File One Hundred and Fifty-Four: A Child's Play
For a split of a second, Conan had contemplated blindly running after the shadowy figure. He had even bitten his lip, and made it as far as one step before Mitsuhiko had thrown himself in his way. With his arms stretched at his sides and a gaze he'd describe as determined hadn't the fire been clouded by fear, he had made himself perfectly clear; he would not let him take a step further, under any circumstances.
He's desperate. A quick exercise of putting himself in his shoes had proved that the sentiment was extremely well founded, and since he'd told Genta that chasing after a murderer in a forest at night was a good way to increase their body count, his past self had more or less conditioned him into giving in. If only for the sake of not turning into a hypocrite ─ or rather, a worse case than he already was ─ and lose his credibility next time he had to stop someone else from killing themselves.
Therefore, he could totally understand the sigh of relief that had escaped Mitsuhiko when he made a one-eighty-degree turn and rushed over to check the proper crime scene instead.
Fortunately, the police were currently far too busy with the potential murderer roaming around to notice him crouching over Numabuchi's body, or pressing a finger to his wrist. Aside from the fact that he was starting to grow cold as it was, the lack of a pulse pretty much confirmed that this guy had just gotten his execution day moved a few years back, all of a sudden.
But who had been the one to take such a decision? With a profile like Numabuchi's, he was nothing short of theories, but he liked none of them, and besides, they did not explain how. How could the killer possibly-?
What's this? Blinking, Conan turned over the hand he'd been holding. It's wet, he observed. Right over here, between his thumb and index finger. Small enough to be easy to miss, as though a raindrop had randomly landed on him on the eve of a downpour.
But the weather forecast for today… Confusedly, he lifted his head. Weird. The night sky was all clear, not a single cloud in sight ─ or at least as far as he could see, with that particular thick branch of a tree cutting his view in half.
He paused at that. A tree?
But his train of thought derailed as he felt himself being shoved off to the side. Now empty handed, he watched in utter puzzlement as Ai glanced over at him, her eyes narrowed and her hands digging through her pockets.
The sentiment did nothing but grow when the girl promptly produced a resealable bag. "I need your handkerchief," she said. He hesitated. "Quickly."
Not that he had another option ─ he reacted with a flinch, fumbling to sort through his belongings for a moment before handing it back to her, without uttering a single question.
She said no word further, either to thank him or reprimand him. All she did was lean forward and carefully dip it into the unknown liquid substance Conan had found. Only then, everything made perfect sense.
"I'll leave it to you, then," was everything he said before standing up. He needed to hurry if he wanted to finish his investigation before someone, namely Yamamura, remembered their presence and chased them away from it.
And the next step was figuring out how to climb a tree without drawing any attention to himself.
Well, on the bright side, they all were still breathing when they walked out of that forest. Or more like, kicked out the crime scene because, according to Yamamura, the Professor couldn't seem to do his job and keep the children out of the dead body and from climbing trees while an investigation was in progress . For once, Conan decided to not to let his opinion on the matter known. He had plenty to ponder about on the way home as it was.
Because, yeah, in the end they had decided to take the train home, no matter how many hours it would take. Conan had already some plans for the following morning he would rather not postpone, and surprisingly, nobody had argued against it. He suspected it had to do with Mitsuhiko, though, and his extremely rigid posture that spoke of his unwillingness of being there a moment further. Conan could not pretend he could not understand him.
Late as it was, on a train that traveled all the way from Gunma to Tokyo, it stood to reason they were practically not a soul to be seen. Except for them, that was, a bunch of children sitting in a row in the back, accompanied by an exhausted professor acting as a chaperone for them ─ all of them watching curiously as the small scientist held a resealable bag in front of her eyes for a preliminary examination.
"Um, Haibara?" She hummed at Genta's inquiry, showing that she was listening. "What's that?"
"Probably poison."
"What?!" Genta and Ayumi screamed in unison.
"Poison?" Agasa parroted, frowning to himself. "But how did this happen?"
"They spilled the poison from above," Conan replied, his gaze stuck to the window glass in front of him. "When I climbed up the tree directly above Numabuchi, I found footmarks. If someone were to stand there and timed it right, it is certainly possible."
"Maybe a familiar or a friend of one of his victims did it for revenge," Agasa ventured. "If he somehow knew he was going to be here…"
"If that was the case…" Conan's eyes narrowed. "Why did they force Mitsuhiko to do all of that?"
Ayumi and Genta blinked, their confusion increasing when they noticed how Mitsuhiko had flinched in between them ─ and then again, when he realized he'd been figured out. Calmly, the detective turned to meet his startled friend's gaze, and as expected, he found nothing but a deep-seated sense of fear. He smiled gently.
"It's okay, there's nobody else but us around," he said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. "They won't hear you."
"They?" Ayumi tilted her head.
"Numabuchi's killer," Conan explained ─ or tried to, from their faces it was evident that it did not make things any clearer. "It's probably the same person who forced Mitsuhiko to run away."
"But, hold on, I thought he went to get some fireflies…" The silence that ensued made Genta's face grow several shades paler. "He didn't?!"
Ayumi sucked in a sharp breath, clapping her own mouth as if to drown a scream. They both exchanged a hasty look before Genta's head whipped back to where it had just been.
"You're telling me you knew all along?!" he yelled. "Why didn't you say something, Conan?!"
But the little detective remained perfectly calm in the face of Genta's aggressive outburst, instead pulling his notepad to, ever so slowly, skim through his notes as if looking for something. Genta watched him, an indignant frown growing on his face with every second that passed, page after page being flipped over without being graced with an answer. His mouth opened, wide and ready to-
To click closed when those notes suddenly found themselves pushed into his face, which he accepted with clumsy hands. Drawn by curiosity to see for herself, Ayumi moved closer ─ all but forgetting about poor muted Mitsuhiko who, squished in between his friends, kept his head low and his lips stubbornly sealed.
"I couldn't say anything," Conan explained, easing back into his seat. "Because Mitsuhiko asked me not to."
