'Oniichan, am I too cold?'
Conan brought his knees to his chest as he shivered. Conan curled more into a ball in attempt to become warmer. He failed. He sneezed. Conan tried to sink further into the soft, comfortable cushions underneath him.
Wait, cushions? Conan's mind reeled awake, recalling tha he fell asleep against the cold gates of his oniichan's house. Conan's eyes snapped open to find eight faces staring at him, only at him. He raised his arms up to his face in defense, eyes squeezed shut. He heard his heart pound against his chest, his body tensing up.
"We're not going to hurt you, Conan-kun." A soft, gentle, feminine voice entered Conan's ears.
Conan braved himself and slowly opened his eyes. He looked at them in confusion.
"Your name is Conan, right?" The girl with the long, chestnut brown hair, asked.
Conan nodded unsure of either to trust them or not. Conan pushed himself into a sitting position. "Who are you?" He asked, his voice hardly audible.
His attention was brought over to the teenage boy who cleared his throat. His eyes widened in realization as he saw that the teenage boy looked liked the one he saw from newspapers and from television, his oniichan. "Oniichan, you're my oniichan right?" Conan asked unable to keep his excitement inside, leaned closer to the older guy.
The older boy blinked. "Uh, yes... My name is Kudo Shinichi, your older brother." He said as if he were unsure to say it out loud or not.
But Conan pushed that feeling aside and threw himself at the the detctive, hugging him tightly. "Oniichan!" He yelled in pure excitement He felt his older brother's body tensed underneath him. As quickly as he embraced his older brother, he pulled himself off. "Gomenasai." Conan muttered, looking down ashamed.
"I-itai. What was that for, Ran?"Shinichi exclaimed.
Conan looked up to see his oniichan rubbing the back of his head in pain as the girl who spoke earlier, who he concluded to be Ran, bended over, her face facing his oniichan and screamed,"BAKA!" His oniichan winced.
Ran straightened herself. "Geez. Your little brother's been looking for you and you can't even give him a decent hug." She huffed.
"Sorry, I wasn't expecting him to hug me out of nowhere. Sheesh." Shinichi cooly replied back.
"Don't act like it's only nothing. You made him sad." Ran complained.
"I did not make him sad," his oniichan turned to face him," are you sad?" he asked.
Conan stared at him, unsure of what to respond back. So he decided to keep silent.
"And you lost Kudo-kun. How about we introduce ourselves?" Conan moved his eyes over to another teenage boy who remarkably looked like his oniichan, who spoke," My name is Kuroba Kaito. Infamous magician!" Kaito gloated.
With that, everyone else introduced themselves. The last one to introduce their selves was Hakuba. Once Conan's eye's landed on the half-brit, Conan swore everything froze all around him. "Papa..." He breathed out unable to tear his gaze away from the half-brit.
The seven teens looked back and forth between Conan and Hakuba with one question all in their minds, including Hakuba. Hattori voiced it out loud, "Papa? What da' he mean by 'Papa'?"
Hakuba shook his head. "I honestly have no clue as in why he called me 'Papa'." He explained.
"Conan-kun. Why did you just called Hakuba 'Papa'?" His oniichan asked.
Hearing his oniichan's voice, Conan snapped back to reality. He shook his head. "No reason." He quipped up fast.
The three detectives plus magician held some suspicion, but kept it to themselves.
"Hey, Conan-kun. How old are ya' exactly?" Kazuha cheerfully asked him.
"I'm seven years old." Conan smiled.
"A seven year old brat that is filthy." Sonoko commented.
Conan couldn't help but glare at the rich girl.
"Sonoko! Taku." Ran complained.
"What? All i am saying is the truth. He is filthy." Sonoko said, somewhat offended.
Conan felt his light body being lifted into the air by two hands. "Come on. Let's get Conan-kun here cleaned up. We wouldn't want him to be filthy on Christmas day, ne?" Aoko asked, mostly directed at the other three girls.
The other three girls nodded, and Conan was taken away. To where ever the girls were taking him, he had no clue, but he let his eyes roam the inside of the modern western home. The house was very big and spacious. There were so much space. Everything was so clean and organized, completely different from his Papa's home, which was tiny and cluttered with papers everywhere. Conan couldn't help but awe at the insight. Honestly he wasn't too sure when he first saw the large home. He felt slightly creeped out at the intimidating house but now since he's been and seen inside, he felt somewhat safe and at home.
Kazuha opened a door to a room in which he realized it was the bathroom. "Time for you to get cleaned up." Aoko cheerfully said.
Conan stared at her in confusion until he heard the water running in the bath. He was put down gently and was given a change of clothes and a towel. "Here you go. Call us if you need us." Ran said with a small smile. With that, they all left the bathroom with Ran closing the door.
Conan quickly stripped, placing his ragged, torn clothes to the right of the sink and the fresh clothes to the left. He slowly stepped into the warm water, careful for his injuries. Only to see that his injuries had been cleaned and bandaged. Even though his injuries had been taken cared of, he was careful when he scrubbed himself clean.
