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“I swear I will commit murder if I have to hang another one of these!”
Shiho hissed her words, feeling as poisonous as a snake, while waving a ridiculously tacky garland in a really threatening way.
Even though it had been only a few days, it felt like Teitan had been preparing for Christmas for ages, which meant students had been decorating the school for ages, which, worse, implied that she had been decorating the school for ages.
A chuckle came from the back of the classroom.
“Careful, with me around, it probably wouldn’t end up well for you.”
Shinichi Kudo was sitting like a proper student at his school desk, while dividing by dimension a monstrous amount of paper snowflakes into several boxes. He seemed to be completely unbothered by the mundane task and, if anything, he seemed to quiteenjoy himself; going to school, doing homework, attending clubs, spending weekends preparing for finals and then get indigestion eating 7 Eleven’s junk food, laughing with your classmates for getting a bad grade (neither of them did that, duh), gossiping, being scolded by your teachers, and even school cleaning duty, the two of them now had a true understanding of how precious all of that actually was. How precious life was.
Well, she supposed she had something to be grateful to the Organization for.
“Probably? Was that a compliment, oh great detective?”
A small smirk (one of his smirks) came to his face. He looked at her behind the abominable paper mountain. “Well, you are my partner, aren’t you?”
Shiho felt dangerously close to blushing, so she turned her back to him and pretended to go back to decorating. Brilliant.
“So, it is true that Christmas can make everybody want to be a better person, uh? It seems in your case, it means to shrink the ego, even if ever so slightly."
She heard his laugh, and the sound of it made her so nonsensically happy.
He had been happy recently, often in a good mood. Well, Shinichi had never been one for sulking and, more often than not, his overly optimistic attitude had put them in lots of trouble that usually involved car chasing, deadly fires, submarine explosions, etc. (and murder, of course), but Shiho liked him happy.
She loved him happy.
She carefully turned to look at him, cheeks still warm, badly hidden under copper hair.
Shinichi was focused on the paper snowflakes, the shadow of a smile still lingering on his face.
Warm sunlight hugged him, and his long lashes projected crescent moons on his pale cheeks.
His ever-messy hair, usually dark as night, took the color of the sunset outside the window, and Shiho wanted so badly to pass a finger, two fingers, both hands, her lips, thought it.
It almost hurt.
She wondered if Shinichi’s love for Ran felt as painful as hers.
Thinking about Ran Mouri brought Shiho back from her daydreaming brutally.
Some people said that stirring can feel, in the worst scenario, like a punch in the guts or on the teeth, but for her it was a direct punch to her heart, so much so that, sometimes, she feared someday she was going die because of it.
And more than acknowledging that Shinichi didn’t love her and was never going to, what really cut deeply was the absolute awareness that Shiho was never going to stop loving him.
Well, that sucked. For real.
Shiho refused to sulk since a long while ago, and so, she resorted to the next best thing she had to a proper dating life: snacking.
Without a care in the world, she threw her garland away and reached for her bag.
Peppermints, that was all.
She munched a bunch, but it was nowhere close to a meal.
“Hey, Kudo-kun, do you perhaps have something to eat? I am starving,” She thought that the not for food line was probably unnecessary.
Without missing a beat, he took a piece of dark chocolate from under the desk, and without taking his eyes from hers, unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. Shinichi chewed slowly, ever so slowly, as if he was savoring a three-Michelin-course instead of conbini junkfood, and once finished, he licked his lips from top to bottom, making sure to leave them spotless, red, wet.
“Sorry, that was the last one,” he grinned at her, eyes twinkling with mirth, and Shiho feared she might be one of those rare cases of people catching fire because of auto combustion, because she was burning all over.
She threw something at him, whatever it was, perhaps a garland or her panties, she didn’t know.
“Idiot! You — Idiot!”
He burst out laughing, pushing that monstrosity of a garland away.
Thank god, it hadn’t been her panties.
“Sorry! I am so sorry! Come on! Don’t be so angry! I will buy you a bigger, more delicious chocolate, I promise! God, you should see your face!” Every word was punctuated by a laugh, and Shiho was almost at his throat for all the possible wrong reasons.
“It is not about the chocolate, you idiot! It is — IT IS —!”
Shinichi slightly put himself together; confusion was popping on his face.
“Uh? If not about the food, why are you so angry? I have never, ever, seen you so red in all the time we have known each other."
Shiho’s voice was caught in her throat, between a curse and a plea, one of those that shouldn’t be pronounced in daytime and outside a bed, so it was a good thing that, for once, she couldn’t talk back to him.
Finally, she managed to put two words together, “Go to hell and die dumb!” and she rushed out of the classroom.
