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A Curse Marked Fate

50: Got Mail?

"You're worrying about me, aren't you?"

Crouching, Kaito pulled Shinichi gently backward into a loose embrace. The action startled Shinichi out of his thoughts. The boy blushed but made no move to pull away.

"I…don't want to make a mistake," the detective admitted, voice subdued. "I know I can be reckless sometimes. It's how I ended up like this. I…didn't used to think it was a big deal," he continued, voice growing even softer as though he were sharing a guilty secret. Perhaps he was. "What would happen would happen. So I thought I might as well just do what I could while I could, come what may. But it's not just about me anymore."

"It never has been," Kaito replied, indigo eyes somber. "I hope you realize that."

Shinichi closed his eyes. "I do now."

For the people around him had always seen him as more than just a shadow passing through, and they had crept into his heart without his even realizing it even as he'd been busy reminding himself to keep his distance.

Kaito tightened his hold on the little detective, hearing in his voice the confusion and regret that Shinichi couldn't quite put into words. "But because you recognize the full extent of what's at stake now, you're afraid to make a move."

The detective's breath left him in a rush and he sagged back against the older boy. "There are just too many variables. Too many things could go wrong, and we don't even really know what we're facing."

Kaito's lips quirked up at the corners when Shinichi used the word 'we', though the detective didn't see because he was facing away. Smiling in spite of the tough decisions that he knew lay ahead of them, Kaito leaned forward and let his chin rest on top of Shinichi's head.

"Then let's fix that. Like you said. The biggest problem is our lack of information. Once we have more of it, everything else will become more clear. And since the only option we have at the moment for getting the information we want most is to stay here, that's what we're going to do."

"You're not saying that just because you think it's what I want, are you?" Shinichi asked a bit worriedly.

Kaito snorted. "Of course not. I'd be happy to explain my reasoning if you need to hear it once we have time, but we're currently short on that commodity. So I highly recommend you go put together a letter for Sonoko-san. Oh, but first grab me a snack box roughly the same size and shape as her phone and describe it to me. I'll get started working on the illusion."

X

Despite her best efforts, Mouri Ran was not enjoying her evening.

There were several reasons for this, none of which had anything to do with the evening's party, which was as grand and festive as anyone could hope for. The music was lively and the food delicious. Add to that the many celebrities among the guests and you got one hell of an event (provided you liked that sort of thing. She had no doubt that Shinichi would have been bored out of his mind had he been forced to come).

Speaking of Shinichi, his absence was one reason for her unease. Shinichi had always been cautious about making sure that he spent the requisite amount of time in her father's company because he feared the harm he might inadvertently cause if he did not. So the fact that he hadn't come to the party and hadn't called Kogoro was unsettling. Ran couldn't help but think that, if he hadn't called, it was because he couldn't.

But maybe she was jumping to conclusions… She knew the Kurobas had been tossing around the idea of conducting short-term tests on the effectiveness of their new curse nullification amulets on Shinichi. So maybe they had decided to run one of those tests and simply forgotten to mention it.

But that wouldn't explain why Kaito had decided so abruptly to ask her and Sonoko to handle the charging of the Matsuharas' watches. He had, after all, been quite insistent when they had first discussed the issue that he wanted to be there so that he could collect some sort of information—probably data on the watches' progress, she supposed.

The charging had gone well, but still…

What had changed his mind?

The only logical conclusion was that the two boys were up to something that they hadn't wanted to share with her. And if they hadn't wanted to tell her about it then it was probably something dangerous.

Feeling her face beginning to crease into a frown, Ran forced herself to take a deep breath and a sip of her iced tea. It helped, but only a little.

She reminded herself that Kaito was a more than adequately skilled mage. And he was in love with her best friend… She could see it now that she was allowing herself to.

The warmth and protectiveness in his eyes when he looked at Shinichi had become a comfort to Ran because it proved that there were people out there who could see past the Curse Mark, reserved attitude and trouble magnet tendencies to see the kind and thoughtful if sometimes clueless little brother she had grown to love in the years since they had become family. With Kaito looking out for him, she was sure that Shinichi would be all right.

