Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.
Pairing: KaitoxShinichi
Lure
Chapter 36 - Guessing Games
Continuing on with one's daily business despite knowing that one was being stalked was a great deal easier said than done. Shinichi had always been sensitive to being watched. Knowing that his watchers were those sleazy tabloid reporters weren't making things any easier. He kept wondering what innocent moment they would catch on their cameras and wave about online to promote whatever crazy theory they thought would sell and bring in the followers.
But Shinichi did his best to conduct his life as normal—which, granted, wasn't particularly normal, considering his usual luck (or rather lack thereof).
Being spied on while he worked cases made him jumpier than he cared to admit, causing him to default to the habits he had picked up while he'd been Conan of trying to lead the police towards the right answers instead of speaking up about them himself. Except sooner or later one of the officers would ask him a direct question, and he would remember that he wasn't in hiding anymore. It was disorienting and uncomfortable to say the least.
Then Shinichi had received an unexpected call from the author Arata Mashiro asking if he had time to meet up for lunch so they could discuss one of the man's ideas for the next sequel book in his series. Shinichi agreed to the meeting before remembering Kaito and the magician's less than friendly attitude towards the author in question. It was a pointless jealousy, Shinichi knew, but he had no desire to learn that Arata had suffered some unfortunate and bizarre accident. So he called the magician to inform him of the meeting and remind him that he had nothing to worry about and not to overreact.
"I never overreact," the magician declared, sounding affronted. "My reactions are always perfectly suited to the occasion."
"Then just remember that this occasion is a small one that deserves only small reactions," Shinichi suggested before heading off to his meeting, hoping for the best.
He knew Kaito would be following him the entire way to the café in question, but he decided not to call the thief out. If stalking him helped Kaito keep his possessive tendencies in check then Shinichi wasn't going to complain.
It wasn't until he had walked into the restaurant where he was to meet Arata that Shinichi remembered that he had no idea what the author actually looked like. The image of the man he had in his head was of an owl mask and a heavy cape of feathers beneath which there had been a pair of boots with talons. All he knew for certain was that the author must be quite tall.
With that in mind, he scanned the many patrons already distributed about the café's many tables. He immediately marked anyone near his own height or shorter off the list in his head. He also dismissed the men who were here with companions. He narrowed his suspects down to four men, all of whom were seated at small tables alone with either a laptop or stacks of books and papers. He studied these remaining suspects a little longer before placing the one with the glasses at the bottom of his list. That owl mask hadn't been designed to fit glasses underneath, and Arata had mentioned during their conversation at the Suzuki Halloween party that he didn't end up wearing the yellow contacts that would have gone with his costume because he found the concept of putting things in his eyes to be a little too disturbing.
Shinichi considered the man with the laptop a moment longer, but he noted that the man had his earphones plugged in. It was the kind of earphone that had a speaker bud attached. He seemed to be either in the middle of an e-meeting or anticipating one and hadn't looked towards the door even once since Shinichi had arrived. Nor did he pay any attention to anyone passing near his table.
His third suspect was similarly engrossed in his own work. And, upon closer inspection, his books were all about mathematics. Chances were that he was a student studying for class.
And that left the tall, black-haired man with the table covered in books and papers. He had startlingly green eyes, Shinichi noted when he approached the table and the stranger looked up and smiled at him.
"Kudo-san, I realized I never showed you my face. I was going to keep an eye on the door and call you when you came in, but I got distracted. Sorry about that."
"That's all right." Shinichi took the seat across from the author and ordered a coffee and a blueberry muffin from a passing waiter.
As the waiter left, Shinichi noticed that Arata had a printout of that painting of the "ghostly couple" who had attended Suzuki Sonoko's Halloween ball lying on top of a manila folder. He also had several articles spread out around him about a lodge house in the mountains.
"Did you see the ghosts at the Suzuki party?" Shinichi asked.
Arata shook his head ruefully. "I left shortly after you did. I suppose I should have stayed longer, but I had no idea there was going to be a performance. I watched what videos I could find online though, and I must say, it's been quite inspirational."
"Really?" Shinichi leaned forward a little. He was rather curious what kind of inspiration Kaito's Halloween show had provided for the author, and he couldn't help but see the irony of it. To think that Kaito's magic show would become a source of information for the very person he'd been complaining about that the setting of that very same show. Shinichi had to hide an amused smile at the turn of events. "How so?"
"Well, I've been reading up on this little village in the mountains that everyone says is rich with ghost stories and paranormal activity. It's kind of a hobby of mine, reading up on these sorts of things. And I just felt like this couple might make an interesting addition to this old lodge." He tapped the photo of the lodge in question.
"From what I've been able to learn, this lodge house was built before the village came to be. It's agreed to be the oldest building in the village. And they say men who try to stay the night there almost always turn up dead."
Shinichi frowned. "That sounds rather serious."
Arata looked surprised for a moment before he apparently thought over his own words then laughed. "I suppose it does. I didn't mean for it to come out like that. I should have mentioned, the deaths were all results of accidents or natural causes. Three were ill, one crashed his car because he was driving while drunk, one slipped on a newly waxed floor and hit his head, and two suffered heart attacks. The first of that last two had a long family history of heart attacks, and the other was obese. There was no foul play found in any of the incidents. There was just a stir over the fact that all of them had stayed at that lodge shortly before their ends. Now some people believe the place is cursed."
That didn't surprise Shinichi. He had heard more than his fair share of similar stories. Of course, none of the rumors of supernatural activity he had encountered had ever proven to be anything other than people's fanciful thinking, but that never seemed to dampen people's desire to attribute misfortune and odd events to curses and monsters. He suspected a lot of those people derived some kind of thrill from doing so, though it wasn't an interest he understood. In the past, he would have shaken his head at the ridiculousness of such behavior, but these days he knew better than to write off the possibility of seemingly supernatural phenomena without a real investigation. After all, to anyone other than perhaps Haibara, his own second trip through childhood was about as supernatural as they came. He just wished people would base their theories on objective and thorough investigations instead of personal preference.
