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Moon on the Snow
2: What You See
Lunch was…interesting.
Kaito had taken Shinichi down to the kitchen before leading him to the dining room, and so Shinichi had been the only human in their party to be introduced to the manor house's head chef. The man was six feet tall and built like a pro boxer. But what really made Shinichi stare was that the man had three pairs of arms. He also had three heads. And because he had so many arms and so many heads, the kitchen in his care had a large, circular workspace so that he could stand in the middle, and all three pairs of arms could work on different tasks under the supervision of one head each at the same time.
When Kaito and Shinichi walked into the kitchen, the chef had been in the middle of mixing up a giant bowl of cake batter, chopping up a vast assortment of fruits, and setting the temperature on something that appeared to be a glass oven made to resemble a turtle. But the instant he caught sight of Shinichi behind Kaito, the chef's extra arms and heads vanished. The knives he had been using fell to the cutting board with a clatter as the mixing bowl thudded onto the counter.
"Sorry," he said hastily, taking a quick step to the side to hide the turtle oven's large, round head. "I didn't realize you would be bringing your classmates back here for a visit so soon."
"It's all right, Mex," Kaito said, tugging Shinichi forward with a grin. "This is Shinichi. He'll be joining the family, so feel free to show him everything. It's those other ones you want to keep a low profile around."
"Right you are then Sir." The big man turned to Shinichi, giving the detective a careful look over that made him feel like he was being assessed for his worth—or maybe for his flavor. But then Mex's broad face broke out into an even broader grin, and he smacked Shinichi on the shoulder hard enough to nearly flatten the detective onto the counter. "This one's got good eyes, Master Kaito. You should take good care of him."
"I plan to," Kaito retorted, sounding mildly affronted by the implication that he might need to be reminded. "Anyway, Shin-chan, this is Almexlis of the Iron Oaks—Mex for short. He's our best chef. He trained under old Ryujin. There's no one better for getting a hold of new and unusual ingredients. He was the one who discovered the screaming tree tea."
"Oh." Shinichi remembered that tea well. Not only was it bright blue, it was also the closest equivalent to coffee available in the Makai. While that was interesting and all, the reminder that this world didn't have real coffee of its own was an extremely unwelcome one. Half dreading the answer, he asked, "Um, about the food stocked here… Do you have anything from the human world?"
Kaito smirked. "Don't worry, I made sure we brought lots of coffee."
Shinichi blushed and glowered at him. "You're the one who insists on pretending we're just in some vacation house of yours back in my world. You can't really do that if you're serving bright blue coffee."
Kaito paused. "That's true. Well, we do keep this place well stocked with human world stuff on a regular basis. And a lot of the food in this world can't really be distinguished from human world food once it's been cooked."
"You got nothing to worry about," the giant chef assured them both with a grin of his own as he thumped his broad chest with a massive fist. "I got everything covered."
Suddenly, the oven turtle lifted its head and a jet of steam erupted from a hole at the top of its skull.
"Ah, grab that cake tin, would you?" the chef asked Shinichi as he turned quickly to the turtle. He peered closely at the flames flickering inside its body then grabbed two short, white logs from a pile of white and black logs. These, he fed to the turtle.
Shinichi automatically picked up the tin on the counter next to him. He couldn't help but give the pale purple batter a dubious look, but he decided it was harmless.
"Do we put the tin on top of him?" he asked.
"No. Inside." Mex reached down over Shinichi's shoulder, grabbed the oven turtle's shell by the edges and lifted the top clean off, leaving a smaller, inner shell that looked like nothing so much as a spun glass rack. Shinichi set the cake tin down on top of the rack and watched, fascinated, as the turtle's shell was replaced. The fires beneath the internal rack suddenly grew brighter and more heated.
"Is it alive?" Shinichi asked Kaito as they left Mex to his cooking.
"You mean the turtle?"
Shinichi nodded.
"Yep. It's sort of a household pet. They're like ovens that regulate their own temperature. You just have to make sure to give them access to the right amount of fuel at all times. Helpful little critters. The little ones are great area heaters. Would you like to bring one back for the dorm next year?"
"I'll…think about it."
With thoughts of turtles and warm winter nights on his mind, Shinichi only noticed after he had sat down that there were a sight more people at the table than he had expected.
There was Hakuba, Hattori and Kazuha, naturally, and Aoko too. But next to Aoko sat a girl who wore her hair in pigtails whom Aoko introduced as Keiko. This would have only been a minor surprise that made the meal more lively if not for the first words Keiko uttered after her introduction.
"I wanted to thank you for that scarf," she said to Kazuha. "And I thought you might want to know that it's doing well. It's also been a great help at my sister's salon. It keeps the floors sparkling clean."
