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.
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
("Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)", by Don McLean)
x.
The same scene…
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
x.
The same scene can look dramatically different from another point of view—and Seiya wonders how their tea session went in Kudo's eyes because in Seiya's eyes, nothing can excuse Kudo's callous behaviour…
x.
When Seiya left the bathroom in high spirits—Michiru-sama's message that the case had been closed had taken an enormous weight (worth of Odango's entrée, main course, and dessert during an all-you-can-eat buffet) off his mind—Shiho was glowing, beaming at Kudo with an expression Seiya only got to see when she had been in the throes of ecstasy. Although he felt a pang of jealousy just then, Seiya let it slide since he would be wearing the same smile if he were having tea with Odango after such a long time.
If it made Shiho happy to talk with her detective in private, why should she deny herself the joy? As long as there were clear boundaries and Shiho knew where to draw the line between lover and friend, Seiya shouldn't feel threatened.
Nadia Gorowitz was no longer watching their bedroom, as Seiya could see through the mahogany Venetian blinds and the transparent curtains, and he pulled up the blinds to let the afternoon sun in. After the rain, the wet balustrade of their balcony was glistening in the pale, warm light. Carrying the clothes rack from the bedroom to the balcony, as he could hear Shiho's request in his head, Seiya noticed that the wild roses at the door were in need of pruning. Since he didn't have time, he only shoved the porcelain flower pots into a sunnier spot near the balustrade before he left.
Entering the living room just when Shiho compared him to Haruka-san, Seiya thought it was a good idea to join in the talk in a natural way—with a comment about Haruka-san's inability to follow orders despite her propensity for giving them. Instead of drawing Seiya into their conversation, however, Kudo only shot him a baleful look. "Get lost!" the look said—and Seiya, who could remember how he felt when he learned about Odango's reunion with her boyfriend after Mamoru-san returned to Tokyo, decided that Shiho's guest needed a longer break to recover.
Weighing the options available, Seiya considered returning to the bedroom to prune the roses and go through the songs for the musical again (a waste of time since he had sung them for years) or do the dishes in the kitchen lest they pile up and Shiho rediscover her violent side, which has been lying dormant since the "opera" at La Fenice. The kitchen won because it allowed Seiya to stay in Shiho's vicinity while the roses could wait. Although the case was closed, Seiya needed to protect Shiho from Kudo's questions.
When Seiya was filling the sink, his girlfriend left her guest alone to approach him and—misusing the convenient angle of the door and the cupboards, which hid her right arm from Kudo's field of vision—ran a teasing finger down his back. She could do the dishes for him today, she murmured.
As Seiya suspected, Shiho loved having both of her men on the scene because she liked having the best of both worlds: flirting with Kudo while tempting Seiya, as she was doing now. Ignoring her roaming hand (whose pretty owner was decorously leaning against the counter in an attempt to conceal her risqué behaviour from her guest), Seiya told Shiho that she could do the dishes when Odango visited them—an innuendo which only Shiho could understand. If Odango were here, they would have so many plates to clean that they could disappear into the kitchen together while Odango and her friends would stay in the living room to banter about Odango's bottomless hole of a stomach. And they would have plenty of time for secret kisses while doing the dishes at the slowest pace possible…
Bored by his lame reaction to her advances (what did she expect if she was the one who had made him promise to behave like the ideal host?), Shiho returned to Kudo and complained about Seiya bullying her—a monstrous lie, for which the earth should open up and swallow her!
Throwing the two people in the living room furtive, watchful glances, Seiya noticed in dismay that Kudo was undressing his girlfriend with his eyes while she, lingering at the coffee table in front of the detective, seemed to be enjoying the attention. Remembering how well Mamoru-san has treated him although he dated Odango during his absence, Seiya told himself to cut the detective some slack. Learning that the woman one loved was living with another man was distressing enough. Dealing with the possibility that her life partner might be the culprit of the case one was trying to solve must be intolerable.
And yet… seeing the happy smile in Shiho's eyes whenever she gazed at her detective, Seiya was reminded of Haruka-san's words when she told him that Kudo Shinichi was in Venice: Since Seiya was so clueless, Haruka-san felt obliged to inform him about how things went when a woman realized that she could have the man she had always wanted. After cursing herself for not grabbing her chance earlier, she would find fault with her present partner.
Koneko-chan will examine all your irritating habits under a magnifying glass until they turn into impossible obstacles to her happiness. She will find meaning in the most mundane gestures of his and elevate their love to a fateful star-crossed romance while she will overlook all the everyday things you do for her. All the sacrifices you have to make for your relationship won't matter at all or will only strengthen her conviction that you, too, will benefit from a break-up. Familiarity breeds contempt, Seiya, and a man she can see every day and in whose arms she can lie every night can never compare with a man she has always been dreaming of but couldn't have. I'm only warning you so that you can brace yourself for the pain when everything you two have built up together collapses and she abandons you for another man…
x.
