Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK

A Curse Marked Fate

10: Blue Clover

Kaito was sitting right next to him.

He was currently deep in conversation with Sonoko and the Mouris. Ran had mentioned that the little hitch in Kaito's dispelling of the illusion was a commonplace occurrence around her father, which had naturally led to a discussion of other similar incidents. Kaito seemed rather fascinated by the idea that magic simply malfunctioned or failed completely around Kogoro. Apparently he'd heard of such people before, but he'd always assumed them to be a sort of urban legend.

Seated between Kogoro and Kaito, Shinichi listened to the discussion with only half an ear. The majority of his attention was focused on the strange way his heart was thudding in his chest while those butterflies in his stomach from earlier fluttered up a storm that was making him feel mildly nauseous. He kept catching himself staring up at the side of Kaito's face and jerking his gaze back down to his silverware. Part of him wished Kaito would stop talking to the others and say something to him, but another part of him was glad for every second that the Sky Mage's attention was off of him because Shinichi couldn't think of a single thing to say. He was supposed to be a stranger after all, and a child at that. There was the book he was here to return, but he didn't want to do that at the dinner table.

Would Kaito recognize him? He dismissed the question as soon as it arose. Teenagers didn't turn into little children. Kaito would have to be crazy to think this boy was his old friend.

And that was for the best. But it left Shinichi in a bit of a quandary as to how to broach the issue.

"You know," Ran was saying, leaning around her father for a better look at the messy-haired magician. "You actually look a little bit like a friend of mine. It's kind of crazy."

"Yeah? His name wouldn't happen to be Kudo Shinichi, would it?"

Ran reared back in surprise. "You know Shinichi?"

Kaito laughed. "Know might be too strong a word, but we've met."

Ran's startled gaze darted to Shinichi for an instant before returning to Kaito. "Really? Wow. He never mentioned."

Kaito gave a careless shrug. "Well, it was a long time ago. I only guessed you were talking about Kudo because I saw some of his work on the news. He's a detective, right?"

"He is," Ran replied, looking every bit the proud mother. Shinichi blushed and hid his face behind his menu. "But he does tend to get himself into a lot of trouble."

Kaito looked interested. "What kind of trouble?"

Ran hesitated. "Well, let's just say he didn't start solving cases because he decided to one day."

"What she means," Sonoko cut in, shooting Shinichi a sly look. "Is that our dear detective geek trips over crime wherever he goes and has no idea how to leave well enough alone. We're the ones who always have to rescue him."

Shinichi returned her look with a glare which only made her smirk widen. Shinichi resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her. Just because he currently looked like a six year old didn't mean he had to behave like one. Seriously though, it was rather underhanded of them to keep talking about him when he couldn't say anything in his own defense. Letting out an irritated huff, Shinichi returned to his twelfth rereading of the menu, trying to pretend he couldn't hear Sonoko gleefully divulging tale after tale of his most embarrassing moments even though he could feel his ears turning red.

"Then there was this incident at Harumina Girls High School," Sonoko went on. "They had this dance instructor who everyone said was—"

"Excuse me," Shinichi half shouted, half chirped in forced cheer before Sonoko could elaborate any further on that particularly mortifying debacle. "Can we order yet? I'm getting hungry."

"Actually, it looks like they're coming around to collect our orders now," Kaito replied, gesturing to the far corner of the banquet hall near Table H where something small and furry had just hopped up onto the tabletop. Shinichi craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the creature and what it was doing, but Kaito drew his attention back to the menu with a tap of a long, calloused finger.

"You need to mark your order, Co-chan. Here, need a pen?" Kaito produced a pen out of thin air with a flourish and handed it to Shinichi, grinning.

Shinichi rolled his eyes but accepted the pen. "Thank you." That said, he went to mark his choice of entres. With his head down, he missed the fleeting expression of surprise then calculation that flashed through Kaito's eyes before they vanished again behind the Sky Mage's unreadable, laid back cheer.

The soft patter of small paws was all the warning Shinichi got before he felt something scrambling up his leg and onto his lap. He jerked backwards with a yelp, arms flailing, but by then the warm, fuzzy something had already leapt onto the table right on top of his empty placemat, leaving Shinichi with a face-full of fluffy tail. Edging his chair back, he gaped at the large, white squirrel sitting on the table. It looked just like a real squirrel just a whole lot larger, and it had a pouch on his stomach like it was a marsupial.

