Disclaimer : I do not own Detective Conan or its characters.

Author's note : I noticed that I wrote "chapter 6" instead of 7 in my previous update. Sorry about that.

To roxifoxi : what a coincidence! I have good timing sometimes, eh? ;) As I have said to some of my reviewers, if ever I feel like I can't continue the fic (which I don't see happening), I will say so. I won't leave everyone hanging, not knowing whether the fic will ever be updated again. If the wait is long, that's just the way I write. I spurts of inspiration with long blank stretches in between where writing progresses at a crawl. Thanks for reviewing :)

Blabla : writing

'Blabla' : thoughts

Chapter dedicated to Tobina, who found my story and proceeded to leave a review for each chapter instead of reviewing only the latest one.

Chapter 8

Ran stared at the file title. "The Pro Soccer Player's Blackmailing Case?" she said aloud, just to make sure she had read it correctly.

It didn't seem like one of Shinichi's typical cases. She remembered nothing involving a pro soccer player from the days around the date written in the header. Maybe she hadn't been there for this one? Still...

'Soccer, huh?' she mused, lids lowering halfway. Her lips thinned.

Perhaps Shinichi's obsession with soccer-second only to his obsession with deductive reasoning-had led him to accidentally stumble upon this one... just like a certain roller-coaster case's aftermath?

She huffed. 'He just won't learn!'

My feelings about this case: utterly exhausting.

Not that it was that difficult to solve, it was actually relatively easy, and the culprit offered to turn himself in once we confronted him. If only every criminal would cooperate so nicely, my job-and I suppose, your dad's-would be much easier. And maybe a tad boring, too. I've found that a good chase really gets the blood going.

'That boy,' Ran thought furiously, 'is crazy. I already knew that, but he's really completely bonkers. "A good chase", indeed!' Her eyes flicked back and forth over those lines.

"'And I suppose, your dad's', couldn't resist making that dig, could you?" she muttered.

No, what really took up most of my energy today was dodging you.

She stopped dead. "Dodging me?!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Took up most of his energy?! I'm not that bad!"

She might have gotten in the way sometimes, she could admit that-begrudgingly-now that she had read about a few cases where she was involved, but there was no way that she was worse than the actual criminal!

It started with a misunderstanding and just went downhill from there. Maybe I should have hung out a little longer with the kids before coming home, then I could have avoided the whole thing.

Nah, that would have been bad. Not only would an awesome soccer player have been humiliated, but you still would have found a way to make me suffer for all this.

By now, Ran's mouth was opened in a wide 'O' shape with outrage. Her narrowed eyes were blazing as if she would set the document alight with the force of her stare.

You probably want to wring my neck right now, but I'll thank you to refrain from making any aggressive moves towards me, wherever I am, until you finish reading the file.

The Pro Soccer Player's Blackmailing Case

I spoke of hanging out with the kids because that was what I was doing before coming home to find a girl hesitating in front of your dad's office door.

She was wearing a sailor-style school uniform, had shoulder-length brown hair, and she called herself Akagi Ryoko. Oh, and apparently she and I were dating-we had even kissed!-and all that without ever meeting, because I for sure had never seen her before.

Realization dawned upon her. She remembered Ryoko-san, with the wide doe eyes and the cute ribbon in her hair and the way she wanted her dad to look for "Shinichi-san", because he had disappeared and she was sooooo worried!

She remembered how angry she had been that Shinichi had been dating this demure-looking girl behind her back for long enough to get to first base. Then he'd actually called the office to say that he'd go to Ryoko-san's place shortly, and then called her at home while Ran was there, and...

But wait. Shinichi was Conan. Conan had been in the office when 'Shinichi's' call had come. Conan was the one who said that 'Shinichi' would go to Ryoko-san's place. Conan had come with them to the Akagi residence...

She slapped a hand over her face. 'Just how much of a fool did I make of myself?' she wondered resignedly.

Right, so after Ryoko-san whipped out that picture of me saying that I was her missing boyfriend, and you sort of went into shock-I don't blame you for that, I was shocked as well-the office phone rang.

Luckily, it was Agasa-hakase calling, and it was a bit rude but I pretended that the call was from 'Shinichi-nii-chan' saying that he'd go to the girl's home. I just wanted to know what her motives were, and she had a little air of desperation about her that piqued my interest.

When we got to the Akagi residence, I noticed the lock was all scratched up, usually a sign of forced entry. From there, the clues piled up: there were only men's and kid's shoes in the entryway; Ryoko-san wasn't familiar with the placement of the items in the cupboards when she tried to make tea; the room with the door marked "Mamoru" was a mess, seemingly ransacked.

Ran tried to tell herself that Shinichi had just been freakishly observant, as always, and that she just hadn't been rude enough to look into the bedrooms without permission. That was why she hadn't noticed any of these things. Only Shinichi-and maybe Hattori-kun-would have. Right.

I found a picture in that room, of a guy about my age and what had to be his little brother. When I joined you in the dining room, the Sunday Cup was on TV, and almost on cue, the player Akagi Hideo-nicknamed "Hide"-was shown, and I recognized him as the guy in the picture.