Or at least that was what she told herself. It was just that she had the nagging suspicion that Kaito might not be the best choice of person for keeping others from doing crazy things. He seemed more like the sort who had to be kept from doing said crazy things himself.

Ran hastily shoved that extremely un-reassuring thought out of her mind. It wasn't like she had any real reason to be worrying after all. Yet.

Once she put those worries aside, however, she had to face the more pressing reason for her discomfort.

"All the rooms in this building are specially reinforced against both magical and mundane mishaps," the man who had been introduced to her as Takagawa Daisuke explained as he led her, Sonoko and about a half dozen other interested party guests through a spectacular, domed chamber centered on a massive, circular water fountain and populated with round little dining tables and equally round chairs. "That includes the dining areas, restrooms and other non-workroom facilities."

"Isn't that a little, I don't know, excessive?" someone Ran didn't recognize but who was dressed in a manner that suggested money asked. "What you describe sounds more like the beginnings of a fortress."

"If we have built a fortress, it is for the protection of us all," their guide said smoothly. "As you may have heard, we work with the Marked. Those who do so learn quickly not to take shortcuts when it comes to safety."

"Here, here," the lady from the fashion magazine agreed. "And it's those safety measures that will make this building the perfect venue for some of the more volatile Expo presentations," she added, looking thoughtful. "Remember that huge mess last year when that prototype enchanted oven exploded and brought half the presentation hall roof down? Almost all the casualties could have been avoided that time if that building had been properly warded."

"It would have been even better if the oven had been kept from exploding to begin with," someone else said dryly.

Shizuna rolled her eyes. "Yes, obviously. I'm just saying that I agree you can't be excessive when it's about safety."

"Do you often see curses going awry around here?" Sonoko asked, interest clearly piqued.

Takagawa chuckled. "Thankfully, no, but it does happen now and then. But it is inevitable when children are learning to deal with their Marks that things happen—often in strange and unexpected ways."

Shizuna shivered. "Doesn't it frighten you sometimes?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I know they're just kids, and it's not their fault that their magic is…abnormal and dangerous, but that's the thing, isn't it? Curse Marks are always so unpredictable. And it's not like anything good ever really comes out of them, you know? Especially for the poor kids who have them. But when you don't know for sure what they can do yet, well, it just sounds scary."

"We have a very thorough and well designed system of approach," Takagawa replied, though Ran noticed that his expression had gone strangely blank behind his friendly smile. And she wondered at that look. Did Shizuna's discomfort with Curse Marks bother him?

Perhaps he was one of the members of the Foundation who did actually care for their cause. Ran supposed there had to be at least a few. Or maybe it was something else. She didn't know and found that she didn't really care.

All that she could see and hear when she looked at him and his and listened to him go on about how amazing the Foundations advancements had been and how successfully they had helped so many cursed children was annoyance verging on anger (not something she was accustomed to). She couldn't help it. The flame had been kindled when she'd found the boy she'd come to think of as a brother unconscious in a back alley reduced to the size of a six year old child. Fuel had been added to that flame when she had met a little blond girl who had looked at her with eyes much too old for her face and told her that she had no family left nor a home she would go back to. A girl who had lost everything that had mattered to her because these people wanted to use her Curse Mark. Her power.

How could these people stand here smiling and go on and on about their successes and their great intentions when their truest desires had already done so much harm to innocent people?

It was frustrating and maddening, and she really didn't like feeling this way. Frankly, she didn't like thinking about such things at all, but one problem with living around detectives was that, sooner or later, you would have to confront the fact that there were people in the world who were more than happy to trample over others if it meant they could get what they wanted. On the other hand, she knew she shouldn't be complaining. After all, she had a choice as to how much she wanted—or did not want, as the case may be—to actually deal with that unsavory side of humanity. Others were not so lucky.

Wrapped in her uncharacteristically foul mood. Ran had to resist the urge to pull Sonoko aside and insist that she not listen to a word the Foundation rep said. She wondered if it had been a mistake not to tell Sonoko earlier what she knew about the Choice Foundation's true nature, but it was too late now.

