Perilous Danger
Chapter 3:Perilous Forest
Spinning around, Conan froze.
That one moment, however, was all that the man (for Conan could only assume that it was a man) needed. Before he knew what was happening, a large cloth bag had been shoved over his small body, and then he was thrown upside down as the man swiftly closed and lifted the bag.
With all his weight on the back of his neck, Conan was scarcely able to breathe. Shifting, he had only just managed to position himself so that his weight was on his back when the bag was jiggled fiercely.
"Don't get too comfortable in there," said a voice that confirmed that his captor was, indeed, a man. That voice, however, chilled Conan to the bones, and it took only a second for him to realize why it was so. "I know about that watch of yours; and those shoes, too. Of course, there's the bowtie too, but that wouldn't be of much help to you in this situation, would it?" There was a blood-chilling chuckle as the man jiggled the bag once again, just as Conan thought that he had gotten himself into a better position. "The shoes will be of no effect against this cloth," the man continued, "especially since you don't have any way of swinging your foot very hard. As for the watch…we've made sure that this bag is thick enough to withstand that."
Conan could not process the man's words, much less think: his head was pounding from the blood that was rushing in and the lack of oxygen in his body as the sharp curve of his neck narrowed his trachea. Time meant nothing—he was struggling with every second, trying to breathe and endure the pain in his head. He would attempt to shift position subtly, but every time was stopped by the man, who would jiggle, toss or flip the bag, somehow always managing to put Conan in a position even less comfortable than the last.
Finally, he ceased struggling, gritted his teeth and endured it. No sooner had he started this, however, then he felt himself being swung through the air, and then landing with a painful thump on something hard.
Gasping to catch his breath, it was a moment before his mind registered the slamming sound that had sounded directly above him. He was in a car trunk.
As his pulse slowed and his mind calmed, he regained his ability to think. With that, the sense of dread returned.
The man had been wearing a mask with a wide quarter-moon-shaped smile and two eyes of similar shape, only smaller and upside down, black hair cut evenly slightly above the shoulders, a top hat, a dark blue tuxedo and a matching cape—the Knight Baron.
The Knight Baron was a character invented by Conan's (or rather Shinichi's) father, Kudo Yusaku, a world-famous mystery author. Somehow, the Knight Baron seemed to have a tendency to pop up in all sorts of places—his mother, Kudo Yukiko, had been given the name of Knight Baroness, and there had been a number of cases involving a person dressed as the Knight Baron. However, that was not what was bothering Conan.
About ten months ago, Kudo Yusaku had come to Japan from the United States and dressed as the Knight Baron, pretending to be a member of the Black Organization. He had been assisted by Yukiko and Professor Agasa. His aim, in the end, had been for Shinichi to understand the danger of his own position. So, when Conan realized that the Knight Baron was attacking him again, and in connection with the Black Organization, that occurrence had sprung into his mind. In addition, the man's voice was eerily similar to that of Conan's father.
For a moment, Conan wondered if that was what was happening again. His mother could have disguised herself to look similar to Chris Vinyard, disguised Yusaku as Gin and the professor as Vodka and had someone else (most likely Hattori Heiji, the Detective of the West, who knew Conan's secret as well) be the remaining person in the photos. Then she could have gone to Detective Mouri, and left the note. Yusaku would have been the one to drop the trunk, and Yukiko the one to drive the car.
However, Conan discarded that idea almost as soon as it entered his mind. His parents had already done that once, and at the time the Organization had known nothing of his status or current identity. Now, though Chris Vinyard appeared to be the only one aware of that, she was also probably one of the most dangerous members of the Organization. No matter how fun-loving Yusaku and Yukiko were, they would never put Conan in such a position now. They would not have tried to kill him either, and Conan had no doubt that the person who dropped the trunk from the roof and drove the car in the parking lot had wanted to kill him. He had had too many close calls for it to be a simple trick.
He felt the vibration of the car's engine as it started up and the car began to move swiftly.
