Disclaimer:
Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!
x.
FS
x.
x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.
(new version)
x.
Fate seemed to pull the strings
I turned and you were gone
While from the darkened wings
The music box played on
("Charade", lyrics by Johnny Mercer)
x.
Promises…
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
x.
Promises, easy to make, are a pain to keep, and Shinichi is once again debating with himself whether he should give Mitsuhiko and Ayumi a call. What bothers him is neither the horrendous price for long-distance calls nor the time his triple life eats up but the problem of how to explain to them why Ai would call her friends from Shinichi's mobile phone or from a public phone box in Venice when she is supposed to be in New York at the moment. Tired of the charade and distracted by his latest case (in an aborted attempt to be vindicated in court, a former member of the Organization had claimed that the seven crows hadn't committed suicide but were still controlling the members from afar), Shinichi completely forgot to tell Ayumi and Mitsuhiko about Ai's trip to Venice when he was on the phone with them last Saturday.
He might just send Mitsuhiko and Ayumi an email from his Haibara Ai email address claiming Ai has come down with a bad cold. If he is lucky and Ai (the real Ai) agrees to help him out, he will never have to impersonate her again. Before going to Cannaregio, Shinichi has bought a new prepaid SIM card with internet access so that he can check his emails and do online research without depending on Ran. Nevertheless, he has asked Ran to assist him so that she won't feel left out. After going shopping with Sonoko, Ran is going to comb Sonoko's collection of fanzines for information on Tenoh Haruka's former track rivals—especially all the second places and would-have-been champions if it hadn't been for Tenoh. While it would have been easier to ask his father for help instead, Shinichi doesn't want to trouble the mystery author again while he is working on his next novel.
Since Kyogoku has driven his guest directly to Al Timon, the quintessential Venetian place of rendezvous with its floating terrace, where the locals enjoy a snack on sunny days (Shinichi has lied to the karate champion, claiming that Carrara would be waiting there), Shinichi has arrived in Cannaregio an hour earlier than planned. After downing a cup of espresso, changing his passwords, and sending several messages to his informants (his mother, Takagi-keiji, and Megure-keibu), Shinichi decides to take a walk in the neighbourhood to plan his next moves and sort out his feelings.
If it was true that Tenoh Akira didn't exist, the police must have found the remains of another man in Tomoe's laboratory. Either Jodie-san has lied to Shinichi—which Shinichi doesn't believe—or she doesn't know anything about it because the matter has been hushed up and she didn't deem it important enough to investigate.
Whoever separated the drawing on the watercolour card from Tenoh Akira's signature on the other side hasn't done it on a whim—it must have been a tricky task even for someone with nimble fingers. Was it the signature or was it rather the drawing which was so compromising that it had to be removed? "Tenoh Akira" must have existed at the time Infinity burned down, must have possessed a passport, official papers, a bank account, and maybe even a social life—the whole make-up of an identity—because Tenoh Haruka certainly wouldn't have told the reporters about her brother's death at Infinity without being able to prove that Akira had existed in case an overeager journalist wanted to probe into the affair…
Passing several small boutiques, an old bookshop, and a few ancient bars and cafés, which are buzzing with people even in November, Shinichi tries to picture Ai walking among them sporting a wide-brimmed sun hat and dark sunglasses to protect her conspicuous hair and her sensitive eyes. Calmly evading the swarms of tourists around her, she is dragging her eccentric singer (who is dressed like a parrot this time) with her to her favourite boutique to admire a new handbag while Seiya, like most men accompanying their girlfriends on shopping trips, is oscillating between being bored out of his mind and feeling so exhausted he is ready to drop. The image lacks authenticity, reminding Shinichi more of Sonoko and Kyogoku than of Ai and Seiya, so Shinichi soon gives it up for another, even more surreal one: The pair is sitting beneath a red, white, or blue sunshade of a café on a large terrace at Canal Grande, holding hands on the table while the sun is playing on the reflective patterns of her love bracelet and his ring. He is telling her an amusing anecdote (or even something inexcusably banal) while she is staring into his eyes in fascination just like Christine Daée was staring at the Phantom's shapely lips on the poster Shinichi has seen at La Fenice…
Shuddering in horror, Shinichi kicks at an empty can on his way, sending it flying against a public trash bin. Even if the lunatic isn't her love interest, which he might be, Ai's fondness for Seiya is an obstacle Shinichi doesn't know how to remove. From the look of things, the singer is involved in the murder either as the main perpetrator or an accomplice, for he is the only person who could have cleaned the dressing room apart from Ai or Tenoh herself. In either case, Shinichi has yet to figure out how to pin Seiya down without hurting Ai in the process, especially since Shinichi will need her assistance to find out what drug the culprit has used to poison Tenoh.
