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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Stepping out into the night...
Stepping out into the night through the front door, you are greeted by a rather picturesque sight. The stranger is standing under the cherry tree in the corner of the garden, surrounded by azaleas and cherry blossoms while the wind, which has risen since you left the balcony, is blowing around his ankles, whirling small leaves and sakura petals around him. Obviously, he has climbed over the fence and jumped over the azalea shrubs instead of waiting outside in the shadow of the cherry tree as you expected.
"Lovely garden," he remarks, walking towards you.
"My landlady is a passionate gardener."
"One of my brothers, too."
"I didn't know you have siblings."
"Well," he smiles, "now you do."
His little remark would have sounded incredibly rude if he hadn't said it in a friendly tone, you observe. Apparently, he is not a genius when it comes to small talk.
"Let's go," he says, smiling again, and offers you his arm in such a natural gesture that you automatically accept it.
Closing the gate to the garden from the outside, you can discern a slight movement of the curtain behind a window on the first floor and wonder whether your landlady is still watching you from behind her curtain at the moment. What would she think if she knew that Kudo is sleeping in your apartment right now? You can still remember her shock when, two years ago, she brought you rolls for breakfast and spotted Kaito.
"Who is living on the first floor of that house?" the stranger asks. "Your landlady?"
"Yes, I think she is watching us."
"I've noticed it, too. Did I get you into trouble?"
"I don't know." By now, your landlady's flight of fancy has probably conjured up an epic love story complete with balcony scenes and secret midnight visits between the stranger and you. "We shall see. Knowing her, she is probably going to bring me fresh rolls in the morning and try to sound me out about tonight."
"Sounds like a rather pleasant person." He laughs. "I wish I had a landlady like that who brings me breakfast in the morning."
"I'm sure she would love you so much that she would bring you breakfast every day. But unfortunately, you can't move in. The apartment on the top floor is already occupied by my landlady's daughter."
"But Reika-san is abroad, isn't she? I should send her a mail and ask her to leave her apartment to me!"
"How do you know her name?"
"Because she is the girlfriend of Furuhata Motoki-san, who happens to be the best friend of Mamoru-san, Odango's husband. And Odango loves telling me about all her acquaintances during our walks in Ueno-koen... The world is small, isn't it? Actually it's a miracle that we two have never met before—although I have the feeling we've already met somewhere and I only can't remember it."
"We met each other at about half past six on Friday night on a bench in front of Shinobazu no ike, don't you remember?" you ask him in a deadpan voice. "Why did you ask me whether my landlady is living on the first floor if you had already known it beforehand?"
He didn't really know it but he guessed it, he tells you. He has learned from "Odango" that "Reika-san" is the owner of an apartment in the house with the two cherry trees and the azalea shrubs Odango admires. And he deduced that it wasn't Reika-san hiding behind the curtain because she is supposed to be abroad at the moment, meaning that the person watching you must be either your landlord or landlady.
"Odango has the endearing habit of talking about almost everything that comes to mind so that I've heard about the whole neighbourhood by now. I'm surprised that she has never mentioned you to me."
"Because she has never met me. I saw her for the first time yesterday evening on the bus on the way to Ueno-koen. She was sleeping next to me. I didn't even know she was my neighbour until I saw you and her in front of Dr Chiba's door."
It is surprising indeed, but during the three years you've been living in Juuban, you've never seen her although you have often heard her high voice talking to Luna in the middle of the night. The black cat has the habit of waking up the whole neighbourhood by miaowing in front of the door three or four times a week; and now that you know about Odango's close friendship with the stranger, you wonder whether the miaowing has something to do with it. Perhaps the cat always waits for its owner in the garden and complains when she stays away for too long.
"So you saw us in front of the door? What do you think of her?" the stranger asks, fixing you with his expectant eyes. Like most extroverted people, he likes talking about his love interest even though, to put it in his own words, she has just dumped him.
"I didn't pay much attention to her face," you admit, "and I have a dreadfully bad memory for faces in general. But from what I've seen of her, I think she is lovely."
