—in, out, in, out.
The first thing to catch his attention was that he could breathe, and the next was the feeling that something was wrong with that statement. As everyone breathed as part of their nature unless they were no longer countable as living beings, he wondered what could feel wrong about doing so.
Shinichi was most definitely one given his vital signs. Without any memory further than a ship running him over and a roughest idea on how he managed through that—maybe the old man and the inspector had the good timing of their lives, he could not really tell through his last pieces of consciousness—he really wished to experience more of his surroundings than the darkness and some kind of wooden floor under him. He thought that was strange, as both him and her should have been in hospital given their condition, but ah well. He would ask someone for clarification and explanation on what he had missed out.
He stood up—it went too easily considering his list of injuries longer than his father's novels—while supporting himself on the wall. His brows shot up in confusion when he took his first steps, as they were shorter than what he was used to, excessively so.
His eyes adjusted to the dimness around him and so, he could make out a corridor. His steps lightly tapped on the floor with his every step as his eyes wandered to the walls with colours distorted in the lack of illumination. He thought they were supposed to be colourful—though it was strange for a hospital to paint its walls in a colour other than white. After agonising minutes of insecurity, because he did not know where he was, where she was, where everyone was and there was absolutely nobody around to answer his many questions, he found a sliding door. He peeled it open, and staggered back at the sight.
He could have found a bloody corpse behind the door and been less startled than seeing a couple dozen kids lying in neat columns, sleeping not so neatly. A foot away from where he was standing, a small boy just landed his arm on the next one's face while turning around. His eyes scanned the room for additional information on the rather strange situation, but the gears in his mind was faltering too much to process any of it. Never mind the lack of clues—he was lacking context.
Or maybe, but very maybe, not.
Next to every little head was a sheet of cloth and a nametag, as it is usual in a kindergarten.
A cherry blossom nametag.
He clutched on his calm desperately as he treaded between the columns with soft steps that barely emitted any noise. He stopped dead at the end of the line, where two girls were sleeping. A brunette sprawled out unceremoniously, tossing and turning restlessly—how fitting for the social butterfly she was going to be in ten years, twenty years—and a precious little one with soft fuscous locks, resting with tears dried to her face over the nametag folded from paper. A taint of sorrow unbefitting that bundle of wholesomeness that laid at the core of the pragmatic and protective karate champion he knew.
He knew them—those girls.
He stood between them, his conscious stuffed into his four-year-old body clad in the vibrant blue and yellow of the kindergarten uniform, looking at them in an attempt to sort out the mixed bag of feelings fleeting around while trying to force this into the current theory.
A concept previously residing in the territory of science fiction was suddenly brought to life through means beyond his, or anyone's, comprehension. A collusion of certain unknown factors enabled him to experience shifting through the space-time continuum once before by chance. According to the professor, whatever caused it broke of an alternate timeline from the original one, which had proceeded to diverge as he, a foreign influence, had started messing stuff up. However, never once had either of them considered the possibility of it happening twice, given than it was miraculous that it had happened once.
And the questions came. How, when and why him.
He had to get to the professor.
"Shin-chan!"
A woman popped up in the door, her charming voice full of overflooding energy and extroversion. A couple of curly brown locks supplemented the immaculate custom and sunglasses in making her look like to have been pulled out of a spycraftian movie—his mother.
He was glad to see her again.
"Mum, you might not understand this, but we have to go the professor right now." He rushed to her and caught her hand, trying to pull her from the door, but she seemed confused and adamant on staying unless he elaborated. "I promise I'll explain everything later. This is not the pl—"
He suddenly froze. He knew that the presence that had appeared in his back was not normal, on the contrary, felt a thousand times more threatening and malicious than any other one. He heard his harsh footsteps clanking against the wood and his breaths penetrating the stillness in the air. He could recognise that crow standing in his back anytime, though he had no idea what he was doing there. As far as he was concerned, the organisation did not mix with kindergartens.
His hand clung to the sleeve of the beige custom of his mother as a feeble attempt to pull her away from the danger that she was clearly unaware of—and he had been too, as an innocent child with a love for sophisticated mysteries without the true nature of crimes and criminals to worry about. He was shocked to the core—he just found out that the crows had been present in his life from godforsaken kindergarten—and that he never even noticed anything. He could not help himself but to feel disappointed that his past self had been lacking the required intuition—which was irreal even with the high standards etched into his personality.
