The Wonderful Muffins
Who should win?
| Nano_Quill |
  
|
10.0% | [ 1 ] |
| supergirl10895 |
|
0.0% | [ 0 ] |
| Lil Luffy Duffy |
|
40.0% | [ 4 ] |
| olive17 |
|
50.0% | [ 5 ] |
| Total Votes: | [ 10 ] | ||
Karin_hime
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- Posted: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:37:48 +0000
This. . is a smart way to get what you want when it comes to ficlets. xD
olive17
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- Posted: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:24:55 +0000
@Luffy Duffy: Well, she's already extended the deadline like, twice. xD
So she might have been referring to that. But if it is extended further, then maybe I could submit my second idea, too...
So she might have been referring to that. But if it is extended further, then maybe I could submit my second idea, too...
Kirksome
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- Posted: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:09:37 +0000
I know, I keep extending the deadline, but I really want people to enter. I think I have an idea as of how to keep this thread more active, though, so maybe I won't need to extend it any more. I'm pretty sure that this will be my last deadline-extending. blaugh
EDIT: Alright, people! Check out the first page to see the new scheme I cooked up for making this contest more popular. OK, I didn't really think it up, I got the idea from somewhere else.
EDIT: Alright, people! Check out the first page to see the new scheme I cooked up for making this contest more popular. OK, I didn't really think it up, I got the idea from somewhere else.
olive17
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- Posted: Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:53:34 +0000
Ah, I don't know how well this turned out, but oh well. xD
But I might end up writing my other idea too, since the deadline got pushed again. And I'm posting this now so that I might be able to write the other one instead of just fussing with this one for forever and a day. So we'll see.
Title: A Trip Through Tokyo (And Its Consequences)
Word count: 4,816
Rating: PG, I suppose, for a bit of swearing.
Characters: Heiji, Kazuha, Conan, Ran
Kazuha was fuming.
Again.
It had happened again. Heiji had grunted something like: “Phone. Sorry,” at her, and ditched her without another backward glance. And it was about five minutes before they had to be in class. What was he thinking, running off to talk right before school? It might not be so bad, she supposed, if he didn’t Do. It. All. The. Time. As if she didn’t know just who it was that Heiji was always chatting to over the phone.
She took that back. She didn’t know who it was that Heiji was having such long phone conversations with. But she knew what kind of person it was.
A girl.
She was sure of it. She’d heard him asking if his mysterious conversationalist was free to talk; if “it” was still a secret. Kazuha had a pretty good idea of just what “it” was, too.
She felt like she couldn’t let him leave his own house without keeping an eye on him. Maybe it was a bit extreme to go with him everywhere, and invite herself on all his detective-business trips to Tokyo, but she felt strangely justified. She’d grown up with Heiji; she deserved to get to meet this mysterious girl. It still rattled her to think about it. Heiji was dating and hadn’t even told her about it.
So if she managed to meet this girl at some point while tagging along on Heiji’s adventures, great. And if her presence was so annoying that it prevented him from meeting up with his girlfriend, that was what he deserved it for not telling her he was dating someone in the first place.
And for making her wait for him all the time. Once more, she was standing with her arms crossed, feeling very irritated, in the middle of the school steps as people hurried past her and into the halls, footsteps starting to echo just as they passed the threshold. She could just barely see Heiji facing away from her, leaning against a tree just on the inside of the school gate.
For a few minutes, she just stood there, checking her watch about once every fifteen seconds as the flow of people gradually thinned around her. Heiji talked away, oblivious to all of it and nodding and moving his arms a bit as he talked to someone who couldn’t see him anyway. He did that all the time when he talked on the phone. Obviously, that was whenever he needed to be somewhere.
Kazuha’s simmering anger finally boiled over. That was it, she decided, as a group of guys started up the stairs. She’d had it. Barging through the crowd, (and incidentally, practically sending the smallest kid flying) she marched straight across to Heiji. She reached the tree he was leaning against, put her hands on her hips, and opened her mouth to say something…
Just as he was hanging up. Damn it.
“Who was that? We’re almost late; come on.” Heiji jumped when she spoke. In her head, she congratulated herself for acting so calm and mature, and managing to make Heiji jump.
Behind her, a few boys were helping their rather battered friend to his feet.
“Nothing.” Heiji was distracted, she could tell that much. He wasn’t looking at her, but instead peering at the guys behind her (now heading inside), the door to the hallway, the gate…
She waved a hand in front of his face, which focused perhaps some fragment of his attention on her.
“I said who, not what,” she reminded him.
He shrugged, and shuffled through his school bag, looking for something. “Whatever. Hey, tell Sensei I’m sick or something?” He pulled out his cap and tugged it on, with the bill pointed backwards. “I have to go.”
Kazuh did a double-take. “What? Heiji, wait, where are you going?” She was dimly aware that they were the only ones left outside, the last stragglers having just disappeared into the halls. Heiji was walking straight out the gate. “We have class! What’s wrong with you?”
He spun around to face her, looking about as irritated and hurried as she felt. “Nothing, ahou! It’s a case, okay?” And with not another word or look, he disappeared around the corner.
A few moments passed as Kazuha stared disbelievingly at the gate.
A case. Sure. It was a bit late her to fall for that. She knew he was hiding something from her, and truly wondered if he really expected her to believe everything he told her. She was tired of pretending to – she wanted to know what was really going on for a change.
The bell rang noisily behind her. She called it a few names in her head. She hated being late to class. She avoided it whenever possible. But really, that meant there was only one option left, if you thought about it at all. Kazuha decided to call it a sign from fate – she pulled her school bag into a more secure position on her shoulder, and sped out of the gate in search of Heiji.
It wasn’t very difficult to catch up with him. It wasn’t like he could get very far in less than a minute. But she hadn’t really caught up with him. Instead, she had started following about a block behind, and across the street, so of course, he hadn’t seen her. It was something she felt awfully smug about, on the rare occasions when she tried to sneak around Heiji. Hattori Heiji, famous detective of the West that he was, could never notice when she was tailing him.
Quite predictably, he headed towards the train station. She felt rather vindictively satisfied. She had noticed that he had been going on a lot of trips lately. Once she knew where he was headed, she allowed herself to follow less closely. And as she relaxed, she found it very pleasant to be outside of school, taking a walk and out to discover something. The sky was bright, the sun was rising high, and she had a mystery to solve. Not that she expected the discovery itself to be at all pleasant, but there was something wonderful about finding it out for herself.
Maybe she was spending too much time around Heiji.
Or maybe definitely, she corrected herself. She doubted that she would ever have considered tailing somebody if it weren’t for the ahou and his stupid detective obsession.
As they reached the station, the ahou in question came into sight once again, in a gap in the crowd. He was buying his ticket. Kazuha squinted to see which button he pressed, and barely avoided smacking straight into a couple walking in the other direction. Third row, second button from the left. She recited it in her head, dodging past another few people and heading for the ticket machine. She reached for second button from the left, in the third row. It was marked with the price, and “Student Ticket – Tokyo Area –Haido Station”.
She had just known it would be Tokyo. Despite her good mood a minute ago, there was a bitter taste in her mouth. Pressing the button a bit harder than absolutely necessary, she paid for her ticket and grabbed it out of the slot where it appeared, returning to the chase.
She didn’t have to wait long on the platform for a train to show up. As it pulled up to the station and screeched to a stop, Kazuha noted which car Heiji got on and got onto the one next to it. Avoiding him the whole ride would just be a bother.
She was careful not to draw attention to herself, but she still got a few strange looks for her school uniform. She supposed that it was obvious that she was cutting class. The ride was long, boring, and extremely awkward. She made herself ignore the stares and slight frowns she got from other passengers. Fortunately, when the train finally stopped, everyone was much too occupied with getting off, getting on, and making room for everyone moving around to pay much attention to a teenage girl ditching school.
Kazuha caught sight of Heiji as she left the train. He didn’t notice her, but quickened his pace suddenly, as if to greet someone. Kazuha craned her neck and saw… Conan-kun?
She stared. The crowd moved relentlessly around her. She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open, and she was getting a lot of weird looks again.
But she couldn’t see why in the world Heiji would have ditched school to visit a little kid. Especially a little kid that should have been in school himself.
She admitted to herself that this didn’t quite reach the scale of “mysterious Tokyo girlfriend”, but there was still a mystery here, a case that just demanded to be solved…
Yep, she’d been spending way too much time around Heiji. She seriously considered smacking herself in the head and turning around that instant. But she couldn’t really think of something else to do, so she decided she might as well keep tagging along.
The two of them – Heiji and Conan, that is – moved through the crowd and out of the station. Kazuha followed, trailing the both of them. As they walked, she gradually realized that Heiji and Conan were getting even more strange looks than she was. She frowned. Why wasn’t Conan in school? It was one thing for Heiji to skip; he did it all the time. But to drag a little kid with him…
Conan seemed to stiffen under her gaze. Acting under pure instinct, Kazuha dodged over to the front of a restaurant just as Conan whipped around, searching the crowds behind him. She pretended to be intent on looking over a menu posted by the door. She felt like she was trying to balance on a razor’s edge. She was thoroughly convinced that she had been seen, but nobody approached her or said anything to her. Still, that was the second time that the kid had nearly caught her following Heiji, and the first time, he hadn’t even known her.
When nobody had started tugging at her sleeve or shouting in her ear, she supposed that her cover was probably still intact. She moved away from the restaurant, and in a few seconds, caught sight of Conan and Heiji’s retreating backs. She hurried after them, tugging the ribbon out of her hair. If she had to hide again, she did not want the back of her head to be at all recognizable, and she wore a ribbon tied in the exact same way so often, it was almost a distinctive feature. She knew that Heiji would never catch her – he never had before, and she suspected that he was not anywhere near as observant as he claimed he was. But she was taking no chances with Conan, even if it meant being a bit paranoid.
She continued to follow them, but she only looked at them out of the corner of her eye, and was careful to watch Heiji, not Conan. Not that it was very easy to see Conan in anything remotely resembling a crowd, and only, let’s say, most of Tokyo and the surrounding area tended to resemble a crowd. Of course, it was to her advantage. If she couldn’t see Conan, he couldn’t see her, and a crowd was easier for her to hide in than an empty street.
Unfortunately for her, the duo led her on to successively less and less crowded streets. She was forced to follow even further behind, and as she turned one last corner, she could distinctly see them stopped partway down the block. She immediately corrected her course and started to cross the street instead. It would be pretty bad if they just stood there and she ended up walking into them.
Heiji was crouched down a bit, squatting to Conan’s level and talking intently (and for once, quietly) to him. She forced her self to look forward. Nobody looked sideways when crossing a crosswalk – not for any length of time, anyway. They just glanced one way and then the other.
Once she reached the other side of the street, she chanced a look back in their direction, while pretending to read a sign, prohibiting smoking – apparently it still got crowded enough around here on occasion to warrant smoking regulation. Heiji was standing up again. Conan nodded decisively, said something, and the two of them walked into a small office building.
She looked around a bit and, finding a nearby bus stop, went over to check the times. None of them were very soon, so she decided to wait there for a little while. She sat down and tilted her head just so, so that she had a clear view of the building that Heiji and Conan had disappeared into.
