A thousand apologies for the delay here—I've gone through a sort of weird… writing crisis of sorts, which made me quite unable to write anything for the fandom these last few weeks. In the end I typed this, which was actually written before said crisis, but whose atmosphere rather echoes my own feelings right now. Hope you'll like it.

(and yes, gems, this is Aoko-POV, shuddup)

Also, I don't own Magic Kaito. (Well, obviously.)

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Silence the Pianos

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'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.'

—W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues

-

She turned off the stove, turned off the gas, turned off the lights. She grabbed her bag on the deep green armchair, pulled on her coat that held about her like a fallen leave, and, as she turned to go, looked around for the note that would tell her father wither she had gone—why the house would be dark and cold when his key turned in the lock.

There it was, a lonely yellow slip by the phone pick-up, scribbled a few lines dark with her handwriting, for her father to find when he came home tonight. If he came home tonight.

It would be enough, surely. He wouldn't conduct a country-wide search for her in the next twelve hours. And she would only be gone a day, maybe—at worst—two. With these thoughts in her mind, more or less satisfied, she turned to leave, past the door and into the rapidly falling evening.

"And how exactly did you intend to get there?" Kaito's voice said softly.

(He was leaning against one of the porch's posts, hands stuck in his jacket pockets, looking for all the world as though he had been waiting here for ages already and would not be much disturbed by continuing.)

Aoko grabbed instinctively onto her bag as though on a lifesaver. "What are you doing here?" she asked, and hardly recognized her voice, thin and defiant as it was. For one fantastic moment, the thought that, maybe, her father had asked him to vigil her did cross her mind.

It was stupid, of course, and she instantly dismissed it as such. "Keeping an eye out," he replied, and the near-indistinct cheerful tilt, like thin silk, in his voice reassured her a little. "How did you intend to get there? On foot?"

He did not say how he had learnt where she was going and she did not think it worthwhile to ask. Knowing Kaito, anyway, it was probably via some sneaky, underhanded way. "I'm taking a bus," she said defensively. "It's leaving in half an hour."

He nodded. "I know. I looked it up. It's also leaving you halfway there, and then what? you'll hitch-hike the rest of the way?"

"Probably," Aoko said, with a shrug whose carelessness she was far from feeling.

"Well, you're not." The tone was firm. "I took a day off and borrowed mom's car. C'mon."

It took her a few seconds to understand what exactly he was meaning, and when she did she said blankly, "Are you sure? it's a long way. We'll have to drive through the night."

He rolled his eyes. "Obviously. What are you standing here like a penguin for? c'mon, or we'll never make it to the highway by nightfall." He grabbed her hand and led her away, led her astray, and the warmth in his fingers, his fine magician's fingers, was such that she didn't even think of protesting—nor of resisting. Kaito swept her clear off her feet, the way he always did, always had, the way he had that first evening at the clock tower.

--

They did reach the highway before nightfall. The last of the day was dying on Tokyo's tall office buildings, gleaming in red-and-gold off the manifold, reflecting windows, each tower mirroring a miniature sunset.

"There's a map in the gloves' compartment," Kaito said, without taking his eyes off the road. A careful, amused smile was poised up at the corner of his mouth, like a small animal. "I looked up the way before coming, but I'd rather not get lost anyway."

Aoko nodded and dove in the gloves' compartment. In it was the map; also a full thermos, two sandwiches, a pocket watch and a brown wallet—presumably Kaito's, unless he had taken to picking pockets without telling her. "You've been preparing for this," she said, wonderingly. "How long have you known about it?"

He shrugged and swept them smoothly onto the highway. "A while," he said, cautiously, it seemed to her. "About two months ago I found a sheet listing the opening hours for that particular cemetery lying on your desk. After that it was only a matter of figuring out when you'd be going. And tomorrow was the most logical, closest, likeliest day."

There was silence after that. Aoko looked down at her hands, which she'd folded neatly on her lap. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she said, after a few minutes. "It wasn't exactly something I could pop up in the course of conversation—"

"That's alright," Kaito cut in. He threw her a look. "I'm sorry, too. For butting in like that. But—" some awkwardness passed in his blue eyes, darkened them. "If you'd hitch-hiked like you'd intended, well, you could have met with anybody. Well-meaning people of course, but there could have been a serial murderer among the lot. Or someone who's throw you in a ditch and rape you." His hands tightened momentarily around the wheel. "I didn't want to risk that. I'd rather stay up the night and be with you." Then he smiled, and his eyes softened again, took on the brief flicker of affection. "I'm aware that's a pretty selfish position."

