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CHAPTER 9

"It doesn't work. That's funny; it was working just a few days ago."

"Did you cause it to short circuit by stuffing your hair into it or something?"

"No, of course not. Think the Hakase used it for an experiment or something?"

". . ."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. It's just that I realized you forgot to put in the plug."

". . ."

"That's better."

Conan bit his lip nervously as he blew the air dryer in Haibara's direction, her face emotionless, looking at him blankly. Somehow he found her different from before. She had changed. She was Shiho, not Haibara. But what separated Shiho from Haibara, and Haibara from Shiho? And what made them the same?

"You would have hated Shiho Miyano."

What was that supposed to mean?

He glanced at Haibara once more, whose eyes were watching the television behind him mundanely, a bored look on her face. He chewed his lip and drew stray hairs away from her face, hoping for some sort of reaction. She did none of the sort.

As a detective, Conan's curiousity was easily perked, and the dark secret of his wife's past was one of them. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, lowering the speed of the hair dryer as he reached the spot right below her ears, the hot air prickling the hairs of her back.

Conan remembered Haibara once telling him a hint of what she was before. Not as the sarcastic, smirking Haibara, but as the toneless quiet Shiho.

"What was being in the Black Organization like?" he asked her.

She looked up from her magazine, her eyebrows raised. "Please don't tell me this is for a school project." She said sarcastically.

"It's for personal research, actually." He said with a grin, snapping the book in his hands shut, spinning his chair round to face her.

She rolled her eyes and brought her attention back to the magazine before her. "Kiss the questionnaire for me goodbye, then."

"Awwww. . .Haibara. . ."

"I'll just put it this way, though. . ." she said in a bored tone, flipping a page of the fashion magazine before her. "Say, for example, I was Shiho Miyano, and somehow the great Kudo Shinichi was brought into my lab as just another lab rat for testing. . ." she looked up at him with a cold smirk.

"I'd give you a killing drug without a second thought."

His reverie was snapped as he heard the dull click of the hair dryer clicking off. He blinked and turned to Haibara, who was looking at him with half-lidded eyes. "My hair's dry." She said to him tonelessly.

"Huh? Oh. . ." He placed the hair dryer on the floor, but she picked it up once more.

"Your hair's still wet." She said softly.

"Oh, no. . .don't. . ." he said embarrassingly.

She ignored him and turned it back on, drawing her fingers through his hair, blowing the hair dryer toward him. He opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it once more in the state of silence, and looked down at the floor. A long moment of silence passed between the two of them; the moment so long that Conan had the image of her pale beautiful feet in his mind so vividly that he could paint a picture of it with his eyes closed.

"Do you hate me?"

He blinked and made motion to look upwards, but her hand pressed down against the back of his neck gently; but hard enough to give him the inclination to keep his head down. He shut his eyes. "Why would I hate you?"

"Because everybody does." came her voice in a sallow whisper.

"That's stupid. . ." he said in a laugh.

"No it isn't." came her voice as she ruffled the front of his forehead, increasing the speed with a click of the switch. "Ever since I was a child, I never had any friends. All I had was my sister and two childhood kids who were basically forced to be my companions."

"Was one of them. . ."

"Yes, it was Gin." she replied shortly. "The other was Akai Shuichi. Things happened, and as both Akai and my sister betrayed the organization they were sent to be murdered. Akai escaped, but Akemi did not." Conan did not sense a tremble in her voice at all; like Haibara would have.

Who. . .are you?

"Their first mission, basically, was to take care of me and to protect me from harm. Since adolescence they were trained by masters of defense at attacking. I was counted as a genius since I was a child, so the Black Organization decided they needed me more than they needed my mother. Thus, her life was ended shortly after creating the base formula of that drug you and I are so familiar to." She continued to dry his hair effortlessly. "As I was a young girl, they decided to find two young men to accompany me in school wherever I went. The two of them were the best choices. We went everywhere together, and lived under the same roof. They took care of me. Not because they wanted to or because they liked me, but because they were forced to." Her voice suddenly turned light. "Just like you."

"I wasn't forced." Conan said softly.

"Yes, you were." She said tiredly. "You wouldn't have given me a second glance if dear old Miss Ran was still in love with you. And possibly even then you wouldn't have. . .until we had an arranged marriage, of course."

Conan stayed silent, and she nodded to herself. Her deductions were right. She flicked the switch off and the soft blowing noise quickly subsided. Haibara got to her feet. "I'm going back to our room now." She said, almost to herself. "I have to meet with Ayumi and her husband for lunch tomorrow. You should come along."

And without waiting for his reply, she turned to walk away.

He gritted his teeth.

"Haibara!" he called out, and she paused in step, not turning around.

"Yes?" she spoke.

His face grew crimson as he looked to the floor, his fists clenched. "I. . ." he stammered, the words suddenly stuck in his throat. The words that flowed so freely in the rain found itself lost and missing without it. She made no motion of appending his sentence, nor did she look like she was going anywhere.

"I. . ."

"Don't." she said softly. "Nobody's listening now."

She turned, and this time there was nothing. Truly nothing. No tears, no glares, no sarcasm. Just a blank stare cut straight into him. She gave him a vacant stare. "It's only me and you this time." She whispered. "Who's going to listen to you lie other than me?"

