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)

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.

"You can't prove…"

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

x.

"You can't prove that Seiya has poisoned Tenoh-san—you believe that he has done it just because he could have done it! I remember you used to say one shouldn't draw hasty conclusions from flimsy evidence, but that's exactly what you're doing now."

Contrary to her nonchalant words, her troubled gaze and raspy voice betray her anxiety. Shinichi can tell that she has grasped the wider implications despite his sketchy outline of the facts. Ai has always been able to keep up with his deductions whenever she was motivated enough to ponder the problem.

"'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,'" he counters, falling into his habit of quoting Sherlock Holmes, whereupon she gleefully lists the holes and fallacies in Holmes' rule of thumb, which only applies when you have all the information necessary for a definite conclusion.

"All right!" he says, triumphantly. "Let's search for more clues, then—until we have all the information we need. Maybe we can even prove that Seiya is innocent. Murder isn't a trifling offence! The public can easily forgive Seiya for all his rumoured peccadillos—but they would never forgive him for poisoning Tenoh!" Since Seiya's blithe disregard for his reputation has obviously rubbed off on Ai, Shinichi has to take it up a notch: "I know Seiya doesn't care a hoot about other people's opinions, but you've always cared about your reputation. Being with a murderer isn't the same as being with a notorious womanizer! If you believe in him, you should help me prove that he is innocent. Otherwise you'll never know for sure whether you haven't grown attached to a murderer."

A look of horror and dread crosses her face before her fear is replaced by her usual stubborn defiance, and Shinichi can tell with conviction that she would stick by Seiya even if Shinichi could provide her with irrefutable evidence that Seiya was responsible for Tenoh's passing.

"What do you want to know?" she asks at last, tilting her head to flash him her half-friendly, half-ironic smile before she resumes walking. Now she is strolling towards La Fenice with a decidedly Seiyaesque nonchalance. As much as her attitude aggravates him, Shinichi must admit that Ai and her singer may be more similar to each other than Shinichi thought. Even this rebellious streak could just be another side of hers which Shinichi has never taken notice of although it has always been there.

Ai was emotional and impulsive enough to slip into a serious relationship with an assassin once. Compared to that, being with a considerate murderer who has poisoned a fellow musician in a painless way and made sure that no one else would be suspected must seem to her like a good deal.

"Were Tenoh and you classmates? Why did you try to hide it from commissario Carrara?" Since the possibility exists that she will run back to her singer as soon as the talk is over, Shinichi has to proceed from the banal to the important. This way he can use the most important questions to distract her until she misses the musical.

"Who has told you that we were classmates?"

"My mother." Since he has no reason to hide it from her, Shinichi shows her the Infinity group photo, which he has saved to his phone. "You looked different back then!" he can't help saying as his gaze falls on the pretty strawberry-blonde bunhead, who had all of Ai's features and colours but none of her distinctive sharpness.

"I was different back then!" She beholds her former face with the detachment of an old woman pondering a regrettable past. "Tenoh-san and I weren't classmates. At Infinity, we were allowed to choose all our classes, but Tenoh-san and I didn't have even one class together." She squints at him against the reddish light of the setting sun. "I suppose that tells you a lot about our compatibility!"

Considering how different they were and how little she mourned Tenoh's death, they had willingly spent quite a bit of their free time together, Shinichi remarks—an observation which Ai chooses to acknowledge without a repartee.

"You must think it's a group photo of our class," she says instead. "But it's the group photo of the whole academy. Most students were kicked out of Infinity or voluntarily left within the first two months. The classes were extremely demanding even by the Organization's standards. Also, Professor Tomoe's witch of a secretary wasn't the most agreeable person."

"What's the name of Professor Tomoe's secretary?"

"I don't know, I've forgotten it since we only called her 'Kaolinite'."

Kaolinite… Shinichi can remember hearing the name once—a few years ago in a flower shop in Azabu Juuban where he bought a flower bouquet for Ran. It was a nickname the saleswoman of the shop used for a stuck-up customer she couldn't stand. If the saleswoman Shinichi met then is still working at the place, it shouldn't be difficult for Shinichi to find 'Kaolinite'.

"There were only about sixty students at Infinity while you were there?"

"Even less than sixty at the end of the semester. I think all the Infinity students were on the photo except for Meioh-san, who was Professor Tomoe's assistant. She volunteered to take our group photos because she loved photography but didn't like being photographed. Kaolinite isn't on the photo either because she had another bad hair day."