In the darkness that enveloped him, Conan groped around the inside of the bag, attempting to find a way out. He slowly followed the bag in one direction, sliding his hands one over the other on the material of the bag. He could feel that as he did so, he was moving around the trunk. That thought was confirmed shortly after it entered his mind, when his head slammed into something hard.
In surprise and pain, Conan's hands left the material of the bag and flew to his head. He was fortunate that he had not been moving that quickly, but unfortunately, it appeared that the car had swerved at that exact moment, causing the impact to be stronger than it would have been otherwise. How was it that those people could cause him so much pain without seeing him? First there was the man's jiggling of the bag, and now the movements of the car. When he was in the bag, it was simple. The man would have been able to feel him moving inside the bag, no matter how careful he had been. But how did they know what he was doing in the trunk?
Conan shook his head in annoyance. It was just a coincidence—nothing more. He was just over-paranoid.
Returning to the task of getting out of the bag, the seventeen-year-old moved his seven-year-old body even more carefully than before. He felt carefully first in one direction, then another. The bag was probably made of leather, he decided as he slowly moved his hands over the thick, hard, smooth material. There was nothing but more bag to his left; same to his right; again, same to the front; turning, he found the same to his back; the same diagonally left and right to the front; again diagonally right and left to the back; nothing above him either.
Frustrated, Conan slammed a fist into the floor. However, just as his fist touched the ground below him, he froze and looked down. His fist had touched the same material, but there had been creases in it. Much more creases than any of the other places he had felt. Excited, he shifted to the side. Just as he did so, the car swerved again, and the back of his head hit the side of the trunk.
Clutching his head, he cursed. How did they do that? Conan could not force himself to think that it was nothing more than a consequence this time. That was only reinforced when, as he struggled back up from the uncomfortable position he had been lying in, the car swerved again, throwing him so that he hit the roof of his dark prison.
Lying on his side with one leg under him and the other stretched out in front of him as his hands clutched his head, Conan refrained from moving this time. He desperately wanted to get out of that bag, and then the trunk, and he would not achieve that if he kept moving and getting himself thrown around.
He slowly moved his hands along the material of the bag, eventually finding the creased area again, diagonally above him to the right. He moved his hands around that area, and finally found the place where it caved outwards—the bag's opening. Holding onto that as tightly as he could, Conan cautiously sat up.
Almost instantly, he was thrown to the side once more. However, this time he had held securely onto the bag's opening, and somehow managed to be sitting up when he stopped. He pulled the material apart slowly, unsure of what he would find. He was sure that it was sealed in some way, although he was unsure of how.
As the bag slowly opened, he heard a slight sound. Stopping his hands' movement, he listened. All was silent, apart from the rumbling of the car's engine. He began to ease the bag open once more, and heard the sound again. It was a cracking sort of sound.
Conan grinned to himself.
The bag was sealed with velcro, which meant that he could open it from the inside.
Moving slowly, so as not to alert his captors to what he was doing, Conan continued to pull the bag open until there was enough room for him to get out. When inching out of the bag, he was still slow and cautious.
Once he was out, he sat on the bag and breathed a sigh of relief. Now that he was out, he realized that he could hear the men talking, though it was impossible to hear what they were saying. Hoping that the fact that they were talking meant that they weren't paying too much attention to him, he cautiously looked around the tight space where he was trapped. As his eyes carefully scanned and squinted in the darkness, a flashing red light in a corner caught his eye.
Conan closed his eyes, listening. When he heard a voice rise in volume, he decided to hope that they were distracted enough not to notice him. Swiftly crawling to that corner, he saw by means of the flashing light that it was a video camera. The flashing light was the signal that it was taping. He looked at it closely, and upon finding the off button, pressed it. The light stopped flashing. Just to be cautious, he also undid the tape that held it securely to the trunk roof. He then felt his way back to the bag and deposited the camera into that.
With that finished, he looked at his cage—though he really could not see anything, for no light filtered in through any cracks. Knowing that this meant that the trunk was closed completely, Conan tried pushing up on the ceiling anyway. It didn't open.
