He is the lost boy.
It has happened before. It's happened all around the world. It will happen again.
This Shiho knows. After all, it's what her parents died learning. It's what their employers want her to learn even more about. It's the reason she's been kept away from her sister but for the rarest of "treats," short visits where she is reminded how alone in the world she is, how definitely alone she would be if they were to do away with her.
Shiho has trouble sleeping, at nights.
She sits up late, in the dark, staring out the window. She sees him sometimes. The trail of fairy dust is unmistakeable when you know what you're looking for. Once, he came near enough to her window that she could see his distinctive grin.
Children tend to go missing when there's a lost boy about. Sometimes she wonders if her parents had any doing in the creation of this lost boy... Then she shakes her head. That's not how lost boys come to be.
J. M. Barrie had it mostly right. His book, Peter Pan, describes most of the process: a small child realises that he is expected to grow up one day, and, somehow, refuses. It's nearly never a girl, though lost boys have stolen away the occasional one. The other world, that of the fair people, senses this, and gifts the child with stardust wings. They are whisked away on sunset winds, lost in neverlands of their own invention.
The parents invariably grieve, but move on. The fair folk take pity. They erase their memories.
How many, Shiho wonders, how many lost boys never make it back?
She falls asleep with her window open. Sometimes she feels someone ruffle her hair.
Work is hard. Even harder when they push for results.
"Work harder," they say, throwing folders with news clippings inside. Another child has gone missing.
"Make it work!" They bark, pointing her at her test tubes, locking her in the lab. She is escorted whenever she leaves to collect samples, supplies.
She can't help but think the enterprise was doomed from the beginning. They want to harness the immortality of the lost boys. They don't realise that it comes with a price.
Sighing, she opens the top folder. The clipping is of a boy, young, no older than seven. He looks burly, prone to fighting, but is described merely as a food lover. Genta Kojima, she muses. His parents run a small restaurant in Beika. She'll have to head there later, collect more samples.
She runs her simulations on her computer as she peruses the other folders, ones she's seen before. She sips her coffee, black, as she rereads the details of Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya's disappearance, re-examines the photo of young Ayumi Yoshida, her headband a distinctive yellow. She pinches the bridge of her nose to stave off a headache.
What the black hearted organisation she works for doesn't seem to notice, is just how lonely these lost boys are. They can fly, they stop aging, but they are still children. They still have the urge to play, the need for... The need for...
Shiho wipes at the tears forming in her eyes. Not now, please not now...
Lost boys still need a family, just like she does.
"Akemi, big sis..." she mutters, her eyes misty. The images of their last meeting flashing through her mind. "I hope you know what you are doing..."
Shiho puts the folders down and puts the ingredients together according to the most promising simulation result. She tries to clear her mind of all thought, all emotion. By the end of the day she's made enough of the drug to test on some mice. It is invariably poison, but tonight... A mouse survives.
It is half its original size.
She had a theory, once upon a time.
No lost boy is lost without a trace. He may be forgotten, but his name will still appear on a register somewhere, there will still be missing posters. He will still have left his trace on his mother's womb.
When they first put her on this project, having ensured she would be educated and able enough to understand its scope, they'd lost trace of any lost boys in the area. It's hard when none of the scientists still working on the project are anywhere near being under the age of twenty. The human eye starts to lose the ability to see fey things at the end of puberty. Shiho's ability to still glimpse the stardust, the fey blessed, is unusually good for her age. Her fey sight has always been good. It's the reason why they picked her over her sister for this.
When they presented her the list of all the Tokyo children missing but not found in the time since her parents' deaths, she made quick work of establishing which one she thought would be the one.
It's unheard of for the fey to bless more than one boy in a century.
She wondered, once, what happens to the lost boys before. The main theory is that they end up gathering enough children to not want to leave their neverland anymore. She finds it sad.
Her theory about Tokyo's current lost boy is straightforward. He is the son of the acclaimed crime novelist Yusaku Kudo and the retired star Yukiko Fujimine. Unlike so many of the other distraught parents, they don't seem inclined to see their child's face in every crowd. They tour the world on extravagant vanity trips and holidays, barely ever at home, never waiting for word. Their silence whenever their missing son is mentioned is noticeably followed by a quick and cheerful topic change. Many presume this to be a sign of their grief, but Shiho suspects silent bewilderment.
The parents of children taken by a lost boy don't have the luxury of forgetfulness.
Of course, she doesn't tell her employers of her theory. She can't prove it without interviewing the Kudo couple, and she can't imagine an anguish worse than finding out that not only your beloved child is missing, but you are constantly forgetting them.
So her theory remains one of many secrets she keeps hidden from the organisation. It's only fair, they keep so many hidden from her.
