For a disclaimer, please contact my lawyer at … oh, who am I kidding, I have no lawyer. And I don't have Detective Conan, either.
Chapter Eleven
The world titled and spun crazily around Ran. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe, and all she could see was Conan – no, Shinichi, Shinichi – still looking at her with Shinichi's blue eyes widened under Shinichi's dark eyebrows, Shinichi's hair with Shinichi's messy cowlick and thick, tangled bangs –
And then he said "Ran—?" with his voice trailing off uncertainly at the end of her name, as if he had started to add "neechan" and stopped himself, and she couldn't even see his face through her tears. He was only an indistinct blur that moved around the table as he knees gave way and she sank to the floor, and a voice that said, haltingly, "Ran – Ran, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – stop crying, Ran, please—"
The panic in his voice made Ran want to laugh and cry at the same time, but when he reached out towards her and then stopped, hands inches away from her face, she found that she couldn't do either. Instead she swiped at her eyes and brushed her hair away from her face until she could see him properly again, and said, a little shakily: "I'm such an idiot. Sonoko – Sonoko told me this house was haunted, and I – I didn't believe her."
He jerked away as if she had burned him, started to say something, and then stopped, mouth pressed into a thin line, eyes downcast, and held out one hand, palm up. Ran could see the tiny lines on the skin, the creases at the joints, the pale blue of the veins under the skin at the thin wrist, but when she put her own hand out as if to take his in it, her fingers met no resistance, and when, after a moment, she pulled it back, her curled fingers passed through his small palm as if it wasn't even there.
"Can you – feel it?" she asked. He didn't look up. "Shinichi?"
At the sound of his name Shinichi looked up, meeting her gaze with an air of forced casualness. "No," he said. "I can see and hear, but – it's different. I can't smell or taste or – touch."
"You touched the books in the library," Ran pointed out, frowning.
"I didn't touch them," he corrected. "I moved them."
"What's the difference?" said Ran, confused.
Shinichi hesitated, staring at her unblinkingly, then rose. Ran scrambled to her feet after him. "What are you doing?"
"Just watch," he said, looking away from her, his face set in a frown of concentration.
Ran followed his gaze to the paper-strewn table, her brow creasing, and then drew in a sharp breath as a pencil lying haphazardly on an untidy pile of paper gave a little jerk, and then moved slowly to the edge and toppled off, landing in the hand Shinichi was holding out – no, not landing, simply stopping dead without bouncing or rolling. Although Shinichi's hand was level and unmoving, the pencil was not: it was trembling almost imperceptibly, and Ran could see that it was not resting on his palm at all, but simply occupying the space directly above it.
"How…?" she breathed.
She'd been quiet, her voice not even a whisper, a mere breath, and Shinichi's eyes flickered up to meet hers for only a fraction of a second before turning back downwards, but in that moment the pencil, released from some invisible grasp, fell through his hand. It clattered to the floor and rolled out into the hallway.
Shinichi looked back up at her. "It takes a lot of concentration," he said, a touch of weariness in his voice. "And I don't understand why…. You know, I never believed – if I even thought about that kind of thing at all – in ghosts or – or anything supernatural, really, when I was alive."
"Don't—" began Ran, and stopped, breathing deeply and closing her eyes to avoid seeing the expression on Shinichi's face. "When I was alive" – he'd said it so casually, but something dark had flickered behind his eyes at the word. When he said nothing, she opened her eyes again, this time to look at him carefully, her gaze traveling over the features that should have been so familiar. "I can't believe I didn't recognize you," she said, at last, wonderingly. "It must have been the glasses."
"You're just bad with faces, you said so yourself," Shinichi retorted, smiling. And then: "—Glasses?"
"You didn't have them when I left," said Ran. When his only response was to frown at her, she added: "I do remember that much."
He said, "I don't," and looked away, still frowning.
"You don't remember?"
"I don't remember a lot of things," said Shinichi, shortly, "otherwise this case would be much easier."
It took a moment for the meaning behind his casual words to sink in, and Ran blanched suddenly as she understood. "You don't—"
He cut her off quickly. "I don't. Not that. But I do remember ... the men who came here were all in black, hats and coats and everything. So...."
