Nevermore
By: Hikari-chan (Chitsuki)
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to Gosho Aoyama. If it's Edgar Allan Poe, it is (eventually) referenced in the text and belongs, of course, to Mr. Poe. I make no profit from this.
Musings: The case takes a few steps forward in this chapter. As always, would love to hear from you, the readers. :) Enjoy~
-o-o-o-o-o-
Chapter 6
-o-o-o-o-o-
The race down the stairs felt much longer than three flights. Conan and Ai dashed through the hallway in the direction of the "employees only" area that led to the kitchen, almost skidding into each other as they rounded the corner. Genta and Mitsuhiko were standing back to back with their flashlight watches on while Ayumi gripped Mitsuhiko's arm tightly, the detective badge in her hand.
"Conan-kun! Ai-chan!" Ayumi let out a loud sigh of relief.
"Where's the person following you?" Conan asked quickly, flicking his own flashlight watch on and looking around.
"We didn't see them," Mitsuhiko replied. "We heard footsteps but once we contacted you, they seemed to have hurried off."
"You guys got here really fast," Ayumi added.
"Tracking glasses," Ai pointed out.
Conan frowned, flicking his flashlight around the hallway. There were shadows everywhere, but he couldn't see much. Mitsuhiko seemed to think their suspect might have run off already, and since they were now in a rather large group, the suspect probably wouldn't try again.
"Are we still getting food?" Genta interrupted.
"We're already here. We may as well," Ai replied. "Come on, before Conan-kun or Kojima-kun wilt away from starvation."
The group moved together down the hall to the kitchen. Conan furrowed his brow, but turned his tracking glasses and flashlight off and followed the rest of his friends.
In the shadows, a figure stood perfectly still, listening to the fading footsteps as the teens disappeared into the resort kitchen. Tracking glasses and communication badges? This was going to be a little more difficult than originally planned.
-o-o-o-o-o-
He was at Agasa's house again. The curtains had been pulled back, revealing the silver moon. He was alone in the guest room and the house was quiet. Maybe, if he just stayed here in this room, he wouldn't have to face whatever was waiting for him this time. He pulled the blankets up to his chin, shutting his eyes.
"Conan-kun!"
His eyes snapped open. That was Ayumi's voice. Where had it come from?
"Conan-kun!"
This time, he whipped the blankets back and got up, hurrying down the stairs to the kitchen. He took a few deep breaths, reminding himself in a rhythmic chant that this was a dream, and whatever it was he was about to see was not reality.
It didn't help when he walked into the kitchen and saw Ayumi with blood gushing out of a stomach wound, trying her best to crawl along the floor towards him. "Conan-kun," she called again. "Mitsuhiko-kun and Genta-kun...they..."
Oh God. No, he didn't think he could handle all three of them in the same nightmare.
He swallowed and looked behind Ayumi. Mitsuhiko's dead body was lying in an awkward angle, and Genta looked like he had been strangled judging by the thick ropes around his neck.
"No..." Conan whispered.
He hurried to them and checked for a pulse, but there wasn't anything. Even Ayumi looked like she had passed out from blood loss now. Conan fumbled for a phone, wanting to call an ambulance, but he didn't have one on him.
"What happened?!" he asked angrily into the stillness of the night. "What in the world happened? Why wasn't I here to save them? Genta! Ayumi! Mitsuhiko!"
-o-o-o-o-o-
"Why wasn't I there?!" he yelled out, thrashing about and finally waking himself up when his hand hit the side of the night table, the pain jolting him awake.
Conan hissed and brought his hand closer to his chest, rubbing it and hoping to soothe the throbbing. His vision was blurry, and he suddenly realized it was because he was crying. Tears were slowly dripping down onto the sheets.
The sun wasn't up yet, but he was in no mood to go back to sleep, never mind that he was so tired he probably could have slept for the next decade if he had any desire to do so. The nightmares were starting to get too close. While still terrifying, in the past, he had always dreamed of the agents and policemen that actually died during the takedown. People who didn't have anything to do with the Black Organization typically didn't make it into his nightmares. Hence, the worst were always when Ai or Agasa were on the verge of dying. Dreaming of Agasa's actual death was a first, and right now, he wasn't sure his dream self could handle seeing Ai's death.
