Hey, looks like I took some time for this chapter to be posted didn't I? But it's longer than my other chapter, so I guess at least I pleased SOME PEOPLE. Ha ha. This story hopefully and go onto other websites; or at least that's what I'm hoping, under my name. Maybe I'll publish it under a different title name which is not so obvious. . The stuff in this chapter may anger or confuse you quite a lot, but hey, that's what my stories do right? (Sobs) BUT keep in mind what I say here. There will be a good ending. Hopefully a very good one.
Okay, enough yabbing.
Please read and review.
CHAPTER 9
" I love you."
These words pierced into her heart, shattering that cold exterior that's she always put on. Something inside her clicked on as she watched Conan, face blushing furiously, seemingly like he would like to do nothing better but to smash through the glass window and run out into the streets but refused to break eye contact with her. Was he-actually serious this time?
Or was he a much better actor that she thought?
" Kudo," she whispered, but was cut short by his arms wrapping around her, pressing her tightly against himself. She let a small gasp escape her lips, but shut her eyes softly. Was she allowed this? Was she allowed love from the heavens above? No. No she wasn't. No she wasn't at all.
Especially from the person whose life she destroyed.
Her eyes flickered open, lifting her hands up to press against Conan's chest, pushing him away gently. His eyes widened as he watched her step away from him, biting her lip. There was a strange vulnerability about Haibara at the moment. Was this her actual true side?
" I'm sorry." She said.
Two simple words. Yet it made such a huge impact.
He looked down, clenching his fists. So this was how Ran felt when he broke up with her on the phone. Numbness filled his body, a strange desire to break down and cry. He looked up, grinning at her. " It's okay." He said. " I was partly joking about it anyway."
That hurt.
Haibara could see through even Ayumi's brilliant fake laughter, it was no problem to see through Conan's. He was crying. Haibara smirked back. " I knew that." She lied. " I knew it." Conan grinned, and looked at his watch. " Hey, it's getting late. I'm going to go take a bath."
" You do that." She said.
He turned, walking to the toilet.
" Kudo." She stated, and he stopped to a halt.
" Yeah?" he asked, expectant and hopeful.
" We're still friends right?"
His eyes widened.
Then he smiled bitterly.
" Sure." He said. " Wake me up for school."
" I'll do that."
She watched him walk away, before disappearing through the door of the bathroom. She opened her mouth, but shut it once more.
" Hmph." She muttered, walking towards her room and shutting it.
Conan heard her.
He removed the glasses from his eyes.
And cried.
Let the rain fall.
-
The poster was still on her wall.
The pad of paper was still on her desk.
Ayumi looked at the two objects through the corner of her eyes, before letting them travel back to the other object in a clockwise direction. The poster was of her dearest Conan, grinning at her, a smile that she had never saw him wear in front of her for a long time now. The other was the pad of paper, which had eight horrible things that she had already made Haibara suffer, and just two more would make a bang on the list to make Haibara gone from school.
At least she hoped.
She walked over slowly, picking up the pad of paper. She was running out of ideas. Well to be factual, she had over a hundred of tactics she could use on any ordinary school girl, but none of them seemed suitable for Haibara. Ayumi bit her lip and frowned. What were the few things that Haibara actually liked? She rubbed her chin. Come to think of it, Haibara had never shown any interest in anything at all, unless you counted smiling at or commenting at something of interest. Ayumi groaned and dropped the pad, looking up at the wall.
' Rain washes away my pain.'
She sat up, turning around. Nothing. She blinked. That sounded distinctly like Haibara's voice, but she had no idea where that came from. She bit her lip and shut her eyes. Ran? There was rain at the place where-Her eyes flickered open. So-was THAT it?
FLASHBACK
It was a few months ago when the detective boys had another campout rather far away from their city, when the professor had taken them all out during the long holidays. They had set camp not far away from a large tree, and the four of them all went out to go check it out. Haibara and the professor had stayed back inside the tent, laying out the tools. Ayumi remembered looking at the tent every so often, watching Haibara help the clumsy professor with his work.
" What's wrong, Ayumi?" she heard Conan say to her, his arms in his pockets as the other two 'wow-ed' and 'oo-ed' at the huge tree. Ayumi shook her head, smiling. Then her smile faded as she looked at Haibara once more. " Co-chan?" she asked, and Conan flinched slightly at the name.
" Yeah?"
" Is Haibara a freak?"
Conan's twitched, his head darting to her, eyes wide. " What?" he asked.
" I-I didn't mean it that way!" she exclaimed, laughing it off, meeting with Conan's raised eyebrows. " It's just that-it seems like she's trapped in someone else's body-trapped in a pit she can't climb out of-and within a group which she can't-escape from." She finished, biting her lip.
