File One Hundred and Fifty-One: A False Memory
All in all, Conan reckoned that things could definitely have gone much better.
If the suspect killing himself and foiling any of their plans to figure out Takagi's had somehow not been enough, the boy soon found out that everything in his life could, and would, get worse whenever possible. Therefore, if he was forced to sit through a helicopter trip back to Beika with their hands empty, destiny would make sure it was close to a stern, scolding Sato.
Maybe it worked as a sort of coping mechanism for her, a welcome distraction from the thoughts of nefarious nature regarding her beloved Takagi, probably running wild within her mind right now. He didn't know, and certainly, it didn't make it better for him.
Especially when he had to pretend that he wasn't by any means uncomfortable with his situation, flying a few several hundred feet above ground. Granted, he guessed he had gotten a little better after that exposure therapy KID had unwittingly put him during that terrorist attack back in the day ─ that one, the one where he had been forced to jump off a helicopter and right onto a flying blimp? He surely wouldn't forget that.
In any case, he was now getting better at it ─ better, as in, not paralyzed in fear whenever heights were involved. Even looking down was hard ─ had been, as in when he had awed at the scenery below in an attempt to play the innocent child with Sato. But now that there was no killer expecting them at their destination, and the adrenaline had long vacated his blood stream, well, he kinda felt like passing out.
Internally, because there was no way he was telling Sato and earning yet another scolding for getting regardless of his strange… aversion, so to say.
"Well, well, look at who finally showed up!"
A refreshing, heartwarming welcome from his friends had clearly been what he'd needed.
What would I do without you guys? he thought sarcastically, watching as they crowded in front of him, frowns of various intensities carved on each of their faces.
"Geez, Conan-kun!" Even the polite, docile Mitsuhiko was irritated by him. Should he be proud of his accomplishment or worried about the consequences? Again, Conan had no clue. "You can't just run off like that!"
"Yeah, yeah!" Genta agreed loudly, empathetically nodding his head from behind his friend. "You can't have all the fun for yourself!"
In return, Mitsuhiko turned to look at him. Genta stared back, blinking.
"I meant it was dangerous, Genta-kun."
"Oh… I suppose that's right, too."
Mitsuhiko looked as if he wanted to sigh, but Conan wanted to argue that it was his right to do so.
But ultimately, it was Ayumi who huffed, stepping ahead of the duo to hand him something. "You dropped this," she explained, and ever so hesitantly, Conan accepted it.
It was his bag, the one he remembered having discarded somewhere to be cared about later. He had expected to find it on the place where he had left it, or having to question the entire police force in order to find who had picked it up. He supposed it was nice that he didn't have to go through all of that.
"Thanks," he said, then stared. "How come you guys have your bags, too?"
He hadn't noticed when he got there, but he supposed he had been too immersed in the case to notice. That probably was his cue to pay more attention.
"We run into trouble almost every day when we step out of our homes," Mitsuhiko said with a smile that did not correlate with his words. "We thought we should be prepared, just in case."
"There's literally a bag of chips peeking out of Genta's backpack."
With a jump, Genta brought his bag to the front, then stared back in confusion when he found nothing of such.
Conan didn't even blink as he told him, "So you do have one."
"Well, I don't… have one."
An awkward chuckle soon morphed into a sheepish smile, and before Conan could raise his eyebrow, Genta had already broken off in laughter. Mitsuhiko soon joined in, and Ayumi as well, who giggled lightly under her hand.
Colorful dolphins bumped against each other, like they were joining in that brief, carefree moment that another set of eyes watched so intently, a few steps back.
Such was the presence Ayumi did not take long to notice, her eyes growing wide as a testament of her bewilderment.
"Hold on," she began, slightly out of breath. "Isn't that Honda-kun behind you, Conan-kun?!"
"No, that's his evil clone," he said plainly. He eyed Genta, and added, "That was a joke, too, for the record."
Genta shot him a nasty glare in return. "You sure don't need a clone to be evil."
Rather than taking offense at that, Conan accepted it with a smirk. He'd take the compliment, thank you.
"The kid who was also kidnapped!" Mitsuhiko suddenly recalled with a gasp. "Are you okay?!"
Honda nodded timidly. "Thanks to Takagi-san," he whispered.
"Thanks to Detective Takagi?" Ayumi echoed, confused.
It was of no use to listen through the whole story again, so Conan decided to let his friends space and time to be filled in. He had spotted Inspector Megure crowding with a few other police members in front of a computer screen.
It wouldn't hurt to take a look, right?
He didn't wait for his mind to prepare an answer, and was already in motion before anything else ─ blinking innocent eyes at what appeared to be the image of Takagi, and a black bird resting in between his shoulder blades.
"A crow?" he muttered.
Then immediately realized that, no, it wasn't just a crow. Normal crows did not have a gray neck.
In any case, it had Megure turning around. Started, as if he had somehow missed him being there behind him ─ which Conan wouldn't doubt for a second. The inspector's attention was all over the place today.
He understood that he must be going through a mental chaos of his own right now ─ Megure was the kind of man that would care for the life of his coworkers as though they were family. But he needed to take a hold of himself.
Eventually, he calmed down enough to explain. "It's from Takagi-kun's recording," he said, as if that wasn't obvious at first sight. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, presumably where the rest of his detective club was gathered, and added, "Those kids wanted to take a look at it, but…"
Conan hummed, casting one last, long look at the monitor before commenting, "So it is Hokkaido after all, huh?"
As the room shifted and all gazes stabbed into his small form, Conan deeply regretted having opened his mouth at all.
Especially when that man was still there, watching him from afar.
"Look at its neck ─ it's gray, right?" he explained. "I'm pretty sure that's-"
"A western jackdaw."
Certainly, the small detective hadn't expected to get his words stolen right from his mouth. Even less had he expected that person to be Honda ─ standing a little behind, a severe frown etched in his usually soft features.
"Huh," Conan said, not bothering to hide his surprise. "Didn't expect you to be this knowledgeable about birds."
"I wouldn't say 'knowledgeable'," Honda replied with a shy little smile on his lips. "But I've always had a strange fascination with crows."
Conan pretended not to notice how his skin had spontaneously started crawling.
He simply opted to cross his arms, hoping that Ayumi's already searching gaze didn't notice it was but a camouflaged attempt to retain the body warmth that had suddenly decided to evacuate the premises.
"Nice!" Chiba suddenly exclaimed, grinning at the tablet with the streaming.
"What's going on?" Sato was quick to join him, her hopeful gaze falling on the screen as well.
"Takagi-san's been moving all the while since yesterday," he explained. "I thought he was moving about because he was uncomfortable, but actually, he was trying to cut the rope at his feet using the corner edge of the board."
And now it appeared that he had succeeded, judging by their faces. Conan felt himself breathing out, relieved. At least equilibrium, or lack thereof, wouldn't be a problem now.
