Black, this time all he could see after opening his eyes is just one black blob after another. When he waves his hand, he discovers that these blobs which can flow actually aren't completely black but are somewhat transparent. Also, they're not completely fluid nor are they completely solid.
Consciousness suddenly travels through these black blobs and connects with the person on the other side. The black blobs become more and more transparent, until the naked eye sees that they became gray blobs.
He moves his hand inwards until it's in front of his face. When he takes a closer look, there appears to be no hue of human skin; no, to be more exact, there's no hue at all. He appears to be in a black and white world, without any other colors decorating it. Neither are there any other people's existence; it's just himself, him who somehow got trapped here.
All of a sudden, his hand uncontrollably stretches out with him having no idea of where his body would be taken.
His fingertips start to overlap and connect with the other person's, until their bodies fuse together. His vision darkens more and more—
He arrives at that deep sea again. This time when he waves his hand, he can see a black silhouette.
It's just like when he first dreamt of this place, the only difference is that there's no difficulty breathing nor is there pain with the ears. There's also some green dots of light floating around like fireflies.
These dots of light distributed in the sea gradually increase—until many thin currents of green light start to randomly appear and randomly connect those dots of light every second.
Suddenly there's a current coming towards him, yet he has no way of dodging it. That current merely scratches the side of his face and leaves a slight pain.
A few seconds later, those light currents all pass through him in an instant. They mercilessly stab every part of his body every moment, as if—
He wakes up with his whole body sweating, yet he feels the chills from head to toe. The same images keep reappearing in his mind, torturing him as he's constantly reminded of the lab.
"I see you've finally woken up, Mr. Detective," she says sarcastically with a calm tone.
Having no idea when she came in, he rubs his eyes and proceeds to see that there's a plump old man standing behind her.
"The door wasn't closed. Hakase and I were wondering what could've happened."
"Ah-haha, is that so..."
After hearing that, Ai Haibara kind of frowns a little. "So, what it is this time?" Then she crosses her arms as a sign that she has no intention of chit-chatting.
First of all, there hasn't been anyone living in the Kudo Residence for quite some time now. Second of all, Kudo's parents have not returned. Third of all, Mrs. Kudo did not come here with him. Fourth of all, the way that Mr. Detective speaks is just downright unusual and ingenuine, so there must be something that he wants to discuss and work out with them.
But Haibara doesn't get it. As an Inspector, Kudo-kun has plenty of resources and people to use. Not to mention, normally he's so busy that he rarely ever gets this type of spare time. What could it be? What's so important to the point that Kudo finds it worthy for him to spend his valuable time to wait until now when they just came back?
"Well, you see, the thing is that..."
After having listened to what seems like Mr. Detective's nonsense talk, Hakase is just straight up dumbfounded to the point where he doesn't know what to say. As for Haibara next to him, she just calmly states: "Huh? I'm pretty sure today isn t April Fools'."
"Haibara-san, Agasa-hakase, though I don't wanna admit it either, but everything that Kudo just said is true."
This person standing before their very eyes has the face of Kudo, and it's Kudo's voice that they hear when he opens his mouth to speak. Except, there's a slight variation in the way that he speaks that's unfamiliar and makes them feel as if it's a stranger.
Hakase still chooses to keep quiet, until when Haibara pulls him to the side does he whisper: "Well, there have been more than just one or two unimaginable things that have happened to Shinichi."
After hearing what Hakase said, Haibara got over her suspicion. After all, how she came about to get to know Kudo did have to do with that insane experiment of the Black Organization. If it wasn't for Akemi-neesan's sacrifice, if it wasn't for Kudo and many other forces, to what degree would their experiment have gotten to? She dares not to imagine.
Besides, he's so busy that he wouldn't have the time to joke around with them anyway. Not to mention, no matter how full of imagination he is, it wouldn't be to this degree.
So Haibara takes a trip to next-doors and comes back with a box while also wearing a pair of latex gloves. She sits down, puts a small pillow on the table, and then puts something on a Q-tip cotton swab.
"Sit down, then reach your hand out like this." Her palm faces up, and she lays her arm on top of the small pillow.
"Wait a second." He followed Haibara s instructions, but when she starts rubbing his arm with the Q-tip, that worried voice slips out just like that. "Nothing to worry about, it's just collecting some blood as a DNA sample," he says in the other much calmer voice.
Haibara doesn't say anything. She just returns the equipment back to the box, puts a bandage on him, applies some medicine to his hands, and then wraps them with some gauze wrap.
The occurrences before their very eyes leave them no choice but to accept reality, which is that there are two people and not just one individual, not just Shinichi Kudo, living inside his body now. Although they have no idea what kind of background the other person came from, but his family must be worried sick about him now.
"Kuroba-san, your family..." Seeing his friend whom he had known for year like this, all of a sudden Hakase just didn't know what to say.
"I'll contact them later, the most important thing now is to find that professor."
If it's allowed, Kaito would rather not tell Aoko anything. He's often not home anyway. Aoko's very used to that. If he gets in contact with Aoko, that means that he has to come up with another reason to lie to her, otherwise if he doesn't tell her something that sounds like the real deal then there's no way she wouldn't worry. All Kaito wants now is to get back to his original body and go home, even if it means Aoko's gonna beat the crap outta him. He really...really doesn't wanna lie to her anymore.
Although Shinichi doesn't really agree with Kaito's train of thought, but he understands this sort of feeling, so he doesn't even try to persuade him.
"I'm afraid that unfortunately, this case isn't as simple as finding where Shinsanrou Suzukawa is. This man knows exactly what he's doing, so his disappearance must have been meticulously calculated."
