The next day, Conan was eager for breakfast. The events of yesterday had left him quite exhausted, both physically and mentally, so he had opted to skip dinner and headed straight to bed. So, needless to say he was now quite hungry.
Conan was already halfway done with his first bowl while Ran and Kogoro had just started. They periodically kept sending him worried looks - he wasn't sure if it was because he cried his eyes out last night, or because he was scarfing down this meal like he hadn't eaten in weeks.. or both. The atmosphere at the table was pretty awkward, considering, but he was just a bit too hungry to care.
Conan had reached the last dregs of his bowl when Ran decided to speak. "Conan-kun, you should slow down. You could get sick."
Conan paused and just blinked at her. "But I'm hungry." He half whined through a mouthful of food.
It also didn't help that Ran just so happened to make Conan's favorite, curry.
"But if you eat slower you'll enjoy it for longer."
"Yeah, we don't want you to choke and die or something." Kogoro mumbled. Ran sent him a small harsh look.
Conan looked at his bowl frustratedly. They were both right. Conan, of all people, would definitely know the dangers of eating quickly and how easily one could choke to death, and it wasn't often Ran made curry for breakfast; it'd be a waste not to enjoy.
"Fine..." He grumbled, then ate his last few bites at a slightly slower pace.
He quickly went to the kitchen to get a second serving, then began eating again.
Since the conversation had ended, the awkward atmosphere had come back in full force.
After a few more moments of silent eating, Ran stopped and started staring determinedly at some random spot on the table. She took a deep breath and turned to Conan. "You can talk to us, you know."
Conan paused and lifted an eyebrow at her. "Hm?"
"I mean, if you want to, you can talk to us. You don't have to, but it'll probably help."
Conan looked down and started chewing slowly in thought. Telling them actually sounded really appealing - to get it all off his chest - but the issue was that he couldn't.
He couldn't just say to them, 'You know Shinichi? Yeah he was almost killed by some super secret dangerous organization so now he's in hiding cause they think he's dead, and I'm actually pretending to be Shinichi to a couple people. Well turns out that was a bad idea and now that same organization is kinda after me too! Oh and also your new English teacher is probably a member too, and knows who I am, and may be trying to kill me! And also my parents killed people!' He'd be thrown into a mental hospital, or even a juvenile detention center.
Well, there was more than that he supposed... A lot more actually. A lot that wasn't as crazy or incriminating, that he actually could talk about.
"Haibara almost died yesterday." He decided to say.
The tension was suddenly thick. Ran and Kogoro both looked vaguely horrified.
Conan looked at his food and pushed it around with his chopsticks awkwardly. "Well," he continued, for their sake, "it's kinda a long story but the bus we were taking to the ski resort got hijacked and it was this whole thing." He sounded far more casual than he should, like he was recounting his school day and not a horribly traumatic event. Maybe it would be better if he pretended he was. "But basically, they brought bombs with them and the switch to detonate them accidentally got turned on. So everyone was like rushing to escape, but Haibara, uh.. got stuck.. so I went back for her and it was really close."
Ran and Kogoro looked even more horrified than before. They seemed to be speechless.
"My arm got hurt a bit." He decided to add. He lifted it up and pulled back his sleeve so they could see the bandages. "See?"
"Ah..!" Ran was broken out of her silence. "Oh no. It doesn't hurt, does it?"
"No." He shook his head. "The doctors said it was just road rash."
"Oh, that's good."
They went back to their meals, letting the silence return. Conan finished about half of his bowl before deciding he might as well continue.
"I know it was kinda a while ago, but," he said, "the whole bombing thing in the tower was pretty bad too." The two turned their attention towards him again, looking a bit apprehensive. "I wasn't even trying to stop it. I just, reflexively did. I thought I was gonna die." He felt years prick at his eyes, but blinked them away and followed it down with another bite of food. He had to wonder how he still had tears left to cry after all that yesterday.
Ran just looked sad now. "That- that's not.. a while. That was only a week ago. You can still..."
She didn't seem to be grasping her words well but Conan understood what she meant. He knew it was perfectly reasonable to still be affected by it, but it was starting to feel like old news with all that's been happening.