Conan frowned at her for a moment before smiling. " Dumbass." He said, and she looked up at him. " She's merely more mature than all of us. There's just a small part of her that tries to hide her excitement, but when you look at her closely, you can see true happiness inside. And the same's for sadness."
" Sadness?" Ayumi asked.
" Ah." He answered. " I woke up one night and found her crying in the living room, a picture of her dead sister in her hands. When I called her name, the tears disappeared, and that cool mask of hers returned back to her face. She tries to be strong, but she cries deep inside."
There was silence that followed this, and a appeared on his face, and Ayumi's eyes narrowed. " You're in love with her, aren't you?" she asked, and his blush increased, and his mouth opened and shut. " You're in love with someone else other than me?" she went on, the fake tears balling up in her eyes.
" Oi, oi," Conan muttered, sweat filling his face as Genta noticed the crying Ayumi, and walked over, cracking his knuckles.
He hung his head. " I don't. I love-you."
Ayumi stopped crying immediately, and flung her hands around him, laughing. " I knew that." She said, " I just wanted to see you flustered, that's all." And she placed a kiss on his cheek and walked off. He rubbed his cheek, sighing. Haibara walked over, smirking. What she said to Conan Ayumi didn't know, but soon after Conan walked away with Genta and Mitsuhiko, and Haibara just stood there.
Ayumi frowned.
She seemed so-
Alone.
-
It was midnight when Ayumi woke up, finding herself in alone in the girls' tent. Haibara was missing. She rubbed her tired eyes, and opened the tent flap, only to find out that it was rain. The wet rain splattered on her face, and she looked outwards, and her eyes widened. There was Haibara, standing in her pajamas, her head bowed, looking down at the ground.
Ayumi ran out with an umbrella, stepping hurriedly into her shoes and walked up until she was just behind Haibara. Haibara seemed to notice her presence, but didn't say anything. Ayumi gulped. " It's wet and cold out here, Haibara." Ayumi said, looking at her worriedly. " You're going to catch a cold if you keep standing here. Come on, get into the tent and I'll make you a cup of tea."
There was no answer.
" Haiba,"
" I won't go in for some time." She heard Haibara whisper.
Silence, except for the splattering of rain onto Ayumi's umbrella. Ayumi looked up at the sky through the see-through umbrella, thinking. " Do you like the rain?" she asked softly.
Haibara didn't answer, until a huge clap of thunder sounded the sky.
" Don't you?" Haibara asked.
Ayumi didn't answer to that, and just when she was about to reply, she heard Haibara's voice, much more bitter and cold that ever.
" I like the rain." She said, her head lifting up from the ground, and Ayumi's eyes widened to see her crying. Was she crying? Ayumi wasn't sure. But tears and rain had a very different kind of look, but in the darkness, Ayumi couldn't really tell. " Whenever I feel sad or alone, I would walk out of wherever I am and just step into the rain, even for just a little while, to feel it clean me, to wash away the dirt or pain that I hold inside my heart."
Ayumi gulped.
" Rain washes away my pain." She whispered. " It cleans my heart."
END OF FLASHBACK
It washes away her pain?
The thought flashed in her mind of herself, crying herself to sleep at the thought of Haibara and Conan together, but just smiled at them the next day, acting like nothing had happened.
Hmm.
Looks like she and Haibara weren't' so unalike after all.
-
Conan was bored.
Not just bored.
Not just bored of being bored, but was bored of being bored about being bored, and was bored until he started counting how many 'bored's he could put into one sentence. Like for one example, he was hated being bored or being bored, because being bored was boring, thus making bored boring and being boringly bored was just making a bored person boringly bored out of recognition.
" Bored?" Haibara asked, smirking.
He got up, blushing furiously.
Then he smirked. " Yeah."
Somehow, the whole confession didn't' seem to do anything to her character. She still said sarcastic comments and quips to him and didn't seem to care about the whole ' I love you' thing at all. Damn. He remembered that he had cried himself to sleep last night, and his eyes were all swollen and baggy the next day, and made the excuse to the professor that he just lacked sleep due to reading a new detective book, that's all. But the way Haibara looked at him, he knew that she knew. But did she know that he knew she knew? He didn't know.
She grinned at him, and tossed a piece of paper at him, in which he caught. He raised his eyebrows at her.
" Solve it." She said. " Hopefully."
He watched her leave before looking at it.
(444) (555)(666)(888)(33) (999)(666)(88) (8)(666)(666)
He raised his eyebrows.
Weird.
-
" Huh? An escape theme park? Cool!"
" I'm in!"
" Me too!"
