Author's Ramble: To Guest, I hope you like this. Whoever you are.
Disclaimer: Shinichi really would've been female if I owned the show.
Amethyst eyes perused shelf after shelf.
"Kaito, have you found it yet?" A sweet, lilting voice called from the corner.
The same violet eyes did not leave the quadrant of books it was poring through.
"Iie. Not yet."
The same girlish voice replied. "Okay then, I'll check the next aisle."
"M'kay."
Kuroba Kaito, high school student, magician extraordinaire and prank connoisseur continued his search.
An aisle away, his highly-tuned and sensitive ears picked up on shuffling and shifting. Aoko most likely, since they were practically the only ones in the bookstore at the moment, looking for a particularly hard-to-find textbook they needed for a research paper required before they were cleared for graduation.
The same highly-tuned and sensitive ears also heard heavy, hefty footfalls by the hundreds running towards then past just outside the store.
And a lighter, more delicate thread of steps that seemed to inexplicably rise above the loud hammering of the mad dash, separated themselves entirely from the barrage and entered the store instead of passing it by.
He had no idea just why he had chosen that precise moment to cease his own search and glance at the bookstore's newest guest when he didn't so much as peek at his own childhood friend and companion through the corner of his eye just moments ago.
The most recent visitor of the shop was a girl.
Panting and breathless, obviously exhausted and weary by her appearance, Teitan High uniform rumpled and creased, brow crumpled and bangs sweat-glued to it, she nevertheless exuded intelligence, confidence.
Danger.
He didn't regret looking as right before his very own blue-violet eyes was Kudou Shinichi, the Heisei Holmes, the Great Detective Of The East, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Saviour, Beika Police Department's Golden Girl.
Meitantei-chan.
Herself, in the flesh, alive and well.
He thought he was never going to see her again, after "Edogawa Christie" "left" Japan to live with her parents in America some months ago.
Sapphires glinted and glared as they took in the entire area in one sweeping glance.
Amethysts shadowed and hid as they feinted the search through the shelves once more, watching the detective through his peripheral vision.
He could easily picture those dark chocolate locks tied back into twin tails, those sharp cerulean eyes behind oversized black-framed glasses.
And he knew he could easily adore the blue-eyed brunette even without them.
So lost was he in his very-much-fake perusal and all-too-real admiration, that his cat-like hearing lacked in power to his own boyish emotions as he failed to hear the same delicate thread come closer to him, and found the object of his musings staring right at him with those arresting azure eyes of hers.
In a very eloquent display of his grace under pressure, no man before or since had uttered the words: "Uuuuuuuuuh… H-Hi." with such poise, nor waved like a hand puppet with such flourish.
"You're Kid, aren't you?"
And he soooooooo did not gawk at her like a broken animatronic after that question(?) that sounded more like a (yeah, definitely, she soooooo knows) statement.
A swift flash came and went, with only the frantic, frenetic flurry of running, the swish of the door and the sudden clang of the tinny bell turned those dangerous, all-knowing eyes away from him.
"I knew it. Bastard."
He didn't know if the words were meant for him or for the runner but he never got to ask since she too took off at an almost demonic speed after the aspiring athlete.
Or maybe that was the ideal speed of justice.
He gaped at the shut door.
"Ne, Kaito… I found it. It's the last one so we're pretty lucky, huh-"
Nakamori Aoko never saw such an expression of open, unabashed disbelief, surprise and astonishment on her best-friend-since-six's face.
And she wasn't sure what surprised and interested her more; whatever happened that caused such a mélange of emotions or the fact Kaito's prized, perfect poker face was shattered so completely, utterly and irreparably.
"Uhmmm… Kaito…? Are you… all right…?" She asked, a tentative hand slowly inching towards his shoulder.
With a start, Kaito flinched and jumped at her inquiry, looking at her, then at the door, then at her, then at the door again. It went on long enough for Aoko to wonder if she had hit Kaito too many times with her mop already and if she should take him to a neurologist or an asylum.
Then he jammed his hand into his bag, took out a few bills and thrust them into her hesitating palm.
"Here's my half for the book. Igottogo. It'simportantSeeyouatschoolByeeeeeeee~!" Kaito motormouthed as he ran through the door.
Aoko blinked the flash image Kaito left behind away, before looking at the wad of cash in her hand.
"He gave me too much."
Certain the track-and-field star ran towards the park, he was also certain he would find Meitantei-chan there as well, wherever the athlete was.
And though he was no detective himself, he was still delighted when his inferences proved correct as he found Shinichi towering over the fallen fugitive, a horde of police officers at one side of her. The female one, Sato, the portly inspector and the guy who's name sounded like tatami mat.
"So that was when you took the toothpick and the olive contained the poison."
A short pause for the apparent suspected murderer's denial, she opened her mouth for the next portion of her deduction...
"You ran into the bookstore and thought you could slip away from us, but the incline of your footprints suggested-"
...but stopped short as azure met sugilite.
Knowing he could not possibly make more of scene or make himself look more foolish, he settled for a smile.
"Hi... Again."
In the very awkward position of mid-arrest, she gave a small wave and a little twitching grin of her own.
"Hey."
About a dozen pairs of eyes trained on him, along with the tumbled over criminal's, Kuroba Kaito was aware that the next words he would say would either change his life forever or require him to change countries and identities.
"Will you go out with me?"
He knew an eternity had passed between that question and her answer.
A very tense, terse and generally awkward eternity it was.
"Sure. Just give me a minute to wrap this up, 'kay?"
Wow, when she smiled, a real one, not that cocky smirk, not that knowing grin, or that venomously, poisonously saccharine turn of the lips, but a real, genuine, Kudou Shinichi smile…
Wow.
He wasn't sure if that sound was the clamp of handcuffs onto the stunned killer's wrists or the sound of every beat of his heart that would beat for Kudou Shinichi.
His Meitantei-chan.