Chapter Text
Thursday, November 14, 1:24 p.m., Gonin Hane (somewhere in eastern Hokkaido)
If you were to start off in Tokyo and then soar like a superhero through the air for roughly seven hundred kilometers north-northeast as the Kryptonian flies, at last landing in deep snow in an undisclosed location in the snow-covered mountains and valleys of Hokkaido, you’d see...
...that someone was being taught a lesson.
(of course, this would be after you’d dug yourself out of all that snow or melted it with heat-vision or whatever, but that’d be your problem and not ours. Next time, best to plan ahead and find an airstrip.)
* * *
Snowmelt. Even the heaviest snow will melt a little in the sun, and the tiny trickles will find their way through cracks inside, dripping through, tracing their way down.....
But beneath the eaves at Gonin Hane all was quiet. --well, *relatively* quiet. At least for the moment.
*
**bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzoom!**
There were... things... flying past, out in the hallway beyond the little side-room they were using for training today. Nakamori Aoko took a deep, calming breath (again) and tried to focus on her teacher’s next question:
“‘Nutcracker’?”
“Um-- storage shed in a backyard, up against the northeast corner of Ikegamicho Park. Big almond tree in the yard, blue house, black roof, red stripe on the pole by the gate in the back.”
“Good. ‘Black Sheep’?”
“Back room of Ginnosara Kawasaki Restaurant, south entrance, has a stencil of three sheep on the bottom left corner of the door, and...”
“...aaaand, pequeña?”
Another flying thing went by outside; Aoko managed not to look.
**zzzzzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeescreech!**
“--and that’s one of the ones you have to have a password for. Also, I’m not that short. Fumika-kun told me what ‘pequeña’ means.”
“Eh, don’t worry about it, all the best ladies’re fierce and tiny. Next one: ‘Glue’?”
“That’s the *worst* name, Mano-kun, ugh... And I can’t believe there’s a ‘hotel’ at the Kawasaki Racecourse! --north end, concession trucks entrance, and you have to go in as some sort of worker. And ask for somebody called the ‘hiroi-oya.’ Does that one actually get used much? There has to be a lot of onsite security--”
“--and that keeps unauthorized people out, yeah? But if you’re badged t’be there--”
“That does make sense. How many more?”
“Mm, s’enough right now; let’s take a break, I’m hungry and it’s late. Want t’go find Hoshiko-kun and eat?”
Out in the hallway, another *something* went past. Again.
**bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZYOW!**
*
Everyone was getting lunch late that day, it seemed. And it was surprising how much noise the resident population at Gonin Hane could make; Aoko could hear it easily long before they’d reached the general-purpose dining room, like how you knew a bus was heading towards your stop across Tokyo’s vast tidal traffic by the chuff-SHRIEK-clunk! of airbrakes in the distance. Here, the stone walls bounced back the sounds with very little distortion (though that might just be her ears) and she could catch Hoshiko-kun’s low-voiced murmur from up ahead where her return text had said she’d be.
Kaito’s cousin had been in training since early that morning; a bag of some sort of vaguely sports-type gear was slung over one shoulder; there was a scratch on one cheek and her hair was sticking up in a milder imitation of Kaito’s. She also had damp patches all over her legs around the knees-- Running in the snow, thought Aoko, wondering what on earth the younger girl had been training in.
“Evasion tactics,” she replied when asked. “I did okay, but I need better boots for this weather.” Hoshiko rubbed ruefully at one hip, which was damper than the other and still had bits of dirt embedded in the tough fabric of her pants. “I skidded, tripped over a log and almost broke my nose.”
“Ouch,” sympathized the Inspector’s daughter with feeling but also just a little distracted, considering the trays of food laid out on a long counter with support staff hovering over it from behind-- simple dishes appropriate for the weather: warming curries, soups, noodles and several covered platters of dim sum.
“There’ll be sukiyaki this evening,” commented a voice behind them with all the enthusiasm of someone who’d had too many noodles as of late, and Sasaki Nyoko took her place in the line behind them. “How’s the little one doing, Aoko-san?” Mika had bracketed the two by dint of shamelessly cutting in front of Hoshiko and was already busily filling her plate with as many dumplings as she could get away with; her mother took a moment to tow her daughter back behind the two young women. “I hope she has better manners than this creature; do you suppose I could trade her?”
“PLEASE trade me!” Mika nearly sent her plate into the air trying to wave both arms. “*They’d* let me go to Tokyo and I could see--”
“What?” Her mother took the plate from her gesticulating daughter’s hands. “And inside voice, please.” It was not a suggestion.
“EVERYTHING! Hachiko-chan’s statue and the Tokyo Tower and all the huge buildings and that crossroads-place with all the people and manga-stores and maybe ALL THE ARCADES and maybe we could watch Kaito-kun do a heist and maybe--”
“--and maybe you’d get run over by a city bus from not paying attention to what’s around you, Bratlet.” A hand clamped down on top of the girl’s head as she swiveled in place (in the wrong direction), trying to find where the voice had come from. Kuroba Aiji let his hand slide forward and nipped Mika’s nose with thumb and forefinger while her mother gave her offspring a long-suffering look, pointed at the chair in front of her, and then at Aiji’s hand. He obliged by gently but inexorably pile-driving her into her seat; the russet-haired scion of the Kuroba family gave a huge sigh and deflated into her dumplings. “How is our cousin’s little apprentice doing, Aoko-kun?”
“Fine... I think. She’s still in our room.” The Inspector’s daughter smiled a little at her companions before drooping just a bit. “She’s being very shy; I tried to get her to come with me this morning, but--”
“We could go bring her down to eat lunch,” suggested Hoshiko thoughtfully, stirring her ramen.
“We could... I just don’t want to scare her, though; she’s... had kind of a rough time lately.”
Mika’s mother frowned down at her food. There was nothing wrong with it per se, the food was perfectly fine; it was just that the original plans for Ayumi had been for her to end up in Nyoko-san’s proverbial nest along with Mika, two chicks under one wing. Nyoko and her husband had been perfectly willing to take her in, but as soon as Ayumi had arrived she had hidden herself away in Aoko’s room and had yet to come out. Aoko had taken to bringing her meals and eating most of her own with Ayumi, but the child had been nervous about venturing out even once since her arrival, and...
..,and now Nyoko was considering a strategy to take the next step. She was a rather round, cheerful woman barely taller than Aoko herself, as unlike her adopted daughter as possible (except for speech patterns and speed; there, the relationship showed) and had a plentiful helping of the Kuroba family’s bent towards plans and plotting. “Perhaps we’re going about this in the wrong way... Aoko-kun? You mentioned that she liked your little white kitten very much, didn’t you?”
“Yes?”
“Hm. Mika?”
“What.” Someone was still sulking.
“Would you mind going and collecting Hercúle and taking her to see Ayumi-chan? I noticed the other day that she was limping; perhaps someone who knows a bit about cats could help, and if you knocked on her door and asked nicely...? Be sure to bring them both back here for lunch, not anywhere else-- Well, let’s hope that works.” Aoko caught and straightened Mika-chan’s falling chair as the girl dashed down the hall.
“Nice work,” said Aiji-kun thoughtfully; he’d been watching the girl’s flash of movement, but Mika’s mother chuckled in response.
“Well, it’s cats. Shy children often react better to animals than they do to people. She does need to come out, it’s not healthy for her to just stay in her room all day long.”
