Voices
The glasses filled with iced tea clattered on their tray when it was put on the table, the amber liquid swayed back and forth, threatening to get over the edge before the storm settled again. However, when she was about to reach for one of the glasses, the ringtone of her cellphone echoed through the room.
"If that's dad again-," With a sigh Ran went to the small dresser to get her phone, leaving Kazuha and Sonoko to their own glasses. She was sure that it was her father again, who tried to reach her for what felt like the thousandth time. But she didn't want to hear what he had to say. Neither his apology or anger (not at Ran but Shinichi), nor his advice or encouragement. He'd known the truth, and the thought gnawed at her too much to listen to his voice now. But when Ran's gaze wandered to the display on her phone, a baffled wrinkle formed between her eyes.
She didn't recognize the number.
It couldn't be her father. He would try to hide his number, but would not borrow the phone of someone else, nor would her mum. Not a lot of people had her number, so she would have to find out. She accepted the call, and put her phone on her right ear.
"Mori here."
Only silence greeted her from the other side of the line. Ran frowned, pressing the phone closer to her ear, but the white noise of what seemed to be an unoccupied line was the only thing she heard.
"Hello?"
The silence began to settle on her skin, causing a shiver to run down her spine. But before she even said another word, her heartbeat fastened, she heard someone - him – exhale before he gasped for air, when his dry voice finally reached her ear.
"Ran."
Her name that echoed from his mouth made her flinch. If Ran had not pressed the phone so tightly to her cheek, it might have slipped between her shivering fingers. She could hear him swallow, nearly feeling his breath on her cheek while he punished her with the silence. Ran's own breath was stuck in her throat, her fingers twitched with the impulse to simply hang up, but the fine muscles in her fingertips wouldn't allow her.
It took some time before she was able to force herself to speak, while taking no notice of the expressions of puzzlement from her friends. Her tongue was literally stuck to her palate, while Ran listened to her own pounding heartbeat.
"What do you want?"
She produced a little more than a whisper, but her few words were enough for her to remember what she'd tried to forget the whole day. The anger, betrayal and bitter disappointment boiled inside her heart, which formed her sentences - each word driving nails into his heart.
"Are you calling to tell me to keep your secret? Or that I shouldn't get involved? Or that I should try not to be upset? That it isn't something personal- because don´t worry… it isn´t…"
'Not any more…' The young woman took a shivering breath while her burning gaze nearly burned holes in the cream-colored carpet of her apartment.
"What do you want?"
Ran closed her eyes, her tone had now turned to disappointment, rather than anger.
"Ran."
His voice was rough, yet she couldn´t stop goosebumps crawling up her skin when he breathed her name. She cursed, resisting her accelerated heartbeat, the tingling feeling under her skin and the tears he brought to her eyes.
"Ran… I. I'm-"
"Don't you dare!" She didn't want to hear it.
"Do you honestly think that a simple excuse is enough for you to make up for the last ten years? Everyone thought you were dead; do you think an excuse is enough for this? For 'Conan'?" She swallowed at the thought of her little brother, as a tear rolled down her cheek. All the explanations she had been given, faded behind his new lie.
"Your apology is ten years too late." Her words were soft, and she tried to not care about how it might break his heart.
Ran listened to the song of the white noise, beside his irregular breath, almost like he didn't get enough air into his lungs. But her own heart struggled with the silence as well, because she couldn't prevent her voice from holding some kind of hope.
"If you're not going to tell me anything, I will hang up." He gasped for breath, ready to take - for what could be his - last chance.
"Ran, I-"
"Shinichi darling, could you help me for a second?"
The bell-clear voice in the background turned Ran's world into ice. The sweet voice surely didn't belong to Yukiko, yet the warm tone in it made Ran's heart tremble.
"Never mind…"
"What? But- wait! Ran, that wasn´t-" But she couldn't hear his voice any longer since Shinichi was already talking to a dead line.
She'd hung up.
XXX
He hadn't had much time to stare at the phone to let himself be hypnotized by the sound of the empty line, because shortly after Ran hung up the American woman appeared in the door frame.
"Tracy."
The FBI-Agent stopped at her sight, his constricted voice and the cell phone in his hand told her who he'd been speaking to. But his gaze made it clear that it was still too early to talk about this topic, namely Ran, so she got straight to the point.