"I've heard that Meioh Setsuna was in charge of Tenoh and Kaioh's adopted daughter —Professor Tomoe's daughter—whenever Tenoh and Kaioh weren't in Japan. Meioh must be a very close friend of both of them. Were Tenoh and she already friends at Infinity? And is it true that Meioh is Chiba's friend as well? Kino claimed that Meioh always seemed to like him most."

"Meioh-san and Chiba-san?" Ai laughs (a delightful sound, which Shinichi doesn't fail to notice in spite of his irritation). "You know, Kudo, one day you'll be assassinated for spreading baseless rumours! Meioh-san told me they met during a summer course in Harvard—that was before Chiba-san went to Oxford, even before Meioh-san went to Infinity. She was impressed by him but definitely not impressed enough to stay in contact with him. The next time they met, he already had a fiancée and she was so immersed in being the perfect mother for Hotaru-chan that she could barely feign interest in anyone else. Meioh-san is the most intimidating woman I've ever met: beautiful, impeccably polite, very intelligent and withdrawn! She loves Hotaru-chan very much, though. One could get the impression she loves Hotaru-chan even more than Tenoh-san did. People who don't know them mistake Hotaru-chan for Meioh-san's child. Even Kaioh-san once remarked that Meioh-san was the best parent for their 'hime-chan'."

"'Hime-chan'… Well, maybe the child is a princess, considering the wealth and fame and social status of her adoptive parents. Does she often come to Venice with Meioh?"

"Very seldom. She hasn't returned to Venice since I came here." Ai's reply has a ring of anxiety, which is odd since she seemed perfectly at ease talking about the supposedly intimidating "dark ruler" Meioh Setsuna, whose speaking name couldn't be gloomier.

"How is Professor Tomoe's daughter like? Just as difficult as her insane father?"

"On the contrary—Hotaru-chan is very sensible! Solitary, sensitive, frail, very talented. She gets sick easily and suffers from asthma attacks and all sorts of allergies, but it's amazing how she handles all her problems without complaining…"

"'…But?'" Shinichi adds. Ai looked slightly frustrated when she talked about the little girl—almost as if she would have liked to add a "but" to her sentence but couldn't for some reason.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" His voice sounds sharp to his own ears, and his gaze must have turned into the penetrating stare which he always uses on the witnesses who lie to him. Unsurprisingly, Ai is not in the least intimidated but seems merely annoyed by his persistence.

"Hotaru-chan doesn't have any friends," she says at last, but Shinichi doubts that this was the issue she would have liked to talk about, as it sounds like a distraction she has made up for him on the fly. "She spends most of her free time alone in the cellar making lampshades and toy planets for her imaginary universe. Meioh-san does her best to keep Hotaru-chan company whenever she can."

"Hotaru sounds just like you," Shinichi points out before he corrects himself, "or just like you were before you had friends and left them to go to Venice to become the… 'secretary' of an ex-teen idol!"

"'Girlfriend' is the correct term on the tip of your tongue!" Ai's glare lasts only a fleeting moment before she is struck by a thought which takes the edge off her anger. "What about you?" she suddenly asks. "Have there been any other women in your life after your break-up with Mori-san?"

"None apart from my mother, female police officers who provide me with the information I need to solve my cases, witnesses, victims who have survived, even a few repentant culprits who keep sending me fan letters… well, and Sonoko, if you count her sermons and insults on the phone!"

"That's plenty of women. You shouldn't have added your mother to your list of conquests, though!" she chides him with a grin. "It's natural for a mother to adore her son."

"There have been no conquests whatsoever! I've only been searching for you!" Shinichi snaps, realizing too late that Ai could mistake his concern for romantic longing. Luckily, she appears too preoccupied with another thought and chooses to ignore (or has completely missed?) the implication.

"Did you break up with Mori-san because she prevented you from returning to the ship?" she asks, disturbed by the possibility that he has blamed Hattori's death on Ran. For a moment, Shinichi considers leaving Ai in the belief that this was the reason why Ran and he have split up—an idea which could provide Ai with the incentive to tell him the truth in case she has lied to him when she claimed to know nothing about what happened to Hattori. But since the probability that Ai will call him an idiot for leaving Ran is higher than the probability that this plan will work out, Shinichi ends up giving her a fairly truthful account of how Ran and he ended their relationship—with one honest but thoughtless remark Shinichi blurted out when he was desperate and Ran's realization that Shinichi would be relieved if he didn't have to return to her.

"What a sad affair," Ai murmurs in a flat voice, fixing her faraway gaze at the entrance of Al Theatro, the small café adjacent to La Fenice, where two glamorously dressed Japanese women in their late thirties or early forties are presently surrounded by the same reporters who had tried to interview Seiya. Their faces are barely recognizable behind their colourful glasses and fluffy scarves and hats although Shinichi can make out a long dark braid on the pale lavender scarf of the taller one.

