Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama, and "Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon" belongs to Naoko Takeuchi.
This is an alternative story to my other fanfic "Encounter in Venice" and one of the possibilities of what could have happened if Ai had taken the antidote before Shinichi brought down the Organization.
Thanks a lot to my friends and betas Rae (Astarael00) and SN1987a and the Aicoholics on LiveJournal, without whom I would never have started this fic.
This chapter has been betaed by aritzen (SN1987a), who hasn't only kept me motivated for years but is even betaing the long fic now that it has ended. I can't thank her enough!
FS
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Ghost at Twilight
(edited version)
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You look indecisively...
You look indecisively at the flower in his hand and think back to the first flower he gave you at the goodbye party following the downfall of the Organization: a yellow rose with orange-red stripes matching the colour of your hair, leaving you at loss for words.
With a vengeance, you remember the evening when everything started, when you peeked through the peephole and saw Kudo standing in front of your door. Something startled you, the stark contrast of Kudo's dark head against the white corridor... or his lips—somehow looking more humorous than usual—curved into a smile which was just a tad too cheeky... or the intense scent of the twenty-two red roses invading your apartment when you opened the door for him. You felt that something wasn't right but didn't sense any danger.
"I had been searching for yellow roses everywhere," he said when he came in, his smile deepening. "But then I saw these and thought they're just as fitting."
Noticing the unfamiliar glimmer in his eyes, you knew immediately, instinctively, that he wasn't the real one. You recalled Kuroba Kaito's disconcerting similarity to Kudo and, after a moment of confusion, put two and two together. This time, you decided that you liked the fake considerably better than the original, who had been busy working on a new case and again forgotten about his promise to spend your birthday with you. You had been in a particularly irritable mood, partly because Kudo had already missed your twenty-first birthday the previous year and partly because you hadn't even wanted to celebrate your birthday before he mentioned it to you. No one had known Miyano Shiho's real birthday except for him. You had been oddly touched by the fact that he had paid attention to it before he deleted the files on Sherry on the main computer in the headquarters of the Organization. He had even joked that you had to celebrate it, if not with others (with whom you celebrated Haibara Ai's birthday) then at least with him to repay him for what he had done. You had replied that you wouldn't mind treating him to dinner once a year on your birthday if it didn't result in an inadequate ego boost on his side.
The first time, on your twenty-first birthday, he was caught up in an important case. Naturally, you didn't blame him for not coming.
Afterwards, you two were supposed to celebrate the anniversary of the downfall of the Organization together. And again he forgot because he had been at Ran's place, watching a DVD with the photos and movie clips Sonoko and Ran had taken at the previous Christmas party. That time you had been furious, mainly because you had spent the whole afternoon cutting vegetables and meat for a sumptuous meal you had to eat alone.
The third time, you were positively surprised when you heard the bell. You hadn't bothered to cook even though your fridge was a bit fuller than usual, just in case he happened to remember. Perhaps that was the reason why you could see through Kaito's disguise at first glance.
Later, during dinner, which you two didn't spend at your place as planned but in Furuhata's bar, a small restaurant above the famous Crown game center, Kaito told you that Kudo was investigating the dubious death of a young woman (the sister of three celebrities whose names you didn't pay attention to). It seemed that one of the three brothers had pulled the plug to her life support system, which resulted in the girl's death. Kaito, who was an acquaintance of one of the suspects, viewed it as an act of mercy and shrugged off the search for the culprit while Kudo, who firmly believed that no one had the right to decide over another person's life, naturally wanted to bring the case to an end.
One thing had led to another afterwards... a good meal, a few drinks, his story of Aoko, who had gone abroad after the downfall of the Organization (after telling him that she never wanted to see his lying face again), your story of your ex-boyfriend, who had stoically carried out an assassination during your very first date, a bit of good music and magical tricks and shared laughs and, when you parted, the first shared kiss. The two weeks afterwards were mostly a succession of pancakes and hot chocolate or coffee in the mornings, overlong zoo visits and comparatively short strolls in various parks during the afternoons, movies in the evenings, and long nights on the sofa cuddling and talking about future plans. Now it seems strange to you that you two never talked about the past again after your birthday and spent your nights building castles in the air instead.
