Case Closed Fan Fiction ❯ When Pandora's Box Is Opened ❯ New Year ( Chapter 29 )

Chapter Twenty-Nine

New Year

“No, that won't matter. If you're right... yeah, it won't matter. All right. Good Luck.”

“What was that about?” Ai asked. Shinichi yelped, having evidently not noticed her listening in on the end of his conversation.

“How long've you been there?” he demanded. Ai shrugged.

“Didn't sound like typical New Year's well-wishes,” she commented. “Who was it?”

“Nosy much?” Shinichi muttered but added “Hattori. He's spotted a couple of Organization members in the Osaka Police, the ones who helped Sake escape at the museum. They're a little suspicious of being watched, but they're not watching him... yet... and they might not as long as he keeps his head down.”

“Really?” Ai said, suddenly feeling deeply worried. “Kudo-kun... police infiltrators generally aren't very highly ranked in the Organization, because they're most likely to be caught and so can't know any valuable information to give away. If Hattori-kun's not careful, he's going to get killed capturing some people who aren't going to be all that valuable. Is he aware of that?”

“Yeah, I told him,” Shinichi said, rolling his eyes slightly, “but he's going to catch every Organization member in the Osaka PD anyway. He's too devoted to the police to let them get away. I just hope he remembers to be careful. He doesn't always, not when he's on the trail of a criminal.”

“So you were advising kettle-san on colour schemes, were you, pot-san?” Ai said pointedly. Shinichi gave in to what she could only hope was the impulses of his child body and stuck his tongue out at her.

“Conan-kun! Ai-chan! We're gonna be late!”

Ai smiled slightly as Shinichi hastily stowed his phone away as Ayumi dragged them both away by the arm. They were all going to the banks of the Teimuzu, from where they had a wonderful view of the New Year's fireworks. Ai thought back, not to the year before, which she'd spent pretty much the same way, but to the year before that. She was still Miyano Shiho then, reeling in grief over her sister's death. She had taken some time off to grieve, and hadn't yet known that her sister's death had been at Gin's hands, nor had she begun to rebel against the Organization because they refused to tell her why. She'd forgotten all about the hypothesis that she'd developed about APTX 4869, the independent research that she'd been conducting on Kudo Shinichi and Edogawa Conan, just wondering why...

“She betrayed us, and that's all there is to it. She deserved death, don't you agree? Or are your loyalties divided?”

She fought back the surge of anger that accompanied those cold words, hiding beneath her stoic mask. Her loyalties had not been divided, not after that. They had lain fully against the Organization that had killed her sister and almost certainly her parents as well, not that she remembered them. She'd studied in the best boarding schools in the world since first grade, and her parents had died in the middle of winter term when she was seven. It hadn't been something that had bothered her hugely, as she hadn't seen her parents since before she went overseas- at the behest of the Organization, she'd stayed in the schools and done holiday courses rather than going home, and her parents had never been able to visit, so she hadn't seen them in two years anyway- but Akemi was another matter. She'd visited every holiday, and once she'd graduated High School she visited most weekends as well. They had written to each other weekly and later emailed daily. Her sister had been her best and only friend throughout her entire real childhood, and for the year between her early college graduation and Akemi's death.

“My real childhood?” she thought, hiding her thoughts beneath a smile as Ayumi made her twirl- somehow, Ai had let the girl convince her to wear a cute little red flower-print kimono with a blue obi, which actually matched Ayumi's pink-and-purple butterfly-print kimono and red obi quite well. Ran giggled and told them they looked beautiful, while Genta and Mitsuhiko blushed and stuttered agreements. “Studying alone all the time... that's not really a childhood. It's like this is... the childhood I should have had...a normal life...”

She caught Shinichi's eye and he smiled softly. She realized that, quite naturally, she was smiling too. Suddenly she laughed.

“Come on!” she cried, tugging at the hand of her best friend, abandoning her normal mature reserve. “Let's get the best spot!”

Ayumi ran along with her, pointing out various spots and keeping up a lively running commentary about the pros and cons of each. Ai watched her, the boys who were batting one of Shinichi's footballs back and forth as they followed, and their various chattering parents and guardians, including Ran “neechan” and her adoptive “great-uncle”- her family, like she'd never really known.