And sometimes, that made him prone to forget that he was not omniscient or failproof.
His line of work called for that and more. He had to be aware of as much information as possible, keeping track of individuals and organisations with their relations and innerworkings, and arrange everything precisely to predict who was likely to be targeted. His extensive knowledge and precognition—whether it originated from hard work or alternate timelines—was the footing that he could not afford to lose. And he did—merely comprehending the depth of the truth was unnerving.
He could no longer look at an incident and tell with confidence whether that was connected to the organisation or not. Nothing was supposed to be connected to them, neither from Tsukikage-jima nor his kindergarten from twenty years ago. And neither the kidnapping due in some days.
Ran—she was safe, at least temporarily.
He had not done anything to screw up the timeline yet.
But he had to act. He wanted to go back to the timeline that he had started to design for himself—if that was possible. He hated the idea of leaving everything incomplete because he randomly popped out of existence—or whatever. His condition needed unique solutions.
"Shin-chan?!"
His grab on her sleeve tightened, fingers digging into the material.
"Hey, wait a second—"
His mother reluctantly followed him into the main hall, through the door and into the street. A couple of bystanders gave them a questioning glare, but neither of them paid even the slightest bit of attention to them. He was glad to have both distanced themselves from that person and closed up to the professor. His mind ignored the protests and demands of his mother in exchange of the knowledge that they were heading towards safety, even though she could not understand.
Then she stood on her heels.
"I will not move from here unless you explain this right now. I know you hate the idea of kindergarten, but we went over this last evening. You have to learn how to fit in, or school will be really hard on you. You might be smart beyond your years, and can read kanji not even most high schoolers can, but life is not all about smarts. You said that you need to learn the social etiquette to become a proper detective, do you remember?"
He remained silent, avoiding eye contact.
"Why do you look like you have to escape from something?"
"I am from the future, and that man from before is my enemy."
His mother paused, then a mischievous chuckle crossed her formerly blank expression. She obviously did not believe him—he could not blame her. She scooped him into her arms—an affection that felt so foreign after starving for it throughout those years he had had to fend for himself knowing that his parents had been alive somewhere on the surface of the planet and had loved him to bits, just not more than other things—and he wrestled his way out of it because making her understand was more important.
"Of course, sweetie. Why won't we go back and catch the bad guy then?"
He balled his fists. He was not a child and was being serious. His mind scrolled through the events of the near future for anything that would be of evidence value, but unfortunately, nothing spectacular happened with him in the next couple of days knowing which beforehand would be written off as extraordinary. He would have to wait until the kidnapping case would come around. A taste of irony, he thought, how he wanted to avoid recognition in one timeline and trying to get it in another. His father came to his mind out of blue, scrolling through the newspaper this evening. He vaguely recalled an accident, close to the kindergarten—his father had been quite upset about it.
"A drunk driver lost control over his vehicle at Haido Intersection 2-36 on March 19th, 1983. He frontally crashed with the transformer-box and the truck exploded, causing millions worth of collateral damage. I can see why the police was baffled that the driver was the only casualty..."
His mother paused again; this time more disturbed.
"Shin-chan, this is Haido Intersection 2-36. And there was no accident here."
He froze. His blind escapade had brought them to a street bearing an uncanny resemblance to the picture in the newspaper from his memories, outcounting the damage from the accident itself. There was a transformer box next to them and not a soul in the street—something exceptionally rare in a metropolis during the light of day. Everything looked like a movie setup, the cameras waiting to capture the grandiose scene—no, for him, it resembled more a testing ground from where everyone had been evacuated excluding the two of them, who knew what was about to happen but not sure whether they can still make it—
He grabbed his mother again, this time with more ferocity.
"There was no accident here, because the accident is going to happen now!"
"Please, Shin-chan—"
And it came. A truck making a beeline exactly towards them at a crazy speed. He would not be able to stop, the obvious registered for his mother as she looked at him with pure horror. He had to admit that a child suddenly acting strange without reason and then sharing a disturbing infodump regarding a gruesome accident that actually ended up happening could fly as a horror story. Too bad the child in question only wanted to prove to his mother that he came from to future—he noted with a morbid sense of humour that his life had recently turned into a distasteful genre crossover. He entertained himself with such useless thoughts until he—
His mother picked him up in instant—horror and shock forgotten in a flash once a threat appeared—trying her best to distance him from the catastrophe about to engulf the world around them. Any effort she could provide was futile, he knew, and he knew that she knew it too.