He closed his eyes and tried to dose. The sound of Genta's breathing filled the air, assuring him that his friend was alive and grounding him to reality. He looked at the room phone, sitting innocently on the night table. Briefly, the natural instinct to handle the problem himself surfaced, but his fear overrode it, and he reached for the phone, dialing Ai's room number.
Ai picked up on the third ring with a sleepy "Hello?"
"Ai," Conan breathed out.
"Hey you," she replied softly, letting out a yawn. "Nightmare?"
"Yea."
"Who?"
"Ayumi, Genta, and Mitsuhiko."
There was a long pause, then she spoke, "Ayumi-chan's sleeping soundly here, so you don't need to worry."
"I know," he admitted. "Genta's sleeping soundly too."
"I'm sure Tsuburaya-kun is fine as well," Ai added.
"I know," he repeated. "You said I should call you."
"Yes. You can call me any time you need," she assured him. "Do you want me to come down?"
"No," he said hurriedly. No, he didn't want her wandering around the hallway this late at night (or was it early in the morning now?) by herself. "I just... I can't take it if something happened to you."
"I'm fine," she sounded surprised.
"I know. The only people of importance to me who I haven't dreamt about not being able to save yet are you and my parents," Conan pointed out.
Ai didn't reassure him that they were only dreams though. She knew first hand how real some of those nightmares felt, and she would never offer him meaningless platitudes. Instead, she told him, "You know I wouldn't want you to save me if it meant putting your own life on the line."
He let out a low laugh. "I think we both know me better than to expect me to consider your feelings about that by now," he replied. "I'm always going to save you, whether you like it or not."
"You're a selfish jerk with a hero complex."
He rolled his eyes. "Thanks a lot," he scowled. "You're really not very cute, are you?"
"Fine," she drawled. "You're my selfish jerk with a hero complex."
He frowned. "That doesn't sound any better."
She laughed a little. "Feel better now?" He could almost hear the smile in her voice.
"Strangely, yes."
"Good, now try to get some sleep."
He agreed and hung up, mostly so she could go back to bed. He was surprised to find that hearing Ai's voice and their brief banter had helped put his mind at ease. He dosed a little more easily, drifting in and out of sleep. Maybe she was onto something regarding this whole sharing thing.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Scientifically, Conan understood that a person should not have more than four cups of coffee a day. There was something about it being bad for one's health – something about stomach ulcers – and that it was not very good for growing teens, since it stunted their growth. Quite frankly though, someone could tell him right then that coffee induced the plague and he might still drink the stuff without a second thought. Besides, he was already taller than Ai, and she drank it as religiously as he did. As long as coffee affected all its drinkers in the same way, he was not that concerned about its health implications.
His friends, however, obviously did not feel the same way if the looks he was getting were any indication. Mitsuhiko and Ayumi were both looking at his bowl – yes, that's right, bowl of coffee with disgusted expressions on their faces. At least Genta had barely noticed and was eating his breakfast like all was right with the world.
"Conan-kun," Mitsuhiko started flatly, "I think that's supposed to be in a cup."
"The cup was too small," Conan scowled.
"That's a cereal bowl," Ayumi added, wrinkling her nose. "Drinking that sludge out of a cup is bad enough. Drinking it out of a large bowl is kind of disgusting." And from Ayumi to him, that was saying something. Ayumi seldom found anything he did bad enough to make that kind of comment on.
"She's right," Ai agreed, snatching the bowl away from under his nose and replacing it with a plate full of food and three full mugs of coffee. "The least you can do is to drink it like a human being and not a dog."
"You like dogs," he retorted before downing the first mug in three big gulps.
"If you were a dog, you'd be the worst behaved dog I've ever met – running off whenever its owner isn't looking."
"I don't run away from you."
"I'm not your owner."
"You'd probably own a cute little Pomeranian. I'm more of a German Shepherd."