**zzzzzzoooooooomzoooooooomzooooooooooooom**
Conversation moved on over lunch as people came and went. Hoshiko had a brief, hurried conversation with Mika’s mother, finished her lunch hastily and then left; a small black drone whirred past along one edge of the ceiling-- “Everybody wave! Don’t worry, it’s just transmitting, not recording, the light’s red,”-- and then headed on its way with its rotors singing a little four-part-song to Aoko’s sensitive hearing.
“What was that?” she asked finally, chopsticks paused mid-bite over her meal; the little drone swerved neatly around a corner further down the hall and was lost from sight. “What were *all* of those?”
“Just another of Uyeda-kun’s projects,” answered Aiji absentmindedly; “I think you might’ve met him once or twice?-- he’s my assistant, and he’s been working with a couple of the Chinese trainees on security ‘watchdogs’ of that sort, trying to find ways to improve them without driving up the cost too much. I mentioned that he works with optics, didn’t I, though? I think right now he’s trying to improve camera response-- less running into walls and all that while on preprogrammed routes, that sort of thing. Oh, and he’s got some new models in mind.” He shrugged, one thin shoulder hiking up; there were shadows under his eyes and beside him Ken-kun was sneaking dumplings onto his plate in an effort to get him to eat more.
Talk swerved to improvements regarding other types of gadgets, both legal and illegal. Mano-kun inhaled his lunch and took off to check on his wife, who was resting in their rooms, and as snow began to fall thickly outside conversation turned to the weather. Aoko’d been worried about that, actually, since Hokkaido’s famous multimeter-deep snowfalls were forecast to begin little more than a week away; the nearest village, she was told, sent snowplows their way when necessary but only halfway, as Gonin Hane had their own equipment to bridge the gap should it be needed.
Ken was just expounding over his empty soupbowl about how he thought that the estate’s enormous trucks (more snow-decimators than snowplows) would benefit from having flamethrower attachments when Aiji poked him in the ribs with a bony elbow. “Aoko-kun, you wanted to ask me something earlier but this lout talked over you. What was it?”
“Nothing, I just thought-- didn’t you say that Ken-kun was heading back to Europe?” The Inspector’s daughter was moodily drawing a map of several crossroads in Tokyo in the sauce from her curry with the tip of a chopstick; it was a childish habit she’d never managed to break herself of.
“Yes, he was; he was supposed to leave yesterday, actually,” Aiji answered, watching his boyfriend, who had opened his mouth and then shrugged.
“Mmmwell; somehow I managed to miss my plane,” sighed the redhead. “All this horrible weather, y’know?” Bangs straggling into his eyes (Ken needed a haircut), he bit into a hot breadroll with evident enjoyment before dipping it into his soup; for someone built so much like a greyhound, he had a large appetite. “We Irish are delicate. Cold weather’s terribly bad for our health and all that.”
“Delicate? Really?” Aiji raised his eyebrows.
“Like a fine Swiss watch,” agreed his boyfriend. “We need to be cherished, appreciated, polished--”
“--and occasionally rewound,” retorted the other. “Which is why we’re going to go get our coats and boots on and go for a walk. Outside.”
“But Aiji--”
“In the snow. Now. You haven’t been outside for days, and neither have I.” Kaito’s cousin stood, gathering his dishes. “Coming?”
“.....” With all the sad, forlorn dejection of a wolfhound who hadn’t been fed in days, Ken got to his feet, collected his own detritus and trudged along afterwards. There might have been just a little curl of a smile tagging after the dejection, though, and he tossed everyone a wink as he followed Aiji down the hall.
“Oh, well done, Ken-kun,” murmured Mika’s mother beneath her breath. At Aoko and Mano’s surprised looks she nodded. “He told me earlier that he was going to try to tease Aiji-kun into getting a little exercise; I don’t think that’s what he had in mind exactly, but any ruse that works--” Her voice trailed off as a single pair of footsteps sounded lightly down the hall from the other direction, accompanied by two voices. “And speaking of ruses...”
The two girls each had one side of the large, well-cushioned cat-basket that contained Hercúle, Mano’s feline bouncer. The large black-and-white cat rode without complaint; in fact, she seemed pleased by her two-legged attendants and accepted their doing the work as her due. She wasn’t a lightweight cat, either, but the girls gamely carted her down the hall--
--until the younger of the two saw the people in the dining area. She visibly balked, hanging back and nearly dumping her half of her and Mika’s mutual cargo out (and since cats are fluid, this would’ve been one whole cat’s worth by volume instead of only fifty percent.) Mika-chan grabbed the entire basket of complaining Hercúle, saying something cheerful before continuing on, and her companion trailed reluctantly behind.
Yoshida Ayumi looked-- Aoko searched for the right word: timid, nervous, unsure... The opposite of ‘confident,’ anyway, she thought, and why not? From everything Kaito’d told her, the poor girl had been yanked away from everything she knew and was now, no matter how much she was reassured about it, in with a batch of strangers in a very strange place. She’d managed to relax with Aoko herself and was beginning to shyly accept Kuroba Chikage, but there was every good reason in the world for her reluctance to venture out into their midst.
“Ayumi-chan, here, sit by me,” the Inspector’s daughter called out; without a word, Nyoko moved her plate and herself over to take Mano-kun’s empty chair so that both girls could sit between them. Aoko felt herself smiling.
‘Well done’ yourself, Nyoko-kun. She reached across the table to drag Mika-chan’s plate of dumplings over to the place beside the child’s mother, and the woman flashed her a little grin.
Lunch won over shyness. Aoko had planned on bringing back a tray for the little apprentice, but the afternoon was getting on and Ayumi was displaying the same kind of ferocious appetite that the other Pandora Gem-touched seem to have; even Mika-chan blinked at the quick disappearance of her companion’s bowl of katsu curry and other things. The child ate in silence while Mika chattered beside her and Hercúle purred from her basket on the floor, but as two more sets of footsteps came down the hall she turned her head... and Ayumi’s face lit up, suddenly bright.
“Hello, little vajra; we’ve been looking for you. Is there room at your table for us as well, perhaps?”
Wrapped in a shawl of deep green against the halls’ chilly air with Pyotr Konstanz just behind her, Akasema Kaori smiled; a little startled, Nyoko-san gestured to two empty chairs; Aoko seemed frozen in place. “Oh-- you arrived with Ayumi-chan, didn’t you? Of course.”
“Thank you; we’ll be just a moment-- lunch smells delicious, and we should pay it due respect.” As she moved towards the side-tables, Kaori-san’s gaze flickered momentarily to the blue water-bottle that Ayumi had brought with her and which stood upright at her elbow; then she turned away, chatting amiably with her companion.
As the pair busied themselves, Aoko looked sideways at the child. “You said they’re clients?” she hissed under her breath.
“Uh huh. That’s what Sumika-s-- I mean, Yuu-san said.” Ayumi had only learned her escort’s actual name during the last day of her trip to Gonin Hane; she dropped her own volume with some effort. “Why? Aren’t you glad to see her and Pyotr-jiisan? They know you and H-- Kaito-niisan.” She wrinkled her brow, picking up a last bite of her curry. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
Aoko was having a moment. “It’s not that I’m not glad... I was just surprised. I’ve only really met them once, outside of--” She hesitated.