The reason for her sister's death, however, was the one secret she could not live with them keeping.
Unfortunately, the fates seem to laugh at her. Her drug doesn't kill her, and the only place she can think to go is the original home of the lost boy she'd been glimpsing at night.
Of course, it was a stupid idea.
Her feet hurt. Her lungs hurt! Why? Oh, yes. She ran. She ran as fast as she could, before anyone could see her, could come looking. Her arms hurt from holding onto her overly large dress, her lab coat. She panicked, is still panicking. Her lungs heave as her hands grip onto the black metal of the gate. She can see stardust here, the fairy powder that a lost boy leaves whenever he visits home. It's often their first port of call when they leave their neverland, to remind themselves why they never want to grow up, grow old.
Her clothes are sodden. Her toes sting from both the pavement and the cold. She can feel her vision fading. All she can think about is that boy, his grin.
She curses him as she passes out.
When she wakes up, it is to the sound of a kettle boiling. A man's voice is singing an old rhyme, a child's ditty. She holds her breath, trying to figure out what to say. He's not one of them, he can't be. But he'll have questions, ones she knows she cannot answer.
"It's alright," he says, kindly. He puts a cup of tea on the table next to the couch she's on. "I can see the fairy dust."
And her eyes go wide as she stares at her hands. It's faint, but it's there. It's a different hue from that at the Kudo mansion's gate, one entirely her own.
"What..." She asks, her voice croaky.
"Hush, rest." He says. "We can play questions and answers later."
The man, it turns out, is called Hiroshi Agasa. He's a professor of engineering and a prolific inventor of popular toys for children. He is also, as it turns out, a former lost boy.
"I found a girl," he explains, when asked. He smiles fondly. "She made me want to grow up. We meet once every ten years, under the peach blossoms."
"Now, what about you?" He chuckles. "You are something different. Something new, aren't you?"
"I... I'm not sure..." Shiho replies. She does feel different. There's something in her chest that wasn't there before. "I..."
She lifts a hand to her face. There are tears there.
"I shall call you love..." He says, brushing the crumbs from their lunch off his lap. "But we can write it as sadness."
He stands to go to his work bench. He beckons her over.
"Come, I need to finish this prototype by tonight." He twists a screw into place. "I hope Shinichi loves this as much as he will love you!"
"Please," Shiho grabs his sleeve. There's a desperate fear clawing at her insides. Shinichi. That's the name of the lost boy. She can't... "Don't tell him about me. Not yet."
The professor deflates a little but nods. "Okay... You can tell him yourself. Now, what do you think of..."
Life with the professor becomes a new routine. He enrols her into the local school at her request, the better to avoid suspicion. It gives her time away from his natural cheeriness and constant tinkering. She's quickly growing fond of the man, more than she ever thought possible. For all his childlike earnestness, he's quickly becoming the father figure she never had in her life.
It makes her feel warm and fuzzy, a feeling she longed for when the organisation sent her as a child too far away for her sister to visit. By the time they were close enough to connect by any means other than letters or the phone, always spied on, never private, the joy of seeing her sister had been supplanted by concern and worry. She still cries over her sister's murder, feels bad in the rare moments where she feels she is forgetting her, but somehow the distractions the professor provides help.
So, she becomes adamant to help him. She assists him in his projects, using her knowledge of chemistry to enhance his when he designs rainbow coloured fireworks. She tempers his enthusiasm with much needed safeguards, if the hole in the garden wall is anything to go by. She frets over his health, noticing that he eats like a child and has his girth as reward, putting him at risk of diabetes and a poorly heart. She drags him to the school's family exercise sessions and monitors his diet. In return he encourages her to mingle and takes her and some of her new classmates on camping trips.
The names that come out of the other children's mouths, however, always remind her of who she is, who she was. The class she is in is the one Ayumi, Mitsuhiko and Genta attended. Their names feature high on the list of mentions when ghost stories are told around the camp fire.
Their disappearance clearly haunts them, even in class she can tell. She goes home to the professor's, and at night, unable to sleep, sits by the window and watches as a trail of stardust streaks across the sky.
The lost boy visits the professor. This she knows. He mentions him fondly, the boy that was his neighbour and is now a lost boy like him so long ago.
"Don't you want him to grow up?" she asks, once. "Wouldn't it be nice for him to return to his parents?"
The professor solemnly shakes his head. "It doesn't work like that." He says. He shrugs. "He's the one who needs to want it. If he doesn't, he doesn't."
She thinks about mentioning the grief hanging over her classmates, the children stolen away by this Shinichi that he's so fond of. She keeps quiet. She knows the Professor has stolen away his fair share of children back in his day.