Too bad that state only lasted for two weeks; and after the twelfth stroke of the clock—or rather after the arrival of Nakamori Aoko's twelfth letter (they all came at the same time, having gone astray on the way for unknown reasons)—your magician ran away.
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That flower, too, will not live to bloom, you think without a suggestion of real sadness. Nostalgia is a luxury you seldom enjoy.
"Well," you say, "in that case, I won't take it and will wait for the yellow rose instead."
Kaito lets the azalea disappear with a theatrical gesture—even though you couldn't see how he did it, you suspect that he is hiding it in his coat—and sighs.
"I should have known that you'd never be satisfied with a substitute."
"You really should have. But I'll forgive you if you tell me why you're wandering through Ueno-koen at this hour. I thought you had given up on your thievery games."
"I'm hurt to learn that I've come down so low in your estimation. I'm not stealing anything, only taking a walk looking for inspiration for my shows next month." A proud smile flits across his face. "My first official, full-length series of shows under my real name."
"Kuroba Kaito's debut, so to speak?"
"Yes." He flops down onto the bench and gestures for you to settle on the place next to him. "It's much more difficult not to be Kaitou Kid than I thought. I didn't really have to act much back in those days, at least not when I was showing myself as Kid. All I had to do was to plan and hold a few sensational shows according to a few set rules: sending an enigmatic notice to the police, disguising myself and impersonating someone else if necessary, appearing on time, stealing the gem without being caught, returning the gem to its owner if it's the wrong one, disappearing into the night without being killed... Whatever I did, I always did it in my own style. Now the rules have changed, and Kuroba Kaito needs a completely new style if he doesn't want his audience to say that he has only copied every gesture from Kaitou Kid."
"Ironic, isn't it... that you need to put on a mask in order to make people believe you're really yourself."
"You mean I must be a good actor to perform under my real name. But a magician is always an actor. And I'm always myself even when I'm playing a role."
"Ah, now we've arrived at the complicated problem of identity and role-play in life. It's getting too philosophic for my taste since I prefer talking about our health and the weather in the first five minutes of our chat."
"No conversation with you could ever stay on the surface! We'd get into deep waters even if we tried to chat about the weather."
"Are you sure? Let's talk about the weather then! Today it's been pretty fickle, hasn't it? Rainy in the morning, sunny in the afternoon, and look at this sunset!" You turn your face demonstratively towards the glowing stripe where the water and the sky meet. "Isn't it fascinating tonight? The sun seems to be hanging over the horizon forever and ever."
"I've noticed it, too, although it didn't surprise me. Someone told me yesterday that twilight would be especially long tonight. Long and dangerous."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes, dangerous in a good way. Magical..." He winks at you. "I heard it's easy to lose your heart tonight if you aren't very, very careful."
"Oh, then you should be very, very careful," you imitate his tone of voice. "You don't want to risk your marriage just because of one special sunset."
"In my case it's different: I already risked it two years ago. Such a thing doesn't happen twice." His voice still sounds humorous; but there is a softness underneath the humour telling you that he really meant to say what you think he has said.
"So you're out of danger now," you dryly comment, "because you've won."
"I'm out of danger now because I've lost. We all have, in a way."
To your surprise, his eyes are looking almost wistfully at you, although it might be only a trick of the light.
"I don't know who you mean with 'we all'... It was me who has lost. You were the one who left me to get married, if I remember correctly." You cross your legs and interlace your fingers behind your head, leaning back comfortably to show him that you've stopped caring. "I don't think it was the wrong decision for you, though. I've seen you two together and thought you're very happy with her."
"Oh, we are genuinely happy, as happy as we can be." He laughs. "But—" he adds in the same soft voice which never failed to get under your skin, "—I knew very well before Aoko and I got married that it would never be like it could have been if I had never come to your birthday. Of course I only have myself to blame, not you."
If Aoko-san is only half as pure as Ran, two years will be too short a time to forgive her true love that he had started a relationship with another woman just because she had told him to go to hell and never come back again—an understandable reaction after learning that he had fooled her and the rest of the world for over three years. You really feel for them. Nevertheless, it annoys you that he seems to view your delightful two-week entanglement as a tragic mistake, particularly since he didn't even regard his past as Kid as one.
