Enjoy! :) I'm sorry for the slow updates on my stories; they're not going as fast as I'd like them to either.
"Um." Shinichi studied the plate of food that was in front of him, wondering if the fact that his fork seemed to be adhered to the side of his plate was a good thing. He suspected that it wasn't. "What exactly...is this, Kaito-niisan?" Seriously,Kuroba. I don't think I've ever seen shrimp curry- well, at least I think it's shrimp curry based on what you and Nakamori-san bought at the store- stick onto a plate like glue before.
"Shrimp curry." After he noticed Shinichi's 'Oh, really?' expression, Kaito added "Hey, don't blame me for that one. Aoko's the one that cooked it after all." This was accompanied by the magician pointing an accusatory empty fork across the wooden table at Aoko.
Aoko gave Kaito a death glare and stuck her tongue out at him before she looked back down at her food with a snort. "I started cooking it, you mean. You're the one who added way more flour than it needed when my back was turned for a second, Bakaito." She eyed her steaming plate of curry and rice suspiciously. "And I have a feeling that you added more to it than just flour. I had to almost turn the pot upside down to get the curry to pour."
Kaito rubbed the back of his head and wore a sheepish expression. "Well, uh, it did look a little thin."
"It's supposed to be thin because you usually serve it like a sauce over rice! Honestly, you'd think that you've never eaten curry before." Aoko lifted up her fork and found her entire plate being lifted up along with it. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before setting the fork and plate back down. "You didn't happen to mess with the cooking temperature as well, did you?"
"Well, yeah. I added the flour and some other stuff so I figured it would need to be turned up for a while to cook right."
Shinichi could almost see the steam coming out of Aoko's ears, but instead of the blowup he'd expected she suddenly seemed to calm down, turning to Shinichi and offering him a smile. "I'm going to order some takeout for us, Kaito's treat, OK? What kind of teriyaki do you like? There's a great little place that delivers just a couple of blocks from here-"
Kaito blinked. "Wait just a dang minute here! Why am I stuck paying for this?"
"Because you're the one that ruined our dinner," Aoko replied evenly before turning her attention back to Shinichi. "Maybe some teriyaki beef or teriyaki chicken, eh Conan-kun?"
"Do they have pork tonkatsu there? I like that a lot." Shinichi pointedly ignored the glare from Kaito he could feel burrowing into the back of his head as he replied in the chipper, childlike tone that had become a second nature to him.
Aoko nodded. "Yep, they have chicken and pork tonkatsu. I'll get the pork for you, then." She got up from the table, picking her plate of inedible food in the process. "What do you want to eat, Kaito?"
"Some beef teriyaki, I guess." This was half-grumbled in a discontented tone before Aoko walked out of the room to call the restaurant. "I don't even know if I have enough on me to cover this," Kaito muttered darkly as he reached for his wallet. After he pulled out some yen of varying denominations and began counting them, he turned to his friend. "Thanks for nothing, by the way."
Shinichi let out a single, barked laugh. "Kuroba, if you think I'm going to put this stuff in my stomach you're crazy." The shrunken tantei emphasized his point by lifting his glued fork and bringing the plate up with it, just as Aoko had earlier. Shinichi then found his eye drawn to a large framed picture that was up on the wall behind Kaito. Hey...that guy looks an awful lot like...He put the fork back down and hopped out of his seat in order to confirm his suspicions. Shinichi's eyes widened slightly as he finished walking up to the wall and took in a picture of Nakamori Ginzo standing alongside Aoko, the older man's right arm wrapped paternally around Aoko's shoulders and both wearing relaxed, happy smiles.
"Yeah, Aoko is Nakamori-keibu's daughter," explained Kaito matter-of-factly after he glanced over and realized what his friend was looking at so intently. "We've known each other since we were little kids."
The ensuing silence lasted for a good three to four seconds before Shinichi finally responded, his eyes never leaving the photo. "That must be...interesting."
"I dunno if that's exactly the word I'd use for it," shrugged Kaito as Aoko came back in to the room.
"Hey Conan-kun, why don't you let Kaito help you with homework for a bit until the food shows up? I'm going to clean up things before this stuff winds up stuck on everything for good and call the restaurant." Aoko gingerly grabbed the other two plates of curry. "Make sure you take notes for our paper, Kaito," she called behind her as she hustled back into the kitchen while hoping that the curry hadn't totally adhered itself to the plates yet.
Kaito sighed while he waited for the water to begin running in the kitchen as Aoko's muffled voice placing their food order came from the other room; it seemed like an eternity until it actually turned on. "Did you bring the stuff you found at that guy's house last week?" he asked as the sounds of clanking dishes and running water quickly filled the room.