Mitsuhiko tried not to flinch, suddenly subjected by Genta's clueless stare. "When did you two talk?"
"Right when we got to his room," Conan replied in his stead. "Through the pages of that calendar we found."
His explanation did nothing to clarify the matter, but it did help to get the attention away from the still shaken boy caught in the middle. So he'd take the win, he supposed.
"These are the dates," Ayumi murmured, her eyes scanning through the notes at high speeds. Nobody was sure when she came to claim possession of the notes, but nobody questioned it either. "July 5th, July 31th in the August page-"
"That'd count as the number zero," Conan pipped in. "Since you can't find it in a calendar, he had to get creative."
She nodded, her eyes wide with understanding. "Then there's August 8th…" Ayumi lowered the notepad to throw her head back, squinting at the lights above as though they held all the answers behind that painfully bright fluorescence. "Five, zero and five…"
"If you write it as arabic numerals-" He cut himself short, laughing nervously at the lost looks he received from them ─ Mitsuhiko included. "I mean, as numbers. Like, their symbol. Just take a look."
"Oh…" She lowered her gaze towards where he knew he'd written them, and gasped. "505… looks similar to SOS!"
Genta tore the notes from her hands, and before Conan could think of being angry at him for mistreating his property like that, he had raised his head back up, his shock gone and his eyebrows raised once more.
"The rest doesn't make any sense," Genta complained, his eyes flickering momentarily to read. "August 4th, August 6th, August 26th… Even if you write 4, 6 and 26, it doesn't resemble anything."
"It's actually four, six, two and six." Conan nodded. "Try to think about how they sound for that one."
He blinked at him for a whole second before he decided to squint at the page. His mouth opened, and for a moment Conan thought he was not going to get it without further aid on his part. That was until, very suddenly, his eyes went wide.
"Shiranpuri," came Ai's quiet, almost emotionless voice. She was crossing her arms over her chest, a smirk caressing her face. "I was surprised when I learned about it, too. Who would've thought Conan's magic work would come to our rescue one more time?"
"Oh, that one 'sit down please' trick he pulled out before?" Genta's nose scrunched. Conan took personal offense to that. "That was awful."
Well, excuse me, Conan thought, his eyebrow starting to twitch. Because you surely had a much better idea back then.
"Shiranpuri, playing innocent…" Ayumi mumbled to herself, her gaze wandering over to her female friend, staring blankly in deep concentration. It flickered back to the young detective in an instant, widening as though she was beginning to piece everything together. "So that's why you two were being so secretive!"
Although he may not have explicitly answered her question, he was pretty sure that his silence worked as a wonderful substitute.
"It certainly can be read that way," Agasa said. "But couldn't it have been a coincidence?"
"I considered that at first," Conan admitted. "Until we visited that flower shop and talked to Fujiwara-san."
"She told us she saw Mitsuhiko last Sunday morning, on the way back from her exercises," Ai added, and turned to the rest of her friends. "Can you guys remember what we all were doing that day?"
They both sat back, humming in perfect harmony as they dug through their memories for what they were just told. Eventually, Ayumi broke it all with a startled gasp and a sudden, "Detective Takagi!"
Genta raised his eyebrow. "Detective Takagi?"
"That's the day he was kidnapped," Ayumi emphasized with a nod. "We went to the Police HQ because Conan-kun failed to show up for the exercises, remember?"
Conan's smile crumbled in an instant. "Wait, you guys did what-?"
"Now that you mention it," Genta said, wide-eyed, as though he had said nothing at all. Rude. "Mitsuhiko was there, wasn't he? Since he was the one who let Conan know about the case." He turned to Mitsuhiko's hunched form, and gasped as though he was looking at an unfamiliar being belonging to a yet undiscovered species. "Then-"
"Exactly," Ai said, her features hardening at the thought. "The boy who Fujiwara-san saw must have been someone else." She closed her eyes, as though she needed the respite to put her thoughts in order before she could continue. "If someone went through the trouble to make themselves look like Tsuburaya-kun to create a witness, then it's possible that he'd been targeted."
"Still, that doesn't explain why Mitsuhiko-kun would go to school so early." Simple as they were, Professor Agasa's words had managed to trigger a response from the muted boy in question. A violent wince that had the older man turning to him and concern painting itself in every corner of his expression. "Did someone force you to?"
Mitsuhiko shook his head rapidly, only adding to his utter confusion ─ a sentiment that was shared by all of his friends, judging by the silent staring that suddenly fell on the boy. Conan was not an exception to that, his intellect failing in where it mattered the most, in understanding another sentient being he cared this much about.
That was beyond frustrating, being honest with himself. Even after figuring out what was going on, he couldn't seem to piece together the why. The reason he had been targeted to begin with, or the reason his friend wound up in such a situation to begin with. Coercion had been his primary guess, but evidently, that had not been it.
"Perhaps you were tricked?" Conan suggested, not yet fully confident on his own hypothesis. "If someone pretended to be someone you know, one of us even…"
Again, he shook his head. Conan frowned to himself, deep in thought, before trying again.
"Did you forget something at school?"
"No…"
"Or maybe you heard about a mystery you wanted everyone to solve? Like a ghost story?"
"That is not-"
"How about a missing pet?"
"No."
"Then, uh… a treasure?"
With a groan, Mitsuhiko bent forward and seemed to hide his head under his hands, only to fail because they were so proportionally small. In a way that, for Conan's lost and bewildered self, was kind of reminiscent of that old duck and cover American propaganda from the Cold War his brother had once told him about in the passing ─ and had sung it to him as a joke once, too, so that was probably this fact had been stuck to him for so long. Just another trauma to add to the list, I guess. Joy.
Albeit hesitantly, Ayumi was the first to try something. She stretched a hand in what she definitely intended to be a comforting gesture, even if somewhat lacking in terms of execution. Before it could even graze his shoulder, Mitsuhiko threw back his head with a loud, "I'm so sorry!"
Ayumi flinched back, cradling her hand as though she had burnt her fingertips.
