Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK


A Curse Marked Fate

3: Snapshot

Tap, tap, tap.

"Shinichi?"

Tap, tap, tap.

"Shinichi! You better get up now or you won't have time to eat breakfast!"

Groaning, Shinichi rolled over and burrowed under his blankets. Right on cue, however, his alarm clock began to shrill. The combination of that piercing cry and Ran's continued banging on his door had him blinking open bleary eyes. It was another few moments before he could force his reluctant body to sit up.

"I'm up, I'm up," called before Ran could decide to barge into the room herself.

The knocking stopped. "We're having toast and scrambled eggs," the girl called through the door before walking away.

Still groggy, Shinichi stumbled out of bed and across the room to turn off his alarm (he'd long ago learned that leaving it within arm's reach of the bed would lead to a dozen clicks of the snooze button and a subsequently angry Ran). He changed into his school uniform with his eyes half closed. He managed to make it out the door and into the bathroom without running into anything purely because of muscle memory, though he didn't remember brushing his teeth or washing his face. It wasn't until he was seated at the kitchen table with half a mug of coffee in his hands (it was his second mug of the morning) that he finally began to register anything that was going on around him. It was only then that he noticed that something—or rather someone—was missing.

"Where's your father?" Most mornings saw the former police officer glued to the morning show hosted by his favorite television star, Okino Yoko. Today, however, the apartment was eerily silent. A glance revealed that the television was off, and there was no sign of Mouri Kogoro anywhere.

Ran gave Shinichi a funny look. "He just left. You even said goodbye. Don't you remember?"

Shinichi blushed and hid his face behind his coffee mug.

Ran shook her head. "Honestly Shinichi, you really need to drink less coffee. It isn't healthy to be so dependant on it at such a young age."

Shinichi clutched his mug protectively and hastened to change the subject. "So did he get a case?"

"He did." Ran pursed her lips as she sat down across from him and picked up her toast. "He's following someone's spouse for the day."

Shinichi suppressed a grimace. In his opinion, investigating an affair did not really qualify as a real case. On the other hand, it was one of the few types of cases that Ran's father never needed help with.

Shinichi still remembered his own excitement back when he had first come to live with the Mouris at the idea of meeting a real detective. Sadly, he had learned all too quickly that Mouri Kogoro was nothing at all like the detectives he loved reading about. Though the man had his heart in the right place, he tended to jump to the first available conclusion then dismiss even the need to look for additional evidence. It didn't help that the man had started drinking more since Eri had moved out shortly after Shinichi and Ran started middle school.

It was also around that time, however, that Kogoro had begun to work more homicide cases. This was not by choice. Over the past few years, Shinichi—and by extent Kogoro—had begun stumbling over murder victims more and more often. Looking back, Shinichi realized that it had all started with that murder on the airplane that had brought him back from Hawaii. But at first, the cases had only shown up once every few months.

Nowadays, it happened two to three times a week.

At first, they'd all thought it was his curse kicking in and that either they'd been wrong about Kogoro's curse negating his or that he wasn't spending enough time in the man's company. They had briefly debated the merit of testing the theory by allowing Shinichi to go with Ran on an overnight school trip that he had originally had to sit out on, but they had collectively decided that it was too risky. So instead they had asked around and found that one of Eri's new colleagues knew a Sky Mage with the police forensics department who specialized in detection magic. He had listened to their story with interest before agreeing to lend them a hand. After all, he'd said, it was a matter of public safety.

He spent the following weekend shadowing Kogoro and Shinichi, the latter of whom had been thrilled by the chance to ask the man all about his work with the police. They had been discussing the recent changes in the licensing requirements for practicing mages over lunch on Sunday when a man at the next table keeled over dead.

On the upside, they had confirmed that it was not Shinichi's curse somehow inspiring people to commit murder in his vicinity. On the downside, that meant that there were just a lot of murderers out there, and apparently Fate had decreed that Shinichi meet as many of them as possible.

That day, after he'd (discreetly) helped Kogoro help the police identify the murderer, Shinichi had spent some time holed up in his room and just staring at a photo of his Curse Mark that he kept hidden at the bottom of one of his desk drawers. And he wondered if these murderers had anything to do with whatever destiny he had been tasked with.

"Finish your food," Ran admonished, dumping her own empty plates into the sink. "We have to get going."