Ignoring Kudo was an impossible task, as Kudo's grief and anger resembled a giant black hole, which swallowed everything in its vicinity. The detective didn't make the slightest attempt to control himself—and Seiya was cudgelling his brains about why Kudo would be so openly jealous of him when Kudo's outburst clarified the situation.
"We were partners… or so I thought."
Astonished by the implication of Kudo's words (it wasn't only Kudo's choice of words but also the break in Kudo's voice, which alarmed Seiya), Seiya exchanged a worried glance with Shiho, who seemed upset that he had to learn the truth in this way. Kudo and Shiho must have been in a romantic relationship, which she didn't end properly before she left—and Seiya should have guessed it earlier, considering the agony Seiya himself had suffered whenever she fled. The detective had a better excuse for his behaviour than Seiya thought.
Shiho must have lied to Seiya for fear that he would judge her or ask her to break up with Kudo via phone or email. And now that she had been lying about their relationship for so long, it was natural that she didn't dare to tell Seiya the truth about her detective, whom she must have written regularly without finding the courage to mention her new boyfriend (or did she tell Kudo about Seiya in one of the emails the real Kudo Shinichi never received?)… Haruka-san must have known about this mess, which would explain Shiho's fear whenever Haruka-san put pressure on her.
This wouldn't be the first time that Shiho had lied to him; and Seiya, accustomed to her evasiveness, remained unimpressed. Feeling sorry for his girlfriend, who had one boyfriend too many now that her past love had come to Venice, Seiya decides that one ex-boyfriend more or less didn't count although they had to inform Kudo that Shiho couldn't return to him.
Embarrassed by his own behaviour, Kudo changed the topic and began to talk about Michiru-sama instead. Terrified, Shiho once again darted Seiya another anxious look, which Seiya ignored so that she could calm down. Seiya had to concede that if Michiru-sama had been sent to Pandora's Box to rescue Shiho that night, Hattori Heiji would still be alive. Michiru-sama was chillingly calculating whenever the situation called for it. Yaten would forever be hampered by his emotions whereas Michiru-sama would brush her personal feelings aside and kill the enemy if it was a necessary condition for rescuing her ally.
Through the kitchen window, Seiya could see Nadia Gorowitz leaning against their gate. To his surprise, she didn't throw another awkward love letter into the mailbox but only pulled a cigarette packet, which he recognized at first glance, out of her pocket to wave it in the air. Cocking her head to grin at him even though she couldn't know that he was looking at her, she shook the packet and took out a blue and white capsule, which she demonstratively held against the light.
With a last victorious smirk, she left—mincing on her high heels along the Canal and then over the bridge until she disappeared behind a wall. If this wasn't a trick to make Seiya believe that she had stopped watching him, she would be waiting for him at La Fenice to terrorize him on the opening night, revelling in her victory for a day before visiting him in his dressing room. And Seiya, who didn't want Shiho to worry, pretended to focus on doing the dishes while he was fantasizing about following the blonde beast just to throttle her.
To distract Kudo from the Pandora's Box issue, Shiho chose this moment to inform the detective about Haruka-san's emails to Shizuka-san and the editors although she omitted the detail that Haruka-san had blackmailed her. Seiya could hear every single word clearly although Shiho was whispering into Kudo's ear (or rather into Kudo's face, which Seiya, who didn't like how their noses were almost touching, observed). Since Haruka-san was convinced that this wasn't going anywhere, she planned to separate Shiho and Seiya so that they could find other people to marry…
"Other people" were, in Shiho's case, Kudo Shinichi, the more sensible choice for her—as Haruka-san attempted to convince Seiya. It was ridiculous how Haruka-san always tried to persuade Seiya to leave his girlfriend, with whom Seiya had a perfectly functional relationship, so that another man could take his place—and Seiya doubted that he had found the answer to this puzzle in Shiho's past relationship with Kudo because not even Haruka-san was capable of such absurd reasoning…
The detective, too, was most puzzling. Without showing an iota of compassion for Shiho and Seiya when Shiho told him about Haruka-san's continual harassment, the sleuth had the audacity to suggest that Shiho leave Seiya in Venice and fly back to Tokyo. Seiya could visit Shiho whenever he wanted, Kudo said—as if having a rendezvous once in a blue moon would suffice when Seiya and Shiho were accustomed to seeing each other twice a day. For all that, Kudo was trying to help her because Kudo cared for her—which was the only reason why Seiya, who distractedly noticed that he had spaced out and stopped doing the dishes, didn't tell Shiho's ill-mannered ex to stop treating Seiya and Shiho's relationship like one of these casual "friendships" which was occasionally livened up by a booty call.
x.
