2 days, that was all it took. Only 2 days and I had forgotten what I really wanted, what really is my goal.

Emiko was sitting cross-legged on top of her bed, her back resting against the wall she was holding the frame between her fingers.

Shinichi... Just who are you? Mom's date? And if so... Could he be my father? Mom is the only person to have the answer and only god knows why she wouldn't tell me anything.

Emiko hid the picture in her nightstand, just like she was hiding a secret she didn't want anyone to see her precious picture. A few days passed and Emiko's behaviour had changed and she wasn't all excited about her trip anymore. An entire week passed and her smile was gone, she looked so depressed, everybody assumed that the British girl got homesick.

Kioshi didn't ask a question, people always told him to let the people confess by themselves and so he waited. She never told him what was on her mind and he ended up really worried about his "burden". Before he realized it, her problems became his problems. Every day after school he would join her and they would do their homework together which wasn't really fun, but still he chose that over his other friends. Also he intended to help her learn Japanese, "her language" as she called it, they would laugh about her mistakes. The normal Emiko was back and it helped Kioshi to clear his mind, in a split second he noticed the missing picture on the desk and forgot people's advice.

"What happened to the desk picture?" Unable to phrase an answer Emiko simply opened the drawer and invited her friend to take a look. "And why did you hide it?"

"I don't know" Emiko shrugged.

"Maybe you should try to find out if that guy is your father or not" he said while getting up.

"If only life was that easy" she sighed

"Stop talking like you're 80! Shit, I have to go now."

"Where are you going?"

"It's not your business!"

"I bet you're joining your girlfriend for a cheeky date" Emiko was observing his every move to spot his reaction.

He looked at her blankly as if she read through him, but the second after he regained composure, he shrugged and just left.

How composed was that guy to do that and then just leave. What really was going on and on in her was what he told her before that. Was it really that easy? Her work done she decided to relax and tried to forget about all that conversation. She sat beside Kogoro who was watching some weird film with traditional inspiration, Emiko decided to watch along although she already knew that she would be drifting really far away. Indeed she stopped trying to understand the film's action andstared at Kogoro for a while.

Does he know? Surely he knows, what kind of parent wouldn't know who its daughter was seeing. Also I doubt that mom would have had a one night stand, it's totally unlikely. A great detective should have sensed something. Emiko was stopped in her thoughts by Kogoro's loud and disturbing laughter. Ladies and gentlemen the great Kogoro Mouri.

"A problem?" He asked as he finally noticed that his granddaughter's eyes had left the screen a while ago and were now directed towards his own face.

"Hmm no... Actually I was just wondering if you had some pictures of mom when she was younger."

Kogoro brought several huge albums full of her mother's memories, going through them in a chronologic order she could see how the beautiful baby Ran used to be. What really was impressive was the amount of pictures they took of Ran's first months, a full album was filled with pictures of her before she even reached her first year.

That amount of pictures seems logical as she is their first and only child after all. It makes me think I am also mom's first and only child but she doesn't have much pictures of me. I guess she was too busy... Emiko was the one taking a hell lot of pictures and from time to time Ran would accept to make an appearance on it.

Little Ran was a real princess, always smiling to the camera, she just looked perfect. Emiko and Kogoro started to play a game which should have been called "and who's that?" It actually wasn't a fun game to play but Emiko was collecting what could potentially be crucial information, the actual fun fact was that the great Kogoro didn't suspect his granddaughter a second of collecting data about her mother's former relationships.

"Who is that little girl with mom?"

"Aaaah Sonoko Suzuki, the best friend of your mother, they were always together."

The flow of pictures was reducing a bit and as a result the time was speeding a bit, the people on the pictures changed, some new faces made their first appearance. Ran changed class, made new friends. She seemed to be quite close with a little boy, they had both the same cute smile and were obviously wearing the exact same blouse and the exact same yellow hat.

"Kogoro, who's that?" Emiko asked with a total innocent tone, she indeed had no idea that she had just dropped a bomb.

