Only upon seeing that the man seems to have trouble breathing does he calm down and release him.
"Who are you..." the man says lightly.
"What a coincidence," he says as he pulls the chair towards himself and sits on top of it again, "that's exactly what I want to ask you."
The man stays on the ground and a sly grin appears on his face. "So this is how you cops aka the good people treat criminals...not any different from how we do it." Somehow this fact reassures him and makes him feel a little better.
The light suddenly flashes on and off for a few seconds. There's now a sharper look in his eyes as he asks: "are you a member of that organization looking for the Pandora gem?" As if it can help him to see many of those who he hates in one person.
The smile on the man's face suddenly disappears. Without knowing who the heck this guy is, he shouldn't just give a response right away. Otherwise, it might cause him serious trouble as with the possibility of death. There's no time for him to get carried away with memories.
"Does it matter if I am or not?"
"Who knew that those lowly rascals hadn't been fully wiped out yet." There's no emotion to his voice at all.
The man doesn't answer. He manages to get up by himself despite being hand-cuffed, and sits back on the chair.
"What do you want from impersonation Kid?" says Kudo calmly.
"That outfit of his is pretty nice. I just wanted to try it on and see how it feels like to be The Great Phantom Thief."
He sets his legs on the table sort of crossed with his right on top of his left. There's a sense of scorn to his tone.
Kudo doesn't say anything. He reaches in the inner side of his coat to search for something. At this time, the light flashes on and off again, and along with the flashing of the light is the "thump", the sound of his heart pumping. Then the interrogation room completely darkens. Light from outside the room travels in through the seam of the window, as if out of all places in the police department, the open place where this strange occurrence exists is this room that they're in.
Maybe this type of thing happens to be just a coincidence, but this still causes his heart to pump at a faster rate.
Then the lighting returns to normal. Kudo holds up a pen in his right hand while he uses his left to flip open the notepad on his lap. Then he picks up the notepad and writes something.
"If you're unwilling to cooperate then fine," he says coldly, "but..." The corner of his lips goes up a little in angle, as if he's smiling. "What would be your fate," he says with a sarcastic tone, bites down on the top of the pen, and then removes it from his mouth to say: "when it comes time, the sentencing won't be any lighter." With that, Kudo writes some more on the notepad and then lifts his head to stare straight at the man. That coldness coming from those eyes instantly travel through the man and forces cold sweat to drip down his face.
He originally thought that this young man in front of his very eyes now was just a normal small leader, no different from those useless police officers who always got fooled by the real Kid, otherwise this lad wouldn't have fallen into his trap the first time. If it wasn't for the uncertainty in the instructions, then he would have just finished them off by firing the gun with real bullets and let the lad say goodbye with this world a long time ago. Who knew that a few days of rest in the hospital could have transformed a weak and scholarly-looking young lad into a fearless experienced elite.
"So you wanna know what it was like that night." Hearing this, Kudo Kuroba's ears prick up and he pretty much holds his breath as he awaits for the continuation. "Release me," says the man who then pauses for a while to examine the look on his face, which happens to be a frown, "what if I request so?"
The test doesn't end up with a result that the man expected. Instead, all Kudo Kuroba does is just lightly laugh a little, whereas the man suddenly laughs out loud as if he amused himself.
He puts the notepad on the table and then stands up to start circling around the table and the mand as he holds his chin, thinking of something.
After he goes around for a minute, the man feels a little uncomfortable. "Hey, I m begging you to stop." As he says so, he closes his eyes for a while and pinches the philtrum.
"Sorry," he says as his pats the man's shoulder. "I was just thinking," as he says so, he leans closer to the man and lightly speaks right into his ear: "what kinds of training methods do The Organization use?"
"Huh?"
"Speaking of which, I don't even know what to call you. You won't mind that I call you Mr. Imposter, will you?"
The light starts flashing again. Mr. Imposter blinks a few times unconsciously. All sorts of sounds from the outside along with the sound of the air conditioner travel into his ear. The sound of human talking, machine functioning, typing...all sorts of things that he didn't pay attention to now all of a sudden magnify many times larger when he closes his eyes.
He opens his eyes and cannot control himself but to let out a sneeze. The edges of his sight slightly blur a little.
"Imposter...Kid-san," as he says so, he holds up a monocle in his left hand, "do you still remember this?"
The fake Kid rubs his eyes and then takes a close look at that thing. Kuroba then pulls out another monocle and loosens his fingers a little. The two monocles start swinging with the movement of his hand, and the brightness of the room sort of goes down.
Mr. Imposter decides to close his eyes, but after some time he opens them again to turn his head in some other direction and shift his focus somewhere else. The lad also moves with him and follows his eyes wherever they go. This is when he takes notice of the lad's eyes, that pair of sharp eyes which he cannot escape. As if possessed by some sort of magical power, he cannot help but get drawn into those eyes.
"Answer me." The only thing that can travel into those covered ears is the emotionless and calm voice of a man—
The man awakes with sound of fingers snapping. Kudo opens the door and walks out, whereas two officers have to come to take him out. "Thanks for your help," says Kudo Kuroba with a smile on the face while standing by the doorway, "Zoukai Takahashi-san."
