Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK


A Curse Marked Fate

34: Breathe

Sleepy blue eyes blinked up at a plain, white ceiling and sunlight seeping in through the cracks around the curtains. Shinichi had had an unusually restful night, so, for once, he didn't feel the desire to immediately roll over and go back to sleep. Instead, he watched the room grow steadily brighter for a long, still moment that could have been an hour or mere seconds. Eventually, however, a vague thought that he should get up surfaced through his usual morning haze. It was Saturday though, so he was in no hurry.

He gave himself another comfortable five minutes before he sat up and shuffled to the edge of the bed. When he had first woken up to find himself six again, he had actually fallen out of bed several mornings in a row due to having forgotten that his legs had gotten a lot shorter. Now though, he had grown accustomed to the change, and he slid smoothly off the edge of the mattress.

His feet hit the floor with a pair of muffled thumps, and he shuffled to the closet. Last night, after his phone call with Kaito, he had picked out the clothes he would be wearing today and hung them in easy reach (why exactly he had bothered, he wasn't sure. He usually thought very little about what he wore and just stuck to his school uniform or whatever he happened to pull out of the closet in the morning. But last night he had actually spent fifteen minutes poking around the contents of his wardrobe, half of which consisted of clothes he couldn't currently wear anyway before picking out a perfectly ordinary outfit that had left him wondering why he'd been wasting his time. It wasn't like Kaito would care what he wore). So now he took them off their hangers on autopilot and changed between stifled yawns.

He exited his bedroom to the familiar humming of the television.

Mumbling a good morning in the general direction of the sitting area, Shinichi wandered into the bathroom to complete his morning ablutions. Teeth brushed and face scrubbed, he felt slightly more aware if not much more awake.

This was the point in Shinichi's mornings where his thoughts filled with coffee. His feet began moving of their own accord, carrying him out of the bathroom and towards the kitchen and the coffeemaker that Ran had threatened to throw out yesterday during their argument (something about caffeine interfering with sleep, messing with appetites, and all around being unsuitable for consumption by young children). Kogoro had, however, hastily pointed out that Shinichi wasn't the only beneficiary of the coffeemaker in their household. Kogoro liked a good cup of morning coffee too. As did many of his clients.

Thus the coffeemaker had been saved.

Now Shinichi just had to make sure that Ran didn't discover where he'd stashed the extra strong coffee bean blends he'd secreted around the house for emergencies.

It was as he was moving to plug the coffeemaker in that he realized it was already plugged in. He also noticed that he didn't hear Ran telling him to drink only one cup.

Lured another step closer to wakefulness by the mystery, he turned to find someone unexpected standing in the kitchen with him holding out a large mug—Shinichi's mug—already filled.

"I was going to bring it to you in bed, but you'd already got up when the machine finished percolating. So yeah, anyway, good morning."

Shinichi blinked slowly but accepted the cup. The waft of caffeine filled his senses, and he sank momentarily into a state of utter bliss where everything was, for just this moment, perfect with the world.

Half a cup later, his brain finally caught up to the present, and his eyes popped open again to stare at the owner of the hand that had offered him the coffee.

Kaito waved.

Shinichi's brows furrowed, but he refused to lower his mug in order to actually say something.

The Sky Mage chuckled. "You really aren't a morning person, are you?"

Personally, Shinichi thought morning people were an uncommon and unnatural breed, but he couldn't be bothered wasting the energy to point this out. Instead, he decided to ignore Kaito for the time being in favor of savoring the last heavenly mouthfuls of his coffee. Then he was looking mournfully at the bottom of an empty mug. With a reluctant sigh, he lowered the mug and swiveled hopefully in the direction of the coffeemaker.

Kaito coughed lightly into his hand. "I promised Ran-san that I wouldn't let you have a second cup until after you'd eaten a proper meal."

Shinichi deflated, but he wasn't really surprised. Actually no, wait, he was. Ran had given him permission to have a second cup? He considered asking if Kaito was sure that that was what the girl had said but thought better of it. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? "Where is Ran anyway?"

Covering a yawn, he turned to study the kitchen table. Finding it devoid of any dishes earmarked for his consumption, he padded towards the fridge.

"She left after we had our talk this morning," Kaito replied. "I talked her into taking some time off of everything and just doing something normal to relax. I believe she and Suzuki-san were going shopping."

"And Uncle?"

"At the café downstairs. I've been told that's within your range—or rather his, I suppose." Kaito paused when Shinichi started rearranging the contents of the refrigerator so that he could extract the egg carton. "What are you doing?"

"Um, making breakfast…?" Shinichi said, puzzled by Kaito's confusion. Wasn't it obvious?

"What? No, put that back. We're going out." Laughing, Kaito tugged Shinichi away from the open fridge, pushed the egg carton back into place, and shut the door. "You've been looking tired, so we didn't want to wake you, but, now that you're up, we can go."

That said, he took Shinichi's hand and started leading him towards the door.

They ended up at the downstairs café where the waitress, Azusa, had apparently already set a table for them in a corner by the window. Shinichi could see Kogoro on the other side of the shop, fully engrossed in a spread of newspapers and his own mug of fresh coffee. The older detective only glanced their way once when they had walked in, nodded, and gone back to his reading.

Shinichi found himself wondering exactly what kind of a talk Kaito had had with the Mouris while he'd been sleeping in. Suddenly, he wished he had forced himself to get up just a little earlier. Then maybe he'd know.

"Here are your menus," Azusa announced with her usual good cheer as she set their menus on the table between them. "You should really try our new turkey sandwiches. The new guy came up with them, and they're really delicious. All our regulars are raving about them."

"I'll order that then," Kaito said at once. "I'd like to know what kind of sandwich gets people raving. Co-chan?"

"I guess I'll try it too."

