Disclaimer:
Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!
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FS
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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.
(new version)
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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 wedding...
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
x.
The wedding was a dream of diamonds and pearls and tears and roses and lace and silk and satin—all the materials fairy tales and dreams were made of. Perfectly timed in late spring between the bride's and the groom's birthday, it took place at one of the most beautiful and most secluded estates in the world: at Michiru-mama's residence, which she had inherited from the cheerful, promiscuous French aristocrat and actor who had fathered her.
Now that the sun had set, they had left the French rose garden for the house, where the candlelight cast mysterious shadows on the silverware, the gilt masks, and the velvet costumes. Princesses, princes, knights, and fairies were gathering around the round tables, feasting on the dinner Makoto-san, the tall dryad in an emerald silk dress and rose-shaped earrings, had prepared for the evening. While all the guests openly admired and adored the king and the queen—the radiant royal couple that was meant to be the main attraction tonight—their gazes would frequently stray towards the left corner near the fireplace, the round table where the three ninjas in black sat.
Murmurs and hushed whispers had been replaced by sighs and chuckles and even squeals when they finally turned up: much too late for the ceremony due to the heavy traffic and the delayed flight—so Taiki-san claimed—but just in time for the wedding reception. Imposingly tall and quietly elegant in his close-fitted black ninja suit and his lavender cape, which he had borrowed (or bought, or even nicked?) from the set of Three Lights' second live action, the auburn-haired middle brother was soon surrounded by almost all of the intellectual women in the room while the less sophisticated of the female guests were trying to flirt with Yaten-san, whose great feminine beauty was enhanced by his opal-green cape matching the colour of his feline eyes and the rare smile on his usually gloomy face.
Seiya-kun, sporting his black Red Ninja suit sans the red cape like an invincible armour, which he had donned to protect himself from heartache, was now gliding through the throng of excited guests with his relaxed, amused smile, gazing at everyone and touching no one, lingering nowhere for longer than a few seconds. One of Usagi-san's old school friends whom Hotaru didn't know personally (a diffident redheaded fairy in a terrible but expensive frilly dress) rushed after him and brushed against him on her way to the buffet in the adjoining room, and Hotaru could see the girl's pulse race in her veins when he turned to look at her.
It didn't escape Hotaru's attention how the whole atmosphere instantaneously changed when Seiya-kun entered the scene—a few minutes later than the other two Lights because he had been assaulted by a group of fanatic fans when he stepped out of the limousine. She was so accustomed to (and so tired of!) the usual sharp intake of breath and the stolen glances, the rosy glow and the fluttering eyelashes. As always, there were also a few (very few!) women who instantly hated him as well—who treated him as if he represented the greatest danger to humankind without admitting that he only posed a danger to their sleep and their peace of mind. Hotaru, who had never experienced adolescence and would never get to experience it in her life, was glad that she could appreciate his vibrant, glaring attractiveness—one of the beautiful things which made life bearable—without getting distracted by what the petite blue-haired naiad next to her (Ami-chan should really wear sapphire earrings and necklaces more often because they brought out her blue eyes so beautifully!) would label "a very unusual, troublesome sex appeal".
It wasn't sex, Hotaru thought, or at least not what people usually meant by "sex" when they thought of it. But perhaps Michiru-mama would tell her that it was nonsense to ponder the meaning of words. Music and art and love made sense whereas words were often redundant, for body and mind were inextricably connected; and words, which tended to suggest a dichotomy where a dichotomy didn't exist, only created unnecessary trouble.
Letting her gaze travel past the gilt paper masks to the no longer masked royal couple, Hotaru noticed that the bride—a silver-haired, serene queen in a breathtaking cloud of white lace and pink roses and silver-threaded satin—couldn't take her eyes off the cape-less ninja, who was now flirting with Rei-san, her best friend, who was dressed up as Artemis or Diana, the virgin goddess of hunting. The wedding reception would be just as wonderful as the ending sunset—Hotaru, who was trying to be more poetic these days, thought—if the bride weren't infatuated with another man.
x.
