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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Love and hate are only…
Love and hate are only separated by a thin line. This old adage doesn't necessarily apply to everyone but definitely to Yaten, albeit in reverse to the typical scenario of lovers who despise each other after a failed relationship—Seiya informs you as he puts away the last clean chopsticks. Somehow Yaten has managed to insult all their friends when they first met, but the girls wore him down after five or six months at the latest.
"He has changed his attitude towards you a bit too soon, though, which is extremely worrisome." Seiya gives his oldest brother a suspicious glance. Alluding to Three Lights' past arrangement with Kakyuu, he adds with a wink, "Don't you dare to work your charm on her! I'm definitely not going to share this time!"
"I hope you don't mind taking this box of gyoza home. Kudo-san must be hungry when he wakes up," offers Taiki-san, who pointedly ignores his brothers' banter about whether monogamy is natural to humans or whether it's only a dated custom, whose hypocrisy has reached its peak in our time. "Your friend and Seiya clashed the last time they met because he accused Seiya of committing euthanasia without having a shred of evidence." Stick darts you a fleeting, shrewd glance to check whether Seiya has told you about his run-in with Kudo and—after satisfying himself that you must know parts of the story—continues in a gentle voice, which has an almost soporific effect, "I hope he has changed his opinion in the meantime and won't try to revive the case since Seiya has a rather quick temper and we don't need any drama before our comeback."
Despite his watchful, fiercely intelligent pale eyes, the smile he gives you now is as entrancing and bright as a ruffled water surface illuminated by the silver moonlight. And it strikes you that Yaten Kou must be the dog that barks but doesn't bite whereas Taiki Kou is the sort of canine friend that will strike the moment you believe yourself to be out of danger.
"Why are you toadying to the wannabe snoop?" Yaten-san, who has overheard the talk, snaps while Seiya studies his two brothers and you with a quizzical expression. "If I were you, I wouldn't let anyone who makes a living from sticking his nose into other people's private affairs taste my cooking!"
"You aren't Taiki—and no one who knows you wants to taste your cooking," Seiya points out with mild amusement, and the morning would probably have stayed pleasant if it weren't for Yaten-san's sudden deluge of complaints about detectives in general and Kudo Shinichi in particular. As if accusing Kudo of intruding into other people's domestic affairs weren't enough, Yaten Kou—whose cattiness dwarfs yours in your most moody moments—is intimidatingly eloquent and knows a plethora of derogatory terms, which he happily uses for his rant on Kudo's supposed incompetence.
Kudo has solved so many cases by now that no one can call him incompetent without sounding like an utter fool—you explode. He may have to invade other people's privacy to do his job, but he goes out of his way and risks his life to help the victims instead of worrying about his precious hair or how much sun and sleep he needs every day! A celebrity's life is, by comparison, rather hedonistic and empty, isn't it? Earning a fortune by supporting the insipid, sensational entertainment industry and exploiting shallow, characterless girls who squeal whenever they see a pretty face or a few cutesy gestures can hardly be considered more meaningful!
A deafening silence follows your self-righteous, moralizing speech as all the three brothers fix you with a long, thoughtful gaze, and Seiya's face clouds over for a second before his eyes brighten and he chuckles and you wonder whether you've only imagined his reaction.
"That's exactly what you once said about the whole idol business!" he reminds Shortie, who only huffs in reply. "It's the same what Taiki said when he refused the 'Johnny Bond' film offer! I can't disagree either." If he didn't love the stage and the job didn't pay so well, he would never consider a comeback.
Seiya recounts with a certain glee how Yaten had whined about the inane advertisements they had to film until they earned enough to buy a private jet, and afterwards Yaten wondered whether being an idol was just another way to fend for oneself in a corrupt system. It's glaringly obvious to everyone in the room that your boyfriend is only trying to salvage the situation with his excited chatter although he was stunned by the vehemence of your reaction and your aggressive, offhand statements. In contrast to Yaten-san, who is muttering to himself that Seiya is going to have a "very supportive wife", Taiki-san only scrutinizes your face in absolute silence as the last trace of warmth drains from his piercing eyes. Waiting until Seiya has finished his anecdote, he flashes you another smile—a perfectly civil one this time—and murmurs something in a low voice into Seiya's ear, which you can't overhear due to another acerbic comment of the Talented Mr. Shortie.