He hoped his mother was as quick as he was.
...and now what?
He felt the need to retch and empty the contents of his stomach immediately. He was in shock, confused and scared, and the only detail he could determine about his new situation was that he was sitting on the backseat of a car—a rather old type of that, though he could not tell from the interior. He did not quite look himself; his fingers were running through auburn locks that could pass as authentic save for the same synesthetic touch that covered his face tightly—a latex mask. He found no defect in the handiwork of his mother as he bored into his reflection looking the spitting image of his shrunken scientist on the window.
A gunshot rang out in the cold night.
A woman with golden hair—Jodie, that had to be Jodie—collapsed against the window, taking laboured breaths and she slowly slid down to the ground, leaving a trail of fresh blood on the window. He looked at his power-enhancing shoes and belt—and knew what he had to do.
Vermouth—an actress from the era of his mother, a friend of hers despite being so fundamentally different—gave him a look of total shock as he slid out of the seat and ripped off his disguise. He treasured honest reactions from the most questionable member of the organisation. She had always been special because of a relation to the boss that evaded his careful investigation decades long. A master of deceit hiding behind a thousand faces with unreadable motivations, gentler and crueller than the majority of the people at the same time, favouriting him and his childhood friend, no, girlfriend as much as hating the person he was disguised as.
Jodie was even more shocked than her own archenemy at seeing a child who was, as far as she was concerned, seven years old casually disarming the organisation agent that had cornered her. Her eyes were wide as saucer plates and shaking slightly from both the pain and the scene unfolding in front of her. He remembered the exact words he had said but chose to remain silent—unlike his old self revelling in attention, he no longer felt the spotlight necessary.
He looked around, detached eyes stopping at the top of a nearby building. A figure stealthy enough to meld into the black of night was scouting the area through a scope on behalf of the actress, likely to shoot any disturbance in the plan—and the only reason he had not taken out the woman yet.
Haibara showed up, like last time.
A green taxi car dropped the child off, quickly speeding away upon catching sniff of the potential danger. He kept his expression stoic as she slowly approached the three of them with tiny, resigned steps—the steps of a person who would give up her all on his behalf, a habit he had personally broken down in the future—her eyes wide with horror under the spare set of tracking glasses that he should have hidden better. No doubt, she was positive that walking to her death was the only way to free him, to make up for all the suffering that she had caused during her time amongst the crows—no matter that she was groomed and isolated for that very purpose.
"Haibara, find cover. I can handle this by myself."
He tried to convince her that he was doing slightly more than suicidal improvising.
Her gaze was uncharacteristically concerned and fearful.
"I'll explain later."
Despite the most unreliable combination of words, there was something in his reaction that drove the point through. He knew what he was doing, never mind that he had died in another timeline merely minutes ago and had not even given it a second thought, but he knew this situation and the solution—well, not that much, as he had been hit with his own tranquilizer dart and kidnapped, only to come around in a car in the middle of nowhere, but he had an idea—
"My, my, what awful manners. I just got to meet your little friend, and you sent her away."
"I will protect my people, no matter the time and method." He popped up the lid on his wristwatch. "I believe you know this gadget from your observations—pins dipped in paralysis agent mixed with sleeping drug, can immediately take out a fully grown adult. I want your sniper to cease fire and retreat without giving anyone a pursuit, especially the girl you saw before and whoever may assist her, then you to help teacher into the car and drive to the nearest hospital."
"Nice try, but you need real weapons to make a real threat."
As soon as she reached for the spare gun strapped to her ankle, Jodie, about to fade out of consciousness, loaded her own firearm with one last bullet. He found it hard to watch someone he knew slowly becoming abandoned by life. "If you try anything, you'll be shot in his place!"
Before he could assure her that he was plenty capable of dealing with anything that could be thrown at him—which she would find unbelievable, coming from a pint-sized child, but anyways—the trunk opened. He looked back with half an eye, unaware of that particular detail from the original case, and he found himself frozen again. A feminine figure jumped into the air with an athletic move—he knew that outfit and hairstyle—closing on the former actress attempting to intimidate. All preliminary knowledge he had on the incident was turned upside down, inside out and thrown miles away while reality laughed as it flopped in distress.
