Open ✦ Introducere

[shaini]

Characters: Klaus, The Fool, and You!
Date: The middle of October
Location: Aifaran and Die Rose Tulpe
Situation: Settling In
Warnings/Rating: None, updated if needed


1. Aifaran (open)
Yuuko had spent some time meandering around the city, taking in the sights and familiarizing herself with the streets. The weather seems better than her initial introduction of drenching rain, although she definitely needs new clothes to replace her borrowed, but dry, outfit.

After locating this city's version of a pawnbroker, she exchanges some of the jewelry she arrived wearing for hard currency, which she then converts into some proper clothing, a meal, and a few bottles to add to the (in her mind at least) lacking collection awaiting her at her new employment. She's in quite a good mood, in no small part due to sampling some of her purchases to make sure the drink in question matches what she expects.

She wanders back toward the cafe, humming under her breath, and stopping at a few street vendors here and there on her way.

2. Die Rose Tulpe (open)
When she arrives back at the shop, she does a liquor count and rearranges a few bottles for easier use, before settling in behind the counter and setting out some of her selection. She'd found a very pleasant rice wine which compares to high quality sake, a rich red wine similar to malbec, and her favourite find, a gingery liquor which reminds her of Becherovka.

She sets these out with a flourish, and surveys the counter. Since she's still absolutely delighted with her new "pet", she calls the Caladrius and sets it to watching the counter, appropriating a midsize potted plant for it to perch in.

Nearly the last thing she does is to set a mid-size stone near the door, facing outward, to which she has affixed a pair of googly eyes, bought from one of the street vendors. It looks for all intents and purposes like an over sized "pet rock"

Finally, she settles at a nearby table to relax, and lights her kiseru pipe, although opening the window courteously for those who might not want to suck in the smoke. She stretches out slowly and comfortably in the plush chair, and lazily props up her feet on a nearby chair.

Comments

[shaini]

"Who am I? Currently, I am but a simple bartender, working to earn my keep serving drinks in a lovely little cafe." She gestures at the cafe, and herself, who does not appear to be in any way, shape, or form 'working' at the moment.

She smiles at him again, with that same cat-like, sly curve to her lips "Or were you asking for my name? One must be very specific with their words. What if I required payment for answering your questions?" She taps the pipe lightly on the small bowl she has for catching ash.

[spoilsfun]

"Don't you need customers to earn your keep?"

He gives her a skeptical look. "Do you normally charge people before you tell them your name? That seems like a terrible way to do business."

[shaini]

She laughs at his retort, getting a cheerful gleam to her smile. "I am here if the customers are, and I shall serve them the finest drinks they have ever had the delight of setting lips to."

"I don't normally charge people for telling them my name, no. I might charge for other questions, however. I'm quite good at finding the answers to certain questions. I think I may answer one for you which can be freely given."

She leans forward, fixing him with a far more serious gaze than she had before, the smoke wreathing her as she gazes at him. "There is an unseen world, all around you, which can not be answered by the rules you are using. There are deeper currents than you realize."

She settles back in her chair, and smiles again, a little more lazily.
"Would you care to have a pastry? My pet likes you, and I found an excellent pâtissier a few streets over."

[spoilsfun]

"I like finding answers to questions for myself," he points out. "When someone offers to give you an answer, you can't always trust it."

He stares at her with deep skepticism. Conan had opinions on statements like that, mostly formed because most of the people who'd told him things like that ended up being criminals trying to pin their crimes on local legends and ghost stories. "I only believe in what can be proven with logic and observation. If I ever see this unseen world, maybe I'll believe in it then."

"Sorry, I'll pass. I already ate." With his life, Conan was very justifiably paranoid about accepting food from persons offering strange advice, especially ones that still hadn't given him a name.

[shaini]

She doesn't look in the slightest bit offended. "What makes you think you haven't already seen this unseen world? You just see what you want to see when you look at it, such as poor Jaigamo, just quietly doing its job over there."

She pushes out the chair across from her with one long leg. "Come, sit. Maybe you will learn something new. One of my other skills is the reading of a person's fate. If you wish to actually see the things I speak of, have some courage and take a step forward."

There's a hint of amused challenge to her voice, but overall she seems to be having a very enjoyable time verbally fencing with him.

[spoilsfun]

No one had ever accused Conan of being poor at observation. It was usually the opposite. And he found it every bit as irritating.

He knew that the wise choice right now would be to turn her down flat and leave. It wasn't like fortunetelling was real. At best it was just a hoax used to fleece money out of the gullible.

But as always, he couldn't resist the urge to prove someone wrong. There was no such thing as fate, and even if there was, there was no way someone could read it.