" Okay." Haibara said, smiling. Mitsuhiko looked embarrassingly at her, but she just smiled. He smiled back. Ayumi grinned at Conan. " Isn't it great, Co-chan? We can all go to the themepark tomorrow,"
But she stopped in mid sentence, noticing that Conan was not paying an inch of attention to her, and she raised her eyebrows. The five of them had met in the professor's house, as school had just ended on holiday a few days before. Conan bit his lip, scribbling on the piece of paper that Haibara had written the code in, rubbing chin as he continued on.
He bit his lip. Haibara. What sort of code would she do? He had tried to look on the numbers of the various things she did, but to no avail. It could have been letters, but there was no use to what they signified. ' A? E? I? O? U? Could there be some alphabetical code to this? What was it?
" Co-chan!" Ayumi called again, and he snapped to attention.
" What?" he asked.
She opened her mouth to say something, when suddenly the idea came to her. Her smile broadened, and shut it. " Nothing." She said. " Nothing at all."
Haibara saw that smile.
She frowned.
-
It was gone.
It was gone.
IT WAS GONE!
Haibara looked around frantically, but could not find it anywhere. There were almost tears in her eyes as she slammed her drawer shut, biting her lip to prevent the tears from leaking out. The only sole last picture of her sister was gone. It had vanished. It was Ayumi. She bloody knew it. Ayumi must have taken it. At the moment, all Haibara wanted to do was strangle that little misery dead for taking the picture but suddenly it occurred to her that Ayumi most likely had-
Ripped it up.
The tears flowed down from her face, salt fixing with saliva as she cried her heart out, falling to the ground. The tiny creak in the door from the room which Haibara stayed alone stood someone. Ayumi. She heard her. Conan raised his eyebrows. " What's wrong, Ayumi?" he asked, coming over.
Ayumi shook her head and walked away.
" Nothing." She said, the photo securely in her pocket.
-
Haibara glared at everything as she slammed the door shut of her room, all the way from Ayumi to the flowerpot near the sink.
" H-Haibara." Conan whimpered.
She gave him a glare that would have killed an elephant twenty miles away. But Conan, being used to this, only received a hard blow and ran away as fast as she could. Ayumi smiled at her, walking up. " What's wrong, Haibara?" she asked. Haibara glared at her grinning figure, her fists clenched.
Then she walked away, her voice ever so sad and downtrodden.
" Nothing." She said quietly.
Ayumi noticed this.
She blinked.
The professor, blur but smart, would have given money to Conan for them to takeout before dashing into his room to avoid an angry Haibara on rampage. But this time he didn't. This was a different kind of anger, more like a small detest of defeat, and more like something he never saw Haibara have before.
" What's wrong, Ai?" he asked softly.
Haibara wanted to tell him.
Damn did she want to tell him.
But she shook her head.
" Nothing." She said again bitterly. " Nothing at all."
Ayumi, once again, noticed this. Her fingers felt upon the picture. Was this picture really that important? She looked at Haibara, who had all of a sudden seemed more sullen and quiet that usual. She bit her lip, before smirking.
" Okay." She whispered to herself.
-
" Alright, see you tomorrow!"
" Bye, Co-chan!" ( Author's note: Three guess who this was. One hint for you people who don't know my story enough. It's definitely not Genta. Hmm-could it possibly be-Mitsuhiko?)
" Later!"
Conan smiled at them as he shut the door. Haibara sighed and watched them leave. Conan raised his eyebrows at her. " What's wrong?" he asked. She was about to answer the same answer thrice today, but she merely shook her head, and headed for her bedroom.
" Yo, Haibara." Conan called out, and she turned around.
He blinked.
" What's the meaning of the code, anyway?"
Her eyes widened.
Then she smirked.
" I'll explain tomorrow." She whispered, before disappearing into her room.
She shut the door behind her and switched on the light; ready to cry herself once more to sleep when she noticed something.
The picture of her sister on her bed.
She picked it up, bewildered.
Then she smirked, looking at the picture of her, Conan and the Detective Boys.
" I guess I'll forgive you just this once," she said, smiling softly. " Ayumi-chan."
END OF CHAPTER 9
All right everybody! The final chapter will be one of my favourite numbers, number 10! Are you all ready for the big wave? There I will answer some of the biggest questions of all! An unknown surprise character shows up! The answer to Haibara's code! (I made it up actually-Hehehe,) The end of all the wars! The final scene of Conan and Haibara! Are you all ready? Please read and review me! I will post it up as soon as I can!
P.S. Maybe I would just answer a question before anyone asks. I just wanted Haibara to call Ayumi a 'chan' for special reasons. As I said, there WILL be a happy endin.g Enough said. Please look foward to the tenth chapter!
