Post by doctorpeggy on Aug 5, 2017 19:14:56 GMT
Themed Writing Contest #36 - Wolves: More to the dreams...
(This is what happens when I let my brain do whatever it wants. I have no explanation for this fic. I don't know what happened to it, I only know that it turned out to be very different from what I had intended it to be. Er, I suppose it works just as well if you can laugh at the ridiculousness of it. It was supposed to be funny, originally.)
Word count: 1805
Summary: If shrinking had been hard to wrap her head around, Ai did not have words to express what this whole situation was doing to her mind.
More to the dreams...
Lunchtime on school days was likely the only time that the detective boys ever did things like normal kids. Sit with friends, eat their lunches, talk about Kamen Yaiba, and other non-traumatic, non-murder related things. Ai was almost sure that nothing could ever come up at lunchtime. Almost, because despite the safety that the lunchtime atmosphere provided, she knew that a certain detective had a knack for attracting murdered bodies.
She spent this lunchtime the way she would any other lunchtime. Zoning out - something she enjoyed for the very reason that she hadn’t had the time to do back when she was Miyano Shiho.
Until Yoshida-san shook her shoulder.
“Ai-chan, what do you think?” she asked, eyes wide and expectant.
“Sorry, what were we talking about?” Ai replied.
“About the dream, Haibara-san. Ayumi-chan has been having this recurring, vivid dream about wolves.” Tsubarya-kun explained.
“I keep dreaming about wolves being all around me, and they’re all calling me, and telling me to come with them. They say I have been chosen.” Yoshida-san elaborated.
“Like I said, it’s probably because you watch stuff like that on TV.” Kudo-kun supplied.
“But Conan-kun, I haven’t watched anything like that no TV, and the dream is always exactly the same! And it always feels so real that I think I’m still with all those wolves when I wake up every morning!” Yoshida-san argued.
“I’m afraid I agree with Edogawa-kun. Dreams are just what you subconscious has processed during the day and is showing you again in the night.” Ai said.
“But what if it’s a vision!” Yoshida-san exclaimed.
Ai just shook her head and changed the topic. She made an excuse by saying they’d all think it over when they got home.
The next day, when Ai stepped into classroom, she found Yoshida-san crying in a corner and the students who had arrived before Ai crowing around Yoshida-san’s desk. Kobayashi-sensei had not arrived yet, and Ai only hoped that with this mess first thing in the morning, the woman would at least have a good day after.
She went to Yoshida-san first.
“What's wrong?” She inquired gently.
All she got were incoherent sobs from Yoshida-san. She thought she caught the words ‘dream’, ‘real’, and ‘desk’. she decided to go see what the fuss was about. She pushed her way through the students who were clumped around the desk.
At first, Ai wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The desk was ruined, the surface covered in scratches.
She sucked in a breath. Not just any scratches, but angry claw marks that had ripped through the wood of the table. What was left was barely standing, three out of four legs supporting it, of which only one was mostly intact. The top of it was a mess of gouged out wood. There were splinters everywhere. To top it all off, there was dark grey fur around and on top of the desk. It looked like the table had been attacked by a rabid dog, except the dog had knives instead of claws.
Even more surprising was the the chair had been left untouched.
Ai backed away from the table and them raced back to Yoshida-san. She wrapped her arms around the sobbing girl. Something that disturbing would scare anyone, and Yoshida-san was pretty sensitive anyway.
Ai’s brain was screaming “Black Organization” even though she had no proof. There had been no signs in the room, in the hallways, on the school grounds that any animal this dangerous had come in or gone out. Ai would have noticed if there had been something wrong with anything other then that single desk. Or at least, believed that she was more likely to notice than most people.
The only explanation was that it was a person, but then, why only Yoshida-san’s desk, and not anyone else’s?
Ai watched more students filter into the classroom over the sobbing girl’s head. Among them was Kudo-kun, who went straight to the desk to investigate. She lost sight of him when he dove into the growing crowd of children.
Ai hugged Yoshida-san tighter. Thankfully, the sobbing had mellowed into sniffles.
In time, Kobayashi-sensei arrived. Ai felt a twinge of sympathy watching the teacher’s face fall at the sight of the students, and then her skin pale when she got a glimpse of the desk over the heads of her students.
Gathering her wits, the teacher ordered the students to go sit down at their own desks in a tone more stern than Ai had ever heard from the woman before. All the kids reluctantly but obediently went to sit at their desks. Well, all except Ai and Yoshida-san, still in the corner of the classroom. And Kudo-kun, who was still doing his detective thing. Ai knew he wasn’t going to budge till he was sure he had the entire crime scene memorized down to the very last detail.