But he was getting sidetracked here wasn't he?
"You see, though the setting is supernatural, I would like the scheme to be mundane," Arata was saying. "But I've been having some trouble with a plausible scheme that incorporates the haunted objects I wanted to use in an elegant way. But I don't want to change the objects because I've already decided on their stories, and frankly I'm a little too attached to just throw them out and start over."
He produced several extremely detailed illustrations and showed them to Shinichi before launching into an explanation about each one and its connection to his ghosts. His enthusiasm for his work was infectious, and Shinichi thought it really was a shame that Kaito had already decided to dislike the man.
They spent the next hour and a half having quite a pleasant discussion about characters, clues, and plots. Though Shinichi wasn't the writer that his father was, he had absorbed quite a bit about the craft from said man and all the books he'd read. And he found he enjoyed the opportunity to participate in the author's creative process. He was looking forward to seeing the end result when Arata was finished.
"When I'm done, you'll be the first to know," Arata promised with a smile. "Thank you again for agreeing to help me with this. I truly appreciate it."
"You're welcome," Shinichi said, returning the author's smile.
The waiter reappeared by their table and cleared his throat. "Would either of you like a refill?"
It was the third time he'd asked. This time, however, Shinichi politely declined and bid Arata farewell.
Because he was half expecting it, Shinichi wasn't surprised to see a shadow that looked an awful lot like their waiter slip out the back of the café shortly after his own departure. Nor was he surprised when he later got a text from Kaito complaining about how chummy he and Arata had been.
Rolling his eyes, he texted Kaito back to remind him that, since he had been there the entire time, he should know that there was no basis for his assertion that Arata was interested in Shinichi as anything other than just a good source of inspiration and a friend.
"Besides," he added in the text, grinning. "He's writing us into his story."
Kaito sent a question mark, and Shinichi replied with the photo he'd taken of Arata's photo of their Halloween night escapade as the ghostly couple at Suzuki Sonoko's ball.
Feeling unusually relaxed and cheerful, Shinichi decided to stop by his favorite bookstore on his way home. There, he picked up half a dozen new mystery novels he wanted to read and one book for class that weighed about as much as all the others put together.
Then he picked up some basic groceries and headed home, doing his best all the while to ignore the now familiar little car inching after him.
It was the morning two days after that otherwise innocuous evening that the proverbial dirt hit the fans.
"Have you read it yet?"
Stifling a yawn, Shinichi shifted the phone to his left hand to free his right one to start the coffeemaker. He wasn't entirely sure what he said in response to Ran's inquiry, but he must have said something because she made a half exasperated, half amused sound on the other end of the line.
"Sonoko forwarded us an article this morning," Ran explained. "You might want to take a look at it."
Shinichi grimaced, safe in the knowledge that Ran couldn't see him. Reading anything Sonoko would want to forward to him was not high on the list of things he wanted to do first thing in the morning (or at any other time of day for that matter). Saying so, however, would no doubt earn him another lecture about friends and how they should let bygones be bygones. Not that he disagreed with her or anything, he supposed. But he reserved the right to have coffee first.
So he did. Two piping hot mugs of coffee (black) later, Shinichi felt human again and braced—or as braced as anyone could ever be—for Sonoko's madness.
So he turned on his phone and opened the article Sonoko, in her ageless gossip queen wisdom, had decided he should see.
It was a post from that Daikura Magazine.
"Is one of these people Kaitou KID?" Shinichi read out loud. The big, bolded question was followed by a chart of candid photographs of himself and a series of people he had interacted with recently ranging from the cashiers at the grocery stores he frequented to the police officers he'd worked cases with. Several of those officers were members of the KID Task Force, he couldn't help but notice. The article attached suggested that the chances of the Kaitou KID being a member of the police force or someone close to them was high as it would explain how the thief always seemed to know what the police were planning and how exactly to deal with those plans.
Shinichi could already hear Nakamori-keibu's bellows of outrage over that particular suggestion. Of course, that was provided that the man didn't have a seizure when he saw his own photo in the chart of Kaitou KID suspects.
Hakuba was on the list too, Shinichi observed with a certain level of amusement. He wasn't sure whether the blond or Kaito would be more offended by the suggestion that Hakuba Saguru of all people could be the Kaitou KID.
Just about all the suggestions made by the chart were so ridiculous that only an utter fool would consider them. That fact, however, didn't appear to hinder the rampant online discussions about how these people might either be KID's real identity or KID in disguise. Only a cursory examination was enough to reveal that there was a disturbingly large number of people eager to believe that some of those photos were the preludes to clandestine trysts between the infamous gentleman thief and Japan's most famous, young detective.
"Shinichi?"
Remembering belatedly that Ran was still on the line, Shinichi coughed lightly. "I can't say I'm pleased to see this, but it's not exactly anything new." Though boy did he wish that weren't the case.
"But whoever took these pictures must have been following you," Ran said. He could hear the frown in her voice even if he couldn't see it. "It's an invasion of privacy."
"That's nothing new either," he replied wryly. "Really Ran, it's best just to ignore it. Stuff like this only gets worse if you pay attention to it. The best thing to do is to ignore it."
"Says he who spent months hiding in a café he doesn't like because of one photograph," Ran replied dryly, but she had to concede the point. "Well, let me know if you need any help. I could always ask Mom if she has any suggestions."
A genuine smile made its way onto Shinichi's face. "Thanks Ran. That means a lot."
-To be Continued-