Approach of Absolute ZERO

by fluxfiction


4. Under the elm

(Who is Furuya Rei?)


"There were two grade-schoolers who went missing on a field trip," Shin'ichi repeats. "One was Furuya Rei, and the other one was Amuro Tooru."

"Right," confirms Hattori. "They got separated during a flood which caused a landslide. When the rescuers found 'em, one didn't make it. That one's Furuya Rei."

It should be a normal background investigation to discover more about the identity of 'Amuro Tooru', someone who might be a real person despite being the current alias of the Public Security Bureau's Inspector Furuya Rei, also known as 'Zero'. Given the track record whenever the Detectives of the East and West get together to solve a mystery... Hattori's otherworldly luck elevates this case from simple analysis of a shoulder injury to what might just be a full, multi-layered conspiracy.

Shin'ichi deadpans. Should've known this would happen.

"They were in grade school, Hattori," Shin'ichi says instead. "They must have been identified by the rescuers by what was written on their jackets."

"What, yer think they swapped their clothes or somethin'? I'd say it's a possibility, if I didn't find one of the rescuers in that town I was in. The survivin' kid was answerin' to th' name 'Tooru'. If anyone was lyin', why'd they lie? Ya gonna need more proof before you can make that kinda claim."

"I'm assuming you took photos of the articles."

"'Course."

"Send them?"

"Already did."

The phone vibrates. Shin'ichi switches to loudspeaker and opens the message. "Thanks, Hattori. What happened to you?"

Hattori mutters, "Got grounded."

"I heard you skipped studying for exams," is Shin'ichi absent response as he skims through the photos. Not one photo shows the full names of 'Amuro Tooru' or 'Furuya Rei' in the same article, and Shin'ichi quietly respects the thoroughness of his friend's investigation. Hattori went to an incredible amount of effort to get this collection.

Shin'ichi is sure that Hattori sensed a mountain of dirt and wanted to be in the thick of it.

"Yeah, I skipped studying. Ain't an important exam anyway," says Hattori. "No big deal."

"Why did you take so long to call back?"

"Ah!" Hattori takes a deep breath. "Someone walked into me outta nowhere! My phone blew out in'ta traffic! Turns out it was the Momiji lady. Then she just so happened to have a spare phone the same model as mine. A new SIM card too."

Shin'ichi recalls Oooka Momiji, the light-haired second-year from Kyoto Senshin High School with a generous bosom and a bigger interest in Hattori. "That's kinda suspicious."

"Ya think? Anyway, I said as much, so she offered to take me to a phone shop to buy one new. So we went. And then I was redownloadin' all my apps and files from the Cloud. Ma caught me. That's it."

"What was Oooka Momiji doing in Chubu?"

"Visitin' Wakasa Bay, fer some reason."

"Wakasa Bay?" Familiarity sparks in Shin'ichi's brain. "That far out from Kyoto?"

"Apparently she's checkin' out somethin' interestin'. Something about Maizuru." Hattori sounds like he's grinning. "Ya thinkin' what I'm thinking, Kudou?"

"Yeah," says Shin'ichi, the circumstances of an old case rising from memory and sinking into his consciousness. "Wakasa Bay and Maizuru are the locations which were involved in the case of Lt. Sasaura and the international spy named X. You and I were involved after I boarded the Aegis Destroyer warship with the Mouris and the Detective Boys."

"Bingo."

"But you found the body on the west side of Wakasa Bay," says Shin'ichi, trying to recall the case. "Oooka Momiji found you in the Chubu region, and the part of Wakasa Bay there is the east." Couldn't it be a coincidence?

"Nah, Kudou," Heiji's grin audibly widens. "She asked me what I knew about Takekawa."

"She knows about the case?"

"Ya. She's lookin' into it fer a school project. Unauthorised objects in or around Japanese waters." Hattori pauses. "She asked me if my arm healed up too, mind you."

"Oh, from when Takekawa shot your left shoulder. And so?"

"Well, she was gettin' annoyin', an' I owed her fer the phone anyway, so I rolled my sleeve up to prove it like she wanted."

Shin'ichi can see it: Hattori being nagged and goaded into showing her the location of the injury, lifting his elbow, carelessly flexing the chiseled planes of a dark, muscled bicep for good measure...

"Hattori..."

"I know! I know."

What exactly does Hattori know about romance, with one Oooka Momiji determined to be his wife? "And Kazuha?"

"Idiot," Hattori scoffs, "As if I'm going to tell her I needed a collaborator!"

Hattori doesn't see Shin'ichi freeze. Furuya Rei was also cut in his left shoulder after saving the Edge of Ocean.

"Say, Kudou..." Hattori continues, "isn't 'Amuro Tooru' the name of the guy workin' at Poirot below yer place?"

"I'm no longer staying at the Agency."

"What? Since when? Fer how long?"

"Until..." Mouri Kogorou's fame no longer puts Ran in danger. "I don't know."

Growing up in a household where his parents left him when he was fourteen, Shin'ichi has always known, intellectually, why men like Mouri Kogorou distanced themselves from those they cared about. He's read about it. Watson's extrapolations of Holmes's private life. Psychology journals, while looking for information that could better teach the art of solving crimes. He knows all of Haibara's warnings, about the Organization finding out about his loved ones. He could have left Ran at any time before this, but he hasn't, because he's the Kudou Shin'ichi who's grown up with an immeasurably beautiful young woman carrying the strength and courage borne from having to take care of herself and her father. It's why Shin'ichi's promises mean so much to her, and why Shin'ichi will always be there when she needs him to be.

A gust of air escapes his chest.

Vermouth has an interest in Ran.

Hattori seems to sense his frustration. "I'm coming over—"

"Don't."

"—is what I'd say, if I could, Kudou." Hattori sighs, a long noise that drags out through his nose, like he knows how hard it was to get Vermouth off of Sherry's back. It took two disguise experts, one foreign agency, a party on a ship, blackmail, and a meeting of minds on a train. "Keep me in the loop, alright?"

Even now, Shin'ichi isn't sure Vermouth has let Haibara go entirely. "Y—Yeah."

"One more thing."

"What?"

"Don't do anything dangerous."

Shin'ichi falls back into yesterday. He's inside an unmarked car, little hands resting on a fabric-covered seat, peering up through fake glasses beyond the faraway shoulder dressed in one of Okiya Subaru's grey, pseudonymous turtlenecks. The boy called Conan has drawn out one of Akai Shuuichi's failings; an inability to save a NOC.

"Sometimes we live and sometimes we die."

Words said with uncharacteristic sullenness from beneath a synthetic mask that does not betray the spy.

When Shin'ichi comes back to the conversation, his phone rings silent. One of the few occasions that Hattori is first to hang up. His chest is empty somehow. An old fragment of a buried memory tries to rise. Shin'ichi coerces the feeling. It fights against every effort to remember.

He puts it aside and returns to the project he's working on in Professor Agasa's basement, picking up the sponge left by a small container of liquid latex.


"Furuya-san has asked me to give you this."

Kazami has something for Conan the next time Shin drops by. Through the body of Conan who is disguised as Shin, Shin'ichi takes the wrapped object. The contents sink into his fingers with the weight and density of something containing metal. He removes the tissue paper.

A slim, wafery SIM card falls to the ground.

Shin kneels to pick it up. There's something left in the package. Once the tissue paper is discarded, he's holding a black smartphone in his hands. He remembers Hattori receiving a new phone; all evidence points to the fact that this one is not. Faint scratches mark the front glass, and beside the spade-shaped logo on its back is a long scratch. He tilts the device and looks at it closely under the light. It's been wiped clean. No fingerprints on its case, and no fingerprints on the device.

External examination complete, Shin'ichi investigates its internals. The SIM card slot inside the phone is empty, and so is the phone. There's no files or photos, no browsing history, no user profile registered to the software. Everything about the data is factory reset, save for an intriguing green-and-orange app.

Kazami interrupts his investigation by bringing out some more items.

A set of keys.

"For the door," Kazami says, referring to their now-shared apartment.

Shin'ichi takes the keys and pockets them.

A wallet.