The poor guy was probably closer to a heat stroke than Conan to witnessing his next murder case. Hopefully that wouldn't be Takagi, live for their own entertainment. Dizziness and delirium did not go well with post-mortem murderers, especially with those that liked to hang people like this one.
"What is he doing with his leg?" Sato wondered out loud.
"He seems to be pulling the sheet covering the board towards him," Chiba replied, and a brief glance at the screen confirmed that, indeed, that was all Takagi was doing. "If he covers himself with it, he could shield himself from the sunlight."
Although it sounded like a sensible plan for Conan, there was a part of him that argued that something was not right. For he could not think of a single reason why there would be a sheet there, to begin with.
A sheet, arbitrarily placed in the plank, just a few inches from Detective Takagi's feet. It obviously hadn't been there because the culprit had a sudden change of heart and wanted to help him somehow, or he would have, I don't know, maybe helped him down without killing him?
What other reason could there be for a sheet? Hiding something from us, was his first thought. What could he have been hiding-?
Conan's eyes snapped open with the memory that suddenly popped in. There, in the culprit's house, the proof of his Plan B he thankfully did not go through…
"No way, he dropped it!"
"Maybe he wants someone to notice the sound of the sheet falling?"
He did not want to look at the screen ─ he did not want to see it, the proof that he was right-
"Wait a second! What is that?!"
Sato's bewildered, low-key terrified, yelling sort of confirmed it before he was forced to look ─ at both Takagi's palling face as he realized that there was a bomb taped to the plank, threatening to eradicate him from existence in just a split of a second.
Tomorrow, according to Shiratori, would be the day ─ when the clock struck 10PM, it would be the second anniversary of Natalie's suicide. It didn't take a tremendous leap of logic to figure out that they had less than eighteen hours to do something, lest they wanted to bid goodbye to that unlucky detective through a cheap tablet screen.
Needless to say, Sato looked a moment away from breaking down. Conan wasn't sure if it was that obvious at first glance, or if he could see it, because he knew she was feeling that way.
"Hold on!" Chiba's yelling broke through again. "The masking tape securing the bomb is about to peel off, and it looks like it's about to fall off any minute now!"
Sato seemed to be about to jump into the screen at any moment's notice. "Takagi-kun," she murmured, biting her lip.
"Don't worry. Takagi-san has realized it, and he's trying to drop it with his feet-"
And then proceeded to watch as the kidnapped detective promptly picked it up with his feet and carefully put it back on the board.
More than once Conan had wished to be wrong on his deductions. Though now he was starting to wonder how exhausting it must be, being so consistently wrong like Chiba was being right now.
He knew better than asking.
"Someone's down there," Conan said, and tried not to roll his eyes at Chiba's clueless expression. "Disabled audio and masking tape for Detective Takagi's mouth. Clearly, it isn't about what he could say to us."
"He's in a place where passersby can hear him," Sato concluded, glancing at Takagi through unreadable eyes. "Takagi-kun did it to protect the people there."
What a gold hearted idiot he was, that guy. Conan could hardly say that it did not sound like something he would do.
"Boy." The gruff voice drew his attention. There was Kuroda again, and his severe, sharp gaze on him as usual. He wondered if he would ever grow used to it. "You mentioned before that we should narrow our search to Hokkaido." Conan nodded, stiffly. "Why is that?"
"Western jackdaws are usually found in Europe," he explained. "Though they were found in Japan twice. Both were in Hokkaido."
His words left Megure pondering deeply about it. "But that's not enough to conclude that his location is in Hokkaido."
"Probably not," the boy admitted
His eyes drifted from the inspector's face and fell on Takagi's ─ his slightly flushed face and that gaze that, though shadowed by the exhaustion, somehow retained that one vivid glimmer that told Conan that he was still living, and that he was willing to keep on fighting.
"But don't you find it weird?" Conan continued, his frown deepening the more he watched the detective in question. "No matter how stubborn he is, there's no way his brain hasn't been fried right now."
"Now that you mention it…" Megure replied, a hint of surprise in his voice. "We're in August, how come…?"
"For someone who has been left exposed to sunlight in summer for over a day, he looks almost too lucid to me," Conan said. "But in Hokkaido, twenty-five degrees Celsius is about the warmest it can get."
"I suppose that's right, but… Can we be certain that he's in Hokkaido, rather than any other region where it's cold?"
Although he wanted to argue the contrary, even Conan could see that the inspector had a point. They may still be in August, sure, but it was also true that the date was marked as the twenty-sixth of the month. Being that close to September meant that, if you went a little south towards the Tohoku region, mostly in the Aomori prefecture, the average temperature did not vary all that much.
But that's what makes the most sense, right? Since the culprit himself has been staying at Hokkaido. It was natural that he might have been nearby ─ it wouldn't do, being so many kilometers away from his victim in case anything unexpected happened. He has to be in Hokkaido.
The problem was how to prove it. Conan glanced over to Sato, his face scrunched up in a frown, but she averted his gaze.
"Um, excuse me?" came Honda's timid voice. He flinched immediately when the whole room shifted to look at him. "Isn't it possible to check with the airport which flight he took?"
Sato smiled down at the boy, though the effort it took was evident for anyone a kilometer away. "Unfortunately, the criminal bought Takagi-kun tickets," she told him. "Under a fake name, it's likely."
Honda's shoulders sank as Ayumi placed a hesitant hand on one of them. She smiled compassionately back at him, but did not get to utter a single word before, suddenly, a flicker of something lit Conan's eyes completely.
"The cameras," he said in a breathless whisper. Mitsuhiko looked as though he wanted to ask, but the boy turned back to Honda, asking, "You said you snuck in that plane, didn't you?"
He nodded, hesitantly.
"Time and date?" Conan pressed further.
"Uh, two days ago? About 10 PM, I think."
"There." The detective nodded over to Megure, giving him a pointed look. "Check the security camera footage, from 9:30 to 10:30 PM. You should be able to spot Takagi boarding the plane, and piece out where he really went. If Honda-kun was with Detective Takagi all the time until he was kidnapped, then that rules out the possibility of him being taken somewhere else."
Even though it would hardly change anything at all. Takagi was in Hokkaido, there was no other way around it.
But he didn't dare say anything else, and instead, contented himself with watching Kuroda ponder over what he had said, taking his time to consider it despite Conan's intense, maybe a little hopeful, gaze.
Finally, he turned to Shiratori, and the boy knew that he had made a decision.
"We will begin our search in Hokkaido," he said, to his utter surprise. "Ask for help from the Hokkaido police and contact the construction companies as well as the demolishers."
Shiratori nodded, and before he could even turn around, Kuroda was with Megure.
"You shall fly to Hokkaido with Sato. In the meantime, we will confirm with the airport staff what flight Takagi took, so be on the lookout for any updates."