“--dreams?” Ayumi wiped away extra curry-sauce from her mouth. “Those are funny. But she’s nice; she and Pyotr-jiisan helped my kaasan get away safe,” (her face darkened a little) “and got me ready to fly with Kaito-san, and she took us to the zoo, and she’s the one who told me I could keep the--”
“Shh--”
“Um. Okay. --anyway, and she and Pyotr-jiisan helped on the trip up here when we got chased...” The girl trailed off into silence; she hadn’t told all the details of their trip to Aoko as yet, and there was trouble buried in there somewhere. “--and she’s nice. She *explains* stuff.”
“I try to, at least,” said the party in question as she placed her well-laden plate on the table and sat down in the chair that her companion pulled out for her. “Sometimes.” The green-eyed woman was warmly dressed beneath her shawl in foresty shades, chocolate brown and moss; beside her the Russian was in comfortable gray and charcoal, a loose scarf hanging around his neck. “Then again, other times I believe it’s best to learn from experience.” A smile glimmered in her eyes. “I told you you’d be fine when you went with your teacher out into the air on his glider, didn’t I? That he’d make sure you got to a safe place? And wasn’t I right?”
Ayumi’s grin was startlingly familiar, if in miniature; Aoko blinked mid-swallow and nearly choked. “Uh huh. It was GREAT. And now I’m here.”
“You got to FLY? With Kaito-niisan?!?” Mika nearly levitated from her seat. “YOU GOTTA TELL ME EVERYTHING ABOUT IT.” She caught her mother’s eye. “...please? Pretty please?”
That, at least, was a relatively safe subject, Aoko thought as she got up to find herself more tea (and maybe some dessert; she needed the distraction.) It wasn’t like anyone here didn’t know who Kaito was, and there was much craning of heads and attentive listening from the others who were still lingering at the other tables as Ayumi launched into a vivid description of her flight. Nyoko, the Inspector’s daughter noted, was paying attention as well, her eyes fixed on the girl’s face; Mika’s mother (and prospective pro-tem guardian) had been introduced to ‘Cousin Kaito-san’s apprentice’ upon her arrival, but the gradeschooler had launched herself at Aoko at the first opportunity, and Mika’s mother hadn’t protested. ‘Anything to make her feel secure,’ she had murmured, and Aoko had agreed.
Another drone went by, this time over their heads; it was small, brightly colored and--
--shaped like a dragonfly. A dragonfly?
**Eeeeeeeee!Eeeeeeeeeee!Eeeeeeeeeeeee!Eeeeeeee--**
Following Aoko’s startled gaze, Nyoko looked up; she hadn’t heard it. “Uyeda’s getting creative,” she remarked appreciatively. Everyone at the table watched it zig-zag on its way through the halls.
“--Why is it a dragonfly?” asked Ayumi tentatively, breaking off her story.
“So if anybody sees it, they’ll think it’s s’posed to be there,” answered Mika, watching it go.
Aoko frowned. “In the wintertime, though?”
“Well, no--” Nyoko blinked. “He’d probably use a bird or something... and now I’m curious. I’ll ask him.” She turned back to Ayumi. “What happened next?”
“Oh-- okay.” Her small face screwed up for a second, and-- “Then Hei-san told me to close my eyes so I wouldn’t be scared, and he jumped off the balcony and we went whoosh--”
* * *
Drops, inching their way down a crevice between two stones laid in place nearly six hundred years earlier, reaching mortar two centuries younger, then a patch of rooftiles... Gonin Hane was a collaboration of many, many hands and as many materials across the years, and where that had its virtues it also had its faults.
Down past layers of rock and pitch and crumbling wood the droplets crept, and now there were airspaces and the first bits of ancient rusting metal...
*
**whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr--**
This one looked like a helicopter. Not a four-propped, helicopter-ish normal drone... it looked like a toy helicopter, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department toy helicopter, red and blue lights blinking back on the tail; after a moment a tiny siren started up and then died away.
“They don’t actually have sirens,” commented the Inspector’s daughter as it sped past, wondering if she was losing her mind.
“I know, but I heard Uyeda-san say that you can order toy ones that do, so...” Mika-chan made a handwavy sort of gesture that could mean almost anything but probably was shorthand for so he did it anyway. “He said it has a really good tiny camera inside it, though,” she offered.
Oh... so I guess that’s good? For a given value of ‘good,’ I mean-- Occasionally Aoko’s sensibilities butted heads over this sort of thing, but she was getting used to it. Whether *that* was good or not, she... wasn’t sure, but she suspected her father might have had an opinion or two.
Ayumi had finished her extremely vivid tale of what it felt like to fly high above the world’s largest city while strapped to an international jewel-thief who’d told her he occasionally had chats with the moon (she’d told them about that too, and nobody had batted an eye.) And somehow, all Aoko could feel was wistful, very, very wistful; it must’ve been pretty wonderful. The noises Kaito’s relatives made were pretty much along the same theme, and Mika’s eyes were absolutely huge.
Pyotr, who had spent most of Ayumi’s story thoughtfully watching the drones as he put away a large bowl of bread and soup much like Ken had (maybe that was a European thing?), turned to Kaori as she took another bite; she had followed the child’s tale appreciatively, smiling. “C-- Kaori? Didn’t you have an appointment with our honored host? I believe it’s almost time--”
“Yes,” she murmured, gathering her dishes. “Of course.” As she rose, the green-eyed woman bowed to the table. “Nyoko-san, Mika-kun, delighted to meet you both; Nakamori-san, Ayumi-chan, I hope to see you this evening?” Wrapping her shawl about her gracefully, she and her companion made their way down the hall.
A small silence followed their departure. “I understand Akasema-san’s people have had a contract with us for quite some time,” murmured Nyoko, watching them go. “She’s an interesting woman, isn’t she?”
You have no idea, thought Aoko; and I’ll bet that contract has her signature on it, and not some relative’s. For a moment she wished Kaito was there so strongly that it was nearly painful; it was times like this, when she wanted to talk to him about something new or strange or both that she missed him the most. Sometimes it was like an itch under her skin, never leaving, and right now? Seeing the pair that had been such a large part of the changes in her life again...
But then, that wish happened fairly often these days. In the quiet susurration of late-lunch conversation, she wondered to herself what he was doing.
* * *
And roughly halfway across Japan, slightly earlier in the day...
“My turn? Okay-- Y’know that number you find everywhere, whatsit-- ‘Pi’? Say it as far as you can.”
“...and here I honestly thought you were going to request something interesting, Hattori-kun. Very w--”
“Backwards.”
“.....Ah. Kudo-kun, please use your phone to check my accuracy. Fifty digits out, backwards, to begin: Zero. One. Five. Seven. Three. Nine. Nine--”
“Well, shit.”
“--Six. One. Seven. Nine. One. Four. Eight. Eight. Two--”
“Okaaaay, calling this one on account of it’s going to bore us to death. You win, ‘Guru-kun.”
“HEY!”
--Two. Six. Four. Eight. Three. Tw--”
“You. Can. Stop. Now. Please. Eight five three five six two nine five one four one point three, there, for the love of god pick a forfeit!”
“No need to get pushy, Kaito-kun. Hm... Hattori-kun? Give up your hat for ten minutes to the person of your choice.”
“.....fine. There.”
“Thank you, Hattori-kun, I promise I’ll give it back. --it’s too big. That’s funny, I didn’t even think of my hat-size being smaller now... Everything else, but not my hat-size.”