The words tore him apart.

In ways he never knew.

And she walked away from him once more.

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Gin's grin almost seemed to succumb his face, a cup of tea in one of hands, the other hand in his pocket casually. "Look what we have here." He muttered under his breath, bringing the cup to his lips, smirking at the person before him. "I take it that you're that friend of Shiho that we've heard so much about."

The man by the name of Mitsuhiko looked up at him.

"Yes, I am." He said quietly.

And then Gin started to laugh.

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"You're still such a kid, Shinichi." Hakase said to Conan sternly, removing the bow tie from his neck in a swift movement, tossing it across to the other end of the room. Meeting with Conan's expression of unflattering shock, Hakase waggled his finger before the boy. "You do not wear bow ties out with friends. A white shirt inside a t-shirt, casually buttoned, leaving two or three unbuttoned, jeans to follow that. Do not wear a one-piece shirt with a red bow tie."

"That's the way I dress." Conan scowled. "You can't expect a leopard to change its spots now, can you?"

"Well, this leopard will." Hakase said, prodding his finger into Conan's chest. "Now try out that light brown shirt that Ran bought for you a few weeks back. It brings out your eyes."

"Since when did you become the fashion guru?" Conan said warily.

"Ever since Haibara tossed out my cookbooks." Hakase said with a tone of gloom. "All that I've got left are these men's wear fashion magazines that she left around the house ever so purposely. And I have to say, I'm enjoying them much more than I expected to. Plus, I've known some interesting trivia. Do you know that a striped shirt makes one look skinny?"

"Skinnier, actually." came Haibara's voice from behind them. "Depends on how much you weigh. You might look less fat, but in hopeless cases all you manage to pull off is a skinny watermelon."

They turned around and Hakase grinned.

"Hello, Ai-chan!" he said happily. "Going for the two-piece on page 73 of Victoria's Image Magazine Issue 12, I see!"

"Correct, Hakase." Haibara said, managing a small smile. "Beige sleeveless top with low-riding jeans along with a waist length jacket. You're catching on fast." She turned to Conan, cocking her head. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah, wait up." He murmured, struggling into the shirt that Hakase tossed at him. "I just need to put these clothes on."

"Careful with those!" Hakase said, alarmed at the sight of Conan almost thrashing inside the shirt he had just handed him. "That one's Armani and it cost a Hell load to get! It's made purposely snug fit!"

"Snug fit my fat ass!" Conan growled, pushing himself against the wall in vain to pull the collar down his neck. "More like a new torture device for the insane!"

"Well then, it would definitely be suitable for somebody of your stature." Haibara said with a yawn and turned around across her heel. "Meet me downstairs. If you aren't downstairs in five minutes, I'm leaving without you."

Conan watched her leave and sighed.

"What's with her, anyway?" he muttered.

"Yeah, she's been acting strangely even since yesterday." Hakase said, rubbing his chin. "Did something happen?"

Conan paused in the action of putting on the jeans Hakase handed him. Then he sighed and shrugged them on. "Nope." He said with an air of deftness. "Nothing at all."

A pause before Hakase nodded.

"I see." He said softly.

Yet another pause.

"There's no way this belt is going to fit around my waist, by the way."

A sigh.

"It's a wrist band."

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It was quiet as Conan drove the two of them steadily toward the direction of the house which both Ayumi and her husband shared. No communication was made between the two of them; the soft rusting of trees and bird chirping and the talk of teens along the road that once seemed so far away almost right before him.

"Haibara." Conan said abruptly, and she turned to him with raised eyebrows. "About yesterday, I. . ."

"Forget about it." She said, shrugging it off. "It was stupid, the rain made me say things I never thought I'd say, Gin was being such an idiot, and you suddenly caused me to flare up. . ." A faint recalling came back to her and she turned away from him once more, looking out the window. "We'll just act like nothing happened."

His fingers clenched over the steering wheel.

"And what if I don't want to forget about it?" he whispered.

Time passed in slow-motion.

A bird outside on a tree paused in mid-perch, awaiting for Haibara's reply as she slowly turned to Conan, a questioning look over her features. He turned to her.

"What if that day meant something to me?"

Something passed across her faded eyes.

"What if. . .I meant everything that I said to you?"

The bird perched and burst into the air, taking flight.

She paused, her somber expression finally fading away, a distant look of Haibara crossing her features. And suddenly she was herself; she had returned.

"And if I did. . ." Conan continued, his voice rough with husky tenderness. "Did you?"

An awakening; the storm had subsided.

"I. . ."

"Haibara! Conan!"

They snapped out of eye-contact to find themselves outside Ayumi's household, the young lady waving at them furiously with her calm-looking husband standing next to her. Conan looked away from Haibara, stepping down on the exhaust, pulling the car key out and slipped it into his pocket. "You don't have to force me to do anything, Ai." He said to her. "I'll do anything for you willingly."

Her eyes widened.

And without another word, he stepped out of the car to speak to Ayumi, shaking the hand of her husband, laughing from ear-to-ear. Haibara stayed sullen, crossing her legs, her arms before her chest tightly.

"You're an idiot too." She said under her breath.

END CHAPTER 9

Time truly passes much faster than I have thought. Please read and review this chapter! I hope you all enjoyed it.