"You won't regret it," Azusa assured them as she jotted this down. "And can I get you anything to drink?"

"One coffee, and one hot chocolate," Kaito said and had to swallow a snicker at the way Shinichi visibly perked up.

"So…I guess you got through to Ran," Shinichi said more than asked once the waitress had gone.

Kaito shrugged. "To be honest, I'd say she got through to herself. Your little row last night got her thinking, so I mostly just had to pat her back and remind her that we're all looking out for you."

"Thanks," Shinichi said quietly. He ducked his head feeling torn between embarrassed, touched, and melancholy. He hated worrying people. It was all the more frustrating that he couldn't seem to avoid doing it.

"Don't mention it." Sensing something of his companion's mood, Kaito changed the subject. "I spoke briefly with Suzuki-san when she came to pick Ran up. She had some interesting news for us."

"About what?" Shinichi asked, not entirely sure if he wanted to know. With Sonoko, 'interesting news' could be anything from the opening of a new all-you-can-eat dessert shop to the information that she had signed them all up to compete in a city-wide talent contest without asking.

"It was Lita-san," Kaito explained. "She got a strange phone call in the middle of the night."

That got Shinichi's attention. Frowning, he leaned forward, blue eyes sharpening. "What kind of call? From who?"

"It was from her soon-to-be-ex-husband."

"What did he say?"

"That's the interesting part. He said something along the lines of 'Lita, I… I'm sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice', then he apologized some more and hung up. Lita told the Suzukis that he sounded really confused. She's not sure what to make of it."

It took Shinichi a moment to process the information because part of him was busy being disturbed by the way Kaito's voice had shifted to a perfect imitation of the voice of Lita's not-quite-divorced-yet husband. It was frankly kind of creepy, hearing one person's voice coming out of an entirely different person's mouth. But then the potential implications of Kaito's words sank in.

"Could it mean the watches are working?" he asked.

"It means something's happening anyway. It might be our lovely anti-magic watches or something else, but I think we can consider this news a step in the right direction. Suzuki-san said she'll see if she can get another look at the man and his mistress in person and let us know what she sees. In the meantime, we should start thinking about how to get those watches charged up again when the time comes. They should have another week in them before we need to move on that."

"We might be able to ask Sonoko to do it," Shinichi suggested. "She's a Sky Mage, and Ran's an Earth Mage. If she invites Ran over for something at a time when the Matsuharas are visiting her dad for business, they'd just have to find an excuse to examine the watches."

"True, but, if possible, it'd be better if I could be there," said Kaito. "I'd have the best understanding of what it needs, and, if I'm there, I can also retrieve the data it's been storing."

Shinichi looked puzzled. "What data?"

But Kaito only waved the question away. "Just a little this and that. Anyway, we can talk plans some other time. Ran-san needed to relax, and so do you. Therefore, today is going to be all about getting a breather and having fun out in the fresh air with your friendly neighborhood mage!"

Shinichi wasn't sure whether to laugh or roll his eyes. "You're not from our neighborhood."

"Details, details. Oh look, the famous sandwiches are here. Thank you, my lady, your timing couldn't have been better," Kaito told the bemused Azusa. "Another minute, and I am afraid I might have tried to eat little Co-chan here."

The girl laughed. "Well, we wouldn't want that." She set two sandwich platters down on the table before them then set the cup of coffee by Kaito's elbow and the hot chocolate by Shinichi's. When Kaito offered her a yellow rose as a token of his gratitude, she giggled and tucked it into the breast pocket of her apron.

The moment the waitress's back was turned, Kaito slid the coffee over to Shinichi's side of the table and commandeered the hot chocolate for himself.

Shinichi was the first to bite into a sandwich, and the startled then amazed look that came into his bright blue eyes had Kaito following his example. It was, they both had to admit, a very good turkey sandwich. And for the next several minutes, all that could be heard at their table was the sound of contented chewing.

When only crumbs were left on the plate, Kaito sat back with a satiated sigh and drained the rest of his hot chocolate. "I have to admit, that was a sandwich worth raving about."

Mouth now full of coffee, Shinichi only hummed in agreement. Now that he was more awake though, the detective found himself thinking that something seemed a bit off about Kaito today.

It was a subtle tension beneath a veneer of his usual good cheer that Shinichi would never have noticed if he hadn't come to know the Sky Mage so well. Kaito had also been looking at him a lot, he mused. He hesitated to call it staring because it was Kaito, and Kaito was typically too much of a skilled actor to stare outright. Instead Shinichi felt more like the older boy was studying him out of the corner of his eye—searching or perhaps evaluating something. But what? Or maybe Shinichi was thinking too much. His recent clashes with Ran, with whom he'd never really clashed before, had left him feeling a little edgy and unsure what to expect from people who, he supposed, were still trying to come to grips with the latest upheavels in their circumstances.

They were all waiting for something to boil over, but no one was sure when or what that would be.

"You should finish your coffee," Kaito told him as the Sky Mage rose from the table. "I'm going to have a word with your uncle."

Shinichi blinked, puzzled, but nodded. He sipped slowly from his mug and watched as Kaito sat down at Mouri Kogoro's table. Shinichi couldn't hear what they were discussing, nor could he read their lips since their faces were angled away from him, and he could feel his curiosity nibbling at him with sharp little teeth. What could they be talking about?

Eventually, Kaito returned with a smile and a picnic basket.

"More food?" Shinichi asked, dismayed.

Kaito laughed. "For later. So are you ready?"

Shinichi drained the last of his coffee, double checked it just in case he'd missed a drop, then set the empty mug down and slid off his chair. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see when we get there."

Shinichi started to pout, caught himself and stopped.

"You're up to something," he said a touch accusingly.

Kaito only chuckled and ruffled his hair. "Of course. Aren't I always?"


TBC