Chapter 13: Scratching an Itch

Author's note: a web browser called Glegle is mentioned here: it's not a typo, that's the name they use in the show. It's copyright safe Google.

"Why are you laughing, Haibara? It's not even that funny!"

"I'm sorry, but the great Kudo Shinichi, who's heavily influenced by his Gallicized mother, is allergic to French Soap," wheezed Haibara. Shinichi scowled at her. Agasa was stifling his own giggles.

"You have to admit the irony there, Shinichi," he said through his laughter.

The trip to the department store hadn't taken very long. Ran had gone ahead by herself to get her own toiletries. Evidently, she already knew exactly what she'd wanted and was back too quickly for Shinichi to browse the bookstore next door. He didn't know what she'd bought, but it was probably the same stuff she used back home, so he didn't really think too much about it.

He'd followed almost aimlessly behind Ran as she picked out different foods from the grocer's downstairs, only bothering to give input when Ran asked a question about his preferences for the week. The whole experience was a bit surreal, as he'd had the same interactions with her as both Shinichi and Conan, and now he was still Shinichi, just… smaller, and Ran looked like him, but the interaction was still the same. He wasn't entirely sure if he should be glad of that or if it should bother him more.

After they'd gotten back, Shinichi had washed his hands with the offending soap to sate his curiosity. When nothing happened, he'd gone next door to tell the two scientists about it, but he hardly expected them to burst out laughing.

"Haibara be serious," he growled. He'd never expected to say that to her of all people. "I used the stuff on my hands, and I don't feel anything, so why does Ran?"

Haibara recovered so quickly it sent Agasa into another bout of laughter.

"She said the reaction was mild, didn't she?" she said, no trace of her laughing fit visible. "You're going to have to do more than wash your hands with it for a fair comparison." Shinichi rolled his eyes, but begrudgingly conceded.

I needed a bath, anyway, he thought sourly as he went back to his house. Ran had already put all the groceries away and was making dinner preparations. Evidently, what she had planned took several hours to cook. He rolled his eyes to hide how fond he was of the familiar scene, and made his way to the bathroom.

Normally, he bathed at night. In order to have time to observe this experiment's results, he didn't mind doing it earlier in the day. Three in the afternoon was a weird time to bathe, too, so with two other people in the house, he didn't need to wait or fight over who got to go first.

After laying out fresh clothes and a towel, he entered. The soap was there, in all its pale pink glory, waiting to be used. He sighed and started on his early shower. The soap, as he'd expected of the color, smelled like roses. He could just imagine his mom's grin as she talked to guests about Versailles or some other such nonsense.

With the shower over, and him dried and dressed, all that was left to do was wait. He remembered reading somewhere that allergies could sometimes take up to an hour to manifest symptoms, so he set that as the time frame.

An hour came and went, but aside from a slightly irritated nose (which he should have expected given its usual sensitivity), he didn't feel any different. He adjusted his clothes a few times, just to be sure moving didn't trigger it or anything. Nothing. He frowned.

Now thoroughly concerned, he didn't even take the time to go next door. He just whipped out his phone and called Haibara directly.

"Yes?" came the somewhat irritable voice on the other end.

"I did what you said and showered with the stuff," he said, not wasting any time with formalities. "I even waited an hour, just in case, but nothing happened. You said she's me genetically, so why does she itch, and I don't?"

There was a brief, stunned silence on the other end before the little scientist answered.

"… I'll look into it." Her tone was much more serious now. "In the meantime, keep an eye out for any other abnormal reactions." She hung up before he could respond. He sighed. Things just kept getting more and more confusing.

At 4:30 pm, he decided to head into the kitchen to see what would even take so long to cook, deciding to ignore the fact that he'd stared blankly at a wall for thirty minutes, definitely not stressed out at the situation.

"Still cooking?" he asked as he entered the kitchen. The aroma was absolutely divine, and he could actually taste it in the air as he opened his mouth. Against his will, his stomach loudly complained that he wasn't currently shoveling whatever the smell was into his gullet this very instant. He blushed.

"Just another thirty minutes," said Ran absently as she checked first the oven timer, and then the wall clock. "It will be ready just in time for dinner."

"What is it?"

"Dutch Oven Beef Stew," she replied, finally looking down at him. "I was originally going to try making it the day that I…" She cleared her throat. "A-anyway, because you seemed to like beef stew so much, I wanted to try out different recipes for it, and it was recommended by one of our teachers…"

It must be the recipe Sonoko mentioned the day after she disappeared, thought Shinichi, a blush creeping up his face at the thought that she'd done this for him, even if it was just for 'Conan' at the time.

"How'd you even remember it after all this time? You didn't have anything on you when you were… returned, and I highly doubt they'd have even given it back to you, considering you… well…" He trailed off.