Meanwhile, Shinichi and Ai have arrived at Campo La Fantin, which is now teeming with journalists and disappointed fans who couldn't snatch a ticket ("Where are the blasted ticket touts when you need them?" "Even the last scalpers have run out of tickets by now!" "Itabashi-sensei, please tell us about your new project with Three Lights—is it true that Seiya Kou and Yaten Kou will appear in the same photo series for the first time?"); and Shinichi can feel acutely that Ai is preparing to leave him for her Phantom despite the unsolved case Shinichi has presented to her like an enormous piece of marzipan covered with bittersweet chocolate on a luxurious silver plate…

Three years of thrill and suspense and what Shinichi once believed to be the most perfect partnership—wiped out by a beautiful voice and three, almost four years of dull domestic duties. Women are indeed a different species!

"No, neither of us are sorry that it didn't work out as we hoped!" Shinichi gloomily resolves to put Ai straight about his feelings concerning the break-up and Ran. "If Ran and I had married, I would have become a second-rate detective with a family I wasn't ready for and Ran would have become an unhappy, neglected stay-at-home mum with one or two mystery-obsessed toddlers who would have cost her all the years of regular karate workouts. I'm glad that it ended early enough for Ran not to waste the opportunity to lead her own dojo."

"I meant to say it's a pity that you two didn't split up a few months earlier, before I decided to go to Venice. Back then, I'd have been overjoyed at the news!"

This time, her mischievous, nostalgic smile confuses him more than her words. Shinichi has always hated Ai's ability to throw him off balance by being so scandalously blunt just when he least expects it—but he is even more disturbed by her inability to commit to one version, one story, one damn love declaration whether it's the truth or a lie.

"Why?" Despite hating himself for asking her (frankly, there is nothing about her statement which even a dense guy like him can misunderstand; and if it weren't for her mysterious smile and all the practical jokes she has played on him by now, he would have believed her already), Shinichi can't help but feel flustered when it hits him that right now she might be telling the truth. So Ai was in love with him, after all—and from the sound of it, she bitterly regrets that she ran to Venice with another man on a whim just when he had ended things with his girlfriend, especially now that she knows that he has combed the whole of Japan in his search for her.

"I must have grown accustomed to you," she admits in the vulnerable, matter-of-fact tone in which grandmothers tell their favourite grandchildren about the long-deceased great love of their life. "So much that there was nothing I wanted more than being in Mori-san's shoes for once. It wasn't easy for me to hide it, but I didn't want to steal someone else's boyfriend either." As she reminisces about her pre-Venice past, she lets her serene gaze roam about the small campo in front of the opera house as though she were a fairy queen watching over the hustle and bustle of her people. "I was also sure I would be rejected if I was impertinent enough to make a move. Going to Venice with Tenoh-san sounded like the perfect solution." Emotion suffuses her voice when her gaze falls on the two women in front of Al Theatro. "Then I met Seiya and completely lost my head…"

"You were really in love with me?" Shinichi asks again, repeating the statement more to himself than to her. Maybe he wasn't struggling with her belated love declaration but rather with the question how he could have doubted it, or rather how he could have overlooked the obvious clues and even dismissed his mother's observations when the truth was so glaring.

Since Ai doesn't reply immediately, Shinichi grabs her by her shoulder and stops her to study her face in an attempt to recall her expression and her tone when she told him that she was still in love with him despite having an attentive boyfriend. But while he still can't tell whether it was a joke or not (just as he can't tell whether she would push him away now if he gave in to the unexplainable urge to kiss her perfect lipstick-free mouth), he can see how much his question has exasperated her.

"No, you see…" she gently says and raises her head to look directly into his eyes, her gaze steady and her lips curved in the familiar mocking half-smile, which wrecks the new order of Shinichi's world and leaves him in total disarray again. "I'm just kidding!"

With that, the world stops spinning. "'Reunion in Venice,'" the reporters in front of Al Theatro parrot back to each other as Shinichi decides that throttling Ai in front of so many witnesses would ruin his chance of solving the case for good. The tall, fashionably dressed woman with dark hair in a long French braid, who must be "Itabashi-sensei" (or is Itabashi-sensei the other lady?), throws her hands into the air in despair whereas her companion (an elegant woman, who looks faintly familiar to Shinichi even though he can't see either her hair or her face, both of which are covered by her eggshell-coloured silk scarf and her red-tinted glasses) only gestures for the journalists to leave them alone before she disappears behind the waiter, who has just come to her rescue.

