This is an old fic from twenty years ago. Back then, even Strangers Ten Years Later hadn't come out yet. Looking back now, the writing feels a little childish and the characters are somewhat out of character. But I suddenly realized that I'd been shipping Conan and Ran for ages, and that I shipped them as a pure pairing: Ran gets together with him without knowing Conan is Shinichi. If you can't accept that setup, be warned!
So, if you also like the angsty shipping point of Shinichi Kudo having to be with the person he loves under a different identity, along with "being jealous of myself," "the younger guy isn't calling me big sis," and "getting the little brother treatment from your childhood friend," come on in!
As for the logic behind Conan not revealing his identity, haha, there isn't any. The original doesn't explain why Conan doesn't tell her either, and I never thought it made sense. But ever since I started shipping Conan and Ran, I've understood why Gosho Aoyama insists on keeping his identity from Ran: the dynamics and chemistry between the characters are everything! For me, the appeal of a pure Conan-and-Ran pairing is that although Conan is Shinichi, when he's wearing this secret identity, his persona in front of Ran is different from Shinichi's. His interactions with Ran as Conan have that younger-boy-and-older-girl dynamic, unlike how Shinichi and Ran interact! So when the Conan secret identity is firmly in place, the "Conan and Ran" pairing is essentially a different pairing altogether!
The characters are 28 and 18 years old.
Theme: A love triangle between two people
