Hey there, I finally updated! Well, this one isn't too interesting, but I got so caught up in it that I split it into two chapters. Aren't you excited? Anyway, here we deal with little yellow hats. I saw a lot of kids wearing them in Tokyo, they're really adorable. (Although if I was a kid I would probably hate it. Haha.) I dimly recall somebody telling me that they wore them so that cars wouldn't hit them when they crossed the street. I'm not sure if that's right but hey. I think you can deal.

-File 5-
"Hats."
In which children wear adorable headgear.

"Jeez, these things are so stupid…" Genta muttered, pulling on the hem of the yellow atrocity perched upon his head. Mitsuhiko and Conan, each adorned in similar headgear, grumbled their agreement. Ai merely yawned.

"Stop complaining!" Ayumi said indignantly, tweaking her own hat to the side and peering into a passing window for her reflection. She smiled at herself. "I think they're cute! And they're to help us when we're crossing the street. You don't want to get run over do you?"

"I… Guess not." Mitsuhiko muttered, trying not to upset her. He looked up at the bit of yellow poking into his field of vision and sighed. Children's traffic hats really were stupid. "But you'd think they could find a less embarrassing way of protecting us.."

"Protecting us!" Genta yelled, resisting the urge to rip off his hat as they were fast approaching the schoolyard. "I'd rather be run over than wear this stupid thing!"

"I agree." Conan grumbled. "I thought I'd gotten out of wearing this with a non-uniform elementary school."

"Even without uniforms they want to keep us safe! Sheesh, you guys complain too much!" Ayumi chided, hands on her hips in a childish imitation of her mother. Ai smiled.

"I like them." She said pleasantly. Ayumi grinned and clapped her hands.

"See? Ai-chan likes it! You guys should too!"

Conan, Mitsuhiko, and Genta stared at Ai

"You… like them?" Conan asked in wonder, "Wow, Haibara. I wouldn't have expected you of all people would enjoy looking like a- Er.." He stopped short. Something about the end of that comment just seemed too ironic to voice. Haibara, of course, smirked.

"Looking like a what, Edogawa-kun? A child? A 'little kid'? I think somebody's forgetting something about themselves." She taunted, smiling quite smugly to herself at the expression on the smaller boy's face. "Besides… Don't these remind you of when you were younger? I find it quite nostalgic."

Ayumi blinked and was about to inquire as to the perplexing word choice of her friend, but was cut off by a rather irritated-looking Conan.

"No, they don't remind me of when I was younger, because -if you remember-, I went to a certain school which until recently had no dress code requiring the wearing of ridiculous hats while crossing streets."

"Hm? Oh, yes. I'd quite forgotten. Well, now look what you get to catch up on. Aren't you the lucky one?" She smiled and pulled the hat down to cover the amusement in her eyes. Conan glared indignantly at her.

"I hope that hat kills you." He grumbled. He had drifted up next to Haibara as they entered the school, and the two had subconsciously started walking faster in order to put distance between them and their younger friends. Now they stood in front of their cubbies, taking off their shoes a little ahead of the rest of the group and a comfortable distance from any teachers who might have been confused by their vocabularies. One nice thing about elementary school: little kids didn't seem to pay much attention to anything that didn't directly involve them. Least of all the not-so-childish conversation of some weird American kids.

"I should hope it doesn't, seeing as my death would put you in a bit of a predicament." Haibara retorted, putting her shoes into her cubby hole and deliberately doing nothing about her hat. For some reason she was feeling particularly playful today. And Kudo-kun was falling right into her every tease… She watched him shove his own headwear unceremoniously into the cubby along with his other unnecessary belongings.

"Yeah, well... Don't go wandering around any dark alleys at night."

"Dark alleys? What, is the hat going to jump me? Honestly, Edogawa, I should think you'd be able to do better than that. With all the murder cases you've been to at least one must have involved some sort of lethal head adornments."

"Alright fine… Don't go… Touching the hat and then licking chocolate powder off your fingers. Better?"

"Come now, I know exactly where you got that one. You'll have to be more creative."

"Hey, I'm a detective not a murderer!"

"I'm sure with a bit of work we could turn that around."

"Haibara-!"

The two continued their bickering as they moved off down the hall, quite forgetting their three 'normal' friends still standing in the cubby room. The children stared after them in something like awe. Their friends were odd, of course, and entirely too mature, but they hadn't expected a conversation of such mystifying intelligence to come of something so small as the traffic-safety hats issued by the school. Ayumi quietly pulled hers off as she continued to stare at the retreating (and still arguing) backs of Conan and Ai.

"Conan-kun and Ai-chan are really smart, aren't they?" She muttered to her friends. The two boys nodded silently. After a second's staring, Genta's face suddenly twisted into a familiar expression of confusion.

"… What the heck does 'nostalgic' mean?" He asked. Given the situation it was amazing he had remembered the word from that far back in the conversation. Ayumi blinked at him.

"Nostalgic? Uhm… I think it means something like… Like thinking about things that happened a long time ago." Mitsuhiko said, recalling the definition from a book he'd borrowed from his sister. "I'm not sure but it's definitely got to do with remembering. My sister said so."

"Remembering…?" Ayumi tilted her head to the side. "But Ai-chan said that her hat made her feel nostalgic… So what's she remembering about?"

"Maybe her old school in America?" Mitsuhiko ventured. Realising he didn't have much time left before the bell rang, he quickly slipped his shoes off and turned to his cubby to switch them for his school slippers.

"Ew, they wear stupid hats like these in America too?" Genta glowered at the object in question and roughly shoved it into his cubby hole. He'd been so proud to go to a school that didn't require them… Stupid teachers and their dumb traffic safety!

"I guess they must." Mitsuhiko shrugged. "Haibara-san must have liked them, then." The thought made him blush slightly. Haibara liked hats…? When was her birthday, again?

"Well if Ai-chan likes them, then I like them even more!" Ayumi giggled. She folded hers neatly and placed it alongside her shoes, then quickly slipped into her slippers. "Come on, let's go to class! Maybe we can get her to tell us more about her old school!"

"If she went to a school with stupid hats like ours, then I'd rather hear about Conan's school." Genta muttered darkly. Clearly the subject wasn't one he'd be willing to drop anytime soon.

"Then we'll ask both of them about it!" Ayumi chirped, dragging her friends down the hallway. Mitsuhiko agreed loudly, thinking of nothing but finding out more about his crush Haibara. Genta grumbled something about stupid American hats and followed, nonetheless excited to ask about a country he'd never been to. Why hadn't they asked about this earlier, anyway…?

Yeah I know that ended in a bad place. The next chapter continues it. And Ai is quickly becoming my favourite character to write. Hopefully expect more of her.