If it weren't for Ai's inexplicable attachment to Seiya and the undetectable poison (which is likely to be a modification of APAH), Shinichi would have staged a grand denouement at the crime scene (preferably in front of all the suspects) before asking Seiya why he has manipulated the other suspects and cleaned Tenoh's dressing room. In this case, however, Shinichi needs to be discreet and wait until he has found compelling evidence and guessed the motive which explains Seiya's interest in Tenoh's death before Shinichi can even think of informing Ai about his suspicion.
Shinichi is standing at the San Apostoli now, eying its plain vermillion facade, the more attractive domed exterior of the Corner Chapel on his right, and the famous Campanile on his left with mistrust. The San Apostoli, too, has been rebuilt, destroyed by a fire, and rebuilt again—not only once or twice but three times! The Campanile, the bell-tower of Venice, didn't fare better, having been burned, brought down by a storm, and collapsed into a giant heap of marble, brick, and wood. Like other famous buildings in Venice, it has been destroyed and resurrected—and will have to be rebuilt over and over again in the future.
If you put a whole city on a shaky foundation and hope that it will defy the scythe of time against all odds, you will have to put so much effort into maintaining it that the beauty isn't worth the sacrifice, Shinichi thinks, refusing to buy into the romanticism Ran has fallen prey to. Memories are expensive to conserve. Only extremely affluent people can afford the luxury of keeping a property in Venice, and many of those people realize with time that they can get much more for their money in other cities than here. As enchanting as it is, Venice is pleasant for a short stay but isn't the right place to spend the rest of your life—just like Seiya Kou isn't the right partner for a lasting relationship. But then again—says the Haibara Ai in Shinichi's mind with her infuriatingly serene smile—neither are you or I…
x.
Checking his mailboxes one last time before visiting Seiya and Ai, Shinichi discovers two new emails, one from Ran and one from Mitsuhiko. Ran, who has postponed shopping to help her mystery freak, has sent Shinichi her findings in a report, as Shinichi has asked her not to call him during his investigation.
"Elza Gray, an American student, became Shirabaka High's fastest athlete after Tenoh-san stopped running to focus on her motocross races. Gray-san always won second place when Tenoh-sama was at Shirabaka. After Tenoh-sama left, Elza Gray won all the medals available. The athletes of our high school have always lost to her as well."
On the motocross track, Tenoh Haruka's strongest rival was Katsutoshi Yamada, who was famous for being an aggressive driver. But Ran doesn't know anything about Katsutoshi-san except that he disappeared just when Tenoh-sama quit racing and began to play the piano in earnest. Katsutoshi-san was declared missing soon afterwards and hasn't been seen ever since. Rumour has it that Tenoh-sama had killed him and quit racing afterwards out of guilt. Of course it was "ridiculous because Tenoh-sama always won by a wide margin" and it was common knowledge in racing circles that "his sexist and homophobic fans often tried to harass her"…
"Many of them spent months in hospital with fractured limbs, and some even tried to sue her although she was usually alone when they attacked her in groups. She was a legend and had never lost a fight. What an awesome woman!
PS: Why do you always have to hide everything from me? I won't ever forgive you for not telling me about Tenoh-sama's real sex!"
Doing her research more thoroughly than Shinichi expected her to, Ran hasn't only looked into Tenoh's racing career but also into Tenoh's past as an athlete. It was inevitable that Ran discovered Tenoh's real sex when Ran learned that the ex-athlete and -racer had once participated in the girl's competitions. At this pace, Shinichi's industrious Watson is going to stumble over Miyano Shiho before Shinichi can wrap up this case. Anyhow, a missing racer and a few burned human remains at Infinity fit too well into the same narrative to be dismissed, and Shinichi quickly sends a new message to Megure-keibu asking about the details of the Katsutoshi Yamada case.