Kudo Shinichi, the Sherlock Holmes of the East, was still missing, the online article said. Some fans speculated that he had disappeared to fight an evil organization in secret and was going to return soon. Others feared that he might have been murdered and his corpse had been disposed of, which was why his mansion was haunted. There was also an interesting site which claimed that he had been abducted by aliens: black-clad invaders that called themselves Death Busters and turned humans into giant black monsters...
"What are we going to do about Sayama-san?" Michiru-mama asked Haruka-papa in a hushed voice, and Hotaru, who could sense her mother's anxiety, silently put her phone away to watch the couple.
They were standing at the fountain in the middle of the rose garden, under one of the large weeping willows which had survived the fire at Infinity and which Michiru-mama had bought and moved to her estate for purely sentimental reasons. Michiru-mama was leaning her head against Haruka-papa's shoulder, and Haruka-papa was stroking Michiru-mama's hair, which looked like ocean waves during a storm as they were flying in the rising wind. Whenever they were in a romantic mood, they would blend out the existence of their daughter completely, and Hotaru liked being invisible and near them in these moments—for they were both lovely but larger than life and their undivided attention and care often exhausted her.
"Nothing!" Haruka-papa sighed in frustration. "What do you expect me to do, Michiru? Abducting and threatening the justice minister and forcing him to pardon her? We can't do anything if she doesn't even try a final appeal. You know that bribing him is impossible!"
The justice minister was, unfortunately, the most upright politician in Japan, who had managed to pass on his sense of justice to his only daughter before he abandoned her after her mother's death. He loved his daughter but knew that he wouldn't ever have time for her, he had told Rei-san's grandfather. And Hotaru wondered whether she was immensely lucky to have an insane scientist as her father, who loved her so much and was so attached to her that he had to be forced to give her away because he would rather have raised her in an asylum.
In contrast to Rei-san and her father, Hotaru's father and Hotaru still met each other once a month and spent hours together doing Feldenkrais, anatomical studies, or even analyzing APTX4869. Even though he was a lunatic, Hotaru loved his hysterical laughter, his wacky sense of humour, his senseless ramblings. There were many types of lunatics that depressed Hotaru, but her father belonged to the sort of mad man who brightened her day because he didn't only think out of the box but couldn't even see the confinement of the box.
It didn't surprise Hotaru that Seiya-kun and her father got along well.
"I wonder whether we should ask Rei-chan for help," Michiru-mama murmured.
Haruka-papa abruptly let go of Michiru-mama's hair and turned away, towards the water, in which the moonlight and the fast moving purple and indigo clouds were reflected.
"I'm not going to do that to her!" she grimly said. "We don't even know whether they're still on speaking terms; and I don't believe she could make him reconsider his decision even if she tried to."
Times and manners were getting rougher, and whenever people were insecure and unhappy and dissatisfied, vigilantism would rise—Seiya-kun once told Hotaru-chan when she asked him why he didn't join them. But since they had seen that fighting usually destroyed more than it saved, Three Lights would keep out of trouble as long as they weren't forced to protect themselves and rather sing and dance their way through life instead.
"Can we really sit back and do nothing?" Michiru-mama tentatively placed her hand on Haruka- papa's neck. She couldn't even imagine what Maeda-san was going through. It would be less of a torture if they just executed his fiancée right now instead of letting him wait.
In the distance, Hotaru could see Seiya-kun step out onto the balcony, followed by a blonde siren in a silver-grey fishtail dress, who was holding a pen and was probably asking him for his phone number or for an autograph. Since Hotaru couldn't see his face, she tried to conjure up the irritated expression she had only glimpsed once when he tried to slip out of the room unobserved but was caught by another admirer, who used his temporary exhaustion to grab his arm.
When he moved his head and Hotaru saw the wide smile on his lips, she had to admit that she was wrong. He had resolved to put on his happy, cheery face for the grand evening, and he was going to keep this up even if it killed him.
"Masquerade, seething shadows, breathing lies," Hotaru sang in her head. "Masquerade, you can fool any friend who ever knew you..."
"If I were Sayama..." Haruka-papa slowly said, whereupon Michiru-mama embraced her from behind and whispered that she didn't want to imagine it.
