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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Through the tinted glass…
Through the tinted glass of the large window, which Taiki-san has closed after airing out the apartment, the outside world looks like a monochromatic study in blue. Recalling Kudo's assertion that one can learn a lot about a person by studying their apartment, you let your eyes roam the living room to search for clues. In front of the quaint open fireplace and the heavy wooden chest where Seiya keeps his fan letters and presents, new piles of fan post, which Two Lights must have brought, are propped up against two full trash bags where the discarded love declarations of complete strangers mingle with lingeries, homemade chocolate boxes, and plush animals. Shizuka-san, whom Seiya is going to send the bags for safe disposal, could make a living selling the unwanted flowers and presents if she wanted to.
An escritoire and two high book shelves occupy the entire wall and the corner next to the fireplace. There are two fountain pens, two bottles of ink, and a pile of pocket-sized notebooks on the escritoire, which surprises you, as you would have expected Seiya to write with a ball-point pen. A few pencil stubs, mechanical pencils, erasers, and stacks of colourful post-its are neatly stored in a very decorative open cardboard piano with silver keys, which also functions as a sort of paperweight. The high book shelves are packed with paperbacks, pocket-sized screenplays, and sheet music. At eye level, an antique teapot adorns a series of study scores, its copper hue contrasting with the indigo scores of Schubert's "Unfinished" and Mozart's "Requiem".
"It's not a teapot, it's an incense burner," Yaten-san sardonically remarks, gloating over his victory like a petty little child when he deduces from your exasperated expression that his guess was right.
"It does look like a teapot," you insist.
"Everyone mistakes it for a teapot the first time they see it," Shortie admits with an air of reluctant generosity. Although you can't claim that he has grown fond of you, he seems to make an effort to accept the reality that he is going to see you with his youngest brother from on. When he shows his pleasant side (and you suspect that right now he is as nice as he can be towards a complete stranger), Yaten-san bears a slight resemblance to Seiya as well as to the flower-loving middle brother. It isn't only the opalescent eyes or the curve of the lips—a peaked, clearly defined Cupid's Bow—or the similar shape of the head and the nose, which convince you that they must be related in some way just like Seiya believes. All the three brothers (even the staggeringly tall Stick) have the same effortless grace and poise and articulated musculature, reminding you more of ballet dancers than athletes or fighters—and none of them has the aura of a Black Organization member.
So who of them was the seventh crow? Yaten-san, who would fit Gin's description of "the stereotypical bad boy," is the most likely candidate, as he is about the same height as the blue-clad biker and the only Kou brother who seems rude enough to honk at Kakyuu in front of a café. But Seiya resembles the biker more with his quick, precise movements and gestures while Yaten-san is so luxuriously languid, not to say apathetic, that you can't picture him as the man who, according to Kakyuu, always behaved as if he were chased by someone.
On the other hand, you can't imagine Seiya to honk at Kakyuu when it would have been more in character for him to park the bike in the vicinity and join Kakyuu and you at the table. Now that you visualize the situation, you can even see him ordering a can of coffee and a whole chocolate cake before asking you whether you were the girl in the white lab coat, whose phone number had been forced on him by her own sister after the Christmas concert. People change with time, however, and even the height can change drastically after eight years. That summer, Seiya was only sixteen or seventeen, and sixteen-year-old boys can still grow by leaps and bounds unlike most girls of the same age.
"How tall were you when you started your idol careers?" you ask Yaten-san in the silliest, nosiest manner you can muster. At the same time, you try a harmless, sweet smile, which turns real as you succeed to imagine Shortie as a little kitten or—even better—a white poodle with a teddy bear cut.
"All the three of us were much shorter back then," Yaten-san replies after shooting you another mistrustful, cautious glance. "But our heights in relation to each other has always been the same. Taiki has always been the tallest ever since we were toddlers; Seiya's body always knew how to reach the exact height which our tyrannical society believes to be perfect and desirable; and I…" He heaves a weary sigh, which sounds honest for the first time.
"You've always been stingy with your energy, or conserved it for a better purpose," Seiya, who has just finished doing the dishes and seems eager to help, proposes. Both Yaten and he have grown a lot since their idol days, but especially Taiki shot up so unexpectedly that it was amazing how well he adapted to it without developing a stoop like most tall people. It was only inconvenient whenever Taiki walked with Yaten, who was as tiny as a petite girl until he turned twenty-one and grew a few inches. Perhaps Yaten was sick of being mistaken for a woman and asked by rude strangers why "she" had chosen such a tall boyfriend or worse, how they managed to overcome their dramatic height difference. What did they do when they kissed? Did Yaten have to stand on tiptoe and crane "her" neck while Taiki stooped, or did Taiki have to kneel down?
With that mental image, the Talented Mr. Shortie vanishes from your list of potential candidates for the elusive seventh crow. Even though he wasn't a giant, the man on the bike was at least as tall as Yaten-san is today—which leaves only Taiki-san or Seiya on your list. Calling to mind Seiya's remark that you have a much more dangerous taste than him, you reluctantly admit to yourself that he must have alluded to the fact that you were once in a relationship with the second crow and were now flirting with the former seventh crow after two failed romances with a magician and a famous detective. Does Seiya know that Kaito was Kid the Phantom Thief? He knew about Haibara Ai and APTX as well as Infinity and Tenoh-san's group before you two met. If he was the seventh crow, he must know about Pandora's Box as well.