Ran had been there and he never knew.
Vermouth watched, if possible, in even greater shock as the figure descended upon her. Her finger tightened around the trigger, reacting to the danger to her person, but a loosened completely when she recognised the one of the two people in the world whom she could never harm—her angel.
Had not been for that, the bold move would not have been successful.
He was not a rookie to lull into the false sense of security the removal of the apparent enemy provided. He knew that as soon as the unconscious body of the upper-eight would hit the ground, as soon as his girlfriend set a foot on the ground again, the sniper would begin the indiscriminate shooting spree to both extract revenge for his superior and dispose of the witnesses. Her intervention, because of that line of deduction, brought more dread than relief. He knew that she most likely overheard their banter and thought that he was in danger—and acted. He wished she had stayed in the safety of the trunk a little longer.
He reached for her, to warn her about the danger, and so did her 'teacher'.
"Ran-san, take this kid and duck behind any—"
Too late.
He did not even hear the shots. He did not need to. As her confident posture broke in two in a single second, her unconquerable determination conquered by disorientation as she stumbled right into his arms, his conscious floated amongst the pieces of his shattered world in misery. He should have done something, anything, moving her into a safe place or stealing a phone from the unconscious crow to call an ambulance or two, but instead, his mind was preoccupied with denial.
Her smile was tainted with red as her clammy hand cupped his cheek.
"Conan-kun, would you tell—Shin'ichi—"
He refused to see, he refused to listen to feel to understand—
"I love you."
And blackout, again.
He was fighting to keep his balance through supporting himself with his hands on the wall. His lips quivered in agony as the reality of seconds ago continued haunting him timelines across. He knew that that happened again, had no idea when he was and could see her blood seeping into his clothes—he bashed his head to the frosty wall, again and again and again and again, as if that erased the timeline where he had failed in every meaning of the word.
A pair of arms held him, trying to fight his trashing.
"Kudo! What the hell?"
Haibara—returned to her adult form by the permanent antidote, just as he was—looked as bad as he felt. Huge bags were sitting under her eyes, evidence of her sleepless nights after their shrunken identities had been made public knowledge. He remembered her breaking the news about the antidote, and them agreeing to return once the organisation was eradicated from the surface of the planet for good—not that they had a choice, returning with an assassin squad and some of the most influential people in the country after them was a quick ticket to the other side—only to swallow the pill as a last attempt at winning the losing battle.
Ah, he knew—yet kept fighting.
He had thought that returning to his adult form and regaining his respective authority and reputation would turn the tables. His priorities bounced back and forth between arranging protection for his friends and acquaintances, and related families—with the witness protection program full, he had to haul up his connections and pay and offer favours—, fretting over whatever his father did to trigger the organisation into launching a total war, and trying to reach that place where the others waited—agencies putting aside personal vendettas, in the name of standing against the oppression, trying to use its symbol as a base for the sake of irony.
He knew that the walls around him were familiar. A maze of massive concrete corridors cascading under a metropolis halfway to the west, branches secluded with bulky doors that could be sealed shut by a button in the central room that nobody had known about—
He collapsed in her hold and threw up.
He was there, again.
"Looks like shock, but why—dammit, Kudo."
He looked at his scientist partner, who was too busy checking on him to realise the tragedy about to strike and seal her fate for good. His mind supplied where and when and what, but he was too damn tired—tried of trying and failing and dying and repeating without a direction or purpose—even though people would die, hundreds of them—as in the original timeline where he had been unable to do anything—but somehow, staying on the ground was treacherously alluring.
He refused to watch another timeline drown into despair, terrorizing him into oblivion with or without his intervention—because he did nothing to cause mess, he made no mistakes, he always made the right decisions, he was the right one, no, not the world, but him.
And beneath the death, he started to understand the true nature of time. A concept standing incomprehensible for centuries, an ambiguous perception of the world based on what was determined as change disguised as a principle of reality itself. And truly, people were unable to live without the concept of time. It determined the pace of life from the average daily routines through holidays to the moment of death. Measuring it, adjusting to its flow and even using its deterministic nature to pin crimes on others—no wonder that everyone, including him, were out of their depth once it started going in circles or dividing into more parts.
