Ladies and gentlemen! I humbly welcome you to the next story of this series!

This story is somewhat special – as it was created as a birthday gift for my dear beta reader and a friend – madelita! Happy birthday!

The Sleeping Detective, is known to be more of a joke than a real investigator – until he of course falls into sleep and gets serious. But why is it that way? By no means he is a stupid man, why would he chose to act like one?

Time in F&H – sometimes during chapter 29 – but could easily fit anywhere;

Characters in the story – Mouri Kogoro;

Genre – character exploration, family;

Warnings – kind of a depression piece;

Background information – Ever since Shinichi discovered that he won't be able to stay at Ran's side as Conan for long, it has became harder for him to uphold a cheerful act during their phone call conversations. He tries to hide it, but she knows something is wrong. And it's eating her alive.

So without further delay…

Please enjoy and review! :)

Story 5: On sleepless days

Kogoro empties another can of Beer down his throat. He's not sure how many he has drank till now. He could probably count the empty ones, but that seemed as too much trouble. He wasn't having a good day, or even a week… make it a life actually. He sighs heavily, wondering for the milliards time where did he go wrong.

He had a good start. Achieved high grades at the university, where he was an ace of his judo team (maybe he should have turned to sports rather than police work?). Soon after he married his childhood friend and had a baby with her. Dream come true, right? Together with his beloved Eri he worked for the police, as he wished as well and everything seemed fine… Only that it wasn't the case. It seems now that they slowly started drifting away from each other sometime after they started living together. It didn't start with anything big – a misunderstanding here, a small bicker there, staying longer at work, occasional snapping at each other after a long day… Until finally Eri decided to move away. And he didn't even try to stop her. Not even as he held his crying daughter, begging to tell her when mommy would be back. That was when gambling and beer started playing a larger role in his life.

He opened another can of beer mindlessly. The only woman he ever loved more than his wife would be probably his daughter. By now she was the light in his life, that forced him to go on. Sometimes it felt like she was his only light. This is why he watched her grow up, with her childhood friend at her side with some worry. It would be his worst nightmare, if these two ended up just like him and his love. Separate and bitter, but caring too much for each other to finally let go and go on with their lives alone. It was probably this suspense that was killing something inside of him. And then that brat suddenly disappeared.

Seeing her worry he tried persuading her to let the boy go. He never got to find out if he could persuade her, because the phone calls started. Calling only once in a blue moon, making his cute little Ran unable to forget him. And despite Kogoro's protests all he could do was to helplessly watch his daughter fall more and more for the boy. And hear her cry, when she thought nobody was listening. He couldn't help but wonder how many times he failed to hear her cry.

If he didn't know how much it would hurt Ran, he would personally strangle the boy, the first opportunity he got. As it is, he supposed that he would prefer to drag the brat back by his shag and somehow force to stay, but whenever he sees him, his just unable to stand his attitude and before he manages himself to recollect, the boy is gone like morning mist. Which annoys Kogoro even further. He did try secretively investigate him, but came up empty. As if he was literally vanishing.

Which is why all he can do is drink, until he doesn't care anymore whenever he sees the longing look on his daughter's face. But even through the haze he didn't miss it that lately Ran was looking more and more disturbed. She doesn't talk to him about it of course. He probably doesn't deserve it. She just scoffs it and says that he's wrong or finds some excuse. He wishes that he would one day have his miraculous narcoleptic attack solve this for him. But this happens only when somebody dies. A gift capable of bringing justice to the world and fame for him, remaining silent when he truly needs it.

He shook the can over his open mouth and grimaces finding it empty again. He throws it away and it bounces with a metallic clang. He growls with annoyance when his reaching hand doesn't meet a full one. His life sucks and now he's out of beer to mute his thoughts out. An unwanted question slips into his mind, forcing him to wonder if Ran isn't off somewhere crying her eyes out again. He turns the volume up and attempts singing along with the cute Yoko on the screen. Because there isn't a damn thing he can do to help the light of his life from fading away. And it hurts too much for him to bear.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed the story, but before I'll say my goodbyes for now I'd like to draw your attention to the stories written, by madelita.
She really does have a huge imagination and a lot of unique ideas – that along with a nice writing style make her stories very nice to read :)

*bows* See you next time~