"Hello? Ran? It's me… Yeah, I know it's sudden, but I didn't really have a choice…"
Across the table, Karasawa Akira absentmindedly stirred a sugar cube in his coffee, watching it rise and sink as it melted into smaller and smaller rings. Opposite him, Conan sat hunched over, sneakily whispering into the voice-changing device as he made a call.
"That's right, there's still no real lead on the case. It's going to take a long time to crack." Conan sighed, recalling the two suspicious men in black. "I don't even know how much longer it'll take."
Whatever Mouri Ran said on the other end seemed to leave him tongue-tied for a moment. Conan paused, fumbled for words, then suddenly looked up at Karasawa, who was still playing with his sugar cube, and had a flash of inspiration.
"It's a really complicated case… This is an urgent and confidential commission. The situation is tangled, and I have to conduct the investigation solo… Yes, very troublesome. It may involve police misconduct and other sensitive matters. I have to maintain absolute secrecy."
Karasawa slowly lowered his spoon, now suspiciously eyeing the kid across from him.
"…It's a mess. The whole case is shrouded in fog. If I return to Tokyo now, I might tip them off…" Conan averted his eyes, unwilling to meet Karasawa's gaze. He gave an awkward cough. "Ahem. Anyway, I can't come back for now. Don't worry—I'm doing just fine…"
"You couldn't think of an excuse, so you just recycled my case to fool Mouri-san, huh?" Karasawa rolled his eyes as soon as Conan hung up the phone.
After all, the case Conan had just described was clearly Karasawa's. Throw in a few lines like "those who get it, get it," or "you wouldn't understand even if I explained," and it all sounded suspiciously legitimate. Given the themes of corrupt cops, dereliction of duty, and potential shady dealings, it was the kind of situation that required discretion. It was easy enough to spin into a story about Kudo Shinichi going undercover as a secret agent.
"Ahaha… I mean, you said it yourself—your case has to wait until I can dig deeper. So really, it's the same outcome, just a different path to get there!" Conan gave a sheepish laugh and scratched the back of his head. Appropriating the case right in front of the person it belonged to… yeah, it was a bit awkward.
Karasawa shot him a strange look. So you're a prophet now, huh? If he actually managed to uncover the details of the case, then sure enough, "different paths, same destination" might be spot-on. For all he knew, Gin had a hand in the original Karasawa's unsolved case too. That guy was everywhere. A true overachiever.
"Why are you drinking coffee again?" Conan quickly changed the subject, pointing at the cup in front of Karasawa. "You live in a café, and now you're out drinking more?"
After buying books, it was nearly lunchtime, and Karasawa, too lazy to trek back home, had brought Conan to a nearby place for lunch.
Karasawa sighed deeply and pointed at Conan, then at himself. "Do you still get to drink coffee these days? Does Mouri-san even let you near it?"
"I…" Conan froze mid-sentence, retracting his finger.
"Exactly." Karasawa took a sip from his cup. "I may not be a kid, but whether it's my face or something else, no one at the café sees me as a grown-up. It's terrible. Yesterday, Amuro-san wouldn't even make me cocoa—just heated up some milk."
Conan studied Karasawa's roundish face and nodded in agreement.
Despite his mixed-race features, Karasawa didn't have sharp cheekbones or striking bone structure. What stood out were his round, puffy cheeks. If Conan hadn't known this was their new high school classmate, he'd have assumed he was from the middle school division.
And middle schoolers are, what, two or three years older than elementary kids?
"But it's weird," Conan added. "Why are you living in a café, anyway?" He glanced at the book he'd placed by the table and thought of Café Poirot. "Even if your parents are abroad, you should be staying with a proper host family if someone's assigned to keep an eye on your schooling."
The real question. Because the Organization needed Bourbon to monitor him. Or—more likely—it was narrative inevitability. A little thing called plot.
Karasawa thought that, but what he said was: "Yeah, I thought it was weird too. Supposedly the café owner is a friend of my parents'. But I can't really confirm that—I haven't spoken to my parents in two or three years."
"Two or three years? That's… a long time." Conan frowned.
His own parents lived in the U.S. and rarely came back to Japan, but even so, they still chatted weekly. At most, time zones made things a bit inconvenient.
Karasawa stirred the remaining half of his coffee and said, "I think they were working on some kind of classified project. Communication started dropping off a few years ago. Calls stopped going through. I don't know much. One day, about two years back, my mom called out of the blue. Said she and Dad were heading out on a special scientific expedition, and it'd be hard to contact them for a while. That was the last time I ever spoke to them."
His voice grew distant. Bits and pieces of memory flickered behind his eyes. Murmurs that sounded like whispers by his ear.
"Akira—that name means shining, bright…"
"Baby, you're smiling! Do it again…"
"Mommy and Daddy have to go…"
"Next time we see you, our little Akira will be all grown up…"
The fragments drifted and sank again. The warmth of those soft, loving memories left a dull ache behind. Karasawa took out his phone and opened his email, scrolling down to that one cold, clinical message. It was far too harsh to be a letter from parents to their child. Those two… probably—
He shut his eyes.
"You okay?" Conan asked. Karasawa's distraction and quiet melancholy didn't escape him. Though not exactly a master of empathy, even he could tell something was off—and didn't know how to fix it.
Before Karasawa could answer, their conversation was interrupted by an argument from the table across the room.
"You're seriously annoying." The younger man, scruffy and unshaven, shoved a stack of papers away. "You really think I want to spend my whole life churning out flyers for your firm? Stay here long enough and you'll kill what's left of my creative spirit."
Across from him, a middle-aged man with streaks of gray in his hair clenched down on the design sketches and bit back his anger. "Aihara! You know clients don't just appear out of thin air. These smaller jobs are how we get our name out there. We've already started pulling in some bigger accounts, haven't we?"
"Oh, come on," the younger man sneered. "You and I both know who they're here for. Without me, that deal wouldn't even exist. They've already reached out to me directly. Let's just call it my severance."
"You—!" The older man shot to his feet, knocking over a pencil that bounced off the table and rolled to a stop at Karasawa and Conan's table.
The outburst had drawn the attention of the other customers. Everyone turned toward the two men.
Realizing they'd disturbed the whole shop, the older man tamped down his temper, gave the room a curt bow of apology, and muttered, "I'm going to the restroom," before stepping away—probably to cool his head.
"What a weird place to have a work argument…" Conan muttered, eyeing the sketches scattered on the table. Weren't they worried about leaking project details?
Karasawa gave the restless man—now scrolling on his phone near the window—a sidelong glance, then peered outside at the steep hill just beyond the café.
Because he's about to solve this whole issue the same way anyone would:
With a dump truck.
Karasawa gave Conan a meaningful look.
Funny how the second the Reaper shows up, this peaceful little town suddenly develops a taste for bloodshed…