She didn’t have long to wait. Barely five minutes had passed when the two of them reappeared, walking fast and looking worried. Kazuha stood up to follow them, noticing that Conan was clutching a handful of papers. He was almost running, to match Heiji’s long stride. Kazuha edged through the crowd, and broke into a fast walk to keep up.
Conan and Heiji had just reached the corner of a busy thoroughfare when a scream pierced through the air. By the time Kazuha got to the same corner, all she could see of them was a glimpse of their backs as they disappeared into a nearby shop. Not again. Why did this always happen? She sighed and flopped down onto the first bench she could see. She tried to think of the positives. Well, for one thing, at least this time she didn’t have to see the body. She also could be pretty sure of where Heiji and Conan would be for the next couple of hours, at least.
And, fairly predictably, it was about a couple of hours before all of the police were gone. But it was only an hour before Heiji and Conan ran straight past her, scaring the living daylights out of her and setting her in a rush to follow without looking suspicious.
It was difficult. How did one look like one wasn’t following anyone when the person one was following was the only one on the entire street trying to run a marathon? She walked as fast as she could, and even started to jog a bit as they pulled away from her and started to get lost in the crowd, holding her school bag as close as possible to stop it from bouncing around and getting in her way. The crowd jostled her as she pushed forward. Occasionally, she would get a glimpse of Heiji’s cap through the mass of people, and she would set off towards it as fast as she could, and keep going in that direction even when she lost sight of it again. She thought she saw it peek through the crowd, and turn a corner. She broke into a run, rounding the corner and scanning the area for Heiji, or maybe Conan.
She couldn’t see either of them. Starting to panic now, she continued the way she had turned, hoping that they had gone this way. What if they hadn’t turned at all, and she had only imagined it? Another thought made her freeze, forcing people to move around her and slow down the flow of the sidewalk. What if she didn’t see them, and accidentally overtook them? What if she practically bumped into one of them? She felt extremely vulnerable, simply not knowing where they were.
More out of nerves than anything else, she kept walking. It hit her that she was very much alone. She’d never gone to Tokyo by herself before, or anywhere much really. It was probably ironic. Here she was, in the middle of as many people as there were grains of sand on a beach, and she was alone because she wasn’t sure of her ability to keep her distance properly from two of them.
The buildings towering over her opened up a bit as she kept walking. The sky grew to fill more and more of the world above her, almost meeting the horizon in front of her. She realized that she was headed in the direction of a bridge – maybe Haido bridge, she really wasn’t sure. She wondered if Conan and Heiji had crossed, or if they were going somewhere near the river.
The street she was on turned into the bridge-crossing, so she veered off, heading across a street that ran alongside the river, and down to the riverbank. It was just as she gave up on looking for Heiji and Conan, turning to walk by the river for a bit, that she found them again. They were just under the end of the bridge, out of sight from most angles, thanks to the road and landscaping blocking them from one direction, and a couple of thick support pillars blocking them from the other. Thankfully, they were both facing away from her, because Kazuha probably gaped at them for an hour upon turning around to find them again, less than twenty meters away.
A rough-looking bush had somehow managed to grow in the strip of land between the river and the city. She moved so that she was mostly hidden by it, but could still see them. She was pretty close to them, but she wasn’t too worried – it didn’t look like the boys would be turning around any time soon. Heiji was perched on top of a tall pile of rocks, debris, and chunks of concrete, holding out a few large sheets of creased paper and trying not to drop them as Conan balanced on his shoulders, one foot on each, and tinkered with something affixed to the bottom of the bridge. It all looked very precarious, like it might all fall down at a moment’s notice.
After watching for a bit, Kazuha registered a very faint blinking light coming from the whatever-it-was, and realized that Conan was holding a small pair of scissors. Heiji’s voice drifted across to her in an unintelligible murmur, and things clicked. They were probably just disarming a bomb or something.
That probably should have bothered her more than it did. As it was, all she found slightly worrisome was why they hadn’t told the police back at the murder scene. But she shrugged that off, and ended up convincing herself that she was quite bored sitting there and watching Conan and Heiji neutralize explosives.
Kazuha could tell the exact moment when they finished. They both relaxed in the same instant. Or anyway, Conan let his shoulders fall a bit and let out a breath, whereas Heiji picked the kid up off his own shoulders and spun him around a bit as he carried them both down the pile he’d been using as a footstool. Conan looked extremely ruffled upon being put down – all dignity and injured pride. Heiji just laughed at him, and went about scattering the contents of the pile around a bit as Conan packed the papers and scissors in his little backpack. They both took one last look around at the scene, apparently satisfied, and walked off.
Kazuha waited a little bit to follow, in case they looked back. Back in pursuit, she was a little disappointed when she realized they were headed back to the train station. Nothing particularly interesting had happened – at least nothing that was much different from usual, for Heiji. Feeling a bit disheartened, she stuck close to them as they entered the station and Heiji bought his ticket back to Osaka. She caught snatches of conversation, but nothing intelligible until Heiji started to leave. Conan started to turn around, but Heiji called back to him.
“Hey, Kudou!” Conan turn reluctantly back around, looking thoroughly annoyed about something. “Give me a little bit more warning next time when you need a hand, okay?”
Conan said something that she couldn’t quite hear, but she personally thought it probably had to do with how last minute Heiji always was with making plans to visit. Or at least that was what she pointed out to herself in the back of her head. The rest of her mind was trying to wrap itself around the fact hat Heiji had quite unmistakably just called Conan ‘Kudou’. She wasn’t exactly sure what to think. It would certainly explain a few things about the kid, she supposed, although accepting it as an explanation just raised a whole bunch of other unpleasant questions.
She waited until Conan was safely out of the way, and then hurried after Heiji, taking the same train back to Osaka. The ride back was very similar to the ride there, although there weren’t quite as many strange looks. People probably didn’t even think of the fact that it still wasn’t quite time for school to be out, and that she should be in one. She avoided Heiji as she got off the train at their stop, and headed towards his neighborhood.
Through some miracle, Kazuha managed to beat Heiji to his house from the train station. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so miraculous. Sure, she was worn out from chasing him all over Tokyo, but he was probably just as worn out from running all over it in the first place. Nobody was home, so she waited for Heiji to get back. She leaned against the side of the house, trying to look like she had just come from an extremely boring day of school.
Heiji wasn’t too surprised to see her there. He did however, look at her a bit curiously.
“You’re wearing your hair down,” he noted.
“So?” She tried to keep her tone as even and her face as straight as possible. She had completely forgotten about the ribbon. She should have put it back in as soon as she had gotten here.
He shrugged, and let her inside. She accompanied him on a search of the kitchen for snacks that required very little effort to prepare. He was far better at it, but this was his house. He started aimlessly asking about school, and she gave extremely vague answers with barbs about his lack of attendance attached. Perhaps a bit hypocritical, but he had been the one to cut first. But after a while, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She finally decided to just ask him.
At that moment, Heiji was chewing on a mouthful of fish he had found. He said it was leftover from the night before. Kazuha wasn’t touching it unless his mother came home and confirmed that.
“So,” she said casually. “Is Conan really Kudou Shinichi?”
Heiji nearly choked. “How do you know that?”
“So he is!” She felt extremely satisfied, despite just how crazy it all was.
“No, wait– of course not, I meant, why would you think–?” He was grabbing at straws, frantically searching for an explanation. Too bad he’d already dug his own grave.
“You called him Kudou,” said Kazuha smugly. “Just today you—”
Well crap. Now she’d let something slip. She felt silent and shut her mouth very quickly. Heiji stared at her, comprehension dawning on his face.
“Did you follow me?” Kazuha wasn’t sure if Heiji was mad, amused, or some strange combination of the two.
“I was just trying to get you to go back to class,” she said innocently.
“So you followed me into Tokyo.”
“Right.”
Heiji looked at her with something strange in his eyes. It actually looked almost like… admiration.
“I can’t believe you.” He grinned at her.
“Well, I can’t believe you either, so we’ve got something in common. Going to explain any of this to me, or let me guess as it?” She didn’t feel quite so cheerful about all this as he obviously did.
Heiji looked anxious. She wasn’t sure what he was worried about, but it was something, that was for sure. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
She shrugged. She was making no promises.
Kazuha decided, after hearing Heiji’s explanation of the circumstances, that she’d had enough.
“So when,” she demanded with as much ice in her voice as she could muster, “Just when was Kudou-kun going to tell Ran-chan about all of this?”
Heiji squirmed. He looked very uncomfortable. “Honestly? I have no idea. I’m not sure he plans to tell her at all. I mean, it’s his choice, and he’s worried about people finding out, you know? Not to mention Neechan would probably kill him.”
“You know what?” Kazuha felt strangely calm. “She probably would.” Without saying a single word more, she pulled her cell phone out of her shirt pocket, and started to look through her saved numbers.
“Kazuha? What are you doing?” Heiji asked warily.
“Nothing.” She found Ran’s number without too much difficulty and pressed ‘Call’. She put it to her ear, waiting for Ran to pick up.
“Wait, what – who are you calling? Kazuha, if you won’t tell me–”
Ran picked up the phone and gave her a cheerful hello. Kazuha grinned smugly at Heiji.
“Ran-chan! You’ll never believe what Heiji just told me!”
“Kazuha!” Heiji looked on the edge of panic. Actually, he looked like he was about to leap at her for the phone if he had to. He lowered his voice to hiss at her. “Don’t tell her, alright? Don’t tell her about Ku- Aah!” Kazuha had stuck the phone right in front of him, and he had leapt away as if it was poisonous. Still feeling extremely malicious, she started to return the phone to her ear – only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist. Heiji saw an opportunity, and he grabbed at the cell phone. Kazuha twisted out of his grip easily and transferred the phone to her far hand.
“Sorry, Ran-chan! Anyway, about what I was just saying: It’s about–” She was cut off once again as Heiji made another mad grab at the phone. It was a failure, but he nearly knocked her over in the process. “Heiji, stop it!”
“You stop first,” he growled. “Hang up. Right now. Kudou’s going to be pissed if he knows I told you, and he’ll probably murder me if word gets around to Neechan.”
“Well, he sure sounds likeable, doesn’t he?” she shot back. She returned the phone to her ear, and started walking through the house to avoid Heiji’s attempts at phone-theft. “Sorry again! Heiji’s just being an ahou. Again. As usual.” It was rather funny to see Heiji twitch out of the corner of her eye as she spoke. “But what I wanted to say was that I was talking to him—”
There was a quick brushing sound, a clatter, and a whoosh of air, and her cell phone flew out of her hand and through the air. She rounded on Heiji to see him standing in some kind of fighting pose behind her, wielding an umbrella he’d obviously pulled from the little canister by the door, where they all sat to dry off or wait to be used in more everyday circumstances.
“Heiji! What was that for?!”
“You know what it was for,” he retorted. “Stop being such an ahou!”
“Who are you calling an ahou, ahou!” she yelled back. He responded in kind.
In short, everything degenerated into the same argument they’d had about five million times since they were kids. Shouting was very cathartic for both of them.
On the other end of the line, Ran stared at her phone, not entirely sure what to think. But seeing as they were getting into a pleasant shouting match, she doubted that Kazuha would be free to talk all that soon. Sighing, she snapped her phone shut and went back washing dishes – her dad had just left his lunch dishes around for her to clean up. He usually did that, when he didn’t buy a lunch or go out somewhere to eat and drink, which was to say, not very often, but it was still annoying. As she scoured a pan – just what had he burned in this? – she heard the door open and a young voice call out to her.