"So you told me to watch out for the black hats," finished Ran. "I thought you were joking."
"I meant you to," said Shinichi, with something of the self-satisfied complacency she remembered. "But after I said that, if you'd been followed by someone in a black suit you would have noticed, right? And you'd have been more careful even if you thought it was a joke."
"Your right," said Ran, wonderingly. "I suppose I would have. But - don't you remember their faces?"
"I don't remember." And then, with a frown: "I'm not even sure they were both men. One of them...." He trailed off, frown deepening, eyes staring past her blankly. "...I think it was a man, but there was something about him that gave the impression of a woman."
"Jewelry, maybe?" suggested Ran. "A slim build? Long hair?"
He pounced on that. "Yes! Long hair - long, light hair and light eyes ... maybe it WAS a woman. Maybe...." Again he trailed off, resting his chin on one fisted hand, but after a minute he looked up and shook his head. "It's no good."
"You don't need to try to remember," said Ran.
"Yes, I do," he corrected her. "Whatever I found when I followed them--"
"You followed them?"
"That was why I didn't go straight home from Kaito's house," he said, impatiently. "I saw them and so I followed them. Only I can't remember why I followed them - or how they found me - or why they followed me home ... they took the lunchbox, so I must have taken a picture ... and whatever I found and photographed must have been important enough that they thought they needed to kill me to keep me quiet about it."
"But that's—" said Ran, and broke off, running her fingers through her hair. "You're – you were just a kid. Even if you told the police what you'd seen--"
"My father IS a famous detective," Shinichi pointed out. "An amateur, but still famous."
"But how would they have known who you were?"
"I don't know," said Shinichi. "I told you I don't remember things. Not what they looked like, not why I followed them, not what I found - I don't even know if I found anything or if they just killed me to warn otousan off because I can't remember!"
Ran braced her shoulders unthinkingly, as if his anger and frustration were a physical attack, and for a moment his small form seemed to blur, pale face turning paler still and yet somehow indistinct from his darker clothes - clothes becoming so insubstantial that for a fraction of a second she thought she could see the folds of the curtain behind him through his chest - and then she blinked and it was gone, and Shinichi looked as solid as she was; but cold fear had already gripped her.
"Stop that," she said.
"Stop what?"
"That - I don't know what it was. I couldn't see you properly, I thought you were - leaving. Don't do it."
Suddenly motionless (eerily so, for now Ran could see that he was completely still: no movement to indicate breathing, not even a blink) he said: "Sorry. I didn't mean to."
"What is it?" she said.
"I don't know," said Shinichi, then added: "Sleep, maybe - or something like it. Sometimes I - I forget that I'm here, and that makes it - difficult."
"What do you mean?"
Shinichi frowned and settled his chin on his fist again, eyes scanning the room blankly before coming to rest on Ran. "You know I'm not really here--"
"Oh, of course not," said Ran, with a sudden spark of temper. "You're just my imagination. I've gone completely bonkers, right? You don't have to tell me."
Shinichi laughed, and some of the tension went out of his face and stance. "That's not what I meant. What I mean is that I don't occupy space the way you do. Gravity doesn't hold me down, I hold myself down by ... by knowing where I am. It's as if I were a helium balloon tied to a chair, and the string is - stability, or my focus on the world around me. If I lose that focus - because of emotion, for example - then I lose my grip."
"I'm sorry," said Ran, softly.
He blinked, surprised, and then turned away, shrugging and stuffing his hands into his pockets with a swift movement. "It's not a problem, really, you don't have to worry. It's easiest here, anyway."
"Do you ever leave?"
"I visit Agasa-hakase sometimes," said Shinichi. "And there's a little girl in a park near here who can see me." He looked back at her. "She's smarter than you, though."
"Shinichi!"
"Well, okay," said Shinichi, blue eyes twinkling, "the fact that she tried to grab my hand and fell right through me instead may have been a bigger hint than you ever got, but you have to admit that it was pretty dense of you to hang around me almost every day for two weeks without realizing who I am. How did you figure it out, anyway?"