If Haruka-papa were faced with the same situation, she wouldn't be sentenced to death—Hotaru thought—because Haruka-papa was smart enough (and would love Michiru-mama enough) to feign remorse. Sayama Akiko deserved her execution since she fully embraced it when she declared that the murder she committed was justified and that she would repeat it at any time. Perhaps the justice minister, who seldom passed death sentences, would have liked to pardon her if she had left him a choice. Hotaru pitied Sayama-san—but she didn't pity Sayama-san because the poor woman was going to be executed someday but because her dignity and her integrity had meant more to Sayama-san than her fiancé did although she must have known that he would be burning in hell.
They had dropped in on Maeda-san on the way from their seaside house to Michiru-mama's estate, as Haruka-papa would have liked to bring him to the wedding to introduce him to Mamoru-san, whose scholarly mind was interested in everything and, as a matter of course, was interested in martial arts as well. But no sooner had they entered Maeda-san's apartment than Haruka-papa told Michiru-mama and Hotaru to leave and wait with Setsuna-mama in the car so that she could be alone with Maeda-san for a few minutes. The apartment was cleaner than Hotaru had expected although it was the emptiest apartment Hotaru had ever seen. The former karate champion, who was now only skin and bones, had wrecked and then thrown away almost all of his possessions and the furniture his fiancée had bought—the chairs, the table, even the double bed—and only kept a few cupboards, Haruka-papa told them afterwards. He had smashed and tossed all the decorations as well: all the vases she had collected, all the pictures she had taken. The phone, his mattress, the blinds, and the curtains were the only "decorations" he had kept. Haruka-papa had opened the curtains to let the light in, but he had drawn them again when Haruka-papa left.
"I wonder why the idiot doesn't simply take some of the thousands of girls who are in love with him for a few one-night stands," Haruka-papa, who had just discovered Seiya-kun on the balcony as well, rolled her eyes. "It would make them happy and ease his pain until he gets over her."
"He is afraid of them because they're all parasites that feed on him," Hotaru thought aloud. "It I were him, I wouldn't let any of them near me either."
Haruka-papa started, stared down at Hotaru in astonishment, then raised a brow and chuckled. Haruka-papa looked cute when she chuckled... young and carefree and almost like Seiya-kun.
"You sound like an old hag, princess!" Haruka-papa shook her head and turned her attention to Seiya-kun, who was gazing back at her (the two of them had been suffering from this weird platonic love-hate-tension for years) while Michiru-mama resolved to give Hotaru less weighty adult's literature and more shoujo manga to read.
Hotaru gazed down at her reflection in the water of the fountain and took time to appreciate the ethereal beauty the moonlight and the water had bestowed on her. A frail, sylph-like porcelain doll in a mauve Gothic Lolita dress, with deep black hair framing a pretty heart-shaped face... In the glaring light of day, Hotaru—pale and abnormally thin—looked like the very image of death.
In fact, she had already died back then in the fire of Infinity (this sounded so much better than it was —which only proved that words often distorted the truth). It had taken her father ten pills of the modified APTX4869 to restore her bodily functions and a few operations to restore her flawless face, but the ugly scars on her body, the nightmares, her fear of fire, and her everlasting childhood remained.
On the balcony, in the moonlit twilight, Seiya-kun looked like the paragon of life despite his black clothes, and Hotaru knew that he looked exactly just as gorgeous in daylight and onstage as he looked at twilight and dawn. The scientist in Hotaru admired the ideal alignment and proportions of his muscles and bones, which she had only seen in Haruka-papa despite having met many tactile prodigies at Infinity, while the artist in her was momentarily distracted by his profile, which she would never dare to draw for fear that Michiru-mama could find her sketches.
All princesses were supposed to be protected and loved in a spiritual way, Taiki-san once told her when she asked Three Lights about their feelings for Kakyuu. But Seiya-kun said that he loved Kakyuu and "Odango" because they were both resilient and tough, and because they weren't afraid to be themselves even when it meant to be wrong.