"S-Sorry?" she stammered, blinking rapidly.
Mitsuhiko ducked his head, visually ashamed, for motives nobody could hope to figure out.
"I just wanted to see…" he began, his voice barely above a whisper. "T-To check if… um…"
Conan tilted his head to one side. "What would you want to check in a school, of all places?"
Which was apparently the wrong thing to say, as he now was sweating bullets for some reason. "W-Well…"
From the way his lips moved, he could tell that he had said something. Just barely though, and apparently, he had not been the only one not to quite catch it, so it was nice to know his hearing still functioned as it should despite living his days this close to the species known as Kojima Genta and the rest.
Predictably, it was specifically Genta who tried to get him to clarify, "What was that?!" but maybe not in the subtlest way there was. "We can't hear you, Mitsuhiko."
Not the nicest approach, but Conan could sort of see the boy's intentions were born from a genuine sense of care for a friend, if completely ineffective. So he sighed in return, took a deep breath, and tried on a small, but compassionate smile ─ not unlike that one Ran would offer him, when the nights were too dark and his dear brother too far away from his reach.
Reassuring, that was what he needed to be ─ for this boy, who had been through so much in a single day, all alone in the darkness, fearing for his life and wondering if anyone would ever come to help him.
"It's okay," he told him, hoping to convey a warm soothing tone, or at least his best approximation at that. He would've preferred if he could make some eye-contact, but unfortunately, Mitsuhiko's eyes were tightly shut. "Nobody is going to hurt you, Mitsuhiko."
Mitsuhiko bit his lip. Frowning, Conan tried again, "Mitsuhiko, it's all right. You can-"
"I wanted to see if Haibara-san had gotten any more love letters!"
It were those innocent, simple words, that valiant confession that had rushed out of his system in a single breath, that sent the world around him to a standstill ─ bewildered expressions of varying degrees were there, frozen in each of his friends' faces next time he lifted back his head, as though time itself had forgotten to run its course. Everyone, even the Professor looked like he couldn't entirely comprehend the situation, though in his case, confusion overtook everything, leaving no space for the scandalized turn the others' had taken.
Ai was an exception to that rule, curiously enough. She simply looked at him with that cold, empty stare, and Mitsuhiko could only wonder what was really going through her mind.
Out of everyone, Ayumi broke out of her stupor first. "Mitsuhiko-kun, you can't do that!" she yelled, her face contorting in a stern frown that was fairly more intimidating than the boy would've imagined it. "That's something too personal! To go behind Ai-chan's back like that…"
Eventually, Conan seemed to remember how to close his mouth, but his eyes had decided to flick everywhere ─ so quickly that Mitsuhiko could not really tell what they were trying to keep track of.
"More importantly," he said, then paused to turn his head away. Like that, it was a Herculean task to figure out where he had decided to rest his wandering gaze, but it also made it easier to notice how his ears mysteriously turned pink in the blink of an eye. "Was… Was there anything in there?"
"Conan-kun!" Ayumi screeched.
It took a while for Mitsuhiko to respond, enough for Conan to glance back in his direction. And in doing so, he found that he had grown quiet again, a hint of a shadow passing behind his gaze.
"It was a simple letter." Slowly, Mitsuhiko nodded. "All it said was… 'Happy Late Birthday.'"
At his side, Conan thought he had heard Ai's breath hitching ─ which, to be fair, he would have never known about hadn't it been for his own lungs failing at the revelation.
"But… How?" Genta struggled to find his own words as blood started to drain from his face. "I mean, didn't Conan…?"
"We just knew about Ai-chan's birthday because Conan-kun deduced it!" Ayumi screamed, seemingly unable to believe what her ears were telling her. "There's no way…"
"Hey, Haibara! You didn't tell anyone, did you?"
As she shook her head quietly, Genta slowly leaned back down. Conan could tell from that look alone that there were hundreds of questions roaming through his brain right now, and he certainly couldn't judge it ─ for there were probably hundreds, coursing freely all around his mind, although he could not get his hands on a single one of them.
"And what happened next?" Ai asked him, oddly calm. "Did you see who sent it, Tsuburaya-kun?"
"He walked up to me. I wasn't sure if it was his, but somehow, that smile…" Mitsuhiko shivered uncontrollably, like he had suddenly been doused in ice water. "He asked me if I wanted to play with him."
"Play with him?"
"If I didn't play along, he said he'd steal my friends for a while," Mitsuhiko confessed, his voice shaking ─ it was a disturbing thought, that he'd still react to a memory so violently even if the person in question wasn't there anymore. "He'd toy with them instead."
"And I'm assuming he didn't just mean playing soccer," Conan ventured. "But some kind of dangerous game, probably."
"His eyes… they were hollow. Dark, empty." Mitsuhiko sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes widening as they stared up ahead. Horrified, as if that person was in front of them, a mirage for only him to see. "I thought… I really thought, if I didn't play along…"
"He'd murder one of us," Ai finished for him. The silence proved that she'd been right. "So, you played along. You followed his every instruction without complaining even once, playing the role of an innocent, kind-hearted boy who got lost whilst seeking fireflies."
"I did everything he told me to do. I wanted to warn you guys that something was off, but at the same time, if he figured it out…" he sighed. "I was just so scared."
"Why would he do all of that?" the Professor wondered, his face showing several degrees of disturbed all at once.
"He said it, didn't he? It was a mere child's play to him," Ai interjected. "But he didn't want to play with Tsuburaya-kun ─ he was but a pawn, a means to get to him."
"Him?" Genta parroted.
Her eyes narrowed, and following them, they found that one bespectacled little detective, sitting there in utter silence with a severe frown pinching his face. Conan never denied or gave credibility to her statement, unable to pull together a single conclusion while he was still splashing and thrashing in the grand sea of doubt.
"Back when I was investigating the scene earlier, I found footprints on the ground, near the tree. I assume it's from the killer jumping off after killing Numabuchi," he whispered, but Ai couldn't tell if they were the intended receptors for it. "Just by looking at them, I'd estimate they were twenty centimeters long at most."
