justonetruth | Fresh from that wonderful RP, Adstringendum

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Fresh from that wonderful RP, Adstringendum

This particular flavour of Hakuba Saguru looks a bit worse for wear as he stumbles through a door in the hall. A door in the hall which leads only to another hallway. He's surprised, yes, but not extremely so, and after he checks and confirms he can't get back out the way he came in, he sags to the ground against the wall.

He's dirty, like he's been living somewhere without running water, his once pristine tweed suit is ripped and frayed, and there's snow melting on his shoulders. He's also very thin, almost unhealthy so, and exhaustion is written on every line of him, in the circles under his eyes, in the sunken hollows of his cheeks, in the way he breathes, in the slump of his shoulders.

Whatever life he's been living, it hasn't been kind to him.

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Aw, aren't you so cute.

"I would like to speak with him at some point then."

Looking at the stairs, down and up. "How many floors does this building have?"

"That won't be a problem," Conan said cheerfully, bouncing down the stairs shounen-tantei style. "There must be at least 20 people here, and of them only 3 we know of left, and they were brought back again -- so I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunity."

He paused halfway down the stairs, looking back at Hakuba. "I've been as high as the fourth floor, but Ran-niisan says its endless."

Hakuba followed at a more sedate pace, "These twenty-odd people, are they all from various versions of the same world?"

Brilliant. An endless building. "That's highly improbable. It would take too much energy to construct."

Conan paused to stare back at the other detective. "You sound like you know a lot about this place already, Hakuba-niisan."

"That's what I think," he continued, turning away to hop down the remaining stairs and wait for Hakuba on the landing. "But Ran-niisan says he hasn't found the end to the corridors or the stairs." He kept his opinion on Ran's navigational skills firmly to himself.

"It was just an idea, Edogawa-kun. As I said, I've had experience in a similar situation."

"They might loop rather than just continue." That would make more sense, or at least, be less unsettling. Endless hallways lined with rooms? Who knows what could be there.

Conan waited for Hakuba to join him before leading the way down the main hallway. "That might explain the hallways -- but not the stairs," he said with a slight frown. He was definitely making a trip to discover the roof at some point. "Do you want the dining hall or the kitchen?"

"Are the floors numbered?" If they weren't, the stairs could be looping as well.

"There's a dining hall?"

"The rooms are -- or some of the rooms are -- but you can't see that from the stairs," Conan said, pausing as he considered the same possibility that Hakuba was. But that defied all rules of architecture surely?

"It's a really big room with a long table and all sorts of food!" Conan thought of Genta, injecting some of the other boy's excitement into his voice. "They have everything, even dessert!"

"This actual physical world might not be set up in a linear fashion." More to himself than to the smaller detective, puzzling over the annoyance of things which stretch his understanding of 'logical'.

He knows that Edogawa isn't this child-like. Sometimes. Occasionally. At least, not at the Detective Koshien. "Brilliant."

What kind of tools would you need to construct something along those lines? It -- almost didn't bear contemplating.

Almost.

Conan found the dining hall door easily, going on tip-toe to open it and drawing it back for Hakuba. "See? There's enough food here for a hundred people or more!"

"That seems a bit excessive."

"Excessive or not, there is." Conan let Hakuba digest the dining hall with all it's accoutrements in silence a few moments. He'd been there before with Ran and with Conan -- still a weird thought -- but the sheer scale of it was still surprising. "Ne, Hakuba-niisan? How many people do you think it would take to make all this food?"

"Eight or ten at least."

And although he heads over to the food, he doesn't take any.

Conan notices the hesitation. "It's all right. Ran-niisan's been eating it all the time he's been here, and I ate it yesterday, and I feel fine too."

"Thank you."

And it's not the speed at which he puts the food on his plate, or the amount that shows how famished he is as much as the fact that he really isn't paying much attention to what he's gathering.

That is -- alarming, and Conan takes an onigiri for himself as he goes to find them a table, so that Hakuba doesn't just have to take his word for it. "How long have you been away?" he asks as Hakuba joins him.

"It was October 20th when I arrived in Adstringendum. Today is January 26th, correct?"

He slips into a chair, eating calmly, but steadily.

Conan checks his notebook rather than his phone to answer that question. "Yes. Yes, it should be. That's -- almost as long as Hattori-neechan's been here." He paused. "Ne, Hakuba-niisan, you've never been here before, right?"

"I don't believe so, and I have been keeping a fairly accurate journal. I would notice if I were missing a day."

Hakuba's shins were safe -- for now. "That's good." Conan added Hakuba's dates to his growing list.

"There's a female version of Hattori-kun?"

That... would have been very strange.

The 'kun' grated on Conan's nerves. "Hattori-san," he said. "Don't get too familiar."

Well, that was an interesting reaction. How much of an age difference was there between Edogawa and Hattori?

"My apologies."

He supposed he would have used 'Hattori-san' instead of 'western detective-kun' if the other had been female. The idea was still very strange, and he pushed it to the back of his mind, to mull over later.

"Is Hattori-san female in your world?"

Conan's answer came in the tones of someone tired of explaining this. "Hattori-neechan is Hattori-neechan."

"I see."

There were more questions he would like to ask the boy, but for the moment, he concentrated on finishing off the plate of food.

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are-too-holmes.livejournal.com - 2010-02-03 01:01 (UTC) - Expand

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