An Unforgettable Summer Night
A moment after Xia Yu's voice fell, a figure emerged from the shadows at the edge of the woods before them.
Only after the man took a few steps forward could everyone make out his appearance in the glow of the fireflies: a gaunt man with long, unkempt hair, his wrists locked together in handcuffs.
The instant Conan got a clear look at his face, his pupils contracted and his expression shifted sharply. It was him...
A dull ache seemed to throb somewhere deep in his body, but this was no time to dwell on that. He had to warn Xia Yu to restrain the man, and quickly.
"Xia Yu, he's an escaped convict! Grab him!" Conan shouted at the top of his lungs.
But before he could even finish, Xia Yu was already moving — the moment she spotted the handcuffs on the man's wrists, she had acted.
The man was quick and agile, but he was no match for her. It took only moments before she knocked him out cold.
Seeing the convict sprawled unconscious on the ground, Conan finally let himself relax.
Xia Yu really wasn't an ordinary person after all. If Numabuchi Kiichirou was this dangerous, then having her around made him feel surprisingly safe.
He gave everyone a brief explanation of the man's identity, and the group was astonished to learn that Conan actually knew him — that this man had even once hurt him. They were furious.
That was when Conan noticed something off about Haibara beside him. She looked utterly shaken by Numabuchi Kiichirou's appearance, as though she recognized him.
While everyone's attention was fixed on the unconscious man, Conan quietly pulled Haibara aside to ask, and learned the truth: Numabuchi Kiichirou had once been a member of the Black Organization as well. His agility had caught the Organization's eye, and they had intended to train him into an assassin — but he had failed, and was slated to become a test subject for their drugs. Before he could be handed over to Sherry for the experiments, however, he fled the Organization.
Haibara recognized him because, back then, the file the Organization gave her had included his photograph and basic information. That was why she had been able to identify him on sight today.
Seeing Conan look faintly encouraged by this, Haibara promptly doused his hopes with cold water. "His involvement with the Organization was shallow. Before he ran, he was nothing more than a peripheral member. That's exactly why, after the police caught him, the Organization never bothered with whether he lived or died."
Conan was indeed a little disappointed to hear it, though he had half expected as much, so the letdown didn't last long.
Just then, Ayumi and the others seemed to be planning something together and were calling him and Haibara over, so the two of them dropped the subject and ran off to rejoin the group.
When they arrived, he learned what it was all about: Xia Yu had promised Mitsuhiko's older sister she would take photos to show her, and so she was gathering Conan and Haibara for a group picture.
And it wasn't just the group photo. Against the backdrop of dancing fireflies, Xia Yu took plenty of individual shots of everyone as well — though by far the most were of Xia Yu herself. Thank goodness Nahida was there to help; if the photo-taking had been left to the others' dubious skills, none of the pictures would have turned out well.
Conan did find it a little odd, though. Xia Yu had never struck him as someone so fond of taking photographs.
Once the photos were done, Xia Yu took her phone back from Nahida and scrolled through them, looking thoroughly satisfied.
Then she selected one and sent it to a number she had grown familiar with over the past few days.
Meanwhile, at an Organization base.
Cointreau felt the buzz of an incoming message and took out his phone. Seeing that it came from that very familiar number, his mood visibly lifted.
He opened the message and found a single photograph — a shot taken in the woods, surrounded by fireflies. He gazed at it quietly for a while, then saved the image, tucked it away in a hidden folder alongside the little-witch photo he'd received before, and erased every trace of the message.
He was confident no one could ever get their hands on his phone, but caution cost nothing. This way, even if some accident did put his phone in another's hands, they would never learn of the connection between her and him.
"Cointreau, what message could be so important that you'd stare at it that long? What's this — a text from your sweetheart?" Bourbon, seated across from him, asked with feigned gossipy curiosity, needling the man he'd been working alongside often enough lately to grow familiar with.
"No." The curve at the corner of Cointreau's mouth vanished, and he answered with two curt, cold words.
Bourbon only smiled and pressed on. "Then how come your messages have been getting more frequent lately? And every time you get one, your mood improves a little. You're sure you're not in love?"
"None of your business!" Cointreau fixed him with a warning glare, and only looked away once Bourbon raised both hands in surrender, promising not to poke his nose in again.
Bourbon didn't raise the subject again after that, but he filed it away in his mind.
Cointreau's unusual behavior these past weeks was definitely suspicious — the only question was whether it had anything to do with the Organization.
It didn't seem like it. Who breaks into a grin over a mission directive from the Organization? He wasn't Gin. So that left something outside the Organization. If he could dig it up... might it be the key to finding Cointreau's weak point?
After all the time he'd spent around him lately, Amuro Toru was growing more and more wary of Cointreau.
Brilliant mind — the plans he laid almost never went wrong. And skilled — no, not merely skilled, exceptionally so. At the very least, in all his observation, Cointreau had almost never gone all-out. Besides, he'd heard that a while back, Cointreau had crossed blades with that FBI agent, Akai Shuichi — and even Akai hadn't been his match.
Amuro Toru took a certain pleasure in Akai being bested, but an opponent of Cointreau's caliber was bad news all the same.
Meanwhile, back in the forests of Gunma Prefecture.
The children and the adults had finally had their fill of playing — and of photographs. And as it happened, the police, summoned by the earlier report, had just arrived on the scene.
They carted the unconscious Numabuchi Kiichirou off into custody, then arranged several patrol cars to take the Detective Boys home, along with Professor Agasa, Nahida, and Xia Yu.
By any measure, every one of them had spent a summer night both satisfying and unforgettable.
At the Agasa Residence.
"Professor, what did you just say? Miss Ningguang is coming back to Japan — already?"
Conan was genuinely surprised. He had assumed that after she left, Miss Ningguang wouldn't return for a good while — he'd all but given up on prying information out of her. Who would have thought she'd come back so soon after departing? What was she planning this time?
"Mm." Professor Agasa nodded, confirming Conan's question, then laid out everything he knew. "Shinichi, remember how you said Miss Ningguang had gone back to America to oversee a project, and had even handed the branch office's affairs over to someone else? Well, I did a little digging into just what this project of hers in America actually was. And as luck would have it, that was right when the Sindora Group contacted me, asking for my help with their new 'Cocoon' project. That's how I learned Miss Ningguang is involved in it too — and she holds no small position within it, at that..."