"Isn't that wallet the same as Furuya-san's?" Shin'ichi indicates.

"It is Furuya-san's wallet." If there's anything strange about freely handing over another person's wallet, it doesn't appear in Kazami's response. "Furuya-san has indicated that you should be allowed to peruse it."

Shin'ichi doesn't hear an alert, but Kazami takes out his phone and appears to check a new message. It must have been another directive as the PSB officer gives Shin'ichi one last nod before inclining his head and leaving through the front door, locking the boy inside. There's about an hour before the kids are due to invade Professor Agasa's, so Shin'ichi goes to find somewhere comfortable inside this new living space. He finds a cushion and sits cross-legged on it.

The smell of this place is different. A different kind of clean to the Mouri Detective Agency's. Living at Agasa's for the past few days meant smelling more disinfectant than he would otherwise be used to in the inventor's house, a scent which follows Haibara like her lectures to the Detective Boys on how they should properly wash their hands before eating. In Conan's absence, the Detective Boys have taken it upon themselves to work out the trick which Kaitou KID employed at the most recent heist. It seems like Genta and Mitsuhiko have come up with competing theories and today, testing both of them is the plan.

Shin'ichi thinks of Singapore, soaring above the Marina, debating a killer's plans. Taken aback by the panoramic view of bright lights fading into the distance, a knitted pattern broken up by architecture shaped like art, and then the satisfying feeling of understanding purpose. Why did KID bring along Edogawa Conan when he could have easily just borrowed the passport of anyone else on the planet? The international phantom thief decided he needed Kudou Shin'ichi as a countermeasure for an obvious trap and a need to thwart his enemies' plans.

"I, KID-sama, can't keep quiet about this, can I?"

Perhaps it was foolish, but there was something about the sincerity in KID's voice, spoken through the hyper-realistic Kudou Shin'ichi mask, that caused Shin'ichi to struggle a little less in his cooperation.

Come to think of it, Shin'ichi reflects, in the IoT Terror attack, Amuro involved me in a similar way by arresting the old man...

Kidnapped by his parents, threatened by a theme park owner handing out wrist-worn bombs, blackmailed by Zero for the IOT terror, taken by Kaitou KID in the night after the thief disguised as Ran...

Shin'ichi groans. He's a detective, not a fool.

He goes back to examining the smartphone. No screen lock. No password. He inserts the SIM card and checks for data on the chip. Nothing appears in files and folders. The contact list is also empty.

Shin'ichi puts the phone aside and turns to Furuya Rei's wallet, lining up its contents. A driver's license. A bank card. Half a receipt for a train ticket. Two stamp rally cards in the back. Shin'ichi unfolds them and reads them, carefully now he has space and time and place of mind: only one appears to be for a set of shops; the other appears to be some kind of pilgrimage. Both are still incomplete.

The cash is gone.

Without conscious thought, his eyes trail towards the two red Shin'ichi and Conan phones, lying to one side, taken out of his pockets earlier to make sitting more comfortable. The Shin'ichi phone has been quiet lately. Ran hasn't called him.

Just as Akai has asked.

Shin'ichi's vision grows blurry. He blinks, and then the smartphone falls out of his grip. As it tumbles, all the little pieces he's been ignoring by keeping himself busy, all the loneliness that Conan isn't used to, it sinks into him, staining him. Conan has always had friends, company, the ambient noise of people, not like the Kudou Shin'ichi who busied himself in books after his parents left, studying detecting...

Focus, he tells himself. "Focus."

Yet there's something about having never truly left Ran; Ran and her beautiful kindness; Ran who has always been beside him whether he's Shin'ichi or he's Conan; Ran who waits for him, is there whenever he's finished his business and welcoming towards his return; something that makes him understand how silence can be deafening. She doesn't just draw strength from him. He draws strength from her.

Argument: Ran shouldn't be calling Conan, who has Kudou Shin'ichi's phone number.

Holmes said, in The Sign of the Four: 'Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.'

He and Ran have saved buildings. They've saved themselves and each other. The past two years have forced them beyond their original limits.

Isn't there anything Shin'ichi can do against FBI Agent Akai Shuuichi's cold, unemotional rationality?

"Damnit," Shin'ichi says. His head drops forwards. Akai has saved the Mouris, yet Shin'ichi knows the sniper is not infallible, and Shin'ichi just needs to find what he's missing to refute what makes sense; a rebuttal better than 'I miss Ran and I don't like it'. He runs through everything that's happened till now.

Think!

Shin'ichi's coming and going from Hawaii has given him disguise skills and established a situation which makes Vermouth suspicious of the Kudous' actions.

The Kudou mansion is currently filled with Vermouth's listening devices, a result of Kudou Yuusaku's plan.

When extrapolating backwards from Vermouth's special interest in Ran, as Holmes would, all Shin'ichi can conclude is that her interest exists so that it can control him. So Shin'ichi has done what he needed to - Shin'ichi has left, just like everyone around him has always wanted.

But Shin'ichi has promised her that he'll come back.

There must be something—anything he can do—to return to her, without risking anybody's life.

He must be missing something.

Beep-beep.

The black smartphone lights up with an alert from the green-and-orange app.


My dear Holmes,

I trust this finds you well.

Would you care for a challenge?

You will find all you need stowed within the document alcove.

[ ... ]


Yuuya comes home to the brightly burning stare of Edogawa Conan.

"The supply chain," the boy says, as if the officer hardly exists. "I had—I had an idea there were firearms, but I never knew..."

A folder is sprawled open on the table, the long edge creased in the manner of having been flipped through a hundred times. Yuuya recognises the headings: time, date, location, individual identification number. Beside that folder is another folder, and then beside that one, Edogawa sits, one ankle propped over the other leg, two fingers cupping his chin and the startling latex prosthetic that makes his face look longer. The little detective's eyes flicker across the books, dark and thinking.

Yuuya is familiar with these folders.

"The number of illegal weapons in this country is estimated to exceed three hundred thousand," says Yuuya.

The boy doesn't flinch, and Yuuya is the one who hesitates as a result. He's no longer under the illusion that his apartment, not really made for raising children, might be inadequate when taking in this brilliant child. At some stage, the boy-who-looks-seven has decided that Yuuya can be privy to whatever it is he's hiding. Yuuya expected he would have to find excuses for why his nephew suddenly has blue eyes, with Furuya never informing Yuuya that Edogawa Conan knows anything about disguising.

But then, Yuuya has a feeling that Edogawa Conan's full capabilities are also beyond what Furuya knows.

These folders contain intelligence reports of where firearms are thought to have been traded and references to police cases where the weapons are thought to have been used. They describe the comings and goings of people, vehicles, goods, services; an overload of information, and yet, still not enough information for the police to determine the exact shape of the supply chain and identify any clear targets. The puzzle has its corners missing and too many random pieces from unrelated puzzles occupying space in the same box.

The boy disguised as Kazami Shin exhales, his large eyes slipping closed, and the tiny figure steels itself before returning to madness.

It's not the kind of work that Shin'ichi usually does. The murders he finds himself involved in don't need terrible weapons for their crimes.

He cannot wilfully ignore this, now that he knows of it.

A detective who corners a culprit with their reasoning and drives them to suicide is no different than a murderer.

Shin'ichi carefully asks questions to the evidence, reminding himself what is fact and what is assumption. He takes logical staircases in Holmes's footsteps, interpreting conflicts in the data, and constructs frameworks to support leaps of logic where there is a complete and total lack of information to build upon.

At last, the information he needs here is—

"Open Source Intelligence, otherwise known as 'OSINT'," says Shin'ichi, as he senses Kazami kneeling to take a closer look at his work. "In other words, research and investigation of publicly accessible information."

He needs Haibara.

"Does the PSB have a Collaborator?" Shin'ichi asks instead. "One that can do research?" He pulls one of the folders onto his lap, and flips it to a report written on a certain date. "Here. If we can work out why this time was chosen, we should be able to get closer to where the source is."

"The time was chosen because of low traffic," says Kazami.

"You were on that seizure, Kazami-keiji. Wouldn't you have noticed something about the traffic?"

"The traffic?"