Both of them straightened up after being addressed, and were already on the move a split of a second later. Which Conan found quite fitting, actually, but at the same time he'd have wished that their reaction had not been that quick.
For his legs were a whole lot shorter, and his arms were only so long. Therefore, when he finally managed to lock his tiny fingers in the hem of her shirt, he was understandably exhausted ─ panting, struggling to find a single word to say, kind of 'exhausted'.
That was what he wanted to snap at his friends who ogled at him from a distance away, their whispers easily getting to his ears despite the distance. He'd like them in his position, honestly.
But that was another matter he'd focus on right after this one. Sato's forehead was starting to scrunch up in concern. Conan could estimate he had about fifteen seconds before she took him to the hospital for a clinical revision, or call Ran, he wasn't sure what was worse.
Neither was he certain whether his next actions aggravated or diminished her concern. She probably did not know either, staring blankly at the suspenders that the boy had, out of the blue, placed in her hands.
"Here," he chirped, smiling brightly. "I've got the feeling that you might need this."
"This…"
"Professor Agasa made it," he told her, just as she was starting to stare at him as though he had grown a second head. "I'm sure you'll figure out how it works."
By now, Conan had long since learned that Sato could be pretty reckless when the people she cared about the most were involved. Which was arguably an endearing, if not dangerous and extremely concerning, personality trait to have. Her being in a helicopter searching for her loved one so that she could save him from a timed bomb, however…
There were a lot of ways it could go down, but no scenario was better than the rest.
Conan narrowed his eyes at the woman, his smile having faded into nothingness at some point he couldn't quite recall.
"Bring him back," Conan muttered. His eyes flickered back to his bright red shoes, her reaction lost in his own bangs. "You two need to return, I…" He breathed out. "I want to talk with both of you. One more time."
Suddenly, her hand had posed atop his shoulder. She kneeled down in front of him, her smile friendly, and dare he say, oddly warm.
"I'll have the cheesecake ready this time," she told him, winking. "Takagi-kun is paying, though."
Conan couldn't help the small laugh that escaped him. "I'll even be nice enough not to run off this time around."
She accepted it with a laugh before rising to his feet. And thus she ran away, disappearing behind the door in an instant, leaving behind a small detective staring up at space, his frown deepening with every second that passed by.
His hand rose to press itself over his chest, as though it would help soothe his galloping heart.
Over and over again, the same question echoed through; had he done the right thing, the voice wondered.
Being a frequent victim to such a crime, Conan was hardly a stranger to kidnappings. It wasn't exactly the most relaxing kind of experience to go through, nor was the kind of accomplishment one would rush to write into their curriculum vitae, but it did give him some insight.
It allowed him to understand how it felt afterwards ─ the exhaustion brought over when the last of the tension sipped away from one's bones, the unrelenting desire of getting back home as soon as possible serving as the only anchor to the waking world, the need of immediate peace and quietness that was oh-so-crucial while dealing with such a traumatic event-
"But are you absolutely sure there's nothing else you remember, Honda?!"
None of them were luxuries that Honda was allowed to have, apparently. And Conan truly felt for him, he really did, but at the same time he could find Genta's point of view clear enough not to call him out on it.
Detective Takagi's life is still in danger and Honda was there when he was kidnapped.
Right now, he's probably the only lead we have left.
But as Honda nodded slightly with his eyebrows furrowed, the child detective knew that they wouldn't get anything else from him. Genta seemed to have sensed the same, receding back to his spot in the passenger seat to hang his head down in defeat.
"Surely, there's something you can remember!" Ayumi, hardly the one to give in so easily, brazenly pressed on. Conan doubted she even noticed him recoiling, startled. "Like, did you see the four-story building everyone is talking about?!"
"Y-Yeah."
Hadn't he been sitting right next to him, he'd probably have never sensed him instinctively trying to scoot away from the girl. Sometimes, Ayumi could be intense like that, the poor guy.
"Then, what did it look like?"
"Well, uh… I'm not sure…"
"Please try to remember, Honda-kun," Mitsuhiko tried, decidedly gentler than any of his other two friends. "Anything would be of great help!"
"Even if you say so…"
"Now, guys." Conan decided it was his time to step in. "I'm sure that, in case Honda does remember something, he knows to contact the police on his own."
They all agreed easily ─ easier than he had expected, more specifically. Although he wanted to be proud of that accomplishment, he reckoned that the look Honda sent him, sort of hopeful, had influenced some.
Basking in this new, hard earned silence, Conan leaned back onto his seat. He allowed his eyes to rest up ahead, absently gazing upon the darkened road Shiratori was driving on.
It had been a long day, especially for Detective Takagi. He was just as unlucky as stubborn, Conan would give him that. But it would be okay, now that they had reduced the search area to Hokkaido, it would be a matter of time until he was found.
That being said, there was something that still was nagging at him; how had Takagi not been found yet? They said they were checking all buildings that have over four stories, so it should've been easy to find.
The sheet he had dropped also proved to be a mystery yet to solve. He had seen him ─ his gaze had been clear, devoid of the haze of delirium that he should have plunged in so long ago. Nobody with a sound mind would risk accidentally hiding the police memo book he'd dropped the night before.
The night cold breeze snapped him off his thoughts, enough for him to realize that the car door had been opened. Out Honda went, turning back to them just after hopping off and bowing slightly, before following Shiratori to the nondescript apartment building just across the street.
A woman was already standing outside when he glanced over, her hands locked against each other and over her chest ─ so firmly at that, they only moved from place, extending as far as her arms could reach as though she could touch him.
At first, Honda froze in place, but a heartbeat later, something seemed to snap back in place.
Soon, Conan found himself smiling at the sight of a young boy running into the woman's embrace, the tears he had been fighting so valiantly for so long, soaking her shirt.
Finally, thought the boy, as Shiratori silently slid back into the car. Now that's a normal reaction.
Eventually, Shiratori started the engine and drove off, stripping Conan from the heartwarming scene to his own face. Blank at first, contemplating everything and nothing at all.
Slowly, it morphed into something else completely different. His mouth fell slightly agape, his eyes began to grow ─ realization was blinked into them, reflected back as though he could see it, tangible enough for his small hands to touch it, even.
All of a sudden, everything made sense.
As the car turned over a corner and disappeared from sight, silence rose anew in that empty street, the wailing abruptly cut off by a child that went dead still. Calmly he took a step back, the hands that had clung to the woman's shirt so desperately latching with one another behind his back, and a bright little smile crawled into his face.
"So?" The woman said, standing back up. Her burgundy lips curved into a smirk before she added, "I see you had a lot of fun today."
Honda nodded effusively. "Conan-kun is so fun to hang around!" he chirped. "And I even saved someone from killing themselves today!"
"Oh, did you now?"
"I told him it wasn't worth it." The boy shrugged, walking right past her to reach the door. He giggled, as if amused by his own unspoken joke, before telling her, "I said that it's much more fun living long enough to watch them suffer, even if it was all the way from prison. It took a while, but eventually, I got through him."