He beams at you, thankful for your favourable comment; and you smile to yourself, thinking that it's easy to make him happy. How exactly—you wonder—does she look in his eyes? You certainly wouldn't have expected her to be the "radiantly beautiful" woman he had told you about although she is cuter than average and—since you are in a generous mood—could even be called pretty. But beauty is known to be in the eye of the beholder, and you remember very well your unhealthy fascination with Gin's silver-blonde hair and his emerald eyes.
"I've almost forgotten to tell you that I've lost my handbag. I think I left it in the bus next to her when I jumped out in a hurry. Since the afternoon was so drowsy, I had fallen asleep, too, and was still sleepy when I got off the bus."
"Really? I'm sure she hasn't noticed your bag at all, otherwise she would have mentioned it to me. But I can call her in the morning and ask her about it if you'd like. Did you have anything important in it? Papers, keys, love letters of snubbed admirers you would rather collect than throw away?"
"There is nothing of importance in it, actually. I keep my papers and keys in my pockets and throw away all types of love letters. It's the bag which I don't want to lose... It's a lavender-coloured Fusae bag with a silver badge, very small and very lovely..."
There was a map in it, too, you think in remorse. The hand-drawn map with the code Kudo gave you. His invitation to hunt for treasures together at Ueno-koen.
"Was it a present from Kudo Shinichi?" the stranger asks.
"Where did you get that idea?"
"You have the same wistful and infatuated look in your eyes when you talk about it." He throws you an amused smile. "As you see, I can read your mind. Don't ever dare to lie to me."
You chuckle and give his arm a spontaneous and affectionate squeeze, surprising yourself with the friendly gesture which is so unlike you that you don't know what to think of it. In the night, on the deserted street, you realize there is a familiar fragrance about him which you haven't noticed at Ueno-koen. Other scents of the evening must have mingled with it and hidden it from you.
"Have you met Mamoru-san, her husband, before?" he asks before you can remember the name of the famous plant, which is on the tip of your tongue.
"A few times. I only talked to him once, though."
"What do you think of him?"
"My first impression of him? The ideal gentleman, but you know, somehow a bit too perfect for my taste."
You've never felt the need to socialize with your neighbours, and Dr Chiba seems to feel the same as you. Sometimes, when you return very late from your part-time job at the pharmacy or get up very early for a walk before your morning classes at university, you can see him in front of his garage or in his small garden, watering the plants. When that happens, you would always greet him with a slight nod and a smile and he would do the same, neither of you feeling the desire to say more to each other than "Good morning" or "Good night". One could get the impression that you don't know each other at all, and yet you—or rather Kaito—once had an interesting conversation with him two years ago.
During your first evening with Kaito at Furuhata's, you noticed that your neighbour was sitting at a small table for three, apparently waiting for someone who didn't come. You remember Kaito teasing you about making eyes at another man while being with him and telling you that "at least your taste isn't bad", the guy was exactly what one would call "a really fine man". He looked like the perfect Mr Darcy indeed, with his dark brooding head and his quiet, reserved demeanour. However, what caught your interest was neither his handsome face nor his impressive height but his sombre attitude and the expression in his gaze when they met yours. Those eyes—so it seemed to you—were the eyes of someone who knew how it was like to grow up alone.
Later in the evening, Kaito managed to initiate a talk with Dr Chiba and invite him to your table. You've forgotten how Kaito did it, but you remember that you admired him for being able to strike up a conversation with other people wherever and whenever he wanted to. From food, the talk turned to books and then to medicine. And by the time Dr Chiba left, Kaito had squeezed all about his private life out of him.
Dr Chiba's goal was to lead an active, busy, and fruitful life helping other people, which is why his childhood dream was to become a surgeon and save other people's lives. His parents had died in a car crash when he was six, and he wouldn't have survived if it hadn't been for a very energetic and capable surgeon who rescued him and gave him on-the-spot treatment before driving him to the hospital and operating on him. While studying at university, he fell in love with a young girl, who was still attending high school, and started a relationship with her. Despite being very much in love, he decided to spend two semesters abroad when he received a scholarship for the medical sciences division in Oxford. A year didn't mean anything compared to a whole life, he thought. After all, he had to grab the chance for their future.
