A New Beginning?
Chapter 5
Their reactions were identical and immediate. There was only one way to describe the expressions on their faces: rabbit caught in the headlights. Then a smile spread over Conan's face that didn't quite mask the apprehension in his eyes.
"That's right. He's my second cousin," Conan embellished on the spot.
Aoko smiled slightly. "So that's why you two look so alike."
Both games resumed play and the atmosphere turned back to normal, but Kaito wasn't satisfied with the answer as it did not account for the look in Conan's eyes.
However he soon forgot his suspicions when he and Aoko went back upstairs to go to bed. The atmosphere between them had been quite relaxed with them playing trampoline games like Crack the Egg on the ancient four poster bed, but now it was quite awkward with lots of tension.
"I'm going in the shower," Aoko said quietly as she picked up her pyjamas and headed towards the ensuite bathroom.
Kaito nodded and as soon as the door closed behind her he threw himself down on the bed. He had probably scared her off with his act that day and when he had dragged her off upstairs she had probably gotten the wrong idea. He would have to work out a new technique the next day for making her happier.
In the shower Aoko was wondering about Kaito Kuroba as she washed her hair. She liked him and appreciated his unsubtle attempts to cheer her up which were as clear as day, but she wasn't sure how much she liked him. She didn't want to commit to pleasing a person like she had been for the past 3 years. Her attraction for him had faded a little while after they had moved in together and she had seen his true personality, but since he had kept her a prisoner she hadn't been able to leave him.
In order to keep people away from her once she had left the hospital and was under Police protection she had tried to maintain a cold facade to stop herself from being hurt by a person she trusted. She had a feeling that Hakuba could see straight through her act and pitied her for it.
She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and turned off the shower. Aoko sat on the edge of the bathtub for a while after, wondering how she was going to deal with sharing the same bed as Kaito Kuroba. She wanted to know his story as well. He had evidently been hurt by his past and the Organisation too.
A short while later she emerged from the bathroom smelling fresh and in her pyjamas. Kaito blushed at the sight if her in bright pink Hello Kitty pyjamas with a flushed face from all the steam in the bathroom.
Kaito grabbed his towel and ran into the bathroom to hide his face. Aoko started after him in puzzlement. Once inside the bathroom Kaito it dawned fully on Kaito how awkward it was going to be to share a bed with someone she as starting to develop feelings for. He consoled himself by telling himself that they were just protective feelings that a brother would have for his sister.
When he left the bathroom after a shower he found Aoko sitting up on the left side of the bed with a pillow propped up behind her back.
"Is the right side okay with you?" she asked with a yawn.
"Uh- yeah," Kaito mumbled as he got into bed.
"Is it okay if I turn out the light on my side?"
"Uh-yeah."
Lucky her, obviously she isn't embarrassed about sharing a bed with me as much as I am about sharing one with her, Kaito thought to himself.
Aoko switched off the lamp on the bedside table next to her and Kaito followed suit. The room was plunged into an inky blackness as Aoko moved her pillow and laid down. There was a strange squeaking noise as she did so.
"Kaito?"
"Yes?"
"I think we broke the bed earlier. It shouldn't be making noises like that."
Kaito smiled at her observation. He had known that some damage to the bed would have been sustained after they had used it as a trampoline. He had broken quite a few beds in his childhood doing the aforementioned activity. He had done it deliberately to get Hakuba back for upsetting Aoko.
"We can tell Hakuba in the morning that he needs to get a new one," Kaito yawned tiredly, as he snuggled up in the cover to get comfortable.
"Okay."
5 minutes later Aoko cleared her throat, rousing Kaito from his state of relaxedness which he had been enjoying as it kept his mind off having Aoko next to him. He had been close to actually getting some sleep.
"Kaito, I'm sorry that I'm unfriendly at times. I'm just afraid of people now."
He was wide awake now. An apology was the last thing that he had expected to hear from her. However, he understood her reasons for being cold and aloof quite well. If you covered your heart with ice to keep people away from hurting you it often unintentionally turned you into a cold person. She was only keeping people away so she didn't get hurt again. His hands clenched into fists when he thought about what Gin had done to her.
He rolled over to face her even though he could only just make out her outline.
"It's all right Aoko, I understand. I've completely changed from what I was like a few years ago."
