Sorry for taking so long I've had a bit of writer's block for this story lately, meanwhile Ideas for other stories have been flooding in like crazy (I have a three secret projects I'm working on) I might upload one of them pretty soon...

In this chapter: Hakuba is worried, Shinichi has rotten luck, Heiji is sick of being 'cute', Kaito questions his love life

Please review or else~

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I don't think it needs to be said that the kissing idea was disregarded almost immediately after the realization that the closest thing I have to romance in my life is my apparent obsession with Kaitou Kid and that our conversation dissolved into awkward meaningless chatter.

"Does anyone else find it odd that in America they sometimes call toilets 'the John' after it's creator John C. Crapper, but in England they sometimes call it 'the Lou'? I mean John is a guy's name and Lou is a girl's name so is the toilet supposed to be a boy or a girl?"

"Is it not more odd that you brought that up?"

See? Awkward. Meaningless. Chatter.

I blame Kuroba.

Around the time that we actually realized that the conversation was going no where (or at the very least wasn't heading anywhere that would actually make a difference in our odd situation) we mutually agreed that we should just go back to going about each other's normal daily lives as we waited for Kuroba's mysterious helpful person to figure out what to do. It occurs to me that we should have just done that to begin with, and that we actually made no progress at all.

Well at least we now had some hope of getting back to normal, before there had apparently been something stopping that person from helping us.

...

An awkward air of silence hung in the air as Kaito and I headed to our respective temporary homes.

I'm not sure if it was his luck, my luck, or maybe even Hakuba's luck that caused it but somehow we ran into a murder case between the park we'd met up at and Ekoda. Not that it was a difficult to solve case, in fact there was no trick so it was especially simple, the problem was that I wasn't a detective at the moment I was a magician but Kaito was a detective. Of course everything was easily settled when I stood behind him and delivered a deduction with Hakuba's voice (finding myself able to use the other detective's voice with creepish ease) as he acted as though he was the one talking, in much the same way I'd made deductions with Agasa-hakase while I was Conan.

That's not the bit of bad luck I was referring to, the issue was that almost as soon as we had handled the case we bumped into Aoko who cheerfully invited (I say invited loosely as we really didn't have much choice in the matter) us to go shopping with her.

Kaito and I looked at each other and sighed.

She at least knew I wasn't Kaito which meant I wouldn't have to put on any kind of act but she didn't know that 'Hakuba' was Kaito which meant that we would have to keep going along with our earlier lie or just admit that we'd been lying before. Neither of which would end that well for Kaito as it seemed the more he acted like Hakuba the more he wound up acting like him subconsciously, but telling Aoko that we had lied to her would probably end in one of her signature mop chases which he probably wouldn't be able to handle in Hakuba's body.

"Has there been any progress in that case you're working on?" Aoko asked me suddenly.

I replied, "There's been a little bit, I might be able to wrap the case up soon."

"Of course if I were the one working on the case I'd have already solved it by now," Kaito bragged, perfectly copying Hakuba's overly proud nature.

"Yeah right, you never would have gotten this far," I responded snidely, layering sarcasm on top of my words, "You wouldn't have been able to solve that murder we just ran into without my help."

Much to my -and probably Kaito's as well- Aoko defended Hakuba, "Hakuba is a good detective! He's going to catch Kid... someday."

Kaito and I looked at each other and laughed.

...

It was hilarious, I wouldn't have put it past Kuroba to have set up that entire thing just to make the utter lack of romance in Hakuba's life into a punchline... though I doubted that was the case. Even if we hadn't made any progress I at least go a laugh out of it and didn't have to act like a kid around them.

I didn't get to laugh long.

Guess who decided to come all the way from Osaka to visit me?

I'll give you a hint. It's not Hakuba. It's a girl that always seems to have her hair in a ponytail, the only other person that would have been in Osaka that would know that I had been turned into Conan.

Yes, I'm talking about Kazuha.

As soon as she came into the detective agency she looked at me and stopped suddenly before rushing forward to hug me (read: suffocate me with her chest) all the while loudly proclaiming, "Oh Heiji!~ Yer jus' so cute!"

Honestly, I never knew Kudo had it so rough before. I mean, yes, it felt totally awesome to have my (well Conan/Kudo's) face squished into her chest but I really couldn't breath and I was probably going to die of a nosebleed once she let go of me, either that or I'd get killed by her if she noticed the nosebleed. Kudo probably goes through stuff like this almost everyday with Neechan, it's a wonder he's still alive.

I managed to speak though my voice was muffled, "You're... choking... me... Kazuha..."

"Oh! I'm sorry Heiji!" She said as she let go of me, acting notably tsundere as though she realized exactly what she'd been doing but I highly doubted that she did because would have never let me live if she had, "Ya jus' looked so cute I couldn' help myself."

"Ahou! I'm not a stuffed animal ya know!" I responded, "'Course it'll hurt if ya squeeze me like that!"

Being 'cute' was beginning to become exhausting, I couldn't be sure how much longer I could keep it up without going crazy and stabbing someone for calling me 'cute'.

I'm not sure how Kudo manages to lie to the girl he loves everyday and is still able up with all this 'cute' crap? One thing's for sure, the guy has some serious guts (not literally, metaphorical guts). I knew wouldn't be able to take it.

...

I couldn't help but wonder a little bit if Aoko really thought that Hakuba might catch Kid -well me- someday, did she have a crush on him or something? I had to know.

"Aoko-kun, answer me honestly," I asked, I managed to keep up my act of being Hakuba despite the fact that I was having a mental breakdown thanks to my poker face, "What are your feelings for Kuroba-kun?"

Shinichi shot me an 'isn't that kind of cheating' -look, which I answered with an 'oh and turning into a child and living with your crush isn't cheating' -look. Point is between the two of us he's cheating way more.

"Why... why would you ask something like that?" Aoko asked, looking so shy that if I almost didn't believe that she was capable of chasing an international phantom thief around a classroom with a mop- but if anything I've learned from Tantei-kun (besides the underwear trick) it's that looks can be rather deceiving.

"It has to do with a case," I claimed, knowing that Shinichi has gotten away with using similar excuses on Ran before. Sure Hakuba wasn't that close to Aoko, but she's a policeman's daughter so she's not going to let a crime go unsolved if confessing her feelings will help solve it. Besides it wasn't even entirely a lie, if she answered this honestly she'd be helping me solve the case that is my love life.

Aoko seemed embarrassed, looking over at Shinichi and then immediately looking down at the ground, "I... I like Kaito..."

Even if I had been expecting that sort of response it was still shocking to hear the real thing. I'd never expected her to say it so out rightly...

"I'll just leave you two alone," Shinichi said, then he snickered -something that in my experience was usually followed by a soccer ball being kicked with demonic force- adding in a whisper that would have been loud enough for Aoko to hear, "Kaito."

And here I though that Shinichi of all people in the group would appreciate the importance of having a secret identity! Why on Earth would he go out of his way to ruin mine! It's not like I go around telling everyone he's Edogawa Conan and Kudo Shinichi... well at least he didn't tell her I'm Kaitou Kid...

Aoko's expression couldn't be described as simply embarrassed or angry, a new emotion would have to be made up to fully describe the look on her face when she realized who I was.

"Kaito?"