She raised a single, delicate eyebrow. "Am I supposed to believe that you saved someone's life?"
But Honda didn't answer, his faltering step the only evidence that he had heard her at all. He slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder at her.
His smile was wide and bright as the sun, his gaze hollow and dark as a starless night.
First and foremost, Conan had to type off a quick message to Ran. For as much as he had, according to those around him, inherited his fair share of recklessness from the Kudo bloodline, he also had a sound, functioning set of survival instincts. A concerned Ran was a dangerous Ran, so, unless he wanted a new crack on the agency's walls with her fist imprint, Conan would rather tell her he was staying over at Agasa's for the night.
Even though his brother would insist that she wouldn't have that effect on him ─ though she might scold him for hours to an end and ground him until next year.
Even though Professor Agasa had yet to know any of this. He had yet to be informed of the car that dropped his smiling, waving self at his doorstep. Or that, as soon as it had driven off, said child was back at frowning, knocking at the door without regard to the late hour.
When it opened though, it was to a face far too young to be Agasa's, far too tall to be Ai's icy glare either. It was to a familiar set of raised eyebrows, and a blue gaze that could easily be a mirror staring back at him.
Conan stared back for a full minute, before his shoulders dropped. "You shouldn't open the door for strangers with that face," he told him, his tone bland.
"We do have windows for that."
The boy regarded him for a moment, then shrugged with a nod. Without further ado, he swiftly walked around him and invited himself inside. Just like that, asking no further questions about anything at all.
Shinichi would later admit being a little lost about the lack of the question bombing he had expected from the child. Instead, he seemed to be fairly more interested in the case he had been pursuing for a while ─ leaping over a sleeping Irene without even casting her a glance in his way to reach a similarly bewildered Professor.
Closing the door quietly, the teenager kept his stare on the phone the kid was shoving at the Professor. He watched Agasa flinch away, startled ─ from either what he was seeing or whatever he had been able to decipher from Conan's rapidly moving lips.
He raised a hesitant hand towards the pair, threading slowly closer. "Uh-" was everything he got to say.
Conan's head had snapped towards him, his gaze so intense that it made his entire system freeze. They flickered from his face to the coffee table, instantly finding the laptop he had borrowed from Kuroba before coming here ─ without the thief knowing, admittedly. And when it returned to him, a frown had already dug in a place onto his features.
He wasn't sure what had happened next. All he knew was a tiny hand pulling from his arm, and then, he was there.
There, sitting on the sofa and hunched over his computer, his index finger in a load of pain from pressing on a single key for hours to an end ─ suddenly at a higher risk of tendonitis than he had ever been in his eighteen years of life. Takagi's face was just as pale as it had been about a thousand frames before, and looking at the bar beneath the video, he knew it would be a long night.
"You're going too fast. We're looking for a single frame amongst several thousands, so be careful if you don't want to start all over again from the beginning."
He could find no fault in his argument, but neither could he find it within himself to openly agree with it. Not that the kid seemed to particularly care about his opinion, absently fiddling with a loose thread on his sleeve as though it was the most interesting thing in the world. Or at least, more interesting than him, Shinichi, and his raised eyebrow.
"We could switch, if you think you're better at this," Shinichi pointed out.
Irene had suddenly manifested at the boy's side, her body hunched over and her eyes solely focused on the sole thread Conan had been playing with. The boy took his moment to chuckle, before raising his arm.
"As far as I remember, you were just supposed to serve as a second set of eyes," he said. "You offered to swap places."
And then proceeded to watch in glee as the feline pawed the air, unable to catch the arm hovering over her head, as though there was no answer for him to wait for. Which wasn't far off from the truth, really, realized Shinichi with a frustrated huff as he returned to the computer screen.
Privately, he regretted both his life decisions, and this boy's ability to remember such inconvenient things.
"I haven't seen Ai around."
Huh. Who'd have thought that his observation skills were also so inconvenient for him and his peace of mind? And now he'd have to start thinking of a proper response, for had promised to cut off on the lies, but neither did he want his little brother breaking his neck in his hurry downstairs to check by himself.
"She's downstairs." He winced, having all but forgotten the Professor's presence ─ currently behind his own computer examining the same footage that had been torturing him all night long. "It appears she's busy with something."
"Still working, huh?" He took the answer well, though the slightly frustrated hint in his voice had been hard to miss. "Even though it's this late."
"You're not the one to talk." Shinichi kept his gaze to the front, purposely missing the glare that was sure to come in retaliation. He passed by a couple frames, squinted at the third, before going back to skipping. "What are we looking for, again?"
"A badge or a sheet, whichever works just fine."
"I think you're out of luck. You won't be able to see anything from this angle if he is in a four-story building."
"If he is in a four-story building, like you said."
He considered his words in silence, not even once letting his gaze stray away from him ─ an odd kind of glint that made Conan wonder what could be going through his mind right now, or if there was a reason for the extra crease in his forehead.
Eventually he went back to the footage, the click of a single key resounding all over as though they were in a vacated room.
"What is it?" Conan asked after a while, slightly unnerved.
"Your friend implied something else."
Conan's eyes went slightly wider ─ he was right. Back when his friends were interrogating poor, likely traumatized Honda, he had confirmed their hypothesis. He had said, despite what the little detective was trying to prove right now, that Takagi was being held in a four-story building.
"Conan." Shinichi seemed hesitant. Conan did not like where this was going. "Do you think he might've lied to you?"
"Honda isn't like that," he replied right away. What a ridiculous question. "He must be misremembering things."
Although he hadn't pushed any further and seemed accepting of his answer, the boy did not miss how his older brother's face had not changed the slightest bit ─ lips forming a thin line, plucked out forehead and sharp eyes that kept on studying the detective in the screen, even though Conan suspected he wasn't paying attention to anything else but his own racing mind.
Irene had finally trapped his arm in between her paws, purring as he scratched her between her ears. Distractedly, sorting through his own conflicted thoughts in search of some probably long extinguished peace of mind.
Thus, he was hardly in the position to notice him shooting a brief glance at his little brother.
It was at times like these that reminded the high school detective that, for all his maturity and heightened sense of independence, he could be a little reckless. For a prodigious individual gifted with a mind so brilliant that could rival the greatest detectives he'd ever known, he could lose focus so easily when there was a playful kitten in close vicinity.
For someone that had been faced with the worst side humanity had to offer, he could be surprisingly gullible. It takes Conan a lot to trust someone, but when he does, he'd do so blindly.
At times like this, Shinichi was reminded that Conan was, deep down, just what his appearance may suggest. A little kid.
His thoughts came to a sudden halt as he realized that his finger had slipped and pressed the wrong key. But as a frustrated groan caught in his throat, Ran came back to his mind uninvited ─ her words muffled in between giggling, as she pointed out that one observation again. One that, to her, was trivial as an axiom, yet a mystery so difficult for him to see most of the time.
