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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Kudo Shinichi, too...
Kudo Shinichi, too, was once a complete stranger—a fact which seems unimaginable to you now that Kudo has become an integral part of your life despite his conspicuous physical absence. Claiming that you miss him would be a bit of an overstatement since you've grown accustomed to not seeing much of him during the past three years. Nevertheless, there are moments when the sight of a skateboard, a pair of black-rimmed glasses, or a football would suddenly bring a lump to your throat. In those ludicrously sentimental moments which, luckily, have become rare at last, you would recall that you were numb with shock when you saw Kudo in his grown-up form for the first time. Back then, the thought hit you that Edogawa Conan never really existed because he was only a shrunk version of Kudo Shinichi, a stranger with piercing grey-blue eyes and an aura so extraordinarily brilliant and pristine that it almost offended you.
Stealing another glance at the stranger, whose extremely kissable lips appear even more tempting with every passing second (while people claim that the eyes of love are blind, your infatuated eyes (and ears and nose) are surprisingly sharp), you wonder how your first meeting with Kudo would have been if the two of you had only met by accident in a park like you and "stranger-san". Would Kudo and you have felt an instant connection with each other as well? Or would he only have shot you one of his typical brief analytical glances, mentally splitting you up into thousands of tiny particles and then piecing you together again to put on you the stamp "Potential culprit/witness/victim, registered and analyzed in Ueno-koen on Friday night at 6:30 p.m." before filing a miniature version of you away in a drawer of his perfectly ordered mind?
Most probably, Kudo would never have developed any feelings for you at all if you two had met outside the setting of a mystery because you are simply not his type. Similarly, you, too, would never have seen more in him than an impressively smart stranger with observant eyes. And before he could explain to you how he had deduced your occupation and educational background at first glance, the woman he would have been waiting for would already have interrupted your little chat because she certainly wouldn't have got lost on the way to Ueno-koen.
Whatever... Even if you two—caught in the crossfire of the clash between the Organization and the FBI—had stumbled across each other without being shrunk, you reflect, you would never have seen anything else in Kudo but your ticket to freedom. You would have found him good-looking but not attractive, charismatic but not charming, brilliant but not witty, friendly but not endearing. And the fact that he was, all in all, pretty much a girl's perfect knight in shining armour would probably have bored you.
On the other hand, your interest might have been ignited by his passion for mystery and his childlike exuberance. When you saw him for the first time in person, Edogawa Conan didn't immediately stand out among his classmates as you had expected. As long as he could maintain enough self-control to hold back his deductions, Kudo could effortlessly blend in with the children who weren't even half of his age, and you remember you found the contrast between his essentially rational character and his unguarded emotional outbursts intriguing. In fact, you remember you thought his smug boyish face was oddly interesting the first time you saw it.
"Are you thinking of your detective again?" the stranger asks, interrupting your train of thought.
"How did you get that idea?" You stare at him, unnerved by his ability to read your mind.
With a sigh, he turns off the hairdryer, gives your hair a final stroke, and gazes dreamily into the mirror before he raises his brow at you and haughtily declares in a flawless imitation of your voice, "How did you get the idea that I'm thinking of Kudo all the time? I admit I had a weakness for him once... but I'm really not in love with him anymore!"
"Who taught you to impersonate other people like that?" You remain undecided about whether you should be irked by his impertinence or impressed by his acting.
He has been doing it since he was small, the stranger declares, glowing with pride. Taiki and Yaten don't appreciate it when he imitates them, though.
"I can imagine! But if you think I've been fantasizing about Kudo's beautiful eyes, you're dead wrong this time."
"So you've been fantasizing about something else? If it was about his beautiful lips you didn't get to touch because he bailed without a kiss, it's the same to me."
"Actually I have been thinking of kissing," you remark, surprising yourself with your boldness. "Do you want me to tell you about it?" Unfortunately, you don't really know how to continue. "Since holding your hand gave me the same feeling as holding Kudo's hand, I wondered what kissing you would feel like," would be the truth but would also be the perfect beginning to ruin your chances of getting a kiss from him for good.
"So you did kiss him?" the stranger asks, misreading your intention completely.
"No such luck," you sigh, wondering how a clueless guy like him could have gained such a notorious reputation. "He was about to kiss me when a friend of his walked in on us."
"When it comes to love, you're cursed just like me," the stranger jokes. "Just follow my example and give it up already."
"I've already given it up long ago. But you should at least have feigned sympathy!" You shoot him a disapproving look. "Haven't your parents taught you how to behave when a woman tells you the sob story of her life?"
"They did. They also taught me not to ask a woman who is in love with someone else to go out with me at night, but I've never been good at following their advice."
He surely has flirting down to a fine art, managing to flatter you and keep you at arm's length at the same time. After letting you know that nothing will ever come out of this, he thinks he can pretend that you are tantalizingly out of reach and woo you like a Petrarchan lover now without having to fear that you will take him at his word.
"So, do you regret it now? Even the weather is against us. You should have asked another woman who is not jinxed to go out with you."
