Shinichi was starting to sweat underneath Kaito's (mesmerizing) gaze. All throughout a breakfast riddled with awkward pauses and ever since, he had felt that gaze glued to him, boring holes into him, making him dizzy. It was strange how unsettled it was making Shinichi feel. It was normal for a teenager to be worried about a pretty much homeless child and to want to keep an eye on him, but Shinichi was starting to feel like Kaito's over-attentiveness was for a different reason. And he could only hope and pray that the other reason was not that he had already discovered Conan's real identity.

(He also tried to attribute the unusually fast thumping of his heart to nerves and not to some other reason he preferred not to think about.)

"Kaito-niichan, are we going now?" Shinichi outwardly asked, flawlessly childlike in his manner as he bounced up and down. After breakfast, Kaito had lent Shinichi some of his old clothes, and Shinichi was glad he could finally act completely childish without tripping over the overabundance of fabric his clothes provided.

Kaito smiled. "I guess we can. Do you know the way to the professor's house, Conan-kun?"

"Yes!" Shinichi grinned widely and bounded towards Kaito's front door. "We have to take the train!"

He didn't miss the burning sensation of a pair of indigo eyes on his back and the way his heart skipped one, two, three beats.


This was all I could write with the awful headache I have. Let me just say that long night of editing videos + heaps of homework + minor cold = not good.