“Onee-chan,” she thought, “I miss you... so much... but you'd be laughing right now, wouldn't you? Saying “I told you so?” Because it's strange, that even though I've got death hanging over my head every day, I'm getting nowhere with the antidote and I know I'll never have the one I love... that's my choice, still... but would it be strange to say that I think that, for the first time in my life... I'm happy?”

A child's laugh, pure and true, rang out through the cold air of the dying year, beckoning all the possibilities of the new one.

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“What are you thinking about, Shinichi?”

Shinichi glanced up at Agasa-Hakase, then back at Haibara, who was letting Ayumi weave a snowdrop into her hair.

“It's just a good thing to see,” he said, indicating the tiny scientist with a minor twitch of his head. “She's normally scared or sad or hiding behind some stoic mask... I think this might well be the first time I've seen her genuinely happy.”

“I'm glad,” Agasa said, his moustache twitching as he smiled. “The poor girl's been through so much.”

“I know,” Shinichi said. “If you hadn't found her, she'd probably be dead now, and not necessarily at the Organization's hands.”

“Would you really have thrown her out, Shinichi?” Agasa asked, the two of them falling back to have their conversation in relative private as everyone else started to spread blankets and sit down on the cold banking, even though it was still nearly an hour until midnight. “When I first took her in- would you really have insisted that she leave?”

“At first... maybe,” Shinichi said. “I didn't trust that she wasn't a spy or a trace- I don't trust anyone on face value. One of the socially negative aspects of being a detective. But when she mentioned her sister...” he looked down, pulling his glasses off and cleaning them, a motion that he didn't do out of necessity but for something to do with his hands when he was discussing something serious. “Even though she seemed calm enough the first time, it gave me a strange feeling... like she was quietly crying for help. Then when she broke down... I knew there wasn't a chance of her returning to the Organization. I also realized that I was wrong. She wasn't crying for help. She was screaming.”

“I'm glad she's had a chance to heal,” Agasa said. “A lot of that could probably be attributed to you, you know.” Shinichi watched Ai chatting happily to Ran and shook his head.

“It's not me, you know,” he said. “I just saved her life a couple of times and bugged her for antidotes. I think it was the kids... Ayumi-chan especially. They're good kids. They've been accepting and kind to her... and me. You don't find that in many kids and even fewer adults. I think they're about the only part of this mess that I'm going to miss.”

“Does mine ears deceive me? He actually will miss this after all?”

Shinichi sent Evil Eyes at his parents as they wandered up, his mother waving crazily at Ran. “What're you guys doing here?”

“Now, Shinichi, I know we're hardly ever in Japan, but we would like to see the New Year's fireworks while we're here,” Yuusaku said genially. “We were planning to leave on the fourth, though...” he glanced over to ensure that Ran and the others were well out of earshot, and Yukiko dragged Ran a little further away, immersing her in a high-speed girl talk which Shinichi got the uncomfortable feeling was about him. “It depends on how things go with Kaito-kun.”

“Yeah,” Shinichi thought. “We'll go talk to him sometime tomorrow... and I hope that we can start over. Because my resolution this year...” his glare hardened as he watched Ran and Haibara laughing together, remembering the promises that he'd made to Ran... and the promise he made to the false woman's real face as she begged him, with her dying breath, not to let Them win.

“This year I'll end it. No matter what.”

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“Wow, what a crowd!” Kazuha complained. Heiji grunted, trying to keep sight of his parent's backs as they fought through the crowd gathering at the centre of Osaka for the New Year's celebrations. “Aaah!”

Heiji glanced back to see Kazuha being pushed back by a passing group, nearly vanishing from sight. Pushing a couple of people aside a little more roughly than was perhaps necessary, he grabbed Kazuha's hand, pulling her back over to him. Muttering a thankfully unintelligible stream of curses against crowds, he started pushing through the crowd to where their parents had vanished.

“Where'd they go?” Kazuha yelled over the noise.

“Dunno,” Heiji called back. “Let's get outta the crowds an' try ta call `em. There's gotta be an alleyway or shopfront or somethin' nearby...”