Mitsuhiko's email, short and less informative, is not less interesting than Ran's, as it proves to Shinichi that Tenoh already knew about the effect of APTX4869 on Ai before the downfall of the Organization. He had "just heard that Tenoh-san passed away last night"—Mitsuhiko wrote—and he is extremely sorry to learn about Ai's loss. "Is that the reason why you haven't called me yet? Your cousin was such a nice woman".
x.
We met her at Ichinohashi Park, don't you remember?—Mitsuhiko asks the fake Ai on the phone. She and her friend, the pretty lady with the strange turquoise hair, bought the two of us ice cream. Conan-kun, Ayumi-chan, and Genta-kun were away on the school trip with the whole class. We two were recovering from a flu, and I suggested that we take a walk together because you once said we needed more vitamin D to toughen up…
Why do the boys with the highest boy soprano always end up having the deepest, huskiest bass during their puberty?—Shinichi wonders, unable to get accustomed to Mitsuhiko's new voice. Adjusting his voice-changing bow tie to imitate Ai's real voice more accurately (being the perfectionist he is, Shinichi can't tolerate the difference between Ai's real voice and the voice he had chosen before he saw Ai again), Shinichi rubs his temples and copies Ai's smile from last night in order to get into his role.
"My memory is abysmal these days!" "Ai" complains. "It must be the insomnia… You'll have to repeat the whole story to me because I still can't remember it."
She shouldn't work so hard—she has always spent too much time indoors! Her impromptu holiday in Italy will do her good. "But," adds Mitsuhiko with a shy laugh, "this has only convinced me that I must come to your school as soon as possible to take care of you."
Scandalized by the boy's newfound boldness and saddened by the impossible love he has unintentionally encouraged, Shinichi makes a mental note to tell Ai to let Mitsuhiko down gently before the boy can put his words into action.
Ai looked surprised—almost shocked—at meeting her handsome "cousin" again because Tenoh-san had changed so much compared to the last time she saw her, Mitsuhiko continues. (Since Shinichi could see on the Infinity photo that Tenoh Haruka hadn't changed much, this was just a lie Ai had to make up on the spot.) Tenoh-san looked like a man with her short hair, flat chest, and long limbs, and even used the male pronoun "boku" for herself… Mitsuhiko would have liked to tell the others about Ai's impressive cousin when he learned that Tenoh-san was a famous racer once. But he loved Ai's idea that this meeting (and their walk in the park) should be a secret between the two of them so much that he didn't tell anyone…
As Shinichi suspected, Ai has hidden her connection to Tenoh Haruka from him (and has even made use of Mitsuhiko's infatuation with her to protect her secret), preferring to deal with whatever trouble she had got into by herself. Was Tenoh a friend or an enemy, or a bit of both? Tenoh must have been an ally, who saved Ai at Pandora's Box, as Shinichi can't imagine how Ai, weakened by her injury and stuck in her child form, could have survived the storm on her own.
Tenoh Haruka didn't save Hattori, however… And as the image of the "distant ruler of heaven", who was known to have fought her opponents with unwavering harshness, once again materializes before his inner eye, Shinichi is struck by the thought that Hattori might not have been washed against the rocks during the storm as Shinichi thought but had been rendered unconscious, thrown off a motorboat, and left to drown.
x.
As he feared…
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
x.
As he feared, reporters, paparazzi, and lovesick fans are already besieging the main entrance to Michiru-sama's academy, forming a massive human wall he can't scale, and Seiya is forced to admit defeat when he spots his blonde nightmare of an admirer Nadia Gorowitz perching under the window of his studio with her smartphone in her hand. If he had to get into the studio at any cost, he could knock her out, climb through the window, get changed, and run home before the reporters discover the unconscious girl. Seiya doesn't attack his fans, however (the paparazzi he knocked out when he was sixteen were exceptions to the rule, as they would gladly have ruined Odango's reputation and her relationship with Mamoru-san for an exclusive shot). So Seiya only totters past the crowd with his simulated stoop, hiding the bouquet of flowers and the box of zabaglione behind his wide leather jacket, and breathes a sigh of relief when he escapes into the Piazza di San Marco unseen.
