The morning was bright and without remorse.
Shinichi grit his teeth as a stray shaft of sunlight sliced through his eyelids. He whined and pulled the blankets into a tight cocoon, willing himself into a dark and quiet place, away from this Alice-in-Wonderland nightmare he kept waking up in. He briefly entertained the thought that maybe he was still lying unconscious in that alleyway, the last few days the result of his brain sautéing in his own blood.
More logical than turning into a kid, but not very comforting.
He was running on about two hours of sleep, and the last three nights were no better. Thoughts sluggishly pooled in his head, attempting to coagulate into something coherent. He had woken up in a new body, no identity to speak of, and was semi-abducted into probably the kindest form of house arrest. He had no money and no way to access any bank accounts. No resources to count on. No leads on the men in black.
Oh, I was also nearly murdered. Can't forget that.
From within his blanket cocoon, he felt the room pulse around him, breathing in and out. His empty stomach heaved with it.
In a disturbing way, he felt like he had been murdered. The life of Kudo Shinichi had been flayed from him like skin. All that was left were the ghosts of dozens of murder investigations haunting his dreams, clotted smears of unfelt emotions. They played out each night, unspooling his assault into a thousand different nightmares. He'd been stabbed, shot, carved up, strangled, left for dead; the only commonality was the poison, the flames down his spine, the snapping bones, the squeezing hand around his heart…
He felt a foot prod through his protective bubble.
"Get up, kid, or I'm eating your breakfast."
Shinichi excavated his way out of the blankets into burning daylight, glaring at the bleary shape towering over him. Detective Mouri Kogoro seemed to cut an intimidating silhouette, when he wasn't wearing pajamas stained with last night's beer and chicken teriyaki. He gazed down at Shinichi with detached intensity, like the boy was a chalk outline of a murder victim. An unlit cigarette flicked back in forth in his mouth.
"No one is eating his breakfast except him." Ran must have had cameras installed in the apartment, because she was suddenly in the room, wielding a spatula like a rapier. Seeing Kogoro's raised foot stepping on the seemingly-abandoned child, she delivered a small, swift kick to his shin. As he yelped, she handed him the spatula. "Make sure the eggs aren't burning."
Kogoro grumbled something under his breath about elder abuse before leaving to rescue his breakfast. Ran retrieved Shinichi's glasses from the nightstand and handed them to the boy. She crouched by the side of his futon.
"How are you feeling?"
He slid the glasses on and shrugged, avoiding looking her in the face. Light and noise hammered in his head.
"Hey," she said gently, lifting his chin to look at her. She smiled, pointing two fingers at Shinichi's eyes and then reversing them towards her face. "Eyes on me. Remember what we talked about. Use your words."
"I'm just tired."
"I know you are, but let's get some food in you."
"Can I have a few minutes?"
"Of course, but you better get it before it gets cold." She squeezed his shoulder and left the room.
Shinichi waited to hear the light bickering and clattering of pans in the kitchen before woozily getting to his feet. Ran's old shirt was drowning him in faded cotton and he had to pull the sleeves up over his hands. He turned back to his futon and carefully peeled back the top layer of foam, exposing the spring-loaded guts of the inner mattress. He reached one tiny hand inside and pulled out a plastic grocery bag. Inside were several pilfered granola bars, some packets of dried fruit, an old subway map, and a handful of crumpled dollar bills totaling to about $10.
The guilt gnawed at him. The food was simple enough; Ran kept giving him snacks because he wasn't eating, so he just set them aside for later, until he realized what a sizable stash he had. That had worked until she insisted he actually eat them in front of her. And the money…
He wasn't a thief. He had spent too long as a detective to resort to that, but as he knelt on the floor, little fingers rubbing over the faded bills, the cognitive dissonance was too real to ignore. It mixed with his sleep deprivation and throbbed in his head like a second heartbeat.
I won't be here forever, he thought. Sooner or later, I'll have to leave. Or they'll throw me out.
He was a charity case, nothing more, and he wasn't going to wait for the Mouri's to become fed up with him. If he was going to leave, it would be on his own terms. For that, he needed insurance. Just some food and money to get by.
Kudo Shinichi may not have been a thief, but Edogawa Conan was.
—
"I can't take him seriously when you dress him like that." Kogoro leaned against the side of the stairwell, clocking Shinichi with a deadpan expression as he blew smoke in the vague direction of the air vent.
"Dad, he's not a doll," said Ran as he she rolled up Shinichi's sleeves for the third time that morning. "I don't dress him."
"He looks like your laundry pile became sentient and started eating my food. You keep stuffing him in your hand-me-downs, he's gonna develop a complex, on top of everything else-"
"Dad, please shut up." Ran adjusted the wool hat on Shinichi's head, pulling it up out of his eyes once again, then rolling the edges up to hold it in place. "If you don't, I'm flushing all your cigarettes down the toilet. Don't listen to him, Conan."
"You'll never find them all. I got hidden caches all over the office. Come on, let's go before we freeze." Kogoro pushed the door open and strolled out into the cold morning air.
Ran held back, absently tucking in stray pieces of his oversized clothing while he felt the dignity evaporate from his body. Today's navy blue sweatshirt almost went down to his knees, while his pants were rolled up and held in place with safety pins. She checked his gloves for the third time, as if they had somehow gotten loose in the last thirty seconds while he was busy doing absolutely nothing.
"I can do this myself," he said quietly.
Her hands froze, fingers tensed in the air. "I know, I know. I'm sorry." The concern in her eyes was so genuine that he had to fight the reflex to look away. "Are you sure you feel alright to go? We can try tomorrow, if you want."
"It's just a walk, right?" He tried to smile but it felt counterfeit. "I'm so bored, cooped up in here."
"Right, right. It's just a walk." Her eyes unfocused, as if looking at something lurking in the stairwell behind him.
She's trying to reassure herself more than me.
"It's just a walk," she repeated.
They stood at the threshold of the door, the light turned cold and silver as it passed through the frosted glass. When Ran held out her hand, he didn't take it.