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 floor-to-ceiling…
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Yaten-san and Taiki-san's vast penthouse apartment, you can admire the intricate, labyrinthine stone paths outside without exposing yourself to the rain. Cherry trees and plum trees are already in full bloom, burdening their slender twigs with heavy white and pink blossoms. The azaleas have bloomed early as well—in brilliant shades of red, whose splendid masses are only punctuated by specks of brown twigs and green leaves. Kinmokusei shrubs and trees—ever-inconspicuous, evergreen—line the stone paths enclosed by arches of wisteria, which haven't bloomed yet but will turn the garden on the roof terrace into a lovely maze of fragrant clouds in April and May, when the wisteria blossoms cover the arches with their drooping curtains in soft shades of purple, pink, or white. Although the plants have been cared for well, the trees have only been lightly pruned and the shrubs haven't been sculpted into any discernible shapes. Taiki-san and Yaten-san are either too lazy to prune their trees or prefer a look of wilderness for their roof terrace.
The two-storey penthouse apartment, on the other hand, isn't only luxuriously furnished but also almost spotlessly clean—a rare sight for an apartment inhabited by two men in their mid twenties. The hardwood floor is heated and the white walls are adorned with oil paintings and limited prints, most of which depict landscapes and seascapes although there are the occasional impressionist studies of dancers and martial artists during training. Adjoining the living room upstairs are a vast library (consisting mostly of encyclopaedias, art books, and classical literature, judging by what you can see through the open door) and a music room with a giant black concert grand, a wall of guitars, and even a set of drums.
"Do you all play the piano?"
"I play it fairly well—well enough to accompany our songs. But Yaten and Seiya are both excellent pianists. I dare say they could play the piano professionally if they practised more."
"They have many talents!"
"Almost too many! It's never good to possess too much of anything."
To your relief, Taiki-san doesn't blame the quarrel between his hot-headed brothers on you. Instead, he adopts a positive, almost conciliatory approach. After showing you the music room, where film posters line the three walls which are not fully covered by Three Lights' guitar collection, he ushers you into the library, where a single hardcover with ink illustrations is lying open on the oval wooden table in front of the lace-curtained window. On closer inspection, you discover that the illustrations, all of which feature plants, have been drawn by hand. Even the letters, which spell out flower names and flower meanings in Hiragana and Kanji, have been hand-drawn by a skilful artist who must have been highly experienced in calligraphy.
"Has Yaten-san done these?"
"No, Yaten prefers watercolours and markers. These were done by Kakyuu. Yaten often copies her drawings to study them."
You can no longer bear the thought of Kakyuu, who has begun to overshadow you, for the few hours you've spent with Seiya suddenly seem fleeting and insignificant compared to all the years she had spent with him before the accident destroyed her life. Yet her drawings intrigue you so much that you eagerly accept Taiki-san's offer to show them to you. Gingerly, he leafs through the sketchbook by touching only the sides of the smooth, heavy watercolour paper with the tip of his long bony index finger, taking care to be slow enough for you to read through a page before turning it. All the illustrations, without exception, were gorgeous even though you can find tiny mistakes typical for spontaneous ink sketches here and there. Weeping Willow: healing, immortality, flexibility, tolerance. Orange Blossom: purity, innocence, marriage. White Chrysanthemum: candour, friendship, honesty… Although you wouldn't call yourself a specialist in flower language, you know most of the flower meanings. Ginkgo: endurance, vitality, duality, hope. Honey Locust: tenacity in the face of adversity. Wild Rose: simplicity, life, protection. Kinmokusei: nobility, memory, truth, fairy tale, "the golden tree of life…"
Some flowers have consistently positive or negative connotations while others are highly ambiguous, Taiki-san observes. The camellia, a positive flower, stands for humility and discretion but also admiration, passion, perfection, longevity, or good luck, and is often used as the symbol of an ideal love. Cherry blossoms, which the Japanese used for propaganda during World War II, can signify great accomplishment but more often represent the fragile beauty and evanescent quality of life, as the short-lived sakura blossoms are seen as a reminder of the passing nature of all things and the value of time.