Kogoro froze, he couldn't seem to find any words and tried to earn some time by making a humming sound. He realized the huge mistake he had just made, Eri and he had agreed on not telling her anything about her father, yet it would have been impossible to deny her request. Kogoro was cornered, the rest of the albums were filled with pictures of him. His only option was to lie to Emiko, Eri and Kogoro promised themselves to protect Ran's secrets.

"I can't find his name but he's not important... I have to work now... Something to prepare for the academy." He suddenly closed the album and placed all of them back to their original place.

Something is definitely off with him, he had that split second of hesitation before pretending he doesn't remember the little boy's name. Does he think I am blind or stupid? I see that he looks like Shinichi.

Emiko decided to stay patient, she had to play it discreetly, Kogoro was a pro after all. During the dinner she was just looking at her grandparents faces, Eri looked perfectly calm while Kogoro was all worried and sweaty. Emiko was good at acting, back in England she was playing drama with her high school and the stage was nothing scary to her. Therefore despite her need for the truth, she was composed and had a smile on the face. She was driving the conversation, using random subjects such as the weather or school to lower their guard.

Once done eating, she excused herself and said that she would be reading before heading to bed. Emiko locked her room, she waited a while and actually started to read a book. She switched off the light when enough time had passed, instead of going to bed she opened her door just an inch opened and sat beside it. At first she could only hear whispers, quickly they tended to become louder and louder. Obviously her Japanese had got a bit better, she could finally understand words and sometimes short sentences. From what she could get Eri sounded really annoyed, if not angry and saw only asking question. As for Kogoro he seemed to be trying to answer her and seemed to come up with a plan. Although she had no idea of what the plan was, she assumed they were trying to prevent "her" from finding "him", that is to say Shinichi.

Why all these lies? Do they need to protect me from something? Anyway I guess I'll find out. Emiko quietly closed the door and went in bed. However she couldn't quite sleep, questions were overflowing in her mind. She decided that she might as well get up, get a drink and if someone dared asking her anything she would have used the "jet lag" excuse. A few gulps of water later, she lying on the sofa and stretched her legs. She heard a noise as her foot kick the side table, when she got up to check on the damages she noticed that the table was fine, but also Kogoro's mobile phone. Emiko took it to place it back, at the last second she tried to press the button and realized the phone had been left switched on. She placed the mobile phone close to a light and examined the trace of his greasy fingers. A reversed "C" later, she had a full access to the phone therefore she realized what she was doing. Feeling anxious about her new international spy lifestyle, she went back to her room and locked herself in bringing the phone along.

Emiko's awful face was a testimony of her late night quest and she had to keep her laugh inside when the poor detective started to look for his mobile phone. She discreetly put the missing item in his coat, a place he had already checked which just had driven him crazy.

The British girl would have liked to have more time to investigate, the time at school was a bit like a waste to her, parts of it were really nice like socializing but besides that she was learning much. The teachers were good, the only problem was her, Emiko was paying enough attention and it was not really because of the language barrier. She was almost obsessed and kept staring at the contact list she copied from Kogoro's phone.

However there was one subject she couldn't sit and day dream and it was PE. Usually she would have Kioshi to translate but he was being weirdly distant that day, thus she observed the two teams that were formed and realized that a game of handball had just started. Kioshi was on the opposing team in goal, as things stood Emiko found herself on the left wing. She had already played this sport a few times, it was a quite entertaining one to her and pretty easy for her. She finally received the ball, dribbled away from the right outside defender, ran passed the right half defender, let the ball bounce high up in the air. Emiko made a huge jump over the goal crease, the action seemed to be in slow motion for the poor goal keeper, Kioshi didn't even move a millimetre when she grabbed the ball and shot towards his goal. He didn't even follow the ball with eyes, instead they were all the on Emiko who crashed on the ground. He was about to go help her to get up but one of her teammates gave her a hand.

