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)

g.

The colour of tonight's…

The colour of tonight's moon is a bright sapphire blue, you absently note. It must have been caused by an abundance of dust particles in the atmosphere that are just the right size to scatter the red light. But if the sun, the moon, and the earth were aligned during a total lunar eclipse, the same blue moon would turn into a red "Blood Moon".

It's startling how much one's mood is affected by the setting and the light—how easy it is to harbour wild hope when the moon is so blue. After studying the two numbers on the piece of paper for an eternity as if he couldn't believe what they're saying, stranger-san gives you a curious joyless smile, which raises your hope that he will dismiss the voice of prudence to stay with you.

"It's almost indecent to earn so much," he remarks, eyeing the note with caution. "But it would solve almost all my problems, I suppose—and all the former members of the Organization who are now out of work and broke will be relieved to learn that they can stay at home and sulk for another year."

Why is he still supporting them, you ask him, whereupon he tells you that he is still doing it just because he can. He knows that most of them won't ever change, but some people only need longer than others to get back on their feet. Apart from that, most ex-codename-members aren't better or worse than the average office worker out there.

"On the other hand, they're old enough to take care of themselves, and I don't think any of them will die without me now that the worst is over," Seiya muses as he surveys your face for your reaction to his words. He doesn't have to accept the offers—he tells you—although he will have to find another job which pays enough for him to get by if he stays in Tokyo. In artistic circles, finding a job which pays is no mean feat—you remind him—but he tells you that he can sell the bike to buy more time until he gets another offer, apart from writing songs for his brothers and doing gigs in their club. People are practically begging him to sing again, it's not like he would starve if he stayed here…

If money were the only issue, you would simply solve it by offering to support you both; but as things are, you know that Seiya wouldn't accept your offer. To him, you're an unreadable stranger with a highly suspect attitude to love: a woman who would let him kiss her and love her but who would also ditch him on a whim—who has displayed a callous disregard for his feelings when she cut him off in mid-sentence during a love declaration which must have cost him all his courage; a woman who would spend the night with a complete stranger but isn't interested in a lasting relationship. His native intelligence must have told him that this can't be more than a passing fling—which is the label any man with brains would give the thing between you and him. Even if the fee weren't exorbitant… He loves the stage and the screen—and there is absolutely no sound reason why he should give up the chance of becoming world-famous and starring in two blockbusters at the same time to chain himself to a woman who doesn't love him.

"It's an extremely tempting offer, isn't it? Even if they don't let you change the script."

It's an offer he can't easily refuse, he grudgingly admits. To tell the truth, he would have accepted it long ago if it hadn't been for Odango…

For the regular walks with her, he has delayed the decision despite knowing that he might miss a once-in-a-lifetime chance—and you can tell that, now that she has perfunctorily dumped him to save her reputation and her marriage, he is not going to make the same mistake again. Whatever have passed between him and her shouldn't have anything to do with you—but of course it does. Failed loves are so memorable because the sharp and jagged edges of their wreckage will linger on, cutting the feet of the hapless new lover who will have to struggle with the task of building something enduring on the ruins their predecessor has left behind.

"Odango has left the equation now, hasn't she?" you ask and, fearing his answer, continue before he can reply: "But you're still not sure whether you should accept the movie offers, why?"

He casts you a dark gaze as if the reason why he is still unsure about his decision is so self-evident that it needs no further clarification while you wonder why he can't just ask you to go with him to New York if he doesn't want you to wait for him here. It also hasn't escaped you that, in this situation, a marriage license would solve all the bureaucratic problems that could arise. You could easily get a visa to join him in New York if you were his wife.

"I was about to accept it last night," he tells you—and since it sounds like the kind of talk you can't have while one person is standing and the other person remains seated, you return to the place beside him. "But then I walked past your window and saw you there…" He looks puzzled, as if he were mystified by his questionable decision to let a complete stranger undermine his hard-earned independence—something he had only let Odango do. Smiling at the memory, he stretches out his long legs until his shoe touches the large trunk of the cherry tree. "We two got along so well—we might as well have been together in a past life."