Perhaps Conan and I are not all that different.
Ironically, the progress bar was now empty, and he was back at the very first frame of the video. Back to minute zero.
"Say, Oniichan."
"Hm? What is it?"
Conan had yet to make a single commentary on the mess he had just made, or filing a single complaint at the consequences of his actions ─ namely, starting over from the beginning. Definitely not a good sign.
"I asked you several times for you to be honest with me," he said. "At this point, I'm starting to sound like a broken record, aren't I?"
He finished his sentence with a snicker ─ a low, strangely empty excuse of one.
"So, I figured out it wouldn't be fair for me not to offer you the same degree of honesty in exchange."
Shinichi sent him a look. "What did you do now?"
"Nothing yet."
"Yet?"
"Yet." Conan nodded. "I promised Detective Sato that, once Detective Takagi is rescued, we're going to have a talk."
Shinichi's breath hitched. Conan's eyelids, however, slid lower.
"I'm not going to tell them everything, obviously."
Just because he had empathized that last word didn't mean that Shinichi should feel any semblance of reassurement right now ─ and indeed, he didn't.
"All I'm going to say is that I was involved with them by chance," Conan said, shrugging. "I poked around and found out."
That was surprisingly believable, Shinichi had to admit.
"There's probably no harm in them knowing that I, well, Kudo Conan, died because of the Black Organization." From the files he had read, and the list of individuals they'd been researching, it was clear that they already suspected as much. "Since I was supposed to have been taken into the Kudo family, it's not far-fetched that I'd be curious enough to investigate on my own, don't you think?"
"Well, I…" Shinichi sighed again, holding a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose as if, suddenly, a wild migraine had appeared. "I don't know. I'm not comfortable with this, Conan."
"I just want to learn from their investigation," the boy argued. "If they think I'm collaborating, then won't try to probe any deeper than I'm willing to let them into."
And then, he said nothing else. His attention was back to the cat that happily allowed being brought into the boy's lap, for little fingers to run through her fur ─ if as a means to distract his own mind or avoid eye contact as he waited for a reaction, Shinichi couldn't tell for sure.
After an eternity worth of waiting, Shinichi dropped his head.
"Is this about the paternity test?"
Though his mouth had opened up to deny it, the twitch of his shoulders seemed to want to tell another story altogether.
"I got my hands into the DNA samples Detective Sato submitted for that test," Shinichi muttered. He shared a brief look with Agasa at the other corner of the room. "Once Ai-chan downstairs confirms that they're a perfect match, we'll be certain that the documents you saw were forged."
In a room that had yet again fallen silent, he heard the faint shift of Professor Agasa against his seat ─ his back rigidly straight despite usually having a terrible posture, his eyes unwilling to stray an inch from the screen.
Irene's purring had morphed into a sort of a strangled whine as she nuzzled the hand, idle atop her head. Shinichi did not risk a single glance, fearing what he might find.
But all Conan had done was lean back, oddly pensive.
"Remember when I murdered a mug when I was four?"
If one was supposed to go logically about this, there should be no right way to go about this senseless excuse of a sentence. He should have probably glanced back in askance, bewildered and curious about its complex meaning in equal quantities.
But his smile felt strangely warm, even on his own lips.
"Sometimes I wonder how you became such a big addict when your first experience with coffee was so regrettable," commented Shinichi. "You went behind Mom's back and tried to taste it… And not only did you make quite the mess there, you even had the nerve to pretend you had nothing to do with it."
"Of course, my plans were foiled by a then middle school detective singling me out as the culprit." Conan laded his head slightly, his eyes closed as he reminisced. "Well, back then, I was too dazzled by your deductive skills to be mad about it." Conan paused, snickering. "But looking back, it was painfully obvious, wasn't it?"
"You literally had traces of coffee around your mouth."
It earned a laugh out of the boy beside him ─ a rare, joyful sound with the strange, but effective ability of easing some of the tension collecting on his shoulders.
"You started me on kanji when I was about three, and probably regretted it four months later after I've learned more than what's included in the elementary school curriculum."
"And somehow, you kept finding more to ask me about. I was afraid you'd wind up pulling out a character I had yet to come across in school."
"It happened once, if I'm not mistaken."
"Right, about three or four months into the next year. Dad had a good laugh about it."
"You had the last laugh at the end, later when we played hide-and-seek and Dad failed to find me." Conan shook his head. "I was so thrilled that you kept the secret regarding my super-secret hiding spot, but come to think of it, you were kind of using me for your own amusement."
"I call it double benefit."
Although he did send him a glare, it was hardly any effective. He hadn't even tried, given how he gave the topic easily enough to stare up at the ceiling, in quiet contemplation.
"To this day, I still tend to remember the license plate numbers of most of the cars that I spot. It's probably because we used to play with phonetic matching all the time…" he whispered, though it was a mystery for Shinichi whether he had been the intended receptor of them, or just a mere spectator to his little brother's rambling. "I… had this habit of running up to you when you came to pick me up from daycare."
A fond little smile was drawn into Conan's lips, making Shinichi wonder which one out of all of those memories had been the artist behind such a flawless piece of art.
"You'd smile every time. Even that one day when I accidentally hit a bruise you got from soccer practice earlier, you did your best not to let me know, like the soft-hearted idiot you've always been."
Shinichi remembered that; every single thing, every single moment they had shared together would probably be embedded in his memory, for eternity and beyond. Needless to say, he failed to see why he was telling him, as though he didn't know, all of a sudden.
Exactly like he'd always done for as long as he could recall, Conan somehow knew what he'd been thinking.
His glasses dug into his arm. It was closer to his shoulder than Shinichi remembered.
"I'm your brother," Conan said. Shinichi could not get over the impression that this was the most certain he had sounded in a long while. "I don't need anything else to prove it."
Ever so slowly, all the last vestiges of bewilderment melted away from existence, giving way to the realization that, ever a late-riser, finally came to warm his heart all over.
He said nothing and instead passed his arm over his brother's young shoulders. Conan scooted over as though in a desperate search for warmth in the middle of summer, but was not questioned ─ and if it ever crossed his mind that his frames might leave a nasty bruise in Shinichi's arm to find the following morning, he would never let him know.
So close they were, that Shinichi easily felt Conan wincing against him.
"Wait," he said. "Why is the video playing?"
This time, it was Shinichi's turn to flinch and hiss.
"You've got to be kidding me."
"Back to the beginning. We're starting over."
Come the next morning, Ai finally decided to head upstairs, and this time around, there was no scent of coffee welcoming her to an unexpected guest, nor was the Professor waiting for her, smiling behind the kitchen counter.
All he found was a snoring professor hunched over his computer, and a certain teenage detective that, cradling his weary head with one hand, struggled to pay attention to whatever was going on his laptop screen through bleary eyes.