“I’m home!” Conan poked his head into the kitchen, looking curiously around at what she was doing.
“Welcome back!” she called back. “How was school today?”
Conan proceeded to tell her all about his day, talking all about a story that Mitsuhiko-kun had told him, and a project they were doing in art. Ran listened, asked interested questions, and he answered them with tenfold enthusiasm. It was a nice way to pass the afternoon, she thought. She continued washing dishes, a small smile lighting up her face. Conan always told such good stories about his school day.
Ah, now that I'm posting it I feel nervous! =^_^=
I think this is longer than any other completed fic I've written so far.
But I might end up writing my other idea too, since the deadline got pushed again. And I'm posting this now so that I might be able to write the other one instead of just fussing with this one for forever and a day. So we'll see.
Title: A Trip Through Tokyo (And Its Consequences)
Word count: 4,816
Rating: PG, I suppose, for a bit of swearing.
Characters: Heiji, Kazuha, Conan, Ran
Quote:
Kazuha was fuming.
Again.
It had happened again. Heiji had grunted something like: “Phone. Sorry,” at her, and ditched her without another backward glance. And it was about five minutes before they had to be in class. What was he thinking, running off to talk right before school? It might not be so bad, she supposed, if he didn’t Do. It. All. The. Time. As if she didn’t know just who it was that Heiji was always chatting to over the phone.
She took that back. She didn’t know who it was that Heiji was having such long phone conversations with. But she knew what kind of person it was.
A girl.
She was sure of it. She’d heard him asking if his mysterious conversationalist was free to talk; if “it” was still a secret. Kazuha had a pretty good idea of just what “it” was, too.
She felt like she couldn’t let him leave his own house without keeping an eye on him. Maybe it was a bit extreme to go with him everywhere, and invite herself on all his detective-business trips to Tokyo, but she felt strangely justified. She’d grown up with Heiji; she deserved to get to meet this mysterious girl. It still rattled her to think about it. Heiji was dating and hadn’t even told her about it.
So if she managed to meet this girl at some point while tagging along on Heiji’s adventures, great. And if her presence was so annoying that it prevented him from meeting up with his girlfriend, that was what he deserved it for not telling her he was dating someone in the first place.
And for making her wait for him all the time. Once more, she was standing with her arms crossed, feeling very irritated, in the middle of the school steps as people hurried past her and into the halls, footsteps starting to echo just as they passed the threshold. She could just barely see Heiji facing away from her, leaning against a tree just on the inside of the school gate.
For a few minutes, she just stood there, checking her watch about once every fifteen seconds as the flow of people gradually thinned around her. Heiji talked away, oblivious to all of it and nodding and moving his arms a bit as he talked to someone who couldn’t see him anyway. He did that all the time when he talked on the phone. Obviously, that was whenever he needed to be somewhere.
Kazuha’s simmering anger finally boiled over. That was it, she decided, as a group of guys started up the stairs. She’d had it. Barging through the crowd, (and incidentally, practically sending the smallest kid flying) she marched straight across to Heiji. She reached the tree he was leaning against, put her hands on her hips, and opened her mouth to say something…
Just as he was hanging up. Damn it.
“Who was that? We’re almost late; come on.” Heiji jumped when she spoke. In her head, she congratulated herself for acting so calm and mature, and managing to make Heiji jump.
Behind her, a few boys were helping their rather battered friend to his feet.
“Nothing.” Heiji was distracted, she could tell that much. He wasn’t looking at her, but instead peering at the guys behind her (now heading inside), the door to the hallway, the gate…
She waved a hand in front of his face, which focused perhaps some fragment of his attention on her.
“I said who, not what,” she reminded him.
He shrugged, and shuffled through his school bag, looking for something. “Whatever. Hey, tell Sensei I’m sick or something?” He pulled out his cap and tugged it on, with the bill pointed backwards. “I have to go.”
Kazuh did a double-take. “What? Heiji, wait, where are you going?” She was dimly aware that they were the only ones left outside, the last stragglers having just disappeared into the halls. Heiji was walking straight out the gate. “We have class! What’s wrong with you?”
He spun around to face her, looking about as irritated and hurried as she felt. “Nothing, ahou! It’s a case, okay?” And with not another word or look, he disappeared around the corner.
A few moments passed as Kazuha stared disbelievingly at the gate.
A case. Sure. It was a bit late her to fall for that. She knew he was hiding something from her, and truly wondered if he really expected her to believe everything he told her. She was tired of pretending to – she wanted to know what was really going on for a change.
The bell rang noisily behind her. She called it a few names in her head. She hated being late to class. She avoided it whenever possible. But really, that meant there was only one option left, if you thought about it at all. Kazuha decided to call it a sign from fate – she pulled her school bag into a more secure position on her shoulder, and sped out of the gate in search of Heiji.
* * *
It wasn’t very difficult to catch up with him. It wasn’t like he could get very far in less than a minute. But she hadn’t really caught up with him. Instead, she had started following about a block behind, and across the street, so of course, he hadn’t seen her. It was something she felt awfully smug about, on the rare occasions when she tried to sneak around Heiji. Hattori Heiji, famous detective of the West that he was, could never notice when she was tailing him.
Quite predictably, he headed towards the train station. She felt rather vindictively satisfied. She had noticed that he had been going on a lot of trips lately. Once she knew where he was headed, she allowed herself to follow less closely. And as she relaxed, she found it very pleasant to be outside of school, taking a walk and out to discover something. The sky was bright, the sun was rising high, and she had a mystery to solve. Not that she expected the discovery itself to be at all pleasant, but there was something wonderful about finding it out for herself.
Maybe she was spending too much time around Heiji.
Or maybe definitely, she corrected herself. She doubted that she would ever have considered tailing somebody if it weren’t for the ahou and his stupid detective obsession.
As they reached the station, the ahou in question came into sight once again, in a gap in the crowd. He was buying his ticket. Kazuha squinted to see which button he pressed, and barely avoided smacking straight into a couple walking in the other direction. Third row, second button from the left. She recited it in her head, dodging past another few people and heading for the ticket machine. She reached for second button from the left, in the third row. It was marked with the price, and “Student Ticket – Tokyo Area –Haido Station”.
She had just known it would be Tokyo. Despite her good mood a minute ago, there was a bitter taste in her mouth. Pressing the button a bit harder than absolutely necessary, she paid for her ticket and grabbed it out of the slot where it appeared, returning to the chase.
She didn’t have to wait long on the platform for a train to show up. As it pulled up to the station and screeched to a stop, Kazuha noted which car Heiji got on and got onto the one next to it. Avoiding him the whole ride would just be a bother.
She was careful not to draw attention to herself, but she still got a few strange looks for her school uniform. She supposed that it was obvious that she was cutting class. The ride was long, boring, and extremely awkward. She made herself ignore the stares and slight frowns she got from other passengers. Fortunately, when the train finally stopped, everyone was much too occupied with getting off, getting on, and making room for everyone moving around to pay much attention to a teenage girl ditching school.
Kazuha caught sight of Heiji as she left the train. He didn’t notice her, but quickened his pace suddenly, as if to greet someone. Kazuha craned her neck and saw… Conan-kun?
She stared. The crowd moved relentlessly around her. She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open, and she was getting a lot of weird looks again.
But she couldn’t see why in the world Heiji would have ditched school to visit a little kid. Especially a little kid that should have been in school himself.
She admitted to herself that this didn’t quite reach the scale of “mysterious Tokyo girlfriend”, but there was still a mystery here, a case that just demanded to be solved…
Yep, she’d been spending way too much time around Heiji. She seriously considered smacking herself in the head and turning around that instant. But she couldn’t really think of something else to do, so she decided she might as well keep tagging along.
The two of them – Heiji and Conan, that is – moved through the crowd and out of the station. Kazuha followed, trailing the both of them. As they walked, she gradually realized that Heiji and Conan were getting even more strange looks than she was. She frowned. Why wasn’t Conan in school? It was one thing for Heiji to skip; he did it all the time. But to drag a little kid with him…
Conan seemed to stiffen under her gaze. Acting under pure instinct, Kazuha dodged over to the front of a restaurant just as Conan whipped around, searching the crowds behind him. She pretended to be intent on looking over a menu posted by the door. She felt like she was trying to balance on a razor’s edge. She was thoroughly convinced that she had been seen, but nobody approached her or said anything to her. Still, that was the second time that the kid had nearly caught her following Heiji, and the first time, he hadn’t even known her.
When nobody had started tugging at her sleeve or shouting in her ear, she supposed that her cover was probably still intact. She moved away from the restaurant, and in a few seconds, caught sight of Conan and Heiji’s retreating backs. She hurried after them, tugging the ribbon out of her hair. If she had to hide again, she did not want the back of her head to be at all recognizable, and she wore a ribbon tied in the exact same way so often, it was almost a distinctive feature. She knew that Heiji would never catch her – he never had before, and she suspected that he was not anywhere near as observant as he claimed he was. But she was taking no chances with Conan, even if it meant being a bit paranoid.
She continued to follow them, but she only looked at them out of the corner of her eye, and was careful to watch Heiji, not Conan. Not that it was very easy to see Conan in anything remotely resembling a crowd, and only, let’s say, most of Tokyo and the surrounding area tended to resemble a crowd. Of course, it was to her advantage. If she couldn’t see Conan, he couldn’t see her, and a crowd was easier for her to hide in than an empty street.
Unfortunately for her, the duo led her on to successively less and less crowded streets. She was forced to follow even further behind, and as she turned one last corner, she could distinctly see them stopped partway down the block. She immediately corrected her course and started to cross the street instead. It would be pretty bad if they just stood there and she ended up walking into them.
Heiji was crouched down a bit, squatting to Conan’s level and talking intently (and for once, quietly) to him. She forced her self to look forward. Nobody looked sideways when crossing a crosswalk – not for any length of time, anyway. They just glanced one way and then the other.
Once she reached the other side of the street, she chanced a look back in their direction, while pretending to read a sign, prohibiting smoking – apparently it still got crowded enough around here on occasion to warrant smoking regulation. Heiji was standing up again. Conan nodded decisively, said something, and the two of them walked into a small office building.
She looked around a bit and, finding a nearby bus stop, went over to check the times. None of them were very soon, so she decided to wait there for a little while. She sat down and tilted her head just so, so that she had a clear view of the building that Heiji and Conan had disappeared into.
She didn’t have long to wait. Barely five minutes had passed when the two of them reappeared, walking fast and looking worried. Kazuha stood up to follow them, noticing that Conan was clutching a handful of papers. He was almost running, to match Heiji’s long stride. Kazuha edged through the crowd, and broke into a fast walk to keep up.
* * *
Conan and Heiji had just reached the corner of a busy thoroughfare when a scream pierced through the air. By the time Kazuha got to the same corner, all she could see of them was a glimpse of their backs as they disappeared into a nearby shop. Not again. Why did this always happen? She sighed and flopped down onto the first bench she could see. She tried to think of the positives. Well, for one thing, at least this time she didn’t have to see the body. She also could be pretty sure of where Heiji and Conan would be for the next couple of hours, at least.
And, fairly predictably, it was about a couple of hours before all of the police were gone. But it was only an hour before Heiji and Conan ran straight past her, scaring the living daylights out of her and setting her in a rush to follow without looking suspicious.