Conan just nodded.
Ran paused for a second, the look of pity on her face being replaced with a more determined one. "You.. no kid should have to deal with that. No one should."
Conan's grip on his chopsticks minutely tightened. It really wasn't fair.
"Yeah," Kogoro said, "when I was your age I was still riding with training wheels, let alone diffusing bombs."
Conan blinked, hiding a smile with his hand. "You.. didn't know how to ride a bike when you were my age?"
"Yeah but you can't tell anyone." He pointed his spoon at him for extra effect.
Conan snorted.
"Hey!" Kogoro shouted. "Why are you laughing?"
"Nothing, nothing." He waved a hand. Kogoro looked at him suspiciously. Even Ran was hiding her giggles. "You know, me and the detective boys can all ride our bikes and we're all pretty good. And I can ride a skateboard too. I can even do a kickflip-"
"Hey!" Kogoro interrupted, his face getting increasingly red from probably both anger and embarrassment. "I get it, I get it! No need to brag."
Haibara didn't show up to school, which wasn't all too surprising really. But, other than that, and the small fuss the detective boys made, the school day went on as normal. The same couldn't be said about the afternoon though. Apparently, Sato was having an arranged marriage? With Shiratori? And had made a deal where if Takagi didn't show up, she would actually marry him?
While he really did not want to get involved with the love lives of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Sonoko had pretty much dragged him along, and the thought of Sato actually marrying Shiratori was worse than the thought of just helping Takagi stop it. So, he had ended up solving a theft case for Takagi (at least it wasn't a murder), and having Araide pretend to be Takagi at the last minute. (Based on the look Sato had given him, it seemed she knew. He was now glad Haibara wasn't there because she might've been able to figure out Sato knew - he still had not told her in protection of his safety.)
The next day at school, Haibara did show up.
She had switched up her hairstyle, wearing it in a ponytail, which, again, wasn't all too surprising. But what was worse was her attitude. She was noticeably more gloomy and snappy than usual, and it had kind of spread to him too. While Sato's arranged marriage from yesterday served as a distraction, today served as a reminder, and made him realize that he was still not over all that shit. He knew that he wouldn't be after crying about it once, but he wished he was.
The detective boys noticed their attitudes too if their occasional hushed whispering was anything to go by. They were clearly planning something, but Conan didn't really care.
He still didn't care when they invited him to the park to play soccer after school. Haibara, the traitor, was able to leave school before they could ask her, but Conan wasn't so lucky.
Before he knew it, he was dragged to the park and into a game of soccer.
Genta was acting as the goalkeeper, slightly crouched down with fake determination as if ready to stop Conan's kick at a moment's notice. Ayumi, on Genta's team, was just standing off to the side, having clearly no intention to stop Conan. And Mitsuhiko, the one on his team, had pretty much carried the whole game; he had gotten the ball all the way to the other team's goal, but had passed the ball to Conan at the last moment.
"Don't let them win, Conan-kun." Mitsuhiko said, with fake encouragement. "You can do it."
"As if I'll let that happen." Genta said, with fake competitiveness.
Conan honestly just wanted this to be over.
Now, with all his months of practice he had actually been improving a little. Most of the time he could kick a stationary ball at a target with relative accuracy. But, right now, Conan could not care less.
Without any thought, he meagerly swung his foot at the ball. It rolled away practically sideways, missing the goal by a mile.
The silence was palpable.
"Um..." Ayumi was the first to speak. "You're improving!" She tried to sound cheerful, but the doubt was clear. "A few months ago it would've gone backwards!"
Wow. He didn't even care about improving in soccer but it still kind of stung.
"A-Ayumi-chan..." Mitsuhiko said.
Conan sighed, looking down to check his watch. "I should leave soon. Ran-neechan won't want me out too late."
She would actually. When Ran heard he was going to play soccer with them she was extremely excited and had urged him to go. But he really did not want to pretend like he enjoyed playing soccer right now.
"Eh!?" The detective boys all shouted in unison. They all hung their heads in disappointment, looking like he just told them he never wanted to play soccer with them ever again.
