Author's note: This chapter was essentially written for the sake of Ran and Shinichi's relationship. They're quite stubborn, those two, and I can't guarantee, either, that things are gonna be easy… Action's next chapter. This one's also the beginning of this story's second half.
Disclaimer: Fjldsasjkfdlsa. I do NOT own anything. I just take those two characters, put them in awkward situations, and see how it turns out. I'm not making any money out of THAT. Oh, no…
-
Chapter 8 – Moment Of Calm-
And then, at night, the lit lamp and the drawn curtain, with the flutter of the turned pages and soft scrape of pen on paper the only sounds to break the utter silence between quarter and quarter chime.
Dorothy Sayers (Gaudy Night)
-
Hikaru-san's aggression was meant to remain in the most complete secrecy. Apart from the Araides, Shinichi and Ran herself, only Briggs and Sakagushi-san knew about it, and their discretion could be relied upon. Nonetheless, it so happened that the following evening, while Ran was working in the library after dinner, Akira-san burst in as usual and asked after 'that row about Hikaru-san's incident yesterday night.'
Ran put her pen brusquely down. "Who told you about that?"
"Everybody knows," he said, surprised. "It was dinner's main topic at our end of the table. Didn't you listen? What is it all about? Nobody seemed to know for sure. Do you?"
"I know all about it," Ran murmured, cursing herself mentally for not paying attention to the animated conversation that had taken place at the other end of the table. But Shinichi had been talking in front of her, and she'd been much too absorbed by the case he was describing to—"Who told you about it?" she persisted.
"Ken-kun did," Akira said, looking more puzzled. "Ikenami-san had told something to him about it, and he wanted to know whether I actually knew anything more. I didn't. What is all the bloody racket all about anyway?"
She really needed to stop personal feelings from interfering with this business. "It's – complicated. I'm afraid I can't tell much more about it than you already know – and I wish," she added hastily, seeing that he prepared to speak again, "you wouldn't disturb Hikaru-san with it, either. She's been sufficiently shocked as it is. In fact, if you could try and shut the matter up – switch topics when it's brought forwards, that kind of thing – it would be very helpful."
He assented, now thorough confused. "Of course I will, if you want me to – I say, is this our friend the poltergeist playing his tricks again?" Ran nodded, and he looked positively thrilled. Presently he recovered himself. "I'll do my best – when I can."
Ran was about to say 'Good boy' and pat his arm, but she remembered billiard's rebounds and redundancies and contented herself with thanking him properly. He opened his mouth, on a good way to get to talking again, but the door opened then, and Shinichi came in.
He glanced rapidly at them both. Somehow his eyes seemed to be a darker blue, but that may be only the room's darkness. "Kano-kun, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I should like to talk with Ran-san. In private," he emphasised.
Akira had twitched at the 'Kano-kun' but he complied without so much as a protest. "Oh! yes, certainly," he said, "I'll leave you two alone. Yes, of course. Well, I'll buzz off then. Er – goodnight." At the door he paused. "Cheerio!" he said amiably, and went out.
Shinichi dropped himself in an armchair by the hearth, picked up the poker, and straightened a log that threatened to fall off. "Well!" he said. "It seems that our man – or woman – whichever – doesn't like incognito."
"Of course he doesn't," Ran said. "His whole threat-letters business wouldn't mean anything if he remained in the shadows. He's got to show off, of else his carefully thought-out plan all goes west." She seated herself opposite him. "Well, it's not for the worst," she said wearily. "They were bound to learn about it sometime or other. How bad can it possibly be anyway?"
"Bad, rather," Shinichi said, looking worried. "Now that they know about the possible violence of the culprit, they may do foolish things in case they're attacked. And get themselves killed, rather sooner than they were meant to be. Had they not known anything, they would have been better protected."
Ran was really tired. To her discharge, this had been a long day, full of more triumphing letters found and decisions to be taken, and she was exhausted; besides, she really couldn't help herself anymore. Not after days of closing Shinichi's presence around her, and feeling like a helpless doll. "Ah, yes – protection's your greatest motto, isn't it?"
"Shit!"
He stared angrily into the fire. "I knew you would come up with this sometime or other. You wouldn't leave it all buried in the past, would you? No, of course not – it was stupid of me to think so."