"Twenty centimeters?" Ayumi repeated. "That's my shoe size!"
"It was a child, wasn't it, Mitsuhiko?" Conan questioned. "The person who threatened you, he was a kid." He received a nod in return, but he didn't cease his questioning. Not just yet. "Do you remember what he looked like?"
"I do." Mitsuhiko took a deep breath and finally raised his head to look at Conan in the eye. "He looked like someone I've seen before."
"Could that 'someone', perhaps, be that boy we met at the fireworks festival that other time?"
His surprise showed Conan that he had been spot on in his deduction. "How did you know?"
"Just a hunch, I guess."
A hunch that would probably turn into certainty after he could get a longer talk with the strawberry blonde that couldn't seem to stop squinting her eyes at him. He had been meaning to talk about it with her earlier, but procrastination aside, hadn't gotten the chance to approach the topic as it should. Without scaring her out of her wits, that was.
Back at that time when he'd been dragged along to a fireworks festival, he'd ended up running into Jodie Starling herself and a murder ─ how surprising. The demise of the pickpocket known as Kurobee had brought its own set of suspects, and one man had been Bourbon himself in disguise. As it was wrapped up, his pretend pregnant wife had come to meet him ─ Vermouth ─ alongside that kid they'd called their son.
A young boy, whose identity he had yet to discover and bore an uncanny resemblance to Kuroba Toichi, the previous Kaito KID. He was not one hundred percent he and the one behind Numabuchi were the same person yet, but that was the best he could think of right now.
"It'd make sense, too," Conan continued, refusing to elaborate. "We didn't just talk about Ai's birthday back then. That also was when Ayumi-chan mentioned the fireflies."
Genta gasped. "He was spying on our conversation?!"
"The kid literally poisoned a serial killer and disappeared like an evil spirit from the forest, Genta."
"Poisoned…" Mitsuhiko repeated, deeply in thought. "Speaking of which, Haibara-san…" The girl in question looked up, surprised to be addressed. "Where did you take those from?"
At first, nobody could understand what he was talking about, let alone the sole person who was supposed to respond. That was until she followed his gaze to the small, resealable, likely lethal, plastic bag she still cradled between her fingers, and smirked in understanding.
"It's a good thing I habitually carry these in my pockets," she answered. "You never know when you could run into a poisoning case while hanging out with an anthropomorphic murder magnet."
Conan had to blink once before the glare could settle in. "What would I do without you?" he muttered, sarcasm rolling down his tongue like venom.
"Hey, I have a question too, Ai-chan!" Ayumi suddenly said, glancing at her friend with big curious eyes. "How did you know something was off? Did you figure it out like Conan-kun?"
"I suppose you could say it's magic," she said, clueless stares serving as her only answer ─ and that intensified glare, naturally, that she'd been willing to ignore from the very beginning. "That's why magic words are for, aren't they?"
Ayumi remained silent, at a loss for what to say, and certainly, Ai stretching her hand towards her did not help make the panorama any clearer. But she did as she supposed it was expected for her, despite Conan's sigh and shake of his head, and hesitantly, reached out for it.
Her friend clasped her wrist gently, coaxing it to turn it over. Once then, she placed her finger on the palm of her hand and, just like a pencil scratching in a wide blank canvas, began to trace strange figures on it.
No, Ayumi later realized, they were letters ─ hiragana characters. "Shi… Ra… N…" Her eyes flew open, glimmering under the light of realization. "Shiranpuri!"
"Exactly. That was how he passed that message to me-"
"So that's why you two were holding hands earlier!"
For a moment, it did not fall on the little scientist what her friend had tried to say, and instead she just sat there, with her innocuous but deadly little bag clutched in between her hands, drowning in a silence she did not know how to surface from.
Genta and Mitsuhiko found the way out for her, soon thereafter when their startled gasping sent the world back in motion ─ the former too surprised to put together a single sentence, the other too busy staring at somewhere a little to the right from her former position.
Sure enough, it was Conan who he was gawking at ─ or rather, a human-looking fresh tomato wearing glasses who had mysteriously taken his place at some point she couldn't quite recall. Realization had apparently mortified him past the point where he forgot human speech, and while normally Ai herself would have rolled her eyes to show her much mature, superior status, the abnormal warmth in her face had her ceasing and desisting any further attempt.
All the while, Professor Agasa laughed loudly. Ai had seemed to miss the fun in all of this.
Eventually, though, their conversation began to fade as the night dragged on, a silence proper of a desolate train gradually settling in their shoulders.
Conan had been the first to drop; there one second and gone at the other, lulled by the rhythmic sway of the train and this semblance of relief to see his dear friend again and in one piece, had been Ai's first guess. Exhaustion was truly a force to reckon with after all, and with a brilliant mind that never once stopped running, it was truly nobody's surprise to see him crash so suddenly, left as an incoherent mess of mumbling as a response to their friends' incessant mocking.
Which wouldn't last for long. Understandably, Mitsuhiko had been the next as he followed Conan into the realm of dreams, all his fears evaporating at the promise of some well-needed rest. Then Genta conked out for the night, almost at the exact time that Ayumi nodded off for good.
So, that left one Haibara Ai left, alone with her own thoughts and the Professor's resounding snoring. In her hands, there was that bag with the evidence she planned on analyzing once she was back home, and in her mind was that young detective's voice, his words replaying over and over again.
Her grip tightened.
A child, huh?
In her memories, raven black eyes peered up to her, a shy little smile drawing itself in his face. She pressed a hand to her forehead, sucking in a deep breath in an attempt to clear up her mind.
I just had a scary thought, she thought, a bitter laugh escaping from her lips.
But that was just it ─ a thought, and hopefully, it'd remain as such after she had finished her analysis. Sighing, she grabbed another bag from her pocket and resealed the package inside as a safety measure, before standing back up.