"Right." Shin'ichi reaches for the map open on his Conan phone, turns on landmarks, and then shows the officer.

He explains, walking the man through the scenario. "—If we analyse that access point, it might reveal a pattern we haven't considered. Then, after cross-referencing the train timetables with security footage of the area, there's a high chance that something will emerge from the gaps."

It's not the kind of work Shin'ichi usually does because the Organization would not leave any gaps.

"It won't be the source unless we get lucky," says Shin'ichi, overlaying what he knows of the Organization's operations, using their methodologies as a worst case. "Is there a way for the PSB to check if people have visited an area more than once?"

"We may be able to set up a Wi-Fi net and monitor repeats of smartphone IDs."

"Wouldn't you be able to contact the cell phone carrier for location information directly?"

For a brief moment, Kazami looks pained. "That would require a... different process."

Shin'ichi gets the hint. He puts his hand back onto his chin out of habit, and the latex prosthesis feels strange now that he's aware of it.

The folder is tossed aside and Shin'ichi paces.

"Did you know, Kazami-keiji, that purchasing theatrical latex requires an ID and a justification for purpose?"

"It does?"

"Because of Kaitou KID." Professor Agasa had to buy it on behalf of Conan. Tossing around ideas for the justification, they eventually settled on Agasa wanting to make a friendly interface for these newfangled chatbots. "Of course the supply chain of some common items—" Shin'ichi indicates the folder, "—can be obfuscated. I don't think anyone would be able to call KID's equipment 'common'."

"Then they've never identified KID even with this registration?"

"They haven't."

"Perhaps he doesn't use... latex. Substitution can be effective."

"The chemical composition is a match for the masks which he leaves behind."

"Ah."

"Isn't it strange? They can't track down how KID gets his supplies when he should be weak to supply chain attacks?"

There's a long silence.

"How, um," Kazami starts awkwardly, then coughs. "Since when have you been... able to disguise yourself?"

"Eh?" Shin'ichi blinks, jolted out of this newest KID conundrum. It seemed logical to Shin'ichi to have a new appearance for a new identity. Like the whole Edogawa Conan glasses thing. Shin'ichi decides on an answer after several seconds. Questions about his disguise techniques would have come up eventually. "It's a new development."

...

They go back to work. Kazami doesn't ask anything else from him.


My dear Holmes,

Between ourselves, do accept the invitation present on the regular newspaper, from the edition dated nine weeks previous.

[ ... ]


The first text with a request in it arrives on an ordinary Tuesday, Shin'ichi working on his project in Agasa's basement, a plate of snacks by the old computer and plenty of water to keep him hydrated. Shin'ichi shows Kazami the message at the next opportunity, and Kazami identifies what the regular newspaper is (a printed magazine with an advertisement on page 16) before disappearing to make arrangements immediately.

"Good evening," says the blond man on their doorstep, genial smile adorned atop dark skin. "I'm from the housekeeping company, my name is Amuro."

"W-Welcome," says Kazami. The officer tries for a smile.

On anyone else, it would be cringing.

The required pleasantries are exchanged, and Amuro enters Kazami's apartment. He goes through it, making general conversation, jotting down notes on a tablet. Not once does he show a sign of recognising either Kazami nor Shin'ichi, and for the most part, he's perfectly in character for a first consultation.

It's when he's about to leave that his pale eyes shift.

"Can I recommend, if I may," he says, in a tone that strikes Shin'ichi as significant, "Would you purchase a planter and some soil before my next visit?"

Kazami does.

Actually, he comes home with five planters, in slightly different shapes.

On Amuro's next visit, the suit is discarded for a shirt and trousers suitable for hands-on work.

Conan has stayed at Kazami's apartment again. Shin pops up from behind Kazami's legs. "Amuro-san!"

"Good morning, Shin-kun, Kazami-san." Amuro bows. "Today I will be helping you in the kitchen. I have brought supplies, don't worry. I will be helping you with what I learned on my last visit - that curry is the only thing which you have learned to cook."

Shin'ichi has tasted Kazami's box curry recipe exactly once, and the meat was so without flavour that he really wondered if helping Furuya with whatever 'save the nation' scheme he was up to would ultimately be worth sacrificing his taste buds.

Shin, who might be the kind of child who has learned about the famous ham sandwiches by Amuro of Poirot, hops aside very enthusiastically to let their visitor in.

Kazami twitches.

When the three of them have piled around the small kitchen in Kazami's apartment, Amuro begins. He reaches inside one of the bags he's brought, pulling out from its captivating confines...

A box curry.

"Ehhhh?" says Shin, accidentally lapsing into Conan.

Amuro gives him a glance, noticing it.

Perhaps Kudou Yukiko's strict acting training might all be for this one moment, when Shin'ichi's a disguise inside a disguise, pocket-sized, a matryoshka. Asking Professor Agasa for a voice changing choker would have been like giving up Okiya's true identity without a fight. Shin'ichi, relying on his own voice, thinks back to the videos of Shin and adopts the boy's enunciation style. "A box curry?" he asks carefully.

"Indeed. I thought it would be most effective to begin with improvements, rather than teaching the two of you something new entirely."

And to their assigned stations they go. Shin washes the vegetables and Kazami helps him peel. Amuro watches and gives Kazami advice on how to hold the blade. Then Amuro gathers the ingredients and instructs them in the proper procedure by which to dice them, checking back and forth to ensure the correct technique is adopted and learned. Mindful of the time, Amuro takes over. He handles the knife with speed and precision. His arms and wrists move as if autonomous. As soon as he's done with one vegetable, he's moving it aside to gather the next. Occasionally he glances around to assess what remains like a seasoned professional.

Perhaps he is a professional. It's not as if Shin'ichi knows the history of the man with the triple face.

Amuro talks them through the recipe. Chicken, because it takes less time to cook. To the chicken he adds onions, soy sauce, garlic, spices. Liquid: water, bouillon. Vegetables: carrots, potatoes, and celery.

Kazami shudders.

Shin looks between them, confused. Does Kazami have something against celery?

Finally, Amuro explains there are a few items that can be considered 'secret ingredients'.

"Alright," he says, gesturing to the stove like this house is his, and the passion tugging at his mouth is both foreign and homely. "Let's begin."

Kazami swallows and takes the spatula.

Cooking, Shin'ichi is familiar with: Yukiko has tried to teach him a semblance of self-sufficiency, Conan often makes visits to Ran while she's in the kitchen, and Haibara seems to trust him with watching the stove and making sure everything is stirred once in a while. The cooking itself doesn't interest him as much as Amuro's modifications to the usual recipe, and so Shin examines the two adults while chicken flesh browns in the pan. He observes Kazami's shoulders stiff and elbows tense. The man's frequent glances between the pan and the clock suggests that frying frozen gyoza is the full extent of his comfort. Kazami stirs and tries to apply the occasional advice about even searing.

"One moment," says Amuro, holding up an apple through the sweet smell of caramelised onion. He grates the apple quickly, explaining that they would cook the apple now with the onions, allowing its brightness to meld with the onions' sweetness, adding an extra level of flavour. Supposedly, ever since this element was incorporated into the curry recipe in a cafe, its repeat orders increased with statistical significance.

The second secret ingredient is curry powder. The third...

"Mirin?"

"Acid brings a brightness to the dish."

Shin'ichi looks at Zero, one of two people in this room who would find themselves killed if their secret identities came to light, and then to Kazami, who is without trepidation ever-present in the back of his head. If there's a reason behind the cooking lesson, and there must be, Shin'ichi is yet to find out. Even as he ponders this, watching as Kazami stops treating the stove like a stubborn animal, he's Kazami Shin in every word. The Kazami Shin persona hasn't slipped today, not once.

Hattori's findings come back: The two children Amuro Tooru and Furuya Rei were caught in a landslide. 'Furuya Rei' being dead is impossible, because Zero is Furuya Rei who is currently pretending to be Amuro Tooru. Zero has given him an identity, a place to stay, thrust upon him some kind of purpose, and Shin'ichi isn't going to get anything else from his research into Zero's history.

Everything has come down to a single question:

What is Zero's motive?

