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
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Ghost at Twilight
(edited version)
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Infinity...
Infinity... The name evokes images of infinite luxury and beauty, a golden cage so spacious, magnificent, and comfortable that the exotic birds in it never felt the wish to escape. Infinity was also the crème de la crème of the world's private academies, the place where only the best were good enough and where telling your fellow classmates they were "pretty good" was considered a back-handed compliment because the students were said to be prodigies. Rumour had it that there was only one exception, a non-prodigy, who was not admitted into this exclusive academy because of her humongous talents but because of a signed letter from an immensely powerful person and the persuasiveness of a loaded Beretta (which didn't belong to Gin but to another of the "seven crows", whose task was to monitor each and every of Professor Tomoe's movements). Calling to mind Infinity's mahogany desks, ornamental fountains, and white marble stairs, you remember hating Infinity with passion because, notwithstanding the fact that you excelled in every single class in contrast to the prodigy brats who were usually experts in their own fields but morons outside of them, your classmates never let you forget that they considered you not good enough.
You also remember the sound of torrential rain and the biting cold air on your skin, Kudo's warm arms and the thick blanket he put over both of you (accidentally rubbing against your new wound in the process), the blinding mist of tears you tried to hide in the nape of his neck while he coldly, almost harshly, reminded you that there was no reason to cry over two well-aimed bullets because "your prompt reaction saved Hattori and me". And then his cheerful, ringing voice trying to distract you from feelings he thought to be shock and guilt: "By the way, Haibara, back at Infinity... Were you one of Stinger's guinea-pig prodigies?"
It's no use dwelling on those memories, you decide, chiding yourself for thinking of them because Pandora's Box didn't have much to do with Infinity. Infinity was only one of the many projects whose files were stored in the main computer along with the particulars of all the codename members. The computer itself, a huge device filling the whole cabin of the seemingly decrepit ship, was only the fake Pandora's Box, harmless and insignificant compared to the real one.
Your memories of Infinity are vivid but all topsy-turvy and jumbled up like tiny photographs in a giant cardboard box. Sorting through them in search of the stranger's face among the junk, you discover that you remember more about your time at Infinity than you believed although most of your recollections are hopelessly random. Decorating your high floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows overlooking Azabu Juuban with purple silk curtains, working for two days and nights in Professor Tomoe's lab with only a few short breaks to visit the bathroom and to devour two croissants you flushed down with ten or more cups of coffee, watching Kaioh Michiru and Tenoh Haruka's pillow fight at six p.m. while trying to make chocolate with rum or rather rum with chocolate for Gin (your kitchen window overlooked Kaioh-san's bedroom)... Infinity was a time of first experiences: The first black cocktail dresses and the first fitting lab coat, the first high-heels that almost landed you in hospital, the first self-made (and probably inedible) rum-filled chocolate on Valentine's Day you ended up giving Tenoh-san as a revenge for snooping around the lab and sounding you out about the Organization, the first long nights in jazz bars sharing a bottle of sherry with Gin, the first time you heard the stranger's voice, Kudo's face you saw for the first time in the newspapers, the incident with the red-haired girl, the first kisses and the first feelings of guilt, the first trip with Gin to Osaka... But in your memory, Infinity itself stays elusive, as if—while collecting so many experiences outside of it—you failed to take notice of Infinity as an institution.
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"Infinity... Don't tell me that we once flirted with each other there because I absolutely can't remember it." Stealing another glance at the stranger's face, you ponder how you could have forgotten him if you had talked with each other at Infinity. Most probably, he was one of Stinger's treasured celebrity prodigies whom the mad professor had told about his pact with the "seven crows". It wouldn't surprise you since the lunatic had a special interest in talented musicians, actors, and athletes with quick reactions and was so talkative during his laughing fits that Gin more than once asked the Boss for permission to do away with him.
"No, we didn't." The stranger smiles. "We met after a Christmas concert, don't you remember? I was standing in the queue to Michiru-sama's dressing room, chatting with your sister when you came and dragged her away from me."
