Humans have a lot of different faces which no other creature can imitate to the same degree. Mankind is also a species that relies solely on their vision, so often times they simply only recognize the beauty on the surface and forget about cleaning that filth on the inside. He's no different from that kind of mediocre and tacky people...obsessed with the world of an artist which he made up himself, and to get carried away with so-called perfection and beauty...that truth as fragile as glass and shatters in an instant.
Even now when he faces a difficult situation, he still cannot stop pursuing perfection. He returns back to there. In the morning at a time that the sun hasn't completely risen, a slight light shines on the glass door and sorts of reflects a familiar face. That long pointer finger sets upon the glass and draws out an outline of this person's face in front of him. He slowly witnesses how he puts on a poker face within short notice.
His fingertips pass by the glass display cases, and as his eyes pass by one precious jewel after another he gets deeply drawn in and cannot take his eyes away from them.
Kaito Kuroba puts on a pair of gloves, takes a piece of cloth and starts wiping a white diamond that he carefully places in his hand. Again and again, he just silently wipes every jewel after another and then places them back to their original spot.
Although these jewels aren't all that valuable in terms of price when compared to certain others, they're still precious to Kaito as he started from scratch and collected them throughout these three years.
Three years, who would've known that within three short years all those big events which he used to experience would become a thing of a past so easily and that his life would just return to normal like this. The only thing that he cannot abandon is that obsession with jewels. So for this he still wears a poker face like in the past, and walks through crowds of people by which the fake and genuine cannot be distinguished from one another. At times he would have a drink after another, but he still maintains a clear mind to enjoy every piece of art; as if through them, he could clearly see artisans' souls.
One could still see a fragment of a moon figure in the sky of the daytime. He grabs a laptop hidden behind the display cases, and repeats the procedures as he did days ago and sends an email to Futoumiya:
I may be occupied later in the day, would it be too early to visit Tsukiya-san at this time?
Futoumiya takes a convenient super light and thin laptop from the inner side of his top attire, and quickly responds with: Whatever pleases you.
Upon first glance after closing his computer, Futoumiya sees a middle-aged and somewhat bearded man dressed in dark-blue with a sakura-shaped badge on his collar coming towards him.
"I see that you've never changed your like for black."
Futoumiya who's dressed in black from top to bottom again today just smiles, and then adjusts his sleeves and collar.
This coffee shop that they're in now has a classical beauty to it, such as the elegant english music of the olden days playing in the background and the neutral colors of the decorations along with some cool tints here and there. This kind of store eases any sort of tension and anxiety that anyone would have quite a bit, and their outfits, especially Futoumiya's, wouldn't seem so unusual.
"Well then, thanks for your help." After a somewhat short conversation, Futoumiya leaves an envelope that has quite some width to it and then leaves.
When he arrives at the psychological consultation clinic, the client's already seated on The Dream Exploring Machine and has entered light sleep.
This time, the client has a special request, and that's to reduce the time that it takes as much as possible so that it doesn't affect his work today.
Unlike Tsukiya, after hearing about this, Futoumiya doesn't smile. He just hopes that the client prepared himself for this.
A jail of wild black grasses, the difficulty breathing in deep seas, those sharp objects which passed through his limbs, that aquamarine light currents, and those invisible chains...one after another do they wrap around and entangle, and torture his body until all that's left before his eyes is just a world where only black and white intercross with each other.
He struggles to try to get up, yet he cannot escape the pull of gravity. He struggles and eventually opens his eyes, yet barely could he fight against that dreadful white light shining in his eyes. The only way he could move forward is by crawling on the ground with his eyes shut.
With no knowledge of how long he crawled for, he has already reached his limit and used up all of his strength. Yet whenever he feels like stopping, he could always feel some electrical currents awaiting.
Suddenly two hands press down on his back and force him to stop. Countless currents pass through his body all at once.
He feels that there's someone pulling him by his hands and dragging him as he walks. He slowly opens his eyes to see that it's that professor.
With no idea why, those hands feel sort of cold despite there's a pair of gloves on them. He could sort of feel that this coldness doesn't come from the gloves but rather the body temperature of the professor himself. When he thinks of this, the professor turns his head and looks at him dead in the eye; however, still with no expression on his face. Suddenly, it seems as if the surrounding light starts darkening. As for those hands that dragged him and this expressionless person before his eyes, it all becomes tiny pieces scattered around in an instant.
A chaotic jumble of disorderly music bursts out and leaves him with no choice but to cover his ears. The next second a large gust of wind comes by and cuts his body as if with hundreds of sharp knives, leaving many wounds behind. Then violent wild gusts of wind come from all directions, ripping the skin and flesh from moment to moment to fill the air with a bloody smell. After the winds have passed, those scattered pieces connect together again, and soon a human figure stands straight and tall to walk before his eyes. That person presses down a button, and countless currents gather up using his body as the center. He then quickly falls asleep in the dark.
He awakes in screaming. Tsukiya and others come and hurriedly undo the machinery equipped on him. Then Mai takes out a white handkerchief to wipe away the sweat on his face, and then hands him a cup of water.