Now he will have to carry the accordion home instead of bringing it to the studio as planned. The change doesn't bother Seiya—he is accustomed to improvising. Seiya has also told Hakuba Saguru about the meaning of his name as if his own parents didn't attach much significance to it. But Seiya doesn't fight losing battles and doesn't see the need to hide something which the detective will discover sooner or later.
For a detective of Kudo's calibre, guessing that Seiya has messed with the time is certainly a breeze. That said, what can happen to Seiya, anyway? The case will soon be closed for lack of compelling evidence. Hakuba will confront Seiya about the falcon some day, whereupon Seiya will tell Hakuba that Seiya hasn't shot it—an answer the detective will have to content himself with. Unless Kudo and Hakuba snoop around in political circles and get themselves into serious trouble with the consequence that Seiya will have to save their necks for Shiho's sake (a delight Seiya would rather forgo, as busy as he is at the moment), absolutely nothing remarkable will happen.
Seiya's greatest problem right now is the packet of APAH he has lost. But since the most logical explanation is that someone has picked it up in the hope of finding a few cigarettes and then thrown it away in disappointment (or taken the harmless painkillers if they're addicted to drugs), Seiya doesn't worry about it too much.
In a showcase behind the display window to his left, a familiar pair of rings attract Seiya's attention. They belong to the same collection as Shiho's love bracelet (Seiya wears his whenever he is not in disguise). The last time he tried to slip hers on her finger (with the joke that she might as well wear the wedding band now that they're living in an "everything but marriage" arrangement), however, Shiho ran for the hills. Out of all places, she chose to stay in Haruka-san's apartment afterwards. And it took him a whole week to get her back, much to Haruka-san's sneering amusement.
Not everything Seiya told Hakuba Saguru was a lie. While Seiya is actually tidy and organized (touring around with an explosive agent and two hypersensitive perfectionists like Yaten and Taiki has prepared Seiya for Shiho's neurotic sense of order), Shiho did leave him more than once during the first months of cohabitation for the most ridiculous of reasons or even for no reason at all. If he had been less confident, Seiya would have drawn the inevitable conclusion that she just didn't love him enough to live with him in a marriage-like relationship. But whenever she returned, he could feel the same longing in her embrace coupled with the same weary resignation which already staggered him the first time she bailed. Hence it didn't take him long to be sure that Shiho must be guarding a dark secret, which only Haruka-san (and Michiru-sama?) know.
As long as Shiho doesn't voluntarily open up to him, Seiya tries not to pry into her past. Even so, he suspects that her life as a codename member and leading scientist of the Organization was a good deal more sordid than what she wants a lover to know. More than once he has dropped hints that nothing she did—not even testing poisons on innocent victims or on other Black Organization members (enemies, rivals, just plain annoying colleagues?)—could change his notion of the person she is now. From time to time, she would let her guard down and confess to him that she once did terrible things. But before he could assure her that it was all right and that he likes her with all her past and present faults, she would clam up and turn away. As always, he would end up kissing her in silence (as words would have been deflected by that invincible armour of hers), they would make love as if it was the very last time in their lives, and then she would sleep on it and forget about her worries on the following day…
…And then Haruka-san—with her meaningful smiles and her ambiguous words—would sweep into their delightful twosome solitude and ask Shiho out for a cup of coffee whenever he was rehearsing. Shiho would always accept the invitation, sometimes with an eagerness which puzzled Seiya, who couldn't make sense of their odd friendship. No doubt Haruka-san was Shiho's confidante, he thought, and it had never occurred to him that Haruka-san could have been blackmailing Shiho behind his back before he saw the Sherlock Holmes painting in Haruka-san's dressing room and overheard their talk in Mestre.