Kaito was in the process of handing it his marked order form. The squirrel chattered happily, accepting the paper forms from each guest at the table, organizing them into a neat stack, then tucking them inside its pouch with the quick and efficient moves of a practiced professional. That done, it produced a large basket out of its pouch that really shouldn't have fit in there which it set on the middle of the table. That done, it ran to the table's edge and took a flying leap over Kogoro's shoulder that sent it all the way across the aisle to land on Table A.

"Wow, I didn't know you could train squirrels to do that," Ran exclaimed. "And it was so cute too."

"It wasn't a real squirrel, obviously," Sonoko retorted. "It was created by one of our Earth Mage artists. She designed them to help run errands throughout the resort. They deliver messages too, and help with cleaning up. She'll be exhibiting them at the expo tomorrow too."

"It looked so alive."

"That's what she's famous for. She creates magical tools that look like living animals. It's pretty cool."

"Are you talking about Minamoto Yui?" Kaito asked, leaning forward.

"Yeah. Have you heard of her?"

"Of course. I saw her work at the International Arts and Magic Conference. It was amazing. I was really hoping to get to meet her in person sometime."

With that, the conversation shifted onto the most recent innovations in magic, and Shinichi breathed a sigh of relief. Honestly, Sonoko was entirely the type of friend who sometimes made you wonder if your enemies were really all that bad. At least most of the criminals he helped catch had better things to do than to go out of their way to embarrass him for fun.

A sudden cascade of lights over the stage at the front of the banquet hall drew everyone's attention to where a tall man in a perfectly tailored gray suit was stepping up to the microphone. He looked too much like Kaito to be anyone but Kuroba Toichi. The realization that an archmage was on the stage brought an instant awed silence to the hall.

He smiled at his audience, indigo eyes twinkling with mischief and good cheer. "Welcome," he said. "As you all know, we're here to celebrate, so I won't bore you with any long speeches. I will, however, say that we had an incredible showing of new talents at all the major certification exams this year, and all of you who participated should be proud of the efforts you've put into your magic and how far you've come. I am certain that you will go much farther still in the years ahead."

He went on to briefly outline some of the resources that had become available to the newly licensed mages in the hall and inviting them to mingle and learn from one another and the many special guests from different magical fields of practice who had been invited to join them for the evening. After all, he reminded them, this was only the beginning of their journey.

Below the stage, the magical squirrels had returned bearing covered plates. They darted about the hall, bringing everyone their meals.

Shinichi had to smile when the large, white squirrel that he was almost certain was the same one that had taken their orders earlier pulled a steaming teapot out of its pouch and poured him a mug of hot coffee. Then it produced a knife and fork and cut up his steak for him into bite-sized cubes.

"Um, I can do that myself," he told it, trying to take the knife from its paws, but it ignored him.

"They do that for all the younger kids," Kaito told him, chuckling at Shinichi's slightly disgruntled face. "Just let them be."

"It's not going to try and feed me, is it?" he asked with real concern when the animal forked up a cube of meat.

"It might if you say 'Ah'. Try taking the fork instead."

Hesitantly, Shinichi reached out for the fork and was relieved when, this time, the squirrel handed it over. Then it patted the side of his face with a large, furry paw in an almost motherly gesture that made him blush.

Kaito hid a grin behind his own mug. That expression was just adorable. He really did look just like Shinichi.

Which brought him to one of the reasons he'd planned this whole event.

With everyone around them focused on either the food or the stage, Kaito leaned down and nudged Shinichi with his elbow.

"Hey, Conan-kun, can I ask you something?"

The boy looked up at him with a wariness that reminded Kaito again of Shinichi.

"What is it?"

"You said Kudo Shinichi is your cousin, right?"

The boy froze for a fraction of a second that no one would normally have noticed. But Kaito wasn't normal, and he always noticed the little things about people—reading the audience was an essential skill for any performer after all. And he saw that hesitation. What he didn't understand was what it meant.

"Yeah," the boy said finally, forcing a bright smile onto his face that just about screamed fake. "Why do you ask?"

"I was just wondering if you knew where he was."

