Case Closed Fan Fiction ❯ When Pandora's Box Is Opened ❯ A Riddle Within An Enigma ( Chapter 32 )

Chapter Thirty-Two

A Riddle Within An Enigma

“Rainbow... so blood means red... a jewel that is anything but red...”

Saguru tapped his fingers idly on the desktop as he regarded the Kid's latest riddle. It worried him slightly. He hadn't seen Kuroba for the past two days, since New Year's, and neither had Aoko, though the old man Jii had spoken to him and apparently Kaito had gone on an overnight trip to Kyoto, to visit a magician who was an old friend of his father's who had invited him out. So there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Kuroba hadn't been around for the past couple of days that had nothing to do with the stalker outside of his house.

Saguru had been to Kuroba's house a couple of times since New Year's only to find it empty, and had become suspicious when, the second time he returned, there had been an idling car- not unusual, of course, but this car's license plates were identical to the plates of a different car that had been on the street the day before. Both cars were fairly unmemorable- a little too unmemorable, the suspicious tantei part of him said- but Saguru's memory was eidetic, useful in murders that required the recall of things most people never noticed- let alone remembered- to solve. Two cars could not have the same number, he knew, unless for whatever reason one set of plates was untraceable and was therefore being reused. His suspicions were confirmed when he ran into Kudo Yuusaku and a very pale-faced Edogawa Conan nearby.

“Is he there?” Yuusaku asked, no clarification of who “he” was necessary.

“No,” Saguru said. “The story is he's visiting a friend in Kyoto overnight, plausible given that he hasn't been home the past couple of days...”

“Like he'd come back when They're watching the place,” Conan muttered. “I'm telling you- that's one of Their cars. I've seen the plates before. Saguru-niichan, you'd better not keep coming back here.”

“The car's empty,” Saguru pointed out.

“Because someone sitting in a car all day would draw notice, while a car sitting empty all day wouldn't,” Yuusaku said. “No doubt it's bugged, or has cameras- most likely both. They'll notice that you've come more than once. You don't want to draw their suspicions, especially if you're ignoring my advice and continuing with your own investigations.”

“Of course I am,” Saguru snorted. “Anyway, a riddle's gone out so he'll be in Tokyo by the time of the heist, at least, wherever else he may be in the meantime...”

“A riddle?” Conan said in surprise. “I never heard about that.”

“For some reason, it wasn't sent to any news outlets this time, and so Nakamori-keibu's keeping it as quiet as possible,” Saguru explained. “Crowds irritate him. More than usual.”

“You wouldn't care to give us a copy of it, would you?” Yuusaku asked, pulling a notebook out of his inner pocket. Saguru wordlessly pulled out a pen and scribbled a precise copy of the riddle, all but the caricature.

Saguru still had the original in front of him. “The crystal rainbow of all but blood will fall from the sky and into my hands after the master's visit and before the shadows begin to creep.”

He, Yuusaku and Conan had all quickly agreed that “after the master's visit” referred to the opening of the inner grounds of the Imperial Palace to the public on January 2nd; in other words, the public's chance to “visit” the “master”. The riddle had gone out on the evening of the 2nd, so Saguru presumed that the “after” meant the day after, which was the 3rd- today. So the heist was sometime tonight. It was easy to guess that his target had to be among the special display of newly discovered jewels in the Beika Museum, but as there were nearly fifty pieces he was going to have to narrow the field a little. “A jewel that is any colour but red...”

Sapphires. It had to be. Contrary to popular belief, Sapphires could be almost any colour, including clear- they were defined as sapphires by their unique molecular structure. The only exception was red sapphires, which were rubies. If it could be any colour, it was a rainbow- lacking only red, the colour of blood. The target had to be a sapphire. Unfortunately, nine of the jewels present could be classed as sapphires, he noted from the listing that Nakamori-keibu had graciously (by his standards) lent to him.

“He said rainbow, which means it could well be a sapphire of any colour,” he thought with a frown. “Think... I need another clue...”

Sky. Why did he specify the sky? Everyone who thought of rainbows immediately visualised them in the sky, though it was possible to create them elsewhere. He wanted them to think of the sky. And the colour most associated with the sky was...

“Blue,” Saguru thought. “There are three blue sapphires, we can probably protect them...” he trailed off with a frown. Something about his conclusion jarred with him. It seemed too straightforward and left too much open. Besides, there was something else about the riddle that bugged him. Not the fact that Kid seemed to be proclaiming that he would summon the jewel, but something in the last part of the riddle. “After the master's visit and before the shadows begin to creep.” He presumed that “before the shadows begin to creep” meant “before sunrise,” as that was when shadows were given the light they needed to creep into existence, but he had a feeling that there was some other meaning to the line. Something wrong.