They wash up. Shin hands a dry plate to Kazami, turning for the next item from Amuro, when he realises Amuro is staring at his face intently, those clear eyes examining his brows and his chin—locations where the disguise is most prominent. Shin'ichi stares back as he takes in the shape of Amuro's cheekbones. They look startlingly non-Japanese from this angle.

Amuro breaks away to taste the curry and adds more pepper.

The stove is switched off once the curry is deemed finished, and Amuro demonstrates chopping spring onions at an angle to garnish. His two students observe as he sets the roots aside and asks for a planter. Amuro takes the fact that Kazami has purchased five planters in stride and turns to Shin, asking the boy to choose his favourite.

The roots are planted. "If you water these regularly, they will regrow."

"Amuro-san," says Shin, "What does it mean if someone says they'll be 'more than a plant'?"

"Well," Amuro begins, "I'm not sure. Though plants are alive, they can't speak, so maybe that means they'll be able to talk?"

"What if the person who said it is a sneaky person?"

Kazami splutters. "Shin—"

Amuro winks. "Then perhaps they're referring to English!"

"English?"

"Right. Do you know any English, Shin-kun?"

Shin'ichi glances at Kazami. Kazami shakes his head. "No, not really."

"There's a second meaning for 'plant', in English, meaning, 'something which is put secretly with the intention of discovery'."

"Wow! You must be really good in English to know that!"

Amuro glances briefly to his upper-left. "I'm half-Japanese."

Before he leaves, Zero kneels down, and makes deliberate eye-contact with Conan through Kazami Shin's disguise.

"Good luck, little detective."


Furuya-san,

The relocation has been completed with success.

[ ... ]


Amuro has marked a line on a book inside one of Kazami's shelves. Humans will tend to perceive what we expect to perceive.

Shin'ichi finds himself thinking back to how Hattori discerned Conan's true identity, looking beyond Ellery Queen to take the advice of Holmes, a different detective. Call it luck, intuition, or stupidity, there's no underestimating the Detective of the West's tenaciousness and his ability to seamlessly bounce off others' correct ideas.

Hattori's logic: If 'Amuro Tooru' makes himself missing from Poirot, anyone who doesn't know Conan and Shin'ichi are the same person would logically think that 'Edogawa Conan' might try to find the missing Amuro by consulting 'Kudou Shin'ichi'.

Rebuttal: Zero appeared as 'Amuro Tooru' while understanding perfectly that 'Edogawa Conan' was disguised as 'Kazami Shin'.

Hattori's original theory of Zero using Conan to find Kudou Shin'ichi no longer holds. Except it makes the most sense. Zero should be looking for Kudou Shin'ichi, who vanished and was then spotted in public, and that close shave involving social media after Kyoto.

The way Shin'ichi identified Furuya Rei was surprisingly simple. Conan simply asked the officers in Division One if they knew a blond, dark-skinned officer called Rei. A Rei-niichan happened to help him out, and he wanted to thank him, but couldn't find him since he didn't know his full name.

"Rei?" Satou echoed. "Let me think... yes. There was someone like that at Police Academy, the year before mine. He graduated with top marks and was valedictorian even before he entered. His last name was something like... that's right. It was 'Furuya Rei.'"

Valedictorian. That information was enough to find results for a sophisticated university, when searching for a dark-skinned Rei provided nothing. A mention emerged of a student club. Knowing the years in which Rei must have attended university, he looked through the records of the club for the contact details of other members. Shin'ichi used his voice changer pre-loaded with Amuro Tooru's voice to call the president: "Hello? Is this Sasaki Yoshiro?"

"Rei-san? Rei-san, is that you? I never thought you'd call me again - you said you were leaving!"

Through Sasaki Yoshiro, he learned of a rising star, a younger Amuro Tooru: a politics student with an eye on an area known as international relations. He'd been an essayist, the president asking him about copies of his work, lamenting on a lack of digitisation. Shin'ichi learned from Sasaki that Rei had gone to work in the political centre of Japan, Chiyoda.

Eventually, Shin'ichi's investigation led him to the PSB.

Perhaps finding this third identity had been easy because 'Furuya Rei' should be dead.

Holmes said, 'It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.'

Any other detective may have taken Amuro's glance to the upper-left as an indication that he wasn't lying about being half-Japanese. Yuusaku's latest book is about debunking the myth that eye movements can reveal truths or lies. To tell if someone is lying, Yuusaku said in Hawaii, requires full understanding of a person's individual habits when they are lying or telling the truth. There is no universal method so simple for the detection of lies. And as Hattori says, for a detective to accuse someone of lying, there needs to be both a reason for the lie and some form of proof.

Zero has been careful, and nothing he has said can be directly contradicted. Therefore, Shin'ichi must assume some level of trustworthiness in the few amounts of information he's received from Zero, even if the man cannot be wholly trusted.

If Akai's hypothesis about Zero having three truths is correct, then what might they be?

The black smartphone rings.

Within thirty seconds, Shin'ichi discovers that voicemail is set up on this device even though everything else has been wiped. Shin'ichi accesses the voicemail inbox carefully, one hand wrapped around the receiver. How weird was it for this phone to have voicemail when everything else was so clearly wiped?

He hits play on the voicemail and Kazami Yuuya's voice comes out of the playback.

Holmes said, 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'

The truth suggested by the voicemail sounds like a lie. It can't be possible. There are so many reasons why it wouldn't be the truth; common sense dictates it. But the truth has been cast on the dark side of the moon, and as Shin'ichi assembles the rest of the pieces, a curtain of ignorance fades away like an illusion in the moonlight.

So that's Zero's plan, giving him this device.

Kazami refers to the owner of this phone as "Furuya-san."

He's really taken a chance on this... that Zero.


"Back at school again, Edogawa-kun?" Haibara comments. "I thought school wasn't necessary for children without Japanese citizenship."

"Idiot," Shin'ichi mutters, trudging along to their classroom. "Dad's been in America too long if he no longer thinks it's weird for people to notice a school age student no longer attending classes."

He doesn't mention his bag is filled with high school materials. To get into the university planned by his father, he still has one last set of final exams.

Initially, grade school seemed like a waste of energy. But he's realised that, if anything, he'll never again have so much time. After all, it was a grade school student who worked with Bourbon to stop a satellite sent hurtling towards Tokyo after a prosecutor hacked the US national space agency. A grade school student followed Irish up to Touto Tower, before being targeted by Gin from inside a helicopter equipped with a machine gun. He also survived an encounter with Gin solely because of his grade school size, after Vodka was so easily fooled into leaving his fingerprints, a trap set by Shin'ichi using the voice of the software creator Itakura Suguru.

He's not doing so bad in grade school.

"Kudou-kun," Haibara says, cutting through his musings in a terrifying tone which sends shivers down Conan's spine, "You got involved in something, didn't you?"

"No! It's nothing. Just thinking about exams."

Haibara gives him a flat stare.

Conan laughs, but the sound is weak. He knows he's not getting out of this one, and Shin'ichi has been expecting this confrontation for a while. "You remember when the Tokyo Summit was cancelled, and then the Hakuchou almost crashed into the Edge of Ocean?"

"Yes. When one person hacked the satellite. Which somehow ended up in you working alongside Bourbon to save Japan."

"I—I told you, Haibara. Bourbon was there to protect the venue, not spy on it..."

"Yes. Like Irish was there to protect a memory chip belonging to Them by infiltrating a police investigation and putting Superintendent Matsumoto's life at risk."

"Um."

"And exactly like Vermouth is surely acting in the service of the greater good when she uses her disguise skills to clean up any last trace of Their actions." Haibara drops her bag on her desk and turns away from him to pull out a workbook in a disgustingly cute shade of pink. "Try again, Kudou-kun."

Shin'ichi spends a significant part of the school day puzzling over how Haibara read his mind.

"Wait," he says over lunch, when it occurs to him. "Why did you bring up Vermouth after Irish?" After he confronted her, Vermouth seems to have left him completely alone, as good of a promise as he'll get from a criminal like that.

Haibara looks at him like he's hit his head with his own soccer balls.