Michiru-sama... The only Michiru at Infinity was Tenoh Haruka's Kaioh Michiru, the gifted violinist, swimmer, and painter, whose illicit affair with Tenoh-san was overlooked by the school because both Tenoh-san and Kaioh-san were Stinger's so-called guinea-pig prodigies. Envied by all the girls at Infinity who either begrudged Kaioh-san her unmatched grace and unmatched beauty or adored Tenoh-san's long athletic legs and distant teal eyes that bewitched almost every female in "his" vicinity (Tenoh-san's real sex was a secret only few people could guess), "Michiru-sama" always stayed the embodiment of serenity, elegance, innocence, gentleness, and perfection at least outside the walls of her penthouse apartment of the dorm. Inside her apartment, however, she happily dropped her angelic mask and surprised you more than once with her choice of lingerie and her choice of movements when she danced wildly for Tenoh-san on the bedside table until they collapsed in a heap into the mess of crumpled clothes beneath them. That and other embarrassing episodes convinced you to keep the curtains of your kitchen window shut after five p.m. for fear of discovering too many things that are not meant for your eyes.
You could have attended the only Christmas party during which Michiru-sama and her "best friend" Tenoh Haruka performed at Infinity (Beethoven's Violin Romances—Akemi-nee-san's favourite pieces), but instead you were busy slaving away in Stinger's lab, completing long reports on apoptoxin and injecting a hundred white mice with the first prototype of APTX 4869, the one whose formula had just been found in the backup of your parents' files. It was your first task as Sherry and of such paramount importance for your future in the Organization and at Infinity that you consoled your sister with the promise to take her out for dinner and shut yourself off in the lab instead of watching the concert. Half an hour after the concert ended, the hall was still dotted with students in green and brown school uniforms (Infinity's colours) and people in black suits (the Organization's scouts often attended Infinity's parties and events in search of prospective fresh recruits)—and you didn't need long to discover the only two colourful people in the dark crowd: Akemi-nee-san and a young man, who, at second glance, was a boy about your age you had never seen before.
"You were the guy with the scarlet roses?" You let your eyes roam over the stranger's face in search of the person with a midnight-blue fedora, a long burgundy trench coat, and a thick white shawl that looked like a beard—a ridiculous sight evoking the image of Santa Claus disguising as a secret agent or vice versa. After eight years, the only features you can still recognize are his high cheekbones and his intense eyes scrutinizing you inquisitively with an expression which, unlike Gin's calculating interest, resembled the unintentional and purposeless curiosity of a child.
Slightly irked by Akemi-nee-san's thoughtless introduction ("Here is my gorgeous workaholic sister I just told you about...") and infuriated by the mocking smile which had stolen into his eyes, you threw a "Hello" and a "Sorry, we're in a hurry" at him before dragging your sister out of the hall. Shooting him a last glance over your shoulder, you noticed that he had already directed his attention to Professor Tomoe aka Stinger, laughing and carelessly waving the red roses in his hands as if he had forgotten about their existence.
"I remember your sister and I talked a lot about you." The stranger smiles. "She suggested that I ask you out on a date to distract you from your work."
"And what was your response?"
"I said I was so busy I had to pass." He grins. "But I would find a way to make time if it was her who wanted a date with me."
"You tried to flirt with my sister?" you exclaim, enraged by the mental image.
"Just kidding!" He laughs, pulling you into his arms again as if he has grown used to it. "I only flirted with Michiru-sama that night. But your sister even forced your phone number on me, imagine that!"
"I should have known it!" You free yourself from his arms with a sigh. Kaioh Michiru was easily the most beautiful girl you had ever seen, turning the heads of all the boys (and the heads of a few girls) at Infinity. It would have surprised you if he hadn't hit on her immediately after they met. "So you were in love with Kaioh-san before Odango?"