Grumpily, he climbs up onto the chair and crosses his arms as he stares at her. "Fine, I'm in the chair. Now what?"

[shaini]

As he climbs onto the chair, she watches him with the same small smile she greeted him with. Once he's settled, she says "And now?" She reaches across the table and takes one of his hands in a quick deft movement.

She curls her fingers lightly around his hand, which may feel somewhat like being trapped in the maw of a machine, rather than anything pleasant, given his current frame of mind.

She gazes at him, but her eyes are unfocused, studying him, but also drifting, searching as if she is watching something entirely different from what he is seeing. Her hair shifts, swirls with the smoke as her head tilts, following her line of sight.

"Shinichi Kudo, 18 years old. You haven't lived with your parents in over 4 years, although they are still alive. You worry very much about your best friend, because she mourns you even now. You lie, almost everything about you is a lie, but you do it to protect the ones you care about. You care very much for protecting, for the truth, so the lies weigh on you even more than they might. You have a strong sense of justice, and if you had any religion, it would be finding the truth by the means of your own mind. This is helpful because you attract trouble and mysteries wherever you go. Your role model is a detective, the one called Holmes, and you strive to emulate his brilliance."

She releases his hand, sitting back and exhaling softly, in a long slow breath, before puffing on her pipe again, introspectively, and she adds, almost casually. "And you are rather hopelessly tone deaf."

[spoilsfun]

From the very first mention of his true name, the boy blanches with horror. His fingers tighten as she continues, and every new sentence drives him closer to full blown panic. He had never told all of this to anyone in this world. Even when he'd been forced to reveal parts of the truth, these were things that he had never shared. He had never even told Ran all of this.

As she finishes and sits back, he takes a deep unsteady breath and tries to reclaim the rigid self control he so prized. One of the reasons he so greatly admired Holmes was the way the fictional detective was able to remain calm, no matter the situation.

But even so, his voice wavers as he asks the question. "How? Where did you find this out?

There was no point in denying. His greatest protection had always been the fact that no one was willing to seriously consider that a teenager had become a child once again. That defense would not work this time.

[shaini]

She looks at him very calmly, giving him a bit to collect himself, as she smokes in a contemplative way, sipping from her cup from time to time. Finally, she answers him.

"Hitsuzen. Fate. The ability to read it. It was inevitable you would come here, and we would have this conversation. Do not worry; I do not speak of what I see with anyone. That is part of the... exchange."

She looks at him a more seriously. "So, this is a lesson, I think. Be more mindful of that hidden world I spoke of. You have been rubbing too close to it, and it will notice you, sooner or later."

Then she claps her hands and smiles "Now! The matter of payment! You have nothing I can think of which I want right now. So you will just have to owe me.." She leans forward and smiles rather wickedly, walking her fingers across the table in time with her words.. "A. Really. Big. Favour."

[spoilsfun]

Forgive him if that didn't give him much comfort. Particularly when it was an exchange he didn't understand and knowledge that multiple lives depended on remaining a secret. But remembering what she had said earlier, he was cautious on how he phrased his next question.

"And does this exchange ever have exceptions?"

Despite his determination to keep his emotions under control, he can't help but let out a frustrated question. "But how? I'm a detective! How can seeking out the truth make me rub close to this other world?"

And at the last he merely scowls at her. He hated owing favors. He hated owing them to people he didn't know well most of all. And he had a feeling this was going to be even worse than the favor the KID insisted that he owed him.

[shaini]

Smiling a little in approval of his phrasing, she says "Each exchange is unique. Their exceptions or lack of them are likewise unique. However, you should have no fear. I will not tell anybody else of another's fortune, fate. That is fact. It would lead to.. mishap."

In response to his second question, she smiles, and shakes her head slightly. It would cost too much for her to keep answering those kinds of questions. "There are many unusual things in the world. Bizarre occurrences which go unnoticed, everyday events which remain unexplained because people close their eyes. Open your eyes, the answers are already yours."

She rises, gets two of the pastries she'd previously offered, and a glass of something carbonated but non-alcoholic, and sets out the glass in front of him, and the food, nibbling from her own plate. "Eat. It's just a sweet. There is nothing wrong with it. Food will help ground you."

[spoilsfun]

That was cold comfort, but it was better than nothing. Simply having the knowledge out there carried by one more person was worrying. Haibara's warnings had sunk in too well. To know that Shinichi Kudo still lived was dangerous knowledge. Anyone who knew could be a target of the Organization. Even being in another world had not rid that warning from his mind. But here, there was nothing he could do but hope that none of their agents ever reached here.

He'd spent his entire life trying to open his eyes, teaching himself how to see all the little details that most people would never think to look for. To see what was truly there, instead of what he expected to see. It had made him a skilled detective, with the ability to solve cases that even the police had given up on.