The real problem lay in the differences between Kudo's and Seiya's attitudes to women, Seiya reflected. Kudo, despite expecting all females to be demure girls who didn't dare to borrow a napkin out of a male friend's trouser pocket, took romantic relationships lightly like most workaholic single men did. Seiya, on the other hand, had never been interested in wishy-washy affairs. At least Shiho didn't sound like she was in a dilemma when she told Kudo in no uncertain terms that she wasn't going with him.
He misunderstood when she said she was going to stay in Venice for four years—Kudo claimed in a feeble attempt to regain Shiho's respect. He thought she was going to return to Tokyo…
If this was a misunderstanding and Kudo believed that Shiho and Seiya had a fling, Kudo must be more delusional than Haruka-san had ever been. More likely, Kudo had projected his attitude towards women onto Seiya and was disheartened to realize that Seiya and Shiho were taking their relationship more seriously than Kudo thought.
Still, Seiya couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy—just like Shiho, who was stroking the detective's shoulder and squeezing his arm with the same gesture with which she always comforted Hotaru-chan after a failed attempt at copying Michiru-sama's drawings. Perhaps they would live in Tokyo again in a few years if the situation changed and Seiya began to spend more time in Japan than in Europe—she explained—but right now it was impossible.
Even if he hadn't seen her faraway gaze, Seiya would have heard the regret in her voice. He could tell that she was dying to meet her Professor and the Detective Boys, whom she had often mentioned in passing.
They could go back to Japan whenever she wanted, Seiya pointed out. He could find a job anywhere, and they still had the apartment in Azabu Juuban. Taiki had also asked Ami-chan to look after Seiya's first apartment, where Seiya once lived with Kakyuu and where Seiya always stayed whenever he returned to Tokyo, so that Shiho and Seiya could move in right after the musical.
"Maybe in a few years," she said in a nonchalant tone although Seiya could hear the smile in her voice, "after the wedding."
The much feared word, which had more than once become the prelude to yet another separation whenever it was brought up in a serious moment, had the same effect on Kudo as on Seiya, who almost let go of the glass he was holding. Reacting at Haruka-san's speed, the detective snatched Shiho's wrist and stared at her as if she had informed him she was going to die of an incurable disease… And for a fleeting moment, Seiya was nineteen again, attending the wedding of the girl he loved with a smile and congratulating himself that her idea to turn the evening into a masquerade and his idea to appear as a ninja allowed him to wear black on her wedding.
It's just a running joke of hers—Seiya told the detective, whose world was falling apart like Seiya's when he received Odango's wedding invitation. In reality, Shiho is so terrified of marriage that she will run away the moment Seiya mentions it. It has happened so often by now that Seiya has lost interest as well. They're never going to marry, period. To both of them, it's just a redundant piece of paper.
Seiya didn't know why he said those words, which he instantly regretted when he saw Shiho's expression and it dawned on him that she had mentioned marriage for the third time within a day. She was now sipping her tea in gloomy silence while her gaze lingered longingly on the half-bloomed roses on the table, the "autumn wedding bouquet". This time (unless Seiya was dumb enough to spoil it all by trying to uncover her secret), Seiya knew with certainty that she wouldn't run away.
Marriage or no marriage—Seiya would do anything to make Shiho happy. If Shiho wanted marriage, she could have it wherever and whenever she wanted. Seiya would give Shiho whatever she needed and become whoever she wanted him to be. Seiya's mother once told Seiya that his greatest strength was his capacity to adapt and change. Kudo might always be the modern Sherlock Holmes—but Seiya, even when he wasn't using his acting skills, could be Sherlock Holmes and John Watson and Godfrey Norton and Irene Adler and James Moriarty…
Your present isn't enough to improve my motivation to stay alive. I don't need a lucky charm made for someone else—I have enough luck for two or three people. If I could get another reward after returning from Chicago in one piece, I'd choose you instead.
When he was blow-drying his hair in the bathroom and checking his messages on his phone, Seiya had deleted the histrionic emails Shizuka-san had sent him and only replied to one email, which was holding the key to his questions: Odango had sent him a photo of a carefully wrapped package, which seemed to contain a pocket-sized notebook or portfolio.
Haruka-san has asked me to hand you her "present" when we meet in Venice. I don't understand the meaning of this! To emphasize the seriousness of her message, Odango had protected it with the Night Baron copy.
It was only one of Haruka-san's silly games—Seiya had replied. Odango shouldn't say a word to either Taiki or Yaten and give Seiya the package tomorrow after dinner when no one was looking. The "present" must be the reason why Shiho insisted on keeping the key to their mailbox, Seiya thought. Since he wasn't Pandora, who couldn't resist peeking into Pandora's Box, Seiya would give Shiho Haruka-san's package unopened so that Shiho could get rid of it—and they were going to marry after the musical and forget about whatever past deed which was so extremely horrible that she would rather break up with him than admit it.
x.
One effective strategy…
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
x.