Growing up in California, Shiho dreamed of seeing snow often; there, it was sunny allyear round, and even in December, people walked around in shirts and sandals. Christmas on a beach was a popular tradition there, and one that Shiho fully loathed.
She supposed she might have seen snow in Japan when she was still a child, her parents still alive, and maybe, maybe, even played snowball fights with Akemi, but she was too little to remember.
No, her very first memory of snow was because of Shinichi.
It happened at the Beika Hotel that night, Jin’s claw almost got her. Even though it didn’t happen that long ago, the events of that day, the murder, the gunshots, the fire, all blurred together in a mass of fear, pain, and resignation.
Yet, she vividly remembered the hotel roof covered in a blanket of snow, candid but for her own red blood, and at the center of it, Conan standing tall despite his childlike appearance, his eyes burning with fierce determination. Determination to save her.
That was it, imprinted in her mind like a scorch mark on skin, her very first memory of snow.
It seemed every defining moment in her life was tied to Shinichi Kudo.
That idiot
She didn't walk; instead, she kept kicking the snow away, one foot after another, until she was under a big tree, its branches completely covered in white. She leaned her back against it, drained. All around her, the world kept changing; the school's garden was bathed in the sunset light, and everywhere was gold and warm, as if the snow had caught fire. Nobody was around, and the silence was striking, so much so that she thought she could hear snowflakes touching the ground.
For a second, she wondered, "I am awake, or am I dreaming?"
Maybe the latter because, from afar, she could see Shinichi running towards her like an idiot: his jacket was half undone and his scarf tied so badly she thought it might have strangled him; he was waving something at her, big, soft, and red.
Her jacket.
Oh
She had been so pissed off by his sheer obliviousness that she hadn’t even realized she had been walking around only in her school uniform.
Or maybe her subconscious was trying to make her commit suicide, which, to be fair, it wasn't a novelty for her.
Once in front of her, Shinichi took a big breath, as if he had just run a marathon.
“Searched for you everywhere—was worried—”
Shiho didn’t, couldn't, dignify him with an answer, just took her jacket and put it on, taking time for each button before going back to look at him.
The cold weather tinted Shinichi’s cheeks and lips red, and his eyes were big and round and worried.
She felt sharp guilt inside her chest.
“Listen, I — I don’t know what I did. It was a silly joke, and if I had known that you were so hungry, I would have given it to you, really."
As if.
Shiho sighed internally. He really was oblivious to everything, to her.
She let the sigh out.
“Listen, Kudo-kun, it is not your fault, ok? I guess I was just nervous because of the decorating thing, which, as you might guess, is not exactly my forte."
He smirked at that, remembering her half-decorated, half-destroyed garlands, dangerously hanging on the classroom’s wall like nooses.
“Kind of, yea” Mirth was back in his eyes, and Shiho averted hers, scared he could see the pain hiding behind them.
“So, you don’t have to worry, really. I am ok.”
“Are you?”
“I will, someday."
He clearly didn't like her answer, because he was immediately back at scowling.
“Seriously? You can tell me if you are not. If there’s anything I can do for you—”
There were many things he could have done for her, to her, but none she could have told him about. Frustrated, Shiho looked at the orange sky, hoping for some sort of solution from heaven, like a lightning strike or something.
Instead, she noticed something else, just right up their heads, hidden between the branches.
“Well,” she said, her voice suddenly firm, “there is something you could do for me,” and she pointed up in the sky at him.
Shinichi diligently followed her finger, up, up, up, until he saw him too: mistletoe.
There was a moment of pure stillness between the two of them, then Shiho spoke.
“Well?”
Slowly, Shinichi’s gaze went down, back on her, until the two of them locked their eyes.
He opened his mouth once, twice, then he cleared his throat.
“You are joking.”
“I am definitely not.”
There was another moment of silence, enough for Shiho’s words to weigh on him, to make space in his mind and trickle down to his face: his eyes became rounder than the moon, and his cheeks went on fire, and this time it wasn't because of the temperature.
“You,” he seemed to have trouble putting words together, “you cannot be serious—You cannot ask me to do that!”
“Why not? Didn’t you ask if there was anything you could have done for me? And, by the way, it is not that big of a deal. I mean, it is just a tradition, isn’t it?”
Shinichi took in a sharp breath, redness expanding to his ears.
“But that—that—!”
“Got it. You are not going to do it. Kind of expected, frankly. Well, if you excuse me, I am going back to class—”
“Wait!”
Shinichi stopped her mid-step, his hands firmly gripped around her arms.
“Will... that help you make you feel better?” he asked with an audible tremble in his voice.
"Oh, it definitely will."
His grip became firmer.
“And, besides, it is just a tradition, right?”
“It is. It is not like it is your fault, or something."
He bit his lip and looked away.