"O—oh. Um, he went to America to visit his parents."

Kaito raised an eyebrow. "Really? So you didn't come to visit the Mouris because your cousin was living with them?"

Shinichi winced. When put like that, it did sound rather strange.

"It—it was a last minute sort of thing," he stammered. "Him going to visit his parents, I mean. Something came up. But I'd just gotten here. He said he wouldn't be gone long, so we decided I should just stay. I mean, I wanted to learn more about detective work, and Uncle's always working with the police…" He trailed off, realizing that he was beginning to babble.

"So when is he coming back then?"

Shinichi looked down at his plate. "I don't know."

Kaito hummed. "I see. That's too bad. My friend Aoko really wanted to meet him. I told her he'd be here, but then he didn't show. Now she's going to think I was pulling her leg."

Shinichi swallowed the reflexive apology and asked a question of his own instead. "Did your friend need Shinichi-niichan's help with something?"

Kaito blinked. "Help? Oh, you mean like with a case? Nah. She's just curious because her dad's a police officer, and she's thinking about joining the force too. Kind of like you, eh? I'll introduce you later. She's over at Table E with her dad. He's here as one of the special guests."

"What does he do for the police?" Shinichi asked, interest piqued.

"He works major robberies and fraud cases for the most part," the older teen replied. Seeing the obvious interest gleaming in his audience's brilliant blue eyes, he went on to elaborate upon some of Nakamori-keibu's recent exploits until one of the other guests at the table leaned over to ask him about his plans for the future.

X

"Wow. If I didn't know that Kaito was an only child, I'd have thought you were his little brother!" Aoko marveled as she beamed at Shinichi. Unable to resist, she reached out and ruffled his hair. "But I see your manners are a lot better than his ever were."

"I resent that," Kaito objected, though he sounded more amused than offended. "My manners are impeccable."

"Maybe when you bother to use them," she sniffed. "And we all know you were a royal terror at his age. I mean, I bet everyone from our first grade class still remembers that horror show of yours. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them still have nightmares about it."

"Hey, it's not my fault those stuffed animals were old. I was just trying to do something fun to make being stuck inside because of the rain more interesting."

Aoko scowled. "Dancing stuffed animals with their stuffing coming out and their eyes hanging loose is not fun. It's creepy. And horrible. Midori's parents had to put all her stuffed animals in a locked chest for weeks after you pulled that stunt."

"And I already told you like a million times, I didn't know those stuffed animals were falling apart before I cast the spell. It's not like the teacher told us people would be fixing them in handicrafts. All she said was they were collected for students to use in class."

"Well then you should have stopped the spell when the first teddy bear's eyes fell out instead of making the eye beads fly after it. That's what any normal person who really wanted to cheer people up would have done, right?" the brunette turned to Ran. "But this idiot just let the stuffed animals parade around the room three times. Can you imagine what it's like seeing something like that when you're only, what, six or seven? They were waving their soft little arms about, leaving bits of stuffing and other stuff all over the place. I still get goose bumps just thinking about it."

The other girl shivered involuntarily. She'd always hated stories of ghosts and monsters, and anything remotely in the horror genre made her skin crawl. So she totally understood Aoko's point, but she'd rather not picture the event for herself. She still had a plush cat that her mom had given her for her tenth birthday, and she didn't want to start picturing it moving while in tatters. So instead she latched onto another detail of the story.

"You guys were in first grade? Does your school start teaching magic so early?"

"What? Oh, no, it was just Kaito. His magic's always been strong, so he started being able to use it pretty early. His parents taught him at home, I think. They probably had no idea what he was planning to do with what he'd learned at school."

She turned back to Conan, crouching down so that they were more at eye level and giving him a long, serious look. "Whatever you do, don't grow up to be like that Kaito. He's a good mage and all that, but he only ever thinks about what he wants. If he really wants to be a master one day, he's going to have to start thinking about more than just entertaining himself."

Shinichi blinked at her, not sure how to respond but figuring that she wasn't so much talking to him as at him.

Looking at her also made him feel a bit like he'd stepped into an alternate universe. He could say to her exactly what she'd said to him. If he hadn't known Ran was an only child, he'd have thought Aoko was her sister.

