.

"Shinichi," she said, "it's after midnight."

His mind went blank. Was there something special about midnight? About the next day that had now turned into today?

"Uh... I don't understand."

It was true.

Ran sighed.

"Shinichi, what was yesterday?"

"Ah, the first of the month?"

"Very good. Now think a little further than that, you miniaturised deduction idiot."

"First of April-oh-hell..."

Ran nodded in accord, agreeing.

"Yes, Shinichi. And right now, today, it is the second of April. Do you have any idea what that means?"

"I'm busted?"

He was ashamed to find out that yes, his voice could now go into the much higher registers without his permission.

"You got it. You're busted."

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AN: I'd planned on getting this out sometime during the 1st. But events conspired against me, and now it's out on the 2nd. Never mind – at least it's out this year...

Not a Fool to the reader unless they don't know what they're reading, I suppose. But poor Conan's certainly been confused enough.

I may – MAY – do a follow-up. No promises, though – right now I'm working on several different things at the same time, and this came on spur of the moment.