It was difficult. How did one look like one wasn’t following anyone when the person one was following was the only one on the entire street trying to run a marathon? She walked as fast as she could, and even started to jog a bit as they pulled away from her and started to get lost in the crowd, holding her school bag as close as possible to stop it from bouncing around and getting in her way. The crowd jostled her as she pushed forward. Occasionally, she would get a glimpse of Heiji’s cap through the mass of people, and she would set off towards it as fast as she could, and keep going in that direction even when she lost sight of it again. She thought she saw it peek through the crowd, and turn a corner. She broke into a run, rounding the corner and scanning the area for Heiji, or maybe Conan.
She couldn’t see either of them. Starting to panic now, she continued the way she had turned, hoping that they had gone this way. What if they hadn’t turned at all, and she had only imagined it? Another thought made her freeze, forcing people to move around her and slow down the flow of the sidewalk. What if she didn’t see them, and accidentally overtook them? What if she practically bumped into one of them? She felt extremely vulnerable, simply not knowing where they were.
More out of nerves than anything else, she kept walking. It hit her that she was very much alone. She’d never gone to Tokyo by herself before, or anywhere much really. It was probably ironic. Here she was, in the middle of as many people as there were grains of sand on a beach, and she was alone because she wasn’t sure of her ability to keep her distance properly from two of them.
The buildings towering over her opened up a bit as she kept walking. The sky grew to fill more and more of the world above her, almost meeting the horizon in front of her. She realized that she was headed in the direction of a bridge – maybe Haido bridge, she really wasn’t sure. She wondered if Conan and Heiji had crossed, or if they were going somewhere near the river.
The street she was on turned into the bridge-crossing, so she veered off, heading across a street that ran alongside the river, and down to the riverbank. It was just as she gave up on looking for Heiji and Conan, turning to walk by the river for a bit, that she found them again. They were just under the end of the bridge, out of sight from most angles, thanks to the road and landscaping blocking them from one direction, and a couple of thick support pillars blocking them from the other. Thankfully, they were both facing away from her, because Kazuha probably gaped at them for an hour upon turning around to find them again, less than twenty meters away.
A rough-looking bush had somehow managed to grow in the strip of land between the river and the city. She moved so that she was mostly hidden by it, but could still see them. She was pretty close to them, but she wasn’t too worried – it didn’t look like the boys would be turning around any time soon. Heiji was perched on top of a tall pile of rocks, debris, and chunks of concrete, holding out a few large sheets of creased paper and trying not to drop them as Conan balanced on his shoulders, one foot on each, and tinkered with something affixed to the bottom of the bridge. It all looked very precarious, like it might all fall down at a moment’s notice.
After watching for a bit, Kazuha registered a very faint blinking light coming from the whatever-it-was, and realized that Conan was holding a small pair of scissors. Heiji’s voice drifted across to her in an unintelligible murmur, and things clicked. They were probably just disarming a bomb or something.
That probably should have bothered her more than it did. As it was, all she found slightly worrisome was why they hadn’t told the police back at the murder scene. But she shrugged that off, and ended up convincing herself that she was quite bored sitting there and watching Conan and Heiji neutralize explosives.
Kazuha could tell the exact moment when they finished. They both relaxed in the same instant. Or anyway, Conan let his shoulders fall a bit and let out a breath, whereas Heiji picked the kid up off his own shoulders and spun him around a bit as he carried them both down the pile he’d been using as a footstool. Conan looked extremely ruffled upon being put down – all dignity and injured pride. Heiji just laughed at him, and went about scattering the contents of the pile around a bit as Conan packed the papers and scissors in his little backpack. They both took one last look around at the scene, apparently satisfied, and walked off.
Kazuha waited a little bit to follow, in case they looked back. Back in pursuit, she was a little disappointed when she realized they were headed back to the train station. Nothing particularly interesting had happened – at least nothing that was much different from usual, for Heiji. Feeling a bit disheartened, she stuck close to them as they entered the station and Heiji bought his ticket back to Osaka. She caught snatches of conversation, but nothing intelligible until Heiji started to leave. Conan started to turn around, but Heiji called back to him.
“Hey, Kudou!” Conan turn reluctantly back around, looking thoroughly annoyed about something. “Give me a little bit more warning next time when you need a hand, okay?”
Conan said something that she couldn’t quite hear, but she personally thought it probably had to do with how last minute Heiji always was with making plans to visit. Or at least that was what she pointed out to herself in the back of her head. The rest of her mind was trying to wrap itself around the fact hat Heiji had quite unmistakably just called Conan ‘Kudou’. She wasn’t exactly sure what to think. It would certainly explain a few things about the kid, she supposed, although accepting it as an explanation just raised a whole bunch of other unpleasant questions.
She waited until Conan was safely out of the way, and then hurried after Heiji, taking the same train back to Osaka. The ride back was very similar to the ride there, although there weren’t quite as many strange looks. People probably didn’t even think of the fact that it still wasn’t quite time for school to be out, and that she should be in one. She avoided Heiji as she got off the train at their stop, and headed towards his neighborhood.
Through some miracle, Kazuha managed to beat Heiji to his house from the train station. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so miraculous. Sure, she was worn out from chasing him all over Tokyo, but he was probably just as worn out from running all over it in the first place. Nobody was home, so she waited for Heiji to get back. She leaned against the side of the house, trying to look like she had just come from an extremely boring day of school.
Heiji wasn’t too surprised to see her there. He did however, look at her a bit curiously.
“You’re wearing your hair down,” he noted.
“So?” She tried to keep her tone as even and her face as straight as possible. She had completely forgotten about the ribbon. She should have put it back in as soon as she had gotten here.
He shrugged, and let her inside. She accompanied him on a search of the kitchen for snacks that required very little effort to prepare. He was far better at it, but this was his house. He started aimlessly asking about school, and she gave extremely vague answers with barbs about his lack of attendance attached. Perhaps a bit hypocritical, but he had been the one to cut first. But after a while, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She finally decided to just ask him.
At that moment, Heiji was chewing on a mouthful of fish he had found. He said it was leftover from the night before. Kazuha wasn’t touching it unless his mother came home and confirmed that.
“So,” she said casually. “Is Conan really Kudou Shinichi?”
Heiji nearly choked. “How do you know that?”
“So he is!” She felt extremely satisfied, despite just how crazy it all was.
“No, wait– of course not, I meant, why would you think–?” He was grabbing at straws, frantically searching for an explanation. Too bad he’d already dug his own grave.
“You called him Kudou,” said Kazuha smugly. “Just today you—”
Well crap. Now she’d let something slip. She felt silent and shut her mouth very quickly. Heiji stared at her, comprehension dawning on his face.
“Did you follow me?” Kazuha wasn’t sure if Heiji was mad, amused, or some strange combination of the two.
“I was just trying to get you to go back to class,” she said innocently.
“So you followed me into Tokyo.”
“Right.”
Heiji looked at her with something strange in his eyes. It actually looked almost like… admiration.
“I can’t believe you.” He grinned at her.
“Well, I can’t believe you either, so we’ve got something in common. Going to explain any of this to me, or let me guess as it?” She didn’t feel quite so cheerful about all this as he obviously did.
Heiji looked anxious. She wasn’t sure what he was worried about, but it was something, that was for sure. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
She shrugged. She was making no promises.
* * *
Kazuha decided, after hearing Heiji’s explanation of the circumstances, that she’d had enough.
“So when,” she demanded with as much ice in her voice as she could muster, “Just when was Kudou-kun going to tell Ran-chan about all of this?”
Heiji squirmed. He looked very uncomfortable. “Honestly? I have no idea. I’m not sure he plans to tell her at all. I mean, it’s his choice, and he’s worried about people finding out, you know? Not to mention Neechan would probably kill him.”
“You know what?” Kazuha felt strangely calm. “She probably would.” Without saying a single word more, she pulled her cell phone out of her shirt pocket, and started to look through her saved numbers.
“Kazuha? What are you doing?” Heiji asked warily.
“Nothing.” She found Ran’s number without too much difficulty and pressed ‘Call’. She put it to her ear, waiting for Ran to pick up.
“Wait, what – who are you calling? Kazuha, if you won’t tell me–”
Ran picked up the phone and gave her a cheerful hello. Kazuha grinned smugly at Heiji.
“Ran-chan! You’ll never believe what Heiji just told me!”
“Kazuha!” Heiji looked on the edge of panic. Actually, he looked like he was about to leap at her for the phone if he had to. He lowered his voice to hiss at her. “Don’t tell her, alright? Don’t tell her about Ku- Aah!” Kazuha had stuck the phone right in front of him, and he had leapt away as if it was poisonous. Still feeling extremely malicious, she started to return the phone to her ear – only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist. Heiji saw an opportunity, and he grabbed at the cell phone. Kazuha twisted out of his grip easily and transferred the phone to her far hand.
“Sorry, Ran-chan! Anyway, about what I was just saying: It’s about–” She was cut off once again as Heiji made another mad grab at the phone. It was a failure, but he nearly knocked her over in the process. “Heiji, stop it!”
“You stop first,” he growled. “Hang up. Right now. Kudou’s going to be pissed if he knows I told you, and he’ll probably murder me if word gets around to Neechan.”
“Well, he sure sounds likeable, doesn’t he?” she shot back. She returned the phone to her ear, and started walking through the house to avoid Heiji’s attempts at phone-theft. “Sorry again! Heiji’s just being an ahou. Again. As usual.” It was rather funny to see Heiji twitch out of the corner of her eye as she spoke. “But what I wanted to say was that I was talking to him—”
There was a quick brushing sound, a clatter, and a whoosh of air, and her cell phone flew out of her hand and through the air. She rounded on Heiji to see him standing in some kind of fighting pose behind her, wielding an umbrella he’d obviously pulled from the little canister by the door, where they all sat to dry off or wait to be used in more everyday circumstances.
“Heiji! What was that for?!”
“You know what it was for,” he retorted. “Stop being such an ahou!”
“Who are you calling an ahou, ahou!” she yelled back. He responded in kind.
In short, everything degenerated into the same argument they’d had about five million times since they were kids. Shouting was very cathartic for both of them.
* * *
On the other end of the line, Ran stared at her phone, not entirely sure what to think. But seeing as they were getting into a pleasant shouting match, she doubted that Kazuha would be free to talk all that soon. Sighing, she snapped her phone shut and went back washing dishes – her dad had just left his lunch dishes around for her to clean up. He usually did that, when he didn’t buy a lunch or go out somewhere to eat and drink, which was to say, not very often, but it was still annoying. As she scoured a pan – just what had he burned in this? – she heard the door open and a young voice call out to her.
“I’m home!” Conan poked his head into the kitchen, looking curiously around at what she was doing.
“Welcome back!” she called back. “How was school today?”
Conan proceeded to tell her all about his day, talking all about a story that Mitsuhiko-kun had told him, and a project they were doing in art. Ran listened, asked interested questions, and he answered them with tenfold enthusiasm. It was a nice way to pass the afternoon, she thought. She continued washing dishes, a small smile lighting up her face. Conan always told such good stories about his school day.
Ah, now that I'm posting it I feel nervous! =^_^=
I think this is longer than any other completed fic I've written so far.