After much persuasion from Kobayashi-sensei, Kudo-kun reluctantly went to sit at his desk, mostly out of pity for the teacher. Meanwhile the other two members of the detective boys had arrived. With coaxing from them, Kobayashi-sensei, and Ai, Yoshida-san finally agreed to come out of the corner, pull her chair up to Ai’s desk and sit there for the rest of the day.
People were called in to take the destroyed desk away, which elicited a small yelp of protest from Kudo-kun. Kobayashi-sensei tried to continue with normal class, but Ai would be surprised if the students had heard any of what had been taught.
Ai, for her part, tried to pretend everything was normal, even when lunchtime came around and Yoshida-san kept saying the incident had happened was because of those wolf dreams, while Kudo-kun muttered to himself under his breath and paced back and forth in lieu of sitting down and eating his lunch.
“So, did you figure anything out?” Ai asked Kudo-kun on their way home, the other kids having headed in the directions of their own houses rather than hanging out, too bothered by the excitement from the morning.
Kudo-kun opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. Ai’s heartbeat doubled. She realized she didn’t really want to know what the whole thing had been about. Her experience with danger had taught her to stay far, far away from anything that was mildly threatening, and it bothered her greatly when Kudo-kun dove straight into murder cases as if they were no more than playground squabbles.
She waited in anxious silence for an answer from Kudo-kun.
“I don't understand… those claw marks seemed legit.” he finally said.
It took Ai a full ten seconds to comprehend the statement.
“So you’re saying that an actual dog or wolf or whatever came in and did that to Yoshida-san’s desk.” she stated rather than asked.
“Well, not exactly… but sort of.” Kudo-kun affirmed.
“Sort of.” Ai repeated.
“Yes, well, it can’t actually have been an animal, because it would have left some other clues, namely signs of it having entered and left. Except that… if those claw marks are fake, it’s the most realistic imitation I’ve ever seen. And believe me, I’ve seen plenty of attempts at making fake animal claw marks.” Kudo-kun explained, trying to clarify his earlier statement.
Ai did not reply. She did not say anything the rest of the way home, and ignored anything else Kudo-kun said. She didn’t want to think about what had happened to that desk, and she didn’t want to know about fake claw marks.
What Kudo-kun had implied was too much for her to comprehend. There was one simple answer to this whole situation: that there was magic involved, and Yoshida-san’s dream-visions had held some truth.
Which was sounded so ridiculous coming from Kudo-kun, a person whose head was grounded firmly in the realm of reality and logic, that Ai was inclined to believe it.
And believing in the supernatural was something she decidedly did not want to do. She had enough problems on her hands already.
When she got home, she put away her school things and went to her lab, where she tried to make progress with the APTX antidote. She spent five minutes making edits to her already-edited notes on the new prototype, and then left the lab to do her homework. On the way to her room she poked her head into the professor’s office, and announced that she was home.
After two worksheets that got completed lightning fast, she rummaged in her bag to look for more, despite knowing there weren’t any. She then headed down to the kitchen, looked for Professor Agasa’s new stash of cookies, found them hidden in a predictable place, and proceeded to hide them in an unpredictable place.
Ai wandered back to her room, paced for a couple couple of minutes, then headed to the kitchen again. She pulled the cookies out of their hiding place, and ate them. All of them. Then she hurled the cookie jar into the dustbin in a fit of irrational anger, where it broke upon impact.
It took her several deep breaths before she realized what she had just done. It took several more for her to realize that she was upset.
And only after downing a glass of water did she finally understand what was wrong.
It was Yoshida-san. Yoshida-san and her desk. Yoshida-san and her desk and everything it meant for Ai.
Yoshida-san was her friend. Admitted, a friend who didn’t actually know anything about her, but a friend nonetheless. Ai did not want anything happening to her. And if Kudo-kun was right… if magic was involved… Ai wouldn't be able to predict or control what happened to Yoshida-san. She had no way to know how to help her friend.
If magic was real…
Ai slapped her forehead. What was she thinking? As if magic could be real. As if she was even sure that whole desk incident had been magic. For all Ai knew, it was a tasteless prank by someone who had something against either Yoshida-san something against someone related to Yoshida-san.
But then, who would have something against a kid?
Ai put the empty glass into the kitchen sink, and headed back to her room, trying to calm herself down. It didn’t really matter what exactly was going on. Kudo-kun would handle it. Heck, it was probably Kaitou KID trying to bother Kudo-kun. It wasn’t like anyone had anything against Yoshida-san. Everything would be fine.