"I need to take a few pictures of your face. Your mother and I are still figuring out how to cover that new scar of yours." Shinichi nodded and 'posed' for Tracy's cell phone camera, turning the way she told him to, until the American was satisfied with the results.
"Alright. We need you in… well, maybe an hour for the first fitting. If you don't have anything better to do, would you mind looking for Stue? He's been bothering the Professor since breakfast and I'm a little worried about the old man." The ghost of a smile scurried over the young man's face and let Tracy breath in relief for a brief moment.
"Sure, no problem, but I guess everything is fine." Tracy nodded gratefully and disappeared from the room, so Shinichi was talking to himself.
"Everything is fine."
'I am fine.´
XXX
No more tears dared to drop from her glassy eyes, the young woman didn't make a sound and didn´t resist when the phone was taken from her hand and her friends carefully steered her back to the couch. Only when the cool glass of iced tea was put into her hand, her friends' voices slowly carried Ran back to reality.
"That was Shinichi, wasn't it?"
Kazuha's voice was soft, her eyes rested impatiently on her, before Ran was finally able to nod. But before she was able to explain further another voice thundered through the room.
"That's unbelievable! This nasty, egoistic idiot!" Sonoko announced in a piercing voice. While Kazuha sighed, Sonoko's anger swept over Ran, clouding her in a dense fog.
"What is he thinking! To call you, after all you've been through! Because of him!" Sonoko's brown eyes flickered over the frame of her friend. The iced tea was able to wash some of the pallor from her nose, at least she still looked better than yesterday. The face of the member of the Suzuki group however darkened. The pictures of the past day were still vivid in her mind. She never wanted to see Ran like that, ever again. What had happened… what he'd done to her was simply inhuman.
'I never thought you would be able to do something like that… Kudo Shinichi.' She might have understood the thing with Conan back then, since he tried to protect her. But it seemed like he was just as rotten in the bright shining armor he'd been forced to wear like the dark guys he was hunting.
He had no idea what he'd done.
If he'd seen… she paused and washed the picture down with a sip of tea, he would not have called if he'd had seen her yesterday.
Sonoko still admired her friend's strength. To leave him behind, after all these years in which she had longed to have him back, to hold him in her arms again.
She'd just ignored him.
To give him a taste of his own medicine, leaving him to the loneliness he'd chosen.
Yet it was this somewhat cruel, almost heartless manner that shook Sonoko to the core.
Because that wasn't like Ran at all.
She'd forgiven him so much, had returned to his side so many times, even though he didn't deserve it.
But yesterday, her world had crumbled into pieces, taking Ran with it.
Sonoko couldn't remember how far they had come until Ran's knees had given away, getting more and more wobbly with each step. She and Kazuha soon realized that they would not make it to the car. So Sonoko had jumped in front of the next best taxi, forcing the frightened and slightly angry taxi driver to a stop. His anger however, vanished as soon as he got a glimpse of the woman kneeling between the two women radiating their fury towards him. His moustache twitched but he opened the door for the three women without any further comment.
As soon as they reached the safe darkness of the car, the dam of tears finally broke. One after another found its way over Ran's cheeks, accompanied by hoarse sobs.
No word came over Ran's lips and looking back Sonoko knew that none of her or Kazuha's words had reached her back then. Due to the heavy traffic and some red traffic lights Ran had the chance to calm down, and she convinced the two women to leave her alone in her apartment.
At least for today.
Even though Ran actually looked somewhat better today, the blank look and her red rimmed eyes, still turned Sonoko's stomach upside down while she silently cursed Kudo.
Ran would have forgiven him for everything.
But the fact that he had lied to her again, while everyone else knew and apparently hadn't cared about her feelings, just had been too much.
It seemed that there was nothing left from the Kudo Shinichi she knew. The man who'd always represented a safe path in this world for Ran had led her astray too often.
Ran was lost.
XXX
His feet had carried him across the lawn to the professor's back door, while his thoughts still were somewhere else. Luckily his hunch was right and the balcony door wasn't closed.
"Professor? Stuart?"
"Over here, Shinichi!"
With a tired smile on his lips the young detective approached the inventors in Agasa's workshop, even though the whole house had been referred to as 'workshop' before Ai moved in. Inventions, tools and things that 'one could need someday' were scattered around everywhere. Shinichi had found it difficult to separate between invention and scrap sometimes. Ai had not only brought more order into the old man's life, but it also seemed like the professor still tried to uphold some of her old rules.
