On another cold, clear night, Ran, Conan, Kogoro, Heiji and I were walking back from dinner out, as Heiji had just come back to visit me for the 6th month in a row. I barely pretended to eat, something I was pretty good at doing until I decided it didn't matter what they thought of me anymore; I looked like walking death anyway. Ran and Heiji urged me to eat while Conan sat quietly observing and Kogoro checked out the nice waitress that probably didn't know she was being ogled.
I started to not hide things very well after I looked in the mirror in my crappy bathroom one day. I had just brushed my teeth, and usually I would turn off the light and leave before I could get a good look at myself, but this time I willed myself to stare into my own eyes. What I saw surprised me, and even made me feel pity and sympathy for the one person that had never felt the same towards me: my mother.
I observed my features carefully. After 6 months, I had lost what I had estimated to be about 25 pounds, though it was more noticeable in my face than where I had muscle. My skin was tight against my cheekbones, only emphasizing the haunting beauty that my mother had. I was extremely pale; my skin almost seemed translucent. But what I saw in my eyes is what made my breath catch.
Emptiness. Grey, hard, pure emptiness, as if there was nothing I could care about. For a moment, I thought I had gone insane and was having hallucinations, because what appeared to be my reflection was my mother in every essence.
So this is what happened to her, I thought. My father's loss is paralleled to not having Ichiro.
I didn't bother to keep these thoughts of Ichiro at bay anymore – it seemed unnecessary. It was easier to admit to myself that I loved him more than anything when I never saw him. 6 months. Where had the time gone? What had he been doing with it?
"Oi, Kokone, are you listening?" Heiji waved a hand in front of my face, his expression frustrated.
"I am now. What?" I said tonelessly. His eye twitched.
"You should come back to Osaka with me when I leave – just for a visit." He suggested as casually as he could. I turned my attention elsewhere without responding. He took that as a no.
"Oh come on, Ichiro-san and Kazuha miss you! You could pay a visit to your mother-"
"Don't even mention my mother." I said listlessly. As usual, he didn't plan his response carefully.
"Your mother," he emphasized, "is actually worried about you. Ichiro caught her in your room, just lookin' around." He had the air of someone that was proud of himself - until I snorted. "What?" He said, irritated.
"She was thinking about what she's going to replace my furniture with. Probably a library." I thought aloud. She had been looking for a place to put my father's books other than that horrid crime scene of a room. "Why was he in my house?"
"How should I know? You should ask him yourself." Heiji taunted. I ignored him and we continued to walk. Kogoro was a bit further ahead, Ran and Conan behind him, holding hands, and Heiji and I were in the back.
The silence was shattered by what sounded like gunshots – and a lot of them. Everyone turned towards the sound while Ran gasped – everyone seemed to determine that the sounds had come from the house we were passing by. After the gunshots however, there was nothing - no sounds, no chaos or yelling for anyone to call the police - so we decided to inspect it ourselves.
Kogoro knocked on the door, calling "OIII, OPEN THE DOOR" and after a few minutes, a woman opened it carefully, calm as you please. The only thing that seemed a bit crazed about her was her eyes, but they only contained the insanity that comes from fear.
"Is everything alright, ma'am? We thought we heard gunshots -" Heiji said as he intrusively peaked over the woman's head.
"Ahh, yes everything's fine. I didn't hear anything; it must have been the neighbor's television, right Kazumi-chan?" The woman said sweetly to the baby in her arms that I had just taken note of. The woman opened the doorway a bit more, as if presenting just how harmonious and in balance everything really was. The baby gurgled.
"How cute!" Ran said, stepping up to get a closer look.
"Can my younger brother and I use your bathroom?" I said without thinking, surprising not only myself but everyone else, as I hadn't spoken voluntarily in months. I stepped up behind Conan, placing my hands on his shoulders, signifying our forged relationship. He looked up at me, puzzled. The woman hesitated, but soon found a flaw in my statement.
"He's your brother?" She said in a disbelieving tone.
"He's not your-" Kogoro started before I swung my hand back, semi-casually, right into his gut.