Aoko smiled. It'd been a while. College and work had pretty much separated them lately, and it'd been a while since the two of them had been able to just talk and be together. Their last mop chase dated back to ages ago. It gave their current conversation a very smooth, nostalgic feel.

He glanced at her. "Maybe you should get some sleep," he remarked. "We will drive the night through."

"I'm not sleepy," she protested. "It's barely seven, besides." Then she gave him a stern look. "And don't you even think of driving the night through, man. Tell me when you're tired and I'll relay you."

He grinned. "Alright."

They talked little as the night tumbled down, a great, thick curtain of blue velvet. The road thundered past, alight with the hundred little luminous signs that sided it and the thousand little lamps, red and gold, that belonged to other cars. Kaito moved about and between them with smooth ease, much like—the comparison made her smile—a fish in water. It certainly felt and looked like blue water, blue velvet, cascading down on them, on the horizon.

Aoko, who faced west, waited until the last clar tints of blue had uniformly descended into nighttime, the last clear light of sunset dissolved into the water, and a bridge of dark trees hid the firmament from view, to finally speak up again.

"Kaito."

"Mm." He glanced at her, though briefly, but the familiar, endearing little smile poised up again.

"Do you remember anything about your father at all?"

He sped up and past a charging truck and then switched back onto the lane they had formerly been on, frowning a little. "… define 'remember'."

"Well…" Trust Kaito to avoid all embarrassing answers and bring her to the core of the problem within three seconds of the asking of the question. "It's just that. I don't remember my mother's face," she admitted, plunging. This being said, she corrected it. "Well, of course, we've got pictures, and of course I know what she looks like. But it's just that—an outside phenomenon. It's not my memory of her at all."

He was silent.

"What I do remember of amounts to almost nothing—it's…" she trailed off for a second. "Warmth. And how shiny her hair looked that day when she came to pick me up from school. I don't know why that moment stuck. It's just that," she repeated thoughtfully, looking out toward the embankment of grass and trees, both dark, "the way the light played in her hair."

"… you know," he said, "you were four when she died. It's almost twenty-years ago."

"I know."

"Well." They were gathering speed again, and the car was a purring nest of warmth and comfort and light, enfolding, blanketing them in needed reassurance. You are not alone, it seemed to say, you are safe, you will be safe. You are well. It induced to sleepiness also. "What I remember of my dad—they're mostly moments, too. Books and movies and manga—they show you memories in a succession, in the way of a video reel. But usually they're not. They're most like snapshots—seconds that tricked you into remembering them. I remember," he said, laughing a little, "that mom was telling him he was putting on a little more weight than was strictly necessary, and maybe he should start on a diet. That was a week or so before he died."

Aoko smiled. It was clearly Kaito's aim to distract and amuse her, and he was succeeding. Still, "It just makes me sad to think that I remember so little about her. I'm going to visit her grave."

"I read somewhere," Kaito said gently, "that the dead never stop dying. Because our memory of them wanes out over the years, become yellowed and used, like old photos. Still," he added, this time not looking straight at the road but at it as though across something, "it might be crueller to remember everything about them, every moment, every detail. Because our memories of them are rare and blurred, we realize how precious they are, how important it is to preserve them."

"You did think a lot about it, didn't you?" Aoko asked, surprised; then was ashamed. Kaito's father had died so much more recently than her mother had, and it had been a terrible blow on the little boy he had then been. (Kaito was right about snapshots. Of that night she remembered little; only secluded moments in time: how she and her father and Kaito's mother had looked all over the district for him, the dark groves and the sharp beams of torchlamps, Kaito's tear-streaked face when they had finally found him, and how blue, blue his eyes had been.)

Kaito nodded seriously. "I've come across a lot of—ghosts, you might call them—recently." Then with curling mouth and laughing eyes, "I wonder what your mom would say to you driving the night in a tiny car with a guy who's spent all high school flipping up your skirt."

"Dad's being annoying enough as it is," Aoko muttered.

There was silence at that. When he did speak it was in carefully joking tone, just on this side of mean. "What, so many pretendants already Nakamouri-keibu insists on giving a Chaperone Task Force?"

She scowled at him. "Of course not. Don't be silly," she snapped. "Besides, it's been ages since you haven't looked up my shirt."