"Kudou-kun," she says, slowly, "They fired on a national tourist attraction. There was no further investigation. Touto Tower continues to operate normally to this day."

Well. If she puts it that way...

Vermouth... probably... was... involved...

"See?" Haibara finishes, correctly interpreting Shin'ichi's expression.

"Yeah," Shin'ichi answers. "Thanks, Haibara."

"Of course." She waves a hand. "Don't get yourself killed. I still need someone to test my medicine on."

Shin'ichi might feel more reassurance if she says 'you're a security risk so I'll kill you to keep everyone else safe' again instead.

He's here to ask her for something, but it's not until after school that he gets a chance to talk in detail.

"I found out that Vermouth has a special interest in Ran," Shin'ichi begins, harmlessly enough.

The kids have run ahead. Apparently Professor Agasa wasn't ready on the day Genta and Mitsuhiko wanted to test their theories about Kaitou KID's trick, and something about today's conditions are just right. With Conan and Haibara steadily making their way back to the Professor's house, it's as safe to talk as it will ever be.

He braces himself for a flinch, the terror which fills her body whenever she learns that friends and family are in danger. To manage her instinct to run and turn herself in and reassure her that things would be fine.

It doesn't come.

"What about it?" she asks.

"Eh?"

"I thought you knew she was the one who saved me from Vermouth."

What? "Ran was—what?"

Haibara stops. "You... didn't know she was there?"

"Where?" Shin'ichi demands. "When did they meet?"

"It was at the docks."

Haibara explains exactly how she escaped the confrontation. A heavy sensation rests in Shin'ichi's chest as she speaks in the soft, logical tone which allows no argument. All around them, elementary school students chatter amicably, the sound of a world in gentle progression.

"'Move it, Angel'," Shin'ichi repeats. "Then... Vermouth's interest..."

"Would be about not involving Mouri Ran unless it's absolutely unavoidable," Haibara finishes. "Looks like you fell for someone's bluff."

The information fits into a field of empty spaces all at once. He's been missing something and it's the reason he and Ran are still alive. Vermouth knows about him. He's seen Vermouth with direct access to Ran. Why hasn't she already acted?

Because her interest is to keep her safe.

The frustration carried by Conan's little body bursts then, like a balloon pierced by a needle, and Shin'ichi hisses through his teeth to let it flow out. His fist comes up and punches a nearby wall. His toes dig into the ground like his body is afraid of falling over.

Seeing this, Haibara's lashes drop and her mouth tilts down. "Kudou-kun—"

"How are you calm?" Shin'ichi cuts her off.

"Because you've been acting strangely ever since Mouri Kogorou was wrongly arrested." She catches the change in his expression before he notices it. "Don't get me wrong. It only happens sometimes. You snapped at me in front of the Professor, didn't you? You, who have never raised your voice unless it is towards a murderer."

"I... what?"

"Your hands are shaking. Calm down."

Shin'ichi looks down at his arms. She's right. He takes a deep breath, willing the frustration away. Slowly, his fingers stop trembling.

"Good." Haibara nods approvingly. "Will you listen now?"

"... Yeah. I will."

"Then you should understand - the reason you still have an angel in your life is because you keep your word. You're someone that people can believe in. And you'll stop at nothing to find the truth. Honestly," she pushes her hair behind her ear, "it almost makes me jealous."

"Haibara..."

"Idiot," she says, turning the word back on him. "If you feel bad about risking the lives of everyone around you, then you have to stop doing things bigger than yourself."

"I..."

"But you won't. These incidents of national and international significance keep happening around you, and that's who you are now. It's too bad that mindsets are quick to form but resistant to change, isn't it?"

Before he realises it, the last dregs of frustration catch alight. All of a sudden, a new path has lit up. Invisible memories and experiences cast building-block shapes into the eye of his mind. The detective takes all of it, formulating a new mental analysis, drawing new inferences out of things he's never considered until now.

Mindsets are quick to form but resistant to change.

Shin'ichi finds it: how to return to Ran without risking anyone's life.

"Haibara," says Shin'ichi, addressing the reason for attending school today. "I need you to find something. Miyano Elena and Bourbon are connected. How?"


Conan and Haibara arrive at the Professor's and Haibara goes inside, presumably to do research on her mother.

Professor Agasa's yard has a large plastic sheet, two buckets, and three grade-schoolers in front.

"What's this?" Conan asks, coming onto the scene.

Upon noticing Conan, the kids enthusiastically explain that this is their set-up! An incredibly important set-up! All for... testing their Kaitou KID heist trick theories!

Agasa huffs in with the weight of one more bucket hanging from his arms. Shin'ichi examines them and realises the buckets are filled with—

"Water?" says Conan.

"Whaterabout, Shin—Conan-kun?" Agasa remarks, punning on 'water', much to Shin'ichi's dismay.

The Detective Boys strike a pose. "We're going to solve how Kaitou KID travelled through the water gate!"

Conan mentions having not seen the videos, and is then subjected to three astonished children immediately wielding their electronic devices to search it up for him on the Internet.

He learns:

1. Suzuki Jirokichi created a water trap.

2. Everything was made waterproof. All visitors wore rain boots and plastic suits.

3. When KID stole the Garnet Lion, the water trap would activate, and his escape would be interfered with by the water.

Which... makes sense. KID's regular arsenal of smoke bombs would be less effective in a wet environment. It's harder to move silently on water, and the water in addition to a collection of carefully-placed mirrors should mean that no matter what KID tries to do, there should be a reflection.

"So?" Conan says, because it's already been a week, and there's been no news of KID being arrested. The thief clearly came up with something. "What happened?"

"We don't know," Ayumi answers. "He walked through a water curtain, and then he was on the roof! And he flew away!"

"Didn't he just disguise with the officers?"

"No!" Genta says.

"Of course we've considered that, Conan-kun," Mitsuhiko points out. "The Kaitou KID on the roof had the real Garnet Lion, he was the one to return it, and he was wet from all the water inside the room!"

"Then he stole it before the heist," Conan says.

"Nope!" Genta bellows. "They checked the gem before the heist! And nobody went near it until it was stolen!"

Shin'ichi thinks about it.

"Okay," says Conan, looking at the plastic sheet. "What are you testing?"

"Before that!" Agasa interrupts, clearing his throat, "Let's have a moment for a qui—"

"AHHH," Mitsuhiko says loudly, "Where did Haibara-san go?"

"Research," Conan answers.

"You're always getting her to do research for you, Conan-kun," says Ayumi.

Genta piles on, saying something about researching eel rice.

Shin'ichi pats the drooping Professor and tells him he can share his quiz later, when the kids have tired themselves out from their fun.

"We think Kaitou KID did a quick travel trick, how did he do it?" Shin'ichi prompts.

The kids instantly remember their reason for visiting Agasa's. The first bucket of water is tipped onto the plastic sheet, rippling and splooshing against the edges pinned down to prevent movement. Genta proudly goes up to one side in his swimming trunks.

"KID must've used the wet floor to slide really fast!" he announces.

"You can do it, Genta-kun!" Ayumi cheers.

Genta attempts to slide across the plastic sheet. Shin'ichi isn't sure where Ayumi got her umbrella from, and has no idea when Professor Agasa put on a raincoat, but realises the wisdom of their choices when Genta hurls across in a giant splash of water and a deafening explosion of sound.

"That's hardly stealthy enough, Genta-kun," Mitsuhiko chides. "No, Kaitou KID must have done this!"

Mitsuhiko brings out a fabric contraption which turns out to be a balloon from a science kit. He explains that even though objects get heavier when wet, balloons rise because of generated lift. Therefore, should enough lift be generated, there's no reason Kaitou KID couldn't have gone outside the room and used a balloon to appear on the roof. The problem of being seen wouldn't matter when there was some maintenance being done on one of the elevators.

"Maintenance?" Conan asks, this detail catching his attention as it should.

Mitsuhiko brightens at the KID Killer's direct acknowledgement. "Yes, indeed! I heard it from Sonoko-san! One of the elevators was found to need repairs a couple of days before the heist took place!"