"We only have the same mother, so I guess he's only my half-brother." I said easily. The woman hesitated once again before saying:
"Well, I suppose…but my daughters and I were just about to leave for dinner with our family friends." She opened the door to let all of us in, and I led Conan a little further inside, waiting to be shown the direction of the bathroom.
"So you have two daughters? How old is the other one?" Ran asked eagerly.
"She's 5 years old now," the proud mother said knowingly. "She'll be starting school next year."
"What's her name?" Ran asked as she made sweet faces at the baby.
"Kazuko. This is Kazumi." The woman smiled, rocking the baby gently. "Oh, yes – the bathroom is…this way." She deliberated, as if she was choosing a different route than the one we would normally take – if she wasn't hiding something. She led me and Conan down a narrow hallway with many doors and took us to the last one on the left, which was what seemed to be the master bedroom.
"Sorry, our toilet in the guest bathroom is in need of repair," she chuckled nervously. "You can use my husband's and my bathroom."
"Thank you, we'll be out in a few minutes." I said. The woman nodded and left the room, making cooing noises to the bubbling baby.
"You check the bathroom and the rooms on the left side, I'll take the right side." I said in a low voice. Conan nodded before heading towards the master bathroom. I peeked my head out of the room to make sure she wasn't in the hallway before crossing to the first door on the right side. I found a light switch quickly and saw that it was most likely the baby's room. After closing the door, I hit the next one, and opened it to pitch darkness. Already something didn't feel right, and the rustic smell of blood stung my nose – just like that night. I felt for a light switch along the wall, but there was no luck. I entered the room carefully, not knowing what I could possibly step on, and continued to feel along the wall. All of a sudden, my feet flew out from under me and I landed on something that was warm and thick – what I presumed to be a human body. Scrambling to get up, my breathing and heart rate increased, and I felt blood and my shirt as I struggled to lift myself off the ground, only succeeding in falling on my backside before I finally got back onto my feet. I ran towards the wall and found the light switch, flicking it on so I could take in the situation.
My clothes were stained with blood, as were my hands. I looked up and found there was a man that had to be the woman's husband lying on the ground with numerous gunshot wounds. He was pale already, and he was lying in his own blood.
This can't be happening, I thought, not again! I dug the gloves that I had stored in my pocket for my night of experimenting and put them on my hands as quickly as I could, hurrying towards the body to check for a pulse. As I felt for one, praying that I could feel just one heartbeat, I started to scream.
"CALL AN AMBULANCE! CALL 110 RIGHT! NOW!" I heard the door opening behind me followed by gasps as everyone surveyed the scene. Just then, I was able to find a faint pulse, and noticed that the man was breathing very shallowly. It wasn't too late, I thought, I can still save him. I looked up at the shocked faces, noticing that the woman only had a look of fear rather than surprise, and grew more exasperated.
"DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME? CALL FOR AN AMBULANCE!" I shrieked at them. They seemed to snap out of it and the guys entered the room hurriedly.
"Ran!" Kogoro snapped. Ran turned and ran away from the room after throwing a "yes!" over her shoulder. I began to observe the man with all the medical knowledge I knew.
I lifted up his shirt and counted. "5 GSW's to the chest," I said, determined. "We need some type of gauze!" I said loudly, though I wasn't asking anyone to magically find some; I was thinking of a replacement. I lifted my sweater over my head, leaving only my tank top underneath. I began to rip the sleeves off, grunting in frustration, and began to rip the torso of the sweater apart as well to create long strips of gauze-like material. The man didn't seem to be too heavy as I lifted him up, placing the strips underneath him; they began to soak up the blood he was lying in. Heiji helped me, throwing a "When will the ambulance be here?" over his shoulder to Ran.
"I think I hear the sirens!" Ran said as she left yet again to meet the paramedics at the door. I grunted as I tied the strips of my sweater securely around the bullet wounds, applying pressure to them with my arms so that I was basically laying on top the body for the second time that night. There wasn't as much blood as there had been when my father was killed, so that either meant that none of the bullets went through, or that he hadn't been lying there for long.
