131. "Please come over. I don't want to be alone on Christmas."

Christmas Blues

"Ne, Kaito."

She listens to his quiet breaths, her own drowned by the irregular drumming of her heart.

"Please come over. I don't want to be alone on Christmas."

She feels her hand shaking and bites her dry lower lip in anticipation of his response.

"Why do you have my number, Aoko?"

Not how but why do you have my number as if it is a crime – as if he doesn't want her to have it, doesn't want her to contact him. But that's Kaito so he should know it's her number – if he just doesn't pick up, he doesn't have to talk to her.

"I…"

The truth is – she's tired. She's tired of pretending, tired of a hatred she doesn't feel anymore. She's tired of regretting and she's tired of her cowardice.

"Does it matter?"

Her voice is soft, resigned.

"It does to me."

And his voice is sharp and clear, so different to hers and though Aoko knows that they are different now with worlds between them, she can't help the resignation seeping into her bones, leaving her cold and shivering.

She lowers her arm with the phone in her hand and watches the screen light up with the silently ticking clock and the name she used to hate the most.

It's different now, everything is just different and though time hasn't healed her wounds, not at all, they are as fresh as they were on day one, just as bleeding, just as hurting, but she's learned to tune them out, to ignore the pain and live with it.

She caresses the edge of the phone – a present of her father, many years ago, and it barely works anymore but she's simply unable to throw it away for a new one – drowning in a hopelessness she hasn't felt for a long time.

"I'm hanging up, Aoko."

So, he really doesn't want to talk to her, doesn't want to see her.

She's not mad, weirdly, not anymore. She's not sad either but when the screen lights up again and the clock stops ticking, she feels this dropping feeling in her stomach and wishes things weren't like this.

She doesn't know how to tell him that she just can't delete his number or that she can't stop thinking about him. Or that she doesn't hate him anymore. She's only half heartedly after Kaitou Kid now because that is her job and she doesn't know what else to do and she thought he knows that, too, but maybe he doesn't after all.

The edge of the phone feels rough with dents in it indicating the rigorous and yearlong use of it but it feels like home, something she can trust in. The thread that keeps her head out of the water.

After some time, she flips the phone closed and sighs.

She's stranded in a country she doesn't know with a language she doesn't understand on a day that she doesn't want to spend alone.

Staying inside her hotel room feels too suffocating, too unbearable, so Aoko leaves and wanders around aimlessly. It's better to get lost in a foreign place than to lose her mind in a closed off room, anyway.

In the end, after hours of walking around, her feet take her to a clock tower not unlike the one in Ekoda, shrouded in Christmas lights, bright and colorful and she stops and closes her eyes in remembrance. The cold is biting, the snowfall quite heavy and she shivers in her clothing but even that is better than the freezing cold room that awaits her later.

"Tch." Suddenly, something warm is being wrapped around her neck and had she not been half frozen, she would have decked that person right in the face. "Geez, first you tell me to come over and when I do, you're nowhere to be found. Then I keep looking for you for half an eternity and when I find you, you're half frozen because you didn't even put on a scarf. Aren't you a handful? No wonder you're still single."

Turning around hurriedly with eyes wide like saucers, she takes in the man she didn't think she'd ever see again, with the carefree grin he used to sport all the time, and the rose he conjures out of nowhere, and the untamable hair that just screams Kuroba Kaito.

"Kaito," she says breathlessly.

"Merry Christmas."

His grin settles into a sincere smile.

"What are you doing here?" She's baffled Kaito went looking for her when he just so rudely hung up on her – just what in the world is he even thinking?

"You're wounding me, Aoko. As if I could leave you alone on Christmas."

She's puzzled, and she sure doesn't understand what is going on in his mind, and it's been years but it feels like she saw him just yesterday and everything is alright again.

Thank for all the lovely reviews :) I wish you lovely Christmas holidays!