"Hey, no fair," Genta says from where he's swathed in one of the Professor's towels. "I didn't know there was an elevator broken."

"Well it wouldn't have worked with your theory anyway, Genta-kun."

"Sure it could! KID has a grapple hook! He could'a climbed it after sliding out!"

As they bicker, Shin'ichi looks up a video of the heist. He skips through the interview parts, and all the old footage, spotting the elevator in question during old man Suzuki's pre-heist tour, and then allows it to run a live playback once the event starts.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! Witness! I shall journey between worlds, and greet you all beneath pure and gentle moonlight."

Atop the pedestal which contained the Garnet Lion, Kaitou KID walked through a waterfall and vanished.

The camera cuts a few times between chaos and frantic searching before someone shouts that KID is on the roof. Another camera comes in, a bird's eye view from a helicopter, revealing the thief shining white and a lattice of police cars strung through Tokyo's sunset.

Shin'ichi, who faces Kaitou KID on a regular basis, focuses on the response after KID's disappearance, where chaos is at its most prominent. People expect Kaitou KID to steal a gem and disappear. People do not expect their vision to be obstructed by a sudden, unplanned downpour of water, to discover radio wave reflectors hidden inside the mirrors which ended up disrupting electronic communications, and having mechanisms designed to make KID's escape more difficult instead turning against them. They certainly did not expect elevator repairs to obstruct the police teams, getting in the way of their access to the roof. In magic and illusion, the tendency of people to perceive what they expect to perceive is most obvious.

By the time someone reports from the top...

Shin'ichi finds a livestream and calculates the time difference. Two minutes and forty seconds.

"How long would it take to get to the roof? If he went directly up from the outside?" he asks.

"Three minutes," Mitsuhiko answers.

Shin'ichi cups his chin and thinks.

So it's not quite possible to arrive if he left after his dramatic announcement. The conditions are almost correct for a recreation of Kaitou KID's teleportation trick, which means it's a different trick, or the thief has somehow improved it. Shin'ichi rewatches the videos and looks for photos taken by anyone at the scene. He searches for new information which might bring the impossible back into the realm of possibility. Mitsuhiko does his experiment and realises that he has to factor in the relationship between balloon size and water retention; maybe a big enough balloon would end up being too heavy to lift itself and Kaitou KID, or it would leave some forensic traces in the elevator shaft if Kaitou KID used it.

Professor Agasa turns to Ayumi encouragingly and asks her what she thinks.

"I don't know," Ayumi says, from where she sits on an upturned bucket. Her cheeks are resting in her hands, the cuffs of her shirt are wet, and her cute skirt is well-chosen, dark enough to not show stains. "If only I could imagine something different."

Shin'ichi suddenly realises the true nature of the trick.

Conan switches off the screen of his phone and gets to his feet.

"Did you find something?" one of the children ask.

Conan shakes his head. "There's no use searching. I'll never find anything like that."

"Eh?"

"Do you know, everyone's comparing it to his teleportation heist. Of course they would. It's something KID has done before, and we know how he did it. But this one is different. It's not the same trick."

"We know," says Genta. "He can't have done it, that's why we're tryin'a find a way he could have used a trick!"

"But what if he didn't use a magic trick?"

Shin'ichi feels a victorious smirk settling in the line of his mouth as the collective confusion only serves to make his deduction clearer.

"KID knows that we know he can pretend to teleport," says Conan. "And the media tend to talk in terms of things we already know. He's used old man Suzuki's search for publicity to fool us into believing this trick is founded on instant movement. The answer is quite simple.

"There was a second KID on the roof."

"Ehhhhh?"

"Because he had the real Garnet Lion, we believed the KID on the roof was the real KID. In the teleportation trick he left behind the genuine Purple Nail to prove that he well and truly teleported. However, this time, it's not a continuous broadcast. We believed in his words that he journeyed between worlds, and our previous knowledge biased us to conclude this trick would have to be a similar form of magic.

"It was hard to get to the roof, and the communications kept shorting out, remember? It doesn't matter if the KID in the room or the KID on the roof was fake. So long as some of the first officers on the scene were either KID or his accomplice, he could announce the one on the roof had the Garnet Lion, and all KID had to do was switch in the real Garnet Lion once the others made it. Put simply, there was a second person fooling us into believing KID was somewhere he wasn't.

"He got wet. But getting wet has nothing to do with the trick that night."


My dear Holmes,

I do suppose there is an explanation for our business together.

As a matter of course, you must have concluded that the usual methods of correspondence will not be appropriate. Congruent to this fact, I hope you are settling well?

Perhaps we should exchange notes.

[ ... ]


"I miss Amuro-san."

Of all the Detective Boys, Genta is the first to say it aloud. Mitsuhiko looks at him, and the retort about Genta always thinking about food crumbles from his mouth. It's true that the nice waiter from Poirot brightened their days ever since he entered their lives. He always had some food for them, a puzzle or two, and believed them when they told him about their adventures. The shape of Mitsuhiko's face mirrors Genta's small frown.

Genta, sullen, doesn't notice. One of his hands scoops up a palmful of dirt. He watches it trickling through his fingers back onto the ground.

"Conan-kun's away a lot more, too," says Mitsuhiko, if only to fill the silence. It's strange with Genta silent. Ever since Conan came back to school for a while, solved the trick behind the KID heist, and now only comes a few days a week because of his parents, the Detective Boys have noticed something has become weird in the way that children are able to garner an inkling of change despite not being able to understand what, exactly, is weird about Conan's parents appearing out of nowhere after a long break, or Haibara's sudden research that she won't share.

Ayumi finds the two of them waiting for her when she finishes talking with Kobayashi-sensei about homework for that day.

"Genta-kun! Mitsuhiko-kun!" she yells.

The two boys perk up. Ayumi draws level with them as Genta tries to brush the dirt off his shorts, inadvertently dirtying them more in the process.

Ayumi, being wonderful, notices the gloom and instantly makes to beat it down with the bright and sunny disposition that keeps the Detective Boys together.

"Are you hungry, Genta-kun?" she asks.

Genta shakes his head. "No." His stomach growls. "Maybe."

"Genta-kun is missing Amuro-san from Poirot," Mitsuhiko says helpfully.

"Oi!" Genta glares.

"What?" Mitsuhiko glares back.

"Don't tell!"

"Well it's too late now!"

"Then don't—"

"Guys!" The disappearance of Ayumi's cheerful aura quiets them faster than anything she could have said. But then she says, "You should have said earlier, Genta-kun! Ayumi knows where Amuro-san is!"

"Eh?"

"Ehhhh?"

The two boys blink in unison.

She grins, bright and proud.


Music, out of sync, stilted, the product of a young student learning the violin. These are sounds which fill one corner of Haido Park some afternoons, piercing through carefully maintained undergrowth and a canopy of green.

The violin is a compromise. The teacher looks up from the app which reports the notes that Shin has played, and plucks a series of soft, thoughtful notes on his guitar, back to him.

Shin'ichi declined installing the app, told the spy that people would immediately associate Kazami Shin with Edogawa Conan if he attempted singing, and informed Amuro of his perfect pitch. Through a music code they communicate. Unlike soccer, there are no associations between Conan and Shin'ichi through violin. It's safe enough to collect his childhood instrument and agree to Zero's proposal... so long as Ran isn't around to hear the quirk he plays with—whatever that is.

'The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,' Shin'ichi plays in code today. 'A Sherlock Holmes short story. Do you know it?'

'I may have read it once,' is Zero's response.

'Holmes tricks a diamond thief using music.'

"Oh," says Zero. 'Where Holmes has the thief believe he is practicing his violin next door because of the sound coming from a gramophone.'

'That's why you gave me your phone, isn't it?'

Zero laughs. It's a deep, merry note, almost bursting from his chest with the sound. There's a sharpness, a punctuation mark against mellow tones. He strums the guitar again and Shin'ichi follows the notes. A few bars pass before the lack of meaning beats into his mind the knowledge that Zero is playing improvisation. It's full of nonsense, yet the melody goes on without wavering. Shin'ichi hears bits and pieces of songs he knows, but the moment he thinks he recognises one, it's gone, and a new chord comes in like gentle wandering.