He frowned for a moment in contemplation, and then lay on his back as he activated his right shoe. Holding himself up with his arms and left leg, he positioned his body half way between the ground and ceiling. He carefully pulled his right foot back as far as it would go, and then kicked as hard as he could.
Despite the fact that he had set his shoe to the strongest strength, the impact was much less than what he had expected. Puzzled, Conan reached up and felt the ceiling carefully. When he could feel no more than one, maybe two, layers of cloth before the hard material of the trunk, he frowned in confusion. That could not be enough padding. Remembering how his head had hurt upon its contact with the inside of the trunk, he could only conclude that there was not a great amount of padding.
As he wondered what was happening, he noticed that his head was beginning to cloud again. Turning his focus to the rest of his body, he realized that he was taking quick, short breaths. He tried breathing in deeply, and found that he couldn't. It was a moment before he understood what was happening.
They had closed the trunk completely, and there was no way for air to go in and out of it. He was running out of oxygen.
He forced himself not to panic and take action. Removing his coat and placing it where he could find it, Conan removed his suspenders. Fastening one side to the cloth of the ceiling and another side to the floor, he made sure that the side on the floor was more secure than the side on the ceiling. Then he felt along the material for the button. As he pressed it, he felt his head beginning to swim.
There was a ripping sound, and he felt the ceiling. It was rough, yet smooth at the same time, and he took longer than usual to realize that it was wood. He tried to fasten his suspenders to it before realizing that he couldn't connect them to wood.
Conan shook his head to clear it, and only succeeded in giving himself a headache. Reaching up, he shoved his fingers between boards and began to tug. As his attempts failed, he panicked. He tugged with all his might, and yet the board would not budge. He continued to pull, his panic rapidly escalating.
He felt his blood shooting through his veins at an amazing rate as his heart pounded unnaturally rapidly. He felt adrenaline coursing through his body. He felt the sweat run through his hair and down his neck. Above all, he felt the pounding of his head and the lack of air in his lungs.
Suddenly, accompanied by a loud sound, the board came off, revealing more cloth. Conan fastened his suspenders to the cloth again and pressed the button, ripping it off to reveal more cloth. He set it up again, and continued to rip and refasten it until the cloth on the floor ripped rather than that on the top. He refastened the bottom securely on another part of the trunk's floor, and resumed the task of removing the cloth from above him.
Finally, when he reached up to refasten his suspenders again, he touched cold metal. His head still swimming, he adjusted the dial on his right shoe again, and not bothering to adjust his position to one ideal for kicking, shot his foot up at the patch of metal. There was a dull metallic sound, and he barely registered the dent he had made. He did not register the pain that rushed through his foot at all.
However, he could tell that in kicking, he had used a great amount of the little air that was left. So he began to pound with his fist. But as he did so, he felt his eyes begin to close. Forcing them open, he adjusted the dial on his right shoe again, once more on high, and using as much strength as he could muster, shot another kick at the ceiling. As he did this, he felt the remaining air rush out of his lungs. His will to keep himself awake was failing…
But then his body was jerked forwards. He heard dull sounds, but paid them no heed as he struggled to keep himself conscious. Then there was another dull thumping sound accompanied by a slight light, and a second later, he could breathe again. Taking deep breaths, Conan snatched back control of his mind.
The car had stopped, and the first dull sounds, no doubt, were the doors being opened, while the second was the trunk being unlocked so that it opened a fraction. Sure enough, a moment later, footsteps stopped very near him and breathing became even easier as light seemed to flood the darkness.
Conan barely had time to see that they were on a small side road with the occasional streetlamp on one side, and a dark grove of trees on the other before the man (if it was a man) wearing the cold mask snatched him up by the ankle.
"I thought you said that you'd taken care of him!" Through his surprise at hearing the person speak in English rather than Japanese, Conan noted that it could have been a man with a relatively high voice or a woman with a relatively low one.
Though his view was upside down, Conan saw the man dressed as the Knight Baron walk around the side of the car.
"I did. I padded the inside of the trunk, and closed it so he should have passed out…" This, too, was said in English, but once more, Conan felt his head beginning to swim as blood rushed to his head, lead by gravity.