In fact, it took him about half a minute to recognize her presence. When he did, she was halfway through her way to him.
But it did help to wake him up completely, his eyes growing wide and alert in a matter of seconds.
She shook her head before his question could ever arise. "Not yet," she answered, regardless. "It will take me a few more days. And besides…"
Her eyes drifted away from his face, and upon following them, he found Conan ─ curled into a little ball in the furthest corner of the couch where he had left him. Privately, Shinichi thought it was amusing how, despite the boy having grown just a little bit taller over these years, that his jacket still covered most of his body as though it was a blanket.
Ai smirked at the sight. "I might've gotten a little distracted from work."
Before he could ask what she meant, the little scientist had already come to a stop in front of Conan, watching him sleep for a moment with her arms crossed in front of her chest and a blank look in her eyes. A sigh later, the girl had leaned in closer, and completely out of the blue, pinched his nose.
Conan woke up gasping. His crazed eyes flickered everywhere before they could find Ai's, and dulled as an obvious consequence.
"What's with you?" he asked, doing his best to keep an eyebrow from twitching, and obviously failed.
Ai stood back, a smirk playing at her lips. Which only seemed to irritate Conan even further.
Shinichi blinked twice at the scene before sitting back, chuckling. Finally, he could understand.
They are just children being children. Nothing I should be getting all surprised about.
No matter how loudly Conan complained to her, most of his words were eventually forgotten, even to him, as she dug her phone out of her pocket to show something to him.
There, he recognized Ai's computer screen and, much to his surprise, Takagi's weary, pale face.
And next to his head, he finally found it ─ a hook-like, little thing that would've gone completely unnoticed if he hadn't been actively searching for it all night long.
Shinichi leaned over to get a glimpse of it himself, and was similarly surprised. Though in his case, his reaction was nowhere as muted as the boy's.
"Where did you get that?" he asked.
"From our group chat," she answered, not even casting him a glance. "Tsuburaya-kun forwarded it to Conan, but apparently, he doesn't know what a direct message is."
And she must have heard about the case from Conan, all the way from the basement. In his hurry, the boy had forgotten to keep his voice down, so he wouldn't doubt for a second that this had been the case.
Shaking his head, Shinichi directed his attention back to his little brother, just in time to see his lips slowly curving into a smirk.
"Thanks, Ai," he said, hopping back to his feet. "Send me the timestamp where you found it, alright?"
By that time, the kid had already gotten to the front door. Agasa was soon after him, having woken up at some point he couldn't quite recall, pleading with him to just wait for one second.
Seeing Professor Agasa rushing Conan to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters hadn't exactly been the way Shinichi would've expected to start the morning, but he was grateful for it. God knew what this unlucky, trouble magnet of a boy could encounter if he were to make his way there on his own.
Ai was the last one to leave, always the one to hesitate, gazing at that door with eyes that said too little, yet strangely enough, spoke of a lot more than she probably wanted to share ─ and there were those fingers, too, fiddling with her dolphin pendant as she struggled to make up her mind.
So when she, wordlessly, finally took a step forward, Shinichi didn't dare to make a single comment on it. He just watched as she crossed the room in a single heartbeat.
And thus, the door was slammed closed, leaving one teenage detective to sit there, basking in his newfound loneliness ─ reflecting on how things could change so radically, in a moment. Wondering, too, if keeping on being surprised at the random twists of events was worth anything in the end.
Eventually, he gave up thinking, and allowed his smirk to spark back to life.
So that's another case solved, he thought. I wouldn't have expected any less from my little brother.
Shaking his head, Shinichi stood up. Hopefully, Professor Agasa wouldn't mind if he made himself coffee as he waited for everyone to come back ─ possibly to have breakfast, as any normal person would do.
The next few days following Takagi's rescue had been surprisingly uneventful.
Well, probably for Conan, as he had the nagging suspicion that it hadn't been easy for the kidnapped detective. Having been found just at the beginning stages of a heatstroke, Conan had believed that he would be just fine after a day away from the sun and under the headquarter's air conditioner. But in his wishful thinking, he had kind of forgotten that almost three days' worth of dehydration and starvation, not even taking into consideration the bone-deep exhaustion he'd be experiencing, would've taken such a huge toll on him.
Takagi was a stubborn individual, however, so he'd been released from the hospital not long thereafter. If you asked Conan, though, he was starting to theorize that something else must've helped to catalyze his healing process. His strongest lead in its favor was that specific moment that he'd witnessed from the other side of the tablet ─ an accidental close up of Sato and Takagi's lips, pressed together in a tender kiss.
He suspected that it had been their first ─ he could've been told that it had been Takagi's first, and Conan wouldn't be even one bit surprised.
I sure hope you don't follow his example, Oniichan, he had thought, as the room plunged from the cheering chaos it had been to a shocking silence in a matter of seconds. He hadn't been too hopeful.
His phone suddenly pinged with a message, bringing the boy out of his thoughts.
"Hurry up with whatever you're doing and get over here already," was what Ai had been sent. "You deal with him. He's your brother, not mine."
"What, he's already there?" he asked, surprised. "I thought you said the results would take a little longer until they're out."
"I certainly did."
He held back a sigh, trying to wave off the picture she was painting into his mind. What is that idiot getting that anxious about? He had been the one who had asked Ai to redo that DNA test, after all. So what if they were due for today? It wasn't as though they would change a thing.
Conan had already told him they were unnecessary. Why should he be getting nervous at all, if he knew what the result would be beforehand?
"God, I'm not getting paid enough for this."
"Are you getting paid at all?" He waited for a reply that never came. "Seriously?"
"Yes. And should I remind you, my services for the other day were not free."
He wouldn't really put it past her to know that he had flinched at her commentary. Was she really charging him for the other day? Conan huffed. This girl, I swear I-
But suddenly, his mind grew quiet ─ silenced by the memory of hands clutching at his arm, and the pallid face that greeted him upon glancing over his shoulder. Back at the front, there he was; Superintendent Kuroda leaned just a little forward, as if to inspect them more closely.
"You have been of great help, Edogawa Conan-kun," he had told them then, his lips curving into a smirk. "In the name of the police, I'm grateful for your assistance."
And Conan would admit that the urge to hide from his sight was certainly strong, but unfortunately, Ai had beaten him to that ─ using his body as a meat shield, all but ducking behind his back.
"Speaking of which, Ai…" he started to type. "About the other day…"
"It's probably fine," she answered right away. Yet the fact that it had been present in her mind enough for her to tell what he meant without being told was, to Conan, far more telling. "If any of Them had gotten such a close sight of my face, the Professor and I would have been about seven feet underground as we speak."
Just like it had almost happened with Pisco, he remembered, so she must have a point there. Though he highly doubted they'd be that gracious to bother to hide the body if that were to happen.