"It's only a working title," the woman with the French braid, who is still standing with one foot outside Al Theatro, cries in English, "and this might be just one of the projects that will forever stay in development hell like so many others before it! In any case, Naked will survive with or without it! Please don't misquote me since neither Seiya nor Yaten have agreed to anything."

x.


"Unless there are…"

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

x.

"Unless there are pressing matters which can't wait until tomorrow, I have to go now."

She has already turned away from him, taking, one, two, then three increasingly faster steps towards La Fenice as she repeats to him the reasons why she needs to run back to her singer at once, and Shinichi wonders whether Ai has listened to him at all when he explained the case to her. Her (fake?) boyfriend or even husband, as she has called Seiya, must have poisoned an old friend of hers in cold blood (at some point, Tenoh must have been a friend of Ai's despite their recent falling-out)—and all Ai can think of is that she needs to attend the opening night of the musical.

"The musical means to him the same as the case means to you," she claims, apparently unaware of how ridiculous the comparison was. "Why can't you see how much it would hurt him if I didn't come?"

That's it—her question was the last straw which broke the camel's back! In a fit of rage, Shinichi scraps his plan of distracting Ai until she misses the musical. Why can't she see how much it hurts him that she turns him down for a musical and a singer she has been seeing almost every day in the past four years? Did she take him for a case-solving robot without emotions and feelings, whom she could just toss a clue and then expect to follow the trail like a well-trained English Setter?

Shinichi can't even tell why Ai hasn't bothered to mention the card with Akira's name until now. On the contrary, she seems not in the least interested in what Shinichi is going to do with it. Shinichi once thought that he couldn't read Ai because she has changed, but now he wonders whether it was him who has changed, who has finally realized that he has never known her at all.

"I only have a few questions before you go," he says coldly, wondering why she looks so bewildered and lost—as though she couldn't tell why he is so beside himself. "Who, in your opinion, has murdered Tenoh?"

"No one!" Since Ai doesn't display the slightest sign of anxiety or hesitation, Shinichi suspects that she has prepared herself for this question or is honestly convinced that Tenoh wasn't murdered. "Everyone liked her. Even Seiya liked her, in his own way. She was the one who always hurt others by being herself at all times, doing and saying whatever she wanted, trying to change the world without giving a damn about the feelings of other people."

"Whose feelings has she hurt except for Seiya's?" Shinichi decides to take Ai's assertion with a grain of salt since Ai is clearly biased and, to him, Tenoh seemed fairly sensible compared to Ai's maverick singer.

"Only mine when she tried to separate us." Her smile, almost imperceptible in the shifting light of the sunset, is followed by a little wink, both of which trigger in him a confusing wave of euphoria. "I suppose you'll have to add me to your list of suspects now."

"Don't worry, you are on my list of suspects!" If she absolutely wants to play this game with him, he might as well play it with her. If she doesn't want the friend, he will give her the detective. Brushing aside the unpleasant thought that he doesn't have the right to behave like a jilted ex, Shinichi continues in a more neutral tone, "What about Tenoh's relationship with Kaioh? Was Tenoh unfaithful or thoughtless? The public seems to believe that she had an affair with you."

"Kaioh-san knew that there was nothing like that between us. Even if Tenoh had been unfaithful—which I don't believe—Kaioh-san would have been the last person to murder her."

Despite her shawl, wool dress, tights, and trench coat, Ai is freezing in the cool autumn wind. Knowing that she wouldn't accept his jacket, Shinichi takes her elbow to lead her to Al Theatro.

"You're cold." He makes a last attempt to change her mind although he can sense that it will be futile. "Let's warm up with a cup of tea. You can return to him when the musical begins." Swallowing his pride, he resorts to mild pressure. "I'm going to meet up with commissario Carrara at Kaioh's place to study Tenoh's belongings and the Sherlock Holmes painting. It's likely that even the painting has been returned to Kaioh now that Tenoh's dressing room has been emptied to make space for the musical cast. If I find evidence against Seiya, I'd like to show them to you before I talk to commissario Carrara."

In brutally honest words: Do cooperate if you want to save your singer's neck! But Ai, being the difficult woman she is, remains unimpressed.

"That's a matter which can wait until tomorrow! You can take photos of them to show me later if you like." She flashes him an encouraging, expectant smile. "Any other questions before I go?"

"Is Chiba Usagi's group of friends, to which Tenoh belonged, a vigilante group?" From Ai's expression, Shinichi deduces in satisfaction that he has touched a nerve. "Maeda Satoru, Ran's karate idol, gave Tenoh away during our talk. He said, 'Tenoh-san was someone who understood it—the ridiculous limitations our society puts on us not to dispense justice but to maintain the status quo.'"