Before he took the sofa from Haruka-san, Seiya believed that like most people with a guilty secret, Shiho needed a good friend to lend her an ear. But whenever Haruka-san brought her back from their friendly date, Shiho would retreat into her shell and lock Seiya out of it, moving away from him as if she was no longer sure of their relationship. Sometimes, Seiya would catch her distant gaze on him, which felt like the look of a complete stranger in its anonymous, impersonal gentleness. Then he would know that he had to fight for their relationship once again as if they had just met, for she was debating with herself whether being with him was worth the demons she had to battle when they were together.
Haruka-san, on the other hand, would drop poisonous hints to Seiya about how Shiho was still wearing her necklace because Kudo Shinichi had always been the one Shiho really wanted, that she was only with Seiya out of convenience and because she couldn't resist his famous charm when she was lonely and vulnerable, that her love for him was the love of a fan for an idol, based on superficial physical attraction and her own desire to be loved. Hurt by Haruka-san's influence on Shiho (less by the silly talk about Kudo being Shiho's true love but more by the realization that Haruka-san was able to alienate Shiho from him within only a few hours), Seiya would distract himself with work and wait, meanwhile turning on his charm even more to keep Shiho by his side, as he knew from past experience that any attempt at talking with his girlfriend would cause her to retreat even further.
x.
The ponderous pigeons, accustomed to being fed by tourists, don't even try to flee from Seiya as he is strolling along the Doge Palace towards the lagoon. Sidestepping each of them so that he won't hurt one by accident, Seiya congratulates himself for having visited Michiru-sama before buying the flowers and the cake, as it would have been a pain to carry the stuff while running to and fro between opposite ends of Cannaregio.
Seiya knows for sure that he will come in time for lunch even though he is not wearing a watch. How funny that Hakuba Saguru tried to shock him by asking him whether he was carrying a pocket metronome around… Seiya has never needed a metronome with his ability to pick up a beat and keep it as long as he wants, altering the pace at his will to return to the right tempo after minutes or even hours without the help of an instrument or a metronome. His musical memory and his sense of rhythm are all he needs. The sight or the sound of two successive movements of the seconds hand on a clock's dial are enough to provide him with the exact tempo to keep track of time for hours. How anyone could prove this in front of a judge, Seiya doesn't know…
Seiya's arrogance, his happy-go-lucky attitude, and his lack of foresight will be his death, Taiki once predicted. Perhaps Taiki is right. But until then, Seiya is going to enjoy his life.
Among the white columns of the Doge Palace—yellowed by age but still extremely imposing in its old-fashioned beauty even in the harsh light of the midday sun—are two pink ones, which are said to mark the spot where the doge once used to stand during ceremonies—the place where death sentences were announced to the crowd below. "I've seen you, but I'm not going to tell the police the exact time when you came back to La Fenice last night," the letter he found in their mailbox this morning has said. "Have you ever wondered how a death sentence could affect the loved ones of a criminal? I'm going to visit you in your dressing room tomorrow before the musical. Please don't complicate things by running away. Don't worry, I only want to be your friend. Nadia."
The woman doesn't know anything about capital punishment and sucks at delivering threats just as she seriously sucks at wooing an unwilling object of desire! Is this supposed to be blackmail—Seiya wonders—or is it only a clumsy and rather creepy way to approach him? He has made the acquaintance of enough infatuated people to know that some of them confuse love with hate on a regular basis. Passing the pink columns without sparing them a second glance, Seiya resolves to rip apart the letter in his pocket when he passes the next trash bin.
Mentally listing the positive things to dilute the negative ones, Seiya thanks his lucky stars (or maybe even Gorowitz's stalking skills) that Shiho didn't empty their mailbox before he did, as he is an early riser whereas she likes to sleep in. The weather is glorious, almost summery, with exactly the right amount of cloud in the sky to create Shiho's favourite type of early sunset. Since Seiya has studied the part of the Phantom years ago (at Haruka-san's suggestion), he doesn't have to study much but can still sing it in his sleep. (If it weren't for this lucky coincidence, Seiya would be in deep trouble tonight, considering how much time Haruka-san and Seiya's stalkers have stolen from him.) This afternoon, they're going to have tea with Kudo and enjoy Makoto-chan's zabaglione—one of Makoto-chan's specialties. And to top everything on the list: it hasn't escaped Seiya's attention that Shiho immediately caught on the topic of marriage last night. At this thought, the last speck of cloud lifts from his mind.