For now, she would simply slip inside Mitsuhiko's bag ─ it'd be safer, she decided, than carrying it with her the entire way home. As long as she remembered to tell him about it, that was.
So, she zipped it closed, and just as silently, pushed it where it had been, tucked between Mitsuhiko's feet, before standing back up.
Now that I'm done with this, maybe I should…
Her steps were light as she threaded closer, a spare plastic bag crinkling between her fingers as she pulled it out from her pocket. Sorry, Tsuburaya-kun, for she'd betrayed his trust in a way, had lied in his face regardless of the severity of her sin. I don't usually carry these around. I'm not as cautious as you believe I am.
Or else she'd have seen this coming. She would have predicted that something of this magnitude happening was a possibility, not as slim as she'd convinced herself.
Eventually, she came to a stop, and gently lowered until her knees kissed the floor, her gaze cast on that certain figure from much closer than ever before. A face that somehow appeared even younger without his glasses, eyelashes flickering as he dreamed on ─ odd, since she'd believed circumstances would have shaped him into being a light sleeper by now, and that his instincts were sharp enough to raise him from the dead when subjected to such an intense scrutiny.
It was definitely just exhaustion, physical or otherwise, or maybe he instinctively felt no need to wake at her innocuous, absolutely non-hazardous presence, the jerk. She thought that maybe, one of these days, she ought to give that bighead of a detective a reason to worry about…
But right now, there was something about him ─ about how he curled tighter in the lap the Professor gently guided him to earlier, that had her yielding. Her fingers, already pinching a single strand of hair, froze where they hovered in the air.
"It could be so easy…" she had told him, her chest sinking at the impotence and the need of getting him to see her point so that they could get to fixing this misunderstanding ─ fixing her mistake, for once and for all. "But it's almost like you're running away again."
Conan's face scrunched up, and in a weak whine, she heard him breathe that word out ─ that one word that had that heart, which he had once jokingly said had been built out of ice and the tears of her victims, squeezing on itself.
"Oniichan…"
And again, it was impossible not to think of those vacant eyes, of the sound of his heart breaking bit by bit with every word he read ─ words that she had written, had carved into his soul forever by these two hands of hers.
"Maybe I am," he had admitted, in such a weary tone that she decidedly did not like. Despised, even, with all her heart. "I… don't want to see it again."
She… didn't want to see her either, if she was being honest with herself ─ the reaction of this drained young boy as he opened what turned to be a Pandora's box, all over again. But would it be okay, she wondered, to encourage this? A detective running away from the truth he'd normally fight so hard to achieve would be unacceptable to some. Ironic, even, as she had once told him.
Would it be acceptable for her to go behind his back like this? To get to the truth, to confirm her own suspicions ─ even if it meant breaking him again, if she happened to be wrong?
For the longest time, Haibara Ai just gazed down at Kudo Conan, wishing maybe for the first time, that her older sister was there with her ─ that sweet smile on her lips, shedding light into her doubts with her strong but warm embrace. Only that by now, she'd seemed to forget how that felt like.
Finally, the girl let her hand drop on his head, allowing her fingers to run across his scalp. The boy's features eventually softened, his breath evening out, and only then did she pull away, cradling that hand to her chest. There was a fire in her cheeks, and breathing deeply did nothing to help in that matter.
Closing her eyes, she just sat on the floor, willing her heart to slow down.
It's not my place to intervene. Though it sure was frustrating.
Conan's first coherent thought after being shaken awake by Professor Agasa was that he wanted to die. Seriously, and it wasn't because of the multiple judging gazes that silently told him he had tried for quite a while, or the fact that he found himself sprawled across the old smiling professor like a freaking toddler.
It wasn't about the sleep either ─ or at least, he didn't think it had to do with the quantity of it. Too tired to even dream, or remember for that matter, Conan had ashamedly realized he'd gotten quite a few hours of uninterrupted sleep ─ about five, probably, out of the six to seven-hour journey it took to get from Tottori to Tokyo. Which admittedly, it was an achievement coming from him, even though Ran wouldn't agree to call it such.
But if it was the quality of it, well, he supposed he could have gotten it worse ─ and could have been much better. Professor Agasa might have done his best to accommodate him, but there was so much one could do in a stiff, soft as rock train seat.
Cue to the pain, the aching of every muscle of his body ─ even those Conan had not known they even existed ─ reminding him of the night they'd gone through. And of course, there also was that damned crick in the neck that, far from leaving him to walk back to the Professor's house shrouded in that bliss that usually came after a good rest, had decided it could cook up a massive headache as an exotic present of sorts.
"What?! What do you mean poison?!"
Groaning, the bespectacled little detective pressed a hand to his temple, but failed to get the aching back in control. Past this point, Conan had given up figuring out where his friends seemed to get their energy from, and had assumed that he might just be an exhausted working adult in the body of a child ─ shrunken by God-knows-what in such bizarre and embarrassing turn of events he could not remember any longer. As if that was possible.
"I didn't bring a bag with me," Ai explained, calmly despite the crazed look he was receiving from pale-faced Mitsuhiko. "Having you carrying it instead sounded more practical to me."
"I… I suppose that's true but-"
"Leave it be, Mitsuhiko," Conan managed, just barely before he had to stifle a yawn with the back of his hand. "It's just poison." No need to keep on clutching at his bag straps as though he was carrying explosives, he thought.
Mitsuhiko's face scrunched in a frown, knuckles going white as if to oppose Conan's views. "Just poison, huh…" he mumbled, sort of troubled.
"Keep your fingers to yourself and you'll be fine."
Mitsuhiko really looked as though he wanted to rebut it, but since he didn't even try, Conan had no more option than to let him be with nothing but a shrug of his shoulders on his part. Poison is not dangerous if you don't get it into you. Those were the mere basics of how crime worked ─ if it was sealed and kept that way, Mitsuhiko would be just fine.