She thinks the professor can hear her thoughts, however, because he is unusually solemn the rest of that evening. He's taken his latest project up to the observatory, the small extrusion on his custom-built house that leads out onto the roof. He comes to her side and kneels. His hands feel warm and large on her shoulders.
"I think it time you met Shinichi," he says.
The way he looks at her as he says this, she doesn't have the heart to say no.
The professor leads her up the stairs, and then pauses. He looks, for the first time, fearful.
"I..." His voice catches in his throat. "I'll be downstairs... If you need me. Please... Be patient with him."
She frowns.
It is not so long a wait, all things considered. She's normally sat for hours before she catches a glimpse of him. Tonight, the clock barely strikes ten when she spies his stardust across the blackness of the night above. The professor's house is nicely situated. She can make out a few constellations despite the light pollution coming off Beika-town.
"Professor!" Cries the voice of the boy. She's hidden in the frame of a round window, shadows obscuring her from view. She can see his face lit by the light off the street lamps. His distinctive grin is there, enchanting her. It's so cocky and carefree. "Are we playing hide and seek tonight? Professor!"
He's floating by the window pane, so close she feels that if the glass wasn't there, she could feel his breath on her skin. Goosebumps tingle along her forearms.
"Hm?" He says, apparently noticing something. He reaches for the handle on the window, pulls it open. Why did the professor install such a security risk? She suspects she knows. "Who... Who's there?"
He pops his head into the observatory, a spark of light forming from his stardust and dancing around the room. A small fairy, Shiho realises, her heart skipping a beat. Well, no use hiding anymore.
She steps off the ledge and crosses her arms. She keeps quiet, watching his reaction.
He frowns, then laughs. His feet find the ground and he brushes himself down. His appearance is incongruous, the outfit a good decade out of date. His Sunday best, she wagers: grey shorts, blue jacket, a red bowtie on a white shirt.
"You must be the Professor's friend. Hi!" He puts his hand out, ready to shake. "I'm Shinichi!"
"I know who you are, Kudo." She replies. He starts upon hearing his surname, clearly unused to it after having left if behind a good ten years ago now.
"Who..." He sounds nearly fearful at first, but his tone soon turns suspicious. "Who are you?"
"The professor named me Ai Haibara," Shiho replies. She brushes her hair behind her ear. She doesn't know what causes her to do it, but she continues, channelling every bit of her dark past into her next words. "But you can call me Sherry."
"You!" He starts, clearly stung by her words. "You're one of them!"
He jabs her in the chest, and the accusation stings her in turn. He's... He's aware of the organisation?
"What have you done with the Professor!" He shouts. There's fear in his eyes.
She's not sure what pushes her to do it. Is it the fairy dust now in her veins, or... did the organisation truly make her one of their own? Nevertheless, the words leave her lips, unforced, like venom from a viper.
"The Professor? He's not coming up here. Why don't you go downstairs and see for yourself..."
It's cruel, and childish, but she finds a secret delight in the terror on his face as he leaps down the staircase, calling out for the professor with every step. She realises that on some level, she's come to resent this lost boy for unwittingly stealing away so much of her life. She never got to live through her childhood years as a child, the organisation keen to put her to use; let alone enjoy as long a childhood as his.
She follows him down the stairs, at a more sedate pace. She feels remorse upon seeing Shinichi's bewildered face as the Professor strives to reassure him. The prank was unnecessarily cruel. He glares at her, realising he's been had, and becomes petulant.
"So, Professor," he asks, pouting. "What is she doing here?"
It's odd, really, how quickly Shinichi becomes a fixture in her new life. He's wary of her, but still insists on having her join in their play when he visits the Professor. She finds that he's surprisingly critical of the Professor's toys. Quick to test them, to find their best use, but also quick to discard them if they don't somehow meet his impossibly high standards. He doesn't ever smile at her, but she can see his grin appearing whenever she makes some sarcastic remark, sometimes chuckling in defeat if it is at his expense.
He visits a couple of nights a week. The Professor knows his prototype is a hit whenever Shinichi asks if he can take it back to the "Detective Boys," the name he's given to his crew of stolen children. Shiho is surprised, when she asks about them, to hear him wax on at lengths about how happy they are.
"Ayumi is super sweet, and the bravest of us all!" He says, waving his arms wide to show just how brave. "And Genta is quick to protect her if she gets in trouble. His strength is an asset in our fight against them." She notices the tone his voice takes whenever he mentions them. She doesn't interrupt though, it's one of the rare days where he isn't trying to get her back for tricking him. "As for Mitsuhiko, he's a clever one." He taps his nose. "But between you and me, I'm the smarter one. He knows a lot of useful stuff, but I'm the brains."
She finds herself laughing, a little, at that. He notices, and it's the first time he's grinned at her since they've met.