Only that it didn't explain everything ─ in fact, it explained little at all. Her reaction had been too intense to be disregarded, strong enough to fuel all of those concerns that he had been trying to appease ever since he caught a glimpse of him, and that one-eyed gaze that stirred so many memories he wanted to forget.
"You looked scared," Conan pointed out.
"You did, too."
"What was I supposed to think with you clinging onto me like that?! I thought we were dead meat!"
"It's hardly my fault. Seeing his horrifying face up close would have an effect on anybody."
Conan's fingers froze where they hovered above the keyboard as her words just began to sink in. That overly dramatic reaction ─ all of this, was, just-
"So, let me get this clear," he wrote, then stared at the screen for about a minute, until he realized he was drawing a blank. Certainly not for the first time today, he sighed. "Nevermind. I give up."
"Who are you talking to?" He just barely managed to keep his phone from slipping, startled out of his mind. "A girlfriend?"
Though he'd admit to have momentarily forgotten about his friend Honda's presence, his commentary made him suddenly all too aware of the curiosity sparkling in his dark gaze. In response, the bespectacled boy stuck his phone back into his pocket and turned his head away in a huff.
"Don't even joke about that," he grumbled, hastening his pace.
Honda blinked at the back of his head, twice, before he hurried to join him. "Your face is all red, though," he pointed out.
But Conan refused to answer, leading the boy to stare back for a while longer, in silent contemplation.
Soon, the previously dropped topic had been long forgotten, as Conan's attention was drawn to his surroundings. Suddenly aware that they both had been there for a reason, he undertook his task as though he had never ditched it, his eyes carefully scanning every corner of that grim, quiet place they had wandered into, in a relentless search.
Eventually, a faint sense of accomplishment lit his face up. He spotted the bouquet of flowers first; the chrysanthemum and the few stray lilies held in between Detective Sato's delicate hands as she kneeled down in front of a certain grave, whose name Conan did not have to read to know who it belonged to.
Detective Takagi's tearful eyes, gazing upon a single engagement ring, seemed to hold every answer, for every question that Conan really didn't have.
"See?" Conan said. "I told you he'd be here."
Honda nodded, apparently surprised at the sight before him. "How could you tell?"
"Detective Takagi is fresh out of the hospital right now. I supposed this is where he'd want to be, first thing after being released."
Even after he was done with his explanation, he found that his friend had not dared to take a single step. It made him smile a little, and placing a hand in between his shoulder blades, he lightly pushed him forward.
Be it his encouragement or the external force pushing him forward, Honda finally approached the couple in question. Both of them lifted their heads upon realizing he was there, and almost immediately after, Honda took a step backwards.
"I-I'm sorry, I-" he stammered. "I wanted to, um-"
A wide grin lit up Takagi's face. "Oh, Isamu-kun," he said, immediately crossing the distance to crouch in front of him.
Honda flinched, his whole stance tense, and being absolutely honest with himself, Conan felt like he could relate somehow. For he did not know how he would react either, having the police detective scanning him up and down, thoroughly looking for what he had no clue about.
Whether his search had been successful or not, nobody would be able to tell. What was obvious, though, was that the sigh that escaped Takagi's lips next was out of relief, and that the drop of his shoulders meant that he must've been carrying an immense weight he only now was able to let go of.
"I'm glad you're okay," was Takagi's honest reply.
Honda's mouth clicked back closed, and did nothing but to stare up at the man through wide, wide eyes.
Shrugging with a smile, Conan looked away, finding Sato's gaze without even trying. So he strayed away from the scene, hoping not to disturb the moment between those two, and joined the female detective.
She greeted him in silence, and he fully intended to do the same, but her attention had already wandered somewhere else. Sato was now rummaging through her handbag, her forehead scrunched up in concentration as she did so.
Before Conan would even wonder what she was looking for, she pulled something out. In his hands were now those suspenders whose existence he had all but forgotten about, and with it came the memory of him lending them a few days ago.
Internally, he was grateful that he'd never come across a situation where he'd made a plan, only to remember he didn't have those mid-execution. That would've been dangerous.
"Thank you, Conan-kun," she told him, and there, he found that one genuine smile that Conan thought suited her best. "They were of great help."
"Let me guess." Conan settled her with a plain glance. "You jumped off the helicopter to save Detective Takagi."
Her silence was more than enough of an answer, but he didn't really think he needed one. Considering the course of events he had been a witness to, her actions had been but a logical conclusion.
Takagi had barely lived to tell the tale, really, with the rescue being made seconds before he could be dusted off existence by the timed bomb at his feet. Hadn't it been for the all nighter that he, and that of everyone he'd dragged along for the ride, pulled out, he probably wouldn't be there, smiling down at a flushing Honda as they spoke.
Everything had boiled down to that one video, that the police had once mistaken as an earthquake taking place. An eastern jackdaw had been the culprit for the confusion, after it had decided to perch on whatever had been holding the camera in place, thus making it move a bit out of place.
As an unexpected result, they wound up spotting the badge Takagi had dropped, looking as though it was floating. Too bad, I've seen enough from that lousy phantom thief to be fooled about it. He wouldn't have been worthy of his title as the KID Killer, if he hadn't then realized that it was a glass put under Takagi, in order to make the building seem taller than it actually was.
Hokkaido was only so big, however, and time had been running thin. But it was the sight of a whole lot of kites adorning the background that had narrowed the search to those few towns holding kite-flying contests ─ Ikeguchi, Komamae and Hibai.
By the time Takagi had managed to free himself from the tape and managed to mouth 'Komamae', there had been only seconds left. Given the context, Conan could pretty much imagine Sato jumping off to save him.
He raised an eyebrow, absolutely unimpressed.
"I guess you secured these to the helicopter skids first," said the boy. "And used them to land safely on the mirror floor."
Sato looked as though she wanted to ask how he knew all of that, yet at the same time, she looked like she didn't. Eventually she settled with the former, looking at the gadget in his hands, before sighing.
"That's an… interesting item you've got there," she said, then snickered. "I wonder if that's what Professor Agasa had in mind when he made them."
"Certainly not." For all he knew, his original functionality was for opening gates and such, stuff that he couldn't do by himself with his feeble child strength. He probably suspected that he'd run into a lot of trouble ─ not that it was too far-fetched ─ and would need a tool for escaping if necessary. "But it's been through worse."
Jumping off Touto Tower and almost murdering Gin via a headlight to his helicopter engine had definitely been well beyond Professor Agasa's expectations. That, or he was secretly a psychic, because there was no other way.
Sato's reaction had not been like that of someone doubting her sanity or hearing capacity, and immediately, Conan was reminded of the little investigation she had been running on him for a while now. Her frown was back on her face, and by the way she bit her lip, he suspected that she was struggling not to inquire any further.
Conan closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He was seriously hoping he hadn't made the wrong choice.
"I told you, I won't run away," he whispered, loud enough for only her to hear.