"Oh, um, that's good," Kazuha stammered, caught off guard by the other girl's gratitude. It was embarrassing to be thanked for giving someone something that you'd basically discarded because you'd decided you didn't want it. On the other hand, since the scarf in question had been a living creature, she was truly glad to hear that it had found a good home.
Hattori and Hakuba, however, were wondering if something was wrong with their ears.
"I thought she said Kazuha gave her a scarf," the Osakan whispered to his blond friend.
"That is what I heard as well."
"So, I mean, I know some people can get sentimentally attached to their possessions and end up giving them names and treatin' them like people, but what's that got to do with salon floors?"
"And how exactly do you expect me to know?" Hakuba snapped. "You should ask your girlfriend."
"Jeez, you can't tell me you ain't curious."
"At least I know better than to expect you to have the answers."
Hattori spluttered.
If the two detectives had not been so distracted by their own conversation, they might have noticed Aoko elbowing Keiko and leaning over to whisper into the girl's ear. The latter's eyes widened for a moment before she murmured something back then suddenly started talking about the weather.
Seated to Kaito's right near the head of the table, Shinichi idly wondered how many days it would take for this charade to fall apart. He wasn't even sure it would take a day, he mused, looking through the kitchen doorway behind Hakuba, Hattori, and Kazuha's chairs at where all six of Mex's arms were hard at work. One of the man's heads had dedicated himself to watching the dining area, and so every time anyone seated with his or her back to him moved as though to turn around, his surplus limbs and heads would vanish like they had never been only to reappear again the moment the observer turned away. He was very quick about the whole thing, and there was hardly a break in his work flow, but if they thought about it at all, he was sure Hattori and Hakuba would notice soon that the goings on in the kitchen were a great deal more complex than one man should be able to handle alone.
Two tall, willowy women suddenly appeared on either side of Kaito's chair, making Shinichi jump. They were pale from head to toe like all the color had been drained right out of them. Even their eyes were all but white.
"These are today's appetizers," one willowy woman said, placing a large platter of seaweed hand rolls on the table where everyone could reach. Her counterpart silently passed out small plates before fading away again just as quickly and silently as they had appeared.
While Hakuba and Hattori craned their necks this way and that, trying to figure out where the women had come from and gone to, Shinichi picked up a hand roll and looked inside.
The hand roll looked back.
He put it down quickly and turned to Kaito. "I think something got into it."
Kaito picked up the roll and glanced down into its seaweed pocket. "Oh, salamander peppers. They only look like they're animals. They're actually fruits. You deep fry them in a spicy sauce and wrap them in dry seaweed. I know the eyes look a bit creepy, but they taste awesome. Like firecrackers."
Shinichi wasn't sure how he felt about a food described as tasting like a firecracker, but he felt slightly better knowing it wasn't actually a lizard wrapped in there.
On the other side of the table, Hattori had already taken a giant bite out of his roll. It crunched loudly as he chewed, and he made a sound of approval before swallowing.
"Hey, this is really good," he said. "What's it made of?"
"I'm afraid that's a trade secret," Kaito said smoothly. "It's one of our chef's family specials."
"Ah, right. Well, you can tell 'im it's awesome."
Shinichi saw Mex's proud smile. Picking up his own roll, he tried not to think about what he thought he had seen inside and took a bite. To his mild astonishment, Hattori was right. It was delicious: sweet and spicy with a hint of tartness.
The crunchy appetizers were followed by a salad tossed with a chef's secret dressing then a creamy chef's secret soup. When the main course arrived, Heiji speared a piece of poultry on his fork and said to no one in particular, "Let me guess. This was marinated in some kind of chef's secret sauce."
"Actually, it's just garlic and hot sauce with some pepper and a few pinches of herbs," Kaito said, grinning. "Dessert's the real secret."
"I prefer to know what I'm eating," Hakuba muttered under his breath, but he was too polite to press the issue. That didn't mean he wasn't intrigued when the desserts finally arrived.
Set down in front of each person at the table was a large, pearly flower bulb. Each bulb was cradled in a bowl of artfully arranged leaves which, in turn, were surrounded by glazed fruits. The entire lot topped a small cake coated in snow white cream.
"Isn't it a little weird for the cake decorations to be just as large as the cake? I mean, this thing on top isn't edible, is it?" Hattori prodded the bulb with his fork then nearly fell out of his chair as it shivered. Then, right there before their eyes, the bulb on Hattori's plate bloomed. Pearly pink and cream petals unfurled outward, releasing a delectable fragrance into the air along with a faint glow.