Morning Glory, another flower of duality, symbolizes the bond of constricted love—for example in Chinese folklore, a pair of lovers can only meet for one day once a year due to a cruel decree of the angry gods. Morning Glory can also stand for a never-ending love whenever it was used on Victorian gravestones. But in certain cases the flower can also symbolize unrequited love or, in Christian beliefs, mortality like the cherry blossoms.
"Nothing beats the ambiguity of the cyclamen, though," you remark, reading the page Taiki-san has just opened aloud, "Cyclamen: sincere affection or true love but also departure, sorrowful resignation, farewell, or death—signifying that all good things will eventually end."
"The red ones are often likened to bleeding hearts," Taiki-san explains before moving on to the next page. "This one has both positive and negative connotations as well: Azalea: temperance or self recognition but also fragile passion; often given to a lover to tell them to stay beautiful, 'Take care of yourself, for me.'"
"Often given to a woman, it says," you darkly correct him. "It's always the women who are told to take care of themselves for their men, at least in our culture—never the men who have to take care of themselves for their women!"
"When Kakyuu copied the meanings from her flower books, she didn't change the original wording, perhaps because she wanted to cite the sources correctly." Taiki-san smiles at you for the first time since you two left Seiya's apartment. "It's true that most men don't take care of themselves for their women—not to the same extent as they expect the women to do for them." His smile broadens. "But in this case, I can assure you that Yaten did anything within the realms of possibility to take care of himself and stay beautiful!"
It's easy for you to see how Misa has become obsessed with Seiya's elegant flower-loving middle brother, whose imposing looks, dramatic voice, and extremely sharp intellect are accompanied by an air of perfect inaccessibility despite his gentlemanly attitude—a deadly combination for vulnerable, romantically inclined girls. His sudden bouts of temper or humour, which occasionally break through his cool shell like the first flower buds through barren spring branchlets, can be immensely attractive to a certain type of woman as well.
And yet you can acutely sense the skilled strategist behind the polite, pleasant mask. In his quiet and unobtrusive way, Taiki-san is far more intimidating than the cranky oldest brother, who has revealed himself to be more fragile than you thought. Calling to mind the moment in Seiya's bedroom when you told Seiya that you would rather fight Yaten-san because Taiki-san was too tall for you, you wonder whether the Fates have thrown loaded dice or Fortuna has cheated when she distributed the cards. After all, they've given you Seiya's opponent and Seiya the opponent you wanted.
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"Do your brothers fight often?" you ask Taiki-san as you two return to the living room. Perhaps you would have waited for Taiki-san to address the matter if you weren't still shaken by Seiya's outburst, which you would never have expected from such a relaxed, gentle man. But Tenoh-san, who blows up like an atomic bomb whenever someone pushes her buttons, can appear unassuming and mild-mannered as well when she is not provoked. Apparently the two of them are even more similar to each other than you thought.
Almost never, Taiki-san assures you. His brothers only clash when they can't accept that they grieve in different ways for Kakyuu—and even then the fight escalates very seldom. "But this fight isn't about Kakyuu although seeing Seiya giving you her parasol was too much for Yaten to stomach. Seiya and Yaten are very close."
You don't comment, careful not to give him an opening, and he pauses for effect before clarifying his statement: Seiya isn't just an obscure acting talent with "a pretty face" and "cutesy gestures" like your (admittedly accurate!) depiction of most idols. He can become—or maybe he already is—the singer and actor of our generation, at least in Japan. If he wants to, he can become one of the greatest singers and actors of all time—"that is, if he stops sacrificing himself for needy damsels in distress who use him to replace some unapproachable love interest and leave him as soon as they figure out whom they really care about!"
As you feared, Seiya's perfect middle brother is the sort of guardian that will maul and kill any intruder who poses a threat to his family with an apologetic smile on his face. Before you can defend yourself against his accusation, he narrates to you the story of "Seiya's now happily married friend Odango, who innocently met up with Seiya over the years whenever Seiya flew across continents just to see her, which happened at least once or twice or even three times a week." In Taiki-san's version of the story, Odango initially went out with his brother to distract herself from the relationship problems with her fiancé; and even though she visibly struggled with her new feelings for Seiya, she pretended to have felt nothing but friendship for him when her fiancé returned.