As if it were trying to illustrate your statement, the torrential rain outside pelts down even faster, lashing against the windowpane, and both of you turn your heads when a gust of wind rattles the window. Somewhere in the darker recesses of your mind, you can still feel the irrational old fear that Gin's ghost will haunt you at twilight.
"No, not in the least." The stranger smiles. "I'm glad I asked you although I can tell you're thinking of Kudo again, judging from the look on your face. Perhaps I should consider making a living of my mind-reading skills instead of my singing."
"You'd starve because your mind-reading skills are unreliable. I've been thinking of someone else this time."
"Some other ex-boyfriend? You had this nostalgic ex-boyfriend look on your face."
"The one who told me about the ghost at twilight. I used to have nightmares about him dying a sudden death and then coming back to life to haunt me."
"Were you terrified of having to confess to him or just afraid of his ghost?"
"I was terrified of being responsible for his death. After all, I knew I could never have forced myself to confess. There is something extremely humiliating about this whole confessing and making a fool of oneself. As long as one doesn't know for sure one's feelings are being reciprocated, one should refrain from doing such a thing to spare both sides the embarrassing situation."
In your mind, you can see the scene as clearly as if you had never forgotten that night... the strips of moonlight on the yellow-ochre sheets, the deformed teddy bear in your arms, Gin's long ponytail and his sharp profile in the soft light... while a feeling of unease suddenly comes over you when you think of Kudo's silhouette against the ending twilight.
"Are you all right?" The stranger slightly touches your arm.
"Perfectly," you tell him, dismissing a peculiar thought which has just flitted across your mind. "I've only forgotten to tell you that both Kudo and Kaito know the story of the ghost at twilight as well although their versions are different from yours and mine."
"And how are their versions?" he asks, pulling the blanket over your naked feet. To your surprise, you realize that you must have been freezing without noticing it.
"Kaito's version is about a spirit trying to steal a heart during a magical twilight while Kudo's version is about a ghost returning to life for a day to say farewell to the person it loved. Two completely different versions of the same story again!"
"Since there are already so many different versions, we should make up our own version of it," he suggests. "I don't know how yours will end, but I'm definitely going to give mine a happy ending."
Even though many memories of your time as Haibara Ai have become blurred over the years, you still remember distinctly the school play during which Kudo played Ran's knight and carelessly removed his helmet in front of everyone's eyes to solve the murder while you were impersonating Edogawa to allay Ran's suspicion. Seeing them in their costumes onstage together, the thought suddenly occurred to you that Kudo and Ran must have grown up with different fairy tales than you did. Theirs were most probably about noble knights who rescued and married their beautiful princesses—stories about secure, requited, and everlasting loves—whereas the fairy tale you grew up with was a ghost story which denied the feasibility of enduring love.
At that moment, you realized that Kudo and you were galaxies apart.
The stranger, too, apparently belongs to the people who have grown up with happy endings, and you perceive for the first time the gaping gulf between the two of you which you haven't noticed before. Regrettably, the rules of magnetism don't really apply to human beings. When it comes to love, opposites usually attract but also tend to push each other apart in the long run.
"And, how does that happily-ever-after look like?" you ask, feeling exhausted and sleep-deprived again. The euphoria of the last hour is wearing off, and you remember the same happened in Paris when you tried to picture a future with Kudo and came to the conclusion that your story with him would never have a happy ending.
"I don't know it yet. But of course everybody is going to live happily ever after. Fairy tales are supposed to end like that."
"Real life never ends like that." You rest your head on his large pillow and bury yourself up to your shoulder under his fluffy blanket. "Unrequited love might be agony as long as it lasts, but I think it's the requited one which actually kills one in the end. The only fair thing in love lies in the fact that one will always suffer no matter whether one gets or doesn't get what one wanted."
"Why?" He gives you a skeptical look. "Getting something you want or not getting something you want usually makes an enormous difference."
"Not when it comes to love because it's impossible to have such an intimate relationship with another person for long without giving up yourself. After a while, the differences can't be ignored—or you manage to ignore them but that would be the end of love as well. Long-term relationships are built on never-ending sacrifices and disenchantment. Sometimes, when I see old married couples together, I almost pity them! Infatuation only lasts for a couple of weeks. Afterwards it's like dealing with a car crash in slow motion..."
You don't need to be a prodigy to know that this is definitely the wrong approach to ask the stranger for a kiss. What's more, you can't understand why you couldn't resist the urge to bore him with your tedious introspection. You can't even make out what you actually want from him after the kiss you're craving despite not believing in long-term relationships. Although you don't want a fling with no strings attached, you can't believe that two freedom-loving people like he and you will ever end up in something as suffocating as marriage either.
Meanwhile, the first glimmer of dawn lazily lingers on just like the last gleam of twilight, bathing the stranger's small bedroom in a nostalgic reddish glow, and you distractedly note that love seems to sneak up on you whenever you believe to have evaded it. Capricious, uncommitted, and perpetually kindling desire which can never be satisfied, the unreasonable passing fancy seems to impose its tyrannical reign on you when you are least expecting it just out of spite.