"I think you'd be the French Mastiff who's the only witness to his master's murder."
Mitsuhiko coughed. "Are the two of you seriously arguing over what kind of dog Conan-kun would be?"
Ai shrugged. "We argue about a lot of things," she pointed out. "It passes the time."
Conan nodded his agreement and dug into his breakfast. Unfortunately, halfway through his second mug of coffee, Igarashi-sensei walked up to their table and sat down. Conan knew right away that things were about to get worse.
"Edogawa-kun," Igarashi began quietly. "Did you have any clues about the other 4 girls who went missing?"
Conan looked curiously at his teacher. "We've been through the entire resort without looking at the rooms currently occupied by the other guests, since we have no warrant to do that," he admitted. "I'm pretty confident they're alive though. If the culprit had already killed Chiba-sensei and Shima-san, they should also have killed the girls they kidnapped and let us find the bodies. The fact that we haven't, suggests that they're being kept away for a specific purpose, so they would be kept alive until that purpose has been served."
Igarashi nodded, but to Conan's trained detective eyes, he knew something was wrong. "What is it?" he prompted.
"One of the girls from our class just told me they couldn't find our class's Kato Natsumi-san and her roommate from Class 3-B, Miyoshi Mina-san."
Conan reached for his notebook. "When was the last time they were seen?" he asked.
"Sometime last night," Igarashi answered. "From what I was told, they just separated to go to bed, and this morning, when they went to knock, no one answered."
"So sometime during the night or early this morning, they were taken," Conan surmised.
"Conan-kun," Ayumi's worried voice made him look in her direction. "You don't think this is a vengeful spirit or something, right?"
"There are no such things as ghosts, Ayumi-chan," Conan replied. "All mysteries in the world have a solution."
"So what's our solution right now?" Ai asked.
"Let's start by confirming Kato-san and Miyoshi-san are missing," Conan stated. "If they are, we'll search the whole resort again, including the guest rooms we didn't look at before. With 4 girls who disappeared right on the resort, we have a very good reason to ask all of the guests to show us into their rooms. We may not have warrants, but we can search if we're given permission."
"And there's no reason to not give permission if they're innocent," Ai finished.
"Exactly. You take the left wing with Mitsuhiko and Genta. Ayumi-chan and I will cover the right wing."
-o-o-o-o-o-
That meticulous search Conan and the team performed took the majority of the day. As Conan had suspected, once the situation was explained, the other guests could hardly refuse them entry into their rooms. Doing so would only make them seem guiltier. They were able to look at all the rooms this time around, but still, other than a few guests having some very odd items in their belongings, there were no girls hidden anywhere in the guest rooms.
Late in the afternoon, Conan remembered his promise to the Professor to call in order to get information about the Hope Hills case. He briefly mentioned it to Ai, and knowing he would rather have that conversation in private, she took the trio to check the rest of the common area. The staff ignored him when Conan came into the office to borrow the landline again. In the past few days, they had gotten used to the teen in the glasses ordering their manager around, after all.
"Please tell me you found something," Conan said as soon as Agasa picked up his phone call.
"I have," Agasa replied slowly. "You sound tired, Shinichi. Are you okay?"
Conan tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear, flipping open his notebook and readying his pen. "I'm fine," he assured the Professor. "Tell me what you've got."
"I looked into Hope Hills," Agasa answered, concern still evident in his voice. "The case you were asking about actually happened 8 years ago, almost to the day. The woman who died was Arakawa Eiko. She was killed in her room at the resort. The cause of death was morphine overdose."
"Has it been resolved?"
"Yes and no. Her husband, Arakawa Daisuke, suffered from chronic pain in his shoulder and was prescribed morphine as medication. He was the primary suspect and arrested for Eiko-san's death. However, there wasn't enough evidence to place him at the scene of the crime, so the police let him go. Afterwards, Eiko-san's death was ruled as a suicide," Agasa elaborated.
Conan frowned as he scribbled down the information. "Does it mention anything about a Shima Chiaki or a Chiba Ren?" he asked.
