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The light in the room is almost blinding as Ran opens her eyes slowly, feeling oddly sore all over. She blinks as she sits up, and it takes some time for the surroundings to register with her.
Ran frowns as her memory supplies her with something about an explosion, but nothing further.
So that’s why she was in the hospital – though it left quite a few questions unanswered as well.
A familiar voice interrupts her musings. “Ran-neechan!”
“Conan-kun?”
She lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding as she watches her young charge clamber up onto one of the two plastic chairs beside her bed. It doesn’t do much to change his height.
Ran smiles, imagining his expression if she ever tells him that.
They’ve been talking for several minutes when he mentions Shinichi.
Ran lets out an indignant huff, crossing her arms petulantly. “Don’t even talk about that mystery otaku. He must know I’m injured, but I don’t see him coming to visit me!”
“Oi, oi… don’t talk about me like I’m not here, Ran!”
She stares at a bemused Conan for a long moment before realising he wasn’t the one who had spoken.
What –
Shinichi is leaning against the doorframe, wearing his usual expression of boredom. It changes to one of mild amusement as he quirks an eyebrow at her obvious surprise.
“What? Did you really think I’d not visit you at all?” he asks theatrically, pretending to fall over in a dead faint as he reaches her hospital bed.
She chuckles, shaking her head, and even Conan can’t hold back a small smile of amusement.
And even as she watches them fall into an overly serious debate about the quality of the chairs – the one beside Conan still vacant, Shinichi having refused it on grounds of discomfort – Ran realises that she hasn’t felt this good in a long time.
She hears the sound of the door opening again, and looks up, a brilliant smile brightening her face as she recognises her two visitors.
“Kaa-san! Sonoko!” she exclaims happily. They exchange a quick glance – probably wondering about her apparent over-enthusiasm, but it can’t be helped, now could it? She hasn’t seen them in months… or maybe really just one, but it feels like one too many anyway.
Sonoko walks forward into the room, more cautious than she’d ever seen her bold friend being. Flashing a quick grin at Ran, she gestures to the chair that Conan was occupying. “Mind if I take that one?”
Her young charge nods easily when she turns to look at him – then lets out an indignant squawk as Shinichi leans over and hoists him up onto her bed. It’s not a big one, but there’s just enough space for him to sit comfortably at the foot of it; and he does, all while muttering darkly about pretentious people who just happened to be older than him. She exchanges a knowing glance with Shinichi over the top of his head, and he rolls his eyes as she laughs at their antics.
The fond smile is still on her face as she turns to her other two visitors, waving them over to the two chairs beside her bed. “It’s fine, you can sit down now.”
Eri eyes the chairs almost warily as she approaches them, and Ran shakes her head with a sigh. Leave it to her mother to treat everything with suspicion, though she supposed that spending too much time in a courtroom would do that to you.
“Don’t worry, Kaa-san, they’re safe to sit on. Shinichi swears he didn’t put any pranks on them.”
In the chair beside her, Sonoko flinches slightly – at what, Ran doesn’t know. But she looks closely at her friend, her brows knitting at what she sees there. “You need to sleep more,” she says, admonishing her friend lightly.
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she wonders if something’s happened – it must be really bad, she thinks, for Sonoko to have such dark circles beneath her eyes. Then she bats the thought away and turns back to present, because her friend’s welfare is much more important than anything else. Besides, if it was really that bad, she’d probably tell her sooner or later anyway.
Sonoko musters a tremulous smile, shaking her head quickly. “It’s okay. I’m just a bit tired, I think. Don’t worry about me.” She tilts her head slightly, reaching out tentatively to carefully grasp Ran’s pale hand on the bed. “What about you, Ran? How’re you feeling?”
She considers the question for a moment.
“Pretty good, actually. Just no karate for the next few months and I’ll be fine. Does that mean I can get discharged soon?” she asks hopefully. “Conan-kun got hurt much worse than I did, but he’s fine already.”
Her mother doesn’t answer – only looks at her long and hard, before abruptly turning away.
Ran feels a vague sense of unease, and it’s not only because of the distinct redness of Kisaki Eri’s eyes. “Kaa-san?”