Depressed and lonely women always fall in love with his younger brother—Taiki-san claims—and while Seiya usually manages to flee from them before love turns into obsession and obsession morphs into hatred, the tragedy of Seiya's life is that he is generous to a fault just like Kakyuu and their parents, who could never resist helping other people. Since none of the deceased had met a good end and Taiki-san and Yaten-san can't watch Seiya walk down the same path, they have to make sure that their brother will be in good hands when he gets himself a girlfriend—with which Taiki-san means to say that your hands—needy damsel in distress!—are not good enough!
"Your parents are no longer alive?" Although you've already deduced this from the way Seiya talks about them, you decide to redirect Taiki-san's negative energy to another lane to escape the damage in case the volcano, which must be lying dormant under his calm exterior, erupts. After all, you can well remember Seiya's warning that when his flower-loving brother is in his psycho-mode, he is the most impetuous and irresponsible of the three of them.
They both died a few years ago, Taiki-san informs you, over one year before Kakyuu.
"May I ask what they died of?" Perhaps the question is too personal for the very first encounter between strangers, but Taiki-san is your brother-in-law sans papers, so to speak; and you've decided to milk the topic for all it's worth so as to avoid the talk about Seiya and you.
Suicide, he coolly says, much to your dismay. The cancer struck so suddenly and so violently that Three Lights' robust, lusty foster parents were practically wasted overnight. They weren't the youngest couple, as they were already in early middle age when they expected Kakyuu, but they both had a weakness for drama and grand gestures so that they cheerfully incinerated their isle and all animals and servants on it when they learned from their personal doctors that the tumours had spread too widely to be defeated.
"Maybe they were murdered by an aggrieved employee just when they were about to die of cancer although that would have been too bizarre a coincidence! Most probably, they just wanted to celebrate their deaths by parodying the lavish disaster movies which were so popular back then."
Taken aback by his icy cynicism when it comes to his own parents, all you can do is to make a puny attempt at offering your condolences in form of an unimaginative "I'm sorry". Your genuine sorrow at the terrible tragedy fails to make an impression on Taiki-san; so he only acknowledges your reaction with a slight tilt of the head. He is sorry, too, he dryly remarks, but less for his parents than for Seiya, who has inherited the family business from them without having the slightest inclination to run it and who has been struggling for years with the disgruntled senior employees, who didn't know what to do with their lives after the company went out of business. Seiya should have let those people fend for themselves—but like all depressed people, they flocked to him, and he couldn't resist giving them a hand. Fast forward to now—after Seiya has financially and emotionally supported them for three years—most of them are still unhappy and out of work while he is strapped for cash and about to go broke at the end of this year at the latest unless he finds an extremely lucrative job like the main roles in the two Hollywood remakes, which you will hopefully not talk him out of accepting.
"I'm not trying to talk him out of anything!" To show Taiki-san that his brother and you are a perfect match since you would even have supported Seiya's decision to help his parents' former employees, you tell him that those people needed a chance and the assurance that they wouldn't be left alone when they were in distress—both of which Seiya has been able to give them.
"A chance? Giving someone a chance doesn't mean to take people who can't walk by their hands and accompany them through life!" Taiki-san's gaze lingers for a moment on the wisteria arches framing the maze of his garden. "Most people I know are like climbing plants! If you save their lives only once, you will have to save them over and over again!"
He flashes you another smile, one which looks perfectly genuine despite its peculiar tranquility although he seems suffused with sorrow at a thought his own comment has triggered. His foster parents were great people, he tells you in a quiet, conspiratorial tone of voice. Intellectuals with great charm and great dreams and great faults. They dared to dream of world peace and eternal happiness for all; and it wouldn't have been so disastrous if they had contented themselves with dreaming instead of trying to pursue their dreams at the cost of their children's happiness and the lives of their employees.
It seems that Seiya's parents, who had been so wealthy that they possessed a whole isle (had they been blackmailed by the Organization as well?) didn't only leave this world in a dreadful way but also ruined their large company before they died. For once you feel lucky for not knowing your own parents, for not having to love them and to feel ashamed of them because they, too, had followed their impossible dreams and ruined their lives in the process, dragging both Akemi-nee-san and you down with them.
