It's been a while.


Night. All were asleep, save for a certain child, whose troubled thoughts kept him awake in bed – a child whose eyes flashed and shone a weary light strangely out of place on his boyish face. His arms were lain carefully behind his head in a gesture of a passing contemplation which had grown faded and old with time. With a heavy sigh, he sat up and drew his hands towards a pen and a notebook. Pushing himself backwards so that the wall now supported his weight, he began to write. With many a pause and mumbling, he scratched out his letter, many times cursing softly and crossing out what he wrote.

At last, the letter having been written, the boy once more sighed, and folded the letter, tucking it inside a diary that he received as a birthday present.

The young boy slid out of bed, and silently dressed himself; he grabbed a skateboard of curious design, and tiptoed to the door of his residence. Suddenly he paused, as if remembering something, and slowly made his way back to his room to get something. He retrieved a plain case from the dresser, and took out from within the soft lining the sole object residing inside. A faint smile could almost be discerned from the boy's face, a self-degrading, mocking smile that seemed so wrong on the face of a child so young.

He slipped out the door with his skateboard, in his hands gleamed a flash of white and red -

'Ran,

Maybe it will make sense to you in time. I know you've suspected this for a long time, and only your trust in me has kept you from once more asking me who I am. Honestly, I don't think I could have hidden myself from you if you did ask; I'm growing tired of this deception, this dark, desolate prison that makes up who I am. But, if by keeping this a secret, I can keep you safe, I will protect this sad story of mine to the ends of time, though I may despair in my grief.

Yet, with Them gone, I feel there is no more need to hide myself anymore, to keep this mask between you and I, separating us as if we were on opposite ends of the earth, though we are but a hand's width apart.

I write to you, for by the time you read this, I will no longer be able to be by your side any longer. They are after me, and I have already set the final traps. Once they kill me (as they inevitably will), they will render themselves open to arrest and jurisdiction, after all these years of shadowy dealings and killings that went on unabated.

I know that you may never forgive me – Shinichi – for leaving you. I don't think I can forgive myself. But Ran, people are dying. And I have to help them.

Maybe things could have gone differently had I stayed with you that night, instead of running off in pursuit of shadows and silhouettes. But now, it's only a sad, solemn whisper of what-might-have-beens.

I regret not being able to tell you this in person. Maybe it's because I'm a fool.

I write to you because I owe you the truth – it's the only thing I can give you, the only thing I can leave behind to perhaps lessen your grief. I don't know. The mysteries of the heart has always been locked away in a room I cannot open with my mind alone.

Melodramatic, isn't it?

Ran, if there's only one thing that I can say to you, one thing that I want you to know...

I love you.

Shinichi'

fin


Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan.

Senior year; college applications done January 1st. Maybe Princeton...?

I guess this was okay, if not a bit rusty. Meh. Hope you enjoyed this sad attempt at the arts.

May be thought of as a prequel to "Reflections." Didn't mean for it turn out quite like it did, but, eh, I wandered.

- M

Only the faults are mine.