Back then he didn't know, he explained, that even a harmonious relationship like theirs could fall apart if one wasn't sure whether one's love was being reciprocated. Growing up in an orphanage, he was a man of few words and couldn't express his feelings openly as she would have liked him to. In order to focus on his studies, he had kept their communication on a basic level, believing that it would make the separation easier for both of them until he returned. A letter from Furuhata informing him that his fiancée had been spending a lot of time with a classmate during his absence finally woke him up and reminded him that the most important person in his life was her. So he returned, and they were reunited just in time before she could be swayed by the romantic attentions of his rival.
"True love actually doesn't prevent you from falling in love with another person if the feelings are unclear on both sides," he said at last. "Actually, the deeper the love between two people is, the easier it can be replaced if another person can fill the void you've left in your lover's heart while you are away."
Despite the happy end of his story, both Kaito and you were strangely depressed after hearing it, and you remember thinking in annoyance that it was a pity she stayed with Chiba instead of eloping with that rival who wasn't so occupied with saving the world that he forgot about her. To be fair, it wasn't really Dr Chiba whom you disliked, as he was actually a pleasant and perfectly nice man. It was the sentence with which he ended his story which made something inside you rebel against him.
"Well, do you still consider ditching me for him?" Kaito winked at you after he was gone, whereupon you replied that you had never considered it, neither before nor after hearing Chiba's story. Dr Chiba was the type of impressive man whom you can admire but not love. Kaito, of course, asked you promptly whether he was one of the men you could love and you said he could always try to find that out, and the ruined evening turned into a rather enjoyable night until he brought you home...
"I've always thought Mamoru-san is frighteningly cool and composed, and easily depressed into the bargain," the stranger remarks. "The very opposite of her. But well, I guess it's the classical case of opposites attract. He is intelligent, cultivated, and down-to-earth. All in all, I think Odango is lucky to have him since he is a rather decent person."
"Now you only need to find yourself a pessimistic and pragmatic woman who can appreciate your happy-go-lucky attitude and your optimism bordering on lunacy, and everyone will be happy," you suggest.
"A pessimistic and pragmatic woman? A woman like you?" He laughs. "Let's fill out the papers together and get married in an instant!"
"Oh no!" You grimace. "In a weak moment, I might even sacrifice my freedom to help you out. But I don't think I'm made for any kind of close relationship, much less for something as steady as marriage. That woman can't be me!"
"Why don't you ever want to marry?" he asks in surprise. "It's not like I can't understand you since I don't think much of marriage either. It ties up one's love with tiresome obligations and paperwork—all the things I abhor. But all the single women I've met in my life told me that they would like to marry."
Most women do but you don't, you tell him truthfully. You would rather stay single until you die. You've had enough trouble of all sorts with various men in your life and learned that the best way to avoid trouble is to stay out of it. Love alone is difficult enough to maintain even without the ties of marriage, and someone told you once that life will be simple if you keep things simple.
"Unless I find the ideal husband who worships me and gladly does all my housework for me," you tell him, "I don't think I will ever marry."
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After his remark that you're just as lazy as his Odango followed by your answer that you will take it as a compliment since it came from his mouth, you two walk together in companionable silence, both freezing in the cold wind, which has picked up even more. The full moon is now hidden behind a veil of thick bluish clouds, and you wonder whether it's going to rain.
"Is your cardigan warm enough?" he asks, looking down at your thin dress with an expression of concern.
"Yes. Warm enough for me not to accept your jacket, if that's what you were about to propose. Your shirt is definitely too thin for this weather. Why don't you at least button up your jacket now?"
"Good idea," he says and follows your advice.
"Your Odango and you surely had a special relationship if you could visit her at night like that," you remark when you two continue walking, wondering whether he had told you the truth about their friendship. After all, you haven't told him the truth about Kudo and you either.
"I didn't visit her at night—even though I don't think she would mind if she weren't living with him. She knows I would never try anything funny. But tonight I only brought her home after watching Kuroba's performance at Two Lights'. Mamoru-san had been called to an emergency case and couldn't go with her, leaving her a note saying she should go with me instead. So we departed again after I fetched her and brought her home after leaving you at Ueno-koen."
You've almost forgotten that he has watched Kaito's performance at Two Lights'.
"So, after bringing a woman home at night, you want to return to the same club with another? People will get the impression that I'm the latest of your many conquests. It's not flattering to me."