One effective strategy which, despite its cruelty, worked like a charm was to defame the boyfriend of your love interest—and Kudo's question about Seiya's reputation of womanizing didn't serve any other purpose than raising doubts as to Seiya's fidelity unless the detective was so priggish that he felt personally offended by Seiya's "international repute". For Shiho's sake, Seiya grimly suppressed the retort that it wouldn't matter if he had been with half of the world's female population since his past didn't have anything to do with his current relationship. He had presented himself as Shiho's supportive life partner, whom even a rival would have no problem to accept if said rival wasn't such a self-centred, hypocritical jerk!
Seiya couldn't stand Mamoru-san in the beginning because Seiya believed Mamoru-san to be an asshole who had left his girlfriend in the worst possible way: ignoring her letters and emails and calls instead of breaking up with her. But Seiya instantly changed his opinion when he met Odango's reserved boyfriend in person and realized that Mamoru-san was the brooding type that attached much more importance to the future than to the present. Unlike Kudo, Seiya had never resorted to backhanded remarks or cynical ploys, and he was revolted by the realization that Shiho's shiny master sleuth would stoop to that level…
All these thoughts must have raced through Seiya's mind since it was child's play for Shiho to read them off his face. Although he still tried to keep up a pleasant attitude, Seiya seemed more confrontational and negative than usual—retaliating against Shiho when she spilled the beans about his weak spot for Odango and Kaioh-san and snapping at her when she complained about the steamy choreography of "The Music of the Night". Shiho has given Kudo a slightly distorted version of the situation when she exaggerated it a bit—omitting the detail that Christine Daaé's lush, thick, lace-trimmed satin corset, which Hino-san wore under the translucent nightdress, has prevented both Seiya and Hino-san from feeling anything. But nothing ever riled Shiho's imperturbable boyfriend, much less trifles like these. A person who didn't know Seiya would ascribe his aggression to the typical stage fright which plague even the most experienced performers before the opening night. Having survived more than one production and endured a dozen metamorphoses, which transformed her Beauty into the Beast, however, Shiho knew exactly what was going on.
x.
The first time it happened, it was most disturbing because she couldn't make sense of the situation at all. Overnight, her new boyfriend—a flawless example of the male species, who until then had read every wish off her eyes—transformed into a second (infinitely more beautiful and less violent but just as insufferable) version of Gin. For a whole week, Seiya would spend his mornings sipping cocktails and snacking on junk food in bed and his afternoons pacing their apartment in a daze while avoiding talking to her unless she addressed him first. He would also ruffle his hair, rant about the sorry state of the world, and imbibe so much alcohol in his waking hours that she had to confiscate his keys for fear that he could get the idea to drive out into the lagoon under the influence.
Despite her complaints and his solemn promises to behave, Seiya didn't show any inclination to change back but developed a philosophizing streak instead. Shiho had already drafted a sixty-nine-page letter rambling on how she was still in love with him but was going to break up with him if he didn't stop ordering gin in crates when she found The Night of the Iguana in his jacket pocket. All at once, a lightbulb went off in her head and it dawned on her that she had been living with the latest incarnation of Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon for days. Afterwards, Shiho was almost thankful that Seiya, even during his terrifying transmogrification into Tennessee Williams' grumpy anti hero, respected their relationship enough not to betray her with other women although he definitely seemed more aware of (and much more interested in?) all his scantily clad admirers than he used to be.
Disturbingly, Seiya could remember well how he acted but failed to see her problem. For all he knew, he got carried away by a role for a few days and spent his free time getting hammered—so what? Since he was the opinion that he had kept strictly to the ground rules of "no violence, no cheating, and no neglect" even when he was plastered (Shiho had to admit that even when he was intoxicated, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon never let her go to sleep without a perfectly balanced amount of goodnight kisses), he wasn't aware of doing anything wrong.
She would have liked to work out neat, workable longtime solutions to their problem with him—but Seiya has a way of distracting her which she is unable to fight. When she tried to discuss the issue with Taiki-san, her worries were dismissed with a gesture of incomprehension. Like most great natural talents whose character development couldn't keep up with their genius, his younger brother (who had stayed a child at heart) often lost the fight against his obsessions, Taiki-san reasoned. Shiho had better accept Seiya with all his faults since Seiya couldn't stand being tied down. It shouldn't be hard for her to forgive Seiya out of all people since Seiya stoically endured her fickle moods and indulged her every whim (which, frankly speaking—Taiki-san added with a slight smirk—no normal man who hadn't grown up with a brother like Yaten would be able to do without ending up in a mental institution).
"Why, Seiya has always been unprofessional! You should have seen him on the set of our first live action—when Akane-san cast him as Young Moriarty," Yaten-san only snickered when Shiho, in her despair, swallowed her pride and turned to him (her greatest rival in love) for support. Instead of assisting her in her unequal fight against his two brothers, who would join forces to play pranks on him and her whenever they could, however, Yaten-san only yawned and went off to take a nap when she asked him what "Young Moriarty" had done.
x.