He had died once, after suffering through a fate worse than that at the hands of the organisation. His memories were quite blurred on that part, not to mention that the concept of dying once he determined that he was, in fact, alive did not sound plausible at all. However, he came to realise that he had, and time had warped in the process. He had died twice, trying to escape the organisation in the new timeline, and that seemed to have broken reality again.
And for the third time. And for the fourth time.
Again and again and again.
Haibara shook him. "Kudo, we have to—"
He looked straight in her eyes, shutting her up. "Haibara, in about five minutes, a rocket going to hit the control room—you can lock and unlock the doors later down in the corridor from there. Many of the agencies just barged in here without actual information on the blueprints—they know nothing, and the organisation is using it against them. All of the doors are locked already, and their plan is to destroy the control room. Add the almost three hundred agents trying to reach the main building and members of the lower eight closing in outside—I take you get the point. I—we have to unlock the doors before the rocket hits."
"I fail to understand how throwing up brought you to that conclusion."
"I remembered that outcome."
Haibara raised an eyebrow, and he prepared himself.
"I came from the future."
"...you gave yourself a concussion, great."
"And I dreamt that I was a child for three years." He collected himself to direct her towards the right destination. "Listen closely, on the right side of the next intersection will be a storage for the underground harbour—there will be allies there too. You will go there and explain the situation to them."
"...you plan to take care of the control room by yourself."
He shrugged—a nonchalant way of showing that nothing else could be done. He would most certainly die, but would not pass on to heaven or hell or—whatever. He was not meant to belong, and it was truly unfortunate that the people knowing him would continue clinging to the shell they believed was the one and only him, unbeknownst to that this version of him perished once he had hijacked the timeline—so he told himself.
He was about to explode on the inside. He was going insane watching the alternate versions of his friends, knowing that the path to the one timeline he considered his was paved with death—because he had to die and leave this world gone astray, these people who were in dire need of his expertise. He could not tell them that this world was already beyond saving and even he, for all his knowledge on the future, could do nothing more than giving them this chance.
Haibara looked at him with vibrant sorrow—as if trying to burn him into his memory, probably seeing him for the last time—and a resentment lurking behind that gaze of hers. He could understand, he was the one always telling her to value herself and shaped her distorted humanity into a decent person, and there he was, a hypocrite ready to throw away his own existence in the same manner she had wanted to on too, too many occasions.
He turned back to her, knowing that the longer he was in her presence, more he would be tempted to stay, to stay with them to the end. He turned back so that he would not have time to think, to realise that nothing, absolutely nothing made a difference besides these people and those he wished to return to. All of them were alternate versions from different timelines who had done nothing wrong, who all deserved to live—merely his choice creating a priority. He could not handle travelling through uncountable number of timelines and continuously repeat a sequence of actions for an eternity though. He was cursed to deem certain worlds to doom.
"Haibara. Thank you."
He did not look back. He did not need to.
"You selfish idiot—what for?"
Five minutes later, all the agents were able to infiltrate U.N.
And at the same time, a rocket hit the control room.
He opened his eyes again, this time to find himself confined in an old car. He could recognise the scent of cigarette permanently engrossed in the interior, the black smears tainting the gaps between the beige seats—out of reach during cleaning, and consequent realisation explained his condition. His entire body ached, but that was the norm. His clothes—a suit alike his former school uniform—were in tatters and matter with his blood, dried drops of which coating his skin and greasing between his fingers as he moved them. His hands were tied tightly behind his back, and a quick glance confirmed that his legs were too. He bumped into the door as the car took a turn.
"I had so much trouble with you already. Just stay put."
He recognised that voice—but after everything, he could not find it in himself to overreact.
He pulled up into a sitting position, ignoring the pain frying his nerves doing so. He knew which timeline he was in. He tugged into the discomfort as he remembered the first month after the victory of the organisation. He had known that those words would condemn him to hell, however, he had failed to comprehend the meaning behind them. He had thought that living in the shadows of society for the rest of his life would have been the price, but he had never been more wrong. A week after the organisation had taken over, they had started a manhunt for the survivors of the resistance against them, with the support of state information and resources.