Kirksome
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- Posted: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:33:52 +0000
olive17
Ah, I don't know how well this turned out, but oh well. xD
But I might end up writing my other idea too, since the deadline got pushed again. And I'm posting this now so that I might be able to write the other one instead of just fussing with this one for forever and a day. So we'll see.
Title: A Trip Through Tokyo (And Its Consequences)
Word count: 4,816
Rating: PG, I suppose, for a bit of swearing.
Characters: Heiji, Kazuha, Conan, Ran
Kazuha was fuming.
Again.
It had happened again. Heiji had grunted something like: “Phone. Sorry,” at her, and ditched her without another backward glance. And it was about five minutes before they had to be in class. What was he thinking, running off to talk right before school? It might not be so bad, she supposed, if he didn’t Do. It. All. The. Time. As if she didn’t know just who it was that Heiji was always chatting to over the phone.
She took that back. She didn’t know who it was that Heiji was having such long phone conversations with. But she knew what kind of person it was.
A girl.
She was sure of it. She’d heard him asking if his mysterious conversationalist was free to talk; if “it” was still a secret. Kazuha had a pretty good idea of just what “it” was, too.
She felt like she couldn’t let him leave his own house without keeping an eye on him. Maybe it was a bit extreme to go with him everywhere, and invite herself on all his detective-business trips to Tokyo, but she felt strangely justified. She’d grown up with Heiji; she deserved to get to meet this mysterious girl. It still rattled her to think about it. Heiji was dating and hadn’t even told her about it.
So if she managed to meet this girl at some point while tagging along on Heiji’s adventures, great. And if her presence was so annoying that it prevented him from meeting up with his girlfriend, that was what he deserved it for not telling her he was dating someone in the first place.
And for making her wait for him all the time. Once more, she was standing with her arms crossed, feeling very irritated, in the middle of the school steps as people hurried past her and into the halls, footsteps starting to echo just as they passed the threshold. She could just barely see Heiji facing away from her, leaning against a tree just on the inside of the school gate.
For a few minutes, she just stood there, checking her watch about once every fifteen seconds as the flow of people gradually thinned around her. Heiji talked away, oblivious to all of it and nodding and moving his arms a bit as he talked to someone who couldn’t see him anyway. He did that all the time when he talked on the phone. Obviously, that was whenever he needed to be somewhere.
Kazuha’s simmering anger finally boiled over. That was it, she decided, as a group of guys started up the stairs. She’d had it. Barging through the crowd, (and incidentally, practically sending the smallest kid flying) she marched straight across to Heiji. She reached the tree he was leaning against, put her hands on her hips, and opened her mouth to say something…
Just as he was hanging up. Damn it.
“Who was that? We’re almost late; come on.” Heiji jumped when she spoke. In her head, she congratulated herself for acting so calm and mature, and managing to make Heiji jump.
Behind her, a few boys were helping their rather battered friend to his feet.
“Nothing.” Heiji was distracted, she could tell that much. He wasn’t looking at her, but instead peering at the guys behind her (now heading inside), the door to the hallway, the gate…
She waved a hand in front of his face, which focused perhaps some fragment of his attention on her.
“I said who, not what,” she reminded him.
He shrugged, and shuffled through his school bag, looking for something. “Whatever. Hey, tell Sensei I’m sick or something?” He pulled out his cap and tugged it on, with the bill pointed backwards. “I have to go.”
Kazuh did a double-take. “What? Heiji, wait, where are you going?” She was dimly aware that they were the only ones left outside, the last stragglers having just disappeared into the halls. Heiji was walking straight out the gate. “We have class! What’s wrong with you?”
He spun around to face her, looking about as irritated and hurried as she felt. “Nothing, ahou! It’s a case, okay?” And with not another word or look, he disappeared around the corner.
A few moments passed as Kazuha stared disbelievingly at the gate.
A case. Sure. It was a bit late her to fall for that. She knew he was hiding something from her, and truly wondered if he really expected her to believe everything he told her. She was tired of pretending to – she wanted to know what was really going on for a change.
The bell rang noisily behind her. She called it a few names in her head. She hated being late to class. She avoided it whenever possible. But really, that meant there was only one option left, if you thought about it at all. Kazuha decided to call it a sign from fate – she pulled her school bag into a more secure position on her shoulder, and sped out of the gate in search of Heiji.
It wasn’t very difficult to catch up with him. It wasn’t like he could get very far in less than a minute. But she hadn’t really caught up with him. Instead, she had started following about a block behind, and across the street, so of course, he hadn’t seen her. It was something she felt awfully smug about, on the rare occasions when she tried to sneak around Heiji. Hattori Heiji, famous detective of the West that he was, could never notice when she was tailing him.
Quite predictably, he headed towards the train station. She felt rather vindictively satisfied. She had noticed that he had been going on a lot of trips lately. Once she knew where he was headed, she allowed herself to follow less closely. And as she relaxed, she found it very pleasant to be outside of school, taking a walk and out to discover something. The sky was bright, the sun was rising high, and she had a mystery to solve. Not that she expected the discovery itself to be at all pleasant, but there was something wonderful about finding it out for herself.
Maybe she was spending too much time around Heiji.
Or maybe definitely, she corrected herself. She doubted that she would ever have considered tailing somebody if it weren’t for the ahou and his stupid detective obsession.
As they reached the station, the ahou in question came into sight once again, in a gap in the crowd. He was buying his ticket. Kazuha squinted to see which button he pressed, and barely avoided smacking straight into a couple walking in the other direction. Third row, second button from the left. She recited it in her head, dodging past another few people and heading for the ticket machine. She reached for second button from the left, in the third row. It was marked with the price, and “Student Ticket – Tokyo Area –Haido Station”.
She had just known it would be Tokyo. Despite her good mood a minute ago, there was a bitter taste in her mouth. Pressing the button a bit harder than absolutely necessary, she paid for her ticket and grabbed it out of the slot where it appeared, returning to the chase.
She didn’t have to wait long on the platform for a train to show up. As it pulled up to the station and screeched to a stop, Kazuha noted which car Heiji got on and got onto the one next to it. Avoiding him the whole ride would just be a bother.
She was careful not to draw attention to herself, but she still got a few strange looks for her school uniform. She supposed that it was obvious that she was cutting class. The ride was long, boring, and extremely awkward. She made herself ignore the stares and slight frowns she got from other passengers. Fortunately, when the train finally stopped, everyone was much too occupied with getting off, getting on, and making room for everyone moving around to pay much attention to a teenage girl ditching school.
Kazuha caught sight of Heiji as she left the train. He didn’t notice her, but quickened his pace suddenly, as if to greet someone. Kazuha craned her neck and saw… Conan-kun?
She stared. The crowd moved relentlessly around her. She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open, and she was getting a lot of weird looks again.
But she couldn’t see why in the world Heiji would have ditched school to visit a little kid. Especially a little kid that should have been in school himself.
She admitted to herself that this didn’t quite reach the scale of “mysterious Tokyo girlfriend”, but there was still a mystery here, a case that just demanded to be solved…
Yep, she’d been spending way too much time around Heiji. She seriously considered smacking herself in the head and turning around that instant. But she couldn’t really think of something else to do, so she decided she might as well keep tagging along.
The two of them – Heiji and Conan, that is – moved through the crowd and out of the station. Kazuha followed, trailing the both of them. As they walked, she gradually realized that Heiji and Conan were getting even more strange looks than she was. She frowned. Why wasn’t Conan in school? It was one thing for Heiji to skip; he did it all the time. But to drag a little kid with him…
Conan seemed to stiffen under her gaze. Acting under pure instinct, Kazuha dodged over to the front of a restaurant just as Conan whipped around, searching the crowds behind him. She pretended to be intent on looking over a menu posted by the door. She felt like she was trying to balance on a razor’s edge. She was thoroughly convinced that she had been seen, but nobody approached her or said anything to her. Still, that was the second time that the kid had nearly caught her following Heiji, and the first time, he hadn’t even known her.
When nobody had started tugging at her sleeve or shouting in her ear, she supposed that her cover was probably still intact. She moved away from the restaurant, and in a few seconds, caught sight of Conan and Heiji’s retreating backs. She hurried after them, tugging the ribbon out of her hair. If she had to hide again, she did not want the back of her head to be at all recognizable, and she wore a ribbon tied in the exact same way so often, it was almost a distinctive feature. She knew that Heiji would never catch her – he never had before, and she suspected that he was not anywhere near as observant as he claimed he was. But she was taking no chances with Conan, even if it meant being a bit paranoid.
She continued to follow them, but she only looked at them out of the corner of her eye, and was careful to watch Heiji, not Conan. Not that it was very easy to see Conan in anything remotely resembling a crowd, and only, let’s say, most of Tokyo and the surrounding area tended to resemble a crowd. Of course, it was to her advantage. If she couldn’t see Conan, he couldn’t see her, and a crowd was easier for her to hide in than an empty street.
Unfortunately for her, the duo led her on to successively less and less crowded streets. She was forced to follow even further behind, and as she turned one last corner, she could distinctly see them stopped partway down the block. She immediately corrected her course and started to cross the street instead. It would be pretty bad if they just stood there and she ended up walking into them.
Heiji was crouched down a bit, squatting to Conan’s level and talking intently (and for once, quietly) to him. She forced her self to look forward. Nobody looked sideways when crossing a crosswalk – not for any length of time, anyway. They just glanced one way and then the other.
Once she reached the other side of the street, she chanced a look back in their direction, while pretending to read a sign, prohibiting smoking – apparently it still got crowded enough around here on occasion to warrant smoking regulation. Heiji was standing up again. Conan nodded decisively, said something, and the two of them walked into a small office building.
She looked around a bit and, finding a nearby bus stop, went over to check the times. None of them were very soon, so she decided to wait there for a little while. She sat down and tilted her head just so, so that she had a clear view of the building that Heiji and Conan had disappeared into.
She didn’t have long to wait. Barely five minutes had passed when the two of them reappeared, walking fast and looking worried. Kazuha stood up to follow them, noticing that Conan was clutching a handful of papers. He was almost running, to match Heiji’s long stride. Kazuha edged through the crowd, and broke into a fast walk to keep up.
Conan and Heiji had just reached the corner of a busy thoroughfare when a scream pierced through the air. By the time Kazuha got to the same corner, all she could see of them was a glimpse of their backs as they disappeared into a nearby shop. Not again. Why did this always happen? She sighed and flopped down onto the first bench she could see. She tried to think of the positives. Well, for one thing, at least this time she didn’t have to see the body. She also could be pretty sure of where Heiji and Conan would be for the next couple of hours, at least.
And, fairly predictably, it was about a couple of hours before all of the police were gone. But it was only an hour before Heiji and Conan ran straight past her, scaring the living daylights out of her and setting her in a rush to follow without looking suspicious.
It was difficult. How did one look like one wasn’t following anyone when the person one was following was the only one on the entire street trying to run a marathon? She walked as fast as she could, and even started to jog a bit as they pulled away from her and started to get lost in the crowd, holding her school bag as close as possible to stop it from bouncing around and getting in her way. The crowd jostled her as she pushed forward. Occasionally, she would get a glimpse of Heiji’s cap through the mass of people, and she would set off towards it as fast as she could, and keep going in that direction even when she lost sight of it again. She thought she saw it peek through the crowd, and turn a corner. She broke into a run, rounding the corner and scanning the area for Heiji, or maybe Conan.