"I know. I'm sorry," he said, suddenly abashed. "That's because you don't wear any anymore. Tell you what. When we've both finished with classes this year we'll trek down to the beach sometime. For a day or two, or something. You'll wear a skirt and I'll flip it and you'll chase me with your mop and everything will be alright again."

Aoko blinked. "Is that a date you're suggesting, Kuroba Kaito?"

"Whatever you want to call it," he laughed.

"… alright."

"Yeah?"

"Sure."

He grinned, and squeezed her hand; it was a short-lived pressure, for he couldn't very well handle both the wheel and the gear box with one hand, but a warm, comforting solace at any rate. He had nice hands, she noted, not for the first time, and long, quick fingers. It entangled with hers in easy tranquillity.

A little after nine they stopped in some lay-by area to eat Kaito's sandwiches and drink some coffee. They did not stay over a quarter of an hour, since they had a long way to go, and as they got back in the car Kaito remarked, "You should get some sleep now. We'll drive for hours." He gave her a strict look. "Especially if you intend to relay me later."

"Alright," Aoko murmured, though if was easier said than done. It was still relatively early, and despite her long sleeping-in mornings the notion of napping was foreign to her. The car was dark, but the headlamps of those they drove by swept over them at irregular intervals; plus, the dashboard's thousand little bulbs were blinking confusedly, blurringly, before her half-lidded eyes… the roar of the car was a gentle one, purring and lazy, buzzing against her temple.

She fell into an odd state of half-sleepiness, never quite awake, never quite out and dreaming, but balancing between the two, strange colours and stranger shapes dancing in her vision. They must be dreams, or half-dreams, for she was not troubled by them. At times she was lost in them, travelling à la Alice in a world much like reality, but not quite close enough to be really; at others she was intensely, accurately aware of her surroundings, perceiving and magnifying with odd, see-through clarity the thousand details of the highway, the car's insides, the red-and-gold dashboard.

It was during one of these moments that, from the windowscreen, she passed—a logical course—on to the driver. Kaito was driving rather quickly, but not (as she had somewhat expected from him) so recklessly as to risk their necks with every strike. He looked expert at it, and for a second of time she wondered when he had ever learnt to drive. She had about two years earlier, and he had helped her plenty with the code, so he must already have known then. He looked as though he had done this for ages.

He drove on, one hand on the wheel and the other on the gear box, sometimes gulping down a mouthful of coffee from the thermos. His eyes were mostly fixed ahead, and when he glanced away it was only briefly, and often—it seemed—at her. It made for a strange impression, to think that they were both watching each other without owning it.

Another strange thing was how different he looked from the usual image she had harboured of him. As a boy he had been lanky and show-off, and he was still rather tall and lean, and certainly had lost nothing of his enthusiasm and demonstrativeness; but he no longer was a boy. Maybe it was the action he was involved in, or the subdued, particular light, that changed him so to her eyes. In any case he was grown. Sometime along the few years that separated them from high school, her best friend—whose six-years-old dimpled smile still played vivid in her mind—had turned into a man, here fully enhanced by the dim lights and the beautiful, roaring night, and she had seen nothing of it.

He looked sharply at her, and a moment's panic bubbled up.

But he reached backwards, extracted a quilt from the backseat, and stretched it across her lap; he must think she was asleep. (And maybe she was, maybe she was dreaming, maybe gently dozing in the creased folds of wool.) Satisfied, Aoko allowed herself to fully close her eyes, allowed tide after tide of darkness and sleep to wash her over and away.

--

She opened her eyes to stillness. Not absolute stillness, though, for nothing can be absolutely still when the highway's roar is still ringing in one's ears, but still about her. Also the light was brighter. The car was stopped, and Kaito was leaning across her and rummaging in the gloves compartment.

"Where are we?" she mumbled, not yet quite awake.

He straightened up instantly, wallet in hand. "In a pull-in again. I thought we'd take a break."

She rubbed her eyes, yawning a little. "What time is it?"

"A little after one," he admitted, fishing banknotes out of the wallet. "You can stay in the car and sleep some more if you'd rather. I'll buy us coffee and something to eat for tomorrow morning." But she shook her head and unlocked the door, stretching her legs out.

"I'll come too. I need the walk."

Drinking coffee by the store's large illuminated windowpane—gold within, blue without—the coffee black and the sugar brown; dissolving; gone; only the sweetness remained. Kaito was at the counter, filling the thermos and buying breakfast. From time to time, a truck roared, or a car engine started, or paused by the fuel pump, and the inside broke in on the outside: sweeping gold into dim blue—fading. Aoko turned her spoon in her coffee mug and watch the little swirl wane out on itself.