He brings them up when she and the Professor are out camping with Maria, Toshiya and Takuma. The children are, much to Shiho's relief, sound asleep when she notices the trail of stardust through the flap of their tent. The Professor is sleeping too, his soft snores a well-earned respite after spending hours accumulating wood for the fire, a prolonged activity he is not used to.
"Hey," she says, stepping out of the tent to meet him. He perches on the log by the embers of their fire, birdlike with his hands on his hips.
"Tell me," he asks, his voice strangely solemn. "What do you know about them?"
She's surprised. Shiho hadn't expected him to bring it up.
"That depends..." She replies, slowly. "Why don't you tell me what you know first?"
It becomes a game. He tells her of an encounter, and she'll share a piece of her knowledge in turn.
They've been chasing him from the day he became a lost boy, he says. Harassing the families of anyone he tries to befriend. Shiho frowns at that but admits that she knows they are chasing after lost boys. Why? he asks. She shrugs. Immortality, she says. They seek to affect the flow of time. He frowns. They are not fey, he says, his fairy dust ball manifesting in an angry dance around the fire. Why does he ask? He curls up, into a ball.
"I have..." He says slowly, quietly. He glances up at her. "A friend. Nearly a grown up. He feels a lot like you do."
She stays quiet, waiting for him to go on. "He's more fun than you are, he likes to play tricks on grown-ups rather than kids."
"I'm about the same age you are," she points out, unsure if he'll understand that she doesn't mean physically. He was only born several months after her. He doesn't take the bait.
"He's a magician." He goes on. "A phantom thief." He smirks, somehow finding this to be a redeeming feature. "I like to chase him."
"But they chase him too." It's nearly a whine, and she frowns. She thinks she knows who she's on about. "And they're playing wrong. They killed his dad!"
"They..." She starts, realising that her tears are running down her cheeks. "They killed my sister too."
He watches, quietly, as she struggles. There's no emotion on his face, but she can tell that the gears in his head are turning.
"Your sister..." he finally says. "Tell me about her?"
Shiho does. She's stunned. The words are pouring out of her mouth and she cannot fathom why. This boy, he's too young, too lost to make sense of half of the unfairness in her life, but she's telling him. She finds herself gripping his jacket, sobbing, before she realises that there are no more words left to say. Akemi is dead. She'll never know why they killed her.
"I knew her..." He finally says. His eyes are sad, so much sadder than they have any right to be. "She was pretending to be called Masami. My... Friend... Her dad is a detective, she went to see him, before they..."
Shiho's stunned into silence.
"Come with me," he says, earnestly. He offers her his hand. His fairy is back, its glow pulsing slightly.
"No..." She answers weakly. She really wants to say yes. "Not yet..."
She doesn't want to be another missing friend for Maria, Toshiya and Takuma. Not like this.
He nods, and wordlessly leaves.
She doesn't see him for a week. She figures it's because they're looking for him.
In that time, they nearly find her.
She's shaking, fighting to keep her breathing steady. What a fool she was. She's balled up in a locker, one of the many in the bus station. She can hear his tread, heavy, purposefully. She tries not to let panic overcome her as she hears him start opening lockers.
"Hmph, what am I doing?" He mutters. "There's no way she'd fit in one of these."
She holds her breath and counts to thirty. She's feeling light headed. She curses the distinctive colour of her hair, that she even thought to go near that Porsche. But she couldn't help it. She had to know, she just had to...
It hadn't taken a genius to figure out which friend Shinichi had referred to. The way he spoke of them, they were clearly from his old life, from before. Though his parents had forgotten him, his playmates hadn't. There were testimonies in the press at the time of his disappearance from his classmates, his friends. Only one of them had a father who was a private eye.
That Akemi had sought them out before her death... Shiho had needed to find out more.
"I found you!" The cheerful words and cocky grin greet her. She stirs, her body feeling weak. She feels herself gulping in air. Oxygen starvation, she thinks, idly. He's saved her.
Shinichi helps her out, she stumbles a little.
"What..." She says. "It's daylight..." She stops. It's not. She must have passed out longer than she thought.
"I came looking for you," he says. "The professor was worried when I said I hadn't seen you."
"I... Thank you." Shiho smiles, relieved. It's... nice, to have someone to worry about her that she isn't endangering... She remembers how close Gin had been to finding her. She hasn't endangered him... yet.
"Your smile is nice," Shinichi says. Though he follows it with a half-lidded gaze and a smirk. "For such a nasty lady."
She glares at him and crosses her arms. He shakes his head.
"Fancy coming to my place for a bit?" He offers.
She doesn't say no this time.