“Y’look cute, Neechan.”
“Right, Okay, MY turn. Hey, Kudo? Why’re you afraid of spiders?”
“I’m not afraid of spiders!”
“Genta-kun said you were... Are you calling an eight-year-old kid a liar?”
“A month ago he told me he was strong enough to pick up a car, so YES. --Oh, fine. I don’t like them because they have too many damn legs, alright? I’m NOT afraid of them. I just don’t like them.”
“Mmm, sounds kinda fake but okay. Your turn.”
(After their resident Phantom Thief had been caught watching Most Expensive Gemstones Ever Discovered via his phone’s YouTube app out of sheer boredom, Agasa had been the one to suggest a game of Twenty Questions to keep everyone occupied while he walked across to the Kudo mansion prior to Kudo Senior’s driving around to pick Division One’s two interrogation subjects invited guests up for their three p.m. appointment. They still had several hours, and there were worse ways of passing the time if you had three detectives, one master thief, one Voice of Reason and a former member of a globe-spanning criminal organization at hand. Fortunately for them all, perhaps, Baaya had gone with Agasa-hakase, fully kitted up in her masculine guise and practically oozing Wrathful Editor vibes in all directions.)
“Pass; Rin, you take it.”
“...ShinIchiiiii, when we were setting the rules, you said ‘no passes.’”
“Ugh. How’s the hat feel?”
“THAT’S your question?”
“Is that your answer?”
“Rin-kun, if you’d like to find a different boyfriend, like I said earlier there’s an entire school you could pick fr--”
“SHUT IT, KUROBA.”
“The hat’s fine, now that I have it pushed back. So now it’s my turn, and here’s my question: Shinichi? What was in that note that you started to pass me on my birthday when we were in Eighth Grade that you chickened out over and tore up?”
“.....forfeit.”
**snicker** “Baaawwwwk-bawkbawkbawk!!! Bawk!!! Ba-cawwwww!!!”
“Oi, Hattori-tan, were those supposed to be chicken noises? See me after class and I’ll teach you how to really sound like you’re tomorrow night’s dinner--”
“Can it, thief. Neechan, what’s his forfeit gonna be?”
“Let me think-- got one. Conan-kun? Sing that song for us that we were learning on the last day we were at school, you know, the one about the futon?”
“Riiiiiiin, you don’t want to make me sing, you KNOW that. --and anyway, I still can’t believe Sensei turned that into a classroom song. She’s got hidden depths.”
“Okay, NOW I’m curious. What’s wrong with singing? C’mon, do it, indulge a poor sick kaitou...”
“Fine, you asked for it-- ‘♬♫𝆕 I wake up in the morning / In my futon-- ♫𝆕♬’”
* * *
Back at Gonin Hane...
“...so we ALL got to sing. It was fun. Do people do that on all boats? I mean, all ships? ‘Cause it had a little boat in the back for us to get into if the big one sank, so it was a ship. But I don’t know how we would all’ve fit in there, because it was kind of small. But anyway, we all sang, and--”
Well, we DID want her to start interacting with people, thought Aoko, wryly regarding the chattering little girl with the large cat in her lap. Now, how do we turn her off? Ayumi-chan had apparently decided to stop being shy and quiet.
“--and it was fun.”
Mika, Ayumi, Mano and the Inspector’s daughter (and Hercúle, of course) all sat on the red-painted bridge that arched across the glass-topped stream room. Today, the tables to either side were mostly empty; lunch was ending and the winter residents of Gonin Hane had mostly returned to their own pursuits, legal or illegal as they might be.
Mano-kun had come back from checking on his extremely pregnant wife with a wrinkle in his forehead; when his current student had tentatively asked him if everything was alright, he had hiked one shoulder in a shrug and simply replied that “Fumika’s kind’ve uncomfortable-- doesn’t want to sit down’r anything. Got ‘Nami-baasan with her.” He had paused, heavy black eyebrows drawn down against his dark skin. “Said they’d call me if she needed me.”
Well, that wasn’t worrying. Much.
They’d gone over ‘hotels’ named ‘Mouse’, ‘Ace of Hearts’, ‘Tuxedo’, ‘Red Lady’ and ‘Three Snakes’ while the two girls talked. At one point Mika had asked how many they’d been over, and between them they had counted a total of forty-nine. “Do you know all of those? I mean, how to get in them and stuff?” the older girl of the two had asked, surprised. “That’s really good for an outsider--”
Mano had tapped her forehead with the tip of one long finger. “Rude. Not an outsider anymore, chica,” he’d chided the girl. “You think Ojiisama’d let me teach her stuff like this’f she was?”
...which had, predictably, made Aoko’s nerves blow up in a flurry of what felt like feathers. White ones, probably. Maybe. Possibly.
It ought to be easier to make up your mind. My mind. And to stop feeling like a outsider, or start feeling like more of an-- an insider instead of being stuck halfway. I *like* these people. I love one of them. And I’m starting to wish I could quit this... tightrope-walking thing I’m doing; it makes me keep feeling like I’m going to fall, and I don’t know which way I’ll land.
I sound like a coin. Which side is heads, though?
Ayumi stroked the fluffy black-and-white mass of cat in her lap; there was a saucer from the lunch area on the bridge’s surface in front of her that contained the remainder of the water she’d given Hercúle, examining the feline’s foot and exclaiming over the swelling that showed where the cat had stepped on something sharp. Now she ran one soft, thin ear-membrane between her thumb and forefinger, white with black on the point. “Does she need her foot bandaged, Ayumi-chan?” asked Aoko, trying to distract herself.
“No. She’ll be okay now,” said the child, carefully allowing her furry cargo to slide gently from her lap as she pushed herself up. “She’s sleepy, though.” Mika was also rising; apparently the two had decided on a course of action while Aoko’d worked on memorizing illegal hideout locations in Tokyo. “We’re going exploring,” she explained.
“Tousan’s in his workroom,” Mika-chan added, leaning her chin momentarily on the bridge-railing and peering down into the cold water below, “and we’re gonna see who else is in there, and I’m gonna show her the roofs and a couple of other places. Kaasan won’t mind.” She grabbed the other girl’s hand before anyone said anything like did you ask your mother about this? “C’mon--”
The two on the bridge watched them leave. “I did want her to come out of her shell...” muttered Aoko.
“Eh, don’t worry; Mika-chan knows what t’stay out of. They’ll be fine. Now,” said the Honduran, settling his back against a red-painted post. “What can y’tell me ‘bout hotel Inkpen?”
Beside them, Hercúle slept on, dreaming vivid cat dreams.
* * *
Footsteps overhead; there’d been many of them across the centuries, running, stomping, leaping-- and the gap that the trickle had found widened, just a little.
*
The rooftops met with Ayumi’s total approval; she and Mika spent a little while building a snowman with cat-ears (twig arms and bits for the face were donated by one of the crew who were cleaning the roof-tiles and had been dragging scraps of branches into a pile to be incinerated later.) A few snowballs were thrown with shrieks and splats, and Mika told her new friend a little about living at Gonin Hane and homeschooling, how they spent some time in the village towards the coast, and about some of the other people living there. Ayumi told her about her school in Beika-cho, her friends Mitsuhiko, Genta, Conan and Rin, and living in Tokyo.