"I won't be a princess forever!" Hotaru flashed Haruka-papa a carefree smile, the kind of smile which her parents and her parents' friends loved and which Hotaru had perfected by watching Seiya-kun, who was a master of disguise and only dropped his happy mask near Haruka-papa and Hotaru, who was invisible to him just as to anyone else whenever she didn't wish to be seen. "I'd rather be like Kudo Shinichi when I grow up." Since Hotaru loved mystery novels in general and Sherlock Holmes in particular and knew how it was to be trapped in a child's body, she could identify with Edogawa Conan.
Michiru-mama's frown, which had barely grazed her brows, deepened. Kudo Shinichi or Edogawa Conan, who they had once hoped to become a valuable ally against the seven crows and that person, had been dead to them ever since the day the Sleeping Kogoro convicted Sayama-san and rejected their methods and their ideals. Vigilantes and law-abiding detectives could never join forces even when they had the same enemy, for they fought on different sides and employed different methods and the detectives wouldn't ever hesitate to jail the vigilantes even if it meant to give them the death penalty—Haruka-papa had taught Hotaru, who had become a fan of the Sherlock of the East when she learned that he had been shrunk as well.
Kudo can't be called the modern Sherlock Holmes, Haruka-papa had claimed, because Sherlock Holmes only served justice and spared vigilantes whenever the murders were justified whereas Kudo Shinichi only serves the present judicial system.
One day, when Pandora's Box is opened, we will have to fight them all—Setsuna-mama had gravely predicted—which is why you can admire Three Lights but shouldn't like them too much. The same goes for Kudo Shinichi and his friends, who will put us into the same category as the members of the Organization and drag us to court—which we can't allow to happen because we would all be eliminated in prison. If the worst comes to the worst, we may even have to take Kudo out before he can hurt us.
Shiho-san, too? Hotaru-chan, who liked Miyano Shiho because Sherry was one of the few "normal" people among the stuck-up prodigies at Infinity, asked.
She is an exception because we need her on our side—but we must be very careful in dealing with her because she is in love with Kudo.
And what about Three Lights? Hotaru—who didn't even dare to blink lest she missed a fleeting display of emotion on her mother's enigmatic face—had asked.
They will be our enemies someday, hime-chan, Setsuna-mama had gently replied. That's the truth even though Usagi and her friends don't want to face it. When the Organization goes down, Three Lights will do anything to protect their parents even if it means to fight us and the secret services and the police. You can't choose your parents—and vagabonds and free spirits like Three Lights are only loyal to their own feelings and the people they love... When the secret services bring down the Organization, the situation will become very difficult for all of us.
Haruka-papa, taken aback by Hotaru's declaration of becoming a female version of Kudo Shinichi, reached out a cool hand to stroke Hotaru's cheek. Her windswept blonde hair threw soft shadows on her brows whenever the wind blew it into her face, and Hotaru was startled by the vast changes her looks underwent depending on the direction of the wind.
"You shouldn't ever try to be a copy of another person," she solemnly said. "You'll never achieve anything with that attitude! You should always aim much higher than that and stay true to your own personality!"
But what does staying true to yourself mean, Hotaru wondered. So many people who tried to be originals were only boring while Seiya-kun, who parodied all clichés and copied everyone and everything, was the most interesting man Hotaru had ever seen.
Inside, the music suddenly played "Charade"—which must be Usagi-san's well-meant, misguided attempt to revive the friendship between her and Haruka-papa, which had suffered a severe blow after the scandal. Poor silly Usagi-san wasn't very smart despite her big heart, Hotaru realized, wondering why she had never noticed Usagi-san's lack of intelligence before. Michiru-mama was holding Haruka-papa in a tight embrace now while Haruka-papa silently cried. This couldn't be only naiveté... or wasn't it Usagi-san but Mamoru-san, who did this intentionally to take revenge on Haruka-papa for hurting his wife?
x.