"O-oh..." Mitsuhiko said dejectedly. "Well, there's nothing that can be done..."
"But, you'll at least come to the circus with us tomorrow, right?" Ayumi asked hopefully.
Conan kind of didn't want to, but it's not like he despised the circus or anything, and combined with all three of the detective boys' puppy dog eyes...
"Sure..." He reluctantly agreed.
Haibara didn't come, again. She flat out refused, opting to stay home and 'do homework' which was code for mope. The detective boys, including Agasa, all seemed a little downtrodden (although he assumed Agasa was partly because the circus tickets were expensive).
But, they cheered up pretty quickly after the show started.
It was alright. It wasn't really anything he hadn't seen before, since his parents had taken him to the circus a couple times. He really enjoyed it when he was that young, but it had kind of lost its spark now. It felt as if the six months (?) he spent in Beika had rapidly matured him or something. He wondered how many kills or missions those tickets had cost.
All in all, he left the circus with only bittersweet memories.
However, what was new was meeting a guy named James Black, a near doppleganger of the circus' sponsor, who then later got kidnapped (well, kidnapping wasn't exactly new, but compared to his past circus visits it was). He had left them a code with a strap that he bought, covering the letters 'P', '&', and 'A', in the strap's message 'Paul & Annie', with his blood. It was pretty vague but Conan was eager to figure it out.
After a bit of fruitless guessing, they got their first lead.. well more like remembered it. Ayumi had left her detective badge with James and hadn't realized until now, meaning he could track his location.
Without wasting anymore time, Conan brought out his phone and called Takagi.
"Ah, Kudo. What is it?" Takagi answered.
"Do you think you could set up a police checkpoint around where I'm highway crossed the prefectural border of Saitama for me?" He asked, cutting to the chase.
Everyone else looked at him eagerly.
"H-huh?" Takagi sounded a bit taken off guard.
"There was this guy we were gonna meet for lunch but he didn't show up and we found one of his belongings with blood on it like a secret message so we think he probably got kidnapped." He explains, taking a breath after the long sentence. "And Ayumi left her badge with him so I'm tracking him right now." He added.
Takagi paused, sighing. "Even if it's you, Kudo-kun, I can't just set up a checkpoint with such uncertain information..."
"But he could die!" He yelled at him with urgency.
There was a small muffled commotion on the other end of the phone before a new voice spoke. "Ah, Kudo-kun?" Sato said. "There was a traffic accident around that area and Yumi's on traffic control. I can ask her to check for any suspicious cars."
"Ah, that'd be great!" Conan said cheerfully. He quickly began telling Sato the relevant information as she wrote it down. "Also, the culprits might be armed." He added.
"Eh, they might be armed?" Sato didn't even sound alarmed, and rather like she was smiling. "Don't worry! Me and Takagi will head there now!" She sounded all too cheerful.
Conan heard a muffled, "Huh!?" From Takagi before Sato hung up.
He smiled at his success, placing his phone back in his pocket. Maybe Sato finding out wasn't so bad, she seemed to be trustworthy, and there's no way she would've done that if she didn't think he was Shinichi.
Conan looked over at Agasa, serious again. "Professor could you go get your Beetle? We're going too."
Agasa nodded and left.
As Conan was watching him, he looked out at the road just in time to see a truck drive past. It was a generic pick up truck, but what was interesting was the driver. He had quite a serious expression on his face, black hair and a beanie, wearing fairly normal clothes, not all too crazy, but he was looking at them.
Their eyes caught for a fraction of a second before he passed. Conan watched the truck drive away as an odd feeling sunk into the pit of his stomach. He couldn't place it, but he knew he didn't particularly like it.
He forgot about it a moment later to focus on the more pressing issue.
His plan was really stupid, but it sure was fun.
A sort of giddy excitement rose up within him as he screamed for help out of the window. Everything seemed to be going as expected. The criminals were falling into their pretend kidnapping plan, following Agasa'a Beetle with a little encouragement from the other, real, police cars. Seeing this stupid plan acually work was extremely satisfying, but perhaps a bit too much - a smile was starting to work its way onto his face. He decided to sit back down - the other detective boys could handle it well enough. It would look weird if a kidnapped kid was smiling anyway.