To know that there was something else there that he had been missing all along was difficult to accept. If there was something else there, if there was information he was missing, was it possible that he had been wrong on cases before?

Distracted by his thoughts, he takes the pastry and drink without thinking.

[shaini]

For her part, Yuuko remains quiet, letting him have the privacy of his own thoughts. He'd had quite a shock, and would need a little time to sort his perspective.

She has set aside the pipe, and quietly sips from her glass. After finishing the pastry, she regards him thoughtfully. Her demeanor is a little more gentle than earlier, when they'd been exchanging ripostes.

"This is where I live, for now, Conan. You are welcome to visit whenever you like. To talk, or to have pastries."

[spoilsfun]

He is silent for a long moment.

"You know my real name now, so you can use that if you want. When there is no one to hear.

The request cost him something to make. But... it had been so long since there had been someone to call him by his true name that he nearly began to worry that he would forget it, and everything that came with it.

[shaini]

There is a pause to her movements as she takes a moment to regard him again. She sets the pipe down into the bowl, then nods to herself.

"Very well, Shinichi. I will keep that name for you to hear when no one else can."

His glass of soda is topped off, along with her own, and she hums to herself quietly for a moment.

[spoilsfun]

"Thank you."

He looks back down at his glass and traces his finger around the edge without making any motion towards drinking it.

[shaini]

She quietly re-lights her pipe, although leaning closer to the window in deference to his developing lungs and need to breathe. As she does so, she remarks

"You seems rather pensive. Your past is haunting you?" She regards him again, a touch more thoughtfully, thinking over what she has learned of him.

"Or are you just bored, without any great adventures to keep your brain occupied?"

[spoilsfun]

"Must it be only one?" he says sourly. "Perhaps it could be both of them, or neither."

The true answer, of course, was that it was a little of both, with other things besides.

[shaini]

"It can be both, neither, or something completely else, of course. You are under no obligation to tell me, but I have been truthful with you."

She says that matter-of-factly, not in a passive aggressive way, because she is being quite honest. Real practitioners of magic, real fortune tellers, do not lie. The risks are too great. They may omit truths, but they do not lie.

[spoilsfun]

Shinichi grimaces and glances away. His natural inclination was to keep his true thoughts close. He'd very rarely told anyone what his true thoughts were, even before he had become trapped like this. As Conan now, he couldn't even share his true opinions unless concealed within a disguise of childishness.

"It is some of both. I am bored. The sentinels here don't know me, and would not take the help of a kid even when offered. Which leaves me far for time to think."

And to regret. What he does not say out loud is the sure knowledge he has that as long as he lives in Aifaran, he has no hope of bringing an end to the organization that had destroyed his life, or finding a cure for his situation.

And Ran... Ran was still waiting for him at home. Still with no idea what had happened to him or why he could never see her in person. And now he could not even stay by her as Conan while she cried over Shinichi.

[shaini]

Her glass is lifted, studied, her expression rather neutral, then she lowers the glass. She regards him with a very level look, her face smoothed out into an expressionless mask.

"Shinichi, I can not teach you to see the unseen world. That is not your talent. But I can teach you to see the signs thr hidden world makes when it intrudes upon the.. "seen" world. It would not be free. I don't have that choice, to teach it freely. But it would be of help to you. What do you say?"

She inhales on her pipe again, slowly, giving him time to think, and surrounding herself in clouds of scented smoke.

[spoilsfun]

"That I would gladly take you up on." He didn't need to see this unseen world. But to know when this unseen world had influenced crime scenes...

"But what is the price?"

[shaini]

She considers him, thoughtfully, a certain amount of pure evaluation to her gaze. There has to be; she has to weigh carefully the cause and effect, the balance of the exchange. After a long few moments, she smiles, slowly, surrounding herself in a cloud of sweet scented smoke.

"I think an even trade, Shinichi. You are quite the investigator, aren't you? You have knowledge, and I am a newcomer here. I will teach you ways to navigate the hidden world I speak of, and you will teach me about the secrets here. Does this seem fair to you?"

She raises her brows, and perhaps surprisingly, seems to actually mean it when she asks, rather than the slightly teasing demeanor she had at first. She is maybe viewing him a little differently than she did when he arrived on the cafe's doorstep, with as hefty an amount of smugness to match her own.

[spoilsfun]

"Information for information, then." That was a deal he was willing to make. Not for all of the secrets he carried, but for the secrets that would be useful for a newcomer. That was something he was willing to share.

[shaini]

She nods, with an approving smile.

"I think the fist step would be to view the library here. Do you happen to know where it is?"

She is actually rather curious what kinds of books and information this strange place might have, so this arrangement is suitable to her for more than one reason.