Is world peace really so complicated—Taiki-san ponders—or can't we ever achieve it because it's much too simple? "My father always said that we should live in the present, plan for the future, and let go of the past. The world would be a better place if all people valued their time, cared for themselves and their families and friends, stopped searching for the right answers in oracles, and let all their gods die." Taiki-san shakes his auburn head in remembrance. "But in reality, things never work like that. There are always strings and baggage on you—remnants of your culture and your upbringing and all your past experiences."
Still, one can enjoy all the cross-purposes in life, he adds. He has learned to think more and to feel less, to turn even the greatest tragedy into a comedy!
To commiserate with Taiki-san and befriend him, you inform him that you once belonged to the Black Organization because your parents were the Organization's head scientists. Even if Taiki-san is not the seventh crow—who he might be—you surmise that he must know about Infinity, Tenoh-san's vigilante group, and Tenoh-san's attempt to bring down the Organization through Seiya. He silently listens to your summary of your life story (your role in the Organization, your education at Infinity, your escape, and your encounter with the Professor and Kudo) with rapt attention but doesn't betray any emotion, much to you surprise. Talking to him almost feels like reading a curriculum vitae aloud, which you've written to apply for the position of his brother's wife sans papers. Only when you reveal to him that your sister, too, is dead because she was shot by one of the Organization's crows, Taiki-san instinctively moves away from you and regards you with an expression of dread in his cool, inquisitive gaze. He must be quailing at the thought of having an ex-criminal as his potential sister-in-law, you think. And it strikes you that the ease you feel in Seiya's presence has made you careless, as you've told Seiya's dangerous middle brother more than you wanted.
"Have you told Seiya about your sister as well?" Taiki-san asks you with a curious edge of panic in his voice.
"I have—although I haven't told him how she died yet."
"Maybe you shouldn't tell him about her at all," he coolly suggests although he keeps his tone polite and his voice mellow. "Seiya doesn't need this sort of drama before his comeback!"
Stick is surely puzzling, running hot and cold! And since you don't know how to deal with him, you decide to come straight to the point.
Listen, I usually don't hook up with men I don't know and discuss marriage with them after one night! Your brother is the exception to the rule since we two hit it off right when we met, almost as if, as if…
"Almost as if you two were 'soul mates'?" He looks thoroughly amused at the idea. "I gather you know that the term was coined by an old concept of love which goes back to Plato's Symposium! Two parts of a whole separated by Zeus, condemned to spend their lives in search of each other…" For a discomfiting moment, he gazes out into the roof garden to ponder the thought. "The idea is not as romantic as it sounds—it only says that love is ultimately imperfect and will hurt the most when it's closest to perfection."
Although he has seen that you've grasped his implication, he concludes with a smile as if he were congratulating himself for defeating you with your own words, "If we take this idea a step further, it implies that circumstances—the gods, in this case— will always prevent soul mates from ending up in a happy, stable relationship. Hence, if you ever encounter a person you believe to be your soul mate, you'd better flee as fast as you can before it's too late!"
You follow him into the music room in a daze, unable to respond because you know that he can use anything you say against you, when he once again surprises you by citing the classics.
"Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain."
Smiling down at you with an almost genial expression in his limpid violet eyes, he adds with a mischievous grin, "It's a quote from Schiller's The Maid of Orleans! You can rely on things which never change!"
This time it takes you a beat to grasp what he has said and another beat for the relief to set in. Disturbingly, you can sense that you're dealing with a person who is far more brilliant than yourself—a smarter, cleverer, darker, more intellectual version of Kudo, who would have no qualms about crushing the people he regards as his enemy. Unlike Yaten-san, Taiki-san can lean back and wait for your demise like a spider in its web or wipe you off his chess board with a single move depending on his mood. And the question is not how to win against this modern Professor Moriarty when you have to fight him because you can only lose but how to get on his good side and win an opponent like him over.
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It must be hard for Yaten-san to see another woman in Seiya and Kakyuu's apartment—you graciously condone Shortie's hostility in order to show Taiki-san that you're above petty resentment against his less pleasant brother while he is leading you through the giant music room, where you can have a look at Three Lights' impressive collection of film posters and musical instruments. "After all, Seiya loved Kakyuu so much that he left home for her sake, just like Yaten-san and you."
