A Grey Rose.


Author's Note: This is a translation from French of my fic "Une Rose Grise."


Bus stop.


Shiho Miyano advanced with slow steps, considered and relaxed. Her umbrella sat upon her shoulder, protecting her hair from the rain that fell heavily, she kept her other hand in her pocket, trying to ignore the cold and damp wind nibbling at her exposed hand. But it wasn't her hand that she felt to be the iciest.

Her heart was frozen.

It felt as though she was walking in the dark, but what a strange feeling that was, knowing that the men in black no longer existed. Gin was dead, Vermouth behind bars, and Vodka was only awaiting his sentence... And the Boss, of course. That man so clever and extraordinary, he was now nothing more than another person subservient to the rule of law. She still found it hard to believe when she thought about it.

All that had happened since the death of her sister seemed surreal. The fact that the Organisation had betrayed her so... The fact that she had found the courage to face them, betray them in turn and try to evade their grasp by taking her own life... And then that miracle, that little miracle that was her survival, and that of Kudo... The fact that she was able to hide for so long, survive, no, live at his side, alongside such warm people as Professor Agasa, the Detective Boys, even Ran Mouri. During that short time, she had evaded, barely, on multiple occasions, their grasp, thanks to the help of that stubborn detective. That detective with a heart of gold, that wouldn't understand what was so awful about the organisation that she hadn't wanted to tell him more. That young fool, who thought he had an answer to everything, that he could solve any puzzle. That idiot who never fully understood her...

And that she had none the less loved.

She bit her lip at that that. It wasn't that she had loved him, it was that she loved him still, and that was why her heart had turned to ice at the announcement of his engagement to Mouri.

She lifted her gaze sharply, hearing the noise of a large vehicle, followed by the sound of water being sprayed by its wheels. She sighed when she saw that she had just missed her bus back. She quickly covered the remaining thirty meters between her and the stop and checked the bus times. Oh joy, she had to wait another three quarters of an hour for the next one. By the time she got back to Professor Agasa's, she had a high likelihood of catching pneumonia. The bus stop provided no shelter, and the few shops nearby were already closed for the night. Resigned to go home soaked to the bone, she leaned against a wall providing relative shelter from the wind, awaiting her bus.

She was surprised to feel a great hunger in her soul. Not that she didn't consider it normal, seeing how she didn't particularly appreciate waiting for forty-five minutes in the rain, yet she could feel that there was clearly a different underlying cause to this anger... What was she thinking about already, before she was distracted by the bus she'd just missed?

Ah, yes. Her life these past two years. The miracle that she was able to live them, and that she was able to find the elusive antidote to the shrinking effects of her drug... her poison... And then the transformation of Kudo, when everything went down, when he finally found how to put an end to the Organisation's activities. Never had she felt closer to the Detective of the East as during those moments, even if she couldn't stop thinking that at any second he was going to his death. She had been ready to sacrifice herself to save him, yet, as if by magic, each time she thought him lost for ever, he would pull a solution from his sleeve, an incredible turn that would twist the situation in his favour.

A magician...

Ha! She must be already catching a cold. Now she could see him in front of her, with his beloved, despite knowing full well that the two were at the other side of town. And as though to mock her thoughts, now the Kudo from her vision was showing them both a simplistic magic trick. He made a rose appear to elegantly offer it to the young woman who was kind enough to shelter him under her umbrella.

It was only when the young man in question hailed her that she realised that it wasn't truly a hallucination.

"Hey miss, has the bus been already?"

He had his voice. He had his face. He even had a cheeky smile that looked uncannily like his. But his hair was different, his clothes reflected a taste for much less sombre adornments, and, now that she looked closer, he wasn't accompanied by Mouri. The young woman was smaller, younger, and much more expressive.

"I told you Kaito, we've missed it, I just know it! All because of your darn habit."

It didn't take much for Shiho to imagine him a habit of stumbling across murder mysteries. But something told her that wasn't what was meant.

"It came by not two minutes ago. I do believe you've missed it, same as me."

"Ah shit. The next one is in 45 minutes, right?"

Shiho merely nodded yes to the young man before turning her gaze away. She wished that he would leave. She didn't want to be faced by this Kudo look alike much longer. Not when he heart was hurting so. Not when she was trying to draw a line...

"Here!"

"Hm?"
She lifted her head to see that she was being offered a throat lozenge. The young man was holding it out as his companion gestured for her to accept it, to avoid catching a cold.

"You're soaked, and since we're going to be standing here a while yet, I might as well offer you one. I would hate to see a pretty lady like you fall ill because she missed the bus."

"I..."

The young man took her hand and smiled as he forced the sweet into her palm. His hands were warm. His smile was the warmest she'd ever seen.

Shiho felt herself blush. She took the boiled sweet and put it in her mouth with a conscious effort to mask her embarrassment, thanking them with a simple nod of the head.

"Proof that Kaito knows how to be nice sometimes!"

"Ach, come on Aoko, I'm always nice."

Shiho watched in silence the two squabble as they came to stand beside her. She may have tried her best to turn her gaze away and ignore them, she could not help but watch them out the corner of her eye.

In the time it took their bus to arrive and for the three to climb on, the rain never ceased, but Shiho had been able to form an opinion on the two people who got on behind her. She showed the driver her ticket before sitting down in a window seat and pretended not to keep track of the movements of the young man who followed her.

He was charming, that Kudo look-alike, and much less stuck-up than him too. He would argue with his friend, Aoko, as though they were both mischievous children, speaking of all and nothing... No embarrassed silence, no tension, nothing left unsaid, none of that. It was relaxing after two years spent in the shadow of a detective who, when he did get the chance to speak with his sweet heart, had the reflex of taking on the role of the moody adolescent who didn't know how to speak to girls. The young woman who accompanied this Kaito had such a candid freshness to her compared to Ran, the eternal worrier, that Shiho felt she envied them, this couple of strangers that she'd met by chance at a bus stop.

The encounter having improved her mood, Shiho relaxed and allowed herself to snooze. She still had a long journey before she got home to the Professor's, no need to tire herself out needlessly by keeping her eyes open. Her daydreams featured magic and romance, danger and illusions. She would wake up in intervals, observe the duo that continued to discuss all and nothing. On multiple occasions she caught the name Kid being mentioned. She smiled as she heard young Aoko's ferocious defence of the policemen in charge of capturing the thief. A young woman who wasn't enamoured with the thief? How novel.

Several stops later they got off. Shiho watched them leave with a sad twinge in her heart but kept smiling nonetheless. It was only when she saw her stop near that she noticed the young man had forgotten something on his seat. She picked it up, noticing a loyalty card stuck between two pages. The name "Kaito Kuroba" written on it confirmed that it was his. The notebook must have fallen from his pocket as he dodged one of his friend's swipes, before leaving the bus. She pocketed the item without too much thought, just the notion that she could return it to him soon, perhaps.

Normally she would have just left the notebook there. Normally she would have decided it wasn't her problem.

He'd really made an impression on her, that Kaito Kuroba.


To be continued...