"A Shima Chiaki was listed on the news reports as the couple's friend," Agasa told him. "They were vacationing together. She had an alibi for the time of death though."
"And Chiba Ren?" Conan prompted.
"Hmm...nothing," Agasa replied. "At least nothing in the public information."
Conan tapped his chin thoughtfully with his pen. He read out the list of eight people they had narrowed it down to and asked Agasa to check them. The Professor patiently went through the list with him, but as Conan had expected, nothing came up in the public search. He sighed, feeling frustrated. This was by far not the most complex case he had encountered, but for most of his other cases, he had had the luxury of tackling them with full energy.
"Shinichi, are you sure you're alright?" Agasa checked again.
"I'll be fine," Conan insisted. "I'll leave you the landline number for the resort. If you find out anything else, can you call?"
"Sure," Agasa agreed, sounding sceptical. "Take care of yourself."
Conan reassured the Professor again, reminding him in passing to eat healthily, then hung up and reread the notes from the conversation. Even though Shima-san was the only person who was linked to the Arakawa case, his gut told him that this was the connection between the two victims he had been searching for. He needed to find someone who knew Chiba-sensei as better than an employee. Maybe Yamagachi-sensei or Li-sensei would know something.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Conan found Li-sensei in the Moon Room, reading a book of Emily Dickinson poetry and sipping tea. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked up to her.
"Hello," he started.
The woman blinked and looked up at him. "Hello," she replied.
"I'm Edogawa Conan, with the Teitan Junior High School group," he introduced himself.
"It's nice to meet you, Edogawa-kun," she smiled. "You're one of the kid detectives the staff has been talking about."
He didn't know how he felt about the "kid" part, but he smiled back anyways. He could hardly be surprised that the resort staff was talking. Rumours of the cases have been floating around now that most of them had seen Ryusaki-bucho come in with Shima-san's body, and the Shounen Tanteidan had been running around interviewing everyone and checking all the rooms.
"I was wondering," Conan began, "if you knew Chiba-sensei well."
Li-sensei put down her book and looked at him thoughtfully. "Depends what you mean by 'well'," she answered. "We weren't after-work buddies or anything, but we do occasionally have lunch together and chat."
Conan nodded. So it was a regular colleague relationship. "Ryusaki-bucho mentioned he was from Sapporo. Do you know if he taught at the old ski resort that was here?"
Li-sensei furrowed her brow, trying to remember. "I think so," she finally responded. "I think he had been giving skiing lessons for something like 10 years. He mentioned it being surreal that he was still teaching in the same place but it looks totally different now than when he first started."
"Do you know if he knew anything about the Arakawa case?" Conan pressed.
"The what?" Li looked confused.
"A woman," Conan clarified. "Her name was Arakawa Eiko. Do you know if he knew her?"
Li shook her head. "I don't think so. I've never heard him mention her in any case." She looked thoughtfully for a second before she added. "Although now that you're asking about women he knew, I think Chiba-kun might have known Shima-san."
"He did?!" Conan perked up immediately.
"I'm not certain," Li admitted. "I only saw them together once in the resort library."
"What makes you think they knew each other then?"
Li shrugged. "I overhead him call her Chiaki-san. That's more familiar than strangers meeting for the first time."
Conan frowned. Li-sensei was right. Calling a stranger by their first name would be a little overly familiar, not to mention a bit rude. "Did you hear anything else?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Sorry, no. It was a library, so it was already quiet. Plus I didn't think it was important at the time."
Conan nodded in agreement. He thanked her and left the Moon Room, his hand holding his chin thoughtfully. If he supposed that Chiba-sensei did know Shima-san from 8 years ago, then he had a connection – finally. He involuntarily let out a huge yawn as he shuffled towards the elevator. He needed to check in with the rest of the Shounen Tanteidan to see if they found out anything about the missing girls, but first, maybe he would catch a quick power nap. He desperately needed it.
-o-o-o-o-o-
"Conan-kun! Conan-kun!"