But it isn’t Eri who speaks next.
“Ran,” Sonoko begins haltingly, and she can feel her hands tremble against her own. “The brat, he – “
The feeling of dread only increases tenfold as Sonoko’s voice falters, fails; she was right, something must have happened. Something about Conan-kun? But –
Her mother’s voice, measured and steady, breaks that train of thought.
“Ran?”
Kisaki Eri looks at her daughter, meets her gaze squarely. Hates herself for what she is about to do.
“Conan-kun is dead, Ran. He died in that explosion.”
Sonoko is clutching to her like a lifeline, sobbing her heart out. “Ran, oh Ran…”
She doesn’t react, doesn’t do anything – hasn’t since Sonoko threw her arms around her one minute ago, since her mother spoke a full minute before that.
Ran sits there, unseeing. She doesn’t know what to do.
She wants to get up, get out of this room and call Shinichi to show them that he’s perfectly fine, alright and okay. She wants to go back to the detective agency, and tell Conan all about this stupid prank. She wants to hug Sonoko back and tell her that she’s being stupid, because – because –
Her thoughts stop, stutter to a standstill.
Then she almost smacks herself on the forehead, because the solution is so simple she can’t believe she hasn’t seen it before. Ran turns –
You’re wrong, they’re right here!
– and stares at the empty, empty space at the foot of her bed.
“They’re not, Ran.”
She doesn’t even realise that she’d said it out loud until she hears that.
Eri is crying as well, tears falling down her face. “I’m sorry, Ran… so, so sorry…”
And it is all Ran can do to sit there, frozen in more ways than she could count, gaze unmoving on the same spot.
White, bare.
Empty.
Impossible, Ran decides, shaking so hard that the world seems to tilt on its axis for a brief moment.
…right?
Out in the corridor, several people look up as one of the many doors swing open ever so slowly. A man gets up, a trifle unsteady on his feet as he stumbles towards one of the two emerging figures – then he pauses for a fraction of a second, hesitant as he takes in her expression.
It’s a far cry, a pale echo of her usual sternness. Her hair is a mess, strands of it escaping from the usual neat bun to fall around her face. In the stark lighting of the hospital corridor, her face is pale as a ghost’s, or maybe the walls around her; she sways on her feet, and without thinking, he steps forward and catches her before she can fall.
Beside them, the Hondou boy stands as well, almost brushing past them as he helps Sonoko to a chair. His voice can be heard in low, soothing undertones, as can her shaky breaths, caught on a sob; but none of it matters to them, at least not right now.
A silence settles over them, oddly comforting if not comfortable.
If she catches the faintest hint of sake on his breath, or the waver in his stride, she doesn’t mention it. Nobody does.
Her breathing steadies gradually as she stays there, leaning against him. And slowly, almost tentatively, he brings his arms up to encircle her back – carefully, as if he’s afraid that she might break as well if he tries too hard.
“Every day,” she whispers softly, almost inaudibly, her face pressed into the rough fabric of his suit that’s just starting to dampen. “Every single damned day for the past month, and she – she still…”
“I know, Eri.”
His voice doesn’t tremble, even as hers shudders and breaks – or maybe it does, but he doesn’t allow himself to hear it. He refuses to.
The silence again, broken only by the quiver of her breath and the murmur of his voice. He blinks hard as he rests his head on her shoulder; if his vision is blurred ever so slightly, it’s not by tears, because Mouri Kogoro does not cry.
But what he does do is hold his wife – ex-wife, whatever, it doesn’t matter – just that much more close to him as he feels her shudder against him.
He blinks again, and looks everywhere else in the narrow corridor but the ward where their daughter is sitting on her bed, unresponsive, catatonic.
I know.
The sun shines brightly behind Ran’s closed eyelids as she wakes from her slumber. Carefully, she straightens, sitting up on the thin sheets of the hospital bed. A frown crosses her face briefly – something deep in her ached, and the faintest hints of a memory nagged at her brain. Had she forgotten something?
“Ran-neechan?”
The thought disappears like morning fog as she turns to the bright voice, alive and cheery as always.
Ran’s face brightens. “Conan-kun!”