author presently laughing so hard she's rolling on the floor… please wait a second…
Ahem… sorry for that. (wipes tears) So, if I understood this well, you want to see Kudo-tantei. (is that it?) And I'm keeping you up with my babbling. Yep, I'm sadistic today. (blame those godforsaken finals, if you must.)
Disclaimer: I don't own, gah. Don't rub it in.
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'If anyone did a dishonourable thing and then said it was for one's own sake, it would be the last insult. How could one ever feel the same to him again?'Dorothy Sayers
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The sunbeams were dancing lightly on the tiles of the deserted classroom, golden flickers swiftly swaying, gliding, disappearing on the smooth, shiny surface of the floor. Higher, they met the students' desks, emptied now, the chairs left behind one last time by their occupants – and played there, cheerfully, with the pending shadows. It was a bright, hot day outside, and shouts and laughter came echoing up from the grounds, half-muffled by the closed windows and the three stories below.
Ran was sitting on the desk which had been hers and which, when she would leave the classroom, wouldn't be anyone's – ready to welcome a new owner in a few weeks. Eyes closed, she let the warm sunlight caress her face; beside her hands, her diploma was standing on the creamy surface of the desk. Sometimes, among the flood of memories she allowed to master her thoughts for the one last time, fled through her mind the reminder of Sonoko and their bunch of friends waiting for her outside, ready to go celebrate their graduation, but she snapped it away. A few more minutes… just a few more minutes…
Moments more, and the classroom could still be a fantastical place where time-wraps and hypnotism were not uncommon; but when she would slide the door shut and walk down the corridor towards the stairs, it would come back down to an ordinary room, silent and empty but for those playful sunbeams. Agitation and cheerfulness would come in handy later on, but for the moment peacefulness did just as well.
Silence.
She opened her eyes, and saw Shinichi standing in the doorway.
Not looking at her – not looking at anything, in fact. In one rapid glance she suddenly wished she could have checked, Ran took in all his lean, tall figure – the dark hair, the pure lines of the profile, the touch of shade where neck met jaw, the shoulders, open and slightly broader than they used to be, the long, nervous hands – one trailing off on the doorframe, the other holding a diploma just like her own.
Then, just when her gaze began to travel down his chest, he seemed to focus again, and his eyes fixed on her – piercing-sharp blue, pulse racing, blood throbbing, pain. She felt mildly ridiculous, but, at the same time, intensely aware of him, of his body, and all that it mattered in the world.
"Ran," he said, with a sharp nod. His voice was deeper and more serious than she'd expected, and it caught her off-guard.
"Shinichi," she greeted, in as cold a voice as she could muster. The words escaped her lips before she could catch them back, "What are you doing here?"
He shrugged. "Same thing as you, obviously. 'Came to take a last look at our old classroom."
The unsaid 'Elementary, my dear Watson' floated between them like a ghost before it disappeared, drowned in Ran's acre reply. "Of course, it isn't as though you were very long in it," she said, glaring at him. His eyes met hers halfway through, steadily.
"No, I haven't," he said dryly. His voice was taunting, defying her to complain, to protest, to come – at last – to the point. She knew exactly what it would all take – the shouting, the accusation, the quick succession of retorts shot from mouth to mouth that she had rehearsed in its merest details while she endlessly paced her room at night, unable to decide – what it would cost… she shook her head and left it unsaid.
He sighed – a long sigh, maybe he'd been holding it in all that time, and sat on his desk just like she sat on hers, the sunlight bathing his face. Inside, every muscle in his body must be tense, and every fibre of his being tended towards her and whatever she should say – but otherwise his perfect composure of nonchalance and self-enjoyment could have fooled anyone. Ran wished he would go to hell.
"So. This is good-bye, Ran?"
Her name rolled on his tongue with an amusement he was probably far from really feeling. It was an actual question, putting all the choices in her hands and leaving her to stare at them. He was looking at her with an air of mild curiosity, as though he was only waiting for her answer, as though it wasn't going to reassess the whole complex of their relationship – with a small, floating smile. The corners of his mouth were sad and tired.
She parted her lips without even knowing what she was about to say – but then suddenly (not fast, but in a swift move she should have seen coming but didn't) he was no longer sitting on his desk but pinning her down against hers, his thumb brushing down her chin and he was kissing her, one hand stroking her hair in her nape and the other flat on the desk, half-covering her own. And Ran – karate-champ Ran, kicking-ass-master Ran – could only gasp in surprise and grasp at his shirt with her free hand.