"Oh, that... Most of the ingredients were similar, so I didn't really have to memorize anything. I vaguely remembered the instructions for it, and just… used that to do a reverse Glegle search. It popped up straight away." Her expression was sheepish, as if she expected Shinichi to laugh at her methods, but he just smiled.

"Well, if it tastes anywhere near as good as it smells, I'm sure it'll be amazing," he said just before his stomach growled again. He blushed, looking helplessly around the kitchen.

"Is there something I can do?" he asked uncertainly. Ran shook her head.

"No—the only thing left is to take out the plates, but…" She gave him an apologetic look.

"Right," he said as carefree as he could. The plates in question required Ran to stand on her toes to reach. Even with a stool, he was much too small to do that safely. He found himself cursing the house design even as he threw her a casual grin. To be completely fair, the house had been designed with adults in mind, and it's not as if anyone could have predicted and accounted for shrunken people when it was built. Or now, even.

It was even more humiliating when he thought back to the day he revealed himself to Ran. When he'd been instructed on how to properly make beef stew, he hadn't even questioned the dishes that were already laid out on the counter. Subaru had quietly taken that into account and prepared accordingly. He was just thankful the man didn't seem interested in teasing him about it the way Heiji or his own mother would have.

"I'll wait in the library, then," he said simply, and didn't wait for her reply before leaving.

There wasn't much he could do in the library except go over what he already knew, but it didn't hurt to look again now that he'd had a few hours away from it.

Shinichi sighed as he added Ran's supposed allergy in the margins of the notes he'd made yesterday. He needed to bring up the subject to Ran, it having slipped his mind in the kitchen when his stomach had basically taken over.

He spent the remainder of his waiting time absently staring at his notes and the reports, as if staring long enough would yield different results. Really, he needed Haibara's report to see if any of the variables changed. By the time Ran came to get him, he was more than glad to rest his brain for a while.

Shinichi had initially planned to bring up the soap issue while they ate, but the moment the stew entered his mouth, he realized this meal needed his full attention. He ate with unrestrained pleasure, which he was certain made Ran happy that her efforts paid off. Soon he was nursing his drink, trying to decide how to best start the conversation.

"I tried out the guest soap," he decided to say, hoping he sounded causal about it. Ran looked up from her glass, brows pinched together.

"… Why?"

"Well," he said, frowning up at the ceiling, "I was curious about how you described your reaction, and I thought that maybe I could pinpoint what was causing it, but…"

"But?"

"Well… It didn't do anything." He glanced back at her to gauge her reaction. She stared at him blankly, her mouth opening and closing a few times as she processed his words.

"… It didn't… You didn't have any kind of reaction at all?" She was thoroughly confused now, a frown marring her features.

"I told Haibara about it—she's looking into it right now," he said quietly. Ran sat back in her seat and squeezed her temples. "She also wanted to know if you had any kind of reaction to other things."

"None that I know of," she said wearily. "But then, I haven't really been looking for problems." She sighed. "Why is Ai-chan looking into it and not Professor Agasa?" She sounded a bit confused. He frowned.

"Why wouldn't she be?"

"Ah… it's because so far all of the testing has been done by the professor," she said. Ai-chan wasn't ever in the room. Now that I think of it, I've only seen her maybe twice since this whole thing started." Shinichi's eye twitched when he realized why that was.

"Well, in answer to your question," he started, "Haibara is basically a geneticist. Agasa dabbles in a lot of different fields, but his primary focus is mechanical engineering. He can't really do much more than be an assistant right now."

"She's a geneticist?" asked Ran, awe lacing her voice.

"Or some kind of biologist. I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that she works within that area." She would have had to be well versed in that field in order to make the drug that shrunk them, taking into account that she hadn't actually been working on a poison. "She's our best hope of fixing this."

"You trust her a lot huh?" asked Ran. Shinichi barked out a cynical laugh. Ran's brows rose in surprise.

"I trust her to be cryptic," he said. "And I'm almost positive she's been withholding information, but considering her background and how terrified she is of those people, that's to be expected."

As they were talking, Shinichi's phone rang. He glanced at the screen.

"Speak of the devil," he muttered before answering. "Yes?"

"I have a plausible theory," came the blunt reply. "Get over here." She hung up. Shinichi chuckled humorlessly.

"I've been summoned," he said at Ran's perplexed look. "you might as well come, too, since this involves you."

"Did she ask for me…?"

"No, but she can't keep avoiding you, so come on." He didn't give Ran any time to question what he meant, because he immediately hopped off of his chair and headed for the door. The dishes could wait—it's not as if Ran would leave them overnight.

xXx

Haibara scowled at Shinichi, pointedly not looking in Ran's direction.

"Why did you bring her?" she seethed, though her anger was directed at him and not at Ran. Despite the tone, it was mostly heatless. Shinichi smiled innocently.

"You didn't say not to," he said simply. "And it does involve her, so what's the problem?"

"S-should I leave?" asked Ran, voice wavering uncertainly.