Shinichi obediently shoved the last forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth then downed the rest of his coffee before taking his plate to the sink as well. It was his job to wash them up after school.

Though he knew that his parents were paying the Mouris for his room and board, he made a point of doing his share of the chores. At first, it had been out of a sense of obligation to these people who had taken him despite his situation. But now it was because he had come to see them as family. Really, Ran behaved more like his mother than his real mother ever had. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about that, so he tried not to dwell on it.

Backpacks slung over their shoulders, the two teenagers made their way out of the apartment and down the stairs past the café where they often had lunch or dinner on more relaxed days. When they reached the street, they were met by a petit girl with her light brown hair cut straight at the shoulders. Her name was Suzuki Sonoko, and she was one of Ran's oldest friends.

Shinichi would never forget the first time Ran introduced him to the other girl. She had given him a very long and careful look over before asking, "So where's your Curse Mark then?"

Ran had immediately gone bright red with a horrified "Sonoko!" before hastening to apologize to Shinichi for her friend's rudeness (and for the fact that she had told said friend about his Mark without asking him. She hadn't meant to, she'd assured him, but it had just sort of slipped out).

It had taken Shinichi some time to get used to Sonoko and even longer to start thinking of her as a friend, but it wasn't because of her bluntness. That was one aspect of her personality that he quite appreciated.

Her other qualities, however, had taken him a great deal of time to get used to. She liked gossiping way too much and was prone to exaggeration. On top of that, she seemed to see drama and romance in everything—and when he said everything, he meant everything. From middle school on up, she was constantly on the lookout for potential boyfriends, and she always had something new to say about somebody's relationship, whether or not that relationship truly existed. She even went through a phase where she kept insisting that Shinichi had to be in love with Ran and vice versa. When they had tried to correct her, she'd gleefully declared that their denials made it true. Worse still, she said all this loudly and frequently in very public places. It wasn't until recently that she'd finally dropped the issue, though Shinichi suspected that she was still convinced of her own assumptions and was just lying in wait to catch them at it.

Well, she was welcome to try. Since he and Ran saw each other as close siblings, there was really nothing for Sonoko to find. But if she was looking then she wouldn't try to set him up on a blind date again.

Shinichi winced at the memory.

It had been the last year of middle school, and Sonoko had insisted that they all had to have dates for the end of year dance. When Shinichi had said that he wouldn't be attending the dance, she had threatened to tell people he was cursed. Though Shinichi was fairly certain that most of their classmates had guessed he had a Mark by now, he was still far from ecstatic about having the fact belted out to the general public. So he had surrendered and allowed Sonoko to set him up with a friend of hers who, she'd assured him, was also not interested in really dating anyone ("She just needs someone to go with her to the dance because no one asked her and she doesn't want to go alone," Sonoko had said).

Only Sonoko had conveniently forgotten to mention that they would be going to the girl's family restaurant before the dance, and that meant they all had to be properly dressed. The next thing Shinichi knew, he was being bundled out of his bed and into the backseat of one of Sonoko's family vans and essentially kidnapped. He'd been hauled into Sonoko's room, where the girls had forced him into a dozen outfits (some of which had to be for their own amusement since he didn't think they were seriously considering making him go to the dance in a dress—unless there was something about this friend of hers that Sonoko really needed to tell him. And here he'd thought he'd escaped dress-up time when his mother had gone overseas) before eventually picking one out. All this had taken four hours. Then they'd driven the insanely long way to Sonoko's friend's place, and just as they were sitting down to dinner, the girl had stabbed Shinichi in the stomach with a steak knife. It turned out that Shinichi had been partially responsible for the arrest of her older brother in an armed robbery case.

Shinichi had ended up spending the next several days laid up in the hospital. On the bright side, he got to skip the dance, so he decided he didn't mind.

"I'm really, really, really sorry," Sonoko had told him. It was the most serious he had ever seen her, and he found himself feeling a little touched. It was the first time he realized that she might actually care about him as a friend.

So he'd smiled and assured her that it was okay. "You couldn't have known. And no one died, so it's fine."

"How can you be so calm about this?" she'd demanded, making an abrupt one eighty from guilty and apologetic to exasperated annoyance.