Kudo has just excused himself to go to the bathroom, which Shiho blames on the amount of tea Seiya and she have forced on him while Seiya claims that her detective is continuing the investigation by inspecting their bathroom and their medicine chest. Filling the small basket in her arm with glasses, napkins, and a bowl of potato chips, Shiho watches her boyfriend squeeze the juice of six orange halves into the jug on the counter in front of him with a frown.
"You've promised to be as perfect as Kaioh-san's Stradivarius, Seiya! I'm only reminding you in case you've forgotten." She knows he is feeling the overwhelming urge to transform into the Phantom now that the performances are about to start. But if he gives in to his dark side and scares her friend away by behaving like a suspicious, controlling maniac, she is going to make sure that his poor underrated stand-in will get the chance to prove himself on the opening night while he—after ingesting a mysterious substance—will be writhing in pain on the floor of their corridor.
"Who is the suspicious, controlling maniac here?" He asks her in disbelief. "And Kudo is not just your 'friend'—he has 'competitive rival' written all over his face! If you don't want him to be all over you by the end of next week—and trust me, this will be much worse than it was in Gentile's case—you'll have to discourage him now."
Rendered speechless by her boyfriend's delusion, Shiho only chuckles. Even though she prefers by far the real Seiya to this pre-opening-night Erik, who threatens to turn into a more sinister and diabolical Phantom with every performance, it amuses her that he has become insecure all of a sudden.
"Is that the reason why you had to deliver the grand speech about us seeing each other much too seldom to bore each other? I bet he found it laughable at best." She turns on the taps for him to wash his hands. "By the way…" She shoots him a puzzled look. "Why don't you ever use our juicer?"
"Because it's redundant!" He takes the basket from her and gingerly places the jug of orange juice into it after drying his hands on the towel she has handed him. Then they spontaneously kiss before she pulls him to the winding stairs, joking that if she were still wearing her red-riding-hood coat, he would resemble the wolf who, after surrendering to his unlikely mistress, was carrying the basket for her on the way to her grandmother.
"Or on the way to her ex-boyfriend," he darkly remarks. "I'm not jealous of your exes, but I don't get why you had to lie to me about Kudo."
"My ex?" She stares at him aghast. "Do we look like ex-lovers to you?" Seiya's delusion has taken on a paranoid quality, which can become troublesome if he lets go of reality like he does whenever he gets carried away by a role he loves. And no matter how ridiculous the idea sounds, Shiho can see the parallel he must have drawn between the love triangle in The Phantom of the Opera and their current situation. Accustomed to pursuing her while she remains indecisive about whether to stay or to leave, Seiya is convinced that their unbalanced relationship is imperilled by an attractive alternative.
"I should say no—but truth to tell, yes! I thought he wouldn't show his jealousy so openly if there hadn't been anything between him and you." He places the basket on the chair between the glass door to the roof terrace and the door to the external staircase, which leads into the courtyard, and hands her the cardigan on the hook. He looks more puzzled than relieved at the realization that Kudo and she have only been friends, and Shiho wonders whether she has mistaken his curiosity for anxiety.
"Kudo isn't jealous—he is overprotective, as always." Despite his thick cardigan and her warm outdoor slippers, she shivers when he opens the door and the damp November air streams in. In response, Seiya shuts the door again and walks downstairs to fetch her a blanket like he always did at Tenoh-san's place. Since Kudo and he are similar in this respect and Shiho, much to her frustration, has often mistaken Kudo's protective gestures for romantic interest, it has taken her a whole evening of debating with herself to consider the possibility that Seiya didn't mean the two of them to share a flat with each other as eternally platonic friends à la Watson&Holmes when he asked her to move in with him.
x.
Until she met Seiya, Shiho had believed that love would always enter her life with the stealthy gait of an experienced hunter or a phantom thief, as all her past infatuations had followed the same pattern. Gin, suave and sophisticated, was the only interesting man in her vicinity when Sherry grew up; and she was fascinated by Gin's penchant for fast cars, his hedonistic ways, his caustic wit, and his habit of using metaphors when he introduced the Organization's philosophy to her. Rye, her sister's boyfriend, reminded her of Gin in the olden times—before the toil of the never-ending executions of traitors and moles turned the idealistic dreamer Sherry knew from her childhood days into a bitter, cynical, paranoid misanthrope whose socks and underwear she was tired of washing. In both cases, love came to her like spring after a long, bleak winter whose end she couldn't see.
