File Thirteen: The Blind Spot in the Darkness

"Will you answer this, Dad?"

Kudo Yusaku looked at his son in confusion. The morning after he had decided to stay in Beika, he had suddenly appeared on the doorstep of his old home, claiming that he wanted to set some things straight before they left the country.

"How did you know?"

"Know what, exactly?"

"Nobody just carries a ten million yen check around." Conan answered, an annoyed look on his face. "You knew I was going to stay."

Yukiko, who sat beside her husband gasped. "You knew?!" the man did not answer, and that agitated her. "Yusaku!"

The child sighed, tiredly, before crossing his arms behind his head. "And here I went through all this trouble to make a decision, and it turns out that it was completely pointless because you knew what was going to happen."

Yusaku smiled. "But if we didn't do that, you wouldn't have gone through that process of decision and personal growth," he told him, stunning the kid. "It wasn't pointless."

"Don't tell me you're doing your parenting duties right after kidnapping your own child," he scoffed, and he stood up. "Anyways, I have to go. Occhan was invited to some party about a game featuring him as a main character."

The annoyment on his voice was obvious, but understandable. The detective had only become so famous because Conan was the one giving out the hints. Well, it's not like I want the attention, he pondered as he bid his parents goodbye and left the house, shuddering about the thought of being him the one replacing Kogoro.

"Just one more thing," he stopped at the gate, and turned around. "This has been bothering me for awhile."

"What is it, Co-chan?"

"Is it because you all are famous that you changed my surname to Edogawa, or is it there another reason?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Oniichan didn't get his surname changed."

"Fame was never a problem to Shinichi, as you might have noticed," his father replied, easily. "You never liked the spotlight, and we know that. That's why we decided to give you a more quiet, humble background."

Conan narrowed his eyes, and just skateboarded away without any other word. Why is everyone so secretive? his eyebrow twitched, in irritation. An honest, straight answer wouldn't hurt every once in a while.

That annoyment, however, would turn into fear and then frustration throughout the day. He would finally met with Tequila, an organization member ─ he had uttered the names Vodka and Gin over the phone, so there was no doubt about it ─ but then see him die caught in a explosion.

The worst thing was that Kogoro currently had a terrible hangover, causing him to slump pathetically against the wall, not paying attention at his surroundings at all, which meant no famous detective to solve the case today.

"Geez, where did you go?" Ran held him by his hand after an entire day chasing him around. "Ah, you're injured."

Conan hadn't noticed the cut on his cheek until now, but he figured it might been from the explosion. Like the mother hen she was, Ran grabbed a napkin from her pocket and started to wipe the blood away. In the process, she dropped her father's and her number tokens. There were 96 and 100, and he clearly remembered Tequila's number being 98.

Then, these three people that had cut in before Ran at that time...

Before she could do anything the kid took of running in their direction, tokens in hand, just as saw a man walking up to the receptionist's desk, as she called his number to pick up his belongings.

"Hey, Mister," he did his best to replicate a very cheerful and loud child "Didn't she say that your number was 124?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Isn't that, like, super weird?" he opened his eyes wide. "I could've sworn you had cut in before Ran-neechan, and after Kogoro-ojisan."

The whole room stared at the two, shocked. The kid put on an innocent expression, as he held the numbers for the man to see.

"You should be careful not to lose your real number," his face twisted into a smirk, that did not match with his actual age, and watched as colour drained from the man's face. "Your suitcase could get mixed and swapped with another one. Maybe you should check if you have the correct one, just in case."

"N-No, it's okay," the man stuttered.

Noticing his anxiety, Megure asked him to check its contents, and he refused. His colleague started to struggle with him, trying to get him to obey so he would not end up as a suspect. The suitcase opened, accidentally, and money fell into the floor.

Takeshita, the true culprit, freaked out. After being told that they could check his suitcase and get some evidence, especially if they checked the lock with the key found at the crime scene, he confessed.

He tried to pressure the other man to tell him anything about the men he had done the deal, but there was little he could do with what level of persuasion a seven year-old could manage, without hinting in any way that he was trying to investigate them.

And, as always, the two men in black disappeared without a trace.