She couldn’t see either of them. Starting to panic now, she continued the way she had turned, hoping that they had gone this way. What if they hadn’t turned at all, and she had only imagined it? Another thought made her freeze, forcing people to move around her and slow down the flow of the sidewalk. What if she didn’t see them, and accidentally overtook them? What if she practically bumped into one of them? She felt extremely vulnerable, simply not knowing where they were.
More out of nerves than anything else, she kept walking. It hit her that she was very much alone. She’d never gone to Tokyo by herself before, or anywhere much really. It was probably ironic. Here she was, in the middle of as many people as there were grains of sand on a beach, and she was alone because she wasn’t sure of her ability to keep her distance properly from two of them.
The buildings towering over her opened up a bit as she kept walking. The sky grew to fill more and more of the world above her, almost meeting the horizon in front of her. She realized that she was headed in the direction of a bridge – maybe Haido bridge, she really wasn’t sure. She wondered if Conan and Heiji had crossed, or if they were going somewhere near the river.
The street she was on turned into the bridge-crossing, so she veered off, heading across a street that ran alongside the river, and down to the riverbank. It was just as she gave up on looking for Heiji and Conan, turning to walk by the river for a bit, that she found them again. They were just under the end of the bridge, out of sight from most angles, thanks to the road and landscaping blocking them from one direction, and a couple of thick support pillars blocking them from the other. Thankfully, they were both facing away from her, because Kazuha probably gaped at them for an hour upon turning around to find them again, less than twenty meters away.
A rough-looking bush had somehow managed to grow in the strip of land between the river and the city. She moved so that she was mostly hidden by it, but could still see them. She was pretty close to them, but she wasn’t too worried – it didn’t look like the boys would be turning around any time soon. Heiji was perched on top of a tall pile of rocks, debris, and chunks of concrete, holding out a few large sheets of creased paper and trying not to drop them as Conan balanced on his shoulders, one foot on each, and tinkered with something affixed to the bottom of the bridge. It all looked very precarious, like it might all fall down at a moment’s notice.
After watching for a bit, Kazuha registered a very faint blinking light coming from the whatever-it-was, and realized that Conan was holding a small pair of scissors. Heiji’s voice drifted across to her in an unintelligible murmur, and things clicked. They were probably just disarming a bomb or something.
That probably should have bothered her more than it did. As it was, all she found slightly worrisome was why they hadn’t told the police back at the murder scene. But she shrugged that off, and ended up convincing herself that she was quite bored sitting there and watching Conan and Heiji neutralize explosives.
Kazuha could tell the exact moment when they finished. They both relaxed in the same instant. Or anyway, Conan let his shoulders fall a bit and let out a breath, whereas Heiji picked the kid up off his own shoulders and spun him around a bit as he carried them both down the pile he’d been using as a footstool. Conan looked extremely ruffled upon being put down – all dignity and injured pride. Heiji just laughed at him, and went about scattering the contents of the pile around a bit as Conan packed the papers and scissors in his little backpack. They both took one last look around at the scene, apparently satisfied, and walked off.
Kazuha waited a little bit to follow, in case they looked back. Back in pursuit, she was a little disappointed when she realized they were headed back to the train station. Nothing particularly interesting had happened – at least nothing that was much different from usual, for Heiji. Feeling a bit disheartened, she stuck close to them as they entered the station and Heiji bought his ticket back to Osaka. She caught snatches of conversation, but nothing intelligible until Heiji started to leave. Conan started to turn around, but Heiji called back to him.
“Hey, Kudou!” Conan turn reluctantly back around, looking thoroughly annoyed about something. “Give me a little bit more warning next time when you need a hand, okay?”
Conan said something that she couldn’t quite hear, but she personally thought it probably had to do with how last minute Heiji always was with making plans to visit. Or at least that was what she pointed out to herself in the back of her head. The rest of her mind was trying to wrap itself around the fact hat Heiji had quite unmistakably just called Conan ‘Kudou’. She wasn’t exactly sure what to think. It would certainly explain a few things about the kid, she supposed, although accepting it as an explanation just raised a whole bunch of other unpleasant questions.
She waited until Conan was safely out of the way, and then hurried after Heiji, taking the same train back to Osaka. The ride back was very similar to the ride there, although there weren’t quite as many strange looks. People probably didn’t even think of the fact that it still wasn’t quite time for school to be out, and that she should be in one. She avoided Heiji as she got off the train at their stop, and headed towards his neighborhood.
Through some miracle, Kazuha managed to beat Heiji to his house from the train station. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so miraculous. Sure, she was worn out from chasing him all over Tokyo, but he was probably just as worn out from running all over it in the first place. Nobody was home, so she waited for Heiji to get back. She leaned against the side of the house, trying to look like she had just come from an extremely boring day of school.
Heiji wasn’t too surprised to see her there. He did however, look at her a bit curiously.
“You’re wearing your hair down,” he noted.
“So?” She tried to keep her tone as even and her face as straight as possible. She had completely forgotten about the ribbon. She should have put it back in as soon as she had gotten here.
He shrugged, and let her inside. She accompanied him on a search of the kitchen for snacks that required very little effort to prepare. He was far better at it, but this was his house. He started aimlessly asking about school, and she gave extremely vague answers with barbs about his lack of attendance attached. Perhaps a bit hypocritical, but he had been the one to cut first. But after a while, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She finally decided to just ask him.
At that moment, Heiji was chewing on a mouthful of fish he had found. He said it was leftover from the night before. Kazuha wasn’t touching it unless his mother came home and confirmed that.
“So,” she said casually. “Is Conan really Kudou Shinichi?”
Heiji nearly choked. “How do you know that?”
“So he is!” She felt extremely satisfied, despite just how crazy it all was.
“No, wait– of course not, I meant, why would you think–?” He was grabbing at straws, frantically searching for an explanation. Too bad he’d already dug his own grave.
“You called him Kudou,” said Kazuha smugly. “Just today you—”
Well crap. Now she’d let something slip. She felt silent and shut her mouth very quickly. Heiji stared at her, comprehension dawning on his face.
“Did you follow me?” Kazuha wasn’t sure if Heiji was mad, amused, or some strange combination of the two.
“I was just trying to get you to go back to class,” she said innocently.
“So you followed me into Tokyo.”
“Right.”
Heiji looked at her with something strange in his eyes. It actually looked almost like… admiration.
“I can’t believe you.” He grinned at her.
“Well, I can’t believe you either, so we’ve got something in common. Going to explain any of this to me, or let me guess as it?” She didn’t feel quite so cheerful about all this as he obviously did.
Heiji looked anxious. She wasn’t sure what he was worried about, but it was something, that was for sure. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
She shrugged. She was making no promises.
Kazuha decided, after hearing Heiji’s explanation of the circumstances, that she’d had enough.
“So when,” she demanded with as much ice in her voice as she could muster, “Just when was Kudou-kun going to tell Ran-chan about all of this?”
Heiji squirmed. He looked very uncomfortable. “Honestly? I have no idea. I’m not sure he plans to tell her at all. I mean, it’s his choice, and he’s worried about people finding out, you know? Not to mention Neechan would probably kill him.”
“You know what?” Kazuha felt strangely calm. “She probably would.” Without saying a single word more, she pulled her cell phone out of her shirt pocket, and started to look through her saved numbers.
“Kazuha? What are you doing?” Heiji asked warily.
“Nothing.” She found Ran’s number without too much difficulty and pressed ‘Call’. She put it to her ear, waiting for Ran to pick up.
“Wait, what – who are you calling? Kazuha, if you won’t tell me–”
Ran picked up the phone and gave her a cheerful hello. Kazuha grinned smugly at Heiji.
“Ran-chan! You’ll never believe what Heiji just told me!”
“Kazuha!” Heiji looked on the edge of panic. Actually, he looked like he was about to leap at her for the phone if he had to. He lowered his voice to hiss at her. “Don’t tell her, alright? Don’t tell her about Ku- Aah!” Kazuha had stuck the phone right in front of him, and he had leapt away as if it was poisonous. Still feeling extremely malicious, she started to return the phone to her ear – only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist. Heiji saw an opportunity, and he grabbed at the cell phone. Kazuha twisted out of his grip easily and transferred the phone to her far hand.
“Sorry, Ran-chan! Anyway, about what I was just saying: It’s about–” She was cut off once again as Heiji made another mad grab at the phone. It was a failure, but he nearly knocked her over in the process. “Heiji, stop it!”
“You stop first,” he growled. “Hang up. Right now. Kudou’s going to be pissed if he knows I told you, and he’ll probably murder me if word gets around to Neechan.”
“Well, he sure sounds likeable, doesn’t he?” she shot back. She returned the phone to her ear, and started walking through the house to avoid Heiji’s attempts at phone-theft. “Sorry again! Heiji’s just being an ahou. Again. As usual.” It was rather funny to see Heiji twitch out of the corner of her eye as she spoke. “But what I wanted to say was that I was talking to him—”
There was a quick brushing sound, a clatter, and a whoosh of air, and her cell phone flew out of her hand and through the air. She rounded on Heiji to see him standing in some kind of fighting pose behind her, wielding an umbrella he’d obviously pulled from the little canister by the door, where they all sat to dry off or wait to be used in more everyday circumstances.
“Heiji! What was that for?!”
“You know what it was for,” he retorted. “Stop being such an ahou!”
“Who are you calling an ahou, ahou!” she yelled back. He responded in kind.
In short, everything degenerated into the same argument they’d had about five million times since they were kids. Shouting was very cathartic for both of them.
On the other end of the line, Ran stared at her phone, not entirely sure what to think. But seeing as they were getting into a pleasant shouting match, she doubted that Kazuha would be free to talk all that soon. Sighing, she snapped her phone shut and went back washing dishes – her dad had just left his lunch dishes around for her to clean up. He usually did that, when he didn’t buy a lunch or go out somewhere to eat and drink, which was to say, not very often, but it was still annoying. As she scoured a pan – just what had he burned in this? – she heard the door open and a young voice call out to her.
“I’m home!” Conan poked his head into the kitchen, looking curiously around at what she was doing.
“Welcome back!” she called back. “How was school today?”
Conan proceeded to tell her all about his day, talking all about a story that Mitsuhiko-kun had told him, and a project they were doing in art. Ran listened, asked interested questions, and he answered them with tenfold enthusiasm. It was a nice way to pass the afternoon, she thought. She continued washing dishes, a small smile lighting up her face. Conan always told such good stories about his school day.
Ah, now that I'm posting it I feel nervous! =^_^=
I think this is longer than any other completed fic I've written so far.
But I might end up writing my other idea too, since the deadline got pushed again. And I'm posting this now so that I might be able to write the other one instead of just fussing with this one for forever and a day. So we'll see.
Title: A Trip Through Tokyo (And Its Consequences)
Word count: 4,816
Rating: PG, I suppose, for a bit of swearing.
Characters: Heiji, Kazuha, Conan, Ran
Quote:
Kazuha was fuming.
Again.
It had happened again. Heiji had grunted something like: “Phone. Sorry,” at her, and ditched her without another backward glance. And it was about five minutes before they had to be in class. What was he thinking, running off to talk right before school? It might not be so bad, she supposed, if he didn’t Do. It. All. The. Time. As if she didn’t know just who it was that Heiji was always chatting to over the phone.