He turned his head to look out the other window instead. He couldn't see much of the action, but he didn't particularly mind. And that's when he saw it again: the same exact truck from earlier, with the same exact creepy driver. As if imitating the events from a few hours ago, they caught eyes. But this time it lasted a bit longer, and this time the man smirked at him.
Creepy, was Conan's first though, but his second was much worse. He was finally able to place that strange feeling from earlier. It was recognition. He was the guy from the busjacking, the one who was going to be used as a fake culprit along with Araide. The man had been wearing a mask, but he could tell he was the same - he had the same hair, beanie, and sharp eyes.
And then came along a third, even worse, thought. Haibara never specifically said that Jodie was Vermouth. He had just kind of assumed based on her timely appearance and his previous interactions with her. But maybe Haibara's Black Organization member sixth sense (or whatever that was) wasn't specific enough to pick out someone from a crowd, and was rather based on general vicinity. It made more sense anyway. And that would mean anyone on that bus could've been Vermouth. Including that guy, who also seemed to enjoy wearing darker colors, like black.
No, Jodie was still his main suspect. She's the only one on that bus that acted suspicious, well, until now...
Conan shook his head, trying to forget about that for the time being and focus on the situation at hand, but even as the criminals got surrounded and arrested, and as the hostage James mysteriously disappeared, his mind couldn't stop wondering. He kept telling himself that Jodie was the important one and he shouldn't be giving himself any more to deal with, but he couldn't just completely put that man aside in good detective conscience. Jodie still definitely was his main focus, but he figured it would be nice to dig into that guy a little, or at least to know who he is.
So, it was decided. After Conan got home from questioning and Ran and Kogoro were asleep, he snuck down into the main office with his phone and called Takagi.
"Did someone get kidnapped again..?" He answered with clear resignation and exhaustion in his voice; he was probably asleep considering the time.
"No, no, I was just.. curious, about something."
"Oh?" Takagi sounded slightly relieved.
"Yeah, could you get me a profile of everyone that was on that bus? The one that got hijacked a few days ago?"
There was a good few beats of silence one the other end, and Conan swore he heard a sigh. "You do realize that's illegal.. right?" Takagi finally said.
"It is..?"
"Yeah! I can't just give classified information to a minor!" The poor man sounded frantic.
"You do realize I only look like a child, right?" Conan deadpanned, mimicking Takagi's previous statement.
Takagi sighed again. "You're still 17, Kudo..."
Conan blinked, now his turn to take a long pause. "Oh, right..."
Takagi sighed for the third time. Another silence passed.
Conan coughed. "So, uh.. could you still get me those?"
Takagi let out a quiet groan, sounding defeated and too tired to be dealing with all of this. "...Fine." He eventually conceded. "Just, give me a few days. I don't want to get caught."
Conan mulled over that for a second, deciding how pressing the issue was and if that was an acceptable amount of time. He figured he might as well save the guy some strife. "Alright, thanks."
Takagi yawned. "Okay then, bye."
"Bye."
This time, the detective boys had forced Conan to the bookstore. Haibara actually came, being unable to escape since it was just going to be a 'quick trip.
Ayumi had her left arm linked with Haibara's and her right linked with Conan's, dragging them through the store. She stopped by a small shelf and unlinked her arm with Haibara to point. "Look, look! There's a lot of science-y books! You like that right?" She looked expectantly at Haibara.
Haibara just shrugged.
Ayumi decided that was sufficient and dragged Conan elsewhere, leaving Haibara. She stopped at the mystery section. "Look, there's so much Sherlock!" She pointed, looking at him with a blinding smile.
"I think Shinichi already owns all of those."
Her face fell. "Oh..." She paused, looking at the ground. "But, there's lots of other stuff too!" She tried.
"Hmm." Was all Conan said.
Ayumi left to go find Mitsuhiko and Genta by the manga section.
It really did end up being a 'quick trip' and all they ended up buying was some manga.