After giving her a concise account of Kino's phone call and Mizuno's Night Baron virus, Shinichi concludes, "From what I've seen, it's likely that Tenoh or her friends have informed Sayama Akiko about Ebara's deeds although murdering Ebara might have been Sayama's personal revenge and Tenoh's vigilante group wasn't directly linked to the Night Baron murder. But how did Mizuno Ami come into the possession of the Night Baron? After the Organization went down, no one could access the files in the Organization's clouds since no one could get past it. Whenever the FBI tried to access a codename member's laptop, the Night Baron struck and deleted all the files, so Jodie-san told me."

Pandora's Box, once activated, would send the Night Baron virus to the codename members' email accounts and would be downloaded automatically, M Jean Black informed Shinichi when they met in Paris. But when Shinichi, Ai, and Hattori were on the ship, they couldn't find anything on the computer which could have activated the Night Baron.

After Shinichi left to get help, Hattori must have continued to study the files; and resourceful as Hattori was, Hattori might have discovered sensitive information. Now that Hattori is dead, Ai is the only person left who has spent a few hours on the ship unless Gin has survived. Until now, it seems Ai is the sole survivor of the Pandora's Box affair—a fact Shinichi finds most alarming.

"Mizuno-san doesn't have the Night Baron. What she sent you must have been the Night Baron copy, which isn't nearly as powerful as the original. When they were fourteen or fifteen, Tsukino Usagi's friends formed a small vigilante group and stumbled over the Organization's weapon deals. They soon realized that they couldn't win and stopped fighting after a friend of theirs was killed. Usagi-san only survived because Seiya saved her." Taking Shinichi's elbow, Ai regards Shinichi with a long, thoughtful gaze. "I don't think you should talk to any of them about that phase. No one wants to be reminded of a project that ended in failure and death."

x.

"That's one good reason more to talk to you about it," Shinichi argues, staggered by Ai's sudden amiable behaviour towards him as they are walking arm in arm in the direction of La Fenice. "Do you know who was killed by the Organization? And how did they learn about the existence of the Night Baron virus?"

She didn't know the name of the boy who lost his life, only that he was a friend and ardent admirer of Hino Rei, who was working at Hikawa Shrine. As for the Night Baron virus, it was discovered by Meioh Setsuna during the time she worked as Professor Tomoe's assistant. "I told you Meioh-san is very intelligent, and Professor Tomoe has always been a dangerously talkative scatterbrain. It didn't take Meioh-san long to discover how the Night Baron worked. Recreating the virus, on the other hand, was so difficult that she worked on the project for three years and then scrapped it to focus on her studies and raising Hotaru-chan."

"Did Seiya belong to their group?"

"No, he didn't." Ai's faint smile broadens. "Seiya is a real loner in that respect, just like his two brothers." Aino Minako, Kino Makoto, Hino Rei, and Mizuno Ami belonged to Chiba Usagi née Tsukino Usagi's group—Ai informs Shinichi. Tenoh Haruka, Meioh Setsuna, and Kaioh Michiru were each other's best friends at Infinity (in Tenoh's and Kaioh's case, the friendship had already developed into a relationship although they were still hiding it from the public), and the three of them met Tsukino Usagi's group of friends by chance on the track since Aino Minako was a fan of Tenoh's when Tenoh was still a racer.

"It surprises me that Mizuno-san has sent you the Night Baron copy and wiped out your whole hard drive, which is a rather mean prank although you surely deserved it," remarks Ai in passing. "I know Mizuno-san personally since she is taking care of Seiya's apartment in Azabu Juuban and often visits Kino-san in Venice. Mizuno-san is very calm and considerate, absolutely not a person who would take revenge on you for spying on her friends—at least not in this way. She is also the verbose, serious type that needs to discuss everything. It won't surprise me if she directly confronts you when she comes to Venice to attend Tenoh's funeral."

"There is the saying that 'still waters run deep'," Shinichi chuckles. "Coincidentally, that's also the name of the file to which Mizuno Ami, 'the beauty of water', attached the Night Baron copy."

"Indeed, 'still waters run deep'!" Ai echoes in a low voice as a satisfied, amused smile parted her lips; and Shinichi can tell with certainty that Ai doesn't believe that Mizuno Ami was the sender of the Night Baron copy although Ai doesn't seem inclined to tell him who the real sender is.

x.


A/N: Two chapters left to edit before I can focus on scribbling on paper again. :D