Disclaimer:
This fanfic is based on Gosho Aoyama's Meitantei Konan and Magic Kaito and Naoko Takeuchi's Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (sans the magic).
The crime in this story is inspired by a novel by Donna Leon (Death at La Fenice). However, this is not a book parody, and you won't find any spoilers for the novel in this fic (or vice versa).
The lyrics of "Charade" belong to Johnny Mercer, the script of "Charade" belongs to Stanley Donen, and the lyrics of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera belong to Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe.
Thanks a lot to Astarael00 and SN 1987A, who have betaed the first chapters of this fic for me. (Rae betaed the first seven chapters (which have been merged into Chapter 1 and 2) whereas SN betaed Chapter 8-17 (now Chapter 3-10). I've learned a lot during the time they helped me, and without them, this fic would be full of typos, grammar mistakes, and long-winded sentences nobody can follow. From Chapter 18 on, the fic is unbetaed since my betas have retired.
Edit: I've merged the short chapters into longer chapters because I don't want to reupload too many chapters after editing the story for the last time.
x.
FS
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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.
(new version)
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Oh what a hit we made
We came on next to closing
Best on the bill, lovers until
Love left the masquerade
("Charade", lyrics by Johnny Mercer)
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Maybe she should give him...
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
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Maybe she should give him a few sleeping pills and shave his head tonight, Shiho ponders with a murderous sidelong glance at her imperturbable boyfriend, who is humming "Charade" to himself as if nothing had happened. Even though she is still furious about his pranks (pretending to kiss Hino-san in front of her door was the last straw—what would have happened if the paparazzi had been waiting there to get a nice shot of his spontaneous 'rehearsal'?), she has let him take her hand out of habit after they left the boat to Alberto Coiro and headed for the Rialto Bridge…
For no one except Seiya would like to "take a little walk" at this hour, and usually Shiho would have helped him put this absurd idea right out of his mind. But this could be their last stroll together without the reporters tailing them, she realizes. And now that they've passed the point of no return thanks to Tenoh-san's meddling, Shiho dreads to think of 'tomorrow': of reporters, paparazzi, and enraged fanatical fans all crowding into Seiya's dressing room to size up the girlfriend he has been hiding from the public for so long. Photos and video clips of hers are going to be published online. And some reporters might do their research better than expected, digging out details of her past she would rather keep hidden.
At least they are no longer in mortal danger, she tries to console herself. Now that the whole Pandora's Box affair is over, Seiya and she will be safe… Albeit at cost to another person…
A Pyrrhic victory, which feels more like a defeat.
"I'll do the laundry and clean the apartment this week if I don't have to sleep on the sofa," Seiya rubs her arm with his free hand, knowing that bribing her with cleaning is the only tactic which always works.
"You'll clean the apartment for the whole month," she declares. "Doing laundry is your task, anyway. You can't make amends by doing it."
"All right," he gives a theatrical sigh. "You're abusing your position, but I've been yearning to give our apartment a good scrub now that I'm already accustomed to doing the errands, the laundry, and the dishes!"
"Don't whine," she smirks. "If you want the career of a starving classical singer, you'll have to do half of our household chores plus the hard labour for your pranks. If you don't want to do the housework, just join your brothers for their comeback and we'll be rich enough to get a housekeeper."
"And make out with at least two actresses during one film? Forget it! We'd fight over the first rehearsal, and you'd divorce me and run off with Kudo within a month."
"You know, I'd run off with him immediately if he were still free and asked me to," she teases him. Kudo has become a pleasant fantasy she can acknowledge to him and herself without all the needless heartache which usually accompanies long drawn-out unrequited loves. Vaguely, she wonders whether "Odango" has become the same for Seiya as well.
"I know you'd do it, you bad girl!" He sounds genuinely hurt.
"We aren't married, though," she points out to him. "Unless you propose to me, I can't ever divorce you to run off with Kudo."
As expected, he immediately catches on to her suggestion.