Takahashi's eyes are wide open in surprise, yet he has no words to speak as he's dragged back to his prison cell.
Kudo has taken a few classes related to hypnotism in the past, except he has never successfully learned it and used it on any criminals. The good thing is that before coming back today in the morning, he consulted with Tsukiya and was able to get a tiny amount of an anaesthetic which has no color and no smell and takes effect as time goes by and it dissipates.
Everything that just happened, he was here to see it all. Kudo was pretty impressed by Kuroba for that fact that he was able to get the gist of hypnotism in those few minutes. That is to say, Kuroba's foundation as a magician did help him quite a bit.
The way that magic works requires the magician to use the skill of his hands and tools to get people's attention in order to accomplish the best visual effect, in other words an illusion. Today, all he did was just use his skills to accomplish something similar, hypnosis, by adding some difficulty on top of visual effect by playing with the man's consciousness. Speaking of which, it's sort of ironic that Mr. Imposter seemed to be the most comfortable under the condition in which he was on guard and watched out for everything. Yet the level's not there. Mr. Imposter was cautious of his movements and words, but he forgot to think of the real goal beyond having him being cautious of certain actions which involved body contact.
But as he suspected, Takahashi happens to be just a low-ranking member, a bait that The Organization threw out to lure out Kaitou Kid. And now, he's just a piece that they threw away. However, this thrown-away piece does make a point with comments like: "physical and mental agility of that which can compare to members of The Organization", "instantaneous change of tone and character", "the persistence of a maniac", "and that fearsome force which scares the crap out of people", etc. All of this indeed describe this body which doesn't belong to just oneself, this body that seems to have been strengthened through an experiment and is also feared by himself—
It's three in the morning, not many people or cars are active even on the streets of the city in the dark night. Except starting from the second street after he leaves the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, there would always be the sound of another car's engine behind them. Stopping before a red light, he takes a look at the rearview mirror and sees that black car exposed under the street light with some distance away. Like he thought, it's the first-party.
They drive pass more roads which no longer have any pedestrians on them. Every time they stop, sleepiness begins to dominate and so the way they keep awake is with a pinch on the arm.
There's no communication throughout the whole way since just concentrating on driving wastes them enough energy. It's a good thing that it only takes close to thirty minutes to get to the clinic.
It may be that this time is hard to stay awake for anyone, on the way to the lab, surprisingly Futoumiya appears to be wandering off somewhere else in his mind instead of being focused on what's going on here. This happens to be quite interesting to him, to think that a man like this would show his weakness so easily.
It may be that he's way too tired now, this time it doesn't take long for him to far asleep compared to all the other times in the lab.
Before he falls asleep completely, he takes a look at Futoumiya. To tell the truth, it's not that Futoumiya appears to be all that tired, but he cannot tell what secrets are hidden behind that mask—
Warm sunlight shines on his body. It reads eleven exactly on the watch worn on his left wrist, so he knocks on the door before his eyes.
Hearing "please come in", he puts on that poker face which a magician is the best at.
"Relax." Maybe it s because Professor Suzukawa realizes the fact that Kuroba doesn't feel all that at ease, after ten minutes of interviewing, he suddenly just tells him this.
Another five minutes pass by, and he his consciousness is already in a haze.
The only thing that he can feel, is the fact that cold hands drag him on the cold floor by the hand while he has no way of even struggling—
Originally he was thinking that after all these years, there should be many crowds of people of whom he's not familiar with, but when he gets here does he realize that now should be summer vacation, so it makes total sense to feel that there's something missing from the schoolyards and that it's rather silent.
It's exactly noon. With no caution at all, Kudo begins the interview with Professor Suzukawa sitting across from him. Just three minutes into the interview, the way that this professor speaks gets deeply ingrained into his mind, so monotone and boring. As if being hypnotized by this type of voice, he eventually goes unconscious—
Aquamarine currents surround his whole body. It's just the screaming of him and the other person which echoes in the lab.
After the currents have stopped, they're no longer physical individuals. Suzukawa removes the protection mask to reveal an expressionless face. As if there's another mask behind the mask that he'll never be able to see through—
Four in the morning, he has already escaped from dreamland despite the fact that he still feels a little sleepy. The only thing that's clearly imprinted in his mind, are their masks, those masks of human skin which cannot be destroyed even if ripped thousands of times.
He returns to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and walks before that mirror of truth again to trace the outline of the person before his eyes and recall that day.
It seems as if his masks also cannot be removed—because they live in his heart, even if that piece of human skin on his face is ripped until it's just a blur of bloody flesh.
"Mirror, oh mirror," he says as he looks into the person reflected onto the mirror, "did I choose this face, or did this face choose me?" He himself starts laughing immediately after saying so.
Silverish white moonlight shines in, he arranges his hair a little bit and then his hand moves to cover half of his face up. He smiles bitterly, and at this moment a thought appears as he faces the mirror.
Maybe, it's not all that hard to see through a mask, but do people really want to?
Probably not.