“FineIlldoit” he smashed the words together, and Shiho didn't have a clear understanding of what was going to happen, to happen for real, until he pushed her against the tree and put his hands on both sides of her head.
Oh
Shinichi didn't look at her while he got closer, that is, until their foreheads touched.
Shiho could feel his warm breath on her face, and his lean body against her own. Everything about that moment was warm, soft, and hard all at once.
Then he finally looked at her, and Shiho's breath got stuck in her throat: Shinichi's eyes were dark and liquid under his pretty eyelashes, and they were roaming on her face, bringing with them too many emotions to count: shyness, insecurity, fear, curiosity, want.
Shiho wondered if he could see the love in hers.
But before she could find an answer to her question, Shinichi shut his eyes tight, smashed his lips against her own, and her brain shut off.
His kiss was unpracticed, raw, and it was petty, childish, and dark, but Shiho felt elated at the realization that he must not have done that before, ever, like she never had.
Shinichi's chopped lips pressed against hers first, then brushed slightly around, like he was trying to understand how a kiss worked.
Shiho pressed back her lips on him, and that must have done something to him, because she could hear a little gulp coming from his throat. Tentatively, she caresses his lips with her tongue, but she feared she might have dared too much, because he was still for a few seconds, until Shinichi licked her lips back.
She moaned.
The world crumbled.
Suddenly, he was pushing her against the tree so hard it hurt, his hands were catching her face, and both mouths were open, and everything was wet, wet, wet.
Shiho couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t care less; she could have died right there and there, and she would have been happy about it. Surely there wasn’t a better way to die.
They hold each other so hard that Shiho couldn’t distinguish her body from his anymore.
And then Shinichi's hands weren’t on her face anymore, but they were unbuttoning her jacket, and was he shaking? Was she shaking? And his mouth was in her mouth and his fingers at the hem of her sweater and his warm fingers on her cold skin and—
Snap!
They separated abruptly, startled by the sudden noise. Shiho looked around, as confused as somebody who had woken up falling from the bed.
And there it was, a few feet away from them, a big branch, fallen from a tree under the weight of the snow.
Shiho breathed in and breathed out.
She turned to look at Shinichi.
He was not looking at the branch at all, but solely at her. His hair was a mess, his eyes were still dark and watery, his face was redder than ever, and his lips were swollen and bloody where she had bitten him. He was still catching his breath.
“Well,” she said, hating herself for sounding so embarrassed.
“Well,” he said, loving to hear him being so embarrassed.
A few more seconds of painful silence passed, then Shiho collected herself, looked straight back at him, and spoke, “So, are you going to do it?”
If Shinichi could have had, he probably would have looked even more confused than he already did, but at that moment, his brain was still too busy registering what had just happened between the two of them, so everything he could manage to do was smashing some other words together that more or less sounded like “Excuse me? Was what I just did not enough?”
“Helping me take mistletoe from the branches, that is.” Shiho reinforced her words, pointing exactly at the big branch beside them, which was dotted here and there with small bushes of mistletoe.
Shinichi’s eyes followed her finger slowly, again, until the wood lying on the snow, and then it stayed there, for seconds, many seconds, completely still.
“What—”
“That is what I meant before when you asked me if you could do anything for me and I saw the mistletoe up in the tree and I thought it might have been a good idea to use it for my Christmas decoration to make them less horrible and it is tradition to use mistletoe for decoration you know” Shiho's words came in one after another in a rush, at the same rhythm of her heartbeats.
Shinichi kept looking at the branch, without uttering a single word; his silence was deafening.
Shiho breathed in, once more. It was almost finished.
“And this is why I told you it wasn’t your fault because it is against the school’s rules, but it was me asking so it wasn’t your fault see?” Finally, the word vomit stopped, and so did her heart.
Shinichi was now looking at her. He had those lost puppy eyes, the ones he used strategically from time to time, when he truly wanted something, and he was ready to take it by any means. Except this time, he was genuinely lost, but so was Shiho; she had no idea what was going to happen from now on. But she was sure that, whatever it was going to be, she didn't want to be there for it to happen, not right now, at least.
She cleared her throat, “Anyway,” she said, buttoning her jacket fast (but not as fast as him when he undid the buttons, though...), “Anyway, now that the branch has fallen, I can do it myself, I guess. Thank you for volunteering and, uh, the kiss.”
At the word kiss, he blushed again, tremendously, and so did she.
Shiho ran for the mistletoe, grabbed a bunch, definitely not enough, and left, stumbling over her own feet.
It was definitely time for her to run away.
It was definitely time for Shinichi to think. And he would have done that. And he would have understood.
So, Shiho ran, ran as fast as she could through the thick snow, like a fox from a hound, with her mouth still tasting like peppermint chocolate.