I get that he's on the edge after everything, though. What he had gone through was, incidentally, a fairly more perilous experience. Serving as a toy to an unfamiliar creepy child whose connections with the underground Conan did not want to ponder about, however, was far deadlier than anything his mind could imagine right now ─ if anything, Mitsuhiko should consider himself lucky he had walked out of that forest with both his legs and his head over his shoulders.
Was he really playing at all? I wonder if he had another reason that I can't think about. He threw his head back, momentarily losing himself in the stars above him, twinkling as if they could relay the answers he needed if they tried hard enough. Numabuchi's death, however… I think I may understand it. I just need to confirm a few things with Ai.
He decided it could wait ─ until tomorrow, though 'later today' could be more fitting. Preferably, when Mitsuhiko wasn't around to avoid further mental scarring. He had clearly had enough for one lifetime as it was, so there was no need to push things further.
It wasn't like he particularly enjoyed hiding things from his friends; he had the oblivious side of the spectrum quite a few times and he despised it with all of his heart. But he also knew this fright would soon grow into trauma if he kept on feeding it, and from that, paranoia was just a nudge away.
I'm paranoid enough to cover for the both of us, so he supposed it would be fine. I'll just have to keep on watching over everyone. In case something strikes from the shadows.
In case they, those nefarious crows, decided to hover close by. For he knew, once they got their eyes on someone, there would be no escaping them until they could pierce their claws into their prey and feast into their cold, rotting body. And they could be anywhere. Anywhere, any second now-
"Huh? Hey, isn't that Detective Sato's car parked over there?"
Car? Conan blinked back to reality. Detective Sato's?
True to Genta's words, a certain red Mazda popped up into his field of view. It was parked on the opposite street, and Conan could not get over the impression that it was, indeed, Sato's car ─ if only he wasn't at such an odd angle, he could probably get a glimpse of the license plate and tell for sure, but… Just a little more, and I'll be able to see who's inside-
"It is!" He hadn't realized he'd trailed a little behind the rest until Ayumi screamed, loud to send any neighbor into an exhausted, angry fit, pointing her finger at the vehicle in question. "That's Detective Takagi right there!"
Oh, so it was Takagi instead of her. Conan did not find that finding any surprising, since late-night police operations were not unusual ─ especially covert ones, in which case, they were probably spoiling by their mere presence.
I've promised Detective Sato we'd have a talk. He had planned to visit her at work earlier, but because of reasons, had failed to make it. For a moment, he wondered if it'd be much too late to crawl into that car's backseat so that he could get over with it, but he supposed that there was still too much to cover in a few hours.
Also, he would prefer to get a few more hours of sleep before morning, lest having Honda mistaking him with a zombie and his appearance with the sign of an approaching apocalypse.
"Ah! He noticed us!" Genta exclaimed. No wonder, Conan felt inclined to say. "Detective Takagi!"
He hurried over to see for himself, and sure enough, that was Takagi alright ─ staring back, internally wondering what they were up to about, Conan would bet. Blinking, his gaze flickered from face to face, pausing for a moment longer in Conan's face ─ surely, he must be connecting the dots with the hour and his problematic existence altogether. He grinned sheepishly, raising a hand.
But never got to wave, instead freezing in midair as he realized that Takagi's expression had changed radically upon meeting Agasa's face ─ that right there, was genuine surprise. It didn't make sense, why would the Professor's presence be any more surprising than any of them? Was he not expecting him to come with us?
Conan looked around, and indeed, he realized they were a mere block away from the Professor's house. If he's around at this hour, then it means that something happened, he reasoned. Maybe it's not that he's surprised to see Professor Agasa with us, but rather, around. Around his own house. Why would that be-?
His breath hitched. He didn't expect him to get home tonight. By the corner of his eye, he thought he noticed Mitsuhiko turning to glance back in worry, but he was too busy trying to keep his stomach from flipping into itself to acknowledge it. A case... The Professor's house…
But nothing stopped his heart from plunging into the dark abyss of realization, nor did his startled calling for his name keep his feet from moving. Before he was aware of it, Conan had started running ─ but that was about everything he knew. Everything else was a blur, stretching in weird lines and random patches of color as he begged his feet to hurry, to take him there even faster than they usually would .
Oniichan should still be there, camping in the Professor's living room with a forced smile plastered on his face. Trusting on his non-existing coercion skills to get Conan to do his bidding, no matter how many times he had refused in the past ─ he had always been such a stubborn guy, and that had gotten him where he was, in the world of living instead of buried several feet underground or swimming with the fishes in the Nile like he should.
If there's a case, if he's involved… Even though he was panting as it is, even if his vision was sliding in and out of focus as he pushed his little body past its limit, he felt strangely cold.
Did… did they… somehow…
That was why he did not really think things through when he slammed the Professor's door open, brazenly wandering into the darkness with a bated breath ─ just about to cry out his name, to call out for him, but all he managed was a weak croak of a voice that had suddenly lost its strength.
He heard a chair being dragged across the floor first, and then he saw light ─ a weak little thing that he distantly recognized as the Professor's old, barely functioning night lamp. There were arms, hands laying flat on top of the table as their owner stood from their seat ─ their face all but swallowed by the shadows, its expression a mystery Conan could not know about.
A second person turned away to watch him as the first moved away from the light, and the sound of steps grew louder. Conan shuddered, instinct roaring for him to run for his life, yet only getting him as far as one step back.
Oniichan, he thought, loud enough to overlap with the rush of blood on his ears. Don't tell me, these people… His hands found his wrist, and his finger caressed the trigger ─ Conan threaded backwards, slowly, squinting his eyes and failing to get even a sign of the presumed attacker his ears were warning him about.
He couldn't see a thing. But they were getting closer. Closer. Closer.
"Conan, watch out-!"
Everything had happened too fast, but had he stopped once to process it, he would probably have recognized the voice as familiar. A hand had latched onto his arm, however, and sent him staggering backwards. Feeling his heel hit some piece of furniture his mind had forgotten about, Conan braced himself for the fall.
The grip became stronger, stabilizing him before he could tumble down, and suddenly, the lights flickered back up.
Thus, Conan found himself blinking back at his brother's raised eyebrows.