She took that back. She didn’t know who it was that Heiji was having such long phone conversations with. But she knew what kind of person it was.
A girl.
She was sure of it. She’d heard him asking if his mysterious conversationalist was free to talk; if “it” was still a secret. Kazuha had a pretty good idea of just what “it” was, too.
She felt like she couldn’t let him leave his own house without keeping an eye on him. Maybe it was a bit extreme to go with him everywhere, and invite herself on all his detective-business trips to Tokyo, but she felt strangely justified. She’d grown up with Heiji; she deserved to get to meet this mysterious girl. It still rattled her to think about it. Heiji was dating and hadn’t even told her about it.
So if she managed to meet this girl at some point while tagging along on Heiji’s adventures, great. And if her presence was so annoying that it prevented him from meeting up with his girlfriend, that was what he deserved it for not telling her he was dating someone in the first place.
And for making her wait for him all the time. Once more, she was standing with her arms crossed, feeling very irritated, in the middle of the school steps as people hurried past her and into the halls, footsteps starting to echo just as they passed the threshold. She could just barely see Heiji facing away from her, leaning against a tree just on the inside of the school gate.
For a few minutes, she just stood there, checking her watch about once every fifteen seconds as the flow of people gradually thinned around her. Heiji talked away, oblivious to all of it and nodding and moving his arms a bit as he talked to someone who couldn’t see him anyway. He did that all the time when he talked on the phone. Obviously, that was whenever he needed to be somewhere.
Kazuha’s simmering anger finally boiled over. That was it, she decided, as a group of guys started up the stairs. She’d had it. Barging through the crowd, (and incidentally, practically sending the smallest kid flying) she marched straight across to Heiji. She reached the tree he was leaning against, put her hands on her hips, and opened her mouth to say something…
Just as he was hanging up. Damn it.
“Who was that? We’re almost late; come on.” Heiji jumped when she spoke. In her head, she congratulated herself for acting so calm and mature, and managing to make Heiji jump.
Behind her, a few boys were helping their rather battered friend to his feet.
“Nothing.” Heiji was distracted, she could tell that much. He wasn’t looking at her, but instead peering at the guys behind her (now heading inside), the door to the hallway, the gate…
She waved a hand in front of his face, which focused perhaps some fragment of his attention on her.
“I said who, not what,” she reminded him.
He shrugged, and shuffled through his school bag, looking for something. “Whatever. Hey, tell Sensei I’m sick or something?” He pulled out his cap and tugged it on, with the bill pointed backwards. “I have to go.”
Kazuh did a double-take. “What? Heiji, wait, where are you going?” She was dimly aware that they were the only ones left outside, the last stragglers having just disappeared into the halls. Heiji was walking straight out the gate. “We have class! What’s wrong with you?”
He spun around to face her, looking about as irritated and hurried as she felt. “Nothing, ahou! It’s a case, okay?” And with not another word or look, he disappeared around the corner.
A few moments passed as Kazuha stared disbelievingly at the gate.
A case. Sure. It was a bit late her to fall for that. She knew he was hiding something from her, and truly wondered if he really expected her to believe everything he told her. She was tired of pretending to – she wanted to know what was really going on for a change.
The bell rang noisily behind her. She called it a few names in her head. She hated being late to class. She avoided it whenever possible. But really, that meant there was only one option left, if you thought about it at all. Kazuha decided to call it a sign from fate – she pulled her school bag into a more secure position on her shoulder, and sped out of the gate in search of Heiji.
* * *
It wasn’t very difficult to catch up with him. It wasn’t like he could get very far in less than a minute. But she hadn’t really caught up with him. Instead, she had started following about a block behind, and across the street, so of course, he hadn’t seen her. It was something she felt awfully smug about, on the rare occasions when she tried to sneak around Heiji. Hattori Heiji, famous detective of the West that he was, could never notice when she was tailing him.
Quite predictably, he headed towards the train station. She felt rather vindictively satisfied. She had noticed that he had been going on a lot of trips lately. Once she knew where he was headed, she allowed herself to follow less closely. And as she relaxed, she found it very pleasant to be outside of school, taking a walk and out to discover something. The sky was bright, the sun was rising high, and she had a mystery to solve. Not that she expected the discovery itself to be at all pleasant, but there was something wonderful about finding it out for herself.
Maybe she was spending too much time around Heiji.
Or maybe definitely, she corrected herself. She doubted that she would ever have considered tailing somebody if it weren’t for the ahou and his stupid detective obsession.
As they reached the station, the ahou in question came into sight once again, in a gap in the crowd. He was buying his ticket. Kazuha squinted to see which button he pressed, and barely avoided smacking straight into a couple walking in the other direction. Third row, second button from the left. She recited it in her head, dodging past another few people and heading for the ticket machine. She reached for second button from the left, in the third row. It was marked with the price, and “Student Ticket – Tokyo Area –Haido Station”.
She had just known it would be Tokyo. Despite her good mood a minute ago, there was a bitter taste in her mouth. Pressing the button a bit harder than absolutely necessary, she paid for her ticket and grabbed it out of the slot where it appeared, returning to the chase.
She didn’t have to wait long on the platform for a train to show up. As it pulled up to the station and screeched to a stop, Kazuha noted which car Heiji got on and got onto the one next to it. Avoiding him the whole ride would just be a bother.
She was careful not to draw attention to herself, but she still got a few strange looks for her school uniform. She supposed that it was obvious that she was cutting class. The ride was long, boring, and extremely awkward. She made herself ignore the stares and slight frowns she got from other passengers. Fortunately, when the train finally stopped, everyone was much too occupied with getting off, getting on, and making room for everyone moving around to pay much attention to a teenage girl ditching school.
Kazuha caught sight of Heiji as she left the train. He didn’t notice her, but quickened his pace suddenly, as if to greet someone. Kazuha craned her neck and saw… Conan-kun?
She stared. The crowd moved relentlessly around her. She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open, and she was getting a lot of weird looks again.
But she couldn’t see why in the world Heiji would have ditched school to visit a little kid. Especially a little kid that should have been in school himself.
She admitted to herself that this didn’t quite reach the scale of “mysterious Tokyo girlfriend”, but there was still a mystery here, a case that just demanded to be solved…
Yep, she’d been spending way too much time around Heiji. She seriously considered smacking herself in the head and turning around that instant. But she couldn’t really think of something else to do, so she decided she might as well keep tagging along.
The two of them – Heiji and Conan, that is – moved through the crowd and out of the station. Kazuha followed, trailing the both of them. As they walked, she gradually realized that Heiji and Conan were getting even more strange looks than she was. She frowned. Why wasn’t Conan in school? It was one thing for Heiji to skip; he did it all the time. But to drag a little kid with him…
Conan seemed to stiffen under her gaze. Acting under pure instinct, Kazuha dodged over to the front of a restaurant just as Conan whipped around, searching the crowds behind him. She pretended to be intent on looking over a menu posted by the door. She felt like she was trying to balance on a razor’s edge. She was thoroughly convinced that she had been seen, but nobody approached her or said anything to her. Still, that was the second time that the kid had nearly caught her following Heiji, and the first time, he hadn’t even known her.
When nobody had started tugging at her sleeve or shouting in her ear, she supposed that her cover was probably still intact. She moved away from the restaurant, and in a few seconds, caught sight of Conan and Heiji’s retreating backs. She hurried after them, tugging the ribbon out of her hair. If she had to hide again, she did not want the back of her head to be at all recognizable, and she wore a ribbon tied in the exact same way so often, it was almost a distinctive feature. She knew that Heiji would never catch her – he never had before, and she suspected that he was not anywhere near as observant as he claimed he was. But she was taking no chances with Conan, even if it meant being a bit paranoid.
She continued to follow them, but she only looked at them out of the corner of her eye, and was careful to watch Heiji, not Conan. Not that it was very easy to see Conan in anything remotely resembling a crowd, and only, let’s say, most of Tokyo and the surrounding area tended to resemble a crowd. Of course, it was to her advantage. If she couldn’t see Conan, he couldn’t see her, and a crowd was easier for her to hide in than an empty street.
Unfortunately for her, the duo led her on to successively less and less crowded streets. She was forced to follow even further behind, and as she turned one last corner, she could distinctly see them stopped partway down the block. She immediately corrected her course and started to cross the street instead. It would be pretty bad if they just stood there and she ended up walking into them.
Heiji was crouched down a bit, squatting to Conan’s level and talking intently (and for once, quietly) to him. She forced her self to look forward. Nobody looked sideways when crossing a crosswalk – not for any length of time, anyway. They just glanced one way and then the other.
Once she reached the other side of the street, she chanced a look back in their direction, while pretending to read a sign, prohibiting smoking – apparently it still got crowded enough around here on occasion to warrant smoking regulation. Heiji was standing up again. Conan nodded decisively, said something, and the two of them walked into a small office building.
She looked around a bit and, finding a nearby bus stop, went over to check the times. None of them were very soon, so she decided to wait there for a little while. She sat down and tilted her head just so, so that she had a clear view of the building that Heiji and Conan had disappeared into.
She didn’t have long to wait. Barely five minutes had passed when the two of them reappeared, walking fast and looking worried. Kazuha stood up to follow them, noticing that Conan was clutching a handful of papers. He was almost running, to match Heiji’s long stride. Kazuha edged through the crowd, and broke into a fast walk to keep up.
* * *
Conan and Heiji had just reached the corner of a busy thoroughfare when a scream pierced through the air. By the time Kazuha got to the same corner, all she could see of them was a glimpse of their backs as they disappeared into a nearby shop. Not again. Why did this always happen? She sighed and flopped down onto the first bench she could see. She tried to think of the positives. Well, for one thing, at least this time she didn’t have to see the body. She also could be pretty sure of where Heiji and Conan would be for the next couple of hours, at least.
And, fairly predictably, it was about a couple of hours before all of the police were gone. But it was only an hour before Heiji and Conan ran straight past her, scaring the living daylights out of her and setting her in a rush to follow without looking suspicious.
It was difficult. How did one look like one wasn’t following anyone when the person one was following was the only one on the entire street trying to run a marathon? She walked as fast as she could, and even started to jog a bit as they pulled away from her and started to get lost in the crowd, holding her school bag as close as possible to stop it from bouncing around and getting in her way. The crowd jostled her as she pushed forward. Occasionally, she would get a glimpse of Heiji’s cap through the mass of people, and she would set off towards it as fast as she could, and keep going in that direction even when she lost sight of it again. She thought she saw it peek through the crowd, and turn a corner. She broke into a run, rounding the corner and scanning the area for Heiji, or maybe Conan.
She couldn’t see either of them. Starting to panic now, she continued the way she had turned, hoping that they had gone this way. What if they hadn’t turned at all, and she had only imagined it? Another thought made her freeze, forcing people to move around her and slow down the flow of the sidewalk. What if she didn’t see them, and accidentally overtook them? What if she practically bumped into one of them? She felt extremely vulnerable, simply not knowing where they were.
More out of nerves than anything else, she kept walking. It hit her that she was very much alone. She’d never gone to Tokyo by herself before, or anywhere much really. It was probably ironic. Here she was, in the middle of as many people as there were grains of sand on a beach, and she was alone because she wasn’t sure of her ability to keep her distance properly from two of them.