And about Hei-san.
“Why do you call him that? Isn’t he--” (the older girl hesitated; you didn’t usually ask about this sort of thing, but) “--is it a disguise name? An eriasu?” The word, alias, was borrowed from English and hung in the air as awkwardly as the question would have if voiced by an adult.
Ayumi nodded. The two, now swathed in scarves and slightly oversized children’s jackets, sat on a doorway lintel; the Tokyo girl was making a small snow-kitten to sit beside the larger snow-cat they’d made earlier, using bits of bark that had fallen from the latter’s twiggy arms when they’d trimmed off the extra fingers. “He was pretending to be a janitor. He saved me from a murderer, though... and then he started teaching me to juggle, but I didn’t know it was him until he got shot and landed on my balcony.”
Mika blinked. Public school in the Big City was apparently a little more hazardous than homeschooling at Gonin Hane. “I’ve never seen a murderer before,” she said cautiously; this was unknown territory. “Was he scary?”
The younger girl shivered (hard voice, tight grip on her wrist, cruel laughter, gunshots.) “He was very scary. And he hurt Conan-kun-- he almost murdered him. But--”
“Who did he murder?” Mika’s dark eyes were wide as saucers.
“Toshiro-kun. He was a boy in my class. But anyway--”
“Ooh. What happened to him?!?”
Ayumi swallowed; she’d been thinking about this, and about other things too. “Um. I’m... not sure? Nobody would tell us. He... Mika-kun? Do you believe in ghosts?”
Mika blinked again. “Of course I believe in ghosts. We got one here, though I *think* ours is more like a kami. Maybe? We’re s’posed to see him when we’re old enough to take the Test. People dream about him and all, and it’s good luck if you do. Why?”
The Tokyo girl pinched snowy ears onto her construction, stuck bits of bark on for eyes and made a small, pointy tail to stick up behind. “I saw him. Toshiro-kun, I mean, and it was later, after we... after Genta started carrying Conan-kun, and he said... But it was-- anyway. I think Toshiro-kun was a, was a, a ghost when I saw him, but I’m not sure.” She bit her lip. “I should’ve asked Hei-san,” she whispered at her snow-kitten, head down.
“Oh...”
“Rin-kun doesn’t like to talk about it ‘cause she’s scared of ghosts, and Conan-kun won’t talk about it since he doesn’t want to believe in ghosts. And Genta-kun wouldn’t believe me and Mitsuhiko-kun would ask all the questions in the WORLD.” Ayumi made a scrunched up face when she looked back up at her new friend. “Does anybody here know anything about ghosts?”
“Obaasama... and OJiisama. And maybe Lists-san? She knows everything. And we could go see the workshops on the way. C’mon.” She scrambled up, brushing snow from her posterior and helped the smaller child up as well. “And she likes hot drinks so maybe she’ll have hot cocoa or tea, ‘cause BRRRRR! it’s cold up here.”
*
If the rooftops had been fun, the workshops were (in Mika’s opinion) the best. It helped that her tousan was hard at work there today.
Wintry sunlight slanted in down lightwells in the ceiling, mostly centered on the open area where the painters worked but also on a long, narrow area where unassigned workbenches and tables stood for whatever craftsman might need them. Individual rooms ringed the long, broad hallway, a few with warning-signs on the doors indicating the use of caustic chemicals or dangerous machinery inside.
Sasaki Kiyoshi, masked and goggled and wearing a thin plastic garment very much like a hooded raincoat, was working in one of those rooms, carving something with a very small pencil-like device that buzzed loudly. Dust rose all around him; what he was making, to Ayumi’s curious eyes, seemed to be thin white toothpicks; he held one of them up to the light, tilting it, and it threw back tiny twists of rainbows.
Face plastered against the small room’s glass beside hers, Mika knocked impatiently on it with her knuckles. The figure inside straightened, turned off the machine and headed for the door-- or rather, doors, two of them, both glass, and barely half a meter apart. Off came the mask and goggles, off came the raincoat; all stayed behind on a stool, and he stepped out.
“Sorry, Mi-chan, but I’m working with mother-of-pearl today.” He was a small man, thin where his wife Nyoko was round, with a narrow beaky-nosed face that balanced a pair of glasses; he had long, graceful hands. He was also missing the tips of two of his left hand’s fingers, Ayumi saw as he wiped his hands carefully on an oily cloth that hung next to the doors. “The dust’s not good for anyone to breathe, you see, so I have to work in there.” He held up one of the ‘toothpicks’-- and the girl was astounded to see that it was actually a tiny, delicately-shaped piece of bamboo no longer than her smallest finger and much, much thinner.
“What is it?” asked Ayumi, fascinated enough to forget to be shy.
Mika’s-father-san smiled down at her-- a small, shy smile, pushing up his glasses with one (whole) finger. “This.” From a drawer in a cabinet beside them he brought out a small wooden box with openings on all sides and in the top; like little windows, they were each barred with many little bits of shining white carved to look like bamboo, and the octagonal space on the top was an entire piece of mother-of-pearl, pierced and fretted to look like woven bamboo canes. “It’s a cricket-cage; it was made about four hundred years ago for a noblewoman, and I’m making a replica.”
“Why?”
“Well...” The man tilted his head to one side; with bits of gray streaking his black hair, he looked like one of the birds that Ayumi sometimes saw on her balcony back in Tokyo. “The owner's was stolen, and he paid one of our family to steal it back for him. So now he wants a copy made so that he can put that on display and put the antique one somewhere safe.” He very carefully placed the original back in its drawer and locked it. “He’s paying us quite a lot of money to have it made.”
Mika tilted her head, just like her father. “Who stole the real one?”
Now the smile was just a little wider, with mischief at its corner. “Your cousin Masae-san, over in Niigata.”
“Really? Who stole it back from him?”
“His brother Okita-sa, who lives with him in the same house.”
“Oh! So--”
“Yes; it was a clever trick. Masae and Okita planned it out very carefully.” Recollecting himself, Mika’s father chuckled at the two faces looking up at him. “Don’t worry; the owner’s a rather foolish, very rich man who buys expensive antiques because he thinks owning them make him look clever, not because they’re worth having. So we’re being paid to return his stolen treasure to him and to make a replica for him to show off. The best trick is the one that only the trickster sees happening.” He paused. “It’s also very good advertising all around.”
He stretched, cracking his shoulders. “I could use a break. And your name is Ayumi, yes? Would you like me to show you around the workrooms?” His eyes were kind, with little wrinkles at the corners.
“Y-yes, please.”
And he did, from the painters and their paintings (“This one’s a forgery, but this one’s not-- it’s a new piece, though everyone will think it’s a lost Lorrain after we age it up a bit”) to the careful restoration work one young man was putting into a damaged stained-glass window that had been carefully shipped up from Kyoto before the snows began (“It was in the Miyazu kirisuto church up til a guy on a ladder fell through it.”) It was all a mix, tricks blending seamlessly with legal jobs, back and forth, and the common link between it all was that everyone was working, the painters and fabricators, metalsmiths and jewelers, people making tiny electronic devices and cutting gems and polishing Russian icons and laying down the gilding in what Ayumi was told was called an ‘illuminated manuscript’ so beautiful that she could hardly take her eyes off it.
There was a long, narrow room off to one side that had metal mesh over its windows; they were narrow too, and Ayumi peered through one to see...