His Neverland is... unexpected. It takes his fairy a while to get her floating. He ends up tickling her to get her in the air. She would resent him for that if not for the novelty of feeling so light. She gets such a head rush from flying that she hardly notices the passage of time. They fly north from the Tokyo tower, headed for the first star to the east. The sun is rising when they burst through a cloud into a world of orange hues, their feet landing on cobbled streets. He grabs her hand and pulls her out of a small alleyway and around a corner. They're surrounded by tall grey houses, iron fences blocking them off from the street. Each door is reached via some stone steps, and its up these steps to a door labelled 21B that he drags her.
Inside she meets his friends for the first time. She recognises them instantly.
"Hi! I'm Ayumi!" The girl beams, her smile able to melt any of her apprehensiveness in an instant. "Shinichi's told us so much about you."
"Nice to meet you, Ai!" Says Genta, he waves. He's wearing a Victorian suit that looks tight on his frame as he chews on a meat skewer. She's slightly intimidated by his size. She always pictured him as smaller than her in her head, the product of being an eighteen-year-old in the body of a child. He looks harmless enough though.
"Um... Hi!" The third child speaks. He's tall and skinny, with freckles across his cheeks. She recalls that his name is Mitsuhiko. He's blushing.
She doesn't know what to say. Shinichi, thankfully, fills the awkward silence.
"Welcome to the Detective Boys, Ai! Let's go solve a mystery!"
"Yeah!" The others cheer. Shiho decides it's best to play along.
They've outwitted criminal gang boss Sebastian Moran by the time she makes her decision. She needs to go back.
"Awh, but why?" Genta complains.
"Yeah, it's so fun here!" Mitsuhiko pipes in.
"I want to be a Detective Boy forever!" Ayumi adds.
"I'm sorry," Shiho replies, her heart in her stomach. These three have made her feel more accepted than any of the children at the school ever could. "My mind is made up."
"It's okay," Shinichi says, sat on top of a lamp post. He's got that insufferable grin again. "She'll be back, I'm sure."
He takes her hand again, his fairy sprinkling dust over her eyes.
"Anyone you guys want me to check on while we're away?"
A cacophony breaks out as the three kids name loved ones they miss the most. A sister, a mother, a father... Shiho's brow creases. These children...
"Bye Ai! See you soon, Shinichi!" They cry as the two soar into the air.
"Say..." She starts to ask. Shinichi shakes his head.
"It's okay," he finally says, as Tokyo Tower pops instantly into view when they leave the fictitious London streets behind. "You sister never liked staying long either."
She starts, and her mind races at the implications. She wonders. He doesn't seem to mind her silence. He greets the professor warmly and then nips off to some adventure or other. She looks at the sky. The sun isn't risen yet.
"How long was I away?" She asks, unsure.
"A day." The professor replies. He smiles and puts a warm hand on her shoulder. "It's good to see you back. Did you have fun?"
"Yes..." The answer surprises her. "Yes, I did."
"Akemi could see you... All along, couldn't she?" Shiho asks when she sees him next.
"Hmhm..." he nods. He's toying with the professor's latest gadget, a belt that can produce a football from it's buckle. "It's rare to find an adult with the sight. Usually I need to dim my fairy dust for them to notice me."
She hadn't known he could do that.
"Then why..." Why had the organisation not used Akemi for their project? Why had they insisted on using her? "How... How long did you know her?"
He goes quiet, looking at her questioningly. She realises that time must be such an abstract concept to him. He pauses, counting on his fingers.
"She was... fifteen, I think? I... I found her on a rooftop, with a card that said happy fifteenth birthday in her hands? She was crying. She didn't notice me until I touched her shoulder. She was listening to a cassette tape I think." Shiho frowns as he describes the event. He goes on, fiddling with the setting on the belt, the ball inflating and deflating alternately. "I... She was the first person I took to Neverland. She told me she had no parents, that she was scared her sister would be taken from her. She looked like she needed the break."
Akemi was fifteen? That would have been about the time the organisation raising them started taking an interest in whether the girls would be able to continue their parents' studies.
"Like you she never stayed long. She always wanted to go back to her sister. To you." His voice is quiet. He's staring out the window, away from her. She's glad the professor is downstairs tweaking his other invention. "I couldn't understand it really. Not until... Not until they got Hiroki..."
He looks back at her, and for the first time there's something in his gaze that she registers as old, much older than he looks. She tries to place the name Hiroki. She feels like she should recognise it.
"That was a year ago." He mutters. She can't help but picture him as her age, her real age, in that moment: his cocky smile no longer tempered by innocence, instead weighed down by the weight of the world. "Most of the friends I bring to Neverland? They want to go home eventually... After a summer, a year or two... He was different. He just wanted to keep having adventures with me."
Shinichi sits down, removing the toy belt.