"Well, it apparently didn't work. Here he is, entirely conscious, there's a huge dent in the trunk, and he ripped right through your padding. Next time, I'm making the preparations." As subtly as he could, Conan reached upwards for his right shoe, thankful that he was being held by the left foot.
"And what would you have done differently, may I ask?" Conan twisted the knob, setting it on high.
"For one thing, I never would have-"
But the captor could not complete his sentence, for Conan swung his right foot at his arm. Hastily, the man in the cold mask recoiled, dropping Conan. Ignoring the pain that rushed through his back at his impact with the ground, the boy sprang to his feet and darted into the grove of trees. Behind him, he heard angry voices, but paid them no heed as he concentrated on putting as much distance between himself and his captors as possible.
As Conan continued to run, he realized that this grove of trees was actually more of a forest. Soon the light of the streetlamps was so far back that they gave him no more light, and he could only rely on the moon and stars through the trees' branches, bare now that it was winter. This, however, was not much at all, and he frequently fell and scratched himself on thorns and other sharp parts of the underbrush. All the boy knew was that he had to get out of there somehow. In the woods, with the dead leaves covering the ground, his pursuers most definitely would be able to hear him.
Stopping, he listened for the people behind him. When he heard the crunching of leaves not too far behind him, his heard sank.
Hastily, he grabbed one of the speakers that he kept on his button, and stuck it to the trunk of the tree beside him before running off once more. He knew that his pursuers had heard him, for the sound of footsteps sped up behind him only moments after he did so.
Conan continued to run, looking desperately for a tree with limbs low enough for his short body to climb. However, he appeared to have entered a grove of pine trees, and he doubted that he could have climbed them even if he had been in his true body. Thinking back, he remembered that the beginning area of the woods had had trees with lower branches. Turning slightly to the left, he decided to attempt making a large loop through the woods. As he ran, he fumbled with his bowtie, adjusting it to his own voice.
"Help!" he called into it. But he heard nothing except his own voice. "Chikushou(1)!" he cursed under his breath. He had intended to wait until his captors were close to the tree, and then lure them away with the voice from the speaker. However, it appeared that he had come too far. He had already turned back, so if he couldn't hear the voice from the speaker, his pursuers most certainly could not either.
He was beginning to think that he could not possibly run any more when he found the trees with lower branches. He had been looking at his feet, trying to keep himself going, and looked up for a breath of fresh air when he saw a branch right in front of him. Ducking at the last minute as he continued to run, it was a moment before the significance struck him. Relieved, Conan stopped and pulled himself onto one of the branches of the tree beside him. As soon as he felt that he was high enough, he pulled back his bowtie.
"Ouch!" Conan shouted into the bowtie. To his relief, he heard his voice from somewhere below him. He was about to sit back and wait when his eyes widened. Below him? He looked down, but it was impossible to see much of the ground, much less a tiny speaker on a tree trunk. Activating his glasses, he thanked the professor for recently adding tracker devices to all of the speakers.
Just as long as I'm not in the tree that has the speaker… he thought to himself, but then had to swallow a stream of curses when the glasses showed a green light in the very center. He zoomed in, but even at the very closest, the green light was only a few centimeters to his right—where the trunk of his tree was.
This time, Conan did allow a few curses to escape under his breath. When he heard the sound of crunching leaves approaching rapidly, dangerously close, he cut himself off abruptly.
He could not see the two in the shadows of the trees apart from the occasional flutter in a beam of moonlight, so he was almost entirely dependant on his ears. The two approached cautiously, he judged by their calculatingly slow footsteps, which stopped directly beneath his tree.
What? How do they know that it's this tree? They don't have flashlights…
But for once, it appeared that it was only coincidence, for the footsteps soon started up again, walking away from the tree. And then they returned, and Conan heard their voices.
"I'm sure that it was around here somewhere…" It was the voice of the man with the cold mask.
"Are you sure? You could be wrong." The Knight Baron.
"I'm very sure. If you think that it was somewhere else, you're free to go and search there." The man in the cold mask spoke in a crisp, annoyed tone.