"Now I know why you refuse to share the girl this time," Yaten-san coolly observes, addressing only Seiya as if your presence is no longer of any importance to him. "You're already sharing—and you have so little of her that it barely suffices." Turning his gaze on the antique incense burner, he absently adds, "But it doesn't hurt to enjoy it as long as it lasts. Generally, relationships of famous film stars end in separation or divorce."
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"This is the most clichéd thing which could have happened," you can hear Stick lecturing Seiya while you freshen yourself up in the bathroom. "As an actor, you should have known that this happens in every movie or novel when the main couple gets drenched and needs to get changed somewhere! If you weren't such a naive idiot, you would have known that she intended to seduce you right from the start! Nobody else could have fallen for her ridiculous claim that she didn't know who you are! Your face is everywhere it's impossible not to know it! It wouldn't surprise me if she turns out to be one of your mad groupies! Come to think of it… Yaten says something is seriously wrong about her although he doesn't know what it is."
The three Kou brothers are now all penned up in the bedroom, where Seiya must be ironing your dress. Since stranger-san laughed and asked his brothers to hush their voices when Yaten-san groaned, "Seiya will never outgrow his elementary school days," you deduce that Seiya must look a ridiculous sight ironing your lacy dress—an impression strengthened by Taiki-san's assertion that now is "definitely not the right time to make such an effort to court a woman!"
"She has the aura of an unlucky charm!" Shortie obligingly continues the barrage of accusations Stick has started. "Whenever people are so unhappy that they can't find a motivation to live, they begin to attract disaster like a misery magnet! She is only interested in you because you're the total opposite!" Like all people who're accustomed to working themselves up into a state, he grows increasingly agitated with every sentence. "From what I've seen and heard, she only loves her stuffy snooper and will dump you the very moment he says the words to her."
"From what I have seen and heard, she loves me, too." The smile you can detect in Seiya's voice softens the blow for you although you're still deeply disturbed by his brothers' withering scorn and loathing for a woman they barely know, who has only committed a few faux pas. "And he doesn't even want her since he has another girlfriend and is going with her to Osaka—"
"So that's why you agree to play the consolation prize for her, because she 'loves' you, too? It's natural that she thinks she loves you since all depressed people are drawn to you like the moth to the flame! They all try to throw themselves at you and live off you like bloodsucking vampires. And when they're done they'll throw you away as if you had never been more than a nice shiny toy for them! It was almost the same with Chiba-san, wasn't it, with the only difference that she wasn't such a loose girl? She literally fell into your arms because she was neglected by her clueless boyfriend. But when her beloved 'Mamo-chan' returned from Oxford, she simply dumped you and ran back into his arms again."
Oddly enough, the face in the bathroom mirror does remind you of a vampire with its pale complexion, bloodshot eyes, and swollen lips—a lovely (albeit not conventionally pretty) reminder of last night's escapades. And yet you're sure that you haven't exploited Seiya in any way. The image of you hurling yourself into Kudo's arms and kicking Seiya to the curbs as soon as your detective is available is just as absurd as these manga series in which the protagonist—despite being surrounded by intensely interested, extremely attractive suitors—keeps pining for her heroic but absent love interest for eight hundred or more chapters.
"I'm starting to wonder whether you two have personal reasons to talk me out of this." Notwithstanding Two Lights' diatribes, stranger-san's voice still sounds perfectly pleasant, lacking the tiniest trace of anger.
"She is so difficult and so bitchy that no one will ever get the idea to steal her from you—not even that cretin of a detective!"
You've got to hand it to Shortie! There is a certain integrity in his unapologetic, persistent nastiness. As unpleasant as he is, he is also unflinchingly frank compared to his smooth middle brother.