He found the two men armed with magnifying glasses and microscopes at the professor's desk, who beamed in joy when he finally looked at Shinichi.
"Stuart just told me how he managed to reduce the already small microphone to this amazing size." Shinichi sighed, shaking his head wordlessly, while his finger brushed over the antenna of – whatever this thing was.
"I am sure it's rather exciting for the both of you, but Tracy isn´t so amused. I guess she demands your company." The inventor of the FBI looked up, blinking through his magnifying glasses with far too big eyes, before he pulled them from his face.
"Is that so?" Shinichi sighed, but the man seemed to have recognized that there was something else behind his behavior.
"You talked to her, didn't you?"
The detective blinked and saw how the professor looked up in surprise before Shinichi dropped his gaze. He swallowed, and squeezed his lips shut. Stuart however sighed and shook his head with a cynical grin on his lips.
"Maybe we should work on an invention against the anger of women?" Shinichi just shrugged, before a brief smile crept over his lips.
"I thought such a thing already existed. It's called a credit card." But the high school student's laughter sounded hollow in the ears of the American. They both knew too well that even the secret weapon of men was useless in Shinichi's case.
A depressing silence lingered between the three, before the American cleared his throat again before he started to speak.
"Sill… do not worry about me, Shinichi. The anger of women is like boiling water. You can get burned pretty hard, but the water needs to boil, because once the steam is off there is no hot water left." The inventor's eyes met Shinichi's just briefly but still managed to earn a thankful smile from the high schooler, before he left the two to their tinkering.
"Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you." As Stuart murmured something behind his back about how good hot water could be used to cook something, the smile on Shinichi's lips was long gone.
XXX
"A WOMAN!?"
Sonoko's volume made Ran flinch.
"You said that she called him "Darling"? This disgusting, false-" but the calm voice of Kazuha put an end to Sonoko's insults.
"Are you sure that it wasn't his mother?" Ran just nodded, kneading the now empty glass of iced tea in her hands.
"Yes, his mother sounds different. This woman- she is a foreigner… at least, I think so." Kazuha looked at her friend for a long time, before she nodded.
"I can't believe it! This ass has the dare to call you even through his-"
"I don't think that she is his girlfriend, Sonoko." The insecure voice of the young mother from Osaka caused the other two to look up. While Ran just looked at her in surprise, a vein began to pulse beneath Sonoko's slightly too thick make-up.
"And how can you be so sure about it?! Isn't it obvious what Kudo did?" Kazuha however didn't look up and just rubbed her forearm with a frown.
"I'm just saying – it doesn't mean anything, just because someone called him that." But the seemingly ignorance of the Osakan only caused Sonoko's blood to boil.
"What is going on with you! Are you defending him now?" Kazuha flinched but stayed silent.
"Kazuha-chan."
Ran's voice forced the eyes of the young woman to her friend, her gaze was soft but also stern, her voice shivered a bit.
"You've been quiet all day. What's going on?" The teacher could see how her friend swallowed. Even Sonoko had calmed down now, also waiting for an explanation.
Her hands sat restlessly on her lap, Kazuha noticed how her eyes started to burn. She had to force herself to look up, to speak with Ran despite the lump in her throat which seemed to make it nearly impossible.
"I… I think there are a few things you should know."
XXX
He no longer remembered if he had decided to go down here, or if his feet carried him here all by themselves through the fog in Shinichi's mind.
Maybe he was searching for help, down here in her refuge, where she had spent so much time.
'Ai…'
Goosebumps crept over his back while he took a deep breath of the dusty air in her laboratory. His fingers glided to the light switch, Shinichi did not blink when the ceiling lamp came to light after a few brief flickers.
Nothing had changed.
A sad smile made its way to the lips of the high schooler when he stepped into the room. He could feel how his heart started to feel heavy in his chest. It was so easy to remember Ai down here, fantasy and reality mixed with each other, creating ghostly phantoms of the little chemist in his mind. Shinichi swallowed heavily, letting his eyes wander over the dusty test tubes and piston. Some of the chemical containers were so dusty their inscriptions were hard to read. He really had to remind the professor to get rid of them, before the decomposing chemical substances blew up in his face. In the small- and thankfully empty – rodent cages only lay a lonely piece of bread, which even the little teeth of the rodents wouldn't be able to chop. Shinichi's feet carried him to the desk, he hesitated before he pulled the chair towards himself and sat down. His gut felt like it had been filled with ice when he noticed how his long legs nearly tangled under the small chair.
