Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.

When the Fox Comes Calling

Chapter 6 - Helpfully Unhelpful Friends

Ran and Sonoko arrived bearing food, a selection of shopping bags and stories of their exploits that day at what Sonoko termed the uber sale of the season.

"Marvel at our amazing success and unparalleled generosity!" the cat hybrid declared with a manic grin as she reached into one of the shopping bags she'd brought and whipped out something round and fluffy. "Behold!"

Shinichi just blinked at her blankly. "That's…a plush toy."

"It's not any old plush toy. It's a super collectable, limited edition Cuddle Puff!" Sonoko corrected him, expression smug. When Shinichi failed to look impressed, she huffed. "Do you have any idea how much effort we had to put in to get these?"

Shinichi thought the answer to that should be obvious.

"Honestly, why do I bother?" Sonoko grumbled. "Anyway, this one's for you—and you better be grateful."

She shoved the plush she was holding into Shinichi's startled arms.

A bit nonplussed, Shinichi examined the toy.

It was about the size of a soccer ball and covered in extremely soft, velvety black fur. Actually, the entire toy was comfortably huggable in all the right ways. Upon closer inspection, Shinichi noted that the puff had a pair of long, velvety ears lying along its back and a super fluffy puff of a tail attached to what was presumably its backside. On the other side of the ball was a pair of round, black eyes and a little button nose.

"It's cute, right?" Ran asked, pulling an identical brown bunny puff from another bag to show him. "This one's mine. They made a set for every type of hybrid. And every animal puff comes in five different colors: black, white, and then the three most common hybrid colors."

"I sort of guessed," said the detective.

"Right. Now pictures!" Sonoko declared. "Then we can eat."

"Pictures?" Shinichi repeated, growing abruptly alarmed. "What pictures?"

"It's part of the ongoing promotion," Ran explained as Sonoko dragged them into Shinichi's living room and shoved them onto the couch. "Hold those puffs," she ordered, whipping out a portable tripod from another bag and beginning to set it up. "Hold on a moment. Do you think we need to be holding both?"

"Both?" Shinichi echoed, feeling increasingly lost.

Sonoko just shrugged. "Nah. The rules only say you have to be holding one of them. You can get bonus points if your picture shows you've done the swap, but obviously that's not really an option for us."

"What are you two talking about?" Shinichi asked again without much expectation of receiving an answer. He was not proven wrong.

In minutes, Shinichi found himself sitting with the girls, each of them holding a Cuddle Puff that matched their animal features, and saying cheese as Sonoko's phone flashed several times. Then the petit cat hybrid was up and flipping through the pictures.

"Perfect. I think I'll submit this one. What do you think?" She turned the phone to show her chosen picture to her friends.

Ran smiled. "It's adorable. Could you send me a copy?"

"Already did."

"What are you submitting to?" Shinichi asked suspiciously.

"Each person who gets one of these limited edition Cuddle Puffs can submit a picture of her or himself with the puff in question for a chance to win an entire keychain collection of the set," Ran explained.

"And since there's three of us, we can submit three entries," Sonoko said gleefully, fingers tapping away on her phone as she set about doing just that.

"Hold on a moment," Shinichi said slowly. "When you say 'the set', do you mean keychain versions of these same plush toys?"

Sonoko rolled her eyes without looking up. "Duh."

"But if there are five colors of every available hybrid type then that would be sixty keychains."

"Yeah. So?"

"Why would anyone need sixty keychains?"

Sonoko gave him a look like he had somehow, beyond all expectations, proven even slower than she had predicted. "They're collectables. You don't get them because you need them. You get them because they're collectable. Besides, it wouldn't be much of a prize if you didn't get the whole set now would it?"

"What you're saying is that you bought me a plush to increase your chances of winning sixty keychains you'll probably never use," Shinichi summarized.

Sonoko narrowed her eyes at him. "So? Is there a problem?"

Shinichi resisted the urge to back away. "Er, no. No, there isn't."

She sniffed. "Good. And just so you know, they're not just plush toys. They're emblems of love."

"…You've lost me."

"Cuddle Puffs are sold in pairs," Ran explained, opening another shopping bag and pulling out a second black bunny puff identical to the first and setting it down on the couch next to its twin. "You're supposed to exchange the second one with the person you love."

"So you see, they're both cute and meaningful," Sonoko added.

Shinichi rolled his eyes. "That's just a sales gimmick."

"You say that because you don't understand romance," Sonoko said condescendingly. "Seriously, it wouldn't kill you to start taking an interest in modern culture. It might improve your social life."

"I don't think collectable plush toys qualify as culture."

"Says you."

Ran inserted herself smoothly between her two best friends before they could start one of their arguments. "Why don't we move this to the kitchen? The food will go cold if we don't eat soon."