He wouldn't call it love, but he was her number-one fan, the stranger gushes. In his whole life, he has never met another violinist who can move him more than she did, and he was devastated when she left the stage and abandoned the violin to focus on her paintings.
"She is one of those people who have too many talents. If she hadn't dedicated herself to one, she wouldn't have excelled at anything." You thoughtfully behold the lavender raindrops streaming down the window glass, thinking back to the umbrella Kaioh Michiru offered you on a rainy afternoon. Intrigued by the sincerity in the stranger's voice, you throw him a quizzical look. "So you were in love with her irresistible music and not her irresistible eyes?"
"Certainly not her looks. Michiru-sama is always so extremely elegant and flawless, so overly refined." He gives a dismissive wave. "She is not as harmless as she looks, though." His lips curve up in reminiscence. "I found her mysterious and very interesting, and I still think she is one of the nicest women alive, but I wasn't sad at all when I found out that she was Haruka-san's girlfriend. It was nothing compared to what I felt for Odango."
"I see," you remark, meaning you understand now that he prefers the cute type although he seems to have had some sort of history with Kaioh-san as well, judging from his words and his smile. But while you were curious a few minutes ago when you tried to grill him about the women in his life, the last thing you want to hear him talk about now is his fling-or-whatever-it-was with Kaioh Michiru.
"So you were so busy at Infinity that you didn't even have time to attend the Christmas concert with your sister?" He leans towards you with interest. "You were wearing a lab coat when you fetched her. How old were you at that time? Sixteen, seventeen?"
Fourteen, about two years younger than "Michiru-sama"—you tell him—although you looked a bit more mature than your age. You were fourteen when the Organization sent you to Infinity to complete your education and get some hands-on experiences in Professor Tomoe's lab, and the Christmas concert with Kaioh Michiru and Tenoh Haruka was the last one at Infinity before Professor Tomoe went berserk the following summer and burned down his own academy.
"Tomoe didn't go berserk," the stranger protests. "He burned it down because he realized that his prodigy-project was a complete failure and that he should never have sold his freedom to the Organization to fund it."
"So it was Professor Tomoe who told you about the Organization?" you ask, realizing that he is fond of the mad scientist.
"He approached me on the same evening I saw you and asked me to come to his academy. It was easy to put two and two together, hearing him talk about cocktails as if they had a life and seeing all the people in black who never took their eyes off him while he was talking to me."
"Was he interested in your musical genius? Or was it your skill of throwing your clothes into the washing machine without consciously aiming at it?"
"I think he was actually interested in my conspicuous lack of inhibition!" He winks. "And what type of prodigy were you?"
"The prudish type." You demonstratively straighten your bathrobe. "He was intrigued by my violent dislike of flirtatious long-haired men! What I don't get is: You're only one year or a few months older than me. Why did I never see you at school?" A part of you—the serious one—wonders why he hasn't heard of the rumours surrounding you at Infinity while another part of you can't help but grin at the mental picture of him in Infinity's bourgeois green-and-brown suit.
You've completely misunderstood. Tomoe asked him to come to Infinity but he declined. He only went to a few parties at Infinity afterwards and still visits the self-proclaimed Nero in his mental hospital from time to time. Tomoe has an offbeat sense of humour he likes.
"Why didn't you want to go to Infinity?" It was no wonder that you two never met since you never attended any of the parties.
Because he disliked Infinity's elitism and abhors all types of uniforms. Even in Juuban high school he only wore Three Lights' suit, and the teachers never managed to force him into a school uniform.
"Three Lights' suit? Isn't it a type of uniform as well?"
No, it isn't, he claims, smiling. Matching clothes are a display of affinity between people who feel a sense of belonging to each other, not a type of uniform. Three Lights was his family and, at that point in time, family was for him the only thing that mattered.
And why did the band split up, you would have liked to ask. But since you remember very well his reaction when you told him to sing for you, you decide not to give in to curiosity. Whatever the reason was, it's most probably gone by now if he considers returning to the stage with his former band members.
"I'd never have recognized you if you hadn't told me," you tell him instead.
