A young woman sat on the bleachers, smiling at the children playing. Her son was getting very good at soccer. It was a pity that she had been forced to home school him because of his powers. He really needed more time to socialize.
As she watched, her son struck. He ran past the child who had the ball and kicked it away, taking control of it.
"Go Hiroshi!" she cheered loudly.
Unfortunately, moments later a small boy with blue eyes and black hair stole the ball back. The boy's team cheered.
"Kudo! Kudo! Kudo!"
A girl on the sidelines yelled, "You've got it, Shinichi!"
To her disappointment, the boy proceeded to score a goal against her son's team for the second time that game. The game continued. After the third goal, her son's team was getting very frustrated. They were down by two goals (the score was 1 for their team, 3 for the other), and they could not turn the game around no matter how hard they tried. Eventually, one of her son's teammates screamed with frustration and kicked the ball as hard as he could. Unfortunately, the boy had a strong leg and no aim. The ball was flying straight at a baby sitting in a carrier on the sidelines. That would not do.
The woman focused, pulling her magic to the forefront and casting it outwards. With a moment's exertion, the ball changed course, flying directly into her arms. She tossed it back to the referee with a smile. The people around her began muttering about wind. She smiled gently, ignoring them. In her experience, anyone over the age of ten either came up with a nonsensical non-magic explanation or gave up because they had no way to prove that the ball had moved by magic.
When the whistle blew a few minutes later, a young boy, Shinichi Kudo, the star of the other team, practically ran over to her, to her surprise. He even beat her son. He stared at her with intense focus.
"How did you do that trick with the ball?" he asked her with intense interest shining from his eyes.
Her lips quirked. "What trick?"
He glared at her angrily. "You know what I'm talking about! You made the soccer ball fly to you. There was no wind and I can't find any strings — plus, we'd trip on any strings if there were any attached. Is there a magnet in the ball? I think it would need to be very heavy to be that powerful, though."
Her eyebrows shot up. So this seven-year-old was not only a genius at soccer. He was also very eloquent for his age, which indicated a level of intelligence she would never have guessed at. She decided to mess with him. Even if she told him the truth, no one would believe an impressionable child. She grinned naughtily. No one could see the area between them.
"Magic," she declared happily.
"Magic does not exist. It is simply a word used to describe things we do not understand yet," he declared.
She grimaced. This kid was arrogant, in her face, and smug. The way he beat her son's team practically on his own was irritating, too. "It does, you know," she declared, and levitated a rock between them with a smirk.
The boy promptly began checking it for magnets, strings, and all sorts of other things. Eventually, he gave up with a huff.
"Tell me how you're doing that," he demanded angrily. It was really quite rude.
"Magic," she growled.
"No. Magic doesn't exist. I'm not a stupid kid like them. I don't believe in that stuff," he said arrogantly.
She glared. "Are you calling my son stupid?"
He gave her a challenging smirk. "If he believes in magic…"
She took a deep breath. She would not shout at the seven-year-old menace, she told herself. Getting mad at a seven-year-old would be pitiful.
The boy continued when she stayed silent. "I'm going to be a detective like Sherlock Holmes," he said, rattling off a bunch of meaningless trivia about the people around her. While the attention to detail and ability to reach conclusions so quickly were impressive, showing off like that was irritating. His parents really needed to teach him some manners — and a sense of what should be kept private. She really did not need to know what her neighbor had been up to before the game.
A moment later, her son wandered over. He saw the floating rock and his brows shot up.
She continued glaring at the arrogant, irritating brat before her. "If you are a Holmes fan, then you must have heard the quote, 'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.' You've eliminated everything but magic," she said with clear irritation.
Somehow, the arrogant but observant boy failed to read the mood or draw the obvious conclusion. "Magic is impossible, not improbable," he declared baldly.
Her son cleared his throat, then asked, "Mom, why are you using magic? The people might see you." He looked around nervously.
The boy confronting her snorted, then broke down laughing. "Magic doesn't exist, you idiot. It's just a trick," he told her son. He then turned back to her. "I told you I'm not stupid like him."
She glared in fury as her son's eyes began to tear up.
"I'm not stupid! Magic does exist. Right, Mommy?" he said defiantly, tears in his beautiful black eyes as he looked up at her in pain and hope.
She smiled at him. "Don't worry, honey. This boy is just mean and stupid. Don't let him get to you," she said, hugging her son close.
"Hey!" yelped Shinichi.
She turned her glare on Shinichi. "Kudo-san, magic exists. I ask that you stop bullying my son over it. What would it take to show you that it is real?"
He glared at her defiantly. "Stop lying — I'm not a stupid kid. It's not real."
She restrained the urge to slap the arrogant menace as her son's tears soaked into her shirt. "In that case, you wanted to be a detective, right?" she said, drawing on her power as deeply as she could, pulling up all of her negative emotions and casting outward, building a matrix of power around the boy, who shifted uneasily at a chill he could not explain. A dark smile graced her face. "From this day forth, until the day that you accept magic is real, you will find yourself plagued with endless cases. No matter where you go, death shall follow," she declared ominously. The curse finished growing around him and its energy began to seep into his skin. "Good luck, detective." The curse settled softly into place.
With a smirk of anger, she turned on her heel and left, vanishing as soon as she exited the trees, her son in her arms.
Shinichi searched, but could not find her.
—
Seven years later, the woman was shocked when Shinichi Kudo emerged in the news as a highschool detective with many cases under his belt. She had expected him to eliminate the impossibility of bad luck after he faced two or three cases, and to switch his career goals to something safer. A child that intelligent should not have been prone to denial.
However, it appeared her curse was still going strong. Murderers had been drawn to him like a moth to flame for seven years, and he still could not admit that magic existed. She snorted, then shrugged it off. He must not be very smart, after all, if he still carried her curse.
Oh well. She could not be bothered to go all the way to Tokyo to remove it.