Unnerved by Taiki-san's blank stare, you inform him that Seiya has told you about the reason why life at home had become so unpleasant that Three Lights left. At the same time, you recall that your stranger has also admitted to you that he has held back a few things although he believes that the person who has much more to hide is you…
"Are you sure Seiya has told you that we ran away from home because our parents opposed to the relationship between the three of us and Kakyuu?"
Strangely enough, Taiki-san seems utterly baffled, just as baffled as you are by his implication that their parents didn't mind their eccentric notion of love at all. Grabbing you by both your shoulders to fix you with a disbelieving gaze, he hangs on your every word as you amend your assertion.
"Well, he didn't say it literally… But since he said that life had become unbearable at home due to your parents' overprotectiveness, I automatically assumed—"
Their parents were indeed very protective, Taiki-san admitted, but perhaps their protectiveness was justified since more than a few attempts had been made to abduct Kakyuu and Three Lights when they were small. It was especially terrifying when those attempts were made by their own bodyguards. Hence Kakyuu was only allowed the freedom of the house and the garden while her brothers were free to roam the isle as long as they didn't leave it. Seiya sometimes managed to steal a boat to leave the isle and sing in jazz bars in disguise—but that wasn't the reason why Three Lights left home.
"Yaten and I stuck by Seiya after our parents gave him an ultimatum and he chose to leave." To your stupefaction, Taiki-san appears to be wrestling with his words. "It wasn't easy since we weren't allowed to take anything with us apart from the clothes we were wearing. Sheltered as she was, Kakyuu would never have survived on the streets. But our mother told us she'd let Kakyuu go if Seiya made it…"
Their parents (who were obviously much crueler and more despotic than you believed) asked Seiya to marry Kakyuu and take over the family business, but Seiya never wanted Kakyuu—at least not in the way he wanted Odango and you, Taiki-san explains. Seiya is so anxious whenever Yaten grieves for Kakyuu because Seiya still feels guilty for her death. To Seiya, she is the one wound which will probably never heal, as it's impossible for Taiki-san to talk him out of the fixed idea that she would never have got into an accident if only he had listened to their parents and married her.
As tragic as it is, the knowledge that Seiya has never loved Kakyuu romantically is a weight off your mind. Meanwhile, your attention has been distracted by a curious detail you've spotted on the old film posters on the wall. You've seen Kakyuu's name in Kanji on the first page of her sketchbook and noticed that it meant the Light of a Fireball, which is a bolide—an extremely bright, exploding meteor. Two Lights' names, however, have been written in Katakana in the Western order (Yaten Kou, Taiki Kou) on all the posters you've seen on the streets. In contrast, the posters on the wall, which must belong to the earliest posters featuring Three Lights, display Three Lights' names in Kanji in the order in which Japanese names are usually spelled: Kou Taiki, Kou Yaten, Kou Seiya, in The Z-files of Detective Boy Holmes…
Kou Yaten: The Light of a Night Sky. Kou Taiki: Atmospheric Light or, if one reads the syllables of his first name separately, Great Radiance. Kou Seiya: The Light of a Starfield… Three Lights' parents were so keenly interested in astronomy that they had given all their children names associated with a starry sky. On second thought, Yaten-san's name serves as a pun summing up all his sibling's names, as his name is also the collective term for all the starlights in the night—including the light from distant, almost invisible stars; the light reflecting off the molecules in the atmosphere; and the scattered light caused by dust particles in the atmosphere, through which meteors and fireballs can be detected…
Letting your thoughts drift to the night in Paris when Kudo and you were stargazing on the veranda while "Vincent" was playing inside, it dawns on you that "Seiya" is also the homophone of "starry night". Your boyfriend has a wonderful name, you think in fondness, ignoring the peculiar sense of foreboding, which has cast its shadow over your love for him again. The light of a starfield, or the light of distant stars invisible to the human eye, which brightens even the darkest night so that there will never be a pitch-black sky; or the light of a starry night, the light of hope—but you refuse to follow this meandering trail of thought to the end when it will only remind you of Pandora's Box.
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