Voices came to him in a haze, and sleepily, he forced his eyes to open and found three concerned faces looking at him. He let out a groan and rolled over, trying to get his bearing. "What is it?" he grumbled.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Mitsuhiko asked, furrowing his brow. "You never fall asleep during a case, and this is the second time it's happened."
"I..." Conan trailed off.
"Had some bad dreams?" Ayumi prompted, remembering what he had told them a little while ago.
"Yea," Conan nodded, rubbing his eyes.
Ayumi and Mitsuhiko looked at each other, before the girl spoke quietly. "Your eyes are bloodshot and you have dark circles. You should sleep more."
"I'm sure we'll crack this case," Mitsuhiko added confidently.
"It's not just that," Conan finally admitted. "I um... haven't really been able to sleep all these nights."
"You know you can tell us if you need help," Ayumi told him.
"I know, but it's not..." Conan trailed off, noticing for the first time that Ai, who was seated at the end of the bed, had said nothing, and neither had Genta. He stared harder at Genta's face, and found that the larger boy was averting his eyes, looking nervous. "You know," he finally said, addressing Genta.
"Um..." Genta stammered.
Conan tried to remember the times he had checked to see if he had woken up Genta. While his temporary roommate had always been breathing evenly and never asked him anything, a deeply slumbering Genta typically snored, and he hadn't heard snoring in the times he had woken up screaming from nightmares.
"I woke you up every night," Conan concluded.
Genta shrugged. "Yea," he admitted, "but I just go back to sleep after, so it's no big deal."
"You never asked me," Conan continued, almost in wonder.
Genta shrugged again. "You didn't want help," he pointed out. "Not even from Haibara, so why would you want help from me?"
Conan felt somewhat ashamed all of a sudden. His friends had been silently worried about him all this time. They blindly followed his instructions, never questioning why, just believing in him, and he didn't even have the courtesy to tell them why he kept falling asleep in the middle of their investigation. He glanced at Ayumi and Mitsuhiko, but they were looking at him in puzzlement. So Genta even had the decency to keep it to himself, which made Conan feel even guiltier about his lack of trust in them. He took a deep breath. Faith was taking the first step even when you couldn't see the whole staircase after all, and he had been lecturing Ai for years about faith. Pot and kettle indeed, he thought with some sardonic amusement.
"I have recurring nightmares," he finally admitted to his friends. "Years ago, some bad things happened, and every year around this time, I'll have dreams of people I knew, dying."
"Like Ai-chan does?" Ayumi whispered.
Conan looked at her, and then at Ai, surprised.
"She told me the first night we were here," Ayumi filled in the blanks for him. "She said she might wake me up, but it's okay and I can go back to sleep."
Conan stared harder at Ai. "Have yours been bad?" he finally asked.
Ai shook her head. "I haven't had one yet," she said. "They've gotten better over the years."
"So you haven't really slept, you skip meals, and you've been investigating all these days?" Mitsuhiko summed up. "No wonder you keep crashing every time we slow down a little. You need to find a way to sleep through the night, or you're going to end up unconscious before we actually figure out who the culprit is."
"I know that!" Conan scowled. "But the only night I managed to sleep through was-"
He stopped abruptly. Okay, now they were bordering on too much information. The trio was looking at him curiously though.
"Why don't I sleep with you tonight?" Ai suddenly suggested.
"Err..." Conan raised his eyebrows at this.
Ai rolled her eyes. "Not like that, pervert," she scolded. "I mean just to sleep. Tsuburaya-kun is right. You can't keep running around solely on caffeine and adrenaline. I know you slept through the night when I stayed with you before. Maybe it'll work again."
"Um, I guess if uh, Genta doesn't mind having an extra person," Conan replied.
"Maybe Ayumi will stay here too," Ayumi suggested. "I don't really like the idea of staying by myself."
"With Genta-kun?!" Mitsuhiko sounded horrified.
"No! On the floor!" Ayumi scowled.
Genta frowned. "You should have the bed, Ayumi," he protested. "I can sleep on the floor."
Not to be outdone, Mitsuhiko was now planning on staying too. Soon, they were arguing over floor space and pillows and Conan realized none of them had even asked him anything remotely private about his nightmares nor looked at him any differently than they had before.