"The music is starting," Sonoko exclaimed, bustling over to their little group in the corner of the ballroom. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were faintly flushed pink as she introduced them to a tall, dark young man with spectacles and wavy, dark hair.

"Makoto-san and I are going to dance. You guys should come too."

"Maybe later," said Aoko. "I want to go get another of those lemon cream cookies before they're all gone. I'll take Conan-kun with me. Then Kaito can dance with Mouri-san."

"Wait. Ahoko—" Kaito started, but the brunette had already grabbed Shinichi's hand and dragged the boy off. He made a face and shook his head before turning a rueful smile Ran's way. "Sorry about her. We don't have to dance if you don't want to."

"Oh, no, no, I don't mind dancing with you," Ran replied, turning faintly pink. "I mean, if you don't mind dancing with me."

Kaito stepped back and swept into a deep bow. "It would be my honor."

Ran laughed.

X

The lemon creams were delicious. They would have been even better with coffee, but Aoko had told him that "You wouldn't enjoy that" when she saw him reaching for the pot and handed him a cup of juice instead. She meant well, so Shinichi didn't object, but he watched the warm pot recede with mournful eyes as Aoko pulled him away, this time to go get an autograph from an actress who was also at the celebration as a special guest.

Shinichi had stayed with them until the two women got into a deep discussion of the latest trends in the movie industry. He could appreciate a good movie, but he would always pick a good book over a movie. And he had never cared which stars were the most popular and which shows they were acting in. To be entirely frank, the only reason he even knew the names of some movie stars was because he'd heard about them from Ran and Sonoko.

So he'd excused himself, saying that he had to go find Kogoro. It wasn't a lie. He did feel like he should go check in on the man—partly for the sake of their curses and partly because he was worried that the man might end up drinking too much without Ran their to stop him. The older detective could get himself into serious trouble when he was drunk. Too much alcohol made him loud and twice as talkative but only a fifth as intelligent. If you factored in the fact that he was always prone to leaping to conclusions, well, it should be easy for anyone to imagine the sorts of fiascos he had landed himself in before.

Like that time he'd lost his pants in a bet and had to walk to the store across from the bar in his underwear to buy a new pair.

Kogoro was a good man at heart, but there were times when Shinichi would almost rather die than admit that they knew each other. And he had vowed that he would never get drunk. Ever.

Stupid was not a state that he had any desire to try out.

Strangely enough though, Shinichi hadn't found Kogoro at the bar—or anywhere else. He was really beginning to worry when he ran into Kaito's mother, and the woman informed him that Kogoro was talking with her husband in another room. At which point she'd patted him on the head and told him how sweet he was for worrying about the older man.

"Did you want me to go get him for you?"

"Oh. No, that's all right," he said quickly. "I just wanted to ask if it was okay for me to go outside." He gestured to where the walls of the ballrooms had been opened out to connect it to the gardens beyond.

"Of course you can," the woman replied. "Just don't go too far. You don't want to get lost."

"I won't."

That said, Shinichi had hefted his backpack higher up on his shoulders and set off in search of a good place to read. He paused at the edge of the dance floor to see that Ran and Kaito were still dancing before making his way outside.

He eventually found himself a seat beneath the statue of a pair of deer. He could still hear the music from here. The band had moved on to a set of slower songs, and he closed his eyes, allowing the dulcet melodies to jangling mess that his nerves had been all evening.

Lost as he was in the music, he was caught completely off guard when strong hands scooped him up off of the ground and into the arms of a grinning man.

Shinichi's first instinct was to lash out at his assailant, but then he recognized the face beaming down at him.

"Kaito!" he exclaimed, trying to convey both his shock and his disgruntlement in a single word. "Don't scare me like that. And put me down!"

"Now, now, that's Kaito-niichan to you," the Sky Mage chided, completely ignoring Shinichi's protests. Instead, he adjusted his hold so that he had a better grip, commandeering Shinichi's backpack and slinging it over his own left shoulder in the process, then set off through the gardens. "And you should be thanking me. I thought you might be bored, so I'm here to take you to see something cool."

Shinichi made one last ditch effort to wiggle out of Kaito's hold before giving up and resigning himself to being carried. Kaito might have grown up, he thought, but, in some ways, he hadn't changed at all.

Despite his current predicament, the thought made Shinichi smile.

TBC