"Your watch," said Ran, simply. She almost reached out, but at her words Shinichi raised his hand, looking down, surprised, at the face of his watch: at the motionless hands, one caught midway between seven and eight, the other nearly to the six. The long, slender spike that indicated the seconds had halted a mere centimeter away from the twelve.
"Oh," said Shinichi, slowly. "Of course. I'd forgotten."
"I hadn't realized – it clicked when I saw that Sonoko's watch had stopped," explained Ran. "And Kuroba-kun had just been saying that the two of you looked alike – and then suddenly other things seemed to make sense. The snow – the day I broke in."
" 'Visited', not broke in," corrected Shinichi, and then grinned suddenly. "That was a blunder on my part, I'll admit. I never would have thought that you'd forget that there weren't any footprints outside. You walked all the way around the house before you came in!"
"If you recall," Ran shot back, "I was a little preoccupied with the discovery that my best friend had – you were watching me?"
"Of course I was," said Shinichi. "I'm always watching. I didn't recognize you, though, not until I saw you in the library. And then I would have panicked if you hadn't made it obvious that you didn't know who I was."
"I still say it was the glasses that – oh!"
Shinichi's still figure had flickered and blurred again, but before she could say anything he had raised his head, staring at her with wide eyes.
"That's it!"
"What—" began Ran, but he cut her off.
"That's what was missing from the list, the glasses! I had them—" his face had gone closed, and his eyes were darting around the room "—I had them that night, I know I did, but after I – afterward, they weren't there."
"I thought you said you didn't remember," put in Ran.
Shinichi looked at her again. "Not then, it was when otousan came, when they were trying to revive me – I was there for just an instant – looking down at myself – and I wasn't wearing them then, I'm sure of it…."
"But," said Ran, "but you weren't – how could you have seen that?"
"That's not important." Shinichi gestured with one hand, as if batting away an annoying insect. "The glasses, Ran, I need to know where they went, what I did with them – unless…."
He was frowning again. "Unless what?" asked Ran.
"Unless they took them."
"What would they want with a pair of glasses?"
"How should I know?" said Shinichi. "I told you – I don't remember things, all I know is that I don't need glasses – I don't, Ran, my eyesight has always been perfect – but I was wearing them and now they're gone, so they must be – what is it?"
Ran has suddenly scrambled to her feet. She grinned down at Shinichi. "They didn't take them – I know where they are."
"What? Where?"
"We've both seen them, don't you remember? You sent me to get some paper and then later—"
"Ran."
"All right, fine," she said. "They're in the desk in the library."
Shinichi made it to the library ahead of Ran, but just barely, and it was Ran who rummaged in the drawers until she found the glasses, half-hidden under Kudou Yuusaku's dog-eared script. She'd expected a look of recognition on Shinichi's face, but when she held them out for him to see he only scrutinized them closely, frowning and silent, until she looked down from his face to the heavy frames.
When she considered them, it was the weight of them that struck her: heavier than they should be, even with the thick lenses and bulky plastic frames. And she'd grown used to seeing them on Conan – on Shinichi's face without ever having really paid attention to them, so that now, as if for the first time, she noted the tiny, evenly-spaced pockmarks on the outer edges of both rims, the raised round places between hinge and ear, and the rectangular indentation on one huge earpiece, near the hinge – but it was the other earpiece, she saw, that caught and held Shinichi's interest. Finally he reached out, pointing, and said:
"If you press there and push here, part of the earpiece should come off."
Ran pressed and pushed obediently, and at first unsuccessfully, but then something gave way beneath her fingers, and something popped out of the frame and clattered lightly to the floor. She stooped to retrieve it, and found herself holding a tiny black plastic rectangle, no bigger that the tip of her thumb, decorated on one side with two rows of microscopic metal prongs.
"Is this … part of a computer?" she asked, hesitating, and then, with more certainty: "Did Agasa-hakase make this?"
Shinichi didn't say anything for a moment. "Yes," he said at last, slowly. "He did … he finished it right before you left. It's a – it records sound like a casette, only onto those chips – there's two of them – and we have the player somewhere, but I can't remember…."