"It's a difficult thing to forget," snarled Ran, who was now too well launched to come back to more solid grounds. She was suddenly taken with an immense hatred for the man sitting in front of her. She went on, regardless of the consequences of such a speech, "being lied to for an entire year by the one person I thought I could most trust. Whom I thought trusted me, too."
"You know perfectly why I did all this," he said, still staring determinedly into the flames. "And it's been ten years. It's past, Ran. Can't we leave it all there? Or do we have to roam over the same old quarrel, all over again?" He poked savagely into the fire.
"It's not something I can forget so easily," Ran said coolly. "And I'm not going to pretend it never happened, because it did." He looked at her, dark blue, and she was immediately breathless. Silence ensued.
"I see," he said finally, after what felt like an eternity of fires flaring high in the hearth. "What you really mean is, you don't want me here at all, not even to solve this case. I'm only bringing back ugly memories – a nuisance, in your perfectly thought-out life. My simple presence here revolts you, doesn't it?" He stopped, at the worst moment. There was absolutely nothing to be said, at this point, that wouldn't put matters worse. "But in that case, why call for me at all?"
"I didn't exactly have the choice," Ran said, leaning forward like an angry animal. "They needed somebody they could all trust, they specifically requested you, and I spent one hell of a time writing that bloody letter – I didn't get a chance to say anything against the whole plot of calling you up. My opinion wasn't even asked for." She was breathless when she finished, and felt very much as though she was about to cry. Tears stung at her eyes, but nothing more, no repressed sob chocking in her throat, no silvery pearl curving down her cheek, that might have saved the situation for them.
Silence, again. This time it was worst than the first. It heaved around them, filling the room with mist and keeping them from moving, separating them from the rest of the house as though the library was one single, particular entity, roaming forward into the night.
"Look," Shinichi said, eventually, and the tension instead of breaking down built up a little tighter. "We can't go on like this. If we do we won't be able to bear each other's presence, and we need to work together, not rip each other to shreds. Can't we call a truce for the time being – until we solve this case. We'll find the culprit, we'll catch him and be done with it – then I'll take you out to coffee and… back away from your life. For good." He paused. "What do you think?"
Ran nodded slowly. "It suits me. I – Shinichi – I'm tired." She relaxed in her armchair and rubbed her eyes. "I'm so tired."
"So am I."
The fire crackled. Outside, raindrops began to rattle on the windowpanes. It was October 31st, and one of the year's last sunny days, slowly dissolving into the rainy skies of Autumn. And, with November slowly crawling in with the twelve strokes of midnight, things began to shift, imperceptibly.
-
A routine of a sort settled in back again. Both Ran and Shinichi were careful not to cross the boundaries they had themselves traced between them, keeping, therefore, on the solid grounds of formal politeness and methodical thinking. Curiously, the other guests seemed to adopt the same policy of discretion: it appeared that Hikaru-san's accident had finally awakened them to the danger and gravity of the situation, and their defiance toward one another was growing stronger. Even Kenjin-san and Akira-san, who usually were the life and soul of their elongated evenings, now kept their distances; and only Ebihara-san, gravely serious and sombre-looking, remained unchanged.
Quarrels sprung out of nowhere, unforeseen, and no-one would dare walking alone in the corridors, especially at night – however, since the trust between the guests was rapidly thinning out, staying in one's room became more and more frequent. Tension was palpable between them, and their defiance toward Ran and Shinichi made it almost impossible to get any substantial information from any of the lot.
Surprisingly, no extraordinary event came to life within the whole following week, more than a nasty bunch of letters and the discovery of equally nasty messages left in red paint on the walls. Ran had thought that their culprit would have wanted to strike them fast and hard, in an unforgettable manner; but by the end of the week, she rather believed he delightedly enjoyed the climax of tension and fear that settled on the mansion, and let it build up among them only to see how soon and how easily it would implode.
Outside, however, regardless of man's twisted schemes and tricks, nature tranquilly went on its way through November towards the first frosts of winter. The last leaves were falling, light-brown and dark-brown, and a strong, chilly wind swept them aside onto the forest's lawns. In the daytime, the sky was clouded and grey, rapidly darkening towards black as the afternoon shortened into an early evening.