Everything was going to be perfectly alright.
(This is what happens when I let my brain do whatever it wants. I have no explanation for this fic. I don't know what happened to it, I only know that it turned out to be very different from what I had intended it to be. Er, I suppose it works just as well if you can laugh at the ridiculousness of it. It was supposed to be funny, originally.)
Word count: 1805
Summary: If shrinking had been hard to wrap her head around, Ai did not have words to express what this whole situation was doing to her mind.
More to the dreams...
Lunchtime on school days was likely the only time that the detective boys ever did things like normal kids. Sit with friends, eat their lunches, talk about Kamen Yaiba, and other non-traumatic, non-murder related things. Ai was almost sure that nothing could ever come up at lunchtime. Almost, because despite the safety that the lunchtime atmosphere provided, she knew that a certain detective had a knack for attracting murdered bodies.
She spent this lunchtime the way she would any other lunchtime. Zoning out - something she enjoyed for the very reason that she hadn’t had the time to do back when she was Miyano Shiho.
Until Yoshida-san shook her shoulder.
“Ai-chan, what do you think?” she asked, eyes wide and expectant.
“Sorry, what were we talking about?” Ai replied.
“About the dream, Haibara-san. Ayumi-chan has been having this recurring, vivid dream about wolves.” Tsubarya-kun explained.
“I keep dreaming about wolves being all around me, and they’re all calling me, and telling me to come with them. They say I have been chosen.” Yoshida-san elaborated.
“Like I said, it’s probably because you watch stuff like that on TV.” Kudo-kun supplied.
“But Conan-kun, I haven’t watched anything like that no TV, and the dream is always exactly the same! And it always feels so real that I think I’m still with all those wolves when I wake up every morning!” Yoshida-san argued.
“I’m afraid I agree with Edogawa-kun. Dreams are just what you subconscious has processed during the day and is showing you again in the night.” Ai said.
“But what if it’s a vision!” Yoshida-san exclaimed.
Ai just shook her head and changed the topic. She made an excuse by saying they’d all think it over when they got home.
The next day, when Ai stepped into classroom, she found Yoshida-san crying in a corner and the students who had arrived before Ai crowing around Yoshida-san’s desk. Kobayashi-sensei had not arrived yet, and Ai only hoped that with this mess first thing in the morning, the woman would at least have a good day after.
She went to Yoshida-san first.
“What's wrong?” She inquired gently.
All she got were incoherent sobs from Yoshida-san. She thought she caught the words ‘dream’, ‘real’, and ‘desk’. she decided to go see what the fuss was about. She pushed her way through the students who were clumped around the desk.
At first, Ai wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The desk was ruined, the surface covered in scratches.
She sucked in a breath. Not just any scratches, but angry claw marks that had ripped through the wood of the table. What was left was barely standing, three out of four legs supporting it, of which only one was mostly intact. The top of it was a mess of gouged out wood. There were splinters everywhere. To top it all off, there was dark grey fur around and on top of the desk. It looked like the table had been attacked by a rabid dog, except the dog had knives instead of claws.
Even more surprising was the the chair had been left untouched.
Ai backed away from the table and them raced back to Yoshida-san. She wrapped her arms around the sobbing girl. Something that disturbing would scare anyone, and Yoshida-san was pretty sensitive anyway.
Ai’s brain was screaming “Black Organization” even though she had no proof. There had been no signs in the room, in the hallways, on the school grounds that any animal this dangerous had come in or gone out. Ai would have noticed if there had been something wrong with anything other then that single desk. Or at least, believed that she was more likely to notice than most people.
The only explanation was that it was a person, but then, why only Yoshida-san’s desk, and not anyone else’s?
Ai watched more students filter into the classroom over the sobbing girl’s head. Among them was Kudo-kun, who went straight to the desk to investigate. She lost sight of him when he dove into the growing crowd of children.
Ai hugged Yoshida-san tighter. Thankfully, the sobbing had mellowed into sniffles.
In time, Kobayashi-sensei arrived. Ai felt a twinge of sympathy watching the teacher’s face fall at the sight of the students, and then her skin pale when she got a glimpse of the desk over the heads of her students.
Gathering her wits, the teacher ordered the students to go sit down at their own desks in a tone more stern than Ai had ever heard from the woman before. All the kids reluctantly but obediently went to sit at their desks. Well, all except Ai and Yoshida-san, still in the corner of the classroom. And Kudo-kun, who was still doing his detective thing. Ai knew he wasn’t going to budge till he was sure he had the entire crime scene memorized down to the very last detail.
