Thanks to KSA Key-chan and Sock Monsta for reviewing.


Chapter Two: Sonoko and Conan

"Is that really the time? Sorry, Sonoko. I need to start dinner," Ran said.

"All right. Tell the chibi I say get well soon," Sonoko said.

A small giggle. "I will. Talk to you later."

"Later," Sonoko said, hanging up her phone with a sigh. The little twerp went and got sick again and thus she was shopping on her own. Oh well, she couldn't really blame Ran. It was probably good for the kid, all things consider.

And consider she had.

Sonoko might not be the super genius some of the people she knew were, but she wasn't stupid. There was a reason she could believe she was the Deduction Queen!

...even if she couldn't remember making those deductions.

She certainly deduced enough about that kid. Hearing plenty from Ran, seeing it for herself, she noticed things. Sometimes she wondered if Ran really missed it or just played dumb because she didn't want anyone to worry and that's why she was always such a good big sister for Conan.

But considering Ran would be anyway, it was hard to tell.

Sonoko would admit she hadn't noticed it at first. Or rather she had and didn't think about it. All the little...odd things about him. Like when her Deduction Queen status first appeared. Talking about severed limbs so calmly and protecting Ran from a psycho murderer. She just thought 'weird' and brushed it off.

No, she could pinpoint when she REALLY started to think about it. It was after Ran met Edogawa Fumiyo. Ran told her all about it because she'd been worried for a while and something just seemed...wrong. The family was clearly loaded, from the amount she said her father got for Conan, so maybe that's why she noticed. Being around enough rich kids, she knew not all parents were as good as hers about being there for their kids.

It was like the Edogawa's just unloaded their kid. And with how Ran always talked about Conan never missing his parents or worried about going home, it kind of fit. Especially since she hadn't heard one peep about Edogawa Fumiyo except for a check that came every few months.

She actually started to feel sorry for the chibi. Clearly he didn't have very good parent. She wouldn't want to be around for parents who couldn't even call their son. Or even show up to visit him when he got shot! What was up with that? A High School detective all the way from Osaka comes to visit just cause he thinks of him like an assistant and they don't even send a letter or call?

It seemed unreal, even for the most neglectful of parents.

That's when she thought about the kid's homelife.

It was when Ran had amnesia that she really thought about him and all those odd little things she noticed suddenly seemed a lot more sinister.

The kid went to Tropical Land, and dragged Ran all the way around the theme park to save her and more than that, he stared down the killer all to protect Ran. And just the day before that, he jumped in front of a train to save her, no hesitation!

What kid did that? He knew what a train would do.

But it made her think and realized two things.

One was how very...protective he was of Ran. Now that she thought about it, Conan really was latched onto her in the beginning, wasn't he? Like he was afraid she'd vanish if he didn't. Gradually, he wasn't always trying to follow and even tried to leave some of their outings. But he never really refused when Ran asked him to come, even when it was obvious he wanted to do something else. Ran asked him to come and that was enough for him.

It made Sonoko wonder if the twerp saw Ran as a mother figure. And when she thought about it, he probably DID. With how distant and neglectful his parents obviously were, of course Ran was preferable. At the very least he has a huge crush on her, whether or not Ran believed it. It was kind of cute before she thought of how lonely his home life had to been. Then it was kind of depressing.

It almost made her want to root for him!

A tragic story of a lonely young man, falling in love for the one person to nurture him and show him the love he never had! A lady with a pure heart, only wanting to make a sad young man smile! It was so romantic!

Too bad he was ten years too late and it was with someone who was as good as married.

But then there was that sinister thought. Severed limbs not withstanding, there was something that had always nagged her about him. There was always something off and wrong about him in dangerous situations and when she FINALLY realized what it was months later, she wanted to kick herself for not realizing it.

He never screamed.

Not once. No shout, no yelp, nothing, but cold silence and an intense look on his face. She screamed. Ran screamed. The kids screamed. EVERYONE screamed at least once, except for maybe the police and Ran's dad. If they did, it wasn't often, but this was part of their livelihood!

But that kid never did no matter how many murders she's been around with him. She even asked the shonen tantei about it once, how he must be funny when he screams and they just looked at each other and said he never did unless he was telling them to get to safety or to get help.

It was a bone chilling thought. She almost asked Ran, but she knew the answer already. The kid didn't scream. The kid never screamed. The kid was never afraid. He faced murderers with no fear for himself. And he treated dead bodies with a detached air like they didn't affect him at all.

And she realized they didn't. It didn't matter the murder, how gruesome, how horrible the death was.

It was then she almost kind of feared Conan. She might not be an expert on psychology or anything, but that Just Wasn't Normal. How does a seven year old get used to dead bodies? How does a little brat become so detached from death?

What kid...what kid didn't get SCARED?

Oh, he'd get scared for others being in danger, particularly Ran. Then run across burning, collapsing bridges to protect them, even.

It made Sonoko wonder, what exactly did Edogawa Conan go through that he could just ignore all that blood and tragedy? The only thing she could think of was something absolutely horrible had to have scarred him or something. What other explanation was there? The only way he could be calm about all of that was because he saw something so much worse and none of it compares, right?

She didn't know.

She didn't ask.

She was too afraid at what the answer would be.

And she suspected the chibi didn't want pity. He was trying hard to always be strong, that much was obvious. Maybe what he wanted more than anything was normalcy? That would explain his weirdness, going from bubbly and cute to super serious and just plain abnormal. A way to hide whatever horrors he's gone through so that nothing fazes him anymore.

And if she let the shrimp tag along more than she would have allowed for any other kid, so be it.

The kid could probably use all the normal and motherly Ran as he could get.


This will probably be rather common. Oddities in Shinichi covering for not acting like a kid, just Conan's history seems like it'd be an interesting and honestly quite upsetting history and Sonoko is one of the few who'd probably know all the details without possibly realizing the Conan=Shinichi thing. (There's Kogoro, but I'll get into that with his chapter.) And it was interesting to explore how she views things. An intelligence, but kind of flighty until something gets her attention.

Next Chapter: Conan and Hakuba