He hadn't known how to answer her. He had long since accepted the fact that he was essentially living on borrowed time. He'd done his research on the previous bearers of the Blessing of the Cat as well as the Eye of Misfortune, and none of them had lived past the age of twenty five. At first, it had scared him. Of course it had. Who wouldn't be scared upon learning that they would almost certainly die by the age of twenty five? But being scared didn't change anything. Nor did it help anyone. So he'd accepted it and moved on.

In the end, he decided to just tell Sonoko the truth.

That was the day Suzuki Sonoko had learned the details of Shinichi's curse. She'd left with an uncharacteristic frown on her face, and Shinichi had been worried about where their friendship would go after that. But, to his relief, she had gone right back to the way she'd always been the following day. She didn't treat him any differently, and he was more grateful for that than she would ever know. Though she never threatened to tell anyone about his curse again.

"So are you ready for the exam?" Ran asked Sonoko as they neared the gates of their high school.

Sonoko let out a loud groan. "As ready as I can be, I guess. Seriously Shinichi, you're lucky you don't have to take any Mage Certification exams."

"I still have to take the written test," he pointed out.

"Well yeah, but it's the practical exams that are hard."

"I'll have to take your word for that."

She scowled. "You're not being very helpful."

"I didn't realize you were asking for help."

"Come on you two, you need to keep your voices down. The seniors are already taking their tests," Ran cut in, hiding a smile at her friends' bickering. Though she doubted Sonoko would ever admit it, she knew that this sort of back and forth with Shinichi helped Sonoko relax when she was nervous. She was fairly sure Shinichi was aware of this too and was doing what he could to help in his own way, though Ran was sure he wouldn't admit it either. "Let's just all focus on getting through our exams, and then we can go somewhere tomorrow to celebrate and relax."

Sonoko brightened instantly. "We should go to Tropical Land. They did some major remodeling recently, and their reviews since the reopening have all been really good."

In no time at all, the girls had agreed on a meeting time and place on the morrow. Shinichi considered pointing out that, if either of them happened to fail their practical exam today, they would have to come back to school tomorrow to retake the test, but he decided he had better keep that observation to himself.

The three Teitan High students exchanged their shoes for indoor slippers then made their way towards the wing of classrooms that had been allotted to the tests being administered to those in their year. There were students from all grades lined up along most of the school building's long hallways. Some were reviewing their notes or meditating while others practiced the spells they would be demonstrating for the practical exams.

All students began taking lessons in magic once they turned thirteen. Each year after that, they were tested on both their knowledge of magic theory and history and their practical casting skills. To graduate high school, you had to earn a Level 5 Mage Certification, which essentially proved that you had the proper understanding and control over your magic not to be a danger to society. Most people, however, aimed for at least a Level 7 Certification because it opened a lot of doors in the job market. Most certificates beyond Level 7 were specialized and required many years of advanced study to attain.

Ran opened the door to the large classroom at the end of the hall where the Level 3 written exam was to be administered. The man proctoring the exam looked up as they entered and gestured to the stack of papers on the corner of his desk.

"Take a test and find a seat," he instructed. "There is no time limit, so you can start whenever you're ready and just turn it in when you're done. There is to be no talking. And be warned. The anti-cheating spells on these exams will know if your answers are not ones you came up with on your own. If you have a phone, it must be turned off and placed on the corner of your desk where I can see it. In the event that you have not yet finished your test by the time you have to go in for your practical, you can bring your partially completed test to me for safekeeping and show me your practical test appointment card. Then, once you're done with your practical, you can return and finish it. But make sure your practical exam proctor signs and time stamps your appointment card so we know you didn't take a detour before coming back. Do you have any questions?"

They all shook their heads. Shinichi picked a test booklet up from the stack and followed Ran and Sonoko to a trio of empty desks near the back corner of the classroom next to the windows.

Pen in hand, Shinichi flipped open the booklet and immediately wrote down his name. He'd heard several students complain in the past that they'd had to retake exams because they'd forgotten that one little oh so innocuous question at the top: "Name".

Then he moved on. As someone who loved to read and who had always had an excellent memory, especially for topics in which he had a vested interest, Shinichi found the exam to be quite simple. He was among the first students in the room to finish.

He headed to the school library after handing in his test. Everyone he passed in the hallways gave him a wide berth, but he had grown too accustomed to such behavior to be bothered by it anymore. Still, he was glad to find the library mostly deserted. The librarian nodded at him as he passed.