...a giant, green moth go fluttering past. It sailed through the air, oddly-shaped wings beating rhythmically. The girl STARED.
“Ah; he got that one to work.” Mika’s-father-san (Ayumi still didn’t know what to call him) knocked politely on the glass.
* * *
Water seeks air; air allows water through. And even the best maintenance can’t catch everything. Metal and ductwork, old cables, newer ones, copper piping green with verdigris and below that finer finaments: wiring that carried the living electricity of Gonin Hane through it like nerves.
Water seeks fire, too, to put it out: not maliciously, but because it can. And now it was pooling on the warmer surfaces beneath where it had come in, making way for more water and finding its way in a growing parallel tepid stream, going wherever gravity took it.
Making way for more...
*
Uyeda-san was a small man, as dark as Conan-kun’s friend Heiji-niisan but a lot shorter; his hair was also short, and he had a nice smile. He also had a sort of hairband (not that he needed one) around his head that had little things like glasses-lenses sticking out from it so that he could bend them down in front of his eyes to see through-- maybe for what he was working on? It made him look a little like a mad scientist from a movie, but unlike most mad scientists he was happy to show them what he was making.
“--so birds and some other insects, those are already being done; but the problem’s that the smaller you go, the harder it is to get really high-quality images and to transmit them very far, so I’ve been working on--”
Distracted by the mechanical green moth that was doing careful loops from one end of the long room to the other, Ayumi sat down on one end of a cluttered wooden bench and watched it while the two adults talked. The room was even longer than she had thought, and at least half of it seemed to go off sideways at an angle from the rest of the outer rooms. Seeing her puzzled look, Uyeda broke off for a moment. “We use this place for devices we want to check distance on-- flight, range, windage-- anything that needs a lot of room but isn’t outside,” he said, and the girl wondered what ‘windage’ was. “Right now I’m mostly tinkering with the cameras on my little drones here, but good lenses won’t be of any use if they get spotted for not flying right.”
Mika’s-father-san was examining what looked for all the world like a seagull, big and white and gray, but it was stiff and unmoving as he turned it over in his hands. “It looks so real,” Mika marveled, and poked at the bird with a finger. “Those are real feathers!”
“Fake ones wouldn’t look right,” explained Uyeda-san. “See?” He was wearing an apron over his regular clothes and he pulled out another bird from a pocket; resting on his palm, it looked *mostly* like a little sparrow... only it didn’t, not quite. Very daring, Ayumi stood up to peer closer and brushed a fingertip along the bird’s back; it felt plasticky and stiff, and the room’s bright lighting made it look...
“It’s painted.” She could see the dusting of color on the feathers; they were too regular, like something printed instead of part of a real bird. “Is it-- it looks like it’s *wearing* feathers, not growing them.” Ayumi looked back to the seagull, still cradled in the older man’s hands. “That one’s lots better.”
Uyeda seemed pleased. “It is better. The sparrow was something I built to test wing-beat patterns.”
Mika’s-father-san went on to ask a question that made little sense to Ayumi; she picked up a stray feather from the floor (black and white and green, like a duck’s) and leaned her head close to Mika’s; the other girl had found another of the headband-lens-things and was looking through each framed bit of glass one at a time. “What do I call your otousan?” she whispered.
Mika thought about it, doubling up two of the lens and squinting through them both at once. “...our family’s name is Sasaki. Sasaki-san? Sasaki-jiisan?” The second one sounded better, so Ayumi nodded and also peeked through the doubled lens; it made her blink and rub her eyes. “Uyeda-san’s nice, isn’t he? He likes to talk. He makes really good paper airplanes, too, and he takes care of Aiji-nii sometimes.”
“Is Aiji-niisan sick?” Ayumi had wondered; he’d been so pale, and he hadn’t looked liked he’d been sleeping well.
“Sort of? Kaasan said his heart doesn’t work like it should. And I heard Uyeda-san say he keeps Aiji-nii from doing anything too stupid.”
“Oh. Okay...” The electronic moth was coming back again, flapping in an arrow-straight path very unlike what a real moth would do; the Tokyo girl wondered if Uyeda-san realized this. She opened her mouth to say something about it to Mika when the moth swerved, altering its course to flicker sideways and then again to straighten back in line with where it had been flying.
“Why’d it move?” wondered Mika beside her, scrunching up her freckled nose; she had seen it too.
“Why’d what move?” Uyeda had still been talking, but he’d stopped (probably to breath.)
“The moth,” ventured Ayumi a little timidly. “It went sideways and then it went straight again.”
The short, dark man frowned. “That shouldn’t happen unless there’s something in the way; I set up an obstacle course yesterday and it was f--” He stopped, and slowly raised a hand, palm up.
Drip. Dripdrip. DRIPdripDRIPdripSPLASH--
“OH NO.” Uyeda-san looked up. There was a crackle, then a louder one, and then sparks, raining down in a sudden shower that also included a plentiful amount of very, very cold water.
And all the lights went out, every one.
* * *
Back in Tokyo:
“Three more questions and then Rin and I’ll have to go. Whose turn is it?”
“Mine, I believe. Tell me, Kaitou-san, and tell me honestly: why are you so afraid of fish?”
“...trust Labcoat-chan to ask something about a poor harmless thief’s deepest, darkest fears...”
“Excuse me, WHAT did you just call me?”
“.........right, uh, f-fish. I don’t actually know. Just am, okay? Runs in the family.”
“Really--? That’s quite fascinating. Very few people have predictable, inborn familial traits that include fears. One might make an interesting study of such a thing... very interesting indeed...”
“!!!”
“--oh, don’t look at me like that. When would I have the time?”
“...whew. OKAY, MY TURN, MOVING RIGHT ALONG. Hey, Kudo? Name one really *good* thing you’ve found about being shrunk. C’mon, one good thing, the best; what is it?”
“Rin. And screw the rules, she gets my turn.”
“Awwwwwwwww... Neechan? Stop with the blushing, y’might as well take it.”
“I, um. I... oh, I know. Kaito-kun? Can you juggle with your feet?-- Don’t look at me like that, Shinichi, I saw somebody do it on a variety show and Sonoko and I were talking about it and she said-- anyway. Can you?”
“Heh; ‘can I,’ she asks. Go find me five pieces of something really breakable and expensive and I’ll show you...”
* * *
Sparks were still crackling down, fire and water together, and there were voices coming from the speakers overhead; Ayumi and Mika were crouched together on the floor, and the Tokyo child had her hands over her ears because everything was so, so loud! And she was scared--
She looked around wildly; beside her there was an unnerved squeak. The two men were groping in the darkness, couldn’t they see-- Oh, they can’t see, but I can. Uyeda-san was slapping his hand along the wall, trying to get to a switch but missing it because he was standing in the wrong place; Ayumi got up and, shying away from the waving hands, turned it on.
Dim overhead emergency lights blinked into life in the long room, making her flinch; Mika was still crouched, staring up at the other girl with her mouth open, and the two men had frozen, listening:
“--electrical failure. Power should be back on momentarily. Please remain in place and do not panic, this seems to be a minor but widespread electrical failure. I repeat, Power should be back on--”
“You got eyes like Kaito-nii,” breathed Mika-chan from her place on the floor. “That’s AWESOME.”
“...okay?”