"All done here," Kaito commented at last, setting down the filled thermos and a white paper bag on the table. "Are you ready?"

"Yes—let me finish my coffee first," she murmured, sipping at it. From one corner of the barstand, four men in overalls were sneering, not unkindly, at her, and they seemed to imply something across the distance that she could not fully grasp at, should blame lay on the late hour or the soothing warmth of her hands coiled about her mug. "Why are they looking at us that way?" —spoken low.

Kaito, as per usual, laughed it off. "They're probably all taking us for a couple eloping away from a distressing father. Well—" as she downed her hot drink, and grabbing her hand, "no reason to dissuade them. C'mon, it's almost two."

He got in the car driver-side. "Wait, wait," Aoko protested, standing in the bright of the flashing headlamps. "We agreed I'd drive the second half of the way. I slept. You need to get some rest, or we'll end up in a ditch."

"Nah, that's okay," said he, patting the seat beside his. "I can go on a little longer. We'll switch later, if you really want us to—anyway, there's the way back, too. Get in," he insisted, as she just stood in the way, hesitant and thoughtful. "Just a little longer, I swear."

Just a little longer, Aoko thought, returned to the crooked comfort of her seat, as they swept away from the lay-by area and onto the long glistening ribbon of the highway, and that became a routine, a refrain, a mantra that accompanied her—a little longer, said the continual rolling of the car's tires on the road—a little longer, said the crackling radio, which Kaito had turned up but clearly didn't listen to­—a little longer, said the passing cars, rising from smoke and shadow and moulding instantly back into it, leaving nothing behind them but the ghost image of their gone brilliance,—a little longer, a little longer.

She caught herself up as she felt herself sinking. 'I must not sleep,' she thought, blinking dazedly. 'Whatever happens, I must not sleep. A little way from now, I will tell Kaito I'll definitely take the wheel the rest of the way. Just a little longer—a little longer.'

When she woke up, it was by Kaito's shaking her shoulder. It was daylight.

Not exactly daylight. The early predawn lights were but a pale grey, but it still made Aoko spring up in her seat. "You let me sleep," she exclaimed, accusingly, as Kaito straightened up and stuck his hands in his pockets, grinning. "I can't believe—I was supposed to—"

"I know," he said, soothingly. "But you looked so peaceful, drolling on the cushions—" she angled out a kick at his shin— "I wasn't tired at all. It's fine, Aoko—really it is. It's better you rested who were tired, than I who wasn't."

"Then at least I get to drive the rest of the way," said Aoko, scrambling for a watch, time—control.

He scratched his cheek. "That won't be necessary."

"Why not?" she snapped. "You can't think of continuing—"

"Not that. We're here."

The morning was all whites and pastels, and the sky oiled clouds, behind which the barely-risen sun was but a slightly brighter blur, knotted and satin-like that frayed away into non-significance. With the air so pure came the cool and fine of such a dawn, the cotton-soft quality that muffles all sound. Across the road, the shrine's walls extended long and low and off-white, offering the seclusion and quiet due to those who retired in either meditation or death.

"We're too early," Aoko commented. "It won't be open yet."

Kaito made a soft, disapproving sound. "I don't think so. I called in yesterday afternoon to make sure, and the priest in charge told me it'd be no problem at all if we arrived early. The shrine officially opens at seven, but apparently they can make exceptions."

The double wooden doors were, in fact, just opening, and the priest who stood at them invited them in with a calm smile and calmer eyes. It was he whom Kaito had spoken to over the phone the day before; he professed himself happy to welcome them in, touched that they had come such a long way, and offered to help them find the tomb. After a moment's hesitation, Aoko declined. The shrine, if she recalled well, was relatively small, so they shouldn't have too much trouble on their own, and she disliked the idea that, kind though he was, a stranger should indicate her to where her mother lay, in the manner of a guide in a museum.

It was, at any rate, a beautiful place. When one had left behind the low-footed, porched, stooped buildings, the tombs rose amid grass and sparse trees on each side of the cobbled paths. Scarcely any sound was heard but that of the wind; and the wind itself blew mellow, speaking of peace and silence and the sweetest sleep. It was a beautiful place, and sometime along the walk Aoko's hand had gotten entangled with Kaito's again like a fallen leave.