"So you were fooled by my brilliant disguise? I borrowed the clothes from the set of the Detective Boy Holmes live action we were filming."
"Who was Holmes? No, let me guess: Detective Boy Holmes was, of course, you."
"Sadly no, since Taiki was Holmes. Yaten said he would take any role they gave him because he didn't care, so he ended up as Watson, which was the worst casting ever. You can't imagine how much he hates it when fans remind him of that role. Back then the gutter press claimed that he had great chemistry with Taiki, which started all sorts of rumours."
"Don't tell me you were Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson."
"I hate to disappoint you, but I was actually Moriarty after filming the one episode in which I played Godfrey Norton. They only changed my outfit and my hairstyle, which prompted some Sherlock Holmes fans to write fanfictions about Irene Adler marrying Moriarty without Watson's knowledge."
"You don't look like a criminal mastermind to me!" You skeptically behold the laugh lines around his smiling eyes.
"Is it meant to be an insult or a compliment?" He raises his brow in mock annoyance. "It was a very loose modern adaption, and looks are deceiving, as Akane-san, our director, always said. She liked to bully me and often kept me on the set for hours even when everyone else had left. Maybe she insisted on casting me as Moriarty just because she wanted me to be the villain."
"Was her special weakness for you her reason for making Moriarty resemble Santa Claus?"
"Why Santa Claus? She thought a true villain had to wear a fedora, a long trench coat, and a turtleneck. For Infinity, I only added the scarf to hide my face."
"And the red roses as a shield. Or were they supposed to be a weapon?"
"No, the roses were a present."
And? How did Kaioh-san react to his confession, you ask him. You gather he wasn't very successful, considering his claim that he has never been kissed and the fact that she is still with Tenoh-san, according to the press...
What confession? He stares at you, apparently oblivious to the meaning of your remark.
"Your giant bouquet of red roses. Any girl would take it as a declaration of love, or was it only an expression of your ardent admiration?"
Those roses were actually a present for him from a fan of his! He smiles, visibly delighted by your misunderstanding. Shizuka-san—his present agent, the daughter of his late first agent—started a hype when she came up with the concept of letting Three Lights throw three giant roses into the crowd before a concert. Since his colour was red, he often received scarlet roses from his fans.
"All the three of us were weary of throwing roses after a few months. But the girls loved the idea so much that we had to uphold the tradition. Yaten tried to rebel by 'accidentally' dropping his yellow rose until the girls climbed on the stage to get it. Afterwards he tossed his rose as far away as he could just like Taiki and me, preferably at a girl who didn't look as if she was going to stalk us."
"So that's how you learned to aim so well? Do the colours of your roses mean anything, or did Shizuka-san choose them randomly?" Examining the poster you saw of Two Lights again in your mind, you try to guess the reason why Shizuka-san has chosen yellow for Yaten-san and white for Taiki-san. If they have kept the same colours from their time as Three Lights, Yaten Kou must be the short silver-haired man with the yellow rose on his suit while the tall man wearing the white rose must be Taiki Kou. You would have swapped Yaten-san's and Taiki-san's roses since the white rose would have matched Yaten-san's looks more. In contrast, it's easy for you to comprehend why Shizuka-san's chose to assign the stranger the red one. Perhaps, so you surmise, Shizuka-san assigned the colours to Three Lights according to their personalities.
Because of the san hikari, the stranger explains. Since their family name means "Light", Shizuka-san presented their family name and their first names in the Western name order and called the band "Three Lights", alluding to the san hikari, the three lights of Shinto.
"The roses represent the three lights. Yellow is supposed to be the colour of the stars while white is supposed to be the colour of the moon—"
"And you're the sun for your agent's daughter? You should be ashamed of yourself for turning the head of the poor girl," you remark, frowning because something about the colours of their roses bothers you even though you can't really put your finger on the reason why you should give a damn.