There was a pause, and then Conan heard the Knight Baron give an audible grumble of "women!" and raised an eyebrow in surprise. So the one with the cold mask was a woman after all.
Looking up, it suddenly struck Conan that if they were to look up, they would see him instantly—there were hardly any branches between him and the cloudless moonlit sky. Keeping his movements at the minimum, Conan searched for a way off the tree that wasn't down. But there was nothing that he could see. Feeling desperate, he looked down. The two had stopped arguing, and it sounded as though they had split up. Conan noticed that if they came between trees, he could see them faintly. However, a branch of the tree beside his obscured his view. Just as he turned to glare at that branch, an idea struck him. He swiftly moved to take off his coat in order to reach his suspenders…when he realized that he had left both his jacket and suspenders in the car trunk.
Conan looked at the branch, and then looked down, where his pursuers showed no sign of going far enough that he could climb down the tree. He looked back at the branch with a steady gaze, his mind made up. He carefully reached out and tested the branch. It did not budge with his strength. Carefully, he let his feet leave the branch where he previously sat and transferred his weight to his arms, supporting him on the branch that had been obscuring his view. His body swung down and hung below the branch that he held. He felt something slide down his nose and fall, but paid it no heed. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he began moving his hands so that he slowly inched along the branch towards the trunk. However, he had not anticipated the thickening of the branch, and soon his hands could no longer hold it firmly. Left with no other choice, Conan began to swing himself—forward, backward, forward, backward—until he had enough momentum to pull himself up. When he was hanging on the branch by his waist, bent over the branch to hold him securely, as well as his hands, he carefully brought one leg up so that he was sitting with one leg on each side of the branch. Heaving a soft sigh of relief that he had accomplished all this in silence, he began to scoot himself along the branch, inch by inch, until he had reached the trunk.
Upon reaching the trunk, he searched for an ideal branch to climb to. Finding none but the one that he had just come from, he looked at the tree that he was now on. The closest branch was about fifty centimeters below him, but was on the other side of the trunk. This time, he didn't bother thinking about the risk involved. He wrapped his arms around the tree trunk and kicked off the side of the branch so that he turned. But he did not turn enough—he only went half the way around to the other side of the trunk. Even so, Conan paid that failure no heed as he reached out with his right foot for the branch, found it, and put his weight on it.
Then his cell phone rang.
Conan hurriedly reached into his pocket and pressed the off button. He could hear his pursuers halt and head towards the tree he was now in. He could not resist pounding his head against the tree trunk.
Why me? I witness one crime, just one, and it causes a lifetimes' worth of trouble. Besides which it's -Conan paused his thoughts to glance at his watch before continuing his mental rant- a quarter to nine. What kind of person calls a second grader at this time? Promptly his cell phone rang again. Ready this time, he pressed the talk button before his pursuers could hear the ringing.
"Yes?" he hissed angrily, making sure that his voice was still soft enough to be mistaken for the breeze.
"Hey, Kudo!" came the enthusiastic voice from the other end of the line. "Why did you hang up on me a moment ago? Never mind; doesn't matter. I was just thinking, and I had this great idea—New Year's coming up, right? Why don't we-" Finally controlling his bubbling anger, Conan cut him off, restraining his urge to scream and forcing himself to settle for another hiss.
"Hattori. I am busy. I've told you to call the office. Call back in the morning if it's so important." He hung up without giving the young man a chance to reply, and then turned off his phone, which he returned to his pocket. His pursuers were now at the bottom of the tree. He could not risk retracing his steps—they would see the movement.
Silently calling Heiji every foul name that he could think of, he stood stock still, pressed against the trunk, paying no attention to what the two pursuers were saying below him. But then one sentence penetrated his thoughts.
"It could be a trick—he could have left his cell phone in the tree and called it by one of his gadgets to get us off track." It was the man's voice.
That's a brilliant idea! Grabbing his cell phone from his pocket, he turned it on once more just as the two at the bottom of the tree began to shake it.