They started pushing through to the nearest building, still holding hands so they wouldn't get separated, though the act was somehow making Heiji feel nervous. “Am I just worried she's gonna slip away again?” Somehow, it reminded him of Bikunijima, and he increased his grip. Kazuha flushed.

Heiji finally burst out into a little bubble of emptiness under the awning of a closed shop, but people were pushing past, nearly tearing Kazuha's hand from his. With a grunt, he pulled her past, but maybe he pulled a little too hard. Kazuha finally burst through and cannoned into him. Heiji swore as he caught her, the force of her escape from the crowd knocking him backwards.

“Owww!” he complained. “Concrete ain't good fer the ass... you all right? In one piece?”

“Umm... yeah.” Kazuha muttered, getting up, suddenly bright red. Heiji flushed too when he realized that she was lying on top of him and he was still holding her, and loosened his grip so she could get up.

“Ahh, is this why you two slipped away in the crowd?”

The Kaitou Kid couldn't move faster than they did as they shot to their feet at the sound of Hattori Shizuka's voice. Bright red (Kazuha was, anyway; Heiji vaguely prayed that his dark skin tone hid his own heated cheeks), they were faced with the vaguely amused smiles of their parents.

“Freakin' crowds,” Heiji complained. “We were just about ta call ya, once we'd gotten outta that lot.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the seething masses.

“Indeed,” Heizo said annoyingly. “Come on, then. We don't want to miss the fireworks.”

“What's with those smiles?” Kazuha muttered, cheeks still flaming. Heiji snorted, tugging at the peak of his cap- the one she'd given him for Christmas. He caught a flash of pink and gold in her hair- the ornament he'd given her.

“Come ta think of it...” he thought with a frown. “I ain't properly told her about what happened in Kyoto when we were kids, did I? She seemed ta know about the girl I saw, but did I tell her it was her?”

He looked up at the sky, shrouded in a darkness that would be torn apart by fireworks in half an hour. “Maybe this year I oughta tell her it was her.” He watched her argue with her mother, her cheeks still flushed prettily in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. “That she was... My first love...”

For some reason, though, the “was” part didn't seem to fit.

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“Curse you, Kuroba-kun!”

“Don't be a bad loser, Akako-chan. If it makes you feel any better, there's a blue shell headed his way.”

“Crap! Unfair! I'm already at a disadvantage since I can't use the wheel!”

“Don't complain if you're in first anyway... my apologies, second... third... fourth... fifth...”

“Shut it, Hakuba. You're in ninth.”

Kaito mashed buttons on the classic controller furiously, closely dodging a giant Piranha Plant as it came out of an inconveniently placed pipe. He'd ended up coming straight to Aoko's. He'd been planning to head home for just a couple of minutes, check to see if any bugs, cameras or Nondescript Idling Cars (tm) were around his house, but when he'd had to say goodbye to his comatose mother, he was suddenly seized by a powerful need to be around people- he just couldn't stand the thought of being alone, not yet. So he'd hung out at Aoko's all day until Hakuba and Akako had dropped in eventually, spent dinner boasting about how he was going to waste them all, and then, to the amusement of all, had found that while he could use his wrist fairly normally, it was still fairly tender in the cast and thus the sharp jerks and twists required to play Mario Kart with motion-sensitive controllers were out of the question. Dammit, but he was crap with the Classic Controller...

“That's it,” he proclaimed as his Mii finished in sixth, only one place above Hakuba's Mario, “I'm at least using the controller and nunchaku. I'm ambidextrous, and my left wrist is still fine...”

“You're ambidextrous? Really?” Akako said, looking supremely unperturbed as Rosalina sailed in tenth. “You're certainly a man of many talents, aren't you?”

“It's helpful for tricks,” he said with a shrug. Ginzo laughed and got to his feet, switching off the Wii.

“The celebrations start in about ten minutes,” he pointed out to their protests. “Congratulations, Aoko. You won the last match of the year!”

“I told you not to slag Daisy!” she said triumphantly, punching the air as she got up to wander over to the balcony. “We can see the fireworks from out here, you know. It's a better view than they give you on TV.”