Well, she thought with a resigned sigh. What could it hurt to let them use a Foundation venue. It was just a building, magically reinforced or not.

Ran was drawn out of her uncharitable thoughts by the sound of something hitting the floor. No one else seemed to have noticed, preoccupied as they were with the tour. But then someone's foot struck something that skittered across the polished floors.

"Oh hey, did someone drop their phone?" Ran asked, spying the oblong shape that had fetched up at the foot of the hallway wall. Trotting over to it, she noted that she recognized the phone in question. "Sonoko, it's yours."

Her friend hurried over, looking puzzled. "That's weird. How did that get there? I could have sworn…" She slipped her hand into her purse and frowned. "Huh? But my phone's right here, so that can't be mine."

By now, Ran had picked up the phone in question and discovered something else odd about it—or rather two somethings. The first was that it weighed far too little to be a real phone. If anything, it felt like a mere cardboard box. The second even stranger thing about the phone that might not be a phone, however, was that the caller ID on the screen claimed that Shinichi was calling.

"Is everything all right, you two?" Takagawa called to the girls from farther up the hall. "If you're ready, we'll be moving on."

"We're coming!" Ran called back, hastily shoving the not-phone into her own bag.

Sonoko raised her eyebrows. "Shouldn't we be taking that to the lost and found or something?"

"I'm not sure… I think it might be from Shinichi," Ran replied as they hurried to catch up to the tour group.

Her friend's confusion only grew. "You realize that makes no sense."

Ran didn't understand it either. She wanted to take another look at the fake phone, but she didn't want to do it in front of all these semi-strangers. So she just shrugged and murmured that they should talk about it later.

Sonoko rolled her eyes but let the matter drop. After all, when Shinichi was involved, things inevitably got weird. She had long ago learned to just roll with it.

"Is your phone all right?" Shizuna asked when they rejoined the group. "I'm afraid I may have kicked it pretty hard."

"Nah. It wasn't really—" Sonoko started to say but Ran jumped in before she could finish.

"—damaged," she said. "The case is really shock-resistant. I use the same type, and I've dropped my phone lots of times without anything happening to it."

Shizuna gave a relieved smile. "Well that's good then. With how much we use our phones for these days, it's always a pain when they get damaged."

"I'll say," one of the men in the group agreed with a hearty laugh. "It's downright scary if you think about it, how much we rely on mobile phones these days. If you dropped my son off in a foreign place without his phone, I'm not sure he'd know how to make it home."

The conversation turned then to the increasingly vital roles being played by technology in the modern age, and the two high school girls drifted to the back of the tour group out of sight of their fellow tourists.

"So? Sonoko hissed. "What did you mean about that phone being Shinichi's?"

"I didn't mean it like that. It's just, well, it was showing his name on the screen like he was calling. And since the phone looked like yours…" She trailed off, not at all sure what to make of it all herself.

Seeing that everyone else in the group was focused on the tour, Ran reached back into her bag and felt around for the imitation phone. Her fingers closed around that strangely light, cardboard rectangle and emerged with—a box of chocolate?

"You brought chocolate?" Sonoko asked, trying to decide if she should be offended.

"No, this is the phone," Ran replied, voice trailing off as she realized how ridiculous that sounded.

The look Sonoko was giving her was distinctly unimpressed.

"Well, never mind that," the smaller girl decided. "We better pick up the pace if we don't want to get left behind."

"Actually, you go on ahead," Ran said. Her shoulders squared as she made up her mind. "I think I'd like to go back to the party. Maybe get a cold drink."

Sonoko frowned. "Are you feeling all right? You've been acting a little weird all evening."

Ran forced a smile. "I'm just a little tired. It's nothing to worry about. I'm just going to find somewhere to sit down for a bit."

"Okay then. If you're sure… I'll come find you once this tour is over, and we can head out early. My parents won't mind."

Ran agreed and watched as her friend trotted to catch up to the tour group. Then she turned and retraced their steps back to the part of the building where the festivities were still in full swing. Once there, she acquired a new glass of iced tea from the refreshment table then checked for her father. Seeing that he was preoccupied with yet another helping from the buffet table, she shook her head and moved to find herself a seat in a quieter corner.