"There we were," he waves a hand in the air. His gestures are always so dramatic. She guesses it must be the traces of his mother in him. "Flying in the sky together, wondering what prank we could play next... We spotted the fairground. There was this rollercoaster..."
Silence fills the room. Shiho thinks she hears the professor pausing at the bottom of the stairs. Clearly, he's heard the serious tone in Shinichi's voice. She's grateful that he chooses not to intrude.
"What happened next?" She asks. She doesn't push, but he clearly needs to talk about it.
"I was careless..." he whispers. "I got distracted."
"There... There was this girl on the rollercoaster..." He says, as she lays a hand on his knee. "I thought... No, I did. I recognised her. I was too busy watching her to notice them, the two men in black. I would have recognised them otherwise, known to take Hiroki and fly far far away."
He places his hand on hers, looks her in the eyes.
"Your... Your sister had warned me about them. But I didn't listen. They fired some sort of magic net at us and... I got away... Hiroki didn't."
Shiho's heart sinks. She has a feeling she knows where this story is going. Shinichi stands up, leaps up onto the window sill.
"Next time I saw him, Hiroki was dead."
He leaves then. She's not sure, because she didn't see any tears, but it looked like he was away to cry. She feels that way too.
Hiroki... Hiroki Sanada. That... That was the name of the boy most recently disappeared when they'd brought her back to Tokyo. That was the name of the child found dead conveniently just after they'd provided her with a large supply of fairy dust. She...
"I... take it Shinichi won't be wanting tea?" The Professor says awkwardly from the top of the stairs.
He doesn't comment when Shiho cries and goes to hug him.
Shinichi acts as though the conversation never happened the next time she sees him. They're out on the streets, testing some tracking glasses the professor designed. They look overly large on Shinichi's face, but he seems to be enjoying them.
It's only the slightest hint of a frown on his face that lets Shiho know he remembers.
"The Detective Boys are asking after you..." He says, when he catches her staring.
"Oh? Tell them I say hi!" She smiles. She's been back a couple of times since the first trip. She's never away longer than a day, going back to school afterwards pretending she was off with the cold. It occurs to her that they never accompany Shinichi on his night trips... Unlike Hiroki, and those before, she presumes... She shivers. Her eye catches a glimpse of ginger. She turns, points. "There's the cat!"
She starts to run towards it, only for Shinichi to grab her hand.
"Never mind the cat." He whispers. "I want to show you something."
He pulls her around the corner, and she notices that his fairy dust has dimmed. She recognises the area. This is where...
Her breath catches as she notices the detective Agency. The streetlights shine bright, but not brightly enough to mask the backlit sign at its elevated windows. A moustachioed man is leaning out the window smoking and notices them. Shiho shies away, still wary of the area, even though there's no Porsche nearby.
"Hey, brat, is that you?" The man above grins. Shiho notices the man stumbling. She wouldn't be surprised if his breath smelled of beer.
"Hi, old man!" Shinichi greets back, seemingly unfazed. He waves. "Is Ran there?"
"What-" Shiho hisses. "Are you doing?!"
"It's okay," he whispers back. The old man goes into the agency to holler for someone. Shinichi squeezes her hand. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."
Shiho hesitates, but there's something in Shinichi's expression that gives her pause. She suddenly realises that at some point over the last few weeks, she'd stopped thinking of him as the lost boy. Today's the first time she sees it in his expression.
"Alright..." she sighs.
"Come on up, boy!" The old man shouts down. "Bring your friend if you must. Ran's got some juice for you."
Shinichi doesn't wait to drag Shiho up the stairs.
Shiho is... surprised. Ran Mouri, that's the girls name.
She knows, because she read up on her when she still worked for the organisation, when she suspected the missing Shinichi Kudo of being the lost boy they were after. The girl's testimony had been enlightening.
She knows, because when Shinichi mentioned that Akemi had seen his "friend's" father when she sought a detective, Shiho had double checked that it was indeed Kogoro Mouri that he meant. That was the same detective that Akemi had mentioned to her at... at their last meeting.
She knows, because she'd been that close to meeting the girl, possibly, and her father. That was the day she'd noticed Gin's car parked in front. Fluke or design, who could say? She prayed for the former...
She hadn't known, however, what it is like to be in the room with the girl. Her smile, so sad, yet hopeful, captures her heart in a way she didn't think possible.
"It's good to see you, Conan," Ran smiles at the boy. He preens at the fictitious name, pushing the glasses further up his nose. "And lovely to meet you too, Ai."
She asks them about their day. Ai answers honestly, briefly. Shinichi comes up with far too detailed a lie. Shinichi asks Ran about her father's classes, her friends, the books she's been reading. Ran speaks to him warmly with the affection of a big sister, keen to delight him with a tale and a biscuit.
