Hell Hath No Fury

Amidst His Absence

( ▼ヮ▼)ヽ(*´∀')ﾉ┌┛

Ran hated simply waiting. It invited inaction, the bane of her existence. It gave her a numbing mixture of move, do something and I can't go anywhere, he might come back. Her hands clenched into tight fists, her legs refusing to stop moving, her mind startlingly blank. Even karate championships that paralyzed the minds of competitors brought her an elation, an adrenaline that encouraged her, whispered in her ear that all she could do was her best, forget the rest.

As she paced circles into the floor, every creak of the floorboards felt like a screech from a banshee. The monotonous bustle of the street outside became a roar in her ears, the lamppost’s glow flooding the room was a blinding spotlight. Everything seemed more than it really was as if trying to fill the emptiness she'd come home to for the past five days.

For five days, Ran cooked only enough for two. For five days, her father drank and smoked enough for the both of them. For five days, both of them investigated enough for the entire police department.

For five days, Edogawa Conan had been missing.

A knock on the door was an ear-splitting pounding, snatching Ran from the clutches of mindless worry. It’s earlier than his promised time. Maybe he found something,whispered something in the back of her mind hopefully. Maybe it's Conan-kun.

She ran to the door, flung it open. "To-san, I thought you--"

Instead of her father, a very familiar officer stood at the door to the agency. He tipped his hat. "Ojo-sama. I hope I'm not too early,"

Ran's shoulders dropped as she let out a sigh. "Hikaru-kun. No, you're just fine. Come, sit. I'll make you some tea."

He reached for her arm, protested, "Ojo-sama, that's not--"

"Sit. Down," she repeated firmly. "I. Will. Make. Tea."

A brief moment's hesitation, he nodded and took a seat on the couch. "If you insist," he assented with a touch of reluctance.

He sat silently, awaiting her return. In his pocket lay a pad of notepaper stuffed with every bit of information he could find on Edogawa Conan— some from questionable sources, others from officers he'd entrusted his life to on multiple occasions. He needed to compare notes with someone who interacted with the child on a daily basis; however, with Conan missing, Kuroha doubted Ran was in any state to talk about trivial matters such as Conan's personality.

Thus, he began assisting the Mouris in their search three days ago. Any tip on Conan's whereabouts, a whisper here or a murmur there, he wrote it down and brought it to the Mouri Detective Agency as soon as he got off of work. Kuroha and Ran, working together with her father, had narrowed down the search area to not Beika over the past days. Even as Ran and Kuroha sat in the air-conditioned, comfortable interior of the Agency, Kogoro was out on the streets of Osaka, searching any place that Conan might've frequented with Heiji. The hospitals were spared from a sweep only for now. If Ran and Kuroha couldn't find any new leads to pursue today, they'd turn to the one place no one said Conan was.

To Ran, the days without Conan would have been unbearable were it not for the man who called himself Kuroha Hikaru. On the second day when he took Ran to lunch, he swore never to lie to her. At dinner that night, he got her to call him by the first name of his alias (because she refused to call him ‘kaitou’). He was transparent, keeping nothing except his true face from her.