Since the raw honesty in his voice and the unapologetic romanticism of the statement make an embarrassing hybrid unfit for this cynical age, he adds flippantly to draw your attention away from his blunder, "At least that's what Odango would claim! She seriously believes in fate, you see."

"I'd rather not believe in it under these circumstances!"

Realizing that destiny, if it exists, isn't particularly supportive of a relationship between you and him, he adds with an exasperated sigh, "The circumstances aren't ideal, I know! I can understand that you fled the moment you learned about my family background, but I thought we could just let the past rest. Both my parents are dead—neither of them can hurt you anymore."

Of course they will continue to hurt you—you would have liked to protest. On every Christmas, when Three Lights mourn for them! You will never dare to follow Seiya to Kinmoku Sei whenever he decides to return to the isle for a visit; and every time their names come up, you will be tortured by stabs of terror which will hurt infinitely more than the invisible blades Andersen's mermaid had to step on! But it would be hypocritical to depict yourself as the victim when you're clearly the villain in Seiya's life. Like a faceless but ever-present nemesis, you've brought him destruction and pain whenever you appeared on the scene.

"Taiki-san said that moonlight has a reddish tint," you suddenly tell your stranger, who knows his middle brother well enough to cast you a worried glance, "but the observer often believes it to be blue."

"Yumeno Yumemi told me about it once." Seiya smiles at the remembrance. "A moonlit landscape is notoriously difficult to paint because in moonlight, all colours change. You can only observe it and paint it afterwards from memory. Michiru-sama often painted it. Yumeno Yumemi, who never dared to paint it, often envied Michiru-sama for her courage."

"You knew Yumeno-san personally!" you observe—and the night you encountered the famous illustrator for the first and the last time comes to mind, bringing back memories of the bouquet of red camellias Kudo had bought for Ran but, as Ran's train was delayed, ended up giving to you. He had often accompanied Yumeno Yumemi to the train whenever she came to Tokyo because she was Kakyuu's friend and art tutor, Seiya recalls. Although they weren't close because Yumeno Yumemi always pushed him away whenever he tried to befriend her, he liked her very much.

"She pushed you away because she was very much in love with you but knew that you weren't in love with her," you think aloud, marvelling at the amazing coincidence that the man whom Yumeno-san was waxing lyrical about must have been Seiya. "I met her once on the train to Morioka, after you had seen her off although you were in disguise and unrecognizable in your woolly hat, your black sunglasses, and your thick coat… That was before I took the antidote—and since I was in a gloomy mood, she said she would like to introduce you to me."

"Let me guess: you told her you would pass!"

You lean in for a lingering kiss, leaving the question hanging in the air; and when your lips touch again, it comes upon you that he and you must have been missing each other all your lives. On several occasions, your paths must have nearly crossed in Tokyo, Kyoto, and even Paris although it was only a fleeting glance, a long black hair, a melody, or the scent of sweet osmanthus in the air. Like the hidden side of the coin you've thrown, or the one person in the universe you aren't allowed to be with, he has always passed you unnoticed as though the string of fate, which once connected you two, had been severed and tied somewhere else for the sole purpose of keeping him away from you.

"What did Taiki try to say with his remark about the colour of moonlight?" Seiya asks between two kisses. "Taiki doesn't like digressions! If it hadn't served some purpose, he wouldn't have mentioned it to you."

"He asked: 'If you were the moon, which colour would you prefer—the true colour, or the colour other people will see whenever they look at you?'"

It has become increasingly harder for you to continue the conversation since stranger-san's kisses have become distractingly intense, tempting you to throw your notion of decency, integrity, and truth overboard for a life in which all your lies and your guilt will be washed away by deep, enormous, endless pleasure.

"And what did you say?" He tilts his head to study you with his hypnotic magician's eyes, giving you the sort of gaze that make people sell their souls to the devil.