The computer monitor stared at him in gold and grey, the thin layer of dust had preserved everything beneath its veil, like a silent witness to her last presence. Ai's last works lay in front of him, the papers had long got an unhealthy yellow shade. Analysis tables of substances, thermal curves, formulas and compositions, everything faded but no less readable. Shinichi's gaze wasn´t leveled to the printed dates, but the notes, which were scattered around the multiple papers. Her writing was as clear and readable, she was no fan of frills and yet the tightly written letters gave the scientist's handwriting a feminine touch. His eyes wandered over the various remarks and briefly tried to follow her thought, but none of these records would give him the answer he needed.
'Should I have told her? Was it wrong to call her? Or should I have tried again?' He swallowed, unaware that he'd started to play with her pen, spinning it around, while his eyes still searched for answers in her notes.
'What should I do?'
A bitter taste crept onto his tongue. The truth was that all his questions only ended in an even bigger one - the reason that all his answers remained unspoken…
'How?'
How did Ai find them?
How could she have known about the letter?
"How?"
The question echoed lonely in the empty laboratory.
He wouldn't get an answer to any of his questions.
The detective let himself sink deeper into the chair with a sigh, while his gaze wandered across the table before they focused on something again.
Could she…?
Shinichi swallowed and reached for the little device, for a brief moment his fingers hovered over the play bottom dictation device, before he finally turned it on. His heartbeat grew faster and goosebumps started to form on his skin, as he listened to the silence.
White noise.
That and the quiet rattling of the old-fashioned cassette recorder was the only thing he heard for a long time. Though, the invisible voice that finally started to speak froze him to the spot.
"Shiho, won't you regret what you are about to do? If so, I'm totally on your side! Well, it will be your nineteenth birthday next time. Bye-bye, honey."
A hoarse breath left his throat, his eyes still rested on the small dictation device, observing how the small coils were running in circles.
Miyano Elena.
Ai's – Shiho's mother.
The cassette was one of a few her mother had recorded for her, the last one so it seems. Shinichi bit his lips, while the voice of the foreign woman continued to talk to him, unintentionally.
"Oh yes, maybe it's about time I told you..."
"Shinichi?"
The voice behind his back made him flinch, he turned around to see Tracy, who looked at him with pity in her eyes. He swallowed and turned back around, while he could see her stepping beside him from the corner of his eyes.
"Shinichi, who-?"
But Elena unknowingly silenced the FBI Agent.
"The truth is, your mom-"
Shinichi put the shadow of the past to a stop with the push of a button. These words were never meant for his ears anyway. His gaze literally glued to the recorder while he answered Tracy's question.
"That's Shiho's mother, Miyano Elena. She recorded these for her, as a reminder and to be still around… to be part of her life."
The chemist nodded silently, took a step closer and leaned on the desk as she looked around in the Lab, before her eyes rested on the dictation device again. She knew about Elena's story, only a little but still – there wasn't much known about the Miyanos anyway. The warm and soft voice of a caring mother offered a new picture of the member of the organization. Tracy would probably never figure out what kind of woman she'd been like.
"She must have known what was about to happen." Shinichi didn't look up, but nodded.
"I can't imagine what it feels like… leaving your children alone, in the hands of this organization. However, I wonder why she didn't try to prevent it, why she didn't do anything…"
"She did…" His voice was rough and his eyes drilled holes in the desk.
"She left these cassettes to her daughter." The FBI agent swallowed, but she pushed the unspoken comment back into her throat.
'If she would have tried to stay alive, she wouldn't have needed them.' A lump formed in the chemist's throat, while her gaze wandered to the high schooler by her side, who had apparently followed her thoughts.
His stomach felt like it had been filled with stones. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears and didn't even notice that his lips were forming the words he didn´t want to pronounce.
"Sometimes it just seemed to be the only solution… to leave something behind in order to make things right, if you aren't there to do it yourself."
"Shinichi…"
His tone had electrified the little hairs on her arms, leaving her restless. The detective seemed to notice the tension in the room and looked up at her with a shrug of his shoulders.