"You're not dying tonight, do you hear me? You had better keep. Breathing." I chanted, mostly to myself as I struggled to cover all the wounds. Heiji took care of two while I had the other three under one of my forearms and my hand. I heard the man moan in response, which gave me a glimmer of hope.
"They're in here!" I heard Ran shout, and soon the paramedics were in the room with a gurney, their eyes wide.
"He has 5 gunshot wounds to the chest, I don't think any of them went all the way through, but he's still breathing and he has a weak heartbeat," the words came out of my mouth like a waterfall. The paramedics nodded, listening as they got on either side of the man, preparing to lift him. Once the man was on the gurney, they checked his pulse and gasped.
"We lost his pulse!" One of them cried.
"NO." I refused to believe this, and jumped onto the gurney, straddling the man's legs as I started to perform CPR. "Hurry and take us to the ambulance!" I persisted. They hesitated before they started to take us out of the house. Once we reached the ambulance, they asked me to get off, but before I did so I checked the man's pulse once again.
"He's back!" I said with conviction. The men thanked me fervently before they started to climb into the vehicle and drove away. It all happened so fast that once the ambulance was gone, I felt my vision get fuzzy, and knew that there was either going to be puke or some sort of cardiac event as a result.
"Kokone!" Heiji said breathlessly, Conan following behind him. "Are you hurt? You have blood ALL over you! There's another ambulance over here, come on." He gripped my shoulders and pushed me towards what I could make out as the second ambulance he must have been talking about. I felt like I was underwater; I wasn't breathing.
How does this happen twice? I thought. What is wrong with my life?
"I'm not – I'm not - " I managed to squeak out when we had approached the ambulance. The paramedics were preparing to check me out, but I waved them off, closing my eyes as I began to breathe faster, heaving breaths.
"Oi, let's get the oxygen mask over here." One paramedic said. There was a fumbling of instruments as they began to do so.
"Kokone-neechan, is it your heart? She has a heart problem -" Conan said as helpfully as he could in a childlike way.
"Her heart? What's wrong with your heart?" The man asked. I groaned before I began to keel over, my hand pressing down on my pounding chest. I could hardly breathe.
"The oxygen, Daisuke-san!" The man said, frustrated. I heard a distant "Hai!" and soon the oxygen mask was placed over my face. I tried to breathe, even as I felt the pure, good air clearing the scent of blood out of my nose. My heart began to calm down with the excellent source of oxygen, and I was able to somewhat breathe better. Only then did I realize that Heiji was supporting me completely, his arm snaked around my back, lifting my shoulders up. I closed my eyes, pressing the oxygen mask deeper into my face as if that would help.
"What's all this blood from?" The man asked, observing my pants and my hands. I opened my eyes to see a bloody, gloved hand holding the mask and immediately let go to rip the smelly things off.
"I fell." I stated. This sounded more like I injured myself though, so I added "I fell on top of the body, and then fell backwards into the blood." I shuddered inwardly, picking up the oxygen mask and placing it over my nose to prevent another heart attack of sorts.
"It's pretty cold out; do we have a blanket in there?" The man asked his partner. Soon enough there was fabric wrapped around my shoulders by Heiji, who had somehow situated me to be sitting on the back of the ambulance without me noticing.
"You did really well with this, so I heard from our partners. They radioed us just now and told us that the man was sent into surgery, and is only alive because of you. They told us to thank you." The paramedic said, kneeling down to be at eye level with me. I stared heartlessly into his eyes. "Are you a medical student?" I shook my head and looked at the ground. The paramedic awkwardly sat there for a second before getting back up to go talk with his partner.
"How…how did you know what you were doing, Kokone-chan?" I heard Ran say. I looked up to see her distraught face. I pulled the oxygen mask away from my face to respond.
"I've been studying," was all I could come up with. She continued to watch me worriedly.
"Where's that woman? We need to figure this out. Now." Heiji said in a bit of an angry tone before getting up to confront what seemed to be the source of the problem.