His former allies and friends had been falling left and right, deceased in mysterious accidents or sudden illnesses, and he could have done nothing about it. He could have tried to stand up to them as he had always done it on a primal instinct, and perish through the ghastliest way for being the most wanted person on their list himself. Whatever he had done would have had temporary effects in a country ruled by the organisation, and that realisation had driven him to the border of despair. He had thought that he and his girlfriend had been the last until that person that had been assumed to have disappeared like his father had showed up—Akai.
Akai had had enough resources and connections to fill him with hope. While nothing could have been done from the inside of the country, an overseas effort still had had the chance to be successful—and they would bite, their countries were in danger from the organisation too. He had considered asking for outside help, especially after the police was decapitated and intimidated into submission, but he had known that the only the real silver bullet could have arranged it.
It had taken him running decoy, and he had decided that he could do that much.
Gin stepped on the break, making him facepalm the seat in front of him.
"I said to stay put."
He ignored the coppery taste in his mouth as he glared in the rear mirror with a little too much spirit.
"I would give up in your place. I can say this because nobody is listening, that you have put up a good fight. But the winner gets everything. This outcome has been obvious for a while now, but you failed to notice it—or you chose to ignore it. You had no chance to win, but continued nevertheless. Unlike the most agents and associates, you were not there because of interest or duty. Those shatters easily. You fought for your beliefs."
He did not say anything.
"I take you know where you will go."
He growled in response.
"I have warned you to give up."
"I will never."
"I thought you were smarter than that. You should have realised by now what our victory means. This country is nothing more than a bag of resources for our boss, and soon will be the entire world. You pledged your allegiance besides the law, convinced that it was the right side. Then comes the question—what is the law? Those who stand on the very top have the privilege to dictate wrong and right. You really believe that there is a universal moral code of humanity—how cliché. You have known us for long enough to resent us. But have you known those others you call allies as long? I bet the CIA or the MI6 have some stories they would never tell you."
"I never claimed that the world was a fair and just place."
"You believed in it nevertheless."
"I did, and still do. I have been a detective for a while. I have seen enough gory crime scenes to falter in my views, but still. I believe in humanity. I consider it worthy to fight for. As the law enforcement and agencies consist of people, they are unperfect, but it is their interest to maintain order in society. You represent those who have accepted the natural corruption and use it to your advantage. You are not even trying to understand people. You deem our moral laughing stock without having one yourself. Being a null will not justify the suffering you will cause for the innocent people when this charade blows up in your face."
"I hate when you play the saint—or martyr, in this case. You did run into our trap on purpose to help your friends escape. Rye and you for two weeks together—you two must have cooked up some plan. I will pull that out of you with any means necessary."
Ah, yes. He had no doubts about that. Looking out the tinted windows, he could see that they were approaching one of those locations. He had never intended to stay any longer in this timeline than he had to, as there was nothing that he could save or protect. This was a reminder of where the world was heading, an ending that he definitely had to avoid. And he would do that—this was the promise of that. He was willing to ignore the personal cost of it.
He finally found the door handle.
"I will be more than uncooperative in that."
"What are you—"
He opened the door before the crow could react and kicked himself out. His archenemy whom he had been confronting for over a decade was baffled at the rash decision that was uncharacteristic of him no matter the circumstances. However, this was not a rash decision but a strategic move for him—rather ironic, if he thought about it. As the organisation took control over the world, he gained control over time itself. He had the ability to die, and retry as many times as needed.
"I will win the next time around."
Aw, the road was harsh.
"It was successful—"
His head hurt, his arms hurt, his back hurt, everything hurt hurt hurt hurt—
"Holy shit, this kid is stubborn as hell."
Even though he passed out almost immediately, he knew.
This time, he got the right timeline.
"I'm back."
Published: 01/10/2022
I think I should stop claiming things in author's notes, because apparently, the opposite is going to be true.
I have said that the concept of time travel in going to be different to Re:Zero, and here goes this chapter. To be honest, I started writing this story without having a clear idea in mind about how it will go, and around the second chapter, I really thought that it would be one-time time travel. However, while there are some similarities, this is not exactly the same concept: in Re:Zero, death brought you back to a set point of time until your checkpoint moved while here, it can blow you anywhere.
(And yes, I could update in two weeks. This is likely going to be a rare occasion though.)