He thanks Mai and then quickly devours that cup of water despite the fact that the pace of his breathing hasn't returned to normal. With that, he picks up a light jacket and walks out of the lab with Futoumiya silently following behind him.
Although the client appears to be pretty worn out, he takes pretty stable steps with no trace of daze. This is in fact beyond what Futoumiya anticipated.
Futoumiya knows very well that the intensity of The Dream Exploring Machine will vary depending on the user's mental condition. After all, it was invented during the time that Tsukiya was involved in Tahou's experiments.
In order to speed up the dream, either stop the dream midway when time's up or increase stimulation of the cerebral cortex, which means increasing the intensity of the electrical current itself. Maybe it wouldn't cause any problems if the user happens to be someone else, yet because the client himself has great stress, therefore he always has stressful dreams in which reality is mixed into fake imagination. From what appeared in the dream that the client just had, there's no doubt that they did increase the intensity of stimulation towards the cerebral cortex, which happens to also increase the intensity of the feeling of pain in the dream.
The amount of electrical current that they originally used wouldn't cause any damage to the human body, and there's definitely a limit to increasing the intensity so that the user's life wouldn't be harmed. Yet, when it gets to a certain amount it'll still cause some burden to the user. Within short time, the user's mind will be very active. Afterwards, there'll be a significant decrease in stamina, along with some other possible side effects.
Even after being informed of these things, the client still decided to go with it. Hopefully such determination will help them accomplish their wish quickly—
Under dim light, the bit of light from the computer flashes on Haibara's face. She speedily types away on the keyboard and clicks with the mouse. Using a speed that the average person cannot compare to, she sorts out the data that Tsukiya sent her along with the data that she originally collected and documented.
As she sorts it out, she starts frowning. These days, she has been analyzing the data day and night. She has viewed it several times, a couple of tens if not over a hundred times by now. Haibara could literally claim that she knows everything by heart, yet she still feels as if there's something that isn't quite right, as if there's something that's—
"Professor Suzukawa of UTokyo...well no, there hasn't been any traces of him lately." The officer who's responsible for this case was wondering why Inspector Kudo came to him, until he heard him say "Todai". With that, the officer doesn't think much more about motives, he just hands the info to the Inspector.
After all, Inspector Kudo graduated from UTokyo himself. Not to say if he was a student of Suzukawa's by any chance, this professor does happen to be a pretty important figure at the university, and so it does make sense that the Inspector would come looking through the files of this missing person case immediately upon returning to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
As he sit down at his office desk and flips through the case file, he sort of starts frowning as he lightly bites down on his lower lip. He had already read the info in the case file before.
Yet when he returns, he discovers that they really haven't made much new progress, and if there is progress it's really not anything that's all that important. There's nothing really worth examining, and so he closes the file and lets out a sigh. He decides to turn his attention to another direction for investigation.
In a fully lighted interrogation room enclosed by four walls, there doesn't seem to be much decoration of any sort in this small space. There's only a desk, two chairs, and a desk lamp that's not turned on. Normally it would appear to be quite empty.
And now, there's a cuffed up criminal to add to this room. Some extra beard has grown on his face since he came a few days ago. He shows his refusal to cooperate by putting his head down the entire time. Sitting across from the criminal is an awfully frustrated newbie officer scratching his head as he faces a blank notepad.
Kudo walks into the room without making a sound, takes a glance at the officer s notepad, takes a pat on his shoulder and tells him to go back for now.
"Well, aren't you stubborn," Kuroba poses like Futoumiya and says so with a smiling poker face.
Upon hearing this voice, the criminal starts to sweat cold sweat. He lifts his head up to see that it's indeed the leader from that night.
"Now, no need to be so nervous, Mr. Imposter." As Kuroba says so, he looks the criminal dead in the eye. Every word, every sentence that Kuroba says, along with those pauses, they all seem to poke fun at him.
"You..."
Kuroba doesn't wait for Mr. Imposter to finish. Kuroba just stands up, drags the chair with him, and sits down next to Mr. Imposter.
"Relax," says Kudo with a stern face, "we don't mean any harm."
Not only does this not help the man relax, in fact that change in the tone gives him the heebee jeebees. Another thing that the man doesn't get, is the fact that there's only two people in the room including him, yet this guy happens to have used "we" when he spoke.
It annoys him a lot that he can't control the fact that he's actually trying to avoid looking at this guy's eyes because he's afraid of him. In fact, he feels a chill behind his back when he does look at those eyes, as if they can see through everything.
"What's the matter?" As Kuroba starts getting closer to him, he can't help but move more and more to the side until he ultimately falls and sits onto the ground.
"Are you alright?" Kudo reaches out his hand, yet the man moves back a little more.
"Such a scaredy-cat. It's not like I'm gonna eat you or something."
"You...it's just like that night..."
Along with that surprise which shows on his face, is a few seconds of silence. "Hey you, tell me about what it was like that night!" He raises his voice a little and grabs the man by his shirt to stare into his eyes directly so that those eyes have no chance of escaping like they had been.
Him now isn't an Inspector who's questioning a criminal like he normally is, all calm and everything, but instead he's a beast ready to rip apart the prey that he captured. He's not a piece on a game board with little use, but rather a fierce soldier who charges bravely.