A few minutes later, the three of them were seated around the Kudo Manor dining table with dinner and their beverages of choice (coffee for Shinichi, naturally, tea for Ran and some newfangled brand of strawberry soda for Sonoko that she claimed was fashionable—though she failed to explain to Shinichi's satisfaction how a drink could be fashionable). Neither girl seemed overly concerned that they might catch Shinichi's nonexistent cold, and he felt no need to bring it up since he suspected he might inadvertently give away that he hadn't actually caught a cold but stumbled into trouble again (they'd both known him long enough that it wouldn't take much to tip them off, and he really, really didn't want to have to tell them about it).

Thoughts of the events he was hiding, however, led Shinichi's thoughts back to KID and the fox's impending visit.

Taking another bite of his teriyaki chicken dinner, Shinichi wondered if he should prepare food for that. Having food available would be helpful if the conversation stalled. The problem was that KID hadn't actually said when he would be coming for his visit. That meant any food he prepared would have to be good cold.

He wondered what KID liked to eat.

Then he wondered if KID had classes of his own to schedule around.

Shinichi was fairly certain that the fox hybrid couldn't be more than a handful of years older than him. It was entirely possible that he too was attending a university somewhere—maybe even right here in Tokyo.

Shinichi found himself trying to picture the Kaitou KID in a classroom. It was kind of difficult. The classroom in Shinichi's mind kept erupting into smoke and glitter and filling up with madly cackling magicians.

The image should terrify any sane person, so Shinichi wasn't sure what it said about him that it made him smile.

"Hellooo, Earth to Detective Geek, did you hear a single word we said?"

Startled from his thoughts, Shinichi could only shrug sheepishly.

Sonoko heaved what Shinichi felt was a way overblown sigh of exasperation. "I said I scored a half dozen tickets to Mystic Rose's anniversary concert."

"Oh." Shinichi considered that. "I take it that that's good."

"Are you kidding me? It's not just good. It's freaking fantastic! The concert's, like, the event of the summer! Everyone's been talking about it."

Shinichi sorely wanted to point out that Sonoko was the only person he knew who had been talking about it, but he thought he'd better not.

"Anyway," the petit feline hybrid went on, oblivious to his thoughts. "It's clearly a sign."

Apparently, this was news to more than just Shinichi because it was Ran who asked, "A sign?"

"That it's time we step up our game," the shorter girl explained. "It's going to be our goal to all have dates for the concert!"

Her passionate declaration was met by something rather less than enthusiasm. Ran smiled at her in that way that suggested she was sweat-dropping on the inside and trying to figure out what to say.

Shinichi just groaned. "Not this again. Count me out."

Sonoko glared at him. "You are not wasting the effort I put in to win those tickets," she said flatly. "Do you have any idea how much just one of them is going for now?"

"Then you can sell the extras and consider it reimbursement."

His perfectly reasonable suggestion earned him a dirty look.

"Why are you so against love?" she demanded.

"I'm not against love," Shinichi objected, taken aback by the accusation. "I just don't think you need to spend every waking moment looking for it."

"And how do you expect to find it if you never look?" she countered. "Admit it. If Ran and I weren't around to make sure you have a social life, the only people you'd ever meet would be police officers way older than you and criminals."

Shinichi opened his mouth a few times before saying a bit lamely, "I meet people in school."

Sonoko snorted. "Barely. Name one campus social event you went to without one of us."

Shinichi couldn't, so he said nothing.

"You see?" the cat hybrid said smugly before her expression inexplicably softened. "I know you and Ran haven't had much luck finding the right kind of people, but that doesn't mean they're not out there. My point is you'll never find them if you don't put in a little effort."

The shift in her attitude threw Shinichi off, leaving him unsure how to respond. It didn't help that she had actually just made a valid point.

"It might help if you just think about it as trying to make friends," Ran added, apparently having already accepted Sonoko's summer plans (as she pretty much always did when Sonoko made plans).

"So it's agreed," Sonoko concluded, clapping her hands together. "I know you two both have summer work stuff lined up, so send me your schedules and I'll deal with arranging our social calendars. We're all going to have dates for the Mystic Rose concert if it kills us!"

"Wouldn't that defeat the point?"

"Shut up. It's a figure of speech."

Once they'd cleaned up and the girls had left, Shinichi poured himself another mug of coffee and wandered into the library, where he sank into his favorite armchair.

It was strange, he reflected. Though they hadn't really talked about anything important—and Sonoko had somehow usurped part of his summer, he felt better now than he had before they'd visited. He wasn't hugely enthused about Sonoko's harebrained schemes, but, in truth, he wasn't that upset about them either. He'd long gotten used to the girls dragging him to all kinds of events. Sonoko had been right when she'd said that his social life would be nearly nonexistent without them, and, though he wasn't ready to admit it out loud, deep down, he appreciated their efforts more than he knew how to put into words.

He still didn't know exactly what he was going to say to KID when the fox next visited, but, now that he was feeling more relaxed, he realized that that was all right. If he wanted this—and he did, there was really only one thing to do. He just had to take a chance and be honest. As Sonoko had said, the important thing was to try.

And Shinichi was never, ever, ever going to tell Sonoko that he had taken her relationship advice.

-To Be Continued-