"Actually, the whole thing is edible," Kaito told the stunned Osakan. "It's another Mex special."
"It's beautiful," Kazuha exclaimed. "It's like a cake that does magic tricks!"
"Nah, it's just good timing," Keiko assured her. "It's the harvesting part you need magic for. When you first start seeing the flowers budding, you have to use this spell for—ow!"
"It's a complicated process," Aoko said brightly, ignoring the way Keiko was rubbing pointedly at the spot on her ribs where Aoko had just elbowed her. "But it's not really all that interesting to talk about. So, if you're not too tired from your trip, would any of you like to go sailing on the lake? It's very peaceful."
"That sounds lovely," Kazuha agreed.
"Is there any fishing equipment here?" asked Hattori. "Maybe we could catch something for dinner."
Aoko stared at the human girl then glanced up the table at Kaito.
"I can go get some later," he said slowly. "From the storage rooms."
Hattori grinned. "Awesome."
Even Hakuba seemed to find the idea attractive. And soon he, Kazuha, and Heiji were being led down to the docks by Aoko while Kaito went to 'fetch' the necessary gear.
Fetching the necessary gear turned out to mean walking into a back room, closing the door to keep out prying eyes, and conjuring said items from a closet back in Castle Moon.
"So, fishing poles, lines, bait, buckets, lures, what else will they need?"
"I think that's most of it," Shinichi hazarded. He'd gone fishing before, but it wasn't like he was an expert. "What do your people normally use when you fish in the lake here?"
"We don't."
"Oh." Shinichi paused in the middle of checking the lures Kaito had conjured. "Is there a reason why?"
"Well, to be honest, no one in my family's particularly big on…fishy creatures. Bug-eyed little monsters, most of them."
"Don't you eat fish?"
"I can if there's no other option available," Kaito said in tones that managed to convey that there would never be such a time. "But Dad did force me to learn about it since he sometimes got invited by people who'd seen his shows to go on cruises and retreats and such that involved fishing."
"So you won't mind if we have whatever they catch for dinner?"
"If they insist. But I doubt they'll catch anything they'd actually want to eat."
With that foreboding statement and a wicked grin, Kaito went back out to where their friends were waiting to give them their equipment. Shinichi hurried after him, suddenly rather worried about the wisdom of letting the others anywhere near the lake. Unfortunately, it was too late to stop them. Kaito had already passed out the gear and was leading their fellow college students out the door and down the snowy slopes towards the silver gleam of water. Shinichi consoled himself with the thought that Kaito wouldn't knowingly put their friends in mortal danger.
"I'm not sure there's enough room for all five of us," Heiji noted as he hopped off the small, wooden dock into the one vessel moored there. It was a fairly simple rowboat and appeared to have been meant for four—provided those four passengers intended only to take a leisurely ride across the waters. The fishing equipment took up quite a bit of space. Factor in the fish they would hopefully catch, and there wasn't much space left over at all.
"Shin-chan and I won't be going, so there'll be plenty of room," Kaito replied. "I would recommend staying away from the far shore. There are a lot of water plants over there that get tangled easily with the oars."
"So what kind of fish should we expect?" asked Hakuba.
Kaito shrugged. "You'll have to find that out for yourselves, I'm afraid. I'm not much of a fish expert. Just don't be too disappointed if you don't catch anything."
"You just watch. We'll bring back a whole bunch," Heiji bragged.
Kazuha only laughed. "I don't really mind if we don't catch anything. This lake is gorgeous! I like the idea of just sailing around a bit. It's so peaceful here."
Confident that their friends were happily occupied, Kaito slid an arm around Shinichi's shoulders and began gently herding him back up towards the manor house.
"So where exactly are we going?" Shinichi asked. He had half a mind to insist that they stay near the docks just in case their friends needed them. He didn't know much about Kaito's world yet, but he was fairly certain that three unsupervised humans could get into a lot of trouble if left to their own devices.
"Stop worrying about them," Kaito admonished. "The lake guardian will make sure nothing happens to them. Now come on, I'm sure you're going to love this."
This turned out to be the manor's small but very well stocked library.
It took Shinichi less than five minutes to realize that he was standing in a treasure trove. The books lined up all around him ranged across all genres and time periods from the classics to modern bestsellers. And almost every volume was a first edition. In the right circles, this little library would fetch a hefty fortune and then some.
"But this is—! And this! I thought all copies were lost decades ago!"
Kaito stood back and just watched as Shinichi flittered about the shelves like a humming bird on a sugar high. A fond smile tugged at the corners of his lips. His detective was adorable when he was all excited like a child about to open his birthday presents. Which was ironic, he mused, since Shinichi would never be so excited about mere birthday presents. No. The only things Shinichi ever exhibited this much enthusiasm for was literature and the occasional soccer game.
