Disclaimer: This disclaimer applies to
all One Shots posted here. I do not own any of the characters
involved.
The Series "Magic Kaito" and "Detective Conan"
are the exclusive property of Gôshô Aoyama.
I'm just
playing around with them.
Author's note:
I
will be posting here a collection of One Shots I have originally
written in French.
With the exception of this first one, all will
be translated into English, because I can and wish to do so.
One
Shot contents will vary from humour to angst, amongst other things.
I
will therefore present the category and rating of each one shot above
it.
Hoping you'll enjoy…
One Shot One:
Note:
This first one shot is not a translation, but a one shot on
translation, with which I have chosen to illustrate this "collection"
of sorts.
Genre: General & Humour (I
guess.)
Characters: Magic Kaito (Hakuba and Kaito.)
Warnings: Slight Out of Characterness.
Rating:
K
Translation, please?
It all started out rather innocuously.
The
students were preparing for their exams, and some of the teachers had
decided to give them study hours, rather than try to cram in more
lessons, for once.The English teacher was one of them.
She
came in, stated her plan, and wrote the basic syllabus on the
blackboard, before sitting down at her desk.
There, she
immediately fished out a book from her pocket and proceeded to
ignoring the whole class room, short of an atomic bomb.
I, myself,
was pretty tempted to do exactly the same thing.
I decided however
to look around at my classmates well pondering the wisdom behind
whoever it was who had decided that such a brilliant student as
Hakuba Saguru should find his presence in English class
compulsory.
Heck, the unfairness of it.
My mother is English,
and I was studying in London last year!
I can speak even better
English than our tutor!
Okay, that last bit was unfair of me.
In
Japan they teach the American hybrid of English, and I also know for
a fact that being taught in London does not guarantee a mastery of
the language… (Memories of some of the English bullies at my
previous school come to mind.)
So I watched, bemusedly, the
blunderings of the other teenagers around me for whom English truly
was a foreign language.
I have to give them credit though. The
differences between the two tongues do make it harder for them than
it is for their European counterparts.
A scuffling of a chair and
the dragging of a desk distracted me from a rather interesting
attempt a girl had been making at rephrasing what Joe Blogs' latest
desire had been.
I had been hiding my smile of amusement behind
my hand, but this was wiped away when I noticed who it was who had
pulled up next to me.
"What is it, Kuroba?" I said, speaking in English since it was obviously the good context to do so.
"Can you give me a hand here?" the dark haired boy said, grinning mischievously. He only slightly distorted the words, and his accent was rather comprehensible.
I raised an
eyebrow.
"What for?"
He leaned forward, showing me a
sheet of paper he'd been writing various words on.
"Can you
tell me what this word is in Japanese, please?" He pointed at
the roman letters involved.
I told him, then sat back expecting
him to return to his proper place.
He scribbled the Japanese
equivalent beside the word, gnawed on his pen a bit, and scribbled
some more on a free corner of his page.
He then reread this and
barred it out.
"What about this word?" he asked, pointing towards another.
I answered, and then, as an afterthought, I asked him why.
"Two seconds…" he
replied absently in Japanese.
He focused on his page, obviously
trying to make sense of something. He obviously wasn't getting very
far, as I noticed him scratch his head in annoyance.
"You know…" I said. "Those two words put together would have a totally different meaning."
"They would?" He perked up. We had both switched to Japanese now.
"What would that be?"
"Well…" I reflected on how best to describe
it. It isn't always easy to find an equivalent for every English
idiom. "I think the best way to describe its meaning is
something along the lines of this."
I explained.
His eyes
widened, and then he chuckled.
"I see, so that's what it
means!"
'Good,' I thought. 'So now you can go away.'
The
young magician, however, didn't seem to pay any attention to my
wishes.
"Would these two words put together find a new
meaning too?" he asked, pointing out another expression he had
scribbled on his page.
I blushed reading it.
"Yes.
Definitely." I replied. And I hoped he wouldn't ask me what
those two innocent words meant when put together like that.
"So…" He egged me on. His smug smile indicated that he was very aware of my embarrassment.
I sighed, brushed my embarrassment away, and gave him the Japanese equivalent.
"Wow." He looked at the two words with a slightly more apprehensive look.
"Is that all? Or do you have much else you'd like me to translate for you?" I asked dryly.
"As a matter of fact, I do." He wriggled
his hand in the air and, in one of those small puffs of smoke and
confetti that were his trademark in class as much as in his night
job, he produced a wad of printed sheets.
"Do you think you
could translate these for me?"
I squinted at the pile of
paper he deposited before me.
"And what would I get out of
it? I trust this isn't for your revisions?"
"Course not." He grinned. I couldn't help but think he'd probably already stolen a copy of the exam papers.
"How about…" He continued, slyly. "Two weeks without any annoyance from me, whatsoever, and I mean it, and…" He did mean it, his eyes even screamed 'Kid being serious' at me. "And… apart from an obvious occupation for the next few English lessons… Oh, I don't know. A favour that a magician like me could owe you?"
I
peered at the sheets.
I estimated there to be around thirty, and
the font size wasn't too small.
Shouldn't be too hard to
translate. Maybe I could even find something in them to prove Kaito
was truly Kid the Phantom Thief, or some sort of clue as to his
hidden agenda.
"Two whole weeks without any taunting or teasing whatsoever? Without any theft or trickery?"
He looked at me as if to say 'Don't push your luck', but nodded.
So this
meant he was really serious about giving me leeway, and probably
meant there wouldn't be any Kid heists during that same time.
The
offer was too good to pass up.
"Okay, I accept." I declared. "I'll give you the translation back within two weeks, okay?"
Why did I ever accept?
I should have known he
was up to no good!
No, he did keep his promise.
At no point
whatsoever did he insult me, tease me, or even approach me in a way
that could have been interpreted so.
There were indeed no Kid
heists either, and I do confess that the translation kept me from
getting bored during English lessons.
No, the problem was very much elsewhere.
At first I thought these texts were some sort
of articles on the thief.
His name and description appeared quite
often.
Then I noticed that officer Nakamori and I appeared at some
point to be involved in the text for some obscure reason.
What
happened then I have no way of describing, and I most certainly will
not tell you what the text described.
Suffice to say it broke my brain. Repeatedly.
It was the last page that delivered the final blow.
Deciphering some pretty obscure American net-speak, it become apparent to me that Kid the phantom thief, known to me as Kaito Kuroba in real life, had discovered that his fan club also existed on the other side of the pacific.
And his fans wrote fanfic.
FIN