"I said I wanted to know both sides of the truth!"

"It's the harder way to live!"

"Taiki-san said that, too! In some respects, your flower-loving brother is very much like you!"

The moon changes its colour all the time—Seiya claims—it doesn't matter at all which colour it is, but the light of the moon is usually reddish although the observer believes it to be blue. Yumeno Yumemi said there are truths you can only try to figure out in retrospect—like a moonlit landscape, which no one can paint from observation.

You do wonder how your story will look in retrospect, years or decades after the last chapter has been written. While it's incomprehensible (and unacceptable) to you how something which feels so sinfully good could ever be wrong, there is the possibility that Tenoh-san is right, as always. Only time can tell whether this will be like kinmokusei—a winter-hardy shrub that will bloom every year anew and give off a scent which will haunt you for life—or whether this will remain a greenhouse lavender rose, enchantingly beautiful and alluring in its exquisite, unworldly gorgeousness but too fragile to survive in nature.

"I'm not like Yumeno Yumemi," Seiya remarks as if he has guessed the direction your thoughts have taken. "I'm not interested in capturing moonlit landscapes at all, in analyzing my impressions and storing them away so that I can ponder over a pale copy of them afterwards. I don't need to share something which belongs to me alone with others who won't be able to love it like I do." He runs his warm fingers through your hair before he lets his hand rest on your neck; and his hot breath tickles your ear when he places a teasing, seductive kiss on your jawline. "I'd rather live! Is it really important what other people think? I like the moon so much that it can be pitch-black for all I know."

g.

"Has Odango graced you with a love declaration of any sort?" you inquire after another kiss, making an effort to sound humorous and nonchalant. As ridiculous as it is, you're still upset over his passing remark that she is going to wait for him at Hikawa Shrine.

Of course she hasn't, he tells you with a flicker of amusement in his eyes, and his quizzical gaze implies what he doesn't bother to put into words: Odango is happily married and has made it clear to him that she is planning to remain married to the same man for the rest of her life. Even if she were secretly in love with him, admitting it to him would be most inappropriate from her point of view.

"I don't think I still want to hear it from her," he contemplates. "It would be like receiving a birthday cake much too late—months or even years after you've stopped craving it."

Hearing these words from him makes you feel strangely devastated and elated at once, as if you had just received your lover's ultimate sacrifice for your love despite knowing that he will be doomed for all eternity.

"Actually, she has only wished me luck for my plight with you, saying I'll need it since you sound so complicated." A wry smile tugs at the corners of his lips before it turns into a cocky smirk. "Aren't you a little bit in love with me?" he asks, half-jokingly. "If you don't mind, we can do the field experiment and elope together just to see how long it will take you to kill me over a petty tiff."

We can go anywhere we want, do anything we want to, live the life we've always wanted to live—I'm sure that our life together will be great…

Although I'm racked with guilt, the one thing I'm sure of is that I love you...

In a way, the two of them are so alike, as if they were the same gem in different cuts or two different cocktails with the same ingredients although Seiya, for better or worse, seems to contain a much higher percentage of alcohol. So you are going to receive a pledge of commitment at last—albeit from another person than the one you loved.

"We should really marry to teach my brothers and Shizuka-san a lesson," your stranger continues as he stuffs Taiki-san's piece of paper into his jeans pocket as though it were another receipt from the grocery store. "I bet Haruka-san will chew the steering wheel of her favourite Ferrari in a fit of rage when she learns that you've returned to me after breaking it up!"

Haruka-san, who has returned to Tokyo to catch up with friends, unexpectedly gave him a call this afternoon, Seiya informs you. Taiki or Yaten must have told Haruka-san about Seiya and you since she claimed that you're still so fixated on your detective that he will never stand a chance. "She has offered me a joint concert and even helped Shizuka-san announce my comeback—imagine that! She even agreed that they cut a few seconds of her own music on the radio to squeeze in the news. Maybe she only thinks that you're too good for me—but with friends like her, I don't need enemies."