Shiho keenly feels the resemblance between Ran and Akemi. Not just physically, but their souls...
When they leave, Shiho's heart is heavy, but she feels that this, this was something Shinichi had been keeping to himself.
"Does she know?" She asks quietly. He shakes his head rapidly.
"The Professor told me they would probably come after her if I told her. I visit her sometimes. She cleans my parents' house in their absence. She spotted me there just under a year ago. I grabbed my dad's old glasses and made up a name, pretended the Professor was my uncle and asked me to return a book to the neighbours." He shrugs, kicking at some dirt on the pavement. The glasses are back in his jacket pocket, the tracker on the cat a lost cause. "After... After Hiroki died, I think she's been my only motivation to keep visiting the real world."
Shiho's breath catches in her throat, imagining this brilliant, sharp-minded and cocky boy locking himself away in a neverland like that.
"Don't get me wrong, I love the Professor," he's quick to add, his arms sweeping out protectively. He stops walking, pausing. "He gets why I am what I am. He makes great toys. But he's not... He's not..."
He's not family, Shiho thinks, not to him. Not like Ran seems to be. To Shinichi, the Professor is a cool friend, and no more. And she... Shiho wonders, what is she to him?
"I get it..." She says, though her heart sinks with her words.
"Hey..." He says, his voice like a summer breeze that's barely there, warm but hesitant. "If... If you were a lost boy, wo-would you? Would you choose to stay in Neverland and never leave?"
The hairs on her arms prickle. She turns to look at the ground, the dark tarmac underfoot. If she could... would she?
She remembers her childhood, painfully short of joy, of fun. Her days were full of textbooks and equations and obscure classes by ancient experts more used to handling old grimoires than young adolescents. She remembers fleeting glances of her sister, short snippets of stories about her parents that didn't involve their research, promises of more, and then... She remembers seeing a photo plastered on the tabloids, of her sister, dead. She remembers the lack of response when she asked, the glares from Gin, Vodka's shrugs. She remembers the cold bite of the metal cuffs and the promise of death should she not resume her research.
"It would be tempting..." She says. Her voice is as quiet as his, searching. She lifts her eyes to the sky above, sees a couple of stars twinkling.
Then she remembers Ran, and her patient smile, her warm cookies and fresh juice. She remembers the Professor and his quiet chuckle, his wacky humour and terrible puns. She remembers Ayumi, Mitsuhiko and Genta's energy and liveliness, and she remembers the occasional sorrow that would flitter across the faces of her classmates at school.
"Tempting... But I'd have to pass." She closes her eyes and wills away the notion of a Neverland built for her, where she could be a child forever and never grow up, never face pain again.
"Why?" He asks, the question he always seems able to answer himself.
"I..." Shiho is startled. He's looking her in the eyes, his gaze intense. "I'd rather live in this world without the pain than flee it, I guess?"
"Well then," Shinichi says, matter-of-factly. "I guess we'd better do something about them."
He smiles at her then. A grin that is both cocky and proud, and caring and trusting, and she really wish he wouldn't because she... And then he's away, off into the sky, waving goodbyes and promising to see her in a couple of days. She barely gets the chance to wave back.
And then she realises what he said.
It all happens quickly, far too quickly for her liking. A couple of days fretting over whether she'd misunderstood him between panic attacks and sheer fatigue are poor preparation for the whirlwind he brings with him when he does return.
"Don't..." She croaks out, her voice cracking with emotion. "Don't make me... worry like that! Please!"
And he grins, and waves to the front of the professor's building. A black car has pulled up out of which come some grown-ups. For a moment she fears that he's stupid, that he went and brought them here, and then she notices that the one in front appears to be his father and she has no idea what to think.
She becomes a bystander in the Professor's living room as he greets the numerous guests. Both Shinichi's parents are here, though she doesn't understand why. They barely address the boy, but seem as involved as the rest, if not more so. There's an old American man, a woman who sounds like the new English Teacher Ran had described, and a familiar face who she's told are all FBI. Her eyes went wide at the sight of the man she'd known as Moroboshi Dai, alias Rye. If she hadn't known the organisation outed him as a mole, she would probably have had a heart attack. As it is, he sits quietly, barely acknowledging her, even though she's glaring holes into the back of his head because he was his sister's boyfriend for grief sake.
There's a short altercation when another car arrives, bringing in a tanned man with bleached hair and some police officers. Turns out Japanese police forces aren't too happy about American intelligence agencies being involved. Their faces turn even more livid when some agents from the CIA show up.