Emiko went back to her side of the pitch and was about to send a distant excuse to Kioshi, much to her surprise he was being scold at by his friend. His girl friend... His girlfriend? She ran to them, Emiko somehow wanted to help him but weirdly enough she wasn't welcome. The girl directly attacked her, screaming something in Japanese. Emiko froze, she had gone silent looking at her blankly. Kioshi got in between trying to prevent his girlfriend from hitting his friend "YAMETE! STOP!" Seconds later the girls were separated by the PE teacher, and they were taken with Kioshi to the headmaster's office. The old man was quite surprised to see the foreigner in his office for behaviour problems, after a lecture they were sentenced to an hour of detention each next Saturday.

The rest of day the two friends couldn't even exchange a look, as Emiko felt a threatening gaze on her the whole time. What the hell did I do? As a result she didn't move an inch, closed her eyes and prayed for the best. When the final bell rang, she had already packed her stuff and sped top speed out of the room, she wasn't even thinking of where she was going and ended in the hallway. Emiko wandered around there, she started to look at the trophies, there were hundreds of them, Emiko didn't bother to read what was written on them. Emiko just looked at the pictures, eventually finding one of her mother performing a karate kick. Totally expectable from mom, I just wonder... If there is a picture of Sonoko somewhere here, or maybe... Shinichi! Emiko was a meter away from her previous position standing in front of a picture of Shinichi playing football. He was wearing his white and blue stripes with Teitan written on the front, her heart nearly stopped. Although she still had no idea if he was her father or not, she couldn't bring herself to not see him in that way.

"Do you know him? You know he is LONG gone by now!" said the English teacher, one hand on each hip.

"Tanaka-sensei!"

"He was a great football player, I believe he was the captain of the team."

"You do know him?" Emiko's heart was racing as she asked her.

"Yes, everybody knew him in the high school, unfortunately he quit the team and also after some time he sort of disappeared ... Anyway I graduated when he was just in his first year."

"So you know his name, do you sensei?" her hands were now clenched into fists.

"Shinichi Kudo, but I'm not quite sure."

"Thank you sensei!" She had already turned her back and was running away not leaving a chance to her teacher to ask any other question.

On her way back to the agency she started to think again about what her English teacher told her "I'm not quite sure". Well I'm not quite sure either... But anyway I need to find him.

"I'm home Kogoro!" If Shinichi isn't my father he might know him, that's why I need to find Shinichi. Emiko headed straight to her room, she kicked her schoolbag in, grabbed snacks and locked herself in her own little world. In the 21st century internet was probably the safest information source, maybe not... .uk had no clue of who "Shinichi Kudo" was, which made sense. The teenage girl was hopeless, thinking that she might as well give up on her obsession. She wasn't even enjoying her time in Japan because of that, and it was not what she wanted. It's 11 am in London I might have just enough time to give a call to mom.

Wait 3 missed calls from Kioshi, I guess I'd better call him first then. She had already pressed the call button, the thought of calling her mother was long gone.

"Moshi moshi!"

"Hey Kioshi, can you talk right now?"

"Haha that's not funny you know Emiko."

"I know, I know... What did you want?"

"I wanted to talk about this morning. Listen I am sorry about what happened and about your detention as well."

"Hmm yeah. What happened actually? I scored an okayish goal and the minute after I had a furious Japanese girl screaming at me."

"It's a bit complicated... Haya and I already had an argument yesterday, she got mad at me during the game too."

"Tsk tsk tsk She got mad at me! What did I even do?"

"That's embarrassing... You see you're a girl and I'm..."

"Oh wait wait wait! Is she jealous of me? She thinks I am going to try to steal you from her."

"Yes..." He was stopped in this thoughts by Emiko's huge laughter it sounded almost evil. "What's so fun about it?"

"Well tell her she's got nothing to worry about."

"Yeah nothing!" Kioshi joined her in her laughter.

"Nothing at all."

They kept laughing for a few minutes, slowly but surely they managed to catch back their breath which was followed by a long minute of silence. The situation was a bit uncomfortable, they need to break the silence as soon as possible.

Kioshi went for it "How is it going with your father?"

"I don't know much yet, but I have a plan."