Detective Conan: The Yellow Sheets Alibi (Part 3)
Summary: Conan recovers from his less-than-dry train ride and tries to come to grips with what's been going on with his body.
Notice: This is part 3 of Detective Conan: The Yellow Sheets Alibi. Check out part one and two before reading. Or don't. Your call I guess.
o-o-o-o-o-o
Conan, Ran, and Sonoko were out shopping in the hippest, youngest district in Tokyo: Harajuku. Trendy teens were wearing their finest and flashiest outfits. Ran and Sonoko where older by a few years than most of the teens and they stood out in their fashionable but somewhat modest clothes. Conan, still a ways away from hitting puberty, attempted to not stand out in the crowd by holding Ran's sweater strategically in front of his wet shorts.
After a short bit of walking and checking out various stores Ran and Conan were able to slip away from Sonoko for just long enough to get him some pants and new underwear, which Conan promptly went to change into.
When Conan entered the restroom to change, however, he noticed he really needed to pee again. He looked at his watch and saw it hadn't even been an hour since he'd peed his pants. He took a second to recover from using 'peed his pants' as a checkpoint but he was still becoming worried about the frequency his bladder was filling. After all, he had barely finished the Coke when it started to flush out of him.
Conan relieved himself in the toilet and turned to his pants and underwear. He unbuttoned his shorts and wiggled a bit, letting them drop to the floor. He lined up his underwear and pants and stepped into them then reached down to pull them up. The pain in his abdomen came back even harder this time. He thought for a second and decided to use gravity as best he could, after all he was in a one toilet bathroom with a lock so he had room to spare. With his feet already in his pants he fell backwards, letting his underwear and pants slide down to rest right under his bottom. It hurt, sure, but a hell of a lot less than bending himself over did. From there he slid his pants the rest of the way up then stood back on his feet.
Conan buttoned himself up and the three of them went back to shopping. About every half-hour, however, Conan would sneak off needing to use the restroom. Conan could tell something was wrong and as they walked around the stores he was beginning to put 2 and 2 together. 'Maybe increased urination is a sign of the medicine Haibara gave me…' he considered. He decided to stop drinking just in case. It made his trips to the bathroom more infrequent but it also started to take a toll on his stamina.
Ran was keeping a close eye on the boy today and couldn't help but notice him sneaking off to the bathroom. She started to worry. Not just about the thought of him having a bladder infection, either. He was showing signs of dehydration.
Seeing that Conan wasn't feeling well the three of them decided to cut the day short and headed home. Sonoko called for a car. She didn't want the situation on the train to end up repeating itself.
o-o-o-o-o-o
The car arrived at Mouri's Detective Agency, where Conan and Ran live, and they all got out of the car to say their goodbye's. Conan gave a tired "thanks for the ride" before heading into the house. Ran and Sonoko stayed behind.
"Is he feeling alright?" Sonoko asked Ran. "He didn't seem like himself today."
"Well after what happened at the station I think he decided not to drink anything," she replied.
"Does this happen a lot then?" Sonoko asked, looking up at the balcony on the third floor.
"Oh!" exclaimed Ran. "I completely forgot about the futon. Please don't tell him, this is the first time he's done anything like this." Sonoko smiled and made a zipping motion. Ran continued "Anyway I should make sure he drinks something, thanks for the ride."
o-o-o-o-o-o
When Ran came inside she went straight to business. She made Conan drink a glass of water then sit at the TV with another glass. While Conan was distracted she pulled his futon off the balcony and switched off the fan in his room. Making him feel better about wetting his bed was a bust but at least he didn't have to sit around staring at his mess all day.
Conan, having drank his water, was beginning to get his wits back. He knew the first thing he needed to do was set a timer to see how fast the water would go through his system. He then heard Ran upstairs and remembered his wet futon. He realized Sonoko must have seen it and put two and two together. Why had she not teased him more? Why was Ran so nonchalant about all this?
'Because I'm a kid,' he recognized. He could cry, he could fuss, he could get sick, and he could soak through his shorts because after 17 years on this earth he was, again, a child. All this time he had tried not to be a hassle and not seem immature. He'd even helped solve cases for Ran's father and made him a famous detective. But none of the mattered when he couldn't even keep himself dry.
He remembered back to what started this: Professor Agasa suggesting he try a medicine to throw off Ran's suspicions. It clicked. Aha! It wasn't his fault he kept wetting himself, it was the medicine. He jumped up from the couch and called Haibara.
"Hello?" Conan said into the phone.
"I've been trying to call all day, where were you? You try a new drug and don't think to update me on how it went? I was starting to worry," Haibara spat out as soon as he spoke.
