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.

FS

g.

Ghost at Twilight

(edited version)

g.

Thankfully, your terror...

Thankfully, your terror of tonight's string of curious coincidences passes as soon as it came although you need a moment to shake off the image of the red-haired girl lying on the pavement in a pool of blood, her frail body surrounded by a cloud of tiny green, pink, and white flowers. Not far away from her, her boyfriend was lying on the pavement as well even though he was still moving slightly, keeping a hand pressed against the side of his helmet as if he were in a daze or suffering from a concussion. Morbidly, among all the details of the scene engraved in your mind, the memory which disturbs you most is not that of her blood-drenched dress but that of her three radiant long-stemmed roses—two of which are slightly torn while the red one is still surprisingly intact—lying scattered around her head, whose dark reddish-brown hair and beautiful features might as well have belonged to an angel from a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

The stranger has stopped humming and is now smiling at you in silence, distracting you from your unreasonable fears with the intense curiosity you can see in his eyes. The red-haired girl has survived and has probably forgotten about you by now. Your strange obsession with her is the only thing you should be disturbed about. That, and your premonition of something disastrous when you think about the peculiar sunset, the stranger's intriguing eyes, and Kaito's warning...

"I already feel sorry for your future husband if you ever change your mind and marry," the stranger says in a light-hearted voice, interrupting your train of thought. With a start, you realize that you're not fifteen anymore and decisively free yourself from the spell his eyes and his voice have cast on you. Beautiful things are skin-deep and to be enjoyed but not to fall in love with. You're no longer so young and naive that you can't fight the moonlight. You know very well that you can resist.

"... It will always seem to him as if Kudo were lurking behind the corner to steal you away at the first opportunity. There are few husbands who can deal with that. If you ever consider getting yourself a slave who does all your housework for you, you'll need to lookout for a level-headed husband, someone who is just as cool and composed as Mamoru-san."

If he had said it before your talk with Kaito, you certainly wouldn't have minded. But after your conversation with Kaito, hearing the same from him is disquieting.

"Do I really behave as if I would throw myself at Kudo in an instant if he were free? It's not like I'm desperate for him because we almost never meet and don't even call each other. I've actually grown accustomed to the fact that he is never there."

"Oh, I wasn't talking about you," the stranger airily waves your worries away. "So Kudo and you seldom meet... But no sooner had your friends and his girlfriend left the two of you alone in Tokyo than he invented a treasure hunting game and even designed a map to ask you to watch cherry blossoms at sunset with him. After you two missed each other, he ran to your apartment, waited for hours, then walked to Ueno-koen in the middle of the night to find you. He talked you into letting him visit you—just to have a cup of tea together, I know—in the middle of the night after walking you home. To top it all he even fell asleep on your sofa so that he didn't have to leave." He pauses for effect before concluding, "A 'friend' like that would drive most husbands insane, you know... And it's even more maddening because Kudo is such a dangerous rival, the stereotypical shiny fairytale prince. You will have to dump Kudo some day like Odango dumped me if you want to save your marriage. Why don't you spare everyone the heartache by going back now and kissing Sleeping Beauty awake before proposing to him?" His long black eyelashes cast dark shadows over his eyes as he gazes into the distance and adds mischieviously, with a smile, "I'm sure he will enjoy it."

Without the links which prevent Kudo and you from going your separate ways—APAH, the Detective Boys, and the deal between Kudo and you to spend your real birthday together—the stranger's version of your alleged secret love story sounds so surprisingly convincing and excessively romantic that you forget your irritation and chuckle instead.

"Well, Kudo seems quite a danger for my future marriage, doesn't he? But we are absolutely not compatible, he can't cook, and I don't like the idea of love leading to marriage while he really believes in it. Three reasons not to go back and kiss him. I fear I'm not easy to please either. So, if I should ever hate doing housework so much that I consider getting myself a husband, I will look out for someone with an enormous ego who likes a real challenge."

"Someone with an enormous ego who likes a real challenge and who is masochistic enough to stick by you if the situation with Kudo and you lasts for years!" He raises a skeptical brow at you. "That combination is hard to find, I think. It's easier to make do with Kudo instead, no matter how clueless and boring he is."

"Masochistic? Someone like you, who was content with platonically wooing a married woman like a medieval knight for seven years?"

Since when has this become a running joke, you wonder, inwardly scolding yourself for thinking that marrying him for real wouldn't be much of a sacrifice.