In return, he choked out a sorry excuse for a laugh. Thank God he had been overreacting a bit. Thank God, he's okay.
"Don't scare me like that, you idiot."
From the doorway, Conan could feel Ai's judging stare. She shrugged after a while, and crossed the room without even glancing at them with a single glance, the plastic bag with the evidence she'd collected back in her grasp.
Just before reaching the door to the basement, she paused to mutter, "Have a good night, Detective Sato," and disappeared inside.
Conan froze in his spot, muscles tensing under his brother's fingers. Did she… Wait, what did she-?
"Ah, good night, Ai-chan."
His eyes flew open as he realized that, no doubt, the voice was a perfect match with that name. Shinichi stepped away from him, and casually, as if nothing had happened, turned around, presumably to speak with that one person.
Right at the entrance, where Ai had been just a second ago, he saw his friends plus Agasa staring just as wide-eyed, their heads moving in so synchronously that it was easy to tell what they were looking at. A moving object was what they were following, possibly a woman crossing the room to stand right in front of his brother.
"Oh, look at the time," he heard her say. "I suppose I should get going."
Not differently from a young shy child afraid of strangers, Conan peeked from behind his older brother's legs. As he had predicted, found Detective Sato, smiling down at him as though he hadn't walked on them talking in the Professor at ─ he drew a blank ─ such a late hour in the night slash morning.
"Detective Sato!" he exclaimed, drawing closer to her. He scratched the back of his neck, a sheepish smile painting his lips. "Sorry, I know I promised you to have a talk, but something came up."
The look she exchanged with her brother let him know she was hardly surprised to learn about that.
It didn't last long until it was back on him. "I can only imagine," she told him. "But it's okay. There's nothing you should worry about, Conan-kun."
As a matter of fact, he had the nagging feeling that there should be something. But as he opened his mouth to protest, she crouched down next to him, and for a moment, she just gazed at him through suddenly softening eyes.
Every question he could have was lost somewhere at his throat when she leaned forward and drew him into a tight, but oddly quiet, hug. She released him quickly, refusing to elaborate on his bewildered look, and instead, smiled warmly down at him.
Though, even if he couldn't understand it, he could see there was something pulling her back. A strange shadow clouded her glistening gaze, tugging into that smile that valiantly struggled to stay afloat.
"Sleep well, okay?" she told him as she stood up. "I'll get going now."
"O-Okay," he managed, with a nod so light that it could've been a shiver. "Take care, Detective Sato."
She did not explain things any further, but that brief span of time that took her to get to the door, wave at the Professor and company before leaving, had been more than enough for everything to click. The door closed behind her, and by the time Shinichi glanced over to his little brother once more, his lips were already pressed against each other.
He didn't even hear Agasa's hushed whispers, urging the kids to retreat to the guest room they would be occupying, nor did he notice him following them even though his room was in the opposite direction. All Conan could see was Shinichi's calm gaze and smooth expression ─ and for some reason, that served to deepen his frown even further.
"Why do I even tell you anything?" Conan breathed out, in a strange mixture of a sigh and a hiss Shinichi couldn't even replicate.
"I wanted to help," was Shinichi's earnest response.
Conan rolled his eyes. "I've got everything under control, thank you very much."
"Yeah, I can see that."
Sarcasm was too much of an old friend for Conan to pretend to be a stranger to. He squinted his eyes at him for a second, only to turn around with a nonchalant shrug and a muffled yawn.
"I'll deal with you later," he decided, already on his way out of the living room. "I gotta get up early tomorrow, so you'd better be grateful for that."
"It's 4 AM."
Conan paused, if only to register it into his brain as it probably should ─ he had no idea, so he supposed he should be minimally grateful for the information. No matter how useless.
"I'm sure your friend wouldn't mind if you canceled this time," Shinichi said, firmer. Conan didn't even need to look to know what kind of expression he was making right now. "You need to rest."
"Look, I'm fine," Conan drawled, unsure why he was bothering with him at all. "You don't have to watch over me all the time ─ I'm already eight , three months away from turning nine."
"Oh, look at the adult talking here." Shinichi raised his hands, waving them off as Conan turned to glower at him. "It's okay then, just remember to pay your taxes and you'll be all good."
The boy's eyes narrowed. "I'm serious. I'm not a baby."
"I know you're not. Babies do not usually keep themselves busy to avoid their own thoughts."
Although he wanted to pretend that he was above playing that game, in reality, the child detective had failed to come up with something reasonably intelligent to protest with. Thus he settled with a huff and a whip of his head and secretly wished that he'd thought of something to say by the time sleep had passed and morning had come.
The next morning, however, Conan woke up from his slumber in silence and the sun smiling brightly down at him from the window. Dazed, he wiped a faint trace of drool from his mouth and blindly patted his way to his glasses ─ only for the bed table to groan, and it wasn't until it started snoring again that he realized there was a sleepy Genta lying right next to him.
It took him a moment to get his bearings back and away from bed. But even so, there was no avoiding the wobbling in his step as he dragged himself back to the living room, casting a bleary glare at his phone, or rather, the time displayed on his home screen as if to taunt him.
His brother had definitely disabled his alarm. Although he supposed it should've bothered him that he had figured his password so easily, curiously enough, he found himself groaning over the mere thought of having to change it.
So, he promptly dragged a chair to get the coffee maker. Miraculously, he'd managed to wake himself up with time to spare, more than enough to drag a stupid teenage detective through the smell of caffeine and the obliviousness of what was really awaiting him. He will never hear the end of it, I swear.
However, Shinichi never once showed up for breakfast.
What he did manage, though, was to get the door to the basement to open. But the plain face he met, the disheveled strawberry blonde hair and pronounced eye bags were the farthest from what he had expected to see this morning.
It was highly unlikely she had been brought out of her safe lab haven by the promise of some warm coffee, and being honest to himself, Conan was sort of afraid of figuring out what it had been.