So, yes, he was annoyed and frustrated for an entire week.

Probably, was part of the reason he was annoyed when his brother asked that question, for the eleventh time this week.

"Are you sure you're okay, Conan?"

Conan sighed loudly against his phone one chilly day of February, as he climbed up the stairs from the detective agency.

"How many times do I have to tell you? I'm fine," he told him.

"Last time you said that, I found you collapsed on the floor. Besides, Ran told me you had to be stuck in bed for three entire days, and you haven't called ever since."

The child pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Listen, my cold is completely gone by now," the boy tried to reason. "I'm sure Ran-neechan must have told you about that, at least."

There was a long pause, which caused the child to give the phone screen a curious look. For a moment, he had thought the call had been accidentally cut short, but it seemed it wasn't the case.

"Say, don't you think something is up with Ran lately?" softly, his brother asked.

"Eh? How so?"

"Even when I call her she doesn't talk that much," the teenager commented. "She doesn't complain so much about my absence anymore."

Just as the teen was saying that, the door of the agency opened before the child could reach it. "Huh? Conan-kun?" he basically heard Shinichi flinching at the sound of Ran's voice. "I'm going to go out for a while."

"Okay," he nodded at her. "See you tonight."

"See you," she waved her hand as she passed by him. "Say hello to Shinichi for me, okay?"

With that, she rushed down the stairs. The kid watched her go for a moment, dimly noticing Kogoro doing the same thing, with a look of suspicion on his face, before he heard his brother speak again.

"Tonight?" he asked, confusedly.

"Yeah, she has been doing that a lot," Conan informed him, walking inside and ignoring Kogoro as he made his way to his room. "She says she has karate practice."

There was a humming sound on the other side of the phone, which told Conan that his brother was probably in deep thought.

"Now that I think of it," the child pondered out loud. "Ran-neechan seems to be unusually happy lately. Probably she has been doing good on her club."

His brother took a sharp intake of air at that, confusing Conan about that reaction. "S-Say, Conan..." he stuttered a bit. "Do you think she...?"

"What?" the kid did not get it, blinking cluelessly.

"Do you think Ran is seeing someone?"

Conan gaped at that, shock written all over his face.

It wasn't every day that Conan was forced by Kogoro to sit inside his rental car and get taken somewhere else ─ he was the one usually forced out. He would had never gone anywhere with the man if it wasn't for Ran pressuring him to take the kid along, in fact.

Even so, Ran was worried, especially when she was told that Kogoro had been going to the hospital for a while now, and that he had some tests done.

"The doctor told me on the phone," the great detective was a bit tense. "...'Please bring your family members as well'."

At first, Conan didn't think it was anything serious ─ probably the man had just drank too much alcohol, he thought ─ but he started to doubt it when they arrived and saw the solemn and very serious face of the doctor, Yoshiteru Araide.

He looked at the papers on his hand and eventually he spoke.

"Mouri-san," both Ran and Kogoro nodded, feeling a bit anxious. "Another half a year more."

Those words prompted the three to gape and pale dramatically. Before he could say anything else, Kogoro raised from his chair and pounced on the unsuspecting doctor.

"You! How can you be so heartless?!" he screamed at him, tears collecting on his eyes. "All of sudden you tell me I've got half a year left. You should think more about your patients and take your time in telling them! Isn't that what doctors do?!"

"... For the next half a year I wanted you to stop drinking," the doctor blinked at him. "That's what I had in mind."

"... Eh...?"

As relief washed over them and Ran promised the doctor that she would make sure her father wasn't going to see another glass of alcohol in another half a year, at least, Conan could only let a dry laugh. Way to give me palpitations, he thought while he watched the doctor momentarily leave to take a call.

When Ran asked Yoshiteru's wife where the toilet was, and left to search for it, Conan worried. Knowing the girl, it was a matter of time until she lost her way inside the house, so he decided to slip out the room to go look for her.

The boy wandered through the halls of the traditional looking house until he finally found who he was looking for. He hadn't expected, however, seeing Ran kneeling down in front of some papers, picking them up, in front of a young man who seemed to be doing the same thing.

