Brother
Conan still couldn't quite figure out why Xiayu had suddenly moved into the neighborhood—he'd never seen her around here before. She had appeared at his side right after that incident, and she'd even been present at the amusement park that day. He couldn't help worrying whether she might have some connection to the men in black he'd encountered then.
With that thought in mind, he tested the waters. "Hey, Xiayu? What made you decide to move here all of a sudden? Is something going on?"
"I came looking for my brother."
Traveler, your brother came to this world too?! Paimon's voice piped up in his head.
Of course not. I just needed an excuse.
Xiayu hadn't been able to come up with a convincing reason for her move on the spot, so she'd borrowed the Traveler's goal from Genshin Impact as a cover story—it had the added bonus of explaining why she'd taken up detective work in the first place.
"Your brother?" Ayumi's face lit up with curiosity. "Is your brother missing, Xiayu?"
"That's right." A shadow of melancholy crossed Xiayu's eyes, and she let her lashes fall to evade Conan's scrutiny, her voice tinged with worry. "A few years ago, I had an accident and was in a coma for a while. When I woke up, my brother had been missing for a long time. People around me kept saying that after disappearing for that long, he'd probably met with something terrible. But someone has been paying my hospital bills this whole time—so I believe he's still alive. He just can't show his face for some reason."
There, she wove in her explanation for moving and becoming a detective. "The reason I moved is that someone told me they'd seen my brother in Beika. And I became a detective to gather clues about him."
"Xiayu, I know you'll find your brother!" Ayumi said, doing her best to comfort her. Being suddenly separated from family had to hurt terribly—Ayumi had been miserable for ages after parting with her own grandmother, and that was when she'd known they'd meet again. Xiayu must be worried sick. "You'll be together again someday, for sure!"
Sometimes Ayumi really was like a little angel—polite, kind and optimistic, always attuned to how the people around her were feeling. A good kid, through and through.
Mitsuhiko and Genta nodded along eagerly. "Yeah, yeah! Your brother's definitely coming back safe, Xiayu!" Then Genta jabbed Conan with his elbow. "Right, Conan?"
The nudge jolted Conan out of his thoughts. "Ah—yeah, right..." Even as he said it, though, he couldn't shake the feeling that this missing brother of hers wasn't a simple case. It didn't feel like an abduction. Money was being wired to the hospital on a regular schedule. Had the man gotten himself mixed up in something bad?
"Oh, right—Xiayu, do you have a photo of your brother?" Mitsuhiko asked. "Show us! The Detective Boys can help you look for him!"
Ayumi nodded too. "Yeah, we can help!"
"I don't have any photos of him..." Xiayu let out a sigh. "When I was discharged from the hospital, I discovered that every photo connected to my brother had vanished."
Not even a photo? Even more suspicious, Conan thought.
"But my brother and I look a lot alike. If you ever see him, you'll know at a glance that we're family." Xiayu gave a brief description of what Aether—the male half of the twins from Genshin Impact—looked like.
Before long, the plate of lotus flower crisps had been picked clean.
Genta flopped back, rubbing his belly. "Whoa, I'm stuffed! Feels like I won't even need dinner."
"Genta, you ate way too much," Mitsuhiko scolded, then turned to bow. "Thank you for having us today, Xiayu!"
Seeing that the sky was growing dark, the children rose to say their goodbyes and head home—though not before solemnly vowing that the Detective Boys would absolutely help Xiayu find her brother.
Deceiving little kids like that—doesn't your conscience hurt, Traveler? Paimon demanded.
Xiayu pressed a hand to her chest. Of course... it doesn't hurt at all. Her conscience, she reflected, was in short supply and better reserved for worthier causes. Besides, this was a white lie.
Worst case, I'll just save them a few extra times whenever they run into danger. And knowing those kids, there was bound to be plenty of danger to go around.
That night, Xiayu lay alone in her bed.
"My brother... huh?" she murmured softly. "It would be nice, if he were real." With that, she rolled over and drifted off to sleep.
Deep in the night, in a certain bar.
One of the Black Organization's safe houses, it should have been bustling with late-night crowds—yet tonight the place stood nearly empty, only a scattering of figures drinking in silence, their gazes drifting, ever so casually, toward the tall man at the counter.
The man at the bar wore a long black trench coat, silver hair spilling to his waist. Even with a glass in hand, he had not removed his hat.
"Aniki, who would've thought that arrogant kid they recruited a few days ago actually had some skills," the burly man in black beside the silver-haired man remarked. "He's already turning out results, and in such a short time too."
"Hmph." Gin let out a cold chuckle; he'd half expected this outcome. "He was a renowned scholar from Country Y. If he were incompetent, the Organization would never have brought him in."
"At this rate, he'll be earning a codename soon," Vodka mused. "He might just be the fastest in the Organization's history to get one."
Gin took a sip of the drink before him and gave neither agreement nor denial. However impressive the man was, he belonged to the research division at the end of the day—maybe it was a small shame they couldn't pull him into Gin's operations team. It was rare to encounter anyone with that kind of physical skill, whereas his own team was packed with nothing but dead weight.
Speaking of skill—someone surfaced in Gin's mind, and with him, the message the Boss had relayed to him yesterday. "Vodka. Cointreau is coming back."
"Eh?" Vodka blinked in surprise. "But hasn't Cointreau been running the European operations? Why would the Boss suddenly recall him?"
"He requested it himself. Says he's looking for someone—a person who doesn't exist at all."
Cointreau was always saying he was searching for someone. But no known age, no known face... nothing. He wasn't even certain of the person's sex. All these years, and not a single lead. If Gin hadn't known for a fact that Cointreau never joked about such things, he'd have written it off as a delusion.
Far away, at a certain airport in Country M.
A young man was about to board his flight. His golden hair was short in the front, while the length behind him was braided into a single plait that swayed in the wind. His eyes were clear and gentle, and as that brilliant gaze lifted toward the sky, it seemed—to anyone watching—as if he had glimpsed, at last, the very thing he had been searching for all this time.
So it's you who has appeared.