Shadows creeping and hunting the white dove...

He sighed and flicked a bit of his fringe out of his eyes. He might as well go report his theories to Nakamori-keibu.

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Over in Beika, the Kudo had come to some pretty similar conclusions in regards to the jewel, but had interpreted the final line differently.

“Tonight,” Yuusaku said. “Before the shadows begin to creep...”

“It'll be something They'll go after too,” Shinichi said. Once again, he was home under the guise of playing at Agasa-hakase's. To be honest, he was finding it a little difficult to be at the Mori Detective Agency for any length of time- or, more precisely, to be near Ran. It wasn't just that so much as brushing her hand when reaching for something at the dinner table was enough to send him into a flush, though she was happily oblivious- in fact, that happiness was what was making it so much harder. It wasn't that it was bad for her to be happy; Kami, no, that was all he really wanted out of life. It was just that she was so much happier than usual that disturbed him. He wondered how lonely and sad she really was, how much of it had been showing for how long now, how much he hadn't noticed. It hurt him. It didn't make him feel any more comfortable to feel that he was running away by constantly sneaking out to search for Kuroba, but he could assuage his conscience by reminding himself that he was doing something to find and stop Them; to get his life back and, finally, return to her forever...

“If we're saying sapphires,” Yuusaku said, poring over a book on gemology and a listing of the jewels on display while Shinichi sat on the desk, reading the riddle and quietly cogitating, “there are nine sapphires, five of which are about the size of a fingernail, which is smaller than he tends to go for. Of the four remaining, one is clear, two are blue and one black. Quite rare.”

“I'd say it's the black one,” Shinichi said. “Besides the magnetic lure that anything black has to Them, the riddle refers to the sky. Normally, you'd think blue for the sky, but depending on the time of day and weather the sky can be almost any colour. Except for green. I think I've seen a sky almost every colour except green.”

“More importantly,” Yuusaku said, closing the book, “The colour of sky most associated with the Kaitou Kid- who operates at night- is black.”

“Exactly,” Shinichi said. “We'd better go to keep an eye out. Besides, I need to talk to Kuroba.”

“I know you do, “Yuusaku said. “That's why I have an idea.”

“An idea?” Shinichi said, eyebrow raised.

“Look.” Yuusaku opened one of the bottom drawers of the desk, drawing out a map of Beika. “I checked the weather online earlier, and the wind's coming from the west tonight, which means he'll have to glide east. That hanglider's a novel and unique method of escape, but still dependant on air currents, so if you learn to predict them... I used to corner Toichi-kun like this. I didn't do it in Osaka because I knew he wouldn't be escaping by hanglider, but as things stand now...”

“I get it,” Shinichi said, angling the edge of the gemology book to create a straight edge with which to predict the Kaitou Kid's flight path. “Let's see... we need tall, deserted locales. The most likely is buildings that'll be closed for Sanga-Nichi, like office buildings, but they'll be hard to get out of without setting off alarms..."

“What about this?” Yuusaku said, tapping one building that was halfway under the book. “Isn't that a multistorey car park? Attached to the department store next door, if I remember...”

“Yeah,” Shinichi said slowly. “That's likely. That place is open-plan, and doesn't have proper doors, just those ticket barriers, so it'd be no problem for a guy on foot to get out... there's security cameras, of course, but I can't exactly see that being a problem for him...” then he frowned. “Hold on. I thought the wind was coming from the north-east this evening...”

“Yes, but it's changing around about midnight,” Yuusaku said, “and I don't believe he'll come until after midnight.”

“What? But the third's the day after...” Shinichi began, but Yuusaku shook his head.

“I don't believe “the master” refers to the Emperor,” he said quietly. “There's another meaning to it, for Kuroba Kaito anyway...”

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“Nakamori-san?” Saguru said in surprise. He had been walking to the Nakamori's apartment when, halfway there, he'd bumped into an equally surprised Aoko clutching a small bouquet of red roses and wearing an oddly formal white dress.

“Hakuba-kun?” she said. “Where are you going?”

“I was going to talk to your father about tonight's heist,” he replied. “Is he home?”

“No, he went to the museum,” Aoko said, continuing on to wherever she'd been going. “I think Kudo-san called him.”

“Where are you going with the roses, Nakamori-san?” Saguru said as he followed her, content to let Kudo have control of the Kid situation for now as he became curious about where Aoko was so desperate to be. He gestured to the roses. “Is it some sort of anniversary?”