"Almost eight years," he tells you with a wry, self-mocking smile. "When we met, she was already engaged to him without me knowing about it. I pursued her for one semester when Mamoru-san was at Oxford. I was dumb enough to think that she was my girlfriend just because she spent all her free time with me."

Before you can dwell on the thought that he is now depressed because your joke has brought back unpleasant memories, he flashes you another of his devastatingly charming smiles and draws you close to him again, with the difference that this time you're not only aware of his scent but also of his warm touch you can feel through your cardigan.

"You know what? Maybe we should really elope just to see whether it would work out." He chuckles. "Even if it doesn't, the expressions on their faces when they learn about the news would be worth it!"

Before your eyes, you can see Kudo inspecting your marriage license with his odd assortments of magnifying glasses, searching for a clue which proves that it is fake until he realizes it must be real and stares at you, incredulous.

"I must admit I'm curious to see the reaction. I might really consider your suggestion if you can clean and cook."

"I can do both really well," he brags. "Cleaning better than cooking, though. But I can make omelettes and chicken congee for you."

"If you call that 'cooking', I'll pass," you sigh, freeing yourself from his grasp. "Nobody can cook worse than Kudo, though..."

With his arm gone, you are once again aware of the chill night air and the wind, which comes in sudden gusts, swaying the trees and messing up your dress and your hair. Laughing at your futile attempts to straighten out your dress, the stranger reaches out his hand to help you keep your hair out of your face while you only glare at him, indignant. But then you get distracted by the way how his dimples and laugh lines deepen and wonder how he would react if you kissed him just for fun.

"So you've already enjoyed Kudo's cooking?" he asks, eyes twinkling and lips curved by a suggestive smile.

"No, I haven't. And I really don't feel like tasting it after what I've heard from his girlfriend. She told me she had attempted to teach him a few times... It's a wonder they both haven't died yet."

"Odango's cooking is atrocious as well." He laughs. "I wish someone had warned me about it before I tried her apple pie." There is an affectionate expression in his eyes as he is gazing dreamily past you into the water, apparently trying to conjure up a future with her and her atrocious cooking. "She forced it on us and Mamoru-san stoically ate all of it. That was the moment when I realized how much Mamoru-san has to endure every day for the sake of their marriage," he remarks lightly, shaking off the mental image with a dismissive movement of his head and his hand. "I can't imagine giving myself up like that! I really admire him for it."

"So you've already enjoyed her cooking. Are there other intimate things between you two you haven't told me about yet?"

"Nothing," he sighs, crestfallen. "But it's still more than the things between you and Kudo because at least I managed to leave her with a kiss on her cheek when I gave her up."

"I win," you tell him in a fit of euphoria when you feel the back of his fingers on your skin as he pushes your hair out of your eyes again while you're busy rearranging your poor excuse of a dress. "I received a confession and a proposal although there was, sadly, no kiss. But I wasn't disappointed because I knew it's no use expecting things like that so soon from a clueless mystery freak like him."

Astonished by the effortlessness with which you could touch on the memory which had been a lump in your throat for over three years, your mind winds back to Pandora's Box only to find that your fear of it has completely disappeared. How could it frighten you so much if it's just another wreckage under the sea, almost invisible in the impenetrable darkness like all the other remnants of your past? Buried under thick layers of sadness and resentment, the ghost of your love for Kudo is still there. But you no longer have to fear it since you've successfully locked it up where it can sleep alone, harmless and untouchable as long as it stays undisturbed.

"He proposed? And why didn't you accept it?" the stranger asks, fixing your eyes in disbelief. "Weren't you in love with him at that time? Or are you that terrified of marriage?"

You sigh, fidgeting with the mobile phone in your pocket, whose presence can't be ignored due to its unfamiliar weight. Although you usually leave it at home, you've taken it with you this time for fear that, if he wakes up before you return, Kudo might get the idea to snoop around and will accidentally stumble over the file with his impetuous proposal, which he took back only a few minutes after he made it. Your computer should be relatively safe from him, but you're paranoid about him guessing your mobile phone password.

"I did accept it, even though I was terrified of marriage... But he bailed! In retrospect, I think I was lucky, considering how poor his cooking skills are and how little I like the word 'marriage' in general."

"And why did he bail?"

"That's a long story," you wave your hand in a dismissive gesture imitating the one he made when you two talked about cooking. "Maybe someday I'll tell you if you don't pester me about it tonight." Since you're feeling slightly guilty about the lie, you change the topic. "Has she ever told you that she had feelings for you as well?"

"No, never." The stranger leans back to gaze at the indigo sky with its dark blueish clouds that are continuously changing shapes, drifting with the wind from one place to another as if they had lost their direction. "I know I must be delusional... But there were moments when I was sure she did have feelings for me although she never said anything."