“You're best to put on a coat, Nakamori-san,” Hakuba called, heading to the entryway for his, which was unfortunately his Inverness Cape. Kaito had taken one look at it and seriously considered fetching his cape, Syndicate or no, just to see the look on his face. In the interests of a peaceful New Year, however, he stuck to the thick orange hoodie that Aoko had brought him, which was almost as good. Aoko's English grades weren't great, but Hakuba clearly understood the legend on the front in black, which was “New York State Dept of Correction: PROPERTY OF PSYCHOTHERAPY WARD 1412”. Hakuba had stared at it for a long moment, before rolling his eyes and wondering aloud if they had a number he could call to report lost property. Akako hadn't yet seen the jumper...

... he thought. She was standing in the entryway, her black fur (from what, he didn't dare ask) wrap already around her shoulders, holding up the hoodie and scrutinizing it with a blank look on her face, though Kaito knew perfectly well that she understood the English.

“So when were you in New York?” she asked, handing it to him. He stuck his head through the appropriate hole.

“I was there with one of Otou-san's shows when I was a kid,” he said as he slid his left arm into the sleeve, “but one of his old friends who moved there a while back and still writes to Okaa-san sent this. He said he saw it and instantly thought of me.”

“I wonder why,” Hakuba said, heading for the balcony. Akako chuckled and followed. Kaito made to join them, but he was encountering difficulties with his right arm. He couldn't bend his right wrist to get it into the sleeve. He tugged at the jumper with his left hand, grunting in annoyance, when to his surprise Aoko reached out and pulled the sleeve out straight, making it easier for him to get into.

“Um, Arigato,” he said as he slid the offending arm into place, momentarily disarmed.

“No problem,” Aoko said with a gentle smile. “If you need help... don't be afraid to ask.”

Kaito followed her to join the other three on the balcony, getting the odd feeling that she wasn't talking about his wrist. He resisted the urge to sit on the railing- he was getting a little too fond of heights these days- but just leaned against it on his left arm. It was still dark, but everyone fell silent as the last few minutes ticked away.

“This year, everything's going to change,” he thought. He looked over at his friends, his sharp night vision allowing him to pick them out easily: Hakuba, flicking his hair back in that infinitely annoying little gesture and looking over Tokyo contemplatively; Akako, tugging her wrap closer around herself and looking not at the city but the stars, now visible as Japan turned off their lights to give over the darkness to the New Year's fireworks; Nakamori-keibu, puffing quietly on his old-fashioned pipe and glancing at his watch; and Aoko, eyes shining as she scanned the sky for fireworks, so beautiful, so pure, so innocent, so alive...

“And nothing is going to change that,” he decided. “Aoko... I'm sorry, but I won't ask for your help. I won't drag you into this. You're too sweet, too kind, and the Syndicate... they're the complete antithesis. Your world and theirs don't touch and I don't want them too. I don't want to see them taint and destroy your life like they did mine.”

He looked up at the skyline, almost feeling the lasts seconds tick away. “I'm sorry, but I'm going to finish this, and I'm going to do it alone. All I can wish for is that someday, long after it's all over... you'll someday bring yourself to forgive me.”

Then the sky burst into light.

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“Were you going to spend the New Year alone, Eta?”

She smiled gently, not looking back at the speaker, leaning back against her bike as the fireworks heralding the New Year burst into life. “New Years are not so special when you have seen as many as we have,” she commented.

“But this year is a special year,” he said, moving next to her, the dancing light of the fireworks dying him yellow one minute, then blue the next. But she knew what colour he would really be wearing. “It's the ten thousandth year.”

“Then the long wait is almost over,” she said softly.

“Can't you feel it, Eta?” he growled. “We are running out of time.”

“But we have had so much,” she thought sadly, unwilling to say it aloud and restart the argument that had been shouted too many times already. “Too much.” Instead she smiled seductively and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“Then how about a little luck, Ushi?” she said, leaning up to press her lips against his. Perhaps this was the greatest torture- no matter how long it had been, how much had changed between them, how much they had changed, the sensation still thrilled her to her core like nothing else ever had. For a moment they were back in time, newly in love, no fighting, no criminals, no shadows, just them, forever and ever...

Maybe, at the end, it would be that way again. When the longest wait was over...

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I have the T-shirt version of the hoodie that Kaito has on, and I've always wanted to put him in it. :P The number on it isn't “1412”, but I thought it would be funny to change it.