"There are many cases like that, but they're certainly not the rule. I think Mamoru-san and Odango are genuinely happy with each other despite their occasional tiffs, and they've been together for nine or ten years by now."
Odango... There is something about the way he pronounces the little nickname which wakes you up from your impossible dream that this unexpected spark of fascination between the two of you could actually develop into something serious.
"Since you believe that I'm thinking of Kudo all the time, I bet you're always thinking of Odango, right?" you observe with as much nonchalance as you can muster.
"Almost always," he admits. "I just wondered what she would say about this."
"About what?"
He gives you a look of exasperation and disbelief.
"Don't tell me you really didn't get what I told you earlier."
"I didn't," you cast him a confused glance, "or at least I'm not sure about what you wanted to say."
"You must be kidding me," he murmurs, looking so crestfallen that you begin to wonder whether he is really so naive and fixated on the idea that you're still in love with Kudo that he is missing all of your hints.
"So, what would she say about this?" you ask, feeling your eyelids drooping and your limbs growing heavier with every breath you take. His soft murmur combined with the rhythm of the falling rain in the background sounds almost like a lullaby to your ears, and his tiny bed is so comfortable that you feel like curling up next to him and go to sleep in an instant—social norms be damned!
"She'd tell me that I'm even more of a masochist than she had thought," he says with a smile. "But you're tired. I can leave you alone now and wake you up in an hour or two if you like."
"Don't!" You sleepily force your eyes open. "You should try to keep me awake instead."
"What about coffee? I made us some while you were still in the bathroom." He puts the hairdryer into his wardrobe. "Or would you rather go to Two Lights' now? I can lend you my clothes since it will take our clothes a few hours to dry."
Coffee, you decide without as much as a second thought, because going to Two Lights' in his clothes isn't really an option. The reporters would get a wrong impression if they spotted the two of you together again at Two Lights' and noticed that you had changed your clothes in the meantime, apart from the fact that you would look weird in his clothes because he and you don't wear the same size.
"I think everyone has already gone home by now," he says in an attempt to dispel your fears, "and people will always think whatever they want to. Not changing clothes will probably give them the same ideas although I wouldn't really mind if you—"
"Of course I would mind!" You shoot him a black look. "The last thing I need now is appearing in the news as the latest conquest of an infamous womanizer like you."
"So you're afraid that Kudo will get the wrong impression about us?" he laughs, eyes bright with excitement. "Now I feel like taking a photo of you in my bathrobe and mail it to him just to see his reaction."
"He wouldn't be fooled by it. Knowing him, I'm sure he will deduce everything within a few seconds."
"You mean the only way for us to shock him out of his apathy is getting married? When, do you think, are the hours of business of the municipal office? Do you have time on Monday?"
Although you know he is only joking, his voice sounded so convincing and honest that, under different circumstances, you would have sworn that he is serious.
"Since I don't mind having someone who does all my housework, you should be more careful with your jokes or you will really end up marrying me. And I must warn you that I'm not an easy woman to be with."
"I'm looking forward to seeing your face when I drag you to the municipal office next week." He flashes you a challenging smile on the way to the door. "Will you dare to sign the papers or will you try to bail like you did with the shower?"
For a moment, you're tempted to take on his challenge just to see his face when he realizes that he has shot himself in the foot. But then you decide against it, partly because you're tired and partly because you're not in the mood to tease him.
"I thought we wanted to call it quits," you remind him instead.
"I'm not joking," he asserts. "I'm sure Kudo will explode as soon as he hears that you're married to me, and I promise that if you want to be free because he tells you he'd like the two of you to start anew, I won't cause any trouble for you but divorce you immediately."
"If you think you can turn me into your short-term affair that way, I'll pass." You reluctantly leave his cozy bed to join him at the door. "Since he won't ever come back to me, I might get the idea to keep you as my house slave for life if we really married."
He blushes at your accusation.
"I only meant to sign the papers although I'd be the last one to complain if you ended up marrying me for real," he laughs, pulling you by your elbow with him into the corridor. "But why do you think Kudo won't ever come back? As things are, I bet he is going to sabotage our wedding if you let him know about our engagement beforehand. I'm really looking forward to that."
"I hate to disappoint you, but I've already given him a good reason to break up with me once. Kudo is not the type who makes the same mistake again."
"A few minutes ago you still claimed that Kuroba and Kudo both broke up with you for lame reasons," the stranger wickedly remarks. "It wouldn't surprise me if Kudo's version of the story is very different from yours and that the one who bailed was in reality you."
"No, it was him who left." You glower at the insolent wretch, who has dared to tell you to your face that he doubts your credibility, "although it doesn't matter who broke up with whom because it's all water under the bridge now. I don't think either of us wants to revive something which has been dead for years."
For a brief moment, he hesitates with one hand on the door handle, scrutinizing you with his probing eyes as if he were about to cross-examine you about the breakup. But then he apparently remembers that you've told him not to touch on that subject tonight and only gives you a strangely enigmatic smile before ushering you into his living room.
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