Things were different when it came to Kudo. While it didn't take Haibara Ai long to discover that she found Kudo-kun's razor-sharp mind, combined with his childlike naiveté, extremely alluring, Kudo Shinichi was off limits right from the start since he had a girlfriend who resembled her sister too much. As far as Ai was concerned, "the girl from the detective agency" and Kudo-kun might as well have been engaged; and Ai dreaded the thought of being tossed into another love triangle after barely surviving the tragedy her fleeting attraction to her sister's boyfriend caused. This time, love was to her the burden she had to carry to redeem herself after Akemi-nee-san's death. She eventually moved on and enjoyed what life had to offer apart from romance—the ancient wonder drug which, once it had worn off, only left an unpleasant, bitter, sticky residue.
It was easier for her to love Kudo with the selfless, pleasant adoration of platonic love. While it didn't feel good, it felt right to admit to herself that Kudo belonged to Ran.
The price for love, in any case, was far too high—so Ai believed—just as the debt afterwards seemed too massive a burden to clear. And since Ai had defined love for herself as a mental sickness which crept up on one unnoticed until it grew into a malevolent cancer which would ultimately wreck one's peace and only produced a happy outcome for a few lucky people, to whom she didn't belong, Ai was bewildered when she woke up in Hotaru-chan's bed the morning after her rescue and realized that she had to reassess her world view. For a whole night, she had been struggling with hallucinations and nightmares, in which the voice of the stranger who protected her from Gin and Tenoh-san triggered the euphoria she only felt when Kudo visited her for the purpose of having an animated chat. (Ai couldn't tell why Tenoh-san played a menacing part in her nightmares, but she didn't care since dreams were inherently irrational.) And the remembrance of his voice gave her the fluttering feeling which only intense fear or—and this was ridiculous but her mind compulsively repeated it until she gave in and admitted it to herself—the first moonstruck phase of love caused.
She can see the whole scene as clearly as if she had secretly filmed it and saved it to the Organization's cloud to study it at least once a week—pausing at the very moment when Kudo's cryptic words that she shouldn't run away from her fate emerged from the back of her mind and began to make sense to her: She was watching the sun setting over the beach from the window of Hotaru-chan's children's room where she was lying, listening to Tenoh-san's account of the happenings during the last two days and wondering whether the two extremely stylish, absolutely stunning young men walking past her window were the rude dishevelled guys who had threatened to throw her back into the sea again, when her mysterious rescuer made a startling, dreamlike entrance upon the scene and she realized that he didn't only have the most wonderful voice she had ever heard but also the most hypnotic eyes she had ever seen.
x.
Giving in to the sentimental urge to reenact the beginning of their relationship, which was then just as fraught with insecurity and difficulties as it still is now, Shiho opens the door and steps out into the cold afternoon without waiting for the blanket. From personal experience, she knows that minor inconveniences and discomforts are indispensable for preventing a long-time relationship from sliding down the comfort trap, which can kill off the initial chemistry and romance between a couple faster than jealousy and physical absence can.
While she is cleaning and setting the table on the roof terrace, she acknowledges with a tinge of anxiety how extremely pleasant her current life is and that such a phase cannot be expected to last for long. There are so many things which can go wrong. If Seiya receives Tenoh-san's message via messenger instead of via post before Shiho can intercept it; if a former scientist, who once worked in her lab, recognizes her face in the news and remembers Sherry; if, despite Three Lights' efforts to salvage the situation, the former members of the Organization or the blackmailed big names snap, her current life, which she is enjoying so much, will be over in an instant. Seiya isn't the type of partner with whom one can spend a life on the run—a fact which Shiho, even without Tenoh-san's warnings, could see at first glance.
It's like gliding through the air with a hang glider whose condition she hasn't been able to test in advance while knowing that the weather is going to worsen, Shiho thinks. She once got a taste of it when Seiya, in his temporary insanity, borrowed Kuroba Kaito's hang glider for the first date with her. When she shook off the fear and began to enjoy the ride, she was reminded of the time she rode a snowboard with Kudo. Seiya, who gave her the same sense of security and suspense, was the type of lunatic she could imagine being with for life; and perhaps she wouldn't have minded at all if the hang glider had broken at that moment and they both had crashed into the waves below.
The glass door opens once more, and Shiho has barely caught sight of her boyfriend's head when she is covered from head to waist by her wool blanket.
"You're messing up my hair!" She tries a frown and then gives up. Love waxes and wanes like the moon or, to put it more poetically, rises and ebbs like the water in Venice. This is one of the moments in which she can't be angry with him.
"Don't catch a cold!" He kisses her neck after she has disentangled herself from the blanket and thrown it over her shoulders. "Rei-chan will kill me if I abandon her during her first musical."
"So? Are you worried about your own health or about 'Rei-chan'?"
"About both." Disappointingly, he refuses to accept her tyrannical reign with the confession that she is the only one he cares for. "Although—" he respectfully touches her toned arms, "—when I see these biceps, I fear your wrath more."