And he couldn't remember why he thought it was better to hide it from them.
-o-o-o-o-o-
The peaceful arrival of the morning almost made Conan forget about the double homicide and triple disappearances hanging over the resort. The snow had stopped outside and the sun was shining. On the floor of the room, Genta was sleeping on his back, arms spread wide, snoring away. Mitsuhiko was on the floor at the foot of the bed Ayumi was sleeping on, both of them still sound asleep, rolled up in individual blankets. Ai was sleeping quietly in his arms, her head pillowed by his chest, one of her hands fisting the t-shirt he had worn to sleep. The smell of her shampoo invaded his senses and for one brief moment, he wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep, pretending they were all just away on one of their many trips with the Professor. But he forewent the temptation, easing himself upright without waking Ai. He reached for his notebook on the nightstand and took out the three cards, staring at them again with a fresh mind.
The second note, he was pretty sure he mostly solved. Foreshadowing the murder of Shima-san, it was revenge for something she had done, likely in relation to the Arakawa case 8 years ago. The note told him that Shima-san would be inebriated, locked away somewhere, and left to die.
The first note was about Chiba-sensei. Perhaps Chiba-sensei hadn't seen something he was supposed to, or thought something was the truth when it wasn't. Maybe a false testimony? But about that punctuation...
"What does that say, Conan-kun?"
Conan startled and looked up, finding himself the subject of three pairs of curious eyes again.
"You guys are up," he said unnecessarily.
Mitsuhiko gave him a funny look. "You didn't hear us?" he asked.
Conan laughed nervously. "Lost in thought," he explained. They were still waiting for him, so he shrugged. The nightmare thing had gone over relatively well, so why not? He explained the contents of the second note, then returned to the first one.
"I just haven't figured out the punctuation here," he pointed.
"Dream in dream? Like yume yume?" Genta asked, obviously confused.
"Err, no," Conan refuted. "Yume yume would be closer to dream dream, or dream after dream. Dream in a dream, if you had to be as literal as Genta's making it, is more like yu-yume-me..."
Conan frowned. Yu-yu-me-me? That could be written with four hiragana characters. He grabbed his notebook and scribbled down the four characters. Speaking of literal Japanese translations, how did the writer know he would understand English? While it wasn't an uncommon language, Edgar Allan Poe was still rather advanced for a junior high school student to be reading in English, let alone recognize, no matter how famous.
"Does English have tenten?" Ayumi asked suddenly.
Conan looked at her and shook his head. "No," he answered, frowning. "Why do you ask?"
Ayumi pointed to the note. "Right here, next to the letter A, doesn't that look like the two dots that go into our hiragana characters? The tenten?"
Conan grabbed the card back and looked at it again. The section within the parenthesis was exactly four words. He looked back at the notebook. He conveniently had four hiragana characters. But the character 'me' doesn't have a form with the tenten.
He opened his notebook to a new page and started brainstorming. Maybe another word for 'dream'...Dream, vision, reverie, goal, wish, hope... Hope? The old ski resort was named 'Hope Hills'. Hope in Japanese was kibo.
Yume yume. Yu-yu-me-me. Ki-yu-me-bo? Yu-ki-bo-me?
He narrowed his eyes. Bo...the third character of the group. The two dots were above the A, the third character of the group of words in the brackets. Putting dots on the hiragana for bo would give him the character ho.
He dropped his pen.
The writer of the note didn't assume he knew English or know that he would be here on this resort. The first note was a notice for a murder – death by sleeping, for something the victim thought was true but was in reality false, at the Yu-ki-ho-me resort.
-o-o-o-o-o-
End Chapter 6.
Word Count: 4,613
Cumulative Word Count: 29,229
Chitsu's Corner: I hope that explanation made sense. The gist of it is that there are some hiragana characters you can add two dots (called tenten) to in order to make them produce a slightly different sound. (Think accents in French or Spanish.) Yume is dream in Japanese. Kibo is hope. If you need further help, let me know, or Google "hiragana chart".