"Sorry, it's been a long day and I got distracted, "Conan replied sheepishly.
"Hm," she grunted. "So, any symptoms?" she asked. If Conan had the same embarrassing problem with the drug as she had then she wanted him to say it first.
Conan felt likewise. "I've been having some stomach pain when I bend over," he was willing to tell her. "Is that normal?"
"Yeah, I've got that too."
"I was trying to get dressed and it hurt a lot," he said, leaving out key details.
"I've been wearing full body skirts, it makes it easier for me. Not sure how you'll handle it."
Conan knew that would be trouble in the future but until then he had a bigger issue to dance his way into. "Am I supposed to be feeling any other symptoms?"
Haibara, too, was willing to dance. She decided to try a scattershot method and hope Conan would take the bait. "Well potentially there's a few, though it might be different from person to person. Drowsiness, dry eyes, sore legs, loss of appetite..." she listed off the top of her head, then added the only real ones she knew of: "...erratic mood swings, and frequent urination."
Those last ones hit Conan. He stuck his toes in the water. "How frequent?"
'He took the hook!' Haibara thought to herself. Still she needed to be careful. "Well it varies, how frequently are you going?"
"Conan, who's on the phone?" Ran asked, finishing up Conan's bedding and coming into the living room.
Conan jumped. "No one!" he exclaimed, then realized how suspicious that was. "Just Haibara, we were just saying bye."
Haibara heard this and responded "Make sure to call me tomorrow," before hanging up. 'So close,' she thought. It had been about 3 days since she stopped taking the medicine and she was still having frequent accidents and needing The Professor to help change her. She wasn't lying when she said she'd been wearing full bodied skirts, but the reality is she wore them to make it easier for The Professor to pull her pull-up on and off. Her only dependence came from the fact she could put on her own diaper while lying down, not that it made her feel any more mature.
Conan and Ran spent the night watching movies together while Conan put some energy on calculating how much he was going. He found himself needing to pee after only 20 minutes of drinking. He hardly drank anything the rest of the day. Eventually they said their goodnights and went their separate way. Ran considered reminding Conan to try to pee before he went to sleep but she thought it might hurt the child's feelings.
Conan got ready for bed. Ran had already laid out his pajamas, cleaned from last night's accident. Conan was able to get the shirt on but he found it too painful to put on his pajama bottoms. He'd have to make due without.
He then turned to the medicine. He knew he couldn't force the large pill down without some lubrication so he took the pill with as little liquid as he could to get it down. Then he looked at the clock. He counted out 30 minutes so he could use the toilet once more before he fell asleep.
He paced the room, watching the clock. The sedative in the medicine making him sleepier and sleepier. He walked back and forth, back and forth. He lost track of time and begun dozing off where he stood.
He then snapped out of his trance when he felt a jolt come from his bladder and straight into his underpants. "Ugh..." Conan said to himself, flexing his bladder muscle before any urine started dripping out. He decided that must be his body's signal that 30 minutes had passed. He sleepily walked down the hall and used the bathroom before walking back to his room. He fell asleep as soon as he hit the bed.
Ran, meanwhile, had been taking care of some homework when she heard Conan's door open. 'Good,' she thought. 'he must have remembered to use the toilet.' She looked back through her open door and saw Conan going down the hall. 'Where are his pants?' she thought, seeing the boy in nothing but a shirt and his underwear. Then she noticed a wet spot on the front, much more yellow being that Conan had let himself dehydrate. 'Did he already wet his bed? He hardly went to sleep 15 minutes ago.'
Conan didn't seem to notice her, going to the restroom or coming back. Between how tired he was and his wetting she knew he must be sick. She followed Conan back down the hall and through the open door. She saw him sprawled out on his bed above the covers, hands in the air and his slightly wet underpants exposed to the world.
She checked the futon for a wet spot and was a relieved when she didn't find any. But with Conan in this state she knew it was only a matter of time. She pulled off Conan's undies, careful not to wake the boy, and threw them in the hamper. She then put a couple of towels under the boy to protect his bedding.
Ran dug through Conan's underwear drawer and found a pair of colorful Doraemon undies that Conan never wore. Her dad had bought them when on an errand run and decided to go by size rather than age. Aside from being covered in cartoon characters they were much thicker than regular underwear, which embarrassed Conan enough to refuse to wear them. As she slid the underwear up the boy's legs she was thankful she hadn't thrown them out.
With that she tucked him into bed and gave him a kiss on the forehead. "Good luck, Conan," she whispered, knowing the boy would be trying his all to keep his bed dry tonight.