'They seem nice.' Conan thought with a smile. He could probably get comfortable around them. The smile on his face disappeared and was replaced with a frown. They all seemed nice but... He couldn't help but think that his oniichan didn't like him, that he didn't want him here to begin with. Well, Conan never planned on staying here. All he wanted was to see oniichan and give him his present. Conan sighed. He felt like he would be a bother to oniichan and oniichan's friends.
Conan drained the water and stepped out of the bathtub and dried his body. He stared at the clean, nice clothing and at his torned, dirty clothes for a long time. he didn't want to be rude and put on his old clothes and not the fresh, clean clothes they given him. But he also did not to put the new clothes and leave the house, it would be very rude.
After some exhausting minutes of deciding what he should do, Conan grabbed one of the set of clothes and dressed.
"Papa? Why would he call me 'Papa'?" Hakuba pondered, staring in the direction in where the girls plus Conan took off and saw the girl minus Conan coming back.
"Maybe, you're actually his Papa." Kaito suggested with cheeky grin.
Hakuba stood up from the chair he sat in and moved towards Kaito. Once he was right next to Kaito, Hakuba smacked Kaito upside the head, which followed by Shinichi kicking Kaito in the stomach effectively caused Kaito to fall onto his back. He yelped in pain.
"I can't even believe you even suggested that, Kuroba." Shinichi and Hakuba both yelled at him as they shook their head.
Shinichi shuddered in disgust at the thought. "My guess is that you, Hakuba, might look like someone Conan knew. But I don't get is why Conan would call Hakuba, 'Papa'." Shinichi deducted with a frown.
"You know, I wonder who 'Mama' might be?" Shinichi heard Sonoko's voice and turned to see Sonoko and the other girls at the entrance of the living room.
Shinichi glared at her. "I don't know, but his parents are my parents."
"I guess we just have to ask him." Kazuha said.
"Ahou. We already tried asking him an' that didn't work." Hattori told her.
"Who are ya' calling an ahou, ya' ahou. And who knows. Maybe he'll answer this time." Kazuha screamed at Hattori.
Before Hattori could yell a comeback at Kazuha, Sonoko asked Shinichi a question that still wandered everyone's minds, "How did you not notice that your mom was pregnant?"
Shinichi put two fingers on his chin, briefly closing his eyes. "I don't know. I was ten at the time, so I guess for the first month or so, I really didn't notice and I played outside a lot. Then for four months, my parents went on a vacation to, I think they went to London. When they came back, I went camping. When I came back, I didn't see Kaasan there neither Otousan. I assumed they left on another vacation and I was correct. Hakase told me that they went to America. I received a few phone calls due to the time difference, we didn't have much time to talk. They came back about three months later and ignored me completely. I remember being woken up one night by my parents hugging me tightly. I never knew what exactly had happened to compel my parents to do that, but to think that night they lost their child to an unknown person. Geez, to think that, it leaves an uncomfortable feeling." Shinichi explained.
Everybody went silent, taking everything in. The silence broke by Hattori giving a low whistle, "Wow."
Then someone cleared their throat, the sound traveled through out the room and into everyone's ears. Everyone found Conan standing there in his old, dirty, torned clothes.
"Conan..." Shinichi trailed off unsure of what to say.
"Gomenasai, oniichan. I don't want to be a burden. So I'll be taking my leave now." Conan turned as soon as he finished saying his sentence.
"How would you be a burden?" Shinichi questioned.
Conan stopped and dropped his head. "Trust me, I'm bad luck."
"I still don't see why you have to leave. This guy here is full with bad luck." Kaito said.
Conan turned his head and looked at Hakuba. Everyone caught Conan's gaze on Hakuba and raised an eyebrow causing Hakuba to raise his hands up in defense.
"Papa told me to leave." Conan said.
They all regarded Hakuba with annoyance and anger especially Shinichi. Hakuba violently shook his head. "I never told him to leave. The only thing I told him was my name. I swear." Hakuba quickly said in hope to prove his innocence.
"Papa, no Saguru-niisan is friends with oniichan and, and I don't want Papa hurt." Conan cried out.
Hakuba walked towards Conan, then dropped to his knees and grabbed Conan's shoulders. "Conan-kun. What do you mean?" Hakuba asked.
What Hakuba wasn't expecting for Conan to cling onto him, crying out, "Papa!" repeatedly.
Hakuba pulled Conan off him to look into Conan's teary eyes. "Conan-kun, I'm not going to get hurt. I have this lucky idiot here with me, so I won't get hurt." Hakuba said, jerking his thumb back, pointing at Kaito, who whined at being called an idiot. All ignored him.
Shinichi walked over, picked up Conan into his strong arms. "Okay since we cleared up the fact that hakuba is not going to get hurt, you're staying here. no buts. You're family and I ain't going to let my seven year old brother go off and live on his own. Come on, let's get you changed into fresh clean clothes." Shinichi explained, leaving the living room with Conan to get Conan into some new clothes.
Shinichi regarded the stunned child.
'You have a lot of explaining to do, Conan.'
AN: Thank y'all for all those reviews and I hoped I cleared most of the confusion about Yukiko's pregnancy. Thank you Guest; I'm working on putting on more details in my writing. Anyways, please review. And I promise i will explain why Conan calls Hakuba "Papa", but later.