"We'll probably never know why she did it." His gaze fell back to the clock on the wall behind Tracy before he frowned. Of course the stupid thing had run out of battery.
"But Tracy, what are you doing here? I thought you and my mom are trying to bring Bell back to life?" The American blinked briefly, then swallowed the bitter taste on her tongue. She wasn't about to forget the topic of the conversation, even though he might want to hope so.
A pale smile appeared on her lips.
"Shinichi, that was almost two hours ago. We were looking for you and when you didn't show up, we started searching for you. The Professor noticed that the door to the basement was open."
"Two hours?" His eyes grew big, before he lowered his gaze to the ground. He really had lost track of time down here; his mind had been in slow motion, while the time outside the laboratory continued to run.
All because he'd been searching for some kind of advice…
All because of her.
'Ran.'
"You need to try it again, Shinichi." Her voice was soft, she caught his gaze with her own. Shinichi however, sighed.
"Why? It will not take us anywhere, not as long as…" The telling gesture wasn't necessary, Tracy already knew what he was talking about, so she decided to put some fire in her voice.
"Shinichi, if you believe that then you could have stopped trying years ago. Or do you no longer believe that we'll be able to stop the organization and get your hands on the poison?" He swallowed and drove his hand through his hair in doubt.
"I… I don´t know, I just hope-" But her stern voice interrupted him.
"Exactly! You Hope. Part of you still believes it, and you know you're not the only one." She sighed, softened her tone and waited until he finally looked up again.
"Why do you think she'd been waiting for the last ten years, Shinichi? Try again. Explain to her what happened and let her decide, for once. She's avoiding you because you never gave her the chance to decide if she still wanted to be with you or not." Her hand found his shoulder and squeezed it when she saw the doubt in his blue eyes.
"Talk to her again… just try." Shinichi swallowed, but nodded silently. A smile crept back to the lips of the chemist.
"Okay, now we see that you get to your mother. Yukiko has already been waiting for you for too long."
She could hear him sigh, but then he rose from the small chair without any further discussion and left, while she stayed in the small lab. Tracy took a deep breath and looked around in Sherry's study again, her eyes fell on the notes and data, before she bit her lips.
She'd promised him…
After several hopeful but failed attempts and disappointments she'd finally given up on figuring out an antidote to the APTX. He made her promise that she wouldn't try again, because he couldn't bear it anymore.
With the data from Sherry's lab, however…
'Only one more try.' Shinichi didn't have to know about it, as long as she, herself, was unsure whether the documents would lead her to something. She folded her arms in though before she nodded firmly.
"Just one more try."
XXX
The day was finally over.
The mask fit again and Tracy would give Bell some finishing touches tomorrow, and it was up to him to make up a believable lie for Bell's new injury.
He laid in bed, hearing his mother preparing dinner downstairs while she discussed something with his father. He was simply too tired to follow the conversation and besides, he simply did not care. His head felt like it was filled with cotton, like everything in him had gone numb.
Only her voice had reached him today.
Every single word of her still lingered deep inside her bones.
'Ran.'
Shinichi swallowed, sinking deeper into his pillow, but that seemed to turn to stone beneath his neck. He should skip dinner - it's not like he would be a great partner for a conversation today. Perhaps some sleep would help him forget at least some part of this day.
But just when the high school student was about to close his eyes, the signal tone of his cell phone made him open his eyes again. With a sigh he fumbled for his smartphone on his side table. The bright light of the display dazzled him. After taking a moment to blink the light out of his eyes, he unlocked the screen.
'An SMS?'
Only when he saw the name of the sender, his eyes grew large and he opened the message with icy cold fingers.
Meet me at the schoolyard during the break, if you can.
Ran.
The lump in his throat had grown. While her cold behavior still sent a shiver down his spine, his heart hammered violently in his chest, and despite all adversity a tired smile crept onto his lips.
'Ran… thank you.'
Hey,
I hope you're doing fine and each and everyone of you will stay safe and sound 3
Thanks to artycreaty, who was my beta this time, I can present you this chapter! Thank you so much my dear! You did an amazing job!
And of course a huge thanks to each who left a review for the last chapter!
Next time we'll have a little talk between Shinichi and Ran... ejoy the piece while it last because we're getting close to the "big bang".
I would love to hear your thoughts as always!
Stay safe everyone!
Till next month,
~ Shelling