His blue eyes blinked, curiously, when their fingers lightly brushed together and Ran pulled away, a faint red blush covering her cheeks. They gazed at each other, eyes wide, exactly like two main characters on a cheesy soap that Ran would force him to watch at dinner time.

They were smiling at each other, and Conan couldn't quite hear what they were saying. Deciding to get closer, the child took a step forward.

When something barreled on his side. There was a crash and he felt himself falling on his butt, then heard steps hurrying closer. He groaned a bit, holding his head for a moment, before opening his eyes to see what had just hit him.

There was a young woman ─ by the clothes she was wearing he guessed it was the housemaid ─ sitting on the floor in the same position as him, probably after having fallen down. Between the two of them, there were several flowers, scattered over pieces of a broken vase and a pool of water.

"Ah!" once she noticed the mess she had done, and the child she had just bumped into, she panicked. "I'm so sorry! Are you hurt, little boy?"

Conan waved his hands in front of him, trying to get her to calm down. Just then, Ran reached the boy and kneeled down in front of him.

"Conan-kun!" she fussed over him. "Are you okay?!"

"I'm okay, don't worry!" he stood up, quickly, trying to reassure her. "See?"

The man that had been with Ran watched the kid flinch a little bit, then stand with his legs together while he forced a smile that somewhat convinced the girl. But it didn't fool him, so he kneeled down next to her and lifted his leg. Conan let out a shocked squeak, keeping himself from stumbling back by holding himself with the wall.

True to the man's suspictions, there was a cut on the side of his leg, blood dripping a bit. Ran gasped at the sight of it.

"Why didn't you say something?" she scolded the boy.

"It's just a scratch really," he tried to argue. "It's not a big deal."

"Honestly, you..."

The man smiled, a bit amused, at the interaction between the two. Just as he was about to stand up, he noticed the Yoshiteru stomping towards the housemaid and starting to yell at her, threatening to kick her out if this repeated again.

"Excuse me," Conan's small voice directed everyone's attention back to him, hands behind his back in a timid posture. "It wasn't her fault, Sensei. I was running around and accidentally bumped into her," he bowed slightly. "I'm so sorry!"

Blinking a bit to the little boy and then glancing at the maid, the doctor sighed. "You better clean that right away," he settled with saying to the woman, before walking away.

"Understood!" the maid said, right away, looking at the boy over her shoulder and mouthing a 'thank you' before disappearing into the hallway.

For a moment, the other two stared at the boy in silence, as he nodded at the maid. The man was the first one to chuckle. "You're a bit of a liar, aren't you?" he said, surprising him.

"Well... uh..." he smiled back at him, awkwardly.

Ran sighed loudly, while the doctor stood up. Then, he rested a hand on his little shoulder and steered him away. "Come on, young man," he told the boy. "We need to treat that cut."

"I don't need-" his words died down when he felt Ran glaring at him. "... Yes, sir."

With a pleased smile, the girl followed them.

The mystery man's name turned out to be Araide Tomoaki, a head graduate from Touto University and the son of the doctor that had seen Kogoro before. He currently sat at the opposite side of table since the doctor had invited Kogoro ─ and by addition the other two ─ to stay for dinner. Ran had accepted in a heartbeat, even if she had to give up karate for today.

Conan shifted in his chair, sitting cross legged as Kogoro jokingly asked Tomoaki to take Ran as a bride, which naturally prompted them to argue with him, flustered. The kid remained quiet throughout it all, his fingers playing with the bandages on his leg.

He frowned slightly. Tomoaki was a nice guy, without a doubt, and he figured he should've taken a liking to him from the beginning. But there was something... The way he talked with Ran, and the way she seemed to stare at him, then blush and look away... It didn't feel right.

Just in time, his phone vibrated. His eyebrow twitched when he read the text he had received from Shinichi.

"If you notice something else about Ran, please tell me."

Conan sighed and set his phone back, without giving it any further thought. He could tell from this far that jealousy was gnawing at his older brother. But that didn't give him the right to push his little brother to become a private detective to spy on his not-girlfriend.

"But the host is pretty slow," said Kogoro, as he looked at his wrist watch, clearly referring to Yoshiteru. "His working hour should be over by now."

