It's astounding, Reiko decides as she listens to the Teitan children sing during her second weekly session with them, that someone can manage to be so abysmally out of tune that they never once hit a note correctly.
Well actually, no.
It's more suspicious than astounding.
"Are you sure you're not doing it on purpose?" Reiko asks Conan pointedly after the piece draws to a close, narrowing her eyes at him. Sure, she'd bought the "he's just tone deaf" excuse the first time, but that was before he demonstrated what was essentially perfect pitch during the bombing at the concert hall several days back—and such sharp ears just don't seem congruous with such terribly off-key singing.
"No, Reiko-sensei, really!" The freckled boy immediately pipes up in defense of his friend. "Conan-kun just can't sing." His statement is met with murmurs of overwhelming affirmation from the other children and an irritated frown from Conan, but even so, Reiko furrows her brow in disbelief.
"This boy perfectly mimicked the pitch frequencies of phone dial tones right down to the exact hertz values. I find it hard to believe someone like that can't manage such a simple melody as this." Not to mention, Conan has already proven himself to be incredibly cunning, and he demonstrated quite the sneaky streak during that recent case investigation. Reiko wouldn't put it past him to be fooling everyone into thinking he couldn't sing as a way of getting himself excused from the performance—or hell, even just as some sort of grand practical joke.
"But it's true!" The very same girl who defended him last time cries out, pouting. "Conan-kun can't sing for his life! Once, he actually tried to sing at a Two-Mix concert and it was terrible!"
"H-hey, Ayumi, hold on!" Conan hisses frantically, his cheeks tinting pink and his eyes suddenly going wide at the girl's words. The reaction gives Reiko some pause; he could just be acting, admittedly, but as far as she can tell, that at least seems like genuine embarrassment.
"Ah, I remember that!" the heavyset boy loudly yells. "The whole crowd started booing and everything!"
"Yes it was quite a spectacle," the light-haired girl at Conan's side adds, shooting a teasing glance at her bespectacled friend.
"…Wait, Haibara, you weren't even there!" Conan proclaims, whirling on her. "How would you know?!"
"You'd be amazed the things you can find on the internet, Edogawa-kun."
Conan squawks like a dying animal and goes bright red. The girl, Haibara, only smirks, and Reiko decides right then that she's starting to like her, if only because she can so easily fluster such an unshakable boy.
"Here," Haibara continues, pulling out her phone and quickly typing something into it, "let me show you."
The girl proffers the device up to Reiko, who takes the phone in hand and glances curiously at the screen. It's set to a page on a video website titled "Kids Hijack Two-Mix Concert", and Reiko, her interest now piqued, quickly hits play.
At five seconds in, an all too familiarly awful singing voice filters through the phone speakers, and as all the other kids promptly burst into laughter, Reiko struggles to maintain her own composure. At thirty seconds in, the entire crowd in the video starts kicking up a loud, angry fuss, and Reiko is forced to stop playback entirely lest she end up laughing her head off right then and there. Committing the video's title to memory, she makes a mental note to herself to look it up again later, when she's alone and can feel free to enjoy herself with total abandon.
Well, if Conan would allow himself to be publicly embarrassed at a concert popular enough to get uploaded to the internet, it's probably safe to assume that he really is just that bad a singer.
"Alright, children. You've proven your point."
Reiko hands the phone back to the girl, who tosses her a slight, smug nod in return. Out of the corner of her eye, Reiko notes Conan watching them sulkily, muttering something under this breath that sounds along the lines of "How the hell did she even find that?"
"Conan-kun," Reiko addresses him, bending down to the boy's level, unable to help the amused smile that comes to her lips. "Since I doubt there's anything I can do for you, I think you would be better off just lip-synching for the competition." As if somehow set off, the children all launch straight into another bout of mass laughter—save Conan, of course, who levels Reiko with a glare that tells her he wants nothing more than to kick her in the shins right now.
"Sensei," Haibara speaks up again, "before we continue, would you perhaps care to give us a little demonstration of your singing this time?" The other kids immediately chime out in support of the suggestion, and Reiko sighs—same request as last time, huh? Honestly, even when she's pretty sure half these kids already heard her sing during the concert?
But, well, she supposes they may have grown on her a little.
"…Fine. In exchange for the entertainment," Reiko decides finally, standing back up to full height, "I suppose one song can be arranged." After all, it's never a bad time for a few bars of Amazing Grace.
And hopefully, Reiko thinks as she glances at the still miffed-looking Conan, that song will be enough to get him to forgive her for poking fun.