“Well, yes, sort of...” Aoko began, but she was interrupted as a voice called to them.

“Aoko-chan! Hakuba-kun! Fancy meeting you here!”

“Koizumi-san?” Saguru said as the tall girl ran up to them and fell into step with them. She was wearing a purple sleeveless dress with a black suit jacket, mildly less gothic than most of the things she wore out of school. “Where are you going?”

“Say, is it true that Kuroba-kun is back?” Akako asked Aoko, ignoring Saguru.

“It's likely, though I haven't seen him yet...” Aoko said.

“Likely? Why...” Saguru trailed off as Aoko turned into the entrance of a cemetery. “Nakamori-san?”

There was something a little odd. The cemetery was almost silent but- there it was, a faint rustling and... cooing?

It wasn't far into the cemetery when he saw the doves.

Every few seconds, one would appear over the rows of graves, flying between some two points a few rows away. Aoko quickly made her way over, evidently from memory, and Saguru stopped in surprise, Akako almost walking into him.

There were dozens of doves, more than he'd seen even on that day when Kaito had grown exceptionally bored during a math lesson and turned the classroom into a dovecot. Saguru still hadn't quite figured out how the baka had even gotten doves into the teacher's desk, or how indeed he had gotten two dozen doves into school unnoticed at all. But here, they were everywhere, fluttering back and forth between the ground, a grave and a tall white figure standing in front of it.

For a moment, Saguru thought that it was Kid, but then he realized that there was no cape, no hat, no monocle, no gloves. It was a little hard to make out through the doves, but he seemed to be wearing a white bow tie instead of a long red tie. It was also Kuroba, and it was the expression on his face that made Saguru stop.

It was harsh, dark, raw, something he'd never seen in the normally idiotic boy before. He was staring down at the grave, unmoved by the fluttering doves, with something like... anger. Sadness. Pain.

“Kaito!” Aoko cried happily. “I knew you'd be back for Ojisan's remembrance...”

“Ah.”

“Aoko?” he said, head snapping up as if out of a daze. Maybe he had been. In a moment, the dark look was gone, his Poker Face slipping into simple, normal grief. “Hey... you came. Huh?” he seemed to have first noticed Saguru and Akako- unusually slow for him. “What are you guys doing here?”

“I ran into them on the way and they followed me,” Aoko said, stepping over to the grave and setting the flowers down next to a bouquet of black roses. “Hey, Otou-san's been already!”

“Remembrance?” Akako said. “Kuroba-kun... is this the anniversary of your father's death?”

“Uh... yeah,” Kuroba said, running his good hand through his hair, making the mess marginally messier. Some part of Saguru's brain wondered how he intended to pull off a heist with one wrist still in a cast. “Ten years.”

Saguru and Akako moved closer to the grave like Aoko. Through the doves, Saguru could make out an inscription: Kuroba Toichi, the Master of Illusions. Good friend, loving husband, caring father.

Something about the inscription seemed to click with something else in the back of his brain, but he couldn't figure out what.

“My condolences,” Saguru said instead. “I had no idea.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Kuroba said.

“Have you been here all day, Kuroba-kun?” Akako said, also reading the inscription.

“Yeah,” Kuroba replied, raising a hand for a couple of doves to settle on. “I got back this morning, overnight train... I pretty much came straight here. I explained why Okaa-san isn't visiting this year, but I doubt he minds- he just wants her to get better.”

“How is she doing, by the way?” Aoko asked. Saguru held out a hand, which one of the doves on the ground pecked at in a friendly way. He noted how Kuroba was talking of his father in the present tense. He wondered whether Kuroba had seen his father's death. It had been onstage, after all. He wondered what kind of memories the anniversary was dredging up.

“Still stable, still asleep,” Kuroba replied.

“You're awfully pale, you know,” commented Aoko. “Have you been eating and sleeping right?”

“I don't sleep well on trains,” Kaito said with a sigh. “And do you really expect me to cook myself a decent meal?” He grinned, but it was a faint shadow of his normal cheeky grin. If this was him with his Poker Face up, Saguru wasn't sure he wanted to know how Kuroba was really feeling today.

“Well, maybe we should go back to your place and I'll do lunch, huh?” Aoko said.

“Um, that's...” Kuroba said worriedly. Saguru could understand why. If that car was still parked out front of Kuroba's house... maybe he should suggest a restaurant or something...

“I think that sounds like a good idea,” Akako suddenly interjected. “You know, I don't think I've ever seen your house. Besides, I doubt there are shadows gathering there now. They will be preparing to hunt the white dove.”