Nope, it was all about Kaito, FaithlessGirl. Conan's here now!

Patience, Padawan! XD More chapters are forthcoming, HaibaraDaiFan! They WILL talk... but as for when... *evil authoress laugh*

It'll happen, Mel72000. It'll happen.

Kolidescope? Okay, that's weird... `cause I just favourited your oneshot about Kaito visiting your computer, and then I turn on my emails and you're on my fic... Like the sound of the pic of Conan in a fish outfit, BTW. Lmao at that one XD Yeah, Akako's symptomatic of the mentality of 80s manga, where no-one has any serious background except the protagonist... but I'm glad that it gives me a chance to flesh her out myself. I like her and she deserves an epic background, and trust me, I'm sure you'll be surprised by what I've given her... I wanna see that picture of the four aces, too. Like the idea. Do you have a DA account or something?

He'll find out eventually, Silver Shadowbreeze. I'm starting to feel more and more evil for putting off this meeting, but given how the story's developed, there's just no way for me to bring it forwards anymore... ^_^;

Breathe, Pretztailfan95 XD You're still my numbah 1! *hugs and cookies* Always waiting on your fics! I'm sure I said Nakamori Ginzo at some point, but since it was from his POV I used his given name since I figured that he doesn't think of himself by his surname. There's going to be quite a few bits from his POV, so get used to is XD All the Yu-Gi-Oh bit went right over my head, since I never watched it... I was an obsessive Pokémon fan when Yu-Gi-Oh first came out. Wait, I still am. I WANT HEARTGOLD! I WILL OWN JOHTO ONCE MORE! HO-OH PWNS EVERYTHING! RAAAH! *calm, calm, calm...* but... b-but... I CAN'T FIND THE AWESOME SOUNDING NUMA VIDEO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! If you find it, send it to KeldaMacFeegle on YT. I CAN'T FIND IIIIIIIIIT! T_T Yeah, Hakuba should stop being a jerk. I do think there's possibilities in Hakuba x Akako, although this is almost purely on the basis that in one of Hakuba's first chapters in Magic Kaito, when Akako pops up out of nowhere to talk to Kaito, he thinks, “She's in this class too?” I've wondered about this line, and I've decided that it means that he has a secret thing for Akako :P Hey, neither of them turn up enough to disprove it and it's MY fic, and so it shall be! XD DON'T BE DEMOTIVATED! I hate it when cool fics go unupdated! *evil eyes at Becky Tailweaver and Urd-chan* Pretz's a better writer than you guys- it's called FINISHING THE FIC! EPIC RESPONSE... It's coming up to 300! (who's even going to count my ramblings? :P) Awww, Gomen for spoiling the OVA! I didn't mean to! T_T Well, actually, my knowledge of what's actually happening is based on educated guesses, since I don't speaka de language so well... :P But you didn't need to understand precisely what they were saying to get the atmosphere of that last scene. Mom walked in on me watching it to find tears rolling down my face (and thought it was exam stress... they're OVER, dammit!!) I want someone to sub it in English, though. I want to know what Ai was saying to Conan at the school and what Heiji and Kazuha were saying on TV! They looked interesting ten years older, didn't they? Genta and Mitsuhiko didn't really look like the projections from movie 5, but Ayumi and Sonoko totally did! Kazuha looked cool, but Heiji and Kogoro didn't look any different at all to me ^_^; Ran actually DID totally look like Eri though, I think :P sooo? EPIC enough for ya? XD EPIC COMMENTS-EPIC RESPONSES-EPIC FIC!

Your senses are on, Ziraulo... I promise, something big is coming soon!

I do not claim to own any of the characters in Meitantei Conan. They are the intellectual property of Aoyama Gosho. All characters, couples and locations, if Canon, will be faithful to the manga, so if you're into fics with weird pairings like Shinichi and Heiji, the back button is at the top there. The fic may not make sense if you have not read up to chapter 694, which you can do at a site called (read between the lines) O/n/e/ma/n/g/a, but I advise you to buy the official Tankoban novels (up to volume 29 are out in English at the time of writing) so that Aoyama-sensei can afford to continue gracing us with his imagination. Now, I hope you enjoy the fic! (If you don't, please see my previous comments re the back button).