Aoko took the opportunity to ask what she had been longing to ask all day. "What happened?"
The only reaction at the question from Kaito was a tensing of his body.
"Have you ever heard of the Kaito Kid?" he started, knowing that she probably had.
"Yes. My father was the head of the Police Task Force against him."
After hearing her answer Kaito felt like slapping himself. He should have realised it straight after he had met her and heard her surname. Nakamori. That meant that there was a high probability that she was the girl he had met under the clock tower all those years ago. That explained why she seemed vaguely familiar.
"Yes, he was," Kaito confirmed excitedly. "And Kaito Kid was actually my father Toichi Kuroba, the famous magician."
"Really?" She hadn't been expecting to hear that.
"When I was 17 I found out everything about it by accident," Kaito said, thinking back to when he fell into his father's secret lair. "I knew there was something suspicious about his death as he had left some clues behind so I started investigating it. After I left school it became an obsession. Then one day I came up with a simple idea that would draw them out."
"What was it?" Aoko asked, struck by the sudden edge to his voice.
"I dressed up as Kaito Kid and robbed a museum after giving out a coded notice to the newspapers, knowing that they would turn up to finish the job that they thought they had finished over 10 years ago. I was right."
Images from the past began to flash into his mind. The chocolate stained floor plans for the museum that he had planned to rob. When he put the Kaito Kid costume on for the first time. Running from the Police with the jewel in his hand with adrenalin flowing. Thinking he had outrun the Police only to find that Organisation lying in wait. They were the images that haunted his dreams and ones he would prefer to forget and leave behind. Hopefully this would be the last time that he would be dredging them up.
"They shot at me and I crash landed unconscious in an alleyway in the pouring rain."
The last thing he remembered was falling down as his hang glider was destroyed and rebounding off a fortuitously placed rubbish bin and thumping down onto the wet ground before passing out.
"When I woke up I was still in the alleyway, but I had been stripped of my mask and monocle and I was surrounded by people in black."
They had stared at him unforgivingly as he realised that he had been stripped of his disguise, his only defence against them finding out who he really was. He had been so panicked that he didn't feel the pain from his fall or notice the blood mixed with rain that was dripping down the side of his face.
"As it turned out they recognised me as being Kaito Kuroba immediately; I hadn't covered my tracks well enough when I had been investigating them. They took the jewel from me and were about to shoot me…"
He neglected to mention that they had beaten him and had threatened to kill his only family member he had left; his mother, in order to make him relinquish his grasp on the jewel. He also deliberately didn't mention that Gin had been there as he didn't want to upset Aoko.
Suddenly he felt a cool hand squeeze his shaking hand under the covers.
"Thank you Aoko," he said softly, touched by her action.
"What happened next?"
"I dropped a smoke bomb that I had concealed up my sleeve once they had relaxed their guard when they were about to kill me. I ran from the alleyway in the lashing rain to the house that I shared with my mother. When I eventually got there…" his voice wavered as he began to tremble at the memory.
Aoko squeezed his hand comfortingly again which gave Kaito the strength that he needed to finish his story.
"…When I arrived the house was on fire and my mother was trapped and being burned alive. The Organisation had got there ahead of me and had made good on their threats. I still hear her screams in my sleep."
"That's …awful." Aoko couldn't find the right adjective that was powerful enough to describe what had happened to him. It was no wonder that he had such a sad look in his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking. His experience with the Organisation put hers on a much lower level of atrocity. "And I thought what happened to me was bad."
Kaito grasped her cold hand in between his hands and stared at where he thought her eyes were.
"You're wrong. My torture was swift and over with quickly unlike yours which was protracted and drawn out."
Aoko opened her mouth to argue, but Kaito beat her to it. "For the sake of the argument we both had an equally bad experience and we are both going to put it behind us to try and start again."
Deliberately he neglected to mention that the Organisation were very likely to turn up as they were going to believe that he was Shinichi Kudo. It would cause needless worry if he reminded Aoko of that and she would go back to her normal paranoid self even though he had made some progress with her.
The only trouble with that idea was that Aoko was still very aware of the situation with the Organisation which had been plaguing her since Hakuba had told them on the plane.
Due to all my summer exams which start in less than a month I won't be able to update for a few months as I should be busy revising.