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Conan walked home alone most days, lately.
Ayumi thought it was strange. Genta and Mitsuhiko avoided him, but they wouldn't tell her why. They whispered to each other when they thought he wasn't listening and scrambled away whenever he came near. He seemed not to mind, but Ayumi knew he did. He had to, because even Haibara wouldn’t let him confide in her anymore.
One rainy afternoon, she tagged after him before he could walk off alone, again. "Conan-kun!" she called.
He paused, umbrella resting over his shoulder, and waited for her to catch up.
"You shouldn't walk home alone.”
"You know why I do."
"I'm sorry. I promise I've scolded them for it! I don't understand why they're acting so secretive. They won't tell me either."
Conan smirked, and resumed walking. "Boys will be boys," he mused. "Don’t worry, I don’t hold it against them. I keep secrets, too.”
Ayumi smiled, but only just. She thought he might be joking, but something told her that laughing, even in jest, would be inappropriate.
“Hey, wanna see what I’ve been up to?"
Without waiting for an answer, he suddenly sprinted ahead, splashing down the rainy cobble with purpose. It took her a moment, but Ayumi soon chased after him, never more than a few steps behind.
“Conan-kun, where are you going?” she cried, pulling her hood tighter over her head as she ran.
“Just follow my lead!”
He turned off the main road the next chance he got and led her down the types of alleys which were guarded by stores she would never recognize from behind. They ran for what seemed like ages, twisting and turning through streets which seemed to loop back onto themselves and cross at impossible junctures. Even their surroundings seemed like they were starting to repeat, and by the time they slowed down, Ayumi didn’t know where they were anymore.
Eventually, Conan turned off the street into an even tinier alley, a mere afterthought in some dark neighborhood. They were in a shadowed place, removed from greater Beika and its watchful populace.
“What’s this?” she eked.
The alley was just wide enough for the two of them, flanked on both sides by high walls and broken by a single utility pole which stretched high past the tops of the neighboring buildings. At the opposite end, after a long procession of air conditioning units, the mouth of the alley opened up to a larger street, beyond which Ayumi could faintly see the tops of skyscrapers.
As she followed Conan deeper into the alley, she became cognizant of the unusual silence of this place. Even at home, “silence” never entailed true silence - but here, she couldn’t even detect the buzzing of the utility pole, or the familiar hum of the air conditioning units, or the whoosh of passing cars. There was simply nothing.
What would Conan-kun be doing in a place like this?
“Here!” Conan announced, as if to answer her. They had stopped partway down the alley, near the utility pole and an A/C unit which seemed to have been positioned backwards.
Ayumi blinked. At the base of the pole, tucked neatly behind the AC unit, was a small dry spot on the concrete, occupied by a dog bowl and some dirty blankets.
“Conan-kun?”
“You’ll see,” he breathed, lowering himself onto all fours. “Do you remember John, Ayumi?”
“Of course!” she beamed.
“His new owners had another dog, and they had puppies. But they couldn’t keep them, so instead they gave them away to someone who promised to love them.”
She had a feeling she knew what was coming next, and secretly wished he had nothing else to say.
“They didn’t,” he continued, peering around the soundless A/C box. “And… I figured out that… at least one of them… lives here now…”
He gave it a slight pull. As soon as it had moved, there was a tiny yip from inside.
Ayumi’s heart fluttered. From the window where the fan would have been, a tiny, shaggy puppy emerged… a miniature version of John with sleepier eyes and a mangier coat. A curious yawn squeaked out of its little maw as it stumbled onto the towels spread out on the concrete, staring up at the two humans who had come to visit. She had to clap her hands over her mouth to stop herself from squealing back.
Slowly, Conan reached out for it, careful to avoid making any sudden moves. It recoiled some as he approached, scooting back into the water bowl, but it was clear that it just didn't have the energy to resist much and gave up quickly. It barely flinched when he finally made contact, and so it was easily scooped up by the chest.
"We're not going to just leave it here, are we?" Ayumi blurted out, louder than she intended.
"Of course not," Conan reassured her, checking its body for obvious injuries. "How about we take it to a shelter?" he proposed.
The suggestion seemed to lift her spirits, and she nodded eagerly. “Are there more? Is there only one?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I thought I saw more than one before. Maybe they’re just hiding…” He got back to his feet and inspected the shell more thoroughly. “Guess not…”
He turned back to Ayumi, cradling the poor creature. A smirk crossed his lips. “Wanna name it?”
She beamed. “Lulu!” she cried, almost immediately.
“Lulu?”
“My mommy told me it means ‘Pearl.’ She was hiding in that box like a pearl in an oyster!”
Conan chuckled. Cute.
“Do you hear that, Lulu?” he cooed. “You’re precious.”
He received a dumb, eager yip in response.
To this, Conan offered a strange smile, titling his head so his glasses caught the light in that ominous, secret way which could frighten even grown men. Ayumi shivered. Something felt… wrong. It looked normal from where she stood, normal as anything when Conan was involved, but… it just felt off. Lulu must have felt it, too, as the gleeful wagging of her tail ceased abruptly.
"I'm going to check her one more time,” Conan announced, pulling her a little closer. “Then we can go."