In the end, he didn't make it to the agreed time. Though, by some sort of bizarre coincidence he had no energy to ponder about, Honda had showed up a few minutes after his arrival, an apology in his lips for being so late. Coincidentally, he had also headed up to bed last night really late because of a book he had been engrossed in and slept through his alarm ─ and since The Valley of Fear had been the culprit, which was absolutely understandable, Conan had merely laughed it off and carried on with his day.
Never once did Conan tell him he had been in a similar situation, mostly because the differences were hardly something he wanted to talk about. About a missing case brought straight from a horror story, where the protagonist was one of his closest friends chased by a boy who was, apparently, about his age. Which was especially disturbing if he was honest, considering that he'd ended up murdering the serial killer Numabuchi Kiichiro himself before seemingly disappearing in darkness. Ai had had a lot to say in that regard, most of what he was still coming to terms with several hours after the fact.
Head dipped slightly and a frown scrunching his face up, the boy let himself into that small café where Ran had summoned him in. Wondering, not for the first time, but since a long time ago, if he should tell her anything at all. What could she possibly do, besides worrying increasingly every single school day from morning until he came back home?
Needless to say, the same also applied to a certain someone ─ especially him. If he knew about this… He may do something drastic.
Even now, he still dreamed about it from time to time. That warm yet frail smile, and that hand slipping from his own small, bloodied fingers. There was no way he was going to let that happen ever again.
"Oh, it's Conan-kun!"
At the sound of his name, the boy lifted his gaze to find a certain platinum blonde walking closer to him, an always radiant smile on his face and a tray full of empty plates in the other.
It was funny, in a way, because he doubted that anybody would believe him even if he said that this was an actual member from none other than Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department Public Security Bureau, working part time in a mundane café serving cheese and miso sandwiches. But the boy had learned that appearances were nothing to be trusted, and anyone, no matter how kind or seemingly approachable, could be hiding a bloodied knife under their skirt or a loaded gun in their right sock.
For all he knew, even Gin could be up and about Beika, passing by a friendly neighbor that cared for stray kittens and earned his living at his grandparents' inherited flower shop-
Conan forced himself to stop, his stomach churning nauseatingly at the mental image.
"Ran-san is right over that table with her friends. She didn't want to order anything until you got here."
The plates clanked against one another as Furuya motioned over their direction ─ and truthfully, Conan almost wished he never had, if it meant living in blissful ignorance for a little while longer and not come up with terms with the fact that Ran was not alone. Sonoko and Sera were there also, and he couldn't even decide what was worse.
"Let me guess," Conan said in a sigh. "Sonoko-neechan protested over her decision."
"But she still waited for you, regardless."
Conan tilted his head lightly, reconsidering his words, before shrugging.
"I'm surprised, however," Furuya suddenly said, earning him a questioning glance from the boy, "that you didn't come with them, like you usually do."
"Ah, yes. I was in the library," he explained. "Meeting up with a friend."
The way Furuya's eyes widened just a sliver was confusing at best. "It seemed to me that those kids weren't the kind to enjoy such a thing," he said. Oh, thought Conan, that made perfect sense now. "What did you do to persuade them?"
"If anything, I normally have to persuade them to leave me alone."
"So it wasn't them," Furuya concluded, easily enough. He tapped his chin for a moment, in which Conan was tempted to ask why he was this invested in his own relationships so suddenly. "Or maybe, if it was that one serious girl you usually hang out with…"
At first, it didn't register what the blonde detective slash waiter slash organization member slash PSB agent ─ sheesh, those are a lot of slashes ─ but then, it finally fell on him. That being, of course, the mental image of the both of them, scientist and detective, sitting close by in an empty library. Of her, tucking a stray lock of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear as she leaned closer to the pages, brushing a finger across the printed words, and a soft little smile sneaking into her lips without her notice. The both of them, together, surrounded by the melodious sound of silence, with no other company than their own.
Maybe if he shook his head quickly enough, the blush on his cheeks would scatter away ─ said no one ever. Furuya's raised eyebrow and knowing smirk kindly let him know of his mistake.
"N-No, not her." He cleared his voice. "It was… someone else."
Furuya looked as if wanted to say something more ─ in fact, he had already expressed it well enough, yet sadly, Conan wasn't afraid of pretending he could not read a face even if his life depended on it.
"Conan-kun!"
He heard Ran calling for him, thank goodness. She was smiling from ear to ear and waving him over so that he could hurry up and join them, even though he wasn't sure if that was preferable to dealing with… whatever that was.
"You should get going," Furuya said, then snickering, added, "And maybe save Azusa-san from becoming a school girl guitarist by Sonoko-san's hand."
He… had so many questions . But for the sake of his already declining, barely existing mental health, he seriously considered just letting things be the way they were without him being aware of them. Surely, it shouldn't be that hard.
There's so many things I'm still not aware of, he thought, his smile dimming. Things I'm not sure I should find out about…
Hiding in darkness, waiting to strike ─ only that he didn't know who it would go for first, and that terrified him like nothing else could.
As if sensing that their conversation was over, Furuya turned around to leave. But before he could even realize it, Conan's body had moved on its own accord, fingers hooking in his apron as though granted with life of their own. They may not have been strong enough to tear the fabric apart, or even undo the knot in Amuro Tooru's back, but it had been sufficient for him to stop.
"There… There is something I wanted to ask you about. Or someone, actually."
To stop, and to blink down at him in surprise. Conan took a deep breath, as though he needed to physically and mentally prepare himself for what he was about to do ─ as though he was hesitating, afraid of what would happen if he uncovered a truth so obscure and heavy he wouldn't be able to withstand.
Yet, there was no backing down now. He let out everything in a shaky breath, his words murmured so softly that only the wind could hear,
"Do you happen to know of an organization operative named Generic?"
A/N
CherryGirl 21-6:
Oh, congratulations! I'm so happy for you :D I'm hoping you get a good job soon!
About your question, well, I think it'd be college? The thing is, I've heard the meaning changes depending on the country so I'm not sure that's the right word, but yeah.