"No, they won't think that. There are a few rooms at Two Lights' which aren't available to the public. The only people who can see you there are my brothers and a few close friends of ours if they haven't gone home by now; and they all know me so well that they wouldn't even believe me if I told them you're a conquest of mine… You must know that, apart from my completely platonic dates with Odango, I've never had a girlfriend in my life."
You stare at him, incredulous.
"You mean you are... twenty-three or twenty-four?... and have never been kissed?"
"Twenty-four," he sighs, crestfallen. "Unless I count the one kiss I gave Odango on her cheek before she got married, I must admit I've never kissed anybody in a romantic context." Throwing a sidelong glance at you, he laughs. "I know that's pathetic. But what's with that look on your face?" He winks at you. "Do you pity me so much that you want to kiss me out of sympathy?"
"Don't even dream of it," you reply although you've been thinking that it's a shame because he has very kissable lips. "So you actually get VIP treatment at Two Lights'?" you ask him, realizing that he might be one of the rising stars you, indifferent to celebrities, haven't recognized. He definitely looks like a showman with his Kaito-like grace. Your theory would also explain his reluctance to tell you his name and his emphasis on "romantic context" when he talked about kisses, as he must have kissed plenty of women in front of the camera.
"Yes," he says without going into detail. "Thanks for coming with me. I've never had such good company apart from Odango since I went to high school. You're the first woman in years who I can really talk with and who doesn't immediately force her phone number on me."
You raise a brow at him, amused by his inflated ego.
"Is that the reason why you were wearing sunglasses in the evening? To hide your pretty face from normal human beings? Don't worry, there are plenty of other beautiful people in the world. Not every woman you meet will fall in love with you."
"Are you so sure?" he jokes before he flashes you a lovely smile and wraps his arm around your shoulder in an impulsive hug, pulling you close to him in a gesture which vaguely resembles Kudo's embrace three years ago. His scent, mysterious and alluring, awakes your memory of Gin's with the exception that it's finer and indefinitely more pleasant.
It must be either the lack of sleep added to the lack of food or some unknown side effect of APAH because you feel giddy all of a sudden, weak and incredibly tired.
"Say, what's the name of the eau de toilette you're wearing?" you ask without trying to free yourself from his grasp. You feel prone to cuddling in a cold and depressing night like tonight. And while he definitely seems like a flirt of Kaito's calibre, he doesn't seem like the type who would take advantage of your passive mood.
He gazes down at you with a puzzled expression.
"I'm not wearing any."
"An after-shave, shampoo, wash gel, deodorant? Of course I know the scent! It's sweet osmanthus, kinmokusei, isn't it? With a slight variation. I think it's kinmokusei and orange blossoms."
Kinmomusei and orange blossoms are really among the ingredients, he exclaims in surprise, admiring your amazing sense of smell. The scent comes from a perfume in his shampoo and wash gel, which his foster parents invented. They claimed that it was less destructive than the commercial shampoos for long hair, and he and his siblings have been taught to mix it since their early childhood...
There is it again, that strange giddy feeling along with a premonition of something painful you can't explain. The rustle of the trees around you seems to grow louder for a moment before it retreats into the distance and dies away, leaving only a dead silence and the fragrance of orange blossoms and kinmokusei. Ironically, the rich and lingering scent of sweet osmanthus reminds you of Kyoto and Osaka in October, bringing back memories of Gin and Pandora's Box, the same you wanted to forget in the stranger's presence. It brings back something else, too, another memory of another time. For a moment, the long-forgotten face of the red-haired girl with her peculiarly melancholic smile and her fragile, exquisite beauty appears clearly before your eyes. The Queen of Spades, you think in confusion, wondering why the woman on Kaito's card reminds you of her. And while the world is spinning and you feel the arms of the stranger catching you, his bittersweet fragrance invading your nose with a sense of alarming closeness and warmth, your mind rapidly winds back to the time eight years ago, to another night in another man's arms...
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A/N: I almost forgot to post this chapter after SN edited it since I'm feeling ill today. Am going to resume writing "Becoming Conan" when I'm better again.
E/N: lol what does kissing have to do with gf/bf?
A/N: Shiho thought kissing has something to do with gf/bf because that's the usual Asian (and also Western European) procedure. Americans are weird with their "dating" (partner shopping!) and smooching on the first date & clarifying the relationship status only after months of hook-ups! xd