"In the desk?" suggested Ran. Shinichi gave a preoccupied nod, and she set the glasses and the chip onto the shrouded desk to free her hands. Then she went back to the drawers, this time pulling things out and tossing them to the floor rather than replacing them carefully: books, scraps of paper, bundles of letters, and finally, in a tangle of wires, a black book-shaped machine with a small screen on one side, and odd ports here and there, and rows of small, unlabeled buttons and knobs.
"That's it," said Shinichi suddenly, crouching next to her and studying the thing with narrowed eyes. "Turn it on. That button right there," he added, pointing, as Ran hesitated over the unmarked controls.
"Will it still work?" she asked, and as if in answer the little screen lit up.
"It's solar powered," said Shinichi. "All his things are. If he'd patent the technology and market it he'd be the richest man in the world, but as soon as he finishes one gadget he's off on another, too busy to even think about profiting from his genius."
His eyes were unfocused and distant. Ran paused in the middle of trying to fit the chip from the glasses into one of the ports. "Shinichi?" she said.
Shinichi's clouded blue eyes flickered up to meet her worried gaze, and then he looked away. "I think I remember – why don't we leave this for later, Ran? I – I don't know how much it would help to listen to it, anyway. I might remember on my own – later."
"What's the matter?" asked Ran.
"It's not exactly … I just don't think you'll…." Shinichi was fumbling, and Ran looked down at him, puzzled, until he looked up at her again. "It might not even help," he finished, unconvincingly.
"We won't know until we listen if you don't remember," she said, reasonably. "How do I put this in?"
Shinichi hesitated, and then, lips thinning in a determined line, reached out and brushed a port with one pale finger. "It's that one," he said. "And this will play it – and that controls the volume."
The chip slid easily into the port Shinichi had indicated, and the machine came to life with a whir and a click.
Breathing – quick, deep breaths. And then Shinichi's voice, tinny, a little hoarse, but recognizable:
"Sorry, otousan, I messed up. I – I dropped my student ID when I left so – I think that's how they found me." His breath caught in his throat. "I called the police and I hid the other one in – in my favorite place, otousan, you know, where I go so often." A deep breath, and a wooden rattling, and then Shinichi's voice again, distant and somehow muffled. "I'm going to leave it on in case – in case they say anything useful. They won't find it here. I'm sorry, otousan, I just wanted—"
A distant, wooden thud. Shinichi's voice broke off, and after a moment, footsteps sounded. Then a second voice, lower, rougher:
"Here you are—"
The sound of a gunshot – a snarl – and then a second and a third shot, almost simultaneously. And through the sound of a third voice shouting "Stop it, you fool, he's no good to us dead!" Shinichi gave a sharp, half-stifled cry and then fell silent as heavy footsteps approached, paused – something went rattling away and fetched up against something else with a metallic clunk – and then the third voice speaking again, closer, softer:
"Tell me where it is."
A ragged breath, and Shinichi's voice: "It will be clear enough to you – soon."
"What do you mean by that? Where is it?"
"I won't tell you."
Silence for the space of a heartbeat, and then a slap, a grunt, and the sound of something hard hitting something wooden. And the third voice, again:
"Tell me—"
There was a click and the voice stopped abruptly. For a moment Ran stared at the player, uncomprehending, and then she raised her eyes.
Shinichi was looking at her, his pale face grave and pitying. "I think that's enough."
"I'm sorry," said Ran, blinking away tears. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think – I – oh, God…."
A tear slid down her cheek. Shinichi put out one hand, tentatively, as if to wipe it away, and Ran closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was standing, looking down at her with a reassuring smile. "It's all right," he said. "I heard what I needed anyway. 'It will be clear enough to you soon' – that's a quote from 'The Sign of Four'. Okaasan used to say that I was off in a world of my own when I was reading Conan Doyle's works. The other chip is hidden in the book."
To be continued…
A/N: You know what, it took me so long to get this chapter finished that I'm not even going to complain about it. Thanks for your patience. :) And in case any of you are worried on that count, I have no intention to abandon this. I mean, at this point, it's sort of an honor thing. I WILL get this story done (eventually) even if it kills me dead in the process.