“Huh?” Aoko said in confusion, glancing at the dozens of birds milling around. Kuroba seemed to calm slightly.

“Well, shall we?” he said. Akako came up with strange things, but she had a tendency to be right. And it did make sense for the Organization to be pulling back if they were preparing to deal with Kuroba at the heist tonight.

“So is it true there's a Kid heist tonight?” Kuroba was asking as they started walking out of the cemetery. About half of the birds fluttered after him. “They're not all mine,” he explained. “Some of Otou-san's old friends, who are still magicians, came by earlier. Their birds hung around. They'll fly home sooner or later.”

“Oh, I see,” Saguru said. “And Nakamori-keibu was trying to keep it on the quiet, but yes, there was a heist announced and we believe it's for tonight...”

A couple of hours later, the last of the doves were just fluttering away when a last, solitary visitor quietly approached the grave bearing a bouquet of white roses. He set them down next to the other two, turning them so that the playing card- an ace of spades- that was tied to them was visible.

“He's a lone wolf like you, Toichi-kun,” the visitor said quietly. “I can only hope that that will change... After all, I promised that I wouldn't bury him in the cape of Kid, didn't I? Because they're both at equal risk now...”

He sat there, squatting on his heels for a long time. Finally he said, “I don't know if he knows the other half of the Pandora legend, though. I doubt anyone does. It's only pure luck- and, all right, a testament to your skill- that you overheard it. If it's true... still, I don't know which of them it applies to. It could still be either. I almost hope it's neither... but then, hope's no good, is it? It's still trapped in the box. All I can do now is watch over them, like I promised.”

A while later, the visitor was gone. The wind ruffled the flowers and flipped the card over so that the last doves could see the signature on the back.

!

But punctuation means nothing to doves.

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Patience, FaithlessGirl... It's planned... but how often do things go to plan for these boys?

The meeting will be when the meeting will be, Mel72000. Something big's happening at this heist, I swear, and it's gonna knock your socks off...

I get them all the time, Yana Takagawa. That may just be a sign that I write and use the computer too much. ^_^; As you can see, the heist will be very soon...

I needed to get them to this point, HaibaraDai Fan. I have all the main scenes of the fic written out, it's just joining and building up to them in a plausible way that gives me trouble... What can you do? He's a lone wolf ;P Sato and Takagi are just going to get more and more suspicious... really, I kind of think that Sato's already more than a little suspicious of Conan. There's indications that she knows he's far from normal and just doesn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth :P CHAPTER TIME!

Yeah, that's why I wish I spoke Japanese better, Kinsey Adler. It also makes me wonder why they so often change the names of characters in the English manga. I just don't know how they think they can get away with it when arcs like the second movie and the “200-faced-man” puzzle created by Kobayashi-sensei are so heavily dependent on puns with their names. I'd rather they just left the names and such as is and put translation and cultural notes at the back of the Tankoban, like in Yuu Yuu Hakusho or Furuba. I don't know, I think he could easily have found links in research, but there's been no indicators in the manga that he knows Shinichi's identity so I'm working with that. I love Kaito! I could never kill him! I killed the plot bunny that suggested it instead *muahaha*

Hakuba knows that Kaito can handle himself, Peppymint... but I think he's still more worried about Kaito's welfare than he'll let on. :)

Gotta love the Heiji, Pretztailfan95! *high-five* Gotta love Kaito more, tho ;P I've kind of gotten into the habit of calling him Saguru, since I always do it in his POVs... It's kind of necessary since his dad's getting a little involved later, and of course his surname's Hakuba as well. YOU CRUEL PERSON! Making Shinichi sing! Come to think of it, he's not really been seen to sing as Shinichi... except for a flashback to when he was actually about seven and is seen to butcher “Do-Re-Mi” while Yukiko plays scales on the piano. I'm guessing as an adult, he's just as bad as as a child but with a deeper voice. :P I got the link, yeah. It's cute :) But I still say the numa-numa chibi are cuter! XD Oh, wait, Lugia's not a water type... It's Psychic/Flying. In any case, GIT THUNDER UP YE! Okay, my Ho-oh in Gold knows Thunder, Solar Beam, Fly and Sacred Fire. Would it or would it not own an equal-level Lugia? Vote now, people! XD I train my team after a certain point by going through the Elite Four with just the one Pokemon and whatever I'm levelling up. The last time I trained up a Dratini, my whole team went up nearly ten levels XD For now, I'm content with LinkG07 for my parodies, but I agree that DC DESERVES BETTER, DAMMIT! Not that he's now AWESOME, but COME ON, Parody-makers! Show the chiisama tantei-san a little more love, huh?

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 695, 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).