You draw, you paint, you play the violin, you excel at everything! It's no wonder that you're so great, considering the rich, successful, prodigiously intelligent, caring adoptive parents you have. You're only being homeschooled because your nervous condition doesn't allow you to socialize with other children, whom you fear because you're overly sensitive. You're a real prodigy, Hotaru-chan, and you're so extremely pretty. Even your giant scars have such a pretty, pretty shape. You shouldn't be unhappy just because your scars cover your whole body and because, whenever you grow, they hurt. The pain is only in your mind and you should ignore it because you won't ever be able to do anything against it...
That's what Hotaru heard from strangers and what she expected to hear from friends as well. Some of them even meant exactly what they said, and Hotaru was grateful to know those few people, who adored and pitied her. She almost expected to hear the same speeches from Three Lights when they were sitting on the beach in summer and she, tired of hiding her scars, stubbornly displayed them for everyone to see.
Taiki-san and Yaten-san didn't comment on her scars but also didn't try to ignore them, throwing them curious glances before they lost interest. They just accepted Hotaru's body as it was, and Hotaru wondered whether growing up in the Organization could really be as bad as everybody tried to make it sound because she couldn't believe that an evil, twisted Organization could raise people like them. Seiya-kun, the cheeky lead singer who could be quite lovely if he wanted to but could seldom hold back a rude remark, would surely make fun of her or pity her as Usagi-san did, Hotaru thought. However, his reaction blew her away—for he was cool enough to tell her that her scars were easily the ugliest things he had ever seen.
"Ugly" isn't even the right adjective. They're so scary that they're going to give me nightmares from now on!
For a few seconds, he stared at them in horror and silent admiration. And Hotaru realized that to him, her scars were proof of the immense hardship she had gone through and her courage when—despite the pain which never ended—she still continued to smile and work.
If we weren't on a beach, I'd say it's vain and ostentatious to show off your war injuries! He had smirked and given her "war injuries" another admiring glance before he went off to ignore her like he always did. And when Hotaru accidentally caught the bouquet, which Usagi-san tried to throw at Haruka-papa when the wedding reception ended, Hotaru suddenly knew that his uncanny ability to blend rudeness with kindness was the main reason why she loved him.
"I love you. I've been in love with you for over three years." Although Hotaru's hormones have never fluctuated, her mind was mature enough to know that this wasn't only a fleeting puppy love. She also knew well that Seiya-kun wasn't in love with her yet—even in her most deluded moments, she didn't believe that he had ever considered her a possible love interest—but perhaps he was going to reciprocate when he learned how sincere and strong her feelings for him were. After all, a marriage built on affection and emotional intimacy was, undeniably, stronger than a marriage built on passion and romance. "Since Usagi-san is now married but I'm still free... will you marry me? I'm sure that we can make this work."
They were standing at the fountain under the starry night, and she was holding on to the bouquet of intertwined red and white roses—the symbol of the perfect unity between passion and purity in a love marriage—as if it was a lucky charm which would help her grow until she was eighteen and he could have a proper relationship with her.
For a while, he stared down at her in astonishment, and she could tell that he was trying to see past her childlike facade to calculate her real age, which he couldn't guess, as he and she—star-crossed lovers separated by fate, or polar opposites kept apart by space and time?—never met during his few visits at Infinity.
"This is just a silly phase—don't take it seriously!" intervened Haruka-papa, who was striding towards them. "Come on, princess, it's late! We're going home now because I have to put you to bed!" Her eyes, which were shooting daggers and rapiers and swords at Seiya-kun, spelled out what she didn't need to say because both of them could hear her roaring in their heads: "I'm going to give you an untimely, grisly death if you dare to hurt my little kitten!"
"I'm not a princess!" Hotaru protested. "I told you I'm going to be the female Kudo Shinichi!"
"Oh God… Not this again!" Haruka-papa groaned. "This must be the teenage phase I've always dreaded!" Hotaru, who didn't expect this exclamation, was pleasantly surprised, as Haruka-papa usually treated her like a real child.
Seiya-kun laughed at Haruka-papa's outburst, and Hotaru could feel vividly that adolescence, even when it had never shown on her body, definitely affected her mind when he reached down and scooped her up for a warm, comforting hug.