"How did you guys find all this?" Shinichi burst out, still flitting from shelf to shelf.
"Dad's been visiting the human world for quite a long time, if you'll recall. Most of these books weren't anything special at the time he got them. He picked them up because he feels literature is an important part of every culture, and so we should read human world books if we want to maintain and improve our understanding of your world. Especially since it changes so fast for you guys. This is only part of the collection though. The library at Castle Moon is at least fifty times this size, and it covers a lot more languages. We've also started adding other media to our collections. Dad's working on installing a home theater for the video and audio materials."
"Why didn't you show me the library at the castle last time we were there?" Shinichi demanded, both thrilled by the news and disappointed by the missed opportunity.
Kaito laughed. "That would be because I didn't think we'd be able to drag you back to school in time for our exams if you set foot in there. I'll make it our first stop next time we visit the castle."
Shinichi barely heard the magician's promise because he had just found the entire Sherlock Holmes collection on a corner shelf—the entire, first edition collection. He stood frozen in front of it, eyes wide in awe.
Kaito couldn't help it. He doubled over laughing. Then he closed the distance between them in two long strides, caught Shinichi's chin with one hand, and leaned down to steal a brief but thorough kiss.
The detective, now rather pink, stuttered something completely incoherent, which made Kaito laugh harder. Flustered and confused, Shinichi gave his partner a wary once over before deciding that the safest course of action would be to ignore the cackling crazy person and go back to basking in the presence of fine literature.
When Kaito finally calmed down, he was mildly surprised when he did not find Shinichi ensconced in an armchair with a book. Instead, the detective was reviewing the shelves he had just spent fifteen minutes gushing over with a small frown on his face in place of his earlier delight.
"What is it?" he asked. "If there's something you want that's not here, I can check our catalogue for you. The spells shuffle the whole inventory with the books back at the castle periodically, but I can summon a specific title if I know what to look for."
"There aren't any books in your language."
Kaito blinked. "Well, creating a story to explain a bunch of books in alien tongues didn't sound like a particularly fun way to spend our vacation, and none of you would have been able to read them anyway, so I had those parts of the selection swapped out with recent releases from your world."
"But you said it's easy to bring one back, right?"
"Very. What's this about?"
"Well, since we have time, I thought I could get started on learning your language."
Kaito blinked again. "I can get you a few books if you want, but is that really what you want to spend your vacation doing?"
"Not the whole vacation. I just figured this would be a good time since I won't have to work on any cases for the next few weeks."
"I suppose that makes sense," Kaito conceded. "I'll see about working it into the schedule. I'll call up a set of our language textbooks and a novel or two. Do you have any requests?"
"Maybe something you liked reading when you were growing up?"
"You sure? We have mystery novels too, but I wasn't really big on them until I met you."
Shinichi could feel his blush returning, but he did his valiant best to ignore it. "I'm sure. I mean, you know what my favorite books are."
Kaito chuckled. "Shin-chan, anyone who knows anything about you knows what your favorite books are—but I see your point," he added hastily when he saw Shinichi's face fall. "I never had favorite books the way you do, but there are certainly some I'm always happy to recommend. I'll get you a few to choose from."
"Thank you."
"Anytime." Kaito ruffled the detective's hair, completely ignoring Shinichi's squawk of protest. "But first, I promised you a trip to the roof. The view is spectacular, and you'll even be able to see our friends from up there. So you can stop worrying about them and focus on important stuff."
"…Their safety is important."
"True, but worrying about them when they're perfectly safe is a waste of time and energy better spent on other things. So~," he held out his hand, "shall we?"
X
Hakuba was seriously starting to wonder if there had been something psychedelic in their lunch. Or maybe it had started even earlier. Maybe he'd fallen asleep on the car and dreamed up the green fog and all the subsequent events—including this excursion onto the water. Or he could have hit his head.
This was an extremely unusual train of thought for the blond detective. He'd never been given to fanciful thinking, and he generally trusted the evidence of his own eyes and ears. After all, if you couldn't trust your own senses then life would become very complicated very fast in all sorts of unhelpful ways. But some things were just too…weird to be believed even when you saw them with your own eyes.
For example, there had been that face in the water. He and Hattori had just rowed their little boat to a spot roughly near the middle of the lake, and Kazuha was working on baiting their lines. Hattori had pulled up his oar and gone to help his girlfriend. Hakuba had been about to do the same when he happened to glance down into the water.