"A former student recently donated a large collection of novels," she told him. "I haven't sorted through them yet, so they're all piled on the reading tables in the back. You're welcome to look through them if you'd like."

"Thank you. I will. Did you want me to sort them while I'm at it?"

She smiled. "Actually, if you could group them up by genre, that would be really helpful."

Shinichi found the aforementioned donations and began going through them. When he came across a book he didn't recognize, he would flip it over and read the summary on the back. Soon, he had three books set aside that he wanted to read and the rest of the collection organized into neat, alphabetized stacks by genre. That done, he looked at the clock and saw that he still had another hour before he had to go speak with the school's career councilor.

Since he had a Curse Mark, he couldn't use any of the spells students were typically taught in school. Because of this, he didn't actually have a practical exam to take. But the school had decided that cursed students should meet with a teacher or councilor in place of that exam to give the illusion to the rest of the student body that they too were normal students. Shinichi could understand and appreciate that the administration was trying to help students like himself maintain their anonymity, but he also knew that their efforts wouldn't really stop people from noticing sooner or later which students were never asked to cast spells in class.

For him, the charade was even more pointless. After all, he was often in the news with Mouri Kogoro and the police solving homicide cases. While some of his classmates had thought that was cool to begin with, they had soon begun to be creeped out by the frequency with which Shinichi ran into dead bodies. Nowadays, everyone in the high school was of the opinion that he was cursed to bring death with him wherever he walked.

"That's not true at all," Ran had often been heard shouting at the classmates who dared to bring this up in front of her, but the rumor stuck. It had grown so prevalent that Kogoro and Eri had been called in by the principal, and they had had to explain the full extent of Shinichi's situation to the man and his top staff members. They had agreed not to share what they'd learned, but the whole debacle had left Shinichi feeling more down than he would like to admit.

He had read that in some parts of the world, people with Curse Marks were thought to have been those who had committed a great sin in a past life. Those souls were then reincarnated and given a Task to fulfill to make up for their wrongdoing, a Blessing to help them, and a Curse to remind them of their shame. Another legend claimed that the Curse Marked were not human at all but angels sent down to earth to finish an important task. And so, when that task was completed, their mortal bodies died and they returned to their places in the heavens, thus explaining the typically short life expectancy of being born cursed. Similar stories could be found in every culture across the globe, and Shinichi knew more than fifty of them by heart, but he had yet to decide which one of them, if any, he liked.

Shaking away those grim thoughts, he opened one of the new books and began to read, losing himself in the exploits of a race craft pilot and his teammate as they sought to win a prestigious championship.

When he reached the career councilor's door, he found it already open. Yamaguchi-sensei was already sitting at his desk. He waved Shinichi in and gestured for him to close the door.

"Well, Kudo, this meeting shouldn't take long, since I know you've been working a lot with the police. I assume that is where you see yourself headed in terms of your future career."

Shinichi blinked, taken aback by the man's many presumptions. But he supposed they were probably correct. If he lived that long, he could see himself joining the police as a police detective or possibly becoming a private investigator. He'd never given too much thought to the distant future since he didn't think he had a distant future to think about.

"I would like that," he said when he realized the man did in fact want a response.

"Right. Good. Suits your calling, I'd say." He started typing away on his laptop.

Shinichi waited for several minutes then asked, "Does this mean I can go?"

"In a minute. First, there's an offer we recently received that we are passing on to all students with Curse Marks like yourself." The man pulled a pamphlet out of his desk drawer and slid it across the desk to Shinichi.

"They're called the Choice Foundation, and they're looking for volunteers with curses. They're a nonprofit organization that is studying how curse marks might be removed or possibly reworked into something, well, better for everyone, I guess. They are a pretty secretive lot—jealous about their discoveries, no doubt, so I don't know much, but I thought it may be something you'd be interested in."

"It says they need volunteers?" Shinichi asked warily.

"Like I said, they're working on removing or controlling curses. To do that, they would need people willing to try their methods. Just take this home with you, look them up, ask some questions, and see what you think. If you decide you might be interested, you can come back and tell me, and I can get you an introduction. Or you can call them directly yourself."

"All right. I'll think about it." Shinichi put the pamphlet into his book bag and rose. "Is that all?"

"Yes. You may go now."


TBC