Ayumi's skin crawled with the familiar dread of a bad premonition. Unease crept down her spine as Conan's smile widened just a little more.
Lulu made a strange noise– something like the start of a sneeze– but she barely moved, instead suffocating in the chokehold of some invisible force. She trembled, writhed a little in his grasp, paralyzed and lost in Conan’s spellbinding gaze.
No! Ayumi objected. Her lips moved, but no words came. Stop!
She didn’t understand. He wasn’t doing anything, and yet… she had the awful feeling he was.
Alarmed, she hastened towards them. But she only got a few steps in. On the fifth, the world snapped to black and white, as if time had stopped. She was suddenly in a vacuum, isolated in some purgatory where the only remaining semblance of color was the dull, red sheen of Conan’s eyes.
It was a strange feeling, to know that they were even there. She couldn’t actually see them beyond his glasses… but she could feel them, felt the disquiet of the color red prickling up her shoulders and wheezing in her skull, like someone holding a match to the back of her eyes.
She didn’t understand… and she didn’t know what she saw, either. She only… felt things, even things which had nothing to feel. Ephemeral instinct somehow translated into just the right kisses of sensation, giving form to the world like a velvet drape over otherwise unseen shapes.
Ayumi’s knees buckled and she collapsed into a frightened mess. Perceiving the world in this way petrified her. Her eyes saw Conan as she had left him, knelt at the base of the utility pole, holding Lulu ahead of him... but she felt more.
…Pointed shapes… like hooks, dug into the flesh…
Please, please… no more…
…Bubbles made of something dark… frothing from lines in the skin, like fluff bursting from the seams of a doll…
Please…
…A horrible, filed grin… the flicking of a serpent's tongue…
…Stop…
In the void, she only knew sound by the unscratchable itching of her brain. When Lulu whined, twitching as if she were trying to scramble away in her paralysis, Ayumi yearned to scream.
Stop!
Her skin turned to paper mâché. The hooks pulled suddenly, and the sensation of tearing wet paper split her back like fire. Ayumi shrieked soundlessly, thrashing in the sterile void as a blood-red film overwhelmed her, consuming her extrasensory reach… leaching into places she didn’t even know were wired to receive a signal.
Meanwhile… somehow… she could still hear the faint yowling of poor Lulu. Somewhere beyond the cacophony of red static… Conan laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
This, she knew she heard.
“No!”
Before she realized what she was doing, she had broken free from her invisible shackles and snatched Lulu away from him. She desperately turned the poor creature in her hands, examining her back for those dreadful, bloody scratches she swore she’d seen carved into the flesh… but there was nothing. Her coat was whole and unsoiled, except for the bit of mud matting down her longer hairs.
She blinked, incredulous. The puppy wagged her tail eagerly, smiling up at her.
“Wh… wha…” she breathed.
She relaxed her arms a little, lowering Lulu just enough to catch a glimpse of Conan behind her. Something fired in her and she flushed red with anger.
“Y-You said we were taking her to a shelter!” she protested, puffing her cheeks.
“We are!” Conan insisted.
She sensed he wasn't telling the truth and pulled Lulu to her chest.
“You’re lying!”
Conan balled his hands into fists. Though she had left the void, she felt that familiar, otherworldly prickle strike her again as it had before, tickling around her eyes as he turned a ferocious glare onto her. She squeaked and hugged Lulu closer.
It took her a moment, but she eventually found the resolve to speak again. “You...you said we were taking her to a shelter,” she repeated, this time with a little more gusto, “so… so that’s what I’m going to do!”
She dared not turn her back on him, at first. She kept her eyes on him for the longest seconds of her life, pacing backwards one step at a time, until she suddenly– and clumsily– whisked about-face and peeled off towards the mouth of the alley.
...Hmm.
He let her run. Without moving an inch, he watched her charge onto the main street and tear around the corner to God-knows-where, and caught the paranoid little peek at him over her shoulder before she disappeared, too.
A wolfish smile turned his face.
Casually, he hoisted his backpack over his shoulders and bounced on his heels twice, checking the feel of its weight on his neck. So she saw him, did she? She had seen something. He knew she would never tell, but… he knew she had.
Ayumi fogged into his mind’s eye, collapsed on her knees in abject horror, petrified as they always were when they saw. How amusing that man and beast alike were reduced to the same, miserable state… Lulu had done the same, after all, before she had been stolen away.
The mental image curled his smile a little more. He smacked his lips, as if the taste of her horror was still fresh on his skin and, satisfied, followed after her in no hurry at all.
Conan walked home alone every day, now. Ayumi didn’t try to walk with him again, and she didn’t try to follow him when he went off the beaten path, either. But she remembered the utility pole and the gutted A/C box, the dirty towels and the water bowl, half-filled with rainwater. She didn’t remember the way there, but she always found it when she went looking for it, somehow.
She went back at least twice, always in secret. She didn't know why she went, it was a tainted place in her mind, and more than anything she feared being whisked into the place where she could feel colors and taste sound. Maybe she thought she would find more puppies sleeping in the A/C box, but there never was another.
On her third visit, however, she noticed something had changed… In Lulu’s old water bowl, there was a dog-shaped plush.