A.N.: Hello, D.C. here. I was browsing TV Tropes today and read something in the Wacky Marriage Proposal Troper Tales that I felt Kaito would do to propose to someone. However, the proposal idea ended up evolving into this, which is pretty different. Please, let me know of any feedback you have, positive or negative. Either way, though, please try to be polite about it. Thank you, and enjoy.
In the middle of a room full of applause and exclamations of awe, twenty-year-old Aoko sighed quietly from her seat as she half-gazed, half-glared at the brightly lit stage. The dinner theater was filled with round tables, each decorated with a white tablecloth and a single rose, the color of the flower selected randomly. Aoko picked up a burgundy petal that had fallen from her rose and absentmindedly admired its silky texture before another puff of colored smoke drew her attention to the figure on the stage.
Even through her frustration with having been dragged to Kaito's magic shows every night for the past two weeks, Aoko had to admit that her boyfriend of two years was amazing when it came to hiding how his tricks worked. She could never figure out just where he (and his father before him) managed to summon a turkey from, and the young woman could tell that Kaito still struggled with the trick. The hints were subtle and masked-eyes widening minutely and an ever-so-slight falter in the magician's grin-but they were still there. To the audience, however, the stunt was flawless, and that was what mattered most. The audience's opinion, not the girlfriend sitting at a table alone.
The university student forced her loneliness down as much as she could. Being lonely made no sense: the room, although small, held at least one hundred other people, and she reasoned that she should have been used to loneliness from her past experiences with waiting for her father to return from Kaitou Kid's latest heist. Thankfully, nobody had seen the thief for three years, ever since he indirectly helped lead the police to a group with less-than-legal operations which was led by a man named Snake, and Kid's final note to the police after that stated point-blank that Kid wouldn't be bothering them anymore. Aoko's relief and joy over the development had been eclipsed by Kaito's coincidental hospitalization for a stab wound to his left leg. He had insisted throughout his time at the hospital that it was nothing for her to worry about, just an accident because of his carelessness while practicing a more advanced, dangerous magic trick, but that incident gave him a permanent limp and a new shadow with a very flippable skirt (much to his enjoyment and her fury) who watched over him while he practiced or performed.
"To wrap up tonight's performance," Kaito's voice drew Aoko out of her thoughts, "the finale is one of my favorite tricks with a special spin on it."
A mahogany red box seemed to appear from thin air and land in the magician's gloved hand. His short-sleeved dress shirt didn't allow him to hide anything up his sleeves, much less a small wooden box.
"A valuable treasure rests inside of this box, meant for only one person," Kaito began setting up the basis for the trick, and his growing nervousness bewildered Aoko. Usually Kaito was a master at hiding his emotions, so why was he getting anxious so suddenly and allowing it to show even a little bit? "When I count to three, the box will disappear from my hand and reappear beside the person the treasure truly belongs to. One... Two... Three!"
In the blink of an eye, the box was gone from he magician's hand. Aoko looked at the audience to see whose pocket the box had jumped into but found that the audience's eyes were focused on her. Her gaze fell on the small wooden box beside her as Kaito stepped down from the stage and made his way over to his girlfriend while keeping his limp as subtle as possible. He grabbed the box from the table, turning the burgundy rose blue in the process, and commented, "This is probably the most nerve-wracking experience I've had, including when Inspector Nakamori and I went fishing." He turned to the audience and joked, "If you ever date someone whose relative works in law enforcement, don't assume that people on the force are above pushing you into the water with a bunch of fish."
Aoko opened her mouth to scold Kaito for picking on her father but was silenced as Kaito carefully knelt down and tried not to put much weight on his bad leg. He opened the box to reveal a simple ring with a teardrop-shaped sapphire in the middle and small diamonds on either side of the sapphire on the band.
"Aoko, will you marry me?"
A tense silence fell over the room, and nobody dared to even breathe. It seemed to take an eternity for Aoko's brain to finally process what Kaito had just asked the girl.
Suddenly, she was grabbing the magician in a fierce hug which almost knocked both of them to the ground. "Of course I will, you idiot!"
"The 'idiot' comment wasn't necessary," protested Kaito halfheartedly as the crowd cheered. He looked back at the audience from the ground, because Aoko hadn't let go of him yet. "Thank you all, and good night!"
"Like father, like son, huh?" commented Inspector Nakamori as Chikage Kuroba lowered her video camera.
Kaito's mother smiled gently and nodded. "Kaito really wanted to propose to Aoko the same way Toichi proposed to me. Changing the color of the rose was a nice touch, though." She sniffed slightly. "I wish that Toichi could have seen this himself."
Nakamori put his arm around his friend's shoulders. "He and Midoriko are probably keeping an eye on those two all the time. Where else could Kaito have gotten all of those prank ideas from over the years? Aoko resembles her mother more and more each day, and Midoriko probably yells at me daily for cursing so often around Aoko."
Kuroba laughed and nodded. "Definitely. Well, it should be interesting to see how all of this works out in the end."
"They should be fine as long as there are no mops on the honeymoon."