He sent one glance over his shoulder, making sure that Honda was still distracted with Takagi, before he could return to her. Sato had that determined look on her face, the one that told the child that she wasn't backing down easily ─ he knew she wouldn't, even if he couldn't see her. That was who Detective Sato was.
And that made him an invaluable force to have by his side ─ as well as someone too dangerous to overlook, someone to tread carefully around.
"But you might want to step back, Detective Sato." His gaze narrowed ─ darkened as he tilted his face forward, every line of expression shadowed from her, until suddenly, the light hit his lenses and his expression was all gone. "After this, it will be impossible to back down."
Sato's silence was loud, however. Dejectedly, Conan accepted it with a sigh ─ what had he been hoping for, really? It should've been obvious from the very beginning.
It was obvious, only that he hadn't wanted to see it. He averted his gaze, wishing not to be faced with any further confirmation of what he'd been fearing-
There was a toothpick ─ the sight was all too sudden to be properly processed, stripping him of any rational thought. It was, just, there, lying right next to the flowers that Sato had left.
As though it was but another offering for the detective who had once been known as Date Wataru.
Conan had a lot of questions, but he chose to ask none of them. As they finally walked away, leaving both police detectives to grieve their friend as they'd been trying to before they stumbled by uninvited, Conan thought he had spotted a flash of platinum blonde somewhere in the distance before it hid away from sight.
Had it been a figment of his own imagination? He had the feeling that didn't quite cover all of it, but was otherwise forced to ignore it.
"Well, this is where we part ways," Conan said, stopping at an intersection. He had been in front of Honda's apartment a few days ago, so he knew what direction his friend was supposed to take. "I gotta go before Ran-neechan gets mad at me. I promised I'd be home early for once."
Honda nodded, a smile blossoming in his face. "Thank you for coming with me, Conan-kun," he said. "Am I seeing you tomorrow?"
"Probably not," Conan admitted, making a face. "Those guys are bothering about radio exercising again. Summer is almost over, so I supposed I could please them for once."
"Oh, I see. Well then, I'll see you around then-"
"Wait."
His words had rushed out before he could even be aware of their presence in their mind, and by the time Honda's steps had halted to look back to see what he was about, he felt his hand dropping a little ─ not that he knew when he had extended it over, as though it wanted to reach over to his friend's shoulder.
"There's something that has been on my mind for a while," Conan said, his voice barely above a whisper. Honda blinked, awaiting. "Honda, you…"
He was hesitating, not unlike how his older brother had acted that one night ─ his all-too-seeing gaze clouded by something he couldn't identify, his face scrunched up in a trouble frown as though he did not know what to think, or rather, he could not put his words together.
Eventually, though, he had managed. "Do you think he might've lied to you?" he had said then.
And even though he had laughed at the absurdity of that scenario, there he was now ─ standing in front of his clueless friend, struggling to form even the simplest of sentences.
"You mentioned it was a four-story building," he finally said, watching for a reaction of any kind, but found none. "Why did you…?"
"I was sure I saw it," Honda replied. Quickly, yet not enough for it to seem desperate. He was holding his gaze with such ease that almost made Conan want to look away instead. "Maybe it was the way Yoshida-san structured her question…"
That… kind of made sense, actually. If he wasn't mistaken, Ayumi had asked him if he had seen 'the four-story building everyone was talking about'. Language manipulation was impressively effective when it came to change someone's perception of what they had seen, leading to what was known as a false memory.
It was pretty common, and something a detective should always keep a mind on whenever questioning subjects. He wondered how he hadn't thought of that before.
"It's unsettling, isn't it?" Honda suddenly said, his gaze lost somewhere above his head. Conan glanced over his shoulder, and when it became evident there was nothing out there to see, he realized he wasn't looking at anything per se. He was only contemplating his own thoughts. "What we hear from other people, the way words are used… How easy it is for our memories to be molded out of shape, until they no longer are what they used to be."
When he turned back around, Honda's eyes were back at his face again ─ raven black falling into bright blue, watching as they widened for reasons their owner could not quite place.
"They are surprisingly unreliable, aren't they?"
His arms rose to clutch themselves to their forearms, hugging himself as to retain what little warmth his body had left.
"These memories of ours are hardly to be trusted."
Somewhere in the distance, Conan thought he heard the cry of a crow.
As he turned abruptly, his eyes widened at the sight of a crow.
Perched ominously on the Professor's windowsill, its gaze seemed to pierce through his very soul. Shinichi had absolutely no idea why that sight was so disturbing, nor did he know exactly why his breath seemed to hitch at the mere sight before him, but certainly had a good theory about it.
He pressed a hand to his chest, forcing himself to look away, as well as a smile to his lips upon spotting, from the corner of his eye, the professor casting him a concerned look.
"Guess I'm a bit jumpy," the boy assured him, his laugh weak even to his own ears. "All of this waiting is making me nervous."
Rather than disappearing, Agasa's frown only intensified. He seemed to want to say something, but was failing to come up with a proper way to state it, and Shinichi was willing to pretend he had never noticed.
Since he wouldn't be able to explain it, were he to be asked about it. For he already knew perfectly well what was about to happen ─ the course of events that were to come, every word, every annoyed huff coming from the small scientist wrapping up her analysis down in her lab.
I don't need it, but Conan does. For he knew that the boy was doing his best to pretend otherwise, he was too stubborn to let him see ─ but he sort of could, either way. If it gives him a little peace of mind, then it'll be worth it in the end.
That being said, he couldn't explain why his heart pounded so heavily against his chest.
The sound of a door opening up foretold the appearance of the girl who he'd been waiting so anxiously for, and couldn't help but smile at the realization that, finally, it was over.
She lifted her head, and her pursed lips made it all vanish. And all of a sudden, the knot on his stomach was there again ─ twisting and turning at the sight of her, glancing down at the stack of documents in between her arms, and back at him again.
As though she couldn't put her thoughts into words.
"Ai-chan," Shinichi began, unable to keep his voice from shaking in the slightest bit. She avoided his gaze. "What-?"
She only sighed, finally closing up the distance in between them. He was passed a slip of paper, which he held tightly in between his hands, his eyes scanning through it until he could find them.
The only thing he needed so that could close this one terrible case, once and for all.
Sure enough, they were there ─ those few words, printed on the paper, that made his breath slip away.
"Probability of paternity: 0%"
A/N
CherryGirl 21-6: Thank you! It's been a while, but I hope you did well in your exams :)
I haven't heard about movie 28, but that sounds exciting! Hoping that they do Kogoro some justice, too…
F.C. Meyer: Yes! I immediately remembered you when I learned about her. That was a surprise.
I don't think it'll affect much here. So far, I think she's been mentioned once when Aoko said that her mother used to sing 'Ten Little Soldiers' to her as a lullaby, but I guess that could still work even if she was alive. I haven't planned for her to play any other role, so I suppose all's good.