He dropped it, carefully aiming for the woman's head, and was rewarded with an "ow!" a second later. He vaguely saw a shape lean down.
"See? A cell phone. I told you that it was a trap. Now we've lost him altogether!"
"Are you suggesting that it's my fault?" As they continued to argue angrily, the footsteps started again, and they and their voices got quieter as they walked off. Conan breathed a sigh of relief. As he waited for a while, just to make sure that they were gone, he felt a sudden shiver run through his body, and became aware for the first time how cold it was. With the sweat that had accumulated from both his physical activity and panic, it was even colder. Even so, Conan did not dare to climb down, and remained silently shivering in the tree for an endless half hour.
When he finally climbed down, certain that his pursuers were truly gone, it occurred to him for the first time that he had absolutely no idea which way to go. He was cold without his jacket, he could not look for lights from the top of a tall tree without his suspenders, and he could not call anyone without his cell phone, which the man and woman appeared to have taken with them.
Standing only made him feel colder, so Conan began to walk in a random direction. It suddenly occurred to him that it had been a very bad idea to throw away his cell phone—the professor was going to call when he got home, and he had said that he would be getting back around nine. It was now nine twenty, which meant that the professor had probably talked with the Knight Baron and the mask woman.
On the other hand, thought Conan, perking up, that meant that the professor probably knows that I'm in trouble, in which case he just has to follow the tracker in my glasses- Conan froze. Now that he came to think of it… He reached up to feel his face and cursed.
His glasses were gone.
Probably fell off when I was going from branch to branch. Of course, there were the trackers that he kept stuck to his buttons, but those were there so that he could stick them to things. If the professor looked in the extra pair of glasses and saw the trackers and the glasses in separate places, he would follow the glasses rather than the trackers. But all the trackers are together! He wouldn't follow glasses that aren't moving when all the trackers are together in one place and moving!
Optimistic once again, Conan resumed walking. Then he stopped again. Or, now that it's safe, I could go back and try and find the glasses. Wasn't there something in the glasses that would let me contact Haibara, even if the professor isn't back yet?
He turned back, his mind made up to search for his glasses. In addition to allowing the professor and Haibara to contact and find him, it would provide a compass that could help him out of the woods. He walked among the trees, searching for the speaker that was on one tree trunk, level with his shoulders. However, the trees all looked identical in the darkness, and his only hope of finding the speaker was the chance that it would glint in the moonlight, but if his pursuers had seen no such glint, then it was unlikely that he would, either.
He carefully felt around each tree, looking for a glint at the same time. He was very careful so as not to lose his direction, sure that if he kept going in a straight line, he would eventually find it. After circling a little over ten trees, Conan lifted his bowtie.
"Ah…" As he made a sound into the bowtie, he heard an identical sound coming from somewhere to his left, sounding quite close. He continued whispering and mumbling into his bowtie and following the sound as he did so.
Crunch.
The noise caused Conan to stop in his tracks. Walking over the leaves, every step he took made a crunching sound, but this was a different sort of crunch. It was crisper; more solid. Carefully crouching, he groped in the darkness of his own shadow for something other than leaves.
His hand touched something cool—glass, metal or plastic. A sudden dread ran through Conan as he lifted the small piece out of his and the trees' shadows and held it up to the moonlight. It was about five centimeters in length, and one end was narrow while the other widened and ended in a bulb sort of shape. It curved at about four centimeters, nearer the broken narrow end.
Conan instantly knew what it was. The next moment he was back on his knees, picking up as many pieces of similar texture as he could find by sense of touch. A number of the pieces were quite sharp, and scraped his hand as it felt around in the darkness. He knew that he must have a number of cuts on his right hand, which was feeling for the pieces, but ignored it. He was already cold, and kneeling on the ground feeling around on the cold earth was doing nothing to improve that.
When he was sure that he had found all the larger pieces, he did not bother for more of the small ones. Searching his surroundings with his eyes, he sought out an area where the trees appeared to be thinner. Walking in that direction, he continued looking around in the hope that he might find a clearing. When he did not, he settled for a place where the moon seemed brighter.