"Bath," an old woman suddenly stepped on the room. "That man likes to take a bath before supper. Having a bath before anyone else and don't have the water dirty."

"Grandmother, putting such harsh words again!"

To say that old lady didn't like anybody on her family ─ except for apparently, Tomoaki, her only blood relative ─ was more than an understatement. She left right after scowling at the wife, without even waiting for dinner.

Just as Tomoaki was beginning to apologize for his grandmother's rude behaviour, darkness enveloped the room. Looking around at each other, confusedly, it didn't take long for them to realize there was a blackout, yet, as Conan pointed out while looking at the rest of the neighbourhood through the window, it seemed like they were the only house.

Hikaru, the clumsy housemaid from before, went to check out in the breakers, while the wife, still on the phone, stood outside the room. They all waited for a couple of minutes more than it should, but eventually the lights turned back on.

Both Kogoro and Conan stared into Ran's soul, and she blinked back, confusedly. Only then she realized she was holding onto Tomoaki's arm, instead of her father ─ who stood right in front of them, with a very unfriendly glare on his face.

The child said nothing, confusion pinching his face for a moment, until he snapped out of it. Instantly after, he pulled out his phone and typed:

"Ran-neechan is squeezing someone else's arm.

He's a doctor. A rather kind and nice one, too.

I don't think you stand a chance, Oniichan."

It didn't take a second for the reply pop into Conan's screen, yet he didn't have the time to read it. Because the wife found Araide Yoshiteru dead on the bath.

Despite all Tomoaki's efforts to revive him, his father passed away. The cause of death had been electrocution, which seemed to happen because he had been shaving his face on the bathtub, for some reason.

The police, plus Kogoro, declared it as a mere accident. Conan stood on the bathroom, watching Takagi impersonating the victim with a sharp look on his eyes. Something didn't seem to fit...

So, he screamed. Loudly so.

And watched with a bored look as Takagi, startled by it, stumbled backwards and fell painfully on his rear end. Ran was instantly at his side, scolding him from making trouble, and he pointed out the obvious. Takagi wasn't supposed to fall that way.

He almost managed to get Megure to think of it as a murder, but Kogoro stepped up and did a demonstration of how it could've happened. To say that the boy was a bit impressed, even if irritated also, was an understatement.

Yet he couldn't just let it go. "But, Kogoro-ojisan..."

"What now?"

"You missed the part where Araide-sensei turns the switch of the shaver off. I really wanted to know how it happened!"

"Huh?"

It was then that they realized it was a chargeable one. There was simply no way it could've turned off on its own, and the victim couldn't have done it if he had been shocked.

"Then, why is it turned off?" Takagi asked. "When you found him, he wasn't moving already, right?"

"Yes..."

"Isn't because of the sound?" his eyes narrowed with a smirk, then his entire expression became more childlike and innocent, as the three adults turned to watch him. "Probably that person didn't want the sound to be heard."

"Huh?" Kogoro asked him, feeling a bit irritated. "Who to who?"

"How should I know?" he smiled, in a sickly sweet smile that actually showed how much he knew instead. "I'm just a child."

And you're the detective here, stupid, was left unsaid, but it was as if he had just said it alright to Kogoro. He scowled at him before turning around to continue working.

Right after that, they went to confirm everyone's alibi. The wife had been talking on the phone, Hikaru had gone to raise the breaker, the old lady claimed she was returning to her room at the Tomoaki had been in the kitchen with the other three the entire time. This last alibi had been confirmed by Ran, who had been squeezing his arm until the lights came back.

At some point, Tomoaki seemed to notice something about the way Hikaru held her arm and stood up. Similar to how he had acted with Conan, the man took Hikaru's arm and then rolled up her shirt. There was a burn mark.

"Excuse me," he said to Megure. "I would like to give her some treatment, so you wouldn't mind if I take her to the check up room, right?"

The inspector nodded and allowed him to go with the company of an officer. Just before he left, however, he stopped him. "Oh, and one more thing," Tomoaki looked back to the man from the doorway. "Today, from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, for some reason only you had been away. Where were you at?"

"I'm the high school basketball team's replacement coach," Tomoaki explained. "When I was a student, I had to be a coach instead of someone who broke a bone, and he had asked me to coach the team until he can get out."