After much persuasion from Kobayashi-sensei, Kudo-kun reluctantly went to sit at his desk, mostly out of pity for the teacher. Meanwhile the other two members of the detective boys had arrived. With coaxing from them, Kobayashi-sensei, and Ai, Yoshida-san finally agreed to come out of the corner, pull her chair up to Ai’s desk and sit there for the rest of the day.
People were called in to take the destroyed desk away, which elicited a small yelp of protest from Kudo-kun. Kobayashi-sensei tried to continue with normal class, but Ai would be surprised if the students had heard any of what had been taught.
Ai, for her part, tried to pretend everything was normal, even when lunchtime came around and Yoshida-san kept saying the incident had happened was because of those wolf dreams, while Kudo-kun muttered to himself under his breath and paced back and forth in lieu of sitting down and eating his lunch.
“So, did you figure anything out?” Ai asked Kudo-kun on their way home, the other kids having headed in the directions of their own houses rather than hanging out, too bothered by the excitement from the morning.
Kudo-kun opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. Ai’s heartbeat doubled. She realized she didn’t really want to know what the whole thing had been about. Her experience with danger had taught her to stay far, far away from anything that was mildly threatening, and it bothered her greatly when Kudo-kun dove straight into murder cases as if they were no more than playground squabbles.
She waited in anxious silence for an answer from Kudo-kun.
“I don't understand… those claw marks seemed legit.” he finally said.
It took Ai a full ten seconds to comprehend the statement.
“So you’re saying that an actual dog or wolf or whatever came in and did that to Yoshida-san’s desk.” she stated rather than asked.
“Well, not exactly… but sort of.” Kudo-kun affirmed.
“Sort of.” Ai repeated.
“Yes, well, it can’t actually have been an animal, because it would have left some other clues, namely signs of it having entered and left. Except that… if those claw marks are fake, it’s the most realistic imitation I’ve ever seen. And believe me, I’ve seen plenty of attempts at making fake animal claw marks.” Kudo-kun explained, trying to clarify his earlier statement.
Ai did not reply. She did not say anything the rest of the way home, and ignored anything else Kudo-kun said. She didn’t want to think about what had happened to that desk, and she didn’t want to know about fake claw marks.
What Kudo-kun had implied was too much for her to comprehend. There was one simple answer to this whole situation: that there was magic involved, and Yoshida-san’s dream-visions had held some truth.
Which was sounded so ridiculous coming from Kudo-kun, a person whose head was grounded firmly in the realm of reality and logic, that Ai was inclined to believe it.
And believing in the supernatural was something she decidedly did not want to do. She had enough problems on her hands already.
When she got home, she put away her school things and went to her lab, where she tried to make progress with the APTX antidote. She spent five minutes making edits to her already-edited notes on the new prototype, and then left the lab to do her homework. On the way to her room she poked her head into the professor’s office, and announced that she was home.
After two worksheets that got completed lightning fast, she rummaged in her bag to look for more, despite knowing there weren’t any. She then headed down to the kitchen, looked for Professor Agasa’s new stash of cookies, found them hidden in a predictable place, and proceeded to hide them in an unpredictable place.
Ai wandered back to her room, paced for a couple couple of minutes, then headed to the kitchen again. She pulled the cookies out of their hiding place, and ate them. All of them. Then she hurled the cookie jar into the dustbin in a fit of irrational anger, where it broke upon impact.
It took her several deep breaths before she realized what she had just done. It took several more for her to realize that she was upset.
And only after downing a glass of water did she finally understand what was wrong.
It was Yoshida-san. Yoshida-san and her desk. Yoshida-san and her desk and everything it meant for Ai.
Yoshida-san was her friend. Admitted, a friend who didn’t actually know anything about her, but a friend nonetheless. Ai did not want anything happening to her. And if Kudo-kun was right… if magic was involved… Ai wouldn't be able to predict or control what happened to Yoshida-san. She had no way to know how to help her friend.
If magic was real…
Ai slapped her forehead. What was she thinking? As if magic could be real. As if she was even sure that whole desk incident had been magic. For all Ai knew, it was a tasteless prank by someone who had something against either Yoshida-san something against someone related to Yoshida-san.
But then, who would have something against a kid?
Ai put the empty glass into the kitchen sink, and headed back to her room, trying to calm herself down. It didn’t really matter what exactly was going on. Kudo-kun would handle it. Heck, it was probably Kaitou KID trying to bother Kudo-kun. It wasn’t like anyone had anything against Yoshida-san. Everything would be fine.
Everything was going to be perfectly alright.