Shizuka-san is anything but a "poor girl", the stranger claims, and he thinks she only loves his singing. But you will know why she chose the sun for him after meeting Yaten and Taiki since neither of them can be called "warm" at first glance.
"On the other hand, some people are definitely too warm for their own sake!" You glare at him.
"So, are you getting burned?" He brings his face dangerously close to yours until you can feel his breath on your skin and instinctively close your eyes. In the silence, you can discern the sound of a suppressed chuckle and open your eyes just in time to see him pulling away, lips curved by a mischievous smile and eyes still half closed.
Admittedly, you had been struck by his easy manner and his sense of fun at first, but now you're irked by his frivolous treatment of you and his inability to take this (date, friendship, prospective love affair or whatever it is) more serious. Trembling with rage and determined to pay back the inveterate flirt for his increasingly annoying pranks, you grab his ponytail, wrap it around your hand, and bend down in an attempt to tie it around a leg of the bed. Contrary to your expectations, he doesn't resist at all but immediately yields to the movement of your hand, wraps his arms around your waist, and pulls you down with him as he lets himself fall on the carpeted floor.
"Jerk at my hair like that again and I'll take this off!" he threatens, his hand toying with the belt of your bathrobe. In the ensuing silence, you're acutely aware of your entangled limbs and the closeness which has become strangely familiar, the sound of his heart beating wildly against your chest and the feeling of his fingers stroking your arm in an almost involuntary caress. Encouraged by the sight of his gaze resting longingly on your lips, you stay glued to his body and wait (fixing his eyes in eager anticipation and mentally preparing yourself for giving this platonic friendship a beautiful funeral) until his bewildered eyes meet yours and you realize in crushing disappointment that the clueless fool—instead of kissing you—is waiting for a response.
"I dare you!" You grudgingly roll down from him, prop yourself up on one elbow, and yank at his ponytail again. "I've won this round, you harmless little kid! You don't even dare to kiss me, much less undress me like that!"
Still disgruntled and humiliated by your victory, you regally plant yourself on his bed, readjust your bathrobe, cross your legs, toss him the hairdryer, and demand, "Finish drying my hair for me now, loser!" when he suddenly pulls himself to his feet with the belt of your bathrobe, undoing the knot in the process.
"Let's call it quits," he says, letting go of the belt, and brushes his lips against your hair. "I fear I've already broken a promise tonight, and your detective is waiting for you at home."
"What promise?" you ask, distracted by his gesture, whose meaning you can't grasp (did he mean to say he likes your hair even though he doesn't want to kiss you?) before it dawns on you what promise he must have meant.
"Oh, come on!" he exclaims in exasperation, shooting you a wry smile while the unnerving wish of breaking the other promise with him as well flits across your mind.
But naturally, you know better than propose such an outrageous thing to a person who—for a reason you can't comprehend—doesn't even dare to peck you on your cheek. Either he has taken those "promises" too seriously and sticks to them now with idiotic firmness or he has scruples because he is afraid of ruining your (non-existent) chances with Kudo. At least it can't be shyness or the fear of rejection, you think to yourself. As bold as brass and undoubtedly observant, he must have noticed by now that you're not averse to kissing him. In any case, it seems you will have to kiss him first because he obviously won't kiss you. But unfortunately, you have never learned to initiate a kiss either because all the other men in your life had started it.
Before your inner eye, you can already see the two of you spending a lifetime together in his apartment or yours, sharing the shower with each other, hugging and flirting and cracking suggestive jokes while dry-blowing each other's hair every day for about sixty to seventy years without either of you daring to step on the boundaries of friendship. But as much as you want to do it, you can't bring yourself to kiss him for fear that, being the unpredictable idiot he is, he might really reject you for some obscure reason.
Helpless in view of this Catch-22 situation and for lack of words, you fail to say anything in reply to his confession (was it really a confession or did he only try to tell you in his flirtatious way that nothing will ever come out of this?) and only let him dry your hair for you in silence while, outside, the rain is still coming down in sheets as the world is still warmed by the first light of dawn.
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