"No," said Shinichi, not taking his eyes off Haibara, who only huffed angrily in response. "I don't need to be the middleman for something like this."

Whether Haibara realized he wouldn't take no for an answer, or she couldn't be bothered to continue arguing, he didn't know. The only thing that mattered was that she relented much more quickly than he'd anticipated, which suited him just fine.

"Fine," she snapped irritably. Ran's brows pinched together in a small frown. Shinichi didn't think much about the expression—she'd been making similar faces ever since she came back.

"You said you had a theory," prompted Shinichi as he followed Haibara to the couch, Ran trialing behind them.

"Right," she said, all business now. Ran stilled beside Shinichi, probably surprised at the other girl's no-nonsense tone. Either that or she was trying to figure out why she never questioned the incredibly adult behavior before.

"I did some tests using the samples we collected so far," she said, reaching for a file folder that was sitting on the coffee table. "As far as I can tell, it's not an allergy."

"It's not?" asked Ran in surprise, eyebrows raised high.

"I'm ninety-eight percent certain you're just sensitive to the perfume they put in the soap."

"That had been my guess, too," said Shinichi. "That still doesn't explain why she's affected and I'm not." Haibara grimaced as she idly flipped through the file in her hands.

"There are too many variables to know for certain what's going on there," she said moodily. "For starters, you are already under the influence of the apotoxin—the variables are different in you case, so it's not as if I have access to a controlled experiment. It could be that your body reacts differently to things now than it did before, but we have no way of testing that.

"What's more likely, though—and this is the theory I find most believable—is that it's because Ran-san's skin is new," she said, scanning one of the documents in the folder.

"'New'…?" Ran looked curiously at her arm.

"'New'?" echoed Shinichi, tilting his head with a frown. Haibara nodded.

"Think about it," she said as she set the folder down and crossed her arms. "She obviously didn't switch bodies with you since you're right here." Shinichi nodded slowly. "But genetically, she is you. Whatever happened to her, her DNA was changed, so that surface skin isn't the same as before her kidnapping. It's really less than a month old."

"Would that really matter?" asked Shinichi. Haibara leveled a flat stare in his direction.

"It would," she said firmly, "given that she hasn't spent her whole life acclimating to the skin she has now. It's why babies need gentle soap. And I imagine that if we scrub you hard enough, you'd probably itch, too." She leaned back and cast a quick glance at Ran before continuing to talk to Shinichi.

"For now, just keep an eye on it. If she hasn't noticed a reaction to anything else, it could just be that she thinks it's from that soap."

"I'm changing soaps, though," said Ran quietly.

"Then you'll find out soon enough whether you react to other things, unless what you get is gentler or you've gotten past the 'getting used to it' phase." There was a finality to her tone that suggested she was finished talking. She gathered up the file and slid off the couch. Ran fidgeted uncomfortably.

"Um… Did I do something wrong?" she asked in a small voice. Haibara stilled and frowned at her, fully looking at her for the first time. Something Shinichi recognized as trepidation flashed behind her eyes for a moment.

"No," she said, tone clipped, before turning on her heel and disappearing into the downstairs lab. Shinichi sighed.

"Don't mind her too much," he said as Ran chewed nervously at her bottom lip. "She's like that with most people, and…" He stopped, wondering if it was okay to say.

"And…?" She asked. He sighed again, resolved.

"And I think… you remind her of her sister, so she's afraid to get close to you." He wasn't completely certain, but a lot of things would make sense if that was the case. Ran's expression immediately softened, sympathetic and melancholy.

"Come on," he said with a stretch. "Just do what she says and watch for other reactions. I need to get my stuff together for school tomorrow." He didn't, but the less Ran dwelled on Haibara the better.

Ran nodded and, after a final glance at the door Haibara had gone through, followed Shinichi back to his house. They were surprised to find Subaru in the dining room, eating some of Ran's oven stew.

"Where have you been?" asked Shinichi. The man had been completely out of sight for most of the weekend.

"I had to attend an important meeting," he said simply, eating another spoonful of stew with clear delight. "Don't worry about the dishes, Ran-san—I'll take care of them when I'm done eating. The stew is exceptional, by the way."

"Thanks," said Ran a bit awkwardly. "A meeting, like an assembly? The university does stuff like that on Sundays? That must be tough."

The cryptic smile Subaru gave her was more than enough to tell Shinichi that the meeting was with other FBI agents. Suddenly, an idea struck him. He turned to look up at Ran.

"You go on up," he said quietly." I need to check something first." She glanced down at him, brows pinching together slightly, but nodded and hurried out of the room after bidding Subaru a good night.

"I make her uncomfortable," the man observed with a small chuckle. He turned his attention to Shinichi, eyes glinting with curiosity. "What can I do for you?" As expected, he'd already guessed Shinichi wanted to speak with him.

"I need you to look into something for me."