"Of course I did, but it's all back at your house in the guest bedroom. I didn't exactly think that it was something you'd want to talk about in front of Nakamori-san." Especially since she's the daughter of the guy in charge of the task force that's trying to catch you. Yeah, maybe interesting wasn't the right word after all. Shinichi looked through the doorway Aoko had walked out of and had a sudden epiphany, probably because he couldn't look at Nakamori Aoko without seeing bits and pieces of Mouri Ran in her gestures and appearance for some reason. "She doesn't know, does she?" Just like Ran doesn't know about me. Well, at least I don't think that she does. There'd been more than a few incidents with Ran that made Shinichi wonder just how much she knew (or at the very least suspected,) the time that she'd given him her blood in the hospital -somehow just knowing that their blood type would match before any tests were done- being the most major of them in his mind.
"Nope, she doesn't. And I figure it's probably a lot better that way for the both of us, with her dad being the head of the Kaitou Kid task force and all." Kaito leaned backwards in his chair and looked like he was thinking something over. "It'd be putting her between one heck of a rock and a hard place." He grimaced briefly while looking up and studying the ceiling intently. "Not to mention that I'd also probably never be able to get rid of the broom marks she'd leave all over me if she ever found out."
Ran punching a dent into the side of a telephone pole flashed in front of Shinichi's eyes suddenly, causing his stomach to go clammy and his mouth to go dry as he pulled out the homework papers he'd brought from elementary school. They both had to keep up appearances in case Aoko wandered back in the room, after all, and Kaito was supposed to be helping Edogawa Conan with his school homework.
"What's wrong, Kudo? You went really pale there all of a sudden." Kaito was leaning forward in his chair now, studying his friend with a cocked eyebrow.
Shinichi couldn't suppress a shiver as he pulled out a pen and very happily refocused his mind on the work spread out in front of him. "Let's just say that Ran knows karate really well, doesn't know that I'm me and leave it at that, alright?"
Kaito snickered while he picked up one of Shinichi's homework papers. "I, uh, take it that you don't need my help with any of this stuff," he grinned as he looked over the basic math problems on the page. "I sure wish I could get this kind of stuff for homework. It'd leave me more time to plan my heists."
"Ha, ha." Shinichi gave Kaito a sarcastic look before he went back to getting through the stuff as quickly as possible. He decided not to mention that he and Shiho occasionally had contests to see which of the two of them got thier assignments done more quickly thanks to the work being so simplistic for them. "No, I definitely don't need any help." As he finished with the math and pulled out the brushstroke practice sheets they were supposed to use, Shinichi realized that the clattering of dishes and sounds of running water had stopped coming fom the kitchen.
"Remind me to not let you anywhere near our stove ever again," sighed Aoko as she came back into the dining room where Kaito and Shinichi were sitting. "Dinner should be here in about twenty minutes. I hope you have enough for a tip, Kaito." She settled into her seat and watched Shinichi doing his assigned brushwork with a deliberately unsteady hand. "Are you almost done with your homework, Conan-kun?"
"Uh-huh. I just have to do two more sets of kanji." Shinichi pointed at the other papers that were laid out to his left. "I already did my math."
"Good job! Kaito and I can check it over for you once you're done with everything." Aoko turned to Kaito. "Speaking of homework, Hakuba-kun lent me a copy of his biology notes so that we can make sure we did that dissection report right."
It took Shinichi a few seconds to place the last name, but once he had he came to the conclusion that Kaito was living even more dangerously that he'd realized. Well, if this 'Hakuba' is who I think it is. He decided to risk asking the question after his curiosity got the better of him. "Hey, do you mean Hakuba Saguru-niisan, Aoko-neesan? I've met him a couple of times at Kaitou Kid heists that Mouri-ojisan brought me to."
"Yep, that's him. He helps dad a lot of the time with solving Kaitou Kid's riddles and trying to stop his heists," explained Aoko brightly. "Of course, Kid always manages to get away somehow."
"He transferred to our class several months ago because he wanted to help catch Kid," added Kaito after seeing Shinichi's puzzled look. "He flies back and forth between England and Japan a lot too, but he always shows up for school and any Kid heists."
Shinichi's mind was still reeling as he willed himself to focus on finishing out his last set of kanji practice. So let me get this straight, Kuroba. Your childhood friend is the daughter of the keibu in charge of the Kaitou Kid task force, and you're also classmates with Hakuba Saguru, the guy that helps Nakamori-keibu out all the time and really wants to catch Kid himself. You may be even crazier than I thought. Of course, Kaito wasn't literally living under the same roof as his friend like Shinichi was, but Shinichi also had the benefit of a seven-year-old body for a disguise. "All done now," he said as he put down his pen.
"OK. Let's go watch TV until dinner comes then; the living room's this way." Aoko got out of her seat and started walking to the right, waving with her hand.
"Be right there- I'm gonna help the squirt here put away his homework." The stomp on the top of his foot that Kaito received after he finished the sentence wasn't unexpected, but he could also tell that Shinichi hadn't put too much effort into making it hurt. "I'm gonna try and get us out of here after dinner so we can get some research done at my house for a while," he near-whispered to Shinichi as the two of them collected the papers that were on the table and finished tucking everything away into Shinichi's backpack.