"Good! Do behave accordingly when Kudo comes back." She ensconces herself in her favourite chair next to the balustrade and pulls up her legs to tuck her feet under her knees while Seiya grabs a napkin to wipe the remaining chairs, which have gathered dirt due to the lack of use during the last weeks. "Speak of Kudo, where have you left him?"
"I heard him rummage through the medicine chest in the bathroom when I fetched you your blanket. Maybe he is searching our bedroom at the moment. Want to bet?"
"You're impossible!"
"No, he is!"
He is leaning against the wet balustrade with an air of petulance, and Shiho, who can't bear to see his d'Artagnan shirt, which she discovered in a secondhand costume shop shortly after their arrival in Venice, get soaked, draws him away from the pink and terra cotta column down to the chair next to her.
"Pottering around in other people's medicine chest as if he were a kid in a toy store…" he mumbles against her lips as they resume kissing, which has become her favourite pastime. She can tell that he is imitating Nadia Gorowitz now, having become allergic to their stalker's voice even though she seldom hears it. It's the artificial, strained tone, which she instantly recognizes: the voice of a woman who has learned the wrong singing techniques and who is now applying the theories she has learned in practice without noticing that her voice is suffering significant harm.
To the best of her recollection, Shiho can't remember Seiya imitating his stalker, whom he can't stand. Shiho also doesn't know whether she is supposed to hate or pity her. On the one hand, Shiho is apprehensive about Gorowitz's single-minded obsession with Seiya and her uncanny ability to walk the line between cruelty and sweetness. On the other hand, Shiho knows exactly how agonizing unrequited love can be. She has suffered from it long enough to feel for the people who are forced to live with it for years. In addition, she is more worried about Seiya's tendency to draw radical people to him.
If Shiho is honest about her feelings, she can't even count herself out when she thinks back to the beginning. After learning from Taiki-san that Seiya was bound to evoke obsessively strong emotions in some people, whose passionate yearning he had to flee on a regular basis lest it twisted into pure, violent hatred, Ai realized with a sense of humiliation that Taiki-san, accustomed to dealing with Seiya's fans, was aware of her emotional reaction to Seiya and was trying to warn her before she could make a fool of herself.
Ai's natural reaction was to hold back, to assess her chances of arousing Seiya Kou's interest, and (in consequence of admitting to herself that her chances were slimmer than the waists of the baby ballerinas of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo) to analyze her new feelings in order to build up her weakened defense mechanism. Common sense advised her to nip the unreasonable, doomed infatuation in the bud. One unrequited love was enough to hurt her fragile ego, which had taken a nasty blow after her failed relationship with Gin. In fact, she still hadn't recovered from her unrequited love for Kudo, who was oblivious to her feelings. A second unrequited infatuation of this dimension would effectively smash her sense of dignity and self-worth to smithereens.
For the sake of natural equilibrium—so Ai told herself—the stranger with the voice which had begun to haunt her in her dreams must be soul-destroyingly boring, mind-shatteringly dumb, and since Ai naturally valued character and intelligence more than looks, she wasn't going to fall in love with him.
She was going to spend time with Seiya-san to get to know him, which was going to cure her of him, she thought, wondering whether she was lying to herself this time. Oddly enough, Seiya seemed attracted to her as well, actively seeking her company although he enjoyed teasing her by treating her like a real child. Ai was elated by the attention he gave her although she couldn't explain why he liked her so much. Even now that they've been living with each other for years, Shiho doesn't know what he sees in her. Considering the strange gazes she gets whenever she meets his friends, Shiho suspects that they don't have a clue either.
Tucking her feet under his thighs to change her posture without sacrificing the luxury of warm feet, she wraps her arms around his neck, interlaces her fingers, and demands an explanation as to why he seems so interested in Gorowitz these days, accepting Gorowitz's invitation to talk in private as if Gorowitz belonged to the group of his nicer fans, who politely line up in front of the opera house to get an autograph from him.
"She is getting on my nerves," he murmurs, planting a trail of kisses from her ear to her chin. "I'm going to get rid of her for good so that we can be alone again."
"And how do you plan to do it?"
"I don't have a plan, I'll just improvise, as always." Leaning back in his chair, he flashes her a careless smile. "I'll talk to her, even scare her a bit if I have to." His eyes darken; and as he tilts his head in a whimsical parody of the Phantom, he throws his right wrist into the air in a smooth circular motion, which she has already seen during his rehearsals. "If she tries my patience—and that goes for your detective as well if he can't keep his hands off you—I'll wring her scrawny neck after catching her with my magical lasso!"
"Don't overdo it!" Shiho warns him, adding that Gorowitz could create a scandal and ruin their holiday or even his brothers' comeback if he taunts her too much. Before she can add that she is amused by his jealousy at Kudo, as ludicrous as it is, he hurriedly pushes her away from him, whispering that he can hear Kudo's steps.