In a fairy tale, Kaito's Queen of Spades would have predicted this death of trust—the moment when the ally, whom you've considered your good friend and for whom you've sacrificed so much, shows you clearly that she wouldn't hesitate to turn on you. The betrayal of a friend, albeit for the soundest of reasons, stings almost as much as the betrayal of love. Another card in your life has been turned; and you should give up now since you've spent enough time with Tenoh-san to fear her as an opponent even more than you value her as an ally.

And yet you can feel it in your bones: the decisive, visceral moment in your fairy tale when Cinderella will confess the truth and tell her personal genie or fairy godfather that she no longer wants the prince but the one whose light and warmth has suffused her mundane life with magic by giving her the glass slippers; the instant when the mermaid shakes off the witch's evil spell, reclaims her voice, and acquires both her eternal soul and love. But, either out of fear, misplaced loyalty, or the selfish desire to stay the ideal woman in his eyes, you can't bring yourself to say anything and the moment passes.

"I suppose I can take your silence as a 'No' or 'Not yet'," he soberly comments. "Since I don't want to give up, I'll just pretend it's the latter."

For a moment, the game has turned again—as it always does whenever your wild card is concerned. You dictate him your number, which he saves into his address book and one of his notebooks after turning it into a mnemonic code—an automatic process, which must be a remnant of his strict upbringing. Afterwards, when he draws you close for another lovely, long kiss—the kiss of death to all your sensible plans—you allow yourself to hope again, to pin your faith in the impossible dream that he will ignore his flight to stay here.

"We could just keep the things between us as they are," you suggest, emboldened by the familiar, effortless intimacy. "There are perks of not seeing each other every day—of not going through the mind-numbing tedium of the daily grind with each other. It will be exciting to meet up in disguise whenever you return from the set, and I could get a thrill out of keeping our rendezvous secret!"

You two don't even need to tell his friends and brothers anything, you proceed, knowing that this can only be a temporary solution until you figure out how to deal with Tenoh-san.

He raises an inquiring brow at you and laughs in exasperation, reminding you that you wanted neither a love affair with no strings attached nor a drawn-out long-distance relationship this morning when the topic was raised.

"For a year or less it would be just bearable. But I'd prefer it if we could attend all the mind-numbing, nerve-racking social events with each other!" When are you going to finish your studies—he asks you—and what are you going to do afterwards?

"I'm not sure if I'll ever finish them since I already have a degree—these days I'm tempted to leave university since I'm sick of studying for redundant exams! Kudo is going to set up his own detective agency in Beika; and since he has asked me for help and the part-time job at the pharmacy isn't enough to wear me to a shadow, I've agreed to give him a hand."

In an instant, the air becomes so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Stunned by his lack of reaction to your reply, you only watch your stranger in silence as he closes his eyes. When he slowly opens them again, after what seems like a decade, his gaze has hardened although his eyes are now suspiciously bright, shimmering in your favourite shade of Blue Lagoon in the evening light.

"So Kudo is not going to Osaka?" he asks while those blue eyes, which have darkened to a deep midnight blue after the flash of emotion, fix themselves on yours with mute, black despair.

"No, he is going to end his relationship tonight since he can't bring himself to love her anymore. It seems that, after only one night on my extremely comfortable sofa, he has rediscovered the perks of sleeping alone."

"Ah, I see," Seiya says slowly, enunciating each word with frosty clarity, as though a horrible realization had just dawned on him. "Good luck to Kudo and you, then!"