They found the grave at the foot of a grassy slope, at the top of which the view was predictably more than a little pretty. It was held captive in its shadow for the time being, but the sun, in rising above the hill, must meet it later on in the day; this alternative cause the vegetation here to grow fairly at profusion.

There Aoko let go of Kaito's hand.

She never did tell him afterwards what she prayed and told her mother, kneeling there. Kaito guessed, as far as he allowed himself to, that it involved first her father, then herself and her college life, and then—if he correctly interpreted the furtive glance she sent him at one point, only half-seeing him—himself. He addressed a few words, in thought if not in speech, to the mother of his best friend, whom he had never met, and whose resemblance to Aoko, as seen in pictures, had never particularly struck him, thus making promises he had every intention to keep.

It was a while before either of them straightened, and the light was considerably brighter. They had not brought any flowers, which might wilter along the way, but Aoko lit an incense stick, and left a box of mochi, which had been one of her mother's favourite sweet treats. After this they left.

They were silent on the way, speech appearing far too insufficient to express thought. It was only when they had returned to the small cluster of buildings that Aoko looked back on that part of the shrine they had just strolled past, misty and green and Avalon-like, and breathed out on a sigh, "It is a beautiful place."

"It is," Kaito agreed, but thoughtfully. The much-expected visit, for which they had travelled through the night, had passed by them much like a dream, in less than an hour; and it left him in a giddy state, an impatience of things half-finished. Only Aoko's following words at last roused him.

"You did see pictures of my mother before, Kaito? didn't you?"

"Why—yes," said he, recovering. "Of course. Why do you ask?"

Aoko's eyes were focused on something over his shoulder, something he dared not turn to look at. "Do you think she looked like me?"

This demanded reflection. "… not much," he admitted. 'She was smaller and rounder than you—but you've got her mouth, and the same type of hair," he added, to be perfectly fair. Why all the thousand questions, Aoko?"

With a start, she re-focused. "When I was about thirteen—nine years ago that makes," she commented fondly, "I started leafing through an old photo album of my parents'. My dad was with me on the sofa, and my mom's wedding dress looked so pretty… I looked up to ask him something, or tell him something, and he was crying." (She was, too—smiling, and this time looking straight ahead, straight at Kaito.) "I'd never seen him cry before."

He reached out and pulled her against him, where she fitted easily, both arms going round his waist in a snug embrace. "He told me lots about the two of them that day. How they'd met, what a bookworm she was, how they kept meeting in university, how their first date went—"

"How'd it do?" Kaito mouthed, muffledly and in her hair.

"Terrible," she said with a hiccupping laugh. "He'd forgotten his wallet, so she had to pay for the two of them. He said that when he brought her back to her car he thought she'd never want to see him again, much less go out with him again, but she did. She kissed him." The tears were still running running freely, but she was smiling still, bright as the curve of the sun over the horizon. "… he said he would have done anything for her," she whispered. "Anything."

His arm travelled from around her shoulders to the small of her back; pressing her close, closer, burying his nose in unruly—even more so from sleeping on the way—black locks. "Like driving her all night through the country in a cramped car whenever she'd need it?"

Aoko's breath hitched. "And drinking bad coffee in end-of-the-road dusty stores," she gasped, snuggling closer still. "Yes. That too."

Kaito chuckled a little.

--

The priest was still standing at the large wooden doors when they reached them, tired yet cleansed. His smile had not wavered, nor did it while he asked. "I hope you found the tomb you were seeking without difficulties."

"None at all," Aoko said, smiling at him. "Thank you for opening so early for us."

"That was no trouble at all. Have a good trip back."

Kaito was repeating her thanks, and moving forwards to go through the door, when Aoko tugged him back. "Look," she mouthed, pointing, and all three turned east-ward.

The sun—was rising. It was rising, slow and steady, above the slove of the steep hill, into the clearing whites of the sky; and it shone over the long stretches of grass and blooming trees, reflecting brilliantly off the white-washed building walls, illuminating, as it was, the small, retired shrine with all the glorious shine of the promising day.

"It is a beautiful place," Kaito murmured under his breath.

And as they turned once more to go, the smallish car parked across the lane, the priest's cheerful goodbye, Aoko's grabbing the car keys and muttering "I'll drive this time," and Kaito's subsequent chuckle, and the dusty, ribbon-like road back home, all seemed drenched in the fine, beautiful light that brought on sun and joy and morning.

--

That was a strange piece to write and stranger to type. There are few stories which I feel made me grow up a little, in mind and writing, and this was one of them. That's all that needs to be said, really.