A wave of tremendous, albeit absurd, relief sweeps over you as it dawns on you that Seiya wouldn't ever condemn you for eliminating Anokata and the seven crows when he himself has played a central part in Tenoh-san's vendetta. After all, it was the seventh crow, who had to distribute the pills to most of the respective victims, as Tenoh-san's allies couldn't possibly have approached the highest members of the Organization and survived long enough to poison all of them. Just like you, Seiya was a traitor and a murderer out of necessity; but unlike you, he hasn't let it break him or rob him of his zest for life. While this makes him a far more dangerous man than you thought him to be, it also makes him the perfect match for you, as outrageous as it sounds. If this were a dream, he would be Gin and Rye and Kaito combined, or a male, straight Tenoh Haruka, who is single and faithful and focused on you alone… Or a more artistic, more compassionate, and less self-righteous Kudo Shinichi, who knows how it was to belong to the Organization…
A night in Paris—the night after you gave Tenoh-san the box with the twenty-five pills—emerges before your eyes, and you can almost feel the agreeable languor of sleep creep up on you as Kudo entered the bedroom. Before he left for the bathroom, he and you had bickered about his odd jealously whenever the sons of the agents motards paid you more attention than urbane politeness dictated. You desperately try to behave like the ideal husband, Kudo-kun (you had intentionally included the suffix you used for him at the beginning of your friendship in order to sound exactly like Haibara Ai once sounded), but you always fail whenever you try too hard. Or is this how you would behave if we were really together? To irritate him even more, you had ridiculed Ran's taste in men and their tentative relationship, claiming that the poor wonder woman with her great character, her cooking skills, her deadly karate, her large doe eyes, and her hourglass shape is forever stuck in an unsatisfying relationship with a possessive, socially challenged, unmusical, clumsy workaholic detective with a cowlick, who can't even distinguish the waltz from the tango!
If you find me so embarrassingly inadequate—Kudo remarked in a cutting voice as he got into bed even though he must have noticed that you were about to drift off—you should at least tell me how your ideal of a boyfriend is. Apparently, you have standards which no man in the world can ever meet so that you will have to search for him in another world and resign yourself to a single life in this one!
You yawned and cracked one eye open to behold him, taking in his smooth short hair and his antenna-cowlick, which looked like a delicious piece of dark chocolate in the reddish light of the lamp on the bedside table. For no logical reason, he was hurt by your harmless teasing and pouted like a husband who had made the greatest effort to please his wife but only received sarcasm and derision in return and who was now fed up with his troubled marriage. He was so immersed in his role that it had begun to shape his real world, in which you should only be his good friend and ally while Ran was the girlfriend he was going to marry. For a weak moment, you decided to let yourself get carried away as well—to imagine an alternative reality, which could have been real if a few things had been different…
I like being single—but I suppose it doesn't hurt to fantasize about the ideal lover once or twice. Well, he should be easy-going and extremely confident—not the jealous type at all, you smirked at your detective, whose frown was deepening. He would have to be intelligent and charming, of course… or why not ingeniously talented and absolutely fascinating? Dreams are supposed to be great, not mediocre! It would also be lovely if he could sing and dance and cook, although I'd accept him if he didn't satisfy all of the requirements but worshipped the ground I walked on. I'm not going to compromise when it comes to his character, though. I want him to be independent but also caring, smart but also loyal, proud but not really vain—someone who can be both gentle and fierce, who will protect me or at least try to protect me whenever I need him but who also lets me breathe…
You had spoken in a sing-song voice which clearly conveyed that you weren't serious, but a part of you had been conjuring up a more attractive version of Kudo, who was yours alone. If Kudo had been born into the Organization, received a different education, and fallen in love with you first, he wouldn't ever look at Ran because he was loyal and you would be all he needed!
Sounds just like me, Kudo mused, looking satisfied and positively puffed up as his frustration was evaporating. I can't cook and I can be a bit possessive when I feel threatened, and I can't dance or sing—but you said you would accept a few shortcomings and idiosyncrasies if he worshipped… he trailed off when he realized that he was stepping on dangerous ground and that someone else was waiting for him at home.
But I'm not done yet, you added as you turned away from him, towards the window where the shadow of the honey locust loomed. He wouldn't have any female childhood friends or past or present lovers who are so conventionally lovely that I can't compete! In fact, I would like it if his love life was just as pathetic as mine before we encounter each other. He might even have siblings or know how losing a family member feels like. He wouldn't ever let anyone or anything prevent him from being with me because he will be perfectly, hilariously, unimpressed by social norms, and having my love would always suffice because society always strangles love and this is supposed to be an ideal world, after all—
Listen, Kudo interjected, and you could sense the anxiety and uncertainty in his voice as he was struggling with himself. Haibara…
The sound of the familiar name cut you to the quick, and you realized in detachment that you couldn't imagine Kudo to be "Shinichi" either.
He would know how failing the people who trusted him feels like, perhaps because he, too, was seen as a traitor by the people who once raised him and loved him. You know, if you had grown up in the Organization and were single and better-looking and nicer and more sensitive and artistically talented, you'd have had an outside chance if I was lonely and bored and had enough time on my hands for a fairytale love-at-first-sight romance.
You could tell from the look on Kudo's face that you had successfully ruined the mood, and yet you couldn't stop at this stage, when the walls you had to build were still incomplete and fragile. The chemistry between us might be lacking, though. And in the long run, the spark goes out and even the greatest love dies, you soberly remarked, like flowers and trees and anything else which lives, you know… That's the danger all infatuated people face when they dare to take the plunge. Watching him turn away in angry silence, you pulled the duvet over your chest and concluded before you closed your eyes, But love will always remain a dream if you don't act on it. A touch never lies, unlike ambiguous words.
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