Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan or Magic Kaito. Cheers, Leuny.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

~Charles Dickens

Coming Home

It was heart-warming, really, the way she felt when her feet finally touched upon familiar earth again after so long a time. Tears running down her cheeks, she turned to take in the old house that she'd spent half her life in. She wiped at her eyes, paid the taxi driver and set out to haul her two bags – the ones she'd started out with, originally, three years ago – up the sidewalk and through the entrance in the fence around her property. It was early in the morning– her son could most certainly be found at school, but it wasn't as close to the end of school as it was to the beginning still. She had wanted to become reacquainted with everyone and everything first, before seeing her son in person for the first time in three years.

There didn't seem to have been as many explosions as she'd feared there would be going on. The house hadn't suffered too much, apparently. That knowledge took a load off her mind that she hadn't even known was there. Entering the front door, her eyes immediately fell upon the small table in the small entrance hall. It was immaculate, as always, the way the things on it had been arranged. Frowning a bit at the tidiness in her home (Didn't growing boys usually leave all kinds of chaos trailing behind them? It should have been that way with her son at least!), she made her way into the old master bedroom and put the bags down on the floor there.

Almost reverently she let her hand wander over the soft duvet that covered her bed – it was still just as she'd left it. Kaito'd even washed it and changed it from time to time, she found out. Her room was as tidy and cleaned-up as could be. She was curious then, as to what her son's room would look like. Chikage remembered the chaos she'd left behind there. Chuckling quietly to herself, she wondered if Kaito had had as much sense as to clean that, too. In the silence of the house, even her chuckling sounded ominous. This had to have been what Kaito had heard and felt in the time after she'd left.

She wasn't as sure as she had been back then about her moving out being such a good idea. It must have been hard on her son. But first, she would inspect his room. With glee and anticipation reminiscent more of a five-year-old than of an older woman, she put her hand onto the door handle and pushed open the door to her son's bedroom. The sight that greeted her was nothing if not depressing. She gulped slightly into the silence that reigned in the house.

It was a room that could have belonged to anyone, really. Positioned right underneath the window, the bed was covered by a nondescript dark blue blanket, with a white pillow at the head. On the left hand side, her eyes were greeted by the familiar sight of an old cupboard that she could still remember her and her husband heaving into the room before Kaito'd even been born. It was blank now, as opposed to being covered in diverse posters of famous magicians and pictures of various stage performances of Toichi before her dear husband had died.

On the right hand side, a small table and a chair were standing – it reminded her much of the ones that had been in her room at the "stage mansion" that they'd stayed at these past three years. Nothing was lying around at all. No piece of paper, no book, and no piece of clothing lay discarded anywhere on the floor. She even bent down to look underneath the bed, but even there nothing was to be found. Was this even her son's room anymore?

When she opened the drawers of the cupboard, it was almost comforting for her to see papers with her son's handwriting on them stacked neatly together and her son's laundry in it. Just what had happened to her son in the time that she'd been gone? She deeply regretted them not being closer than they were now. They could have honestly talked about their feelings and told each other about their problems. Why was it that important again to keep her troubles from her son?

Clearing her mind by shaking her head, the next thing she did was to go to the phone and call up her neighbor at his office. A plan had formed in her mind already on the flight to Japan, and now she planned to execute it, having seen all that she had. Chikage actually managed to talk to Ginzo without him swearing up too much of a storm this time, owing that to the simple fact of her immediately telling him that she'd come home right after he had picked up the phone. He truly listened to her and kept mostly quiet all through her explanation of having the suspicion of her son being in danger somehow.

The police officer naturally wanted more details pertaining to this suspicion, but as she couldn't give him more than her feelings on this and as "feelings" simply weren't enough proof to hold up in court, he could only tell her that he'd cover her bases wherever he could. She told him of her plan and how she wanted to do it and he in turn told him that there was a letter from his wife waiting for her in his bedroom. It sounded urgent, the way he said that to her, so she honestly considered going over there and getting it.

But first she needed to call the school and pull Kaito out of it for the next two weeks ("He's visiting with family relatives" was the official excuse she'd come up with). Chikage only hoped that this short amount of time would be enough for them both to figure out a solution concerning the Kaitô Kid-situation.

In the end she did go to her neighbor's house after making several other phone calls because she still had time to spare and packing her son's things wouldn't take as long as phoning all the other people did. The keys to the neighbor's house could still be found in the third drawer of the entrance hall's small table, just as it had been before she'd left. Kaito did have his own keys, but a set of spare keys were always to be found in that drawer, in case of loss. On the letter that she did indeed find in the bedroom, in the fine handwriting that her deceased friend had used to send secret letters and messages to her often enough that she was still able to recognize it after ten years, her name was written down elegantly right above the inscription "To be opened ten years after my death".

Chikage remembered that she'd died about four years before her husband had had the "accident", so that would make this year… the eleventh! She couldn't believe it. It had already been eleven years since her dear friend had died and she hadn't thought about her as much as she'd thought about her husband and… Kaitô Kid. She felt dismayed at that thought. But she couldn't help it. That insane thief kept coming up at the most inopportune times!

She was snapped out of it when the car she had rented stopped in front of her house. She put the letter in a front pocket of one of the two bags. Good. Now the only thing she was still waiting for was her son and then they'd be able to get rid of that good-for-nothing phantom thief for good, hopefully.