"I'm already proposing to you." He dramatically sinks to his knees at once, grasping at her coat with both hands. "Please marry me immediately after the show tomorrow night. We can steal Christine's wedding dress from the theatre and elope to Las Vegas together." As an afterthought, he cautiously adds, "You will have to take care of all the paperwork, though. But I promise I will sign anything you give me and endure your nasty temper for all eternity."
"Even if I wanted to marry, I wouldn't marry a penniless singer like you," she haughtily breathes, giving his arm a slight kick with the tip of her shoe. "You've been rejected and are allowed to drown yourself in the Canal now if you absolutely want to."
He instantly falls over to the side, writhing in pain on the marble bridge, which is still wet with rain. Strolling towards the central portico bathed in the yellow light of the street lamps, she thinks in admiration that his acting has become so convincing and flawless that, if she had heard the sound of a pistol, she would have fallen for it and believed that he had just been shot.
"Ah, look at all the love padlocks," she exclaims when her gaze falls on another group of identical padlocks strung around the handrail. Letting her eyes roam about the bridge, she estimates that there must be at least a hundred of these on her way to the portico. "One could almost think this is not the Rialto but the Ponte del Accademia… Don't they mind ruining the Rialto for their love declarations? But padlocks are still easier to remove than love graffiti, I'd guess…" At second glance, she discovers the engraved names on the locks and groans. "I can't believe it, there are even padlocks with your name engraved on them. You have some truly lovesick fans!"
Since he does not respond, she turns and—seeing him lying on the ground—snaps, "Oh come on, get up already! As lovely as it sounds in theory, I don't want to spend the whole night on this bridge with you." If the gesture weren't so juvenile, she would have stamped her foot. The years of living with him are starting to take effect on her.
Seconds pass. When he doesn't reply, she decides to try a last nice approach before resorting to violence. "Isn't it awfully cold on the wet marble? You'll get sick if you stay there for too long!" Irked by his persistent silence, she continues in her darkest voice, "I've just about had enough of your infantile pranks. I swear you'll sleep on the sofa for the whole month if you don't get up now. This instant!"
In the ensuing silence, she is acutely aware of how empty the city has become. While they are the only people on the bridge, she can feel the presence of a third person lurking somewhere, watching them from the distance. For a moment, the old wave of nausea sweeps over her again. And her surroundings suddenly seem to her threateningly dark despite the glowing portico and the street lamps, whose red and yellow lights are mirrored in the moving water like miniature suns.
"Seiya, Seiya!" She runs back to him, checks his pulse and, sighing in relief when she finally finds it, proceeds to inspect his body rapidly for signs of an injury. "Can you hear me? Just say something!" After opening the first buttons of his shirt, she cradles his head to inspect his face. The stalker must be a product of her imagination, otherwise they would already have shown themselves by now, she surmises, trying to pull herself together to think straight. She still has her stun-gun wristwatch in her handbag in case someone attacks them. Could Seiya have swallowed the poison or part of it by accident, she wonders while rummaging through her handbag in search of the watch. It is impossible although he has this uncanny gentle look on his smiling face. And she wouldn't be able to do anything because it is irreversible unless he is resistant…
"I could stay here forever," he chuckles, catching her hand before she can hit him. Resting his head on her lap, he taps a cheerful rhythm on her bracelet. "Why don't we just stay like this for a while?"
"Why can't you stop when it's too much?" she snaps, jerking at his ponytail. "What's wrong with you tonight? Why can't you be serious for just one minute or two?"
He gives her an innocent smile, charming her for a moment with arresting eyes, which are almost black in the night. His greatest talent, she suddenly realizes, is his ability to ignite spontaneous feelings of love in other people without doing anything. One smile here, another pat on the shoulder there, and even his sworn enemies usually falter, falling prey to his infectious sense of contentment.
"Imagine what they would have thought if I had told them that you're actually Haruka-san's secretary," he thinks aloud instead of answering her question. "The dear commissario would have jumped to the conclusion that you had had an affair with her."
"It's odd that some people are so occupied with other people's love lives when it should be none of their business." She rolls her eyes. "Your fans are the same… I've never cared about whom Higo was in love with. But your fans pursue you without knowing who you are, sometimes even leaving their own boyfriends to worship an ideal."