"If you had known so well that your relationship wouldn't have recovered afterwards, why had you returned to her? Wouldn't it have been easier to stay with me instead?" To your embarrassment, you realize that it must sound like a proposal in his vain ears. "I'm not asking you to come back to me."
"I know very well that you're not!" He dramatically winces. "You don't need to damage my ego by telling me that so explicitly!"
He gazes past you into the distance as though he were rummaging in a past which happened an eternity ago.
"I had to make a decision." As he turns his gaze on you again, you believe to detect a hint of emotion in his eyes. "I couldn't have both of you, after all. If I had stayed with you, I wouldn't have known how to get out of the mess we were in. Leaving you was the best for all of us."
He hesitates before adding with a wry smile, "I wanted to be loved for myself, not only for my looks and other attractive qualities which might as well have belonged to someone else."
"I think that was an unjust and totally groundless accusation, really unworthy of you," you tell him with a raised eyebrow, wondering what "mess" he meant, as the word doesn't really suit the short infatuation two years ago, which has come and left as abruptly as the summer rain. You weren't emotionally damaged afterwards although it was a bruise to your ego.
"Besides," you continue, unable to fight your bantering mood, "we're getting back to our problem of identity again: If your looks and other attractive qualities—whatever you mean by that—don't belong to yourself, what features belong to yourself then? It must be something you thought Aoko-san liked and I didn't. But I can't think of anything. If my memory serves me correctly, it was me who accepted your past as Kid, which she didn't do."
"I think you've misunderstood. My looks and my attractive qualities naturally belong to me." His grin deepens. "Come on, you know I have plenty of them. And Aoko likes them just like all the girls who give me chocolate on Valentine's Day do. But you... you liked me very much because of my resemblance to someone else. You wouldn't have been that attracted to me if I hadn't had someone's face and voice. My disguise that evening did contribute a lot to my success, didn't it?"
The word "mess" whirls around in your head and suddenly makes sense, falling into its rightful place on a puzzle whose picture has become recognizable though still incomplete.
Noticing the look on your face, he gives you an endearing grin, and your anger subsides as quickly as it has come.
"I know being so clumsily honest doesn't suit me at all, but I didn't know it would earn me such a gloomy look."
"I've just realized you're a brainless idiot," you comment in a playful voice to soften your statement, but a trace of resentment is still audible.
He looks mildly disappointed.
"From your reaction, I guess my assumption was right."
"From my reaction, you should have guessed that I'd never have expected you to be such an idiot—and on top of it, an idiot with no self-respect! Why did we ever go out with each other if you thought that I only used you as a replacement for Kudo?"
"I didn't know it in the beginning. And then I hoped things would eventually work out between us, but they didn't. I always had the feeling there was Kudo's ghost between us although…"
"—although Kudo and 'Ran-chan' had already been going out with each other for over a year," you proceed in a sharp voice. "That was what you were trying to say, wasn't it? He and I met so rarely you could have counted it on one hand. And you really thought there had been something going on between him and me?"
"I only noticed that you seemed to prefer him to me, for a reason I couldn't understand! We two look alike, sound alike, and are the same age. He is certainly not smarter than me while I'm much more lovable and attractive than him!"
"You two even share the same enormous ego even though he doesn't flaunt himself half as much as you do. And both of you are ingenious idiots lacking common sense. I can't argue with you, after all. Even if I told you a thousand times that I didn't go out with you because you resembled Kudo, you wouldn't believe me. So let's change the topic!"
"Oh, if you repeated it to me a thousand times over, I might believe you and admit that I had had the wrong impression. But, you see..." He makes a dramatic pause before asserting with a wicked grin, "You're only making half-hearted attempts to do it."
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A/N: Thanks a lot for the reviews! :) I'm sorry that I've updated so slowly, but SN was very busy. I was too distracted to write as well, as the readers of "Encounter in Venice" and "The Red String of Fate" can tell, but I'm going update my WIPs soon (Encounter first). :)