Detective Conan - Magic Kaito oneshots

Uncle, uncle

Kogoro Mori knew with certainty that he was far from the smartest man that ever walked the earth. Especially when he was kind of (absolutely) handicapping himself with his addiction and continuous substance abuse. But if there was one thing he had a certain talent for, it was jumping to conclusions. And there had been a lot of odd coincidences for him to speculate about in the past months.

Not to say he didn't like to ignore issues and oddities when they popped up around him, he did, with a passion. (He barely had the energy to get out of bed and into his clothes most days, most mysteries were just more stressful than he could handle, alright? Especially when his loved ones could be endangered... he wasn't traumatized from the incident that ruined his life a decade ago, absolutely not.)

But the sudden piling up of weird coincidences and the barrage of cases happening around him ever since that boy moved in became increasingly difficult to ignore quite quickly.

He just tumbled into his life one night and with him came the constant crime solving. Kogoro was thankful for the money and the boost to his reputation, he really was. Even if it meant his nerves were suffering more, at least Ran didn't have to worry about their finances anymore. And if some amount of it fueled his addictions to alcohol, nicotine, and gambling, well... He had to survive the additional stress in his life nowadays somehow.

Things got a bit less stressful when he started falling asleep during his cases, presenting the solution without remembering it once he woke up. Which, weird, he'd never had a heightened likelihood of developing a narcoleptic condition.

He tried to push it aside, seeing as it at least freed him from actually having to try too hard to solve the case, seeing as it would practically just solve itself. Instead he could devote his sparse energy to making sure Ran (and the little freeloader, as much as the brat was annoying he couldn't let a child die) made it out of the often dangerous circumstances relatively unharmed.

The sleep he got as the Sleeping Kogoro also granted him rest of a different kind, while he'd always been a heavy sleeper, that also meant he was never able to escape the hazy nightmares of Eri leaving him again and again, or little Ran dying in his arms with a bullet hole in her chest, until the moment sleep released him from its clutches and he awoke.

The kind of sleep he experienced on cases was just as deep, but blissfully dreamless and peaceful. Though he felt even groggier upon waking than when he slept at night, similar to waking up from anesthesia after surgery, he actually preferred it over his regular sleeping.

But as he only knew all too well, good things could never last. The narcoleptic attacks grew shorter, the sleep itself lighter until it was barely a trance, and soon he experienced only a slightly painful poke on his neck, briefly blacked out for a few seconds, then found himself sitting on the ground as his own voice presented sound deductions for the course of the crime and proof for its theory, cornering the culprit and solving the case, without coming from his own throat.

That was more than a little unsettling, but if he didn't acknowledge it nothing would change, right? No problem to be seen if he just covered his eyes.

Sadly, Kogoro Mori could only resist coming to conclusions for so long, especially with evidence jumping him straight in the face. His detective career had only taken off after Conan arrived, and before he became the Sleeping Kogoro the boy had been giving him hints to help him solve cases.

Also, there were no narcoleptic attacks when Conan and a case weren't around. That was one undeniable coincidence. And then the painful little poke, that had to be some sort of needle hitting his skin, had no effect at the next crime scene they stumbled upon.

Which unfortunately meant Kogoro had to make a decision in the split second after the needle struck the skin on his neck. He could either put an end to the charade, and probably subsequently his career, or play along.