Looking down at the objects in his hands, he found that he could see nothing. He moved them forward so that they left his shadow, but he still could see nothing. Brow furrowed, he looked up. Clouds had come in front of the moon.
Too tired to curse or complain, physically or mentally, he settled his back against a tree and waited for the moon to come out again. As he sat, watching the sky, he felt drowsiness approach. The sky was beautiful when away from the city, he realized. I never really do admire the beauty in things, do I? he thought to himself as he felt sleep approaching and his eyelids grew heavy and began to close.
Then the clouds slowly slid away, allowing him a little sight once more. Conan's eyes snapped open the instant the moon began to reveal itself once more, though it was a moment before he remembered why he had wanted the moon to come out. Standing, he stepped out of the trees' shadows and turned so that the objects were not hidden by his shadow, either.
His eyes narrowed, and what drowsiness had been left in him slipped away in an instant.
In his hand he held pieces of glass that could have once been two round-edged pieces as well as pieces of metal that were obviously once a glasses frame. However, Conan had been expecting this much. What caught his attention was the fact that the frame was in five pieces. Made of metal, the only way that it could have broken into five pieces by being stepped on would be if both arms had broken off, and then the pieces around the glass and the piece for the nose were glued together and had come apart. However, Conan's glasses were not made that way, and the arms were broken in the middle and the pieces surrounding the frame were broken in the middle as well—exactly what stopped the glasses from functioning and prevented any effort at repairing them. In addition, the cuts, though not straight, were relatively neat—a sign that they had been deliberately cut.
His two pursuers had had no time to do such a thing without his own knowledge between the time when his glasses had fallen and they had walked away. He was also sure that no one could have snuck around there while he was waiting to see if the man and woman would return. The only opportunity would have been when he had walked away from the area. Whoever had done it would have had only a brief opportunity—and they would have had to know that that was an opportunity, which meant that they would have had to know where he was. It could not be the man and woman who were pursuing him—of that he was sure.
A chill ran up Conan's spine. He was in the worst possible situation. He was cold with no shelter, hungry with no food, tired with no way to sleep, and lost in a forest that was apparently quite large with no idea where he was or how to get out.
And there was someone spying on him—no doubt watching him at that very moment.
(1) chikusho - literally translates to 'beast', so it could mean a 'dumb animal' or a 'brute'. But in this case, this is simply used as a swearword, and the meaning is entirely out of context. However, that is how this word is generally used as a swearword: out of context.
Replies to reviews:
Claude le noctambule – (grins) Don't worry, all your questions will be answered…eventually. I took your advice and moved the reviews to the bottom… (smiles sheepishly) I didn't quite get seven reviews, but oh well…
Basser – The only reason I speak both languages fluently is because I learned both English and Japanese the normal way—as in, just naturally. I was quite young when I moved to Japan, which accounts for that…
Shirafor – Once I start writing, I can do lots at a time. For example, my main hobby is translating (both from English to Japanese and from Japanese to English) and at one point, I got so into it that I finished translating an entire book in a month. The sad thing is, the author wouldn't let me publish it because of the procedure—she said the European/American publisher gets to choose the translater, so even though I've translated two books in her series, it counts for nothing. …Okay, sorry for rambling, back to replying. I hope you liked this chapter… Though the prologue tells you that Conan survives at least three days (smirks).
Magick Dreamweaver – I hope you stay with it until the end… It might get a bit tedious—at the moment it's moving at the pace of a snail.
Meril – Thanks!
DeafLizgon – I think most people would have expected Vermouth… What I did may have made it slightly anti-climatic, but it was sort of necessary for the sake of the plot. Then again, you don't know who those people are, so it might not be that bad.
Author's Note: As anyone who read my profile after April 19th would know, I have been on vacation. Since I could write, but not post during that time, I said that I would update when I returned, and that the chapter's length would be relative to the number of reviews I received during that time with 1000 words per review. Since I received 6 reviews, this chapter is approximately 6000 words long.
If I get 7 reviews, my next update will be at least 7000 words long. So review!