Seconds afterwards, she can hear them as well. Through the translucent curtains in front of the glass door, which have been partly pushed aside, she can see Kudo slip into his jacket and his shoes, which Seiya has carried upstairs when he fetched the blanket for her. Pity that Kudo is just as immune to Seiya's charm as Seiya is immune to Kudo's influence, Shiho thinks, beholding her detective's gloomy face. The last time they met, Tenoh-san told Shiho that a meeting between Seiya and Kudo would be a disaster because Shiho would have a hard time to choose, Kudo would never give her up, and Seiya would never share her, resulting in a situation in which Shiho could only lose—but Shiho had laughed off Tenoh-san's theory, which was built on the far-fetched premise that Kudo nurtured a secret love for her and which neglected the most important detail.
Shiho has her feelings perfectly compartmentalized. In her mind, Kudo is connected to everything exceptional and admirable in this flawed, messy world—her time with the Professor and the Detective Boys and Kudo has given her all the joys of a normal life, which her upbringing within the Organization could never give her. But it felt like the proverbial thread of fate, which had got entangled in the hands of other men, had led her to the moment when Seiya and she kissed—when she discovered that all the song lyrics she had dismissed as being unbelievably hackneyed and mawkish were true: All of a sudden, water tasted like wine, each kiss was an inspiration, no word was left to speak, and the fundamental things would always apply as time goes by…
x.
You didn't tell me that you were going out with Seiya-kun, Hotaru-chan darkly remarked when Shiho passed her room on the way to Meioh-san's bedroom (after Hotaru-chan and Meioh-san returned from New York, Meioh-san insisted that Shiho move into her room while she stay in the smaller guest room until Shiho left); and Shiho uneasily stopped at the door to the small but elegant Victorian-style children's room, racking her brains for an explanation for why she had kept her relationship with Seiya secret while he was in Chicago.
We wanted to wait until he came back from Chicago because we weren't sure that he would make it, she gently said, deciding that Hotaru-chan, who knew about the Organization and Seiya's family, was too observant and mature to be lied to. I was going to tell you first. The girl looked hurt although Shiho wasn't sure that the emotion she saw in her deep mauve eyes was wounded pride. If Hotaru-chan were older, Shiho would have sworn that it was betrayed trust and intense jealousy.
Do you know what you're getting yourself into? Realizing that she was still wearing her paint-stained apron, Hotaru-chan quickly took it off and dropped it into the armchair near the door. All the members of the Organization are following him now because to them, he is that person's chosen heir.
She does because he has told her everything, Shiho said, kneeing down to look the little girl in the eye. Even before he went to Chicago, Seiya had admitted to her that all the things Tenoh-san had told her about his family were true. Still, they were going to Venice together and ignore the problem as if it had never existed. People easily grew accustomed to both war and peace. In a few years, nobody would remember the Black Organization anymore.
If you like him so much, you can borrow him for eight years, until I'm old enough to marry him, Hotaru-chan had graciously said, much to Shiho's astonishment and disappointment, as Shiho had begun to believe Hotaru-chan to be in love with her, considering the girl's lesbian adoptive parents and the special affection the girl displayed towards her. This was so… disappointingly typical! Has he told you that we're engaged? Hotaru-chan wiped an invisible speck of dust off her smart Gothic Lolita dress, which Meioh-san had made for her. Maybe you haven't noticed—but he has brought me Christmas presents and hidden them in the drawer of my bedside table.
Only me and not you, she might as well have said. Although she was baffled by the sudden turn of events, Shiho held back the protest that Seiya meant the books he had left in the drawer to be Hotaru-chan's birthday presents, which Hotaru-chan was supposed to find in January, and that Seiya did give Shiho a Christmas present when he gave her his key.
Really? When and where did you two get engaged to each other? Shiho asked seriously, with a perfectly straight face, fighting the urge to smile.
He didn't say yes but he told me he would think about it, Hotaru-chan reluctantly admitted before she took a long breath to recount the whole story in one single sentence: He said he did love me and was going to wait for me but wanted me to ask him again in ten to fifteen years because love could always change when I asked him to marry me on Usagi-san's wedding…
Is it true that Hotaru-chan once proposed to you and that you said you would be waiting for her? Shiho asked Seiya that night. If that's true, she is right to be angry at you. He was practicing with a calligraphy pen at Meioh-san's Victorian desk, drawing Hotaru-chan's initials in black ink on a creamy sheet of paper because his neglected "fiancée" had demanded a written declaration from him now that he had dared to take a lover without asking her.
I didn't expect her to remember it! He groaned as the ink once again bled through the thin sheet of paper. She was lonely because Odango's cousin, who was her only friend, had just moved away. I was sad because Odango got married. So, when she caught that bouquet and asked me to marry her, I said that she should ask me again in ten to fifteen years…
x.
A/N: This chapter is really long, and I could have split it but I didn't want to, considering how the scenes are connected to each other.