When night fell, it was to drown that sky and its surroundings in an ocean of blue and black. Darkness tumbled down like a mist, and with it the cold air saturating the window; sometimes, Ran wiped it away absently, and in the few seconds before it fogged over again, she saw that one, or several more lights had been turned off on the west wing's façade, which her window was looking onto. She had time to wonder whether the occupant of one of these other bedrooms, instead of going quietly to sleep, had not gone off haunting the inner corridors to slide lunatic letters under people's doors, and could not repress a shudder of alarm.
Black clouds amassed in the dark-blue sky, forecasting rain for the next day and tension between the mansion's inhabitants at having to remain cloistered among themselves – unless the wind that ran against the building, whistling gloomily, was strong enough to shake the clouds away like thin black ribbons of smoke. Farther off from the house's grounds, the surrounding forest marked the limits on the known territories with shadows; a thin, vague, faint trickle of moonlight slid in through the mist like a silver thread stretching out; and then the glass blurred over with cold, and everything outside was grey again.
Within, the warm glow of the light on the pages of her latest case's record; the lamp was an old nineteenth-century gas one, and not at all unusual in the Suzuki household. It cast a golden gleam on the desk's red wood, like the trail swept by a firework stick, that immediately extinguishes in the darkness.
The silence was oppressive – the scrape of a pen occasionally taking notes repeated itself as the only sound to break through it. Sometimes, she fancied she heard footsteps in the background, in some far-away passage; and she looked up from her report and listened carefully – but the sounds (if there ever were any) did not reproduce, and everything lapsed again into silence.
From time to time, she would interrupt her work and lean her cheek on her palm, thinking, her mind wandering off in some la-la land of a sort. In such reverie, her object was ghostly figures tiptoeing down a corner and plotting tricks, as well as the memory of an involuntary kiss interrupted ten years in the past. Sometimes the two would melt together in the present time, or else in the anticipation of tomorrow morning, when, maybe, probably, there would be another letter to be found and Shinichi would be studying it, carefully…
What she didn't know was that, at the very moment, Shinichi was sitting with Sakagushi-san by the hearth in the library, just like she had sat with him last time; the seats only were reversed. She might have recognised the symptoms on Shinichi's face as he talked with the lawyer; just like herself when she spoke with her colleague, he felt like his brains were turned inside out.
"I quite see what you mean," he said when she had finished; she had just explained to him her own theory about the incidents and the poltergeist. "But you see the catch. It's as large as the Titanic." He pulled up a log from the grand basket beside the chimney and arranged it in the hearth. The fire sizzled and crackled.
"Yes," Sakagushi-san said thoughtfully. "It's impossible to miss, of course."
"It's the incident of the dog in the nighttime," Shinichi said, relaxing in the depths of the armchair with a smirk. Sherlock Holmes was solid grounds enough. "And I don't see any way around it. Besides," he added, "your whole theory – though possible – is counteract as soon as you are considered a suspect yourself."
"I could very well have used this device, as well," the lawyer remarked.
"And you would have told me so that I'd think you would never expose your plans to me? Yes, of course. Anyway," Shinichi went on carefully, "I don't think we'll be able to get out of this without public revelation. There's been at least one murder attempt in this case, and if somebody really is killed – and I should tend to think that's our culprit's final aim – scandal with be unavoidable. Even if we try to cover it up, it will only call more attention onto the matter. I'm afraid your study will suffer then," he added with a smile that only half apologized.
"Maybe. But nothing compared to what you can hurt."
The fire cast a reddish glow on Sakagushi-san's chiselled features, like a statue of marble.
"Have we been found out in that matter, too? I should have known."
"It's as large as the Titanic," the lawyer dropped casually. "You are playing the role well enough to fool everyone else. Except perhaps Kano-kun." The name rolled out with amusement. "And you've slithered out of my question." She wasn't going to leave him any escape.
"I don't know," he said sincerely. "And I don't suppose I'll know until it's all over. We were childhood friends, you know."
"Hmm." Eyes half-closed in the shadows of the library, Sakagushi-san looked almost exactly like the cat on her lap, whose black fur was rippling with each stroke. Shinichi could almost imagine he heard her purr.