*
Hours later, halfway through the batch of chocolate-chip cookies that Hoshiko-kun had dragged both girls off to make after the power had come back on and the source of the problem had been sorted out (a leak in the stonework above), Mika sat beside Ayumi with a plateful of crumbs in her lap and a calculating expression on her freckled face.
Totally ignoring the anime that was currently playing on the TV, the two girls were camping out in Hoshiko’s tiny apartment with a pair of sleeping bags. The other half of the cookies sat in a sealed container on the kitchen counter, waiting to be transported to one Kuroba Chikage the next morning as her son had suggested; but for now, Ayumi was at her first Gonin Hane sleepover.
Mika had worked out that she was exactly two hundred and eighty-four days older than Ayumi; Ayumi had counted down all the policemen and detectives she had met, a number which had widened her new friend’s eyes as if she had been counting tigers instead of lawmen. They had, in short, become fast friends... and Mika had asked point-blank about Ayumi’s eyes.
Ayumi had explained.
After all, she was safe where she was, right? Her kaasan had given her to Kaori-basan to be looked after, and Kaori-basan had given her to Hei-san, and Hei-san had sent her here to his favorite place where his mother and his girlfriend were, and that *had* to be safe, right? And even Kaori-basan and Pyotr-jiisan were here; it had to be okay. It really, really, really had to be okay. Someplace had to be okay.
And... that meant talking about what had happened to her and Aoko and Hei-san had to be okay too, right?
So she had. Talked, that is. Lots.
There’d been things Ayumi had left out; she hadn’t told about Kaori-basan or Pyotr-jiisan, hadn’t said that *she* had the Panda Gem, hadn’t brought out her juggling stones and tumbled them onto the floor between them... but she’d wanted to. She had wanted to.
And now, lying on the carpet with her chin propped up on one hand and the other picking at the cookie-crumbs scattered before her, she was thinking.
“Mika-chan? Who does this whole place belong to? I mean, all of it?”
“I... guess to Ojiisama and Obaasama? I mean it’s ours, all of ours, but they’re in charge. Why?”
The child from Tokyo drew a deep breath; one hand sought out her pocket, half-mashed beneath her, to make sure her juggling-stones were still there. “I think I need to talk to them. Can I?”
* * *
And in a small remote lab with a great deal of equipment both legal and illegal, a technician frowned at a burst of unexpected transmittals that had been released from a location on the southeast side of Hokkaido-- phone images and texts, mostly, received from an area which should have been untouched mountainsides and half-frozen rivers. Those weren’t of much interest, but the fact that a large amount of the rest of the transmittals had not just been heavily encrypted but encoded was.
The Hatazesa monitored every sector of their host countries, not so much for the usual traffic but for the unusual. This was a great deal of data-- incomplete in many parts, but still worthy of notice.
The tech who examined this particular batch of phone-images was bored... bored, bored, bored. Selfies, terrible landscape shots, people (those'd be sent over to one of her coworkers who did facial-recognition crawls; maybe she could get some coffee with him, anything to break up the monotony), far too many pet pics-- how many cats did people even HAVE?-- random things that might mean something, the occasional private bedroom stuff, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
But something caught her eye. It was a peculiar silhouette with a dash of color (red) streaming from its center, backlit by a wintry sky; “Weird shape for a hang-glider,” she muttered to herself. And, “Black? Why's it black?”
Oh well, whatever; she labeled the image and fed it along with the rest through the sorting program; whatever it pulled would be sent on for further review.
And she went back to her work.
*
Snowmelt. Even the heaviest snow will melt a little in the sun, and the tiny trickles will find their way through cracks inside, dripping through, tracing their way down... and down... and down...
* * *
Sing as We Go (an Omake)
Tuesday, November 12, Ajigasawa port
The Bepi had just chugged out from its dock, carrying four new passengers. That wasn't unusual; most ships in the area were willing to play water-taxi for the right price. The thing about the Bepi, though, was that sometimes it went a little further than just down the coast to the next town.
Or a lot further; to Hokkaido, for instance.
It was a sturdy craft, for all its age (and if it was a little on the elderly side, it was still eminently seaworthy so who cared?), with a crew of five including the captain; sometimes they fished, sometimes they carried cargos of machine parts or pottery or whatever needed hauling; the Bepi was an odd-job ship and did well enough. Its crew had few complaints.
Watanabe Souta had welcomed his passengers aboard, shown them into the tiny bunkroom where'd they'd sleep (hastily vacated by crew, who'd all be sleeping on deck that night if they weren't on shift)... all without a single word. Just smiles, a bow or two, a handwave; his first mate, Tono-san, had chatted briefly with them but had spent a few minutes more with Kuroba Yuu, their heads ducked together; then she'd come back down into the bunkroom, shoving her hair back and tucking it into her collar against the icy sea-breeze and shutting the door behind her.
For a little while the roar of the Bepi's engines made conversation impossible; huddled up between Pyotr Kostanz and Agasema Kaori, Ayumi had her hands over her ears. Her companions winced occasionally at the noise but managed to ignore it well enough; they were all weary, and Yuu was no less. She sat down with the other three, gave her charge a tired smile, and settled back. She seemed to be waiting for something.
The something was a cessation of the noise; a good distance out to see brought about a brief pause as the engines shut down, the ship drifted for a few minutes, and then far less noisy engines took over; Yuu's shoulders relaxed. “All clear,” she said as Ayumi cautiously allowed her hands to slide down. “They have a secondary engine system, you see; sometimes the Bepi, well... needs to be a little faster than it looks like it could be.” She shrugged and gave the others a half-smile. “It depends on the cargo.”
“Are we cargo?” asked Ayumi tentatively; she had asked that question once before, but the circumstances had been very different.
Her caretaker chuckled. “We all are, today. And there's something I need to explain-- ah; there we go.” Yuu lifted her head, listening; they all did.
Someone was singing; one of the crew, with a strong accent that invaded the words of the song (it was in a different language-- Korean, maybe? It sounded like something Ayumi might have heard on K-pop stations), and after a moment another voice picked the tune up, and the two voices carried it along above the sounds of the waves and the engines and the occasional shout of the rest of the crew. Four voices only, though; never five.
“Ayumi-chan? Have you ever known anyone who had a stutter?”
Still listening, the girl blinked. “Um-- there's a boy in the next grade, he stutters. Some of the other kids made fun of him for it... He's nice, though; he helped my class last Sports Day. Why?”
“Well.” Yuu pushed her hair back again; little bits of breeze kept sneaking in through the door's crack, sending her curls drifting. “When a person has a bad stutter, sometimes they don't like to talk to people. It can be a problem for them for their entire lifetime; stutters are extremely hard to overcome. But there are ways... and sometimes they find methods to avoid their problem-- some people can talk without their speech issues getting in the way if they're not speaking face to face. And some people--”
(Outside, another voice joined in the song; strong and tuneful, the singer seemed to enjoy what he was doing, and now there were five.)
“--don't stutter when they sing. Why? I don't know. But Souta-sancho, who has a problem speaking to most people, doesn't stutter when he sings. Or talks on the phone, or the radio.”
All five were singing, some loud, some like they were busy but wanted to anyway, like the way Ai-chan sometimes hummed when she was doing something. They didn't sound like some rehearsed band or professional music group or anything like that; they just sounded like people singing. One of them broke off to swear (Ayumi knew what swearing sounded like) and call out to one of the others, who stopped singing for a few minutes. Then the song was picked up again.