He kissed her surprisingly in kind. He was gentle, yet at the same time highly possessive (god knew how he achieved that); and that kindness and gentleness kept growing more and more like a swelling balloon – a softness so careful it was painful. Never, never in all the times she had imagined kissing Shinichi, had she thought it would be so sad – and so delicately, excruciatingly beautiful, like a fragile chiselled construction of glass, that has been thrown high in the air, has reached the climax of its height, and is slowly making to fall.
Oh god, she was melting. She was melting in his arms and in the sunlight.
Then he broke off, abruptly, suddenly, and his fingers left her hair; she felt the vibrations of his voice when he murmured in her ear, "Gomenasai, Ran. Sayonara."
And his warmth was gone, too. He picked up his diploma on the desk that had been his – the desk she had furtively glanced at so many times – and exited the classroom, and he didn't look back. The door slid shut.
Ran was left to stare at the glittering pieces of glass in the sunlight.
It was the sunlight that woke her up. It flowed inside her room in pale-gold rays, glistening all the way with sparkles of elusive dust, while outside the sky was a clear, fresh blue. A breeze could be seen shaking the trees' branches. She realized she was swimming in an ocean of white bed sheets.
She straightened slowly and put her arms around her knees, silky black hair tumbling down the back of her white nightgown. The ten-years-old dream lingered a moment then reduced, giving way to a strange, echoing replay of last night's conversation. Asama-san, explaining that he had met Kudo Shinichi over several cases and he had the most complete trust in his detective skills. Sakagushi-san, agreeing that he was a remarkable young man and was fit for the job. Ikenami-san, drawn out of her silence to admit that his capacities of investigation and deduction were truly impressive. The concert of protest from the whole set of guests, assembled in praising him and decreeing that he was The Man We Need.
And then, of course, they had applied to her. She was the most neutral person of the lot, the best informed, the central axis– the only one who could explain the matter professionally, as a lawyer, without prejudice and without anything to conceal. And she, like a fool, had accepted to write the letter – since a phone call would be far too long and awkward – and in doing so had equally accepted to remain within them and meet him as legally responsible of the case.
Ten years were such a heavy gap…
But the twenty-eight-years-old lawyer was already resurging, her mind set on tackling the subject in an accurate, professional, perfectly genuine way. It would have had to happen sooner or later anyway – meeting again. Better now and be done with it than looking forward to it with anxiety every damn minute of her life…
She had her breakfast brought up to her room that day, and spent most of the morning sitting at her desk in front of a blank sheet.
Professionalism or no, personal circumstances came bursting in anyway, whether she wanted it or not. What were you supposed to say – to write, even, to someone who had been your best friend your whole childhood, whom you were supposed to hate now, whom you hadn't seen for ten long, heavy, overwhelming years? How were you ever meant to address that someone again? What could you do, when you were supposed to have gone on living without him?
The heading in itself was already a problem. Years and feelings came furtively into the lot, entangling themselves with words, intertwined with meanings, and generally produced chaos out of what should have been order. Both the formal 'Kudo-san' and the more familiar 'Shinichi' felt insolent, out-of-purpose and disrespectful in their way. And then, of course, the whole letter derived from that. Explaining the matter of the letters and Makoto-kun's office and Sakagushi-san being shot would not cause much trouble, if correctly, legally put, but that was only the skeleton and—
After hours – it seemed – of sitting and standing and pacing and sitting and standing and pacing and – such, she thought to go down to Dr Araide and Hikaru-san's rooms, or wherever they were now, and lay the whole problem before them. They had never met Kudo Shinichi – not to speak to; they had never been aware that they had known him at a time – nor had they ever known of her relationship with him. Surely, if they understood the actual point of the problem, they would placidly undertake, with no guilty conscience, the writing of the letter–
But no. This concerned her only; she would not have anybody exterior to this coming in. She certainly wouldn't let Shinichi come to the manor before having him know what he was in for.
Rough drafts carpeted the floor, where they had been crumpled and thrown away in irritation. The bedroom was bathed in luminous sunlight flowing right in through the window, and which the glass crystallized into a thousand tainted glitters. It was beautiful day outside, clear and sunny, calling for exercise and sunbathing – and instead she was stuck here, reduced to confront herself with what had happened in the past and should have remained there.
At length, however, she took a decision. The problem was not so much those ten-years-old events but the fact that she, as a lawyer of twenty-eight, was not able to dissociate herself from the eighteen-years-old schoolgirl who kept hinting at things in her mind. Once locked away carefully, she would no longer be able to prevent her writing a business letter from a professional to another… yeah, right.