"You really believed she would leave her husband for you someday?"

A moment of silence passes until he turns and gives you a pained look as if your question had directed his attention to the reality he had tried to ignore.

"No, I didn't," he says at last. "But I often had the feeling that I could steal her away if I wanted... that she would let me carry her off to a place where no one can find us and make her forget about him for a while." A mischievous smile flits across his face as he contemplates the option. "For a few weeks or even a few months, it would be sheer bliss. But what would happen then?" Switching from mischievous to resigned and depressed within the split of a second, he sighs. "She is devoted to him and extremely loyal. If she abandoned him for me, she would never be the same again. Someday, she would feel guilty for it and despise herself. Ruining her life like that... I could never do it."

After three years, you can still hear Kudo's voice at your ear. I'm racked with guilt, he had said, telling you nothing you hadn't already known beforehand.

"Kudo is extremely loyal as well," you remark. "It's one of his best character traits, I think. His girlfriend is the same... Loyalty is so rare in this world. Is it one of the things you love most about her?"

"Yes, it is," he replies lightly, springing to his feet. "That's why it can't be helped." Throwing an attentive glance at the darkening clouds which are approaching, he says with a tinge of surprise in his voice, "'Suck it up and move on,' I'd told myself, wallowing in self-pity when she got married. Of course I didn't really mean it. But tonight when she dumped me, it was different." Turning round to gaze down at you with a mystified expression, he murmurs, "I've been feeling very strange since the sunset."

"Strange?"

"Yes, as if something important had happened to me without me noticing." His eyes fix yours with an expectant look. "Can you understand that?"

"I think so," you say flatly, no longer bewildered by the fact that he feels the same as you.

"It's the first time that I've realized I'm an idiot for not moving on, but, at the same time, I don't know what to think about it." His eyes are sorrowful when he bends down and distractedly removes for you a leaf which was caught in your hair. "I felt that something would change tonight but I hoped things would take another turn..." Frowning, he kicks a twig away in frustration. "I have the feeling I've reached my limit and can't take it anymore, and yet... I'm still clinging to my love for her. I really don't want to lose it!"

"Those feelings always fade with time, which is actually a blessing, in my opinion," you coolly reflect. "In contrast to you, I wish they could simply disappear without a trace just when I want them to. It would make life much easier." Throwing a glance at your watch, you decide to get back to the more prosaic aspects of life. "I think we need to go to Two Lights' now if we still want to have a drink. And it's getting rather stormy here. We need to hurry if we don't want to get caught in the rain."

With a vengeance, you realize that you've left your wallet in your lost handbag and grudgingly admit it to him.

"Come on, of course it's on the house!" He smiles.

You raise a brow at him, amused by his choice of words.

"Didn't you want to say it's on you?"

He gives a small chuckle.

"You can see it like that if you want."

"Thank you."

A sudden gust of cold wind blows in your direction, causing a few sweeping branches of the weeping willow to brush against his head and get entangled in his collar and his hair above the satin band of his ponytail. Laughing and pulling at his locks with both hands to remove the branches from his hair, the stranger winks at you with a conspiratorial smile. "It doesn't matter whether the party is still going on or not," he declares. "We still have a few hours until you have to return to Kudo. Let's make a lot of fun memories together to dilute the bad ones! I'll bring you home in the morning."

"Good idea," you remark before you realize what he could have meant with making "fun memories together" until he brings you home in the morning. Even though his claim that he has never kissed anyone in a romantic context sounded truthful to your ears, he might belong to the type of man that doesn't count the kisses exchanged during a one-night stand. He himself has told you that women immediately force their phone numbers on him. Flirtatious, easy-going, and fun-loving as he obviously is, he might not have turned down all of them.

"Whatever you mean with 'fun'... I'm not the right woman for physical stuff with no strings attached," you warily remark, suddenly apprehensive about his impulsive hugs and his scent, which brought back your memories of Gin. "Don't even think of trying anything funny with me."

An awkward silence descends upon the two of you as he stares down at you in stupefied amazement. Seeing the flabbergasted and genuinely innocent expression on his face, it dawns on you that—despite his penchant for excessive flirting and uninhibited displays of affection—he has never been even remotely interested in having a one-night stand with you.

Embarrassed by the realization that he is now aghast at the thought that you might be contemplating the option—there is indeed an expression of mistrust in his eyes, which probably mirrors your own a few seconds ago—you add in an attempt to joke while wishing that the earth would open up and swallow you at once, "Besides, I won't marry you unless you impress me with your housekeeping skills. Don't forget that and fall in love with me!"