“Do they do this throughout their voyages?” Kaori-basan sounded fascinated.
Yuu-san (she had told Ayumi her actual name a little before they'd boarded) shrugged. “Sometimes; Souta-sancho relays anything he needs to tell the crew to Tono-san. They manage. The singing's for fun, they just... do it because they like to. I think at first it was just one of the older crewmembers who'd sing while he worked, and then the others started doing it; he's retired now, but he got Souta-kun to try too, and--” (she paused, listening to the voices outside.) “And, well, it worked. He wasn't the captain then, just another deckhand; that was years ago.”
Pyotr-jiisan murmured something in what was probably Russian; he sounded surprised.
“So... if you want to, you can sing with them. They always like that; I usually end up singing a little; it's hard not to.” There was a little quirk to one side of Yuu-san's mouth. “They sing a little of everything: folk songs, things they pick up from videos on YouTube, stuff they hear from movies-- on one trip it was nothing but Disney songs, if you can believe that.”
*
And they did-- sing lots of different stuff, that is. At one point, one of the crew started singing something in English that made the rest break up after a few minutes. Even Yuu-san sat bolt upright, eyes wide, and covered her mouth to hide her laughter (she needed to laugh more) at that one; she went up on deck and said something to Souta-sancho, who snorted, and a few minutes later the crew picked a different song. Ayumi couldn’t see why; she had no idea what something that sounded like honkeetonku-badonka-donku would bother anyone.
Eventually, the other two joined in... or, at least, sang something for the men that were working so hard to get them to where they needed to go. Kaori-basan sang something rhythmic and lilting, all words that no-one there seemed to know, but several of the men tapped their hands against the nearest surface along with the tune. Pyotr-jiisan had a rough, slightly off-key voice, but he sang something in a language that he later told Ayumi was French; it was bouncy and fast, and the crew shouted in approval after he did a bunch of verses one after the other. (Later on, he told Ayumi that it was about a bird, a ‘lark’, and how it was caught and eaten one bit at a time. It had been a funny-sounding song, but she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor little bird.)
Yuu-san, though... she never sang. She listened, smiled more than Ayumi had ever seen her smile, but never sang along. And neither did Ayumi; she wanted to, but...
...maybe later? Maybe before they got where they were going? Maybe?
*
It was late, and everyone who was supposed to be sleeping was asleep, Ayumi thought; she wasn’t sure what had woken her up. In the nest of warm blankets that she’d been given, she sat up; she was just barely short enough not to bump her head on the bottom of the bunk above here (where Kaori-basan lay, snoring very softly in a tiny whistle) and when she looked across the tiny room, she saw that one of the other bunks was empty.
Where was Yuu-san?
And then she heard what had awakened her: a song made out of two voices.
The Bepi’s engines were doing what Pyotr-jiisan had called ‘coasting,’ just barely keeping them going; they wouldn’t be going to shore until the next afternoon, but he’d said that sometimes you didn’t want to call attention to yourself by roaring around fast all the time, so she guessed it was okay. Ayumi could hear the waves lapping, and just above it, Souta-sancho’s low voice; he was...
...it wasn’t like he was singing a SONG-type song, more like he was talking. But she’d heard him talk, just a little, heard the jagged way his words staggered and tripped; this wasn’t like that. This was... he was saying things, but singing them. And they didn’t stumble, didn’t bump against each other. And the other voice was--
Oh. That was Yuu-san.
She sounded pretty. But kind of shy. Ayumi hadn’t known she could be shy. And she was talking too, only she was doing it the same way Souta-sencho was, and the child strained to hear--
“Ayumi-chan.” THAT voice came from up above, where Kaori-basan’s snoring had stopped a couple of moments earlier. “Sometimes, being able to hear doesn’t mean you should be listening. Some things are private.” Not quite scolding but almost... but why...
Her eyes grew wide. OH. This was like in the movies, when two people whispered nice things to each other, getting to know each other... This was before the part in the movies where they kissed.
“Ayumi-chan?”
The girl sighed. “I can put my fingers in my ears,” she whispered in return, reluctantly.
“I think that might be a very good idea; well done, Ayumi-chan. Good night.”
“G’night, Kaori-basan.”
And, with a sigh, Yoshida Ayumi curled back up in her blankets and did just that...
...for a little while, at least, and eventually fell asleep; and if Watanabe Souta and Kuroba Yuu’s personal movie ever did make it to the part where people did kiss, that was their own business.
* * *
The next day, after too many hours at sea had passed and their harbor was in sight, the four passengers stood on the little bit of the deck where they’d been told they could watch safely and without being in the crew’s way. Yuu-san had tied her hair back and was wrapped up in a heavy coat against the cold; Ayumi stood between her and Kaori-san, swathed in her own winter clothing and with her gray silk scarf bundled in many layers around her head and throat, toasty warm except for the tip of her nose which the cold salt air had turned pink.
She’d been thinking hard, and it seemed bad to not sing, not even once, when Souta-sancho and his crew had sang so much for them. And while she still wanted to hide her face out of shyness, Ayumi had learned how to be brave from her friends... some of the time, at least. So now she reached up and tugged at her caretaker’s coat. “Um... Yuu-san?”
“Yes, Ayumi-chan?”
“...Could. Could I s-sing something?”
Yuu-san blinked down at her in surprise. “Of course.” None of the others were right then; Ayumi swallowed down her shyness (it was a lump in her throat, but she could do it), opened her mouth, and began.
There’d been a song, a very simple one, that Sensei had played for them at school so they could hear the English words; sometimes it helped, hearing what they were just beginning to learn and then seeing them written. And these were simple! Simple enough that someone had turned them into a song in proper Japanese, and that was what she sang, softly at first, and then bravely, louder:
“Koge koge kobune
Yukkuri to--
Yura, yura, yura, yura,
Yume no yo-u...”
And she began again. Halfway down the Bepi’s length, Souta-sancho turned his head to listen, and the English words sounded in Ayumi’s mind even as she sang them in Japanese-- Sensei had said that they weren’t exactly the same, but they were very close.
(Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream--
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.)
They sounded better in Japanese.
To her shock, one of the crew picked it up-- he knew it, and he sang along with her, a grin creasing his sunbrowned face. And then one of the others did, and Pyotr-jiisan did, and--
“Koge koge kobune
Yukkuri to--”
Ayumi kept singing. There were people working on the large dock up ahead, on their boats, on the seawall, and some of them were smiling--
“Yura, yura, yura, yura,
Yume no yo-u...”
And that was Yuu-san, singing very softly, watching Souta-sencho, who was watching her, and smiling.
* * *
Later on, after they’d docked and ridden away and made it to Gonin Hane, Ayumi had told the story of the Bepi and her crew who sang. But she hadn’t mentioned Yuu-san’s singing with Souta-sencho; that wasn’t... well. She didn’t know much about grown-ups, but one thing Yoshida Ayumi did know was this: Happy endings only happened in movies if nobody spoiled them. And she *liked* happy endings.
“...so we ALL got to sing. It was fun. Do people do that on all boats? I mean, all ships? ‘Cause it had a little boat in the back for us to get into if the big one sank, so it was a ship. But I don’t know how we would all’ve fit in there, because it was kind of small. But anyway, we all sang, and--”
(“Well done, Ayumi-chan.”)
“--and it was fun.”
-owari-