Thankfully, the detective boys had no more outings planned for the next day. Although that didn't mean he was free since Sonoko wanted to go to some new cafe. Normally he would decline, but it was giving a major discount to any party with a child under six. Conan was, in fact, not under six, nor did he want to pretend to be, but Sonoko was determined to get that discount and had forced him to come along. And, besides, free cake was free cake.
"Conan-kun, do you know what X means?" Ran suddenly asked him.
"Huh?" He looked up at her. He hadn't exactly been paying attention to Ran and Sonoko's conversation, so that had came out of nowhere. "X?"
Ran nodded as Sonoko began cackling next to her. "Don't even bother Ran! There's no way a kid like him will know."
Conan glared at her. He knew many things, actually.
"But he knows a lot of weird things." Ran said back.
Exactly.
"Do you mean the letter..?" He asked Ran, ignoring Sonoko.
"Hm..." Ran out a finger to her chin, looking a bit troubled. "Not exactly? Jodie mentioned it at the end of her lesson today." (Conan had to hide his discomfort at the mention of Jodie.) "She said it had some sort of special meaning, for girls specifically."
Sonoko was still giggling and had this irritating smug look on her face.
Conan continued to ignore her as he pondered, placing a hand on his chin as he would when solving a murder. X already had many different meanings unassociated with the letter, but the 'for girls specifically' was kind of strange. It reminded him of something silly his mom would sometimes write on her letters, xoxo. (He wished everything would stop reminding him of his parents lately.) She said it meant hugs and kisses. So, he assumed the X was the kiss part..?
He looked up at Ran. "I think I might know what it means!"
It was incredibly satisfying to watch Sonoko's smug expression be replaced with a surprised one. "What!?" She exclaimed. "You know!?"
"Mhm!" He nodded. "My mom used to write it on her letters."
Sonoko's shock quickly changed to frustration. "Damn, that's right." She mumbled. "She said it was an American thing.. forgot."
"Hey, Conan-kun..?" Ran turned to him, giving him a very sweet look. "Can you tell me what it means?" She plead, putting her hands together as if in prayer..
"Wait, don't tell her!" Sonoko yelled.
Conan didn't even glance at Sonoko and smiled at Ran. "Of course, Ran-neechan. It means-"
In only a second Sonoko had darted over to Conan and shoved a hand over his mouth. "I said don't tell her!"
He grabbed her hand and removed it. "Why would I listen to you."
"C'mon, she has to figure it out herself! It won't be funny that way."
Conan gave her a deadpan stare for only a second before turning back to Ran. "Anyways, it mea-"
And the hand was back on his mouth. "I'll buy you an extra item at the cafe." Sonoko said far too seriously.
Conan paused and narrowed his eyes as Sonoko removed her hand. "...Two items."
"Deal."
A small groan could be heard from Ran.
"Sorry Ran-neechan."
She just sighed before looking back at Sonoko. "But haven't her lessons really improved?"
"Oh, yeah! They used to be super serious but now they're really fun!"
When Conan realized they were talking about Jodie again, he decided to stop listening. The less he thinks about Jodie, the better.
However it seemed the universe had other plans since Jodie chose that exact moment to make her unwanted appearance. "Hi girls! Even if you flatter me I won't make the exams easier!"
It took a lot of willpower to react normally when he heard her voice. He somehow succeeded, but he could still feel his blood run cold and his muscles tense up like a spring.
He knew now she may not be Vermouth, but that still didn't mean she wasn't his top suspect. Nor did it erase the fear.
He dared to send a quick glance at Jodie. Thankfully, she wasn't staring back at him like she often would, but instead was continuing the conversation with the girls.
He released some of the tension with a small sigh. Making sure to stay unnoticed, he slightly slowed his pace so that he was more hidden by Ran. He hoped that, maybe, if he stayed unnoticed for long enough, Jodie would either lose interest or just leave. She was a teacher, right? She must have papers to grade or something. She can't just stay out the whole day, right?
"There's something I want to ask you guys about." Jodie said. Conan had missed a lot of the prior conversation but he immediately zeroed back in. "Mind if I tag along?"
Oh for fucks sake.