Zero tilts his head at Shin'ichi, glancing at the violin in invitation. Conan's fingers twitch and a repulsive wave grips Shin'ichi; he swallows.

The music stops.

"Is everything alright?" Amuro asks, concerned.

Shin'ichi doesn't hear him. The music has reminded him of something. Some feeling has been pulled out from deep inside his chest, something unbearable, emotions awoken.

"—Shin-kun?"

"I—" Shin'ichi rasps, staring down at his hand. The lack of bangs in the way reminds him he's wearing a wig. He still feels tense lines pulling together his brows. "What was that?"

"Nothing in particular," says Amuro, "but if you recognised something—"

The feeling of wrongness intensifies. Zero's laugh plays back in Conan's head, and Shin'ichi closes his eyes to see the image flashing inside his eyelids. The image sharpens into Akai disguised as Okiya, talking about a NOC who is dead, someone important to Bourbon.

"Ah," Shin'ichi gasps. Sera Masumi. The girls' band. Sera was taught guitar by one of her brother's friends... and there was someone who seemed to resemble Amuro...

Akai said, 'The three of us were in the same squad.' Shin'ichi opens his mouth.

Zero raises his finger to his lips in a gesture for silence.

'You are terrifying,' encodes the spy.

'Says the one who gave me his smartphone,' Shin'ichi replies.

Shin'ichi has found Zero's motive. In the modern day, smartphones are the keepers of a person's most intimate secrets. From Kazami's voicemail message, he believed Zero was still in possession of Furuya's phone. Shin'ichi confirmed this by calling Kazami back with his voice changing bowtie, just as he did in the case of Vodka and Itakura. Kazami spoke of references to PSB work, enough for Shin'ichi to understand they were using the findings of Edogawa Conan in the coordination of a national security response, rolling out additional tactical measures to counteract the dynamic nature of the illegal arms trade. The evidence of the truth outweighed the sheer common sense around nobody parting with their smartphone.

Just like Kaitou KID and Sherlock Holmes, Zero's planted a trick to muddle his true location.

While Shin'ichi has this smartphone in his possession...

The identity of Furuya Rei is him: Kudou Shin'ichi.

'Kazami does not know,' Zero informs. 'I trust this information is safe with you.'

'Does anybody know?'

'No one.'

Shin'ichi pauses. 'Are you—'

"Look!" says a familiar voice, "I told you, from the way they play, it sounds like they're talking!"

"Oh, hello," Amuro says.

Ayumi and Mitsuhiko and Genta burst into view like an explosion of sound and colour.

"Hello, Amuro-san!" Mitsuhiko greets.

"Heheh, Amuro-no-niichan! Hey! You can play the guitar?!" Genta exclaims.

The cheerful expression on Ayumi's features falters when she notices a person missing.

"Hey," says Ayumi, trying to peer around Amuro's shoulder, "I'm Ayumi! This is Genta-kun, and that's Mitsuhiko-kun. What's your name?"

Shin peeks. "S-Shin."

"Nice to meet you, Shin-kun!"

Mitsuhiko and Genta notice the boy hiding behind Amuro. "We're the Detective Boys!" says Genta.

"Wow!" Mitsuhiko notices what Shin is holding. "You play the violin?"

"One of the Kamen Yaiba theme songs has a violin!" says Ayumi.

"Hey," says Genta, "Can you play the Kamen Yaiba theme song?"

Amuro chuckles. "I'm not sure I know that one. Which one is it?"

Just like that, the children burst into lyrics. They sing about strength and power and legendary days. Ayumi injects a bubbly excitement, Genta the powerful, punchy, explosive repetition, and Mitsuhiko makes sure they don't deviate too far from the real order of verses in their enthusiasm.

Amuro watches them thoughtfully, a small smile in his mouth, fingers tapping on the body of his guitar.

"I might be able to do it by ear," he says kindly. "How about you, Shin-kun?"

Shin seems to be the kind of character who wouldn't feel wholly comfortable meeting new people. That's Shin'ichi's excuse for hiding, since Conan does not underestimate the Detective Boys and their ability to accidentally stumble upon things which should remain utterly secret.

Like how Kudou Shin'ichi is currently Edogawa Conan disguised as Kazami Shin and in possession of Furuya Rei's very personal smartphone.

Shin'ichi is about to say no when he takes one glance at the childrens' hopeful faces and his willpower crumbles.

He's not Zero, with enough musical creativity to play anything he likes. Classically trained, Shin'ichi has never truly improvised a score. He's never found scales and arpeggios boring, enjoying the exercises so important to practice. Even the way he holds the instrument has been refined through rigor and repetition to keep his body in alignment.

But Holmes is unafraid to take his observations and experiences and combine them into imagining alternative possibilities. If he considers the song as a series of notes... break it down into an opening, assert his position, reinforce with proof, finish with a conclusion... and find the matching sound...

Shin'ichi lifts the violin to his collar and rests his chin into the best position he can find. The bow slides over the first string and he lets the music lead him. The guitar follows, a second late, and it doesn't take long for Shin'ichi to realise that Amuro is playing random scales and has probably never watched Kamen Yaiba in his life. He can't have done it by ear even if he wants to, it's just another one of his damn bluffs...

But they're in harmony. Shin'ichi feels it flowing through the air, the music creating something new and vivid and unique to this moment, and so do the children. They cheer through the opening instrumental, and gleefully join in when it's time for the words to come on.

Halfway through the second verse, it falls apart. Shin'ichi loses his place. The urge to stop appears, as it always does, whenever a musician makes a mistake. But the guitar is still going, and the children don't look at him. Shin'ichi hovers in this bubble of nothingness, struck with the feeling of being a disguise within a disguise again.

He's not himself.

When Kudou Shin'ichi told his parents he wanted to learn violin, he was following in Holmes's footsteps; Holmes plays the violin as a search for emotion in a world where he lets himself have none. It struck Shin'ichi how Holmes believed a detective must be cold and unemotional, yet he could be allowed to enjoy music like the common folk. The music must have helped Holmes keep back the loneliness.

And all the notes are wrong now. Without Shin'ichi to guide them, the children have been led off-key by Amuro, or Amuro has followed them off-key without knowing. But Shin'ichi listens, and listens, and the original melody is still intact. Shin'ichi hears companionship and the warm strength of being alongside others.

Oh, he thinks, in a moment of absurdity, that's why they added Nyaiba as a new hero to fight alongside Kamen Yaiba.

Clear blue eyes turn to him. Shin'ichi looks at his too-small hands.

Amuro encodes, 'Realise something?'

Shin'ichi... has, and doesn't correct the key when he joins back.

"You played for them because you thought your friend would have," Shin'ichi says to Amuro quietly, after the Detective Boys leave for their next destination so they don't get home too late. "He was the one who met Sera Masumi and taught her how to play, wasn't he?"

"I wondered what it was that made a terrifying expression on your face," Amuro replies instead.

"I didn't think you were the kind of person who takes on others' strengths."

"You have a tendency to play an extra note, did you know that?"

Shin'ichi blinks. Where did that come from?

While Shin'ichi processes the fact that this identifying habit of his playing style is as simple as an extra note, a hand lands on his head, and Zero rubs it.

Zero wins... again.


My dear Holmes,

I must thank you for your cooperation in our endeavours. It seems I have been remiss in keeping from you something of critical importance. Please accept my deepest apologies, and allow me to explain the situation...

[ ... ]


The spring onions have grown in Kazami's apartment. Shin puts his hand beside the shoots and compares them, taking a measurement. This one's become just about two times the length of his hand. Ever since Amuro's visit, Kazami has taken to regrowing with great vigour, and they have enough roots planted at once that they can trim this one down and use it in the rolled egg tomorrow morning.

Kazami turns off the news broadcast playing on his smartphone, gets up to put on his tie, and then joins Conan in switching from slippers to outdoor shoes.

They take two different train lines. Conan crosses a block and gets in the Professor's car which is waiting for him already.

Edogawa Conan arrives at school with Haibara Ai. They meet the other Detective Boys by Genta's shoe locker, gushing over the one time they met Amuro in the park and sung the Kamen Yaiba theme song.