"I really didn't know anything about it last night since he made up his mind this morning," you hastily try to put your stranger straight, as he obviously believes that he has been used and discarded now that Kudo has become available again. Your mind-reading skills must have improved dramatically, as you can clearly see his thoughts materialize before your eyes: your defensive behaviour at his place whenever Kudo's name was mentioned; the brutal way in which you cast him aside after your very first date; your question whether he has received any love declaration from Odango, which implies that you actually received one from Kudo; your refusal to continue your relationship officially—an indication that you want to avoid the hassle of ending a committed relationship and moving out of a shared apartment in case you want to leave him for someone else; all the throwaway comments you've jokingly made about preferring Kudo to him, which would have weighed little if he were still certain of your feelings for him like he was this morning but which have now been magnified and aggravated by the misunderstanding during your breakup and the countless derogatory remarks he must have endured afterwards from Yaten-san and Taiki-san…

"Also, it's nothing romantic, just a friendly partnership! I'm only going to assist Kudo whenever he needs a hand and I have time. Knowing him, he is planning to turn me into his secretary and mother and doctor combined, who has to handle all the bothersome daily tasks necessary for survival so that he can hunt his criminals." Since your words don't seem to change anything for your ex-boyfriend, you add to clarify the situation, "I do love him still, in a way—but the romance is more or less gone, alas! I could even talk openly with him about his past proposal without feeling much."

His distant gaze is still gentle but darker than the darkest night sky; and the stone he has just skipped bounces rapidly off the water surface until it arrives on the other side of the pond, leaving a pattern of growing and dwindling ripples. In a post-infatuated bout of clarity, it dawns on you that Seiya can be excessively stubborn in these situations and winning him over when he has resolved to shut you out of his world might be harder than placating Gin had ever been.

"Don't give me false hope!" A less attentive observer would have missed the barely discernible trace of bitterness in his mellow voice, but you've become so tuned in to him during the last twenty-four hours that the sheer sound of it causes a stabbing pain. "It's only a question of time until that changes, I suppose…"

He has a completely wrong picture of the situation, and you know instinctively that no lie of yours will ever cause him to change his mind. Evidently, a few things Gin once taught you were right although you had to find out the truth on your own. Love is as volatile as Pandora's jar when one believes to have been dismissed and betrayed, and yet a perfect love can only thrive in one's fantasy, where reality never bites, where time never flows, and where the circumstances are ideal.

As long as you can't give your stranger a plausible reason why you've left him after only one night, his suspicions will remain. And while you're still debating with yourself, trying to invent a persuasive argument which won't ruin his life unlike the naked truth, you can feel how he retreats further into himself, putting a distance between him and you.

Turning away from you, he bends down to pick up a bright red azalea blossom, which someone must have recently plucked and thrown away.

"What are you going to do tonight after I'm gone?" His tone has become light and consciously, painfully nonchalant. As you feared, he is trying to merge the casualness of a one-night stand with the love he still feels for you to find a balance.

"I don't know, it depends…" you murmur, imitating his non-committal tone and the answer he gave you this morning when you asked him about his comeback. For a moment, you try to imagine what would have happened if it had not rained, how long it would have taken you two to confide in each other and become lovers if you had spent the whole night in Roppongi in a club or at Two Lights' under the watchful and jealous gazes of his brothers and his friends and Igarashi-san. Once a love has burst into your life like a natural force which ruthlessly wrecks everything in its path, it's impossible to imagine that it might not have happened under different circumstances, that it was simply a natural development fostered by a string of lucky (or, in this case, unlucky) coincidences and not by fate's red string.

"I know you're planning to seduce Kudo someday," he wryly remarks as he sticks the azalea blossom he has just picked up into a buttonhole of your dress. "But I hope that you won't do it tonight… Even if you don't mourn our relationship, you could at least feel a scintilla of guilt for the way you treated me this morning."

"Why should I?" You raise your brow at him, uncertain whether he has just decided to give you up or accepted your proposal to continue your relationship long distance. "I remember you really enjoyed it. And the last part of it was just the right treatment for your humungous ego."

Your stranger chuckles and then laughs, giving you a genuine, contagious laugh without resentment.

"Touché!" He sighs in defeat and smiles again. "You win, as usual! I've tried but I couldn't even touch the drums… No one has ever crushed me like you did this morning!"

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