Both Shiho and he are independent people, who dread the idea of being tied down by the tyrannical shackles of bureaucracy society imposes on individuals behind the lies of legitimacy and romance. Nevertheless, marriage is in this part of the world no longer the one-way trap it used to be. Without drawing up a spoken or written contract (neither of them has felt the need to do it), Seiya and Shiho are already sharing everything—not only a bed as Rei-chan so brazenly blurted out at La Fenice but also an apartment, their finances, and their everyday life. Now that Haruka-san has made their relationship public, there is no sense in hiding it. A marriage, as mundane as it is, would ease Shiho's life by protecting her from the malicious gossip all of his supposed affairs had to endure.
Seiya won't ever try to talk Shiho into marrying him against her better judgement, especially not after her depressing reaction to the ring he gave her. (Back then, his ego suffered a severe blow, from which it has never really recovered.) But if she should feel the wish to tie the knot out of practical or even sentimental reasons (Shiho is able to transform from the pragmatic woman who can make the most of an extremely limited budget to the incurable romantic who asks him to walk with her along the canals of Venice during sunset within a second), Seiya will happily run with her to the next municipal office (the dreaded paperwork be damned!) to seal the deal.
Perhaps he shouldn't be too greedy and push his luck, Seiya concedes, giving up the illusion. Although a part of him does fit his public image of the loner who will be happy with or without a woman by his side, another part of him has always been pursuing the romantic ideal of sharing the rest of his life with a lover who voluntarily sticks by him despite knowing his family background. A ring would only be an ostentatious display of a relationship which is as close to perfection as he could ever have imagined—their personal happiness, which has been ruthlessly endangered by Haruka-san's grand scheme. Although Seiya knows that he loves Shiho far more than she loves him (he would never have left her, whatever the circumstances), he is content with the relationship they have. Therefore, when he passes another jeweller's and spots a love necklace in the display window which dwarfs the one Kudo has given her in both beauty and elegance, Seiya doesn't buy it for Shiho as planned.
Everyone has the right to cling to the memories of a hopeless love, however satisfying their present relationship is, Seiya thinks, beholding the vintage pendant with a pang of remorse. He, too, won't ever try to blot out the memories of the two women he loved before he met her. Giving Shiho the necklace now after carelessly revealing to her that he was irritated by the sight of Kudo's present would be the same as asking her to let go of the past for the sake of their relationship. The gesture would be egocentric and petty, even cruel in a sleazy way—and sooner or later, he would hate himself for it.
In contrast to his reputation (wrecked by Haruka-san in another of Haruka-san's attempts to be helpful), Seiya does have rather high standards of decent behaviour, which he effortlessly upholds as long as he isn't driven into a corner by external circumstances. Otherwise he wouldn't have felt so sorry for the timid usher he flirted with last night that he refrained from messing with her watch as he initially intended to. In the end, all he needed to say was "I can't believe it's already sixteen past eight!" and distract her with the autograph on her arm so that she couldn't look at her watch at that very moment. If it should come to an inquest, which Seiya doubts, Alessandra could console herself with the thought that he has only made a mistake but hasn't used her like he used Gentile.
Climbing into his motorboat, which Alberto Coiro has brought him, Seiya shrugs off the worries Michiru-sama has tried to instill in him this morning for fear that he will get himself into trouble with his reckless attitude. Hakuba Saguru and Kudo Shinichi can investigate as much as they want—checking watches, stopping the time, bombarding Seiya's friends with questions, searching his apartment in vain… There is absolutely nothing they can prove, Seiya realizes, distractedly smiling at a girl who has just ignored the chatter of her boyfriend to gaze after him. He is almost curious about how Kudo is going to solve a case without any conclusive evidence, a bunch of uncooperative witnesses, and an opponent who doesn't fear anything.
x.
A/N: A fast update this time, maybe because I'm loving the heat. I feel like an ice block most of the time, so my favourite time of year is late June to early August when I'm finally thawing. :D
Lilliane Matake: You're spoiling me with the long review!
Old A/N: A virtual cookie for everyone who has noticed that Seiya's studio does have a window.
