Mistakes
"I'm hungry!"
"You just ate lunch!"
"I don't care; I'm hungry!"
Kaito had been enlisted for shopping duty. This wasn't an unusual situation, however, it was one Kaito spent lots of time trying to wiggle out of. Occasionally though, like today, it was unavoidable. Whether through guilt or blackmail, Aoko knew how to manipulate her friend.
"…and then we'll go to that one shop that's got all those cute little thingies and THEN we'll eat, all right?"
Kaito was grumbling to himself under his breath. However, the word 'eat' caught his attention. It has that affect on many teenage boys. "Fine then, let's go!" He grabbed her wrist and started weaving through the crowds before stopping. "Ummm…which store was it again?" he asked sheepishly.
Shinichi, newly returned, was trying to spend more time with Ran. If this involved following her around the shopping mall, so be it. If it involved carrying her purchases, well, so be it. But he would -not- follow her into the lingerie department. There's only so much a guy can take, after all, and he really didn't feel like being karate'd near to death any more times in the foreseeable future.
So instead, he was just sitting on the bench outside, waiting for her to be done with…whatever she was doing, and watching the people passing by. He had turned it into a sort of game, trying to read the people hurrying about their daily lives. It helped keep his skill sharp, and with his luck, it might just be useful later when the inevitable corpse happened by.
There was a lady, carrying lots of bags and looking hassled; judging by the names on the bags, she was shopping for a kid's present. Possibly her own, but more likely a cousin or nephew. And there, that man had just got a new grill and had no clue how to deal with it; nobody else buys plastic barbecue tools. They melt. And there, that kid….He blinked. That kid…was him? But he was sitting here, not over there flipping that girl's skirt. So, logically, that was not him. Hooray for logic. Not that it did him much good, because the kid was still there, running away from the angry girl, passing by the department store and getting seized by Ran and towed away and...oh shit.
Aoko blinked, then saw Kaito sitting on the bench across the way. How did he get there? Chalking it up to one of his 'magic tricks,' she charged over and seized him by the collar.
"You, mister, are coming with me."
Shinichi didn't even have time to get out a single word. He managed to twist a bit so he wasn't being choked, and was at least facing forward. The girl, who looked surprisingly like Ran, would not let him go. Desperate, he did what he would never have even considered doing before that moment. He did what had seen the other boy do earlier. He flipped her skirt, and, when she dropped him to hold down her skirt, he ran.
Ran was surprised to see Shinichi running by; he said he'd wait on the bench. Still, this made it more convenient, so who was she to complain? He was saying something, it was all mixed up, but the word 'mistake' was clearly audible numerous times. Probably another case that had occurred while she'd been in the store; she couldn't leave him alone for five minutes! Honestly!
"Look, lady, let me go! Where are you dragging me off to anyways? Stop!"
Ran turned to face Shinichi, intending to give him a good dressing-down. He'd always been inconsiderate, but that was just plain rude! She started to launch her tirade at the poor, bewildered boy, but stopped. "Wait a second, there's something wrong…your hair! What'd you do to your hair?" She looked closer as he fidgeted uncomfortably, but she didn't even give him time to open his mouth, much less explain. "You…you're not Shinichi!"
Just then, a scream came from a store they had just passed. "AHHH!! Help! Somebody! He's dead!"
Ran sighed. "Never mind. You're Shinichi."
I somehow love the idea of Ran identifying Shinichi based on the inevitable corpses. Because really, how else do you tell Shinichi and Kaito apart?
Imagine your own ending for poor Shinichi. There's too many possibilities to pick just one.