The buildings towering over her opened up a bit as she kept walking. The sky grew to fill more and more of the world above her, almost meeting the horizon in front of her. She realized that she was headed in the direction of a bridge – maybe Haido bridge, she really wasn’t sure. She wondered if Conan and Heiji had crossed, or if they were going somewhere near the river.
The street she was on turned into the bridge-crossing, so she veered off, heading across a street that ran alongside the river, and down to the riverbank. It was just as she gave up on looking for Heiji and Conan, turning to walk by the river for a bit, that she found them again. They were just under the end of the bridge, out of sight from most angles, thanks to the road and landscaping blocking them from one direction, and a couple of thick support pillars blocking them from the other. Thankfully, they were both facing away from her, because Kazuha probably gaped at them for an hour upon turning around to find them again, less than twenty meters away.
A rough-looking bush had somehow managed to grow in the strip of land between the river and the city. She moved so that she was mostly hidden by it, but could still see them. She was pretty close to them, but she wasn’t too worried – it didn’t look like the boys would be turning around any time soon. Heiji was perched on top of a tall pile of rocks, debris, and chunks of concrete, holding out a few large sheets of creased paper and trying not to drop them as Conan balanced on his shoulders, one foot on each, and tinkered with something affixed to the bottom of the bridge. It all looked very precarious, like it might all fall down at a moment’s notice.
After watching for a bit, Kazuha registered a very faint blinking light coming from the whatever-it-was, and realized that Conan was holding a small pair of scissors. Heiji’s voice drifted across to her in an unintelligible murmur, and things clicked. They were probably just disarming a bomb or something.
That probably should have bothered her more than it did. As it was, all she found slightly worrisome was why they hadn’t told the police back at the murder scene. But she shrugged that off, and ended up convincing herself that she was quite bored sitting there and watching Conan and Heiji neutralize explosives.
Kazuha could tell the exact moment when they finished. They both relaxed in the same instant. Or anyway, Conan let his shoulders fall a bit and let out a breath, whereas Heiji picked the kid up off his own shoulders and spun him around a bit as he carried them both down the pile he’d been using as a footstool. Conan looked extremely ruffled upon being put down – all dignity and injured pride. Heiji just laughed at him, and went about scattering the contents of the pile around a bit as Conan packed the papers and scissors in his little backpack. They both took one last look around at the scene, apparently satisfied, and walked off.
Kazuha waited a little bit to follow, in case they looked back. Back in pursuit, she was a little disappointed when she realized they were headed back to the train station. Nothing particularly interesting had happened – at least nothing that was much different from usual, for Heiji. Feeling a bit disheartened, she stuck close to them as they entered the station and Heiji bought his ticket back to Osaka. She caught snatches of conversation, but nothing intelligible until Heiji started to leave. Conan started to turn around, but Heiji called back to him.
“Hey, Kudou!” Conan turn reluctantly back around, looking thoroughly annoyed about something. “Give me a little bit more warning next time when you need a hand, okay?”
Conan said something that she couldn’t quite hear, but she personally thought it probably had to do with how last minute Heiji always was with making plans to visit. Or at least that was what she pointed out to herself in the back of her head. The rest of her mind was trying to wrap itself around the fact hat Heiji had quite unmistakably just called Conan ‘Kudou’. She wasn’t exactly sure what to think. It would certainly explain a few things about the kid, she supposed, although accepting it as an explanation just raised a whole bunch of other unpleasant questions.
She waited until Conan was safely out of the way, and then hurried after Heiji, taking the same train back to Osaka. The ride back was very similar to the ride there, although there weren’t quite as many strange looks. People probably didn’t even think of the fact that it still wasn’t quite time for school to be out, and that she should be in one. She avoided Heiji as she got off the train at their stop, and headed towards his neighborhood.
Through some miracle, Kazuha managed to beat Heiji to his house from the train station. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so miraculous. Sure, she was worn out from chasing him all over Tokyo, but he was probably just as worn out from running all over it in the first place. Nobody was home, so she waited for Heiji to get back. She leaned against the side of the house, trying to look like she had just come from an extremely boring day of school.
Heiji wasn’t too surprised to see her there. He did however, look at her a bit curiously.
“You’re wearing your hair down,” he noted.
“So?” She tried to keep her tone as even and her face as straight as possible. She had completely forgotten about the ribbon. She should have put it back in as soon as she had gotten here.
He shrugged, and let her inside. She accompanied him on a search of the kitchen for snacks that required very little effort to prepare. He was far better at it, but this was his house. He started aimlessly asking about school, and she gave extremely vague answers with barbs about his lack of attendance attached. Perhaps a bit hypocritical, but he had been the one to cut first. But after a while, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She finally decided to just ask him.
At that moment, Heiji was chewing on a mouthful of fish he had found. He said it was leftover from the night before. Kazuha wasn’t touching it unless his mother came home and confirmed that.
“So,” she said casually. “Is Conan really Kudou Shinichi?”
Heiji nearly choked. “How do you know that?”
“So he is!” She felt extremely satisfied, despite just how crazy it all was.
“No, wait– of course not, I meant, why would you think–?” He was grabbing at straws, frantically searching for an explanation. Too bad he’d already dug his own grave.
“You called him Kudou,” said Kazuha smugly. “Just today you—”
Well crap. Now she’d let something slip. She felt silent and shut her mouth very quickly. Heiji stared at her, comprehension dawning on his face.
“Did you follow me?” Kazuha wasn’t sure if Heiji was mad, amused, or some strange combination of the two.
“I was just trying to get you to go back to class,” she said innocently.
“So you followed me into Tokyo.”
“Right.”
Heiji looked at her with something strange in his eyes. It actually looked almost like… admiration.
“I can’t believe you.” He grinned at her.
“Well, I can’t believe you either, so we’ve got something in common. Going to explain any of this to me, or let me guess as it?” She didn’t feel quite so cheerful about all this as he obviously did.
Heiji looked anxious. She wasn’t sure what he was worried about, but it was something, that was for sure. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
She shrugged. She was making no promises.
* * *
Kazuha decided, after hearing Heiji’s explanation of the circumstances, that she’d had enough.
“So when,” she demanded with as much ice in her voice as she could muster, “Just when was Kudou-kun going to tell Ran-chan about all of this?”
Heiji squirmed. He looked very uncomfortable. “Honestly? I have no idea. I’m not sure he plans to tell her at all. I mean, it’s his choice, and he’s worried about people finding out, you know? Not to mention Neechan would probably kill him.”
“You know what?” Kazuha felt strangely calm. “She probably would.” Without saying a single word more, she pulled her cell phone out of her shirt pocket, and started to look through her saved numbers.
“Kazuha? What are you doing?” Heiji asked warily.
“Nothing.” She found Ran’s number without too much difficulty and pressed ‘Call’. She put it to her ear, waiting for Ran to pick up.
“Wait, what – who are you calling? Kazuha, if you won’t tell me–”
Ran picked up the phone and gave her a cheerful hello. Kazuha grinned smugly at Heiji.
“Ran-chan! You’ll never believe what Heiji just told me!”
“Kazuha!” Heiji looked on the edge of panic. Actually, he looked like he was about to leap at her for the phone if he had to. He lowered his voice to hiss at her. “Don’t tell her, alright? Don’t tell her about Ku- Aah!” Kazuha had stuck the phone right in front of him, and he had leapt away as if it was poisonous. Still feeling extremely malicious, she started to return the phone to her ear – only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist. Heiji saw an opportunity, and he grabbed at the cell phone. Kazuha twisted out of his grip easily and transferred the phone to her far hand.
“Sorry, Ran-chan! Anyway, about what I was just saying: It’s about–” She was cut off once again as Heiji made another mad grab at the phone. It was a failure, but he nearly knocked her over in the process. “Heiji, stop it!”
“You stop first,” he growled. “Hang up. Right now. Kudou’s going to be pissed if he knows I told you, and he’ll probably murder me if word gets around to Neechan.”
“Well, he sure sounds likeable, doesn’t he?” she shot back. She returned the phone to her ear, and started walking through the house to avoid Heiji’s attempts at phone-theft. “Sorry again! Heiji’s just being an ahou. Again. As usual.” It was rather funny to see Heiji twitch out of the corner of her eye as she spoke. “But what I wanted to say was that I was talking to him—”
There was a quick brushing sound, a clatter, and a whoosh of air, and her cell phone flew out of her hand and through the air. She rounded on Heiji to see him standing in some kind of fighting pose behind her, wielding an umbrella he’d obviously pulled from the little canister by the door, where they all sat to dry off or wait to be used in more everyday circumstances.
“Heiji! What was that for?!”
“You know what it was for,” he retorted. “Stop being such an ahou!”
“Who are you calling an ahou, ahou!” she yelled back. He responded in kind.
In short, everything degenerated into the same argument they’d had about five million times since they were kids. Shouting was very cathartic for both of them.
* * *
On the other end of the line, Ran stared at her phone, not entirely sure what to think. But seeing as they were getting into a pleasant shouting match, she doubted that Kazuha would be free to talk all that soon. Sighing, she snapped her phone shut and went back washing dishes – her dad had just left his lunch dishes around for her to clean up. He usually did that, when he didn’t buy a lunch or go out somewhere to eat and drink, which was to say, not very often, but it was still annoying. As she scoured a pan – just what had he burned in this? – she heard the door open and a young voice call out to her.
“I’m home!” Conan poked his head into the kitchen, looking curiously around at what she was doing.
“Welcome back!” she called back. “How was school today?”
Conan proceeded to tell her all about his day, talking all about a story that Mitsuhiko-kun had told him, and a project they were doing in art. Ran listened, asked interested questions, and he answered them with tenfold enthusiasm. It was a nice way to pass the afternoon, she thought. She continued washing dishes, a small smile lighting up her face. Conan always told such good stories about his school day.
Ah, now that I'm posting it I feel nervous! =^_^=
I think this is longer than any other completed fic I've written so far.
Love it! Great job. 3nodding
supergirl10895
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- Posted: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:37:11 +0000
(bump)
Wonder if there'll be any other entries~
Wonder if there'll be any other entries~
Kirksome
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- Posted: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:22:29 +0000
sad I really hope there will be...
supergirl10895
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- Posted: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:58:10 +0000
How many are there right now- 4?
Come on people! are there that little Conan fans out there?
Come on people! are there that little Conan fans out there?
Kirksome
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- Posted: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:29:30 +0000
Maybe we should put out more advertisement - got any ideas?
supergirl10895
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- Posted: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:46:34 +0000
Did... did this die? O___o
The Wonderful Muffins
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- Posted: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:43:20 +0000
It won't die as long as I'm around!!
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Kirksome
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- Posted: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:48:16 +0000
Awww... thanks, guys. I really appreciate it. 3nodding
olive17
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- Posted: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:32:40 +0000
Ack! A page-stretch! D:!
She might not like that I'm telling you this, but the friend of mine that found this contest and linked me got an idea herself, so she might write something.
Very quickly. xD
But I do hope there are some more entries before the contest closes. It's fun to read them~
She might not like that I'm telling you this, but the friend of mine that found this contest and linked me got an idea herself, so she might write something.
Very quickly. xD
But I do hope there are some more entries before the contest closes. It's fun to read them~
Karuka
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- Posted: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:43:56 +0000
*sticks tongue out at Olivia* Posting here just puts more pressure on me to get it finished!