The movements of their boat had sent ripples racing away across the glassy surface of the lake in long, graceful loops made stark by the brilliance of reflected sky. It was a beautiful picture—serene and pristine as the snow-capped mountains rising all around the edges of the sky. And what a sky! Flawlessly blue in that luminous, translucent way that only the sky could be without a single cloud to mar its satin expanse.
And so why was it that, with no clouds over head, there appeared to be two clouds reflected in the water? Not fluffy clouds either. They were almost angular in shape. Parallelograms with rounded corners, he decided before the word 'eyes' suddenly rose in his mind unbidden. After all, the pale diamonds reflected in the water mirrored each other very much like a pair of eyes. And beneath them shimmered a thin, sharp streak of reflected white that could easily pass for a mouth.
Now, Hakuba knew that reflections on water could easily form faces and all other kinds of images when that water was disturbed or when creatures and rock formations put in their two cents. But that face floating on the lake's surface just looked so definite that, when it opened its mouth, he even heard it speak.
"Good afternoon."
The words arrived inside his head without first passing through his ears, and he stiffened, staring at the face with a growing sense of horror. He couldn't seem to think straight—or really think at all beyond the fact that the face was speaking to him. Except of course that it couldn't be.
He snatched his water bottle from where it had rolled under a bench and took three large gulps of ice cold water to clear his head. When he looked back into the lake, the face on the water was gone.
But alas, that was not where the weirdness ended.
There were little things like dragonflies that, in the brief glimpses the humans managed to catch of them flitting by, looked almost like actual, tiny dragons with thin, serpentine bodies attached to their dragonfly wings. But of course that couldn't be right. Right? It must have been a trick of the light. But then there was the fish that Hattori reeled in.
Yes, they had set out to hook a fish, but none of them had ever expected to hook one not by its mouth but by its tail. The hook had been wrapped neatly around the base of its tail fins, and the creature now dangled upside down, glaring balefully at Hattori with eyes the size of ping pong balls that glowed neon green.
Hattori was the first to break the silence. "What…is that?"
"Um, a fish?" Kazuha said uncertainly. It certainly had the general shape of a fish—rounder on one end and tapered on the other until it flared out into a glorious fan of a tail that shimmered with opalescent rainbows completely at odds with the vicious, needle-sharp teeth it was baring at them. Its dorsal and pectoral fins were ribbed with silver spines like curvy ice picks. It also had scales like a proper fish should, except that, on this creature, the scales looked rather more like armor.
"It looks like a mutant," Hattori said bluntly.
"Or perhaps a deep sea fish," Hakuba suggested, though his dubious expression didn't waver. "Perhaps it is a byproduct of pollution."
"I don't know. This lake's got the cleanest water I've ever seen," Hattori pointed out. "Maybe it's fake? It's pretty light for its size… And it ain't struggling."
It really was just hanging there, the blonde observed, disturbed. But those glowering eyes definitely felt like they were glaring at them.
"Or it could be a really rare species," Kazuha offered. "I think we should let it go."
The boys agreed readily, though they did so more because they didn't want to get any closer to that mouthful of teeth than because they thought the monstrous fish was some rare and heretofore undiscovered species. Besides, the thing couldn't have looked more unappetizing if it had tried.
The decision to release the fish was easy, but how to free it was rather less easy to decide. They ended up lowering the creature back into the water and jiggling the line. There was a flurry of whitewater and a flash of silvery fins. Then the fish was gone.
Time passed quite normally after that.
Until they fished up the sparkling glass teapot.
Filled with tea.
Hot tea.
Clearly, if he wasn't dreaming or hallucinating then it had to be a prank. He supposed that was what you got for going to a magician's vacation home. The entire place was probably riddled with hidden contraptions. Yes, that had to be it.
That might even explain the subsequent set of matching teacups and basket of picnic sandwiches.
Watching the scene play out from a roof high over the lake's snowy shores, a certain demon was having trouble containing his laughter. Seated next to him with a warm thermos of coffee in hand, Shinichi only shook his head.
"Even Hakuba's going to start wondering after that display," he said dryly. "I thought you wanted to keep the magic at a minimum?"
"Hey, that was the lake guardian, not me. He's trying to figure out what they're looking for. He probably heard them talking about fish, but they put it back. Since they kept the teapot instead, he thinks they want afternoon tea. Besides," he added. "That blond twit friend of yours wouldn't recognize real magic if it bit him on the nose."
"He's not stupid," Shinichi said, feeling obliged to defend his friend. "He's an excellent detective."
"Maybe. But you can't deny he's pigheaded about things that don't fit into his world view. Though I assume he'd call it logic."
Shinichi opened his mouth then shut it again. "So you said something about a schedule," he said instead. "What did you have planned?"
TBC