An hour later, she was able to look onto her work with feelings akin to satisfaction. It was everything it should have been from the start – detailed, accurate, politely formal and as impersonal as she should have wished for. It was neither cold nor conspicuous – from Ran to Shinichi, it may be surprising a letter, but to Kudo-san from Mouri-san, it was the very thing.
She ran down to her car and drove rapidly to the village, where she dropped her letter in the public mailbox, feeling as she watched it disappear that in all likelihood she should regret every word she had written every night until she got an answer. She wasn't disappointed.
-
Routine was an old friend by now. Ten years tended to soften the hearts, and it so happened that Routine sometimes dropped by around half-past four, sat down with him, and had tea. It was a silent and inscrutable companion, but it was better than no companion at all. Besides, he liked it that way. He was okay with this life.
Ten years had brought him everything he didn't yet have at eighteen – consecration, reputation, more relations among the police, among lawyers, among his fellow detectives. At twenty-eight, he was famous, intelligent, well-off, run after – he had everything he had ever wanted, in theory. In practise… well. He'd gone on living, hadn't he?
One day, however, Routine did not fulfil the appointment that had been implicitly created between them. That day October was nearing its end, and dusk outside was shadowing the shades and shapes of the street, where lampposts were lit at regular intervals like floating yellowed orbs standing out of the foggy darkness, when his secretary – an elderly woman who had worked for his father before him and had always been seventy-six – brought him the evening post. He thanked her, told her she could go home now, and seated himself in one of the comfortable armchairs of his office, whose walls were lined with dark-brown bookcases, to flip through them.
Business letters, business letters, business letters. Bills. One or two letters of thanks from former guests, which he read with pleasure. The armchair was drawing him in its depths, the glow of the lamp onto his lap was warm and cosy, and the day had been a long one… he was beginning to feel sleepy… he would have nodded off if one letter in the lot had not stirred him out of his torpor.
In substance, the envelope was not any different from the rest of the others – there were his name and address neatly inscribed on it, the stamp and postmark indicating that it came from a small village whose name seemed to recall something… he was not exactly sure what. Apart from that the only difference with all the rest of the post was that it was handwritten – and this handwriting he would never have been able to confuse, even out of a thousand.
Shinichi?Surprisingly, there was no shell-shock, no cracks of thunder, no bolts of lightening striking him numb – no flashes of relentless memory, either. He stared a good bit, then turned the envelope over – nothing written on the back – and ripped it open. Inside he found two sheets of writing paper crammed with the same neat, thin handwriting. As he unfolded them and searched for the heading, his heart beating maybe more rapidly than it usually did, his secretary's head popped up in the doorframe.
"Good evening, Shinichi-kun – or do you need any help with those?"
"No – I'll be fine, thanks. Good evening," he said distractedly. The head popped back down and footsteps creaked away. After a few minutes he heard the front door open and close with a fine slam. Remarking his body was tense, he tried to relax against the cushions and accorded his full attention back to his letter.
, October 22nd
Dear Kudo-san—He sighed, and burrowed herself deeper in the armchair. He had seen that coming a mile away. Bracing himself against whatever blows were to come, he went on reading.
-
Every day after she'd sent her letter Ran expected to receive an answer, and every evening that passed untroubled brought more irritation for the next morning. And the universe seemed to have made a point of attacking her every time it could manage with more and more expectation – she would always be right in the way when the morning mail was brought in, or Briggs would always be on the phone, nodding carefully and taking down messages, when she came down the grand staircase. It didn't fail that morning either.
Briggs had rang off by the time she had reached the hall. "Anything for me, Briggs?" she asked lightly, all the more casually that she had asked him every morning for half a week.
"Yes, miss. Kudo Shinichi-san just called."
Pause. She was evidently supposed to say something then, but her mouth had gone extremely dry. Which was silly, she reflected with irritation, it had to happen sooner or later. "Ah. I'm sorry I missed him. Did he leave a message?"
"Yes, miss. He said he would call on you tomorrow morning. He couldn't say the hour precisely, but around ten or eleven."
"Oh – thank you very much."
And that was that.
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So let me get this straight: a flashback, Shinichi's eventual apparition in this story, a goddamn KISS for goodness' sake and the promise of a meeting between our two ten-years parted lovebirds next chappie… don't I get a cookie?
xD just kidding.
Well, ja! I'll try to update evenly again… I'm actually proud of myself here ;)