Chapter Text
The bell rang; a wave of students rushed outside like a single entity. They were her classmates, had been for the last three months, but still Shiho felt as though she didn’t know them past their names and faces.
Then there was the girl now standing in front of her. Shiho didn’t know much of Naomi Argento either, but in the similarity of their condition she’d found a place of understanding, the suggestion of a connection. But it was, she believed, wishful thinking. The only way she could ever find to plant roots in a place, a person, that wasn’t Akemi.
Her sister always said it was fine to be as she was. Shiho didn’t have to change for other people. But it wouldn’t hurt, Akemi also said, if she smiled more. If she made friends, or at least attempted to.
Still Naomi hadn’t moved. She looked at Shiho, averted her eyes, then looked at Shiho again.
“Uh, do you need anything?”
English still rolled in a strange fashion on her tongue, but she preferred it over Japanese nonetheless. Japanese was the condition she’d been born into; it knew her like no language ever could. Here in the US, speaking a language that she’d only ever heard on TV, she could almost convince herself she was another person. That she’d been reborn, and no danger awaited her back home.
“Why did you do that?” Naomi asked. “On the bus—why did you defend me?”
“They were making fun of you,” said Shiho with a shrug. “I didn’t like that.”
“But now they’re making fun of you.”
“They did that already.”
Most kids shied away from her, as though repelled by the mist that surrounded her. Akemi said Shiho carried herself like an adult, and that scared kids her age away. Akemi said a lot of things, and Shiho believed them all. But she couldn’t just change. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t know where to begin. She was fine being like she was. More people should be more like Akemi instead. Shiho never had any trouble getting along with her, surely.
Akemi never got upset if Shiho said the wrong thing. With Akemi, there was no ‘wrong thing’ to begin with. She did look unsettled from time to time, mostly when Shiho blurted out some random facts kids her age shouldn’t know, but Akemi never reprimanded Shiho for it. It did however upset the adults and the other kids, that a seven-years-old child didn’t act as they wanted.
Shiho expected Naomi to react the same way. Instead Naomi smiled, inched closer, and timidly asked, “Do you want to go home together?”
・
That day, Naomi might as well have asked, “Do you want to be my best friend?”
It was as simple as that. One day they were casual acquaintances, the next they weren’t.
Shiho found Naomi’s presence as natural as Akemi’s. Naomi didn’t get upset because Shiho said the wrong thing, and instead gaped every time Shiho mentioned some random fact Naomi had never heard of.
“You’re as smart as my dad!” she once said, and Shiho almost believed her. She found most adults to be quite stupid, but Mr. Argento had something different to him. His wife, whom Shiho only met once, was a thin woman, delicate and quiet. They were both politicians, and travelled a lot.
During her only meeting with Mrs. Argento, Shiho saw a trace of Akemi in the woman. Shiho catalogued most people as Akemi-like and Akemi-unlike. The first category was ever so rare it was an exception, and every time Shiho met one of the Akemi-like species, she was drawn to like them.
That time, Mrs. Argento was laughing at something her daughter had just said. “And what about your parents, Shiho?”
Shiho didn’t remember what led to Mrs. Argento’s question. She only remembered her own answer, and what Mrs. Argento said afterwards.
“They were scientists.”
A flicker in Mrs. Argento’s eyes. “Were?”
“They’re dead.”
Most adults were uncomfortable around the subject of death; they believed it was a wrong word to come out of a child’s mouth. They certainly acted like so with Shiho. It was as though her pain, or the absence of it, troubled them. She always said it like truth, because it was. It didn’t mean there was no pain behind it. She didn’t feel the absence of her parents because she’d never met them, but she could tell something about her and Akemi was wrong.
She saw the parents waiting for their children outside of school. No one, not even Mrs. Blackwood, was ever waiting for her.
Mrs. Argento smiled. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, dear.”
It was just that, but Shiho appreciated the honesty. It was exactly like she did things. No crying, no bantering. Even when she’d been forced to leave Akemi, it had just happened. There was no way she could oppose that.
Still Akemi made a point of calling her every chance she got, and once, Shiho could almost feel her sister’s happiness traveling all the way to her when she told her, “I’ve made a friend.”
・
She’d made more than one—but try as she might, she couldn’t quite remember their names; their faces were blurry like smudged ink.
Everything felt distant yet perilously close, as though the walls were about to close on her. Someone, a boy, was laughing. It was a living thing, this laugh; it exploded into her mind and sent a chill to every bone. Her whole body ached as one heart.
“Shiho?”
Another memory.
She must be in the room where Gin had thrown her, awaiting for her death to come. Or perhaps the APTX4869 had worked as intended after all, Shiho was dead, and everything she thought had come after was no more than a dream.
But then the kids . . . they couldn’t be fake. And the Professor, and Edogawa–kun—
“Shiho?” said the same voice. “Is that really you?”
Her head throbbed as she sat up. Instinctively she tried to wrap her hands around her head, but found they were stuck—no, tied—behind her back. She could do nothing but endure the discomfort, clenching her teeth as she waited for the pain to subside. Eventually it did, or perhaps she was only getting used to it. Either way, the room stopped spinning.
“Are you hurt?” the voice asked.
Finally Shiho lifted her gaze. The room was dimly lit, all metal and grey things, another world entirely to the one she remembered. Squinting, Shiho could only make out the shape of a young woman. Her mind worked slowly around her face.
“Naomi?” she said, before her mind could even begin to consider why it was wrong to give herself away like that.
Naomi smiled, and the gesture alone made her seem even younger, ever so similar to the girl Shiho remembered from her life in Boston.
“It’s really you,” Naomi said. “You haven’t changed one bit.”
Of course she hadn’t. To Naomi, she was still a child, not looking a day older than—
No.
This was what felt wrong. It wasn’t the room, it wasn’t her memories—or rather it was, but they were only a suggestion, an arrow pointing to one direction.
She was, had been, Shiho Miyano. The one in Japan, then in Boston, then back in Japan. She was, now, Ai Haibara. Only her body wasn’t that of a child anymore. Her two lives intertwined in a single thread, and she couldn’t say where the one began and the other ended.
“What happened?” Shiho asked.
“I don’t know,” Naomi said. “I woke up here and found you lying unconscious. Someone—our captors, I don’t know—came here and took the other guy before he woke up.”
“The other guy?”
As though summoned by her words, the one door to the room sprung open. Shinichi was unceremoniously thrown in.