However, he still has to give a little reminder; facing off against such a malicious experiment of the degree of human merging must be a long hard battle, no matter if they consider it from a personal perspective or not.
"By the way, have you guys thought of it?"
"Thought of what?"
"You guys are now essentially equivalent to a relatively successful experimental body, so will that professor really just let you guys off the hook so easily?"
Haibara has no interest for solving cases and mysteries and detective stuff, but the way that professor chose to handle this seems beyond unusual, so she had to say something.
"Yeah, I've thought about it, but I don't have an answer as to what his objective is."
Haibara understands that they want to first find Suzukawa and then figure out these details, but somehow she has a bad feeling.
The Kudo now is still the Kudo from before, but he is more than just himself. In the same way, that Suzukawa is a Professor of Cell and Molecular Bioscience, yet he's way more than a regular professor.
"If we contact the Public Safety Bureau..." he says while he holds his chin with his hand and thinks. "We cannot." With that being said, the whole atmosphere chills down. "I mean, they would think that we're crazy," he adds on after realizing that there's two more people involved with the discussion.
"..." All of a sudden, Kudo didn t know what to say. "It was only an idea."
It's definitely beneficial to use the power of the police, but those authorities above him would indeed suspect something going on and thus demand a reason. With Kudo's credibility, it wouldn't really be that big of a deal if he doesn't explain the details. Besides, he already made a copy of information related to Suzukawa, and it's not like the police would leave a missing person case unattended; although, they might not care for the case as much as others. Those normal investigation procedures would still go on.
After all, now they're one person, so Kudo has to respect Kuroba's opinion and find another way to further investigate.
"If we go to the FBI or CIA..."
"They might be able to pull out files on cases and events relating to genomics studies, but after all they are American agencies. The information that a few members can provide wouldn't help much anyway." This time, it's Haibara who turns down Hakase's suggestion.
If he can't contact the police and tell them the specifics, and his old friends from FBI and CIA may not provide much help, then what should he do?
The more that Kudo thinks of how to successfully investigate Suzukawa under this sort of situation, the more his brain hurts. He can't let Kuroba know too much, but he also can't just do nothing and let everything stay this way.
"Don't forget that we're one, I know everything that you're thinking about," Kuroba thinks.
"...Gotcha."
Kaito Kuroba suddenly recalls that he can pick out any memory as he likes from the memory bank of this body, and so he got the memory relating to an organization which takes the middle grounds and has no official name.
"*Tahou*...?" Kudo sighs. Of course, under this type of condition there's nothing he can hide from Kuroba. "In the end, guess they're our only choice."
"It's the solution when you don't have a solution, but I have to warn you," with that being said, Haibara pauses for a second, "don't trust them too much." Haibara leaves one last sentence for Kudo and Kuroba when she took the equipment and sample back along with Hakase.
After the door closes, in this large Kudo Residence there is nothing else but shelves of books, traditional western styled furniture, the golden sunlight which shines through the windows, and him. It seems, as a matter of fact, rather lonely.
He is the owner of this residence, but he is also a stranger who came here for the first time and has stayed here for not even twenty-four hours yet. But as a stranger, he very naturally walks towards that telephone that still works which he didn't even know existed and actually still works, and phones a most familiar yet unfamiliar phone number.
On the other end of the phone call, there's no one to answer. The sound of "beep" erases everything that he was thinking of saying. Shinichi sees Kaito like this and has a slight urge to help him say it, but then he thinks and reaches the conclusion that a message by Kaito himself is the best choice.
"Hey, Aoko..." Kaito says after thinking for some time, "it's me. I may not be able to go home for a few days. I'll have you and them look after the store for me. You..." As if a fishbone is stuck in his throat, he suddenly doesn't know how to use words to convey his feelings at this moment. "Remember to take good care of yourself."
It was a very typical message, yet it was as painful as the moment before swallowing down the last breath, as if they would never see each other again.
"Not gonna try calling her cell phone?" After Shinichi says this, a number appears in their mind yet instantly disappears. "Nope. Also, I want to make an agreement with you."
Their bodies had already been merged together into one at that time, yet even if their thoughts start to synchronize, there has always been always two free individual consciousnesses. Therefore, if they can avoid reading each other's private memories then they will, for it's the most basic respect.
They have no other choice but to believe in each other and cooperate.
With every hit of the fingertips do the keys of the keyboard and the mouse make a sound. He just now realizes that what's on the screen before his very eyes is a totally different email system than what he's used to. He sees his fingers very accustomed to typing out a series of numbers which appear to be a password that he's not familiar with at all. After a few seconds to load, there's only one person in the contacts list by the name of "T20-F". He thinks for a while, around twenty seconds, to formulate his wording. When he's done, he looks at the timer in the top right which reads only thirty-nine seconds, and quickly types out a few lines.
Very important, I have an offer that you must accept.
I would like to talk to you in person. You decide the place, time, and amount.
Please schedule the meeting during these two or three days. The quicker the better.
—P4869
That flashing light on the computer screen, somehow feels familiar to him.
Within two minutes, he receives a reply: Tokyo Tsukiya Psychological Consultation Clinic, you're welcome to come whenever.
It has only been a short twenty seconds after clicking to see the reply, the screen has already returned to the default homepage like when he opened the web browser in the beginning.
The way they function is still the same, so annoying and frustrating.
*Tahou means other side, which refers to the fact that this organization doesn't really take a side. Also, as said in this chapter, one can say that they take the middle grounds.