"A doctor being a basketball coach, huh?" Megure pondered a bit.

"If you want, ask Ran-san. The one that i'm talking about is the high school she goes to, Teitan High School," Ran's eyes snapped right at him at the mention of her name. "You know the coach of the basketball team is Tamochi-sensei, correct?

Conan could only stare at them both, in shock, while Ran nodded her head. Could the reason Ran-neechan has gone to karate practice every day actually be...?

As Tomoaki told his grandmother ─ who had stepped in something weird on the blackout and injured her feet ─ to come along, and Ran offered to help him, Conan picked his phone once more.

Shinichi's text was in the screen.

"What do you mean with that, Conan?"

There wasn't much in it, yet Conan somehow could tell. In his mind, he could see the sadness on his brother's eyes as he wrote that message. The smile on his face he would have forced to pretend everything was alright, when clearly it wasn't.

The child put the phone back. There wasn't anything he could say.

Conan knew for a fact that the culprit was the wife. But the police was still suspecting Hikaru, because her alibi couldn't be confirmed ─ it had taken her far too long to raise the breaker. He had found out why recently, when he discovered a broken vase on hidden on her cupboard.

They needed a little push in the right direction, but how?

An idea popped on his mind when he spotted Kogoro and Megure, standing on the yard with an umbrella protecting them from the pouring rain. Taking a deep breath, the boy took off running.

Only to collide with Kogoro. Hissing softly because of the pain his fall had caused, the little boy stood up quickly. Before he could apologize, Kogoro sat up and glared at him.

As the child had planned, the man had fallen into a puddle. "Hey!" now the great detective was soaked to the bone. "What's the idea?!"

"I wasn't watching where I was going?" he offered with a shrug.

"You little brat...!"

"Now, now," Megure let out an awkward laugh, restraining Kogoro so he wouldn't land a hit on the kid. "Be more careful next time, okay, Conan-kun?"

"Okay!" the child nodded with a bright smile, which annoyed the adult even more.

Kogoro scoffed at him, breaking free of Megure's grasp and stomping inside the house. The inspector merely looked at the angry detective, and the child that seemed to follow him without a clear reason and sighed, loudly. Kids these days...

"Maybe you should take a bath or something..."

Mouri could feel annoyment cursing through his veins at the sound of the seven year-old irritatingly innocent voice, who trailed behind him like a puppy, but still made sure to avoid stepping on the trail of water that Kogoro was leaving behind.

"Tell me something I don't know, squirt," the man told him, not even bothering to look at him. "Hey, make yourself useful and tell Yoko-san I'm going to borrow her bath."

"Understood!" he nodded, cutely, before disappearing around the corner.

It didn't take two seconds before his head popped up on Kogoro's view again.

"Now what?" he sighed loudly.

"I think Hikaru-san is the culprit," Conan stated.

Kogoro raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I found something weird in Hikaru-san's cupboard," the child said, then quickly continued before the man could ask him what he had been doing there in the first place. "There was a broken vase. That's a pretty suspicious thing to keep, right?"

"Idiot, she most likely broke it by accident and decided to hide it there so they wouldn't find out."

Conan seemed to ponder about it for a moment, when his eyes went wide. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Now that I think of it, Araide-sensei threatened to kick her out if she messed up again, so it makes sense she would want to hide it!"

Kogoro stopped waking there, freezing on the spot as he watched the kid, not caring if there was a pool of water forming beneath his feet. His gaze shifted to the phone sitting on the table at the end of the hall and gasped in realization.

Blinking twice, the child waited for the man to talk.

"Conan," there was a very serious expression on Kogoro's face. "Tell everyone I'm going to make my deduction as soon as I finish my bath. And tell Takagi and Inspector Megure to meet me here in five minutes."

The child nodded and hurriedly went around the corner.

Kogoro didn't notice the wide smirk that had appeared on Conan's face, though.

A/N:

Gamelover41592: Actually, Conan learned Vodka and Gin's codenames at the train in chapter 8 of this fic. I had to go with the manga version for this part because the anime messed up and completely changed it. But, yeah, those men were actually them.