Shin'ichi sees the moment Haibara realises their conversation about this 'Shin' might be referring to him.

"Kudou-kun," she says.

Shin'ichi turns to her, aware of her wisdom, not unwilling to hear her critique.

For some reason, this takes her aback.

"What is it, Haibara?" Shin'ichi asks. "It's not unusual for a chess player to also have an interest in classical instruments, is it?"

They end up in class and take their seats.

Haibara says, "I suppose not."

And she leaves it.


In an unwavering justice deceiving the world

I'll unleash the truth in this hand

[ via Ai no Scenario - Magic Kaito 1412 OP2 ]


When Shin'ichi puts Furuya Rei's phone away, having just bluffed through yet another conversation with Kazami, his Conan phone rings.

"Hello, Ran-neechan?" Edogawa Conan chirps.

"Good morning, Conan-kun!" Ran says, her tone the same false cheer she greets Conan with whenever he returns home after Shin'ichi has said he doesn't know when he'll be back. Conan has always been a very sharp child when it comes to knowing about Ran and Shin'ichi, and his chest grows tight. She still hasn't taken well the news that Shin'ichi has been on a dangerous case for over a year and risked his life every time he's shown up. She knows this truth better than he does: they shouldn't call as a precaution that keeps them both safe and sound.

But nobody has said that she can't talk to Conan.

"Good morning, Ran-neechan," says Conan.

And Conan listens. Ran talks about her exams, about Sonoko, about a mystery that Sera has uncovered, and about her father who is somehow making only a moderate fool of himself on that new contract arranged through his friendship with Okino Youko. She tells him about life without him, and Conan listens and asks questions. And she knows he's not Shin'ichi, he can hear it whenever she forces herself to remember to ask about him, how he's doing, if he's settling well with his father, and her happiness over hearing that he's managing to solve puzzles by himself.

"Well done, Conan-kun!" she says, after he finishes an edited story involving some classmates in the year above. "I would never have thought the sandwich was important!"

"Thank you, Ran-neechan," Conan replies, bashful when it comes to praise from his Ran-neechan.

She cuts the call short as usual, citing the same exams which Hattori's doing and Shin'ichi's left with a phone devoid of sound. A small amount of guilt settles in his mind, knowing Yuusaku paid for his entry into university, now he's talking to Ran.

Shin'ichi shakes it out and returns to his destination: the coin lockers on the Touto Loop Line.

A lot has changed, very quickly. Hard to think, six months ago, that he would be on an errand as a proxy for Furuya Rei while disguised as Kazami Shin, the child whose truth is withheld. Shin'ichi, who has been 'Furuya Rei' for far longer than originally intended, has picked up the way of seeing possessed by public security officers. A delivery truck with countless little boxes is a potential vector for transporting illegal goods. An open garage is a chance that someone could enter a storage room and tamper with supplies. Standard dress is a means where anyone can get themselves access to any location, purely because nobody looks past the uniform.

This is how Zero perceives the world.

He reaches the locker, surrounded by the noise of the subway line, and enters the code sent to his device. The door pops open to reveal a little black pouch. Inside the pouch is a key with a tag hanging off it.

White base.

Shin'ichi makes the usual assessment. 'White' is a colour. And a 'base' is...

Text flashes across his mind. MAISON MOKUBA.

...

This is the key to Furuya Rei's house.


"'Furuya Rei'."

The word comes off like a curse, curling in the air inside the black Porsche 356A, spoken with an idle curiosity which sounds like distaste. Vodka hears it for what it is, however, and is also perhaps the only person who might remember something said off-handedly by Gin without being threatened with his imminent death.

"What's this Furuya, bro?" Vodka asks.

Gin says nothing for a while, staring at his phone. "Nothing," he says. "Rum mentioned he's looking into someone by that name."

"Why not send Bourbon?" says Vodka. "Better than sending Vermouth. Bourbon'll get to the bottom of who this Furuya is, no biggie."

Gin scoffs. "Bourbon is reaching his end."

"He is?"

Silence is the response.

If Vodka is anything, it's two things:

One, he's really damn fucking good at remembering people. Someone's gotta be. See a face, spot a gait, remember it in the shiny catalogue of his mind. Same way Chianti obsessively memorises every vein and artery in living bodies, and Korn can map and identify every single gun part ever manufactured. Vodka's special. It's part of the reason Gin tolerates him.

"Oh hey, it's 'cause he's been suspected of being a NOC too many times, ain't it?" Vodka asks, since the second thing is that he's an absolute loudmouth.

Gin doesn't sigh, but he makes one of his rare grunting sounds that Vodka interprets as his equivalent of that.

"He's on the Executive Path," Gin replies.

Vodka whistles, in the know for that euphemism, and grins.

The two of them are without Vermouth this time, and good for that. Gin has parked the Porsche in a private parking space for maximum visibility of the road and minimum visibility of the car. Today's operation is textbook. A number in a table. A footnote on the accounts. Gin tolerates Vodka's gossip because he knows someone is getting killed, even if it's not him doing the job.

That's when Vodka spots something familiar.

"Bro," Vodka says.

"What?"

"Doesn't that kid look familiar to you, bro?"

It's unfortunate Vodka doesn't remember some things as well as he remembers people, because Gin twitches at the mention of children and Vodka remembers, a bit belatedly, that Vermouth was involved in clearing out the incident where they borrowed the AH-64 Apache without authorisation. Because they didn't have any, Air Traffic Control got pissy about a military helicopter in Tokyo airspace. And since nobody in any useful location noticed they ended up shooting on Touto Tower, Vermouth more than saved Gin's ass, she owns it.

Wait.

"That's him," says Vodka. "I'm sure of it. His walk, it's the same. Bro, that's him, the one on Touto Tower!"

One unblinking crow's eye lands on the stocky gangster. Vodka understands the order and double triple quadruple confirms that the middle school kid walking out of the train station's second entrance is the same kid who was running away from Irish.

Vodka nods.

Gin reaches for the radio and turns it on. "Korn. Kir. Do you see a child? Vodka, description."

Vodka describes.

"I see boy," confirms Korn. "Taking photo. Will send one."

A few seconds later, Gin checks his phone and stares at the image with an intensity that burns.

"Do we kill him?" Kir asks nervously. She's fond of these... children. They've always been her weakness.

"No," says Gin. "Not yet. Follow him, and find where he lives."

"S... Sir?"

"Who knows," Gin smiles, enjoying the way her voice trembles, how she tries not to hesitate; she knows the fate of this child is in his hands, and she's powerless to stop the demise of him. "Irish was up to something before he died. Perhaps he gave the child a keepsake. We should be vigilant."

In Gin-speak, it means: Let's eradicate his life.

Vodka chuckles.

Suddenly a call arrives on Gin's phone from a number that Vodka doesn't recognise. Whoever it is, it makes Gin's smile widen. Gin answers the phone with "It's me," and listens.

He hangs up, crow's eyes glowing with a hidden light.

"Our other insect has been found."

"Insect? Who that?"

"The one with fireworks who interferes with us."

"Oh." Vodka remembers that. Touto Aquarium, Curaçao, that stuff. But they did get authorisation to use the V-22 Osprey that time, Vermouth actually arranged it for them, that was nice.

Vodka sits around as Gin texts somebody, thinking back about how that was nice.

"Wait," says Vodka. "Bro, who is it? How you know that's the guy?"

"Sources that supply materials for those fireworks are limited. Our foolish insect never tried to hide them."

"Right. So you got a contact who was lookin' into the chain, huh."

That's Gin the Executive, alright.

Gin turns the screen so Vodka can see some newspaper photograph of a portly, grinning man. He has grey hair and a conventionally kind face. The face is framed by glasses which would leave scarring if he ever got punched.

The radio is turned on again, and Gin makes the announcement:

"Be quick. Finish up. The next target is Agasa Hiroshi, an inventor in Beika."


A/N: Now we're getting serious. And that wraps up the first arc!

Next Conan's hint: Liars' Palace - Intermission I

Thanks to everyone who's reviewed!