So that was Akagi Hideo's residence, where he lived with his younger brother Akagi Mamoru, and Akagi Ryoko was probably not "Akagi" at all but a friend who wanted Kudo Shinichi to come to that house.

I put the pieces together: judging from Hide's atrocious play on TV, he was being pressured into throwing the match, via his kidnapped brother, and Ryoko-san wanted me to find the kidnapper.

I went to the bathroom and called the Akagi home phone using hakase's new invention-a portable fax machine in the shape of a bento, of all things-and Ryoko-san confirmed my deduction.

Ran buried her flaming face in her hands. At the time, she had been too relieved to hear that Ryoko-san had never even met Shinichi, much less gone out with him, to be embarrassed by the fact that a whole kidnapping/blackmail case had been solved right under her nose without her knowing about it-and not for lack of clues. Now, the facts were laid out before her in black and white, and she felt sort of... stupid.

Forget noticing the out-of-place stuff at the Akagi residence, Shinichi wasn't the sort of guy who would hide the fact that he was in a relationship from everyone. Though he wasn't overtly emotional or even very demonstrative, he was usually true to his feelings and principles.

He could be a jerk sometimes, like when she'd cornered him in the bathroom and he'd pretended he had something important to say to her-and only her-through the phone, only to hang up and run away when she turned her back to take the handset from Ryoko-san. She understood that he had probably been desperate to protect his secret, but that was really insensitive of him.

Ran sighed, picking up the sheaf of papers again, her eyes roving distractedly over the page and her mind only taking in a few lines here and there.

...faxed over the letters from the kidnapper and the victim, which was very strange : "Nii-chan, resurrect me"...

...Onimaru game in Mamoru-kun's room and remembered what Genta and Mitsuhiko had said about resurrecting the main character...

...the character "ki" from "Naoki", who was in fact the culprit, only he had never intended to harm Mamoru-kun...

...sorry about hanging up on you after saying that, but you had gone past "scary" at that point and gone into "terrifying". The way you kicked in Naoki-san's door...

Ran was slightly mollified. 'Scared him, did I?' she thought smugly. After all, Shinichi was afraid of very little. The apology helped, too.

She was a bit ashamed of her behavior at Uemura Naoki's place, however. At the time, she had no idea that he was actually blackmailing someone by holding their younger brother "hostage". For all she knew, he'd been an innocent bystander, and she had kicked in the door right on top of it, when he was already injured.

Only Shinichi could exasperate her to the point of blanking out everything else. Her jealousy had grown into a rage that surprised even herself. It was lucky that she had ended up inadvertently helping with the case and no real harm had been done.

...turned out Naoki thought that Hide had injured his leg on purpose, to remain Tokyo Spirits' best player, and wanted to humiliate him in return...

...we didn't involve the police, as you recall, because to Hide, Naoki was a good friend and rival, though Naoki seemed to have forgotten that in his bitterness...

...all's well that ends well, except that it took you three whole days and lots of explanations from Ryoko-san before you would believe that I had never gone out with the poor girl.

Ran rolled her eyes. Alright, so she had wanted to be sure, so sue her. From her angle (a rather obtuse one, but still), Shinichi's behavior had been suspicious as heck, calling Ryoko-san from inside the same house, running away...

She'd finally caught up to him, though, in an alley somewhere. Well, she'd heard his voice, and seen his silhouette projected across a wall, but she hadn't actually seen him.

'Light from Agasa-hakase's car coming from behind him... made him seem taller than he was. And he probably hid in there after talking, while I ran around looking for him like an idiot,' she thought sullenly.

She paused. He'd said something sweet at the end, hadn't he? Because she hadn't been angry at him anymore, she just wanted to see him. Had he written about that? Feeling shyly hopeful, she dropped her eyes to the last few lines.

Forgetting to turn off the portable fax machine slash bento was one of those stupid oversights I have sometimes. I'd just given the phone number to Ryoko-san, and I knew you still thought I had been dating her behind your back, and yet I never thought about the risk that either of you would try calling again once the case was over.

So I was forced to run away again when the thing went off in my backpack, and, well, you know what happened after. It's a little embarrassing, so I won't go over the whole thing again.

All I can say is that Agasa-hakase has awesome timing sometimes. And that I meant what I said: I'll worry if you cry. So, try not to give me early gray hairs, okay?

The Pro Soccer Player's Blackmailing : case closed.

She rolled her eyes even as an amused little smile tugged at her lips. He hadn't been able to bring himself to just say "don't cry". Even though he'd used words like "a moment I will treasure always" and had already admitted that he could get jealous of guys who got close to her, he still couldn't ask her directly not to cry. Well, he had always been weird that way. Extremely blunt at times, and roundabout at others.

Some people would have been bothered by that, she mused as she put the folder down neatly on the "finished" pile. But not her, she thought, picking up the next file. Her smile softened, becoming more tender.

'Shinichi is Shinichi. That's just the way he is.'

Japanese words :

-hakase: professor

nii-chan: familiar way to address an 'older brother'

bento: Japanese lunch box

Well. That sure came out easier than the last one, and a heck of a lot quicker, too. Constructive criticism and positive comments welcome as usual. Many thanks to all the people who favorited the story and myself as an author!