-
Later that night, after he'd wished Sakagushi-san goodnight and was walking up to his room, he was stricken by a fancy to go see Ran and tell her of her colleague's theory. It wouldn't be so much of a detour – their bedrooms were on the same floor, on corridors symmetrically opposed not far from the grand staircase. Only halfway through he paused, thinking maybe she had gone to sleep already – it was way past midnight; but as he approached he saw the thin slit of light under the door.
He rapped on it softly. "Ran? It's me. Can I come in? I've heard of new developments to tell you about…" No answer – maybe she was so absorbed by her work she hadn't heard him. He knocked, a little louder. "Ran?"
Silence again. His throat stuck. Blindly, his hands searched for the handle – found it, turned it, the door wasn't locked. He opened abruptly and stepped in.
Ran was slumped on her desk, her head pillowed in her folded arms. Her raven-black hair scattered amidst the piles of paperwork she had obviously been studying. She was fast asleep.
He sighed with relief. For a moment he'd thought – never mind. She didn't so much as stir when he closed the door and approached her, his shoes creaking on the parquet slits, and he must be badly sleep-deprived himself because even sound asleep and slumped on her desk, even with shadows under her eyes, even half-drooling onto her papers, she was still an angel on earth. She looked younger in sleep.
She slumbered on while he scooped her gently up in his arms, and actually purred and cradled against him as he carried her over to the bed. He laid her delicately down, taking care of her head, and her hand grasped at the shoulder of his jacket for a second, then let go. She hadn't stopped sleeping – she was probably lacking rest very much, what with touring the corridors at night, running after an unmatchable lunatic, classifying anonymous letters in the daytime, and plotting strategies. And dealing with him.
He flung a blanket over her body and she mumbled something indistinct under her breath. By the time he bent to her, whatever she'd said had reduced to peaceful breathing. She turned on her side and huddled lazily into the cover, curling up in a ball like a cat.
One shouldn't be allowed to be so beautiful.
He watched her a moment more, then turned all the lights off and exited the room.
-
Ran made no observation in the morning. If she had felt any surprise at waking up on her bed, fully dressed, curled up under a blanket, while she had fallen asleep amidst the papers on her desk, she showed no sign of it.
-
After dinner, Ran stood at the front door, of which only one pane was open whilst she leant against the other, and watched thoughtfully outside. The sun had set some time before, just atop the hills on her right, and the sky in that corner was a light azure, still drenched in the last rays of the drowning light.
Farther down south, black clouds were gathering and stretching out upwards; they already darkened the sky so deeply the line of the mountains was hardly discernible – only a handful of stray lights from a distant town ascertained the presence of a ground there. The separation between the clear blue firmament on one side and those heavy black clouds on the other, standing out sharply in dusk, receded every second; rolling, they devoured space towards the point where the sun had sunk.
Northwards, dark clouds were equally assembling, so tightly they spread like a misty curtain over the hills: slowly but surely, the two masses advanced towards one another to close around the clearer blue – thinner clouds already intertwined in that interval, threading together like masterly-worked pieces of black lace. Sometimes, their top half cleared into white, touched with gold, when the last lingering remains of sunlight lit them from behind.
The air was rainy and heavy, the atmosphere charged with that electricity that foretells a storm. Lightening was already at work in the southern corner; short but dazzling streaks of silver flashed against the black skyline, and they were, after a few seconds' wait, followed by the trembling roll of thunder. It must be raining there, and during the night, in all likelihood, the wind would pull the storm in their own direction.
Ran shuddered with cold, got back inside, and closed the door.
The tension and pressure built up gradually, and it was a little after ten, while she was working at her desk, that the skies finally opened with a thundering crack. She hastily closed her window, which she had left open, and in doing so she glanced outside: the black, lead-like clouds looming over the entire horizon, the rustle of trees' branches shaken by the wind, the first drops crashing onto the windowpane, and their rapid acceleration to drop every sound, eventually, into the senseless sound of rain coming down.
-
The last part of this chapter – the sky and storm – truly happened. We were driving home after a vacation in Normandy a while back, and the sky was just that shade of blue and black and rolling clouds. It was stunningly beautiful.
Then it started to rain. That was less funny.
xD well, anyway, end of the chapter. See you next time, minna. –holds out plate– cookies? (yeah, yeah, I'm repeating myself… but cookies 'n' fanfiction is life. Yes.)