"It's interesting to hear you out of all people call her 'difficult and bitchy'!" Seiya remarks. "She is funny and exciting and one of the nicest, prettiest women I've ever met—and fascinating and extremely intelligent into the bargain! The chemistry between us is also unbelievably great… absolutely, divinely… perfect!"
"I can imagine!" Stick cuts off Seiya's enthusiastic exclamations with an exasperated sigh. "Even your vocabulary has become unbearably sappy since last night! Please spare us all the graphic details!"
"The only thing which bothers me is that she is much too good to be true." Stranger-san, who is remarkably undeterred by his brother's insult, sounds genuinely puzzled, as if you were really the ideal woman in his eyes. "There must be a catch somewhere—and I'm going to find it and deal with it as soon as possible."
In answer to Taiki-san's comment that this seemingly perfect relationship has more than a catch—Kudo Shinichi, their family, and time—and that it begins at an extremely inconvenient stage in Seiya's life because Shizuka-san has become so desperate that she threatens to make their comeback public as soon as possible, Seiya nonchalantly replies that their agent will have to wait. "She can't simply proclaim that I'm going to return to the stage when I'm still not sure about it."
"If your girlfriend is the reason why you don't want to come back with us, it would be the most immature and unprofessional thing you've ever done!"
"I told you I'll have to discuss this with Shiho first! I can't simply disappear for months and let her wait now that we're together."
"There is the phone and the internet—if only we didn't have to avoid both for serious talks. It's impossible to disappear nowadays if a girlfriend really wants to contact you, though. I bet the overwhelming majority of boyfriends would love to pull a vanishing act on their girlfriends if they could."
"And what's with all these talks of marriage?" grumbles Shortie with the impatience of a child who has been silenced for too long. "You said you wouldn't ever let anyone put you into a straightjacket! She is just the type of woman who will do it, and if you ever divorce her, she'll take the shirt off your back. Let's face it, you aren't cunning enough to handle a woman like her!"
They simply can't leave him alone, and you begin to admire your new boyfriend for being so immersed in whatever he is doing at the moment (ironing your dress?) that he doesn't seem to mind their nagging.
"After all these years and after this appalling mess with Chiba-san, one should expect you to have internalized the few principles we decided to adhere strictly to in life!" Stick dramatically sighs. "But no—of course you absolutely had to turn 'breaking rules' into your speciality!" You can finally hear the puffing sound of a steam iron now, which is odd since you didn't hear it before.
"Nonsense!" stranger-san retorts with his usual stoicism. "I've never said I wanted to adhere strictly to anything. I'm not going to behave as if I were in prison."
"You did promise our parents to stick to the hard and fast rules whenever you were allowed to go out!" Taiki-san reminds him. "'Don't ever trust strangers, no matter how pretty!'"
"Ah, but even our parents must have been strangers to each other once—and I made that promise when I was four or three."
"It doesn't matter!" Yaten-san chimes in. "'Don't ever share your personal fragrance with anybody!' She smelled of your personal fragrance, idiot! What you did is treason, which could have endangered the whole crew! Ten years ago, you could have been executed for this!" Judging from the gross exaggerations, the Kou brothers are having a blast, and you smile at their melodramatic tone parodying the mystery live action series on TV.
"I remember them giving out perfume samples to their closest friends," Seiya recalls. "They even asked Kakyuu and you to do the illustrations on the labels whenever they wanted it to look special."
"They always changed the formula a bit whenever they did that," Taiki-san coolly reminds him. "They never shared their personal fragrance."
"The fragrance of a perfume always changes on your skin and mingles with your natural scent, anyway. Even if everybody on earth were using my shampoo and wash gel, no one would smell so much like me that someone who has a trained nose and pays attention to the scent wouldn't notice."
"One little error or a stuffy nose is enough to disprove your theory!" returns Taiki-san. "Most importantly, you've broken Rule Three, which should never, ever, be broken—not even in afterlife, mind you, if afterlife existed!"
"So what? Just shoot me!" Seiya chuckles while Shortie and Stick recite in unison Rule Three: "'Don't fall in love with the enemy!'"
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