"People often fall in love with a fantasy," he recites. "Especially when they're unhappy with their lives. It's a safe way to distract yourself from problems that are too overwhelming to deal with. You're fleeing from a real threat to hide behind an artificial one."
He is using Tenoh-san's voice now, her husky androgynous voice with the same seductive quality which once confused many a girl at Infinity…
At the same time, while he is cool and detached, reciting it like a theory he doesn't believe in, he is eyeing her with an expression of deep, never-ending, universal sadness, acting out Tenoh-san's existential crisis, which even Kaioh-san could never defuse for her.
"Did Tenoh-san say that about us in the beginning?" she frowns.
"That and many other things," he dismissively says in his own voice, turns away, and surprises her by pulling his napkin, which is still damp from the water Kudo has spilled on her, out of his pocket. "Ta-dah!"
"What's this?" she asks, stupefied, while he swiftly ties her love bracelet to a padlock.
"One of the napkins Setsuna-san gave us last Christmas, you remember? Apparently, the commissario thought that I had used it to choke Haruka-san—an impossible feat, if you ask me… I'm sure he wanted to steal it when no one was looking. Hence I took it to add a bit of suspense to the case instead of leaving it in the café."
"I know it's one of Meioh-san's napkins. I put it in your pocket, after all! I want to know what you're doing with it and most of all why!"
"I'm tying your bracelet to a padlock with only my name on it," he states, matter-of-factly. "Maybe I can even ask Rei-chan to recite a spell for me and make you marry me in a daze. Did you know she once trained to be a priestess? People around her believed she had unearthly spiritual powers, which is why she didn't have any friends at school. That was before the Organization burned down her grandfather's shrine. If it hadn't been for Rei-chan's light sleep, they all would have died…"
Shiho did not know it. And usually, Hino-san's childhood would have intrigued her but tonight, she doesn't care about anything reminding her of the Organization. She has decided to leave the past behind her like a nightmare which, now that she has awoken, no longer has any noticeable effect on her present and future life. If he asked her in all seriousness now, she thinks, she would be weak enough to marry him even without "Rei-chan's" spell, confining herself to a life of marital ups and downs.
"Really? Aino-san once told me that Hino-san sleeps like a rock. But this is so childish I can't believe you're really doing it," she demonstratively yawns, tugging at the napkin. "It's such a pain to untie it with one hand." To her annoyance, he only adds another knot, pulling it as tight as he can. "But now that you've had your fun tying me up, what about untying me now before I fall asleep here?"
"Never," he chuckles, leaping to his feet. "This is for making eyes at Kudo all night. It was so distracting that I could barely focus."
"You know anyone could assault me and kill me before I can untie all these knots?" she raises her voice, feeling the anger surging back to her face as she takes in her ridiculous situation.
"You? No way!" He affectionately pats her hair. "I already pity the poor fool who tries to assault you out of all people." Then he gives her a last radiant smile and adds exuberantly, "Let's see who arrives home first!" before he dashes away at Tenoh-san's speed, disappearing between two houses on the other side of the street.
For inexplicable reasons, Shiho had wanted him to befriend Kudo (and had also expected that his natural charm would automatically take care of the rest) before she witnessed in horror how he turned their very first meeting into a mess. But now that she is crouching alone on the empty bridge, stoically untying the long chain of knots his four-year-old alter ego has created with the damp napkin, she wonders how she could have believed in the utopia that Seiya and Kudo would ever get along. The outcome that Kudo would rather question her sanity than acknowledge her good taste was inevitable right from the start. To make matters worse, she sometimes wonders to herself how she could have been living with Seiya for almost four years. As much as she loves him, she also hates him during moments like this when all his cells seem to carry out his sole command to irritate her as much as possible.
Nevertheless—and even by his own standards—Seiya has been unbearable tonight, she thinks. It almost seems as if he, too, is struggling to keep up a facade to avoid the one topic they should have talked about but have sidestepped for the whole evening.
"I know my packet of APAH can't have disappeared on its own. Did you…?" But even in her thoughts, she doesn't dare to finish the sentence, fearing that all the years of their relationship would be weighed against the implications of that one question.
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