"I love you, too!" He beamed at her as he tenderly placed her on the rim of the fountain, leaving his hands on her waist for a moment to help her find her balance. He smelled like the last warm autumn night before the scent of sweet osmanthus faded from the air, Hotaru hazily thought, wondering whether she should kiss him first. She had almost leaned in and tilted her head when he turned to throw a wondering glance at Haruka-papa, who only shrugged at him.
"But since love will always change and I won't ever let myself be tied down by a rash promise," Seiya-kun lightly added, "you'll have to ask me again in ten to fifteen years."
Ah, the eternal wanderer, the eternal vagabond! He would forever be breaking hearts and never let a woman tie him down for long, just as Haruka-papa had told her. Although she knew that such an attitude wasn't conducive to enduring love, Hotaru was motivated enough to take on the challenge. She would be like Michiru-mama, who knew how to chain Haruka-papa to her with unconditional love and small everyday rituals, a concoction of healthy jealousy and implicit trust, and the right balance between fulfilment and withdrawal.
"I'm going to ask you again in ten years," she agreed, sealing the promise with a shy, fleeting kiss on his cheek—almost missing the spot and kissing his eye in her excitement. He didn't draw away as she had feared but smiled and affectionally rubbed her back in response. It was slightly disappointing—she had hoped to receive a kiss or at least a peck—but perhaps this was his way of showing that he wanted to behave like a gentleman towards her, and it was all she could ask for at the moment.
"Great!" Haruka-papa sighed in relief. "And now please tell her that she should embrace individuality instead of imitating a shrunk detective!" Haruka-papa, who took Hotaru's spiritual education almost as seriously as Michiru-mama and Setsuna-mama her artistic and formal education, never failed to take advantage of a favourable situation.
"Why do you want to become Kudo Shinichi if you can become Sherlock Holmes instead?" Seiya-kun, who liked to disobey Haruka-papa, suggested. "If you choose a real person as your role model, they will disappoint you someday because humans always make mistakes. It's best to avoid that sort of heartbreak."
x.
Two years later, the heartbreak happened: Kudo Shinichi forgot Miyano Shiho on the ship... and all the evils of humanity flew out of Pandora's Box, sweeping away Hotaru's great expectations and high hopes...
"Young Moriarty!" she longingly called out to Seiya-kun, who had just arrived at their beach and was climbing out of the motorboat. He grabbed his bag, smiled at her through the battered pair of black sunglasses he already wore when he was a teen idol, and took them off in a smooth movement when she pulled him down to hug him. He had grown another inch and was absolutely irresistible even in his worn black leather jacket and his faded blue jeans, and when he pulled away and their eyes met, her eighteen-year-old mind regretted that, even according to Japan's liberal law of consent, her body was at least six years too young to be caressed by him.
"How's life?" he inquired. "I heard you've become a passionate painter in the meantime, even moved on to oil paints after finishing off all the pastels on Michiru-sama's shelves. Hence it surprised me that I haven't seen any oil painting of yours in your room."
"I've left them in Michiru-mama's atelier in Venice," she said, dismissively. "They're still wet and too ugly to be displayed anywhere. But I'm doing my best to improve." She looked him up and down, breathless in curiosity. "But what about you? How did you manage to stay alive?" He didn't even have a scratch, and she wondered whether he had simply charmed the wayward third-generation Chicago codename members into following him.
"Because all the codename members who wanted to have my head have conveniently killed each other off and the rest like me too much to shoot me." He shrugged. "Chicago was dirty and cold but I liked the snow."
It was obvious that he didn't want to tell her what happened, so she contented herself with admiring his gestures and movements as he took off his jacket in the entry and walked to the sink to wash his hands. "Where are your parents? Don't tell me they've all been poisoned by the talented chemist in the meantime." He was as irreverent and sarcastic as ever, treating her as a normal girl and not an invalid or a princess. And Hotaru smiled at the thought that he was going to stay here for three days before they all flew to Venice together.
"Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa have gone shopping because you were supposed to arrive tonight and not this afternoon," read: I'm sure they're hiding out to have a romantic time with each other in the Ferrari so that they can behave in front of their guests, "and Setsuna-mama is working on some new formula." Deciding that it would be lame to ask him why he had taken an earlier plane to rush here while he preferred arriving fashionably late to appearing too early, Hotaru broke the news about the new sleeping arrangements: "You'll have to sleep on the sofa in the living room or on a futon in the music room this time because Shiho-san has moved into Setsuna-mama's room after you left and Setsuna-mama is now staying in the guest room. We don't have any free bedroom left." Her bedroom was too small for two people—she mentally added—and Haruka-papa would roast him alive before he could finish asking her for permission.
Seiya-kun paused and gazed into the distance with an unreadable expression before he continued to wash his face and his neck. Hotaru handed him a towel when he was done, and he seemed slightly surprised by her gesture although he accepted the towel with a cheerful "Thanks".
"Since I prefer sleeping in a bed to sleeping on the couch, I'll ask your pretty guest to share a room with me." He winked at her as he dried his face and his neck, and Hotaru chuckled, wondering whether he was trying to make her jealous like Haruka-papa often did to Michiru-mama. If her guess was right, this would be a very welcome change to their dynamic! Until now, he had never treated her as his future fiancée because to him, she had always been and would always be a kid.
In a way, it was her own fault, she admitted, for she played the part of the endearing elementary school child too well. They were both born actors who treated life as if it were a vast stage, trapped in a never-ending, lonely charade which neither of them was even trying to escape...
"You can move in right away if you help me change the sheets," Shiho-san, who had just appeared at the staircase to the second floor, said in a low voice before she flashed him a mysterious, almost seductive smile, which Hotaru, until now, had never seen on her face. She was only wearing a simple indigo cashmere dress, one of the dresses Michiru-mama had bought her after she took the antidote, but the colour and the cut suited her extremely well. "You must be tired after the long flight. What about a nap before dinner?" She turned away before he could reply and obviously expected him to accept the outrageous invitation, judging by the confident, radiant smile in her eyes.
There it was: the glow. Even the fluttering eyelashes, the longing glances, the sharp intake of breath, the racing pulse... It wouldn't give Hotaru any reason for anxiety if it weren't only the annoying admirer but also Seiya-kun who displayed all these signs, which Hotaru had only seen on him when he met up with "Odango".
"Any important news I need to know before my nap?" Seiya-kun asked Hotaru with a faraway expression after tearing his eyes away from Shiho-san, who had just disappeared into Setsuna-mama's bedroom; and Hotaru—who had never expected her ever-so-enthusiastic, ever-so-energetic Seiya-kun to take a nap, much less sleep in a room which belonged to a female stranger he only knew for a few days (Seiya-kun was terrified of women after being drugged by a particularly evil admirer, who would have misused the situation to do unmentionable things to him if Yaten-san had not intervened)—wondered what the deuce (to quote Sherlock Holmes) she had just witnessed.
"Well, I've watched and re-watched your first live action, the one in which you played Godfrey Norton and Moriarty... Setsuna-mama said you shouldn't play the villain because you make the bad guy look cool! She also said you're really badass in real life as well but that's beside the point... Oh, and I'm positive I'm over Kudo Shinichi now after he left Shiho-san on the ship. That... disappointed me."
"So?" he looked at her expectantly as he took his bag, and Hotaru breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed that he was still paying her close attention when he talked to her despite his… flirt?... with their guest. She was going to surpass Kudo Shinichi!—she declared. Instead of becoming a female version of Kudo-san, she would become a modern Sherlock Holmes—someone who wouldn't ever mind breaking the law!
"Well then," he gave the top of her head a light pat before he made for the stairs. "I hope you're going to like my presents, Sherlock of the twenty-first century!"
"I know you won't ever disappoint me," Hotaru murmured and silently followed him with a smile although a premonition of disaster had begun to blur her vision and she had to blink away the tears burning in her eyes, "Moriarty..."
x.
A/N: I hope I'm not spamming the people who have this fic on the alert list when I try to edit the remaining old chapters while I'm free. Since I've merged chapters, there are 9 chapters left to edit before I can continue the fic. :D