"Deal. Since I don't plan to spend the rest of my life doing housework, I wouldn't fall in love with you even if you were the only woman in the galaxy!" He gives you a gleeful grin. "Rest assured that the only physical thing with no strings attached I expect from you to do with me tonight is dancing."

Still visibly amused by your misinterpretation of his words, he extends his hand to help you to your feet. And once again you surprise yourself when you—even though you usually avoid needless hand contact—happily reach out to take it.

The sudden shift in breathing and heart rate comes simultaneously with the jolt of surprise and something close to recognition when your fingers touch. Without letting go of your hand, he stands still for a moment after pulling you into a standing position.

Like in a dream, the past and the present seem to merge into each other in a world frozen in time, and a confused silence falls between the two of you in which you're struck by the memory of Kudo holding your hand three years ago when Hattori and the two of you were going for a stroll along Quai Montebello with M Jean Black, the French agent of the FBI. Affected by the troublesome hormonal changes after taking the antidote, you had been walking on air despite knowing that Kudo was only holding hands with you because it was part of the disguise.

The hand you're holding now feels distinctly different from Kudo's, and yet the physical sensation you have when you touch it is exactly the same.

"I'm very much into dancing," explains the stranger and lets go of your hand, regarding you with bewildered eyes, whose deep blue gaze stirs vague and jumbled memories of violin and piano music and scarlet roses, Tenoh Haruka's lavender scarf, Kaioh Michiru's long flowing locks, Professor Tomoe's mad laughter, and the knowing wink of Akemi-nee-san...

"Thanks," you tell him with studied nonchalance, linking arms with him like you did before. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I can't dance at all. The few steps I learned in my dance classes... I've forgotten them long ago."

"Don't worry," he smiles, pulling you with him towards the intersection behind the gate of the park. "I'll lead. Probably you're only out of practice..."

g.

The camera pans out, leaving the pair to show the motorbike waiting at the motorcycle bay, an extravagant custom-made model, which was one of the world's most expensive motorcycles seven or eight years ago. On the streets, several photos and posters of Two Lights are gracing the walls of the buildings and the advertisement billboards. Slowly and deliberately, in ominous silence, the camera zooms in to a poster, shifting the focus from Two Lights' long flying ponytails to the large roses in their buttonholes, one of a rich golden-yellow and the other of a sparkling white evoking the image of snow...

On an advertising screen next to the traffic lights at the intersection, a reporter has just announced Taiki Kou's and Yaten Kou's comeback as "Two Lights" when Seiya Kou'silhouette appears in a flashback of the movie clip for a fleeting moment. Imitating the spotlights focusing solely on the object in his right hand, the camera zooms in and reveals a long-stemmed scarlet rose—a gleaming red orb in the dim light—which is now flying through the air while the horde of girls under the darkened stage are hurling themselves at it, screaming.

Oblivious to the dramatic happenings on the screen, Miyano Shiho only looks up when the traffic lights have turned green and the scene has already faded out, replaced by the announcement and the trailer of the new romantic comedy starring Two Lights and Aino Minako. From another angle, the camera zooms in to the face of the nameless stranger, who is now gazing down at his companion with an expression of amusement and disbelief as he sneaks a few loose locks the wind has torn from his ponytail back beneath the collar of his long jacket.

As they are ambling together through the deserted streets, each of them wonder whether the other one has noticed it. Yet neither of them identifies it as the unexpected tingling sensation which accompanies the first stirrings of love or something akin to it... And both of them shrug it off as the spell of a fleeting moment, passing over the critical juncture where destiny threw the dice anew and reshuffled the cards as two strangers arrived at the crossroads between the easy rapport of kindred spirits and the gravitational pull of a more troublesome attraction.

g.

A/N: Since I'd feel bad about making the (very busy and very exhausted!) Ritz beta this fic every week although she isn't into DC anymore, I've decided to edit GaT alone for now. This means no one will ask me to shorten my long rambling sentences or fix my prepositions, or tell me what sounds off in American ears. I also catch only half of the typos I've made after rereading a text for ten times. You've been warned! :D

In other news, I've been addicted to Overwatch for weeks although I think I'm slowly returning to a healthy rhythm. Hopefully this phase will last for a while so that I can continue my WIPs (and hopefully I won't start a fic with the DC crew as Overwatch characters: Mercy-Ran, Shinichi McCree, Ai Moira... :D Go away, plunny!).