Taking the inexplicable chocolate box out of her bag, she turned it over in her hands, noting that it was too light to actually be holding any chocolate. It had also clearly been opened already. When she looked inside, she was greeted by the sight of a folded sheet of paper.

She pulled it out and saw that it had "To Ran or Uncle" written on the outside in Shinichi's handwriting.

Was Shinichi somewhere here at the party after all? Why hadn't she seen him? And why all this subterfuge to send her a, what, a secret message?

She unfolded the paper, noting that it had probably been ripped out of a notebook.

Her hopes for some sort of explanation died as she took in the contents of the letter though because it didn't make any more sense than anything else about the situation.

"See Agasa," she read. "Staying overnight at his niece's old place. Check out entry fourteen on Kai's invention log. The treasure hunt may take some time. Five days at most. We want to prepare for the World Expo. We think it'll be a big show. And Kai says not to give clovers to secret admirers unless you're looking to buy a watch."

Ran read the message—if it could even be called that—over again a few more times and didn't understand it any better by the end than she had after her first reading. On the other hand, she suspected that she knew who she could ask for an explanation.

See Agasa indeed.

X

"Well, it sounds to me like they found our letter," Kaito observed. "Now we just need them to read it."

"Maybe all those card games did serve a purpose after all," Shinichi mused.

"Will they get it though?" Wandering back to the armchair he had started thinking of as his, Kaito dropped into it and folded his arms behind his head, gaze trained on the ceiling. "We didn't exactly give them much to work with. I still say we should have written in code. Then we could have gone into more detail."

"We could have, but codes can be broken," Shinichi replied, climbing onto the other armchair and sinking into its cushions with a tired sigh. "This way, it shouldn't matter if anyone else sees the message."

"True."

They fell into a pensive silence. Murmurs of conversation punctuated by short bursts of laughter drifted from the sparrow, but otherwise the little library was quiet and perfectly still in the way that places in the real world never were. If he hadn't been so used to it from the long hours he had spent working in this place, Kaito thought he might have found it eerie. As it was though, he found he felt surprisingly relaxed.

Yes, they were in enemy territory, and yes, they were voluntarily giving up on this opportunity for escape. But they were also well hidden, decently supplied, and on the verge of uncovering their opponents' master plans.

A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. In all honesty, he was kind of excited. Even so, he knew better than to get complacent.

"Shin-chan?"

It was a moment before the small figure in the other armchair stirred. There was a stifled yawn. "What is it?"

"Sorry. Did I wake you?"

"Not really. I just sort of zoned out for a moment. What did you need?"

"I was just thinking that I could get started preparing some spells and things we might need if we make a list. But I think I already have a few spells in mind. So I'll just work on those while you get some sleep."

"I'm too tense to sleep," the detective grumbled.

Kaito turned a fond smile on that head of dark hair where it was pillowed on the arm of his armchair. Since he could, he reached over and ran his fingers through those silky black locks and watched in amusement as that adorable cowlick sprang back up every time he brushed it down.

"Try. You're obviously tired, and you'll need your energy and your wits when our host gets back to his associates. I'll keep an ear on the party and wake you if anything interesting happens."

Shinichi couldn't argue that that was a reasonable plan, and he really didn't have the energy to protest even had he wanted to. It had been a very, very long day, much of which had been trying on his nerves for a variety of unrelated reasons. But now that they were here and the ball was, for the moment, out of their court, he suddenly felt like all his energy had simply seeped out of him, leaving him exhausted mentally and physically. It was definitely the child body, he thought a touch grumpily. It simply didn't have the energy to keep up with their activities. It wanted to sleep, and his mind wasn't going to be able to function well until he gave it that sleep.

"It's such a bother," he mumbled into the armchair cushions as he curled more comfortably into its plushy embrace. Kaito's fingers combing through his hair was strangely soothing. In moments, the little detective was fast asleep.


TBC

A.N: I hope your holidays have gone well. This last year's been an eventful one for me, some of it not so great but some of it great as well. Here's to a good year to come for everyone. Happy New Year!