But somehow, Shinichi makes it work. Going, again, by the name Conan, he and Dai, no, Shuichi Akai map out the broad strokes of a strategy, with some input from the tanned man and the CIA woman who looks like a famous TV presenter. Turns out, they are both moles in the organisation too. They seem stunned when Shinichi turns to her and asks her to confirm some details. She replies quietly, succinctly, but not without inserting some quip to remind him about how dangerous this whole folly is.
And then they're gone. And before the professor can think to stop her, she's gone too, the spare set of tracking glasses on her nose.
No casualties. She can scarcely believe it. Shinichi became a quick candidate for murder though, when she realised he recruited the Detective Boys for the fool hardy mission.
"How..." She can't even finish the question. Shiho stares from beneath the hood of her jacket as she watches Gin and Vermouth both escorted into the back of a police van, hands shackled, heads bowed. The boss is already being driven away to jail.
"Do you remember I told you I knew your sister?" He says, sat next to her on the rooftop, swinging his legs. At the corner of the street he can see the Detective Boys being reunited with their parents. It must be bitter sweet for him, she thinks.
"Yes?" Shiho can't even begin to guess what this will be leading into. Shinichi's face is a mask, his mind a mystery behind that self-satisfied smile.
"I... I was there..." His feet stop swinging. He puts his hands in his lap. "The night she died."
Shiho doesn't trust herself to speak.
"I was... Too late to help. Ran went to call an ambulance, but..." Shiho wishes it wasn't so dark, that she could see his eyes better. "I knew it was them," he continues with venom. "She confirmed it. And she..."
He turns to her now, and Shiho sees the age in his eyes again, wiser than the years he should have.
"She asked me to look out for you. To take you to Neverland and keep you safe, if I could." He chuckles. "I expected you to be taller, you know? And your name's not Sherry, or Ai Haibara. It's Shiho. Shiho Miyano."
"How... How long have you known?" Shiho asks, unsure what else to say. That Akemi would request this of him... That even with her dying breath, she'd...
Thankfully, he ignores the tears building in her eyes.
"I didn't know at first." Shinichi replies, shrugging. "It's rare to find children with their own fairy dust, but it can happen. I thought you'd maybe met another Lost boy somewhere else. I suspected when you told me about your sister. I knew for sure after."
"Thank you..." Shiho whispers, not sure what for, but the feeling is pouring through her as a tear runs down her cheek.
They sit in silence for a while, as the last van drives away.
"What now?" She finally asks.
"I think I will stay." He says, standing and turning to her. He grabs her hand and kisses her cheek. "If... If you will let me?"
In the end, Conan doesn't get to stay with her and the professor. Which is fine, because Ran seems keen to adopt him as her little brother and her old man willingly puts up with him. He often accompanies him on cases, enjoying the same kind of adventures as in his neverland. The Detective Mouri Agency never thrived so well.
The professor surprises Ai by introducing her to Fusae Campbell, the girl who convinced him to give up being a lost boy. Upon seeing Shinichi give up his Neverland, the Professor finally found the will to ditch their ten-yearly meetings for daily ones, and the two are engaged. Fusae is delighted at the idea of adopting her with Hiroshi once they marry, and Ai finds she doesn't mind having the pair as adoptive mother and father. Fusae will be good for him.
Ai and Conan still have regular adventures with the Detective Boys, the class being delighted at having the three back, and a new boy to welcome. The Professor's camping trips are greatly enhanced in their company, and Conan and Ai find they need to wait until the four others are asleep to sneak into the woods and enjoy some time as their old selves. Their dead names slip from their lips as they stare at the stars and try to remember what it felt like to fly. The Detective Boys quickly forgot all about Neverland, leaving them as the only two able to reminisce.
Shiho lefts her hand up to the sky. She observes the sparkle of her faint fairy dust against the spread of the milky way.
"It's still there," Shinichi smirks, playfully swatting at her hand. She makes a sound of annoyance and he leaves the hand be, puts his own up beside hers.
There's no fairy dust left on his. It all drifted away that night on the rooftop when he asked if he could stay. Getting down from there had been interesting.
"What do you think it means?" She asks, frowning. She'd thought maybe her dust would wear away in time or vanish alongside his... but its intensity never changed.
Shinichi is quiet for a moment.
"I... I don't know..." He says, the words clearly uncomfortable on his tongue. His voice grows more confident however. "Shiho, if I had to guess... From what you told me, they never let you have much of a childhood, did they?"
She shakes her head, not bothering to reply. The question is rhetorical at this point.
"Well," Shinichi sits up, smiling down at her as he brushes the grass off his legs. "Just as the fairies granted me an extended childhood, I believe they've granted you a second chance at one."
Shiho's eyes snap to his, bewildered.
"Akemi would be so glad." He whispers.
And for the first time in as long as she can remember, when Shiho feels a tear running down her cheek, it is a tear of joy.