Chapter 19 — Matsuda Jinpei
"Rainbow-glazed mega pancake!" Xiangling announced, pointing at the second dish.
Conan stared at the yellow pancake, which was dusted with toppings of every color imaginable — and from the outside alone, there was no telling what any of them had started out as.
Hold on, what on earth are these weird ingredients? Red and orange he could guess — ham and carrots — but what were the rest supposed to be? There was even blue. He couldn't imagine a single foodstuff that came in that shade of blue. Honestly, it looked even more dangerous than the lizard they'd just eaten.
"Here, here! Under this thin layer of egg wrap there's red ham, orange carrots, yellow frog meat, green lotus leaf, blue butterfly wings, purple grapes... Aww, do you really not want any?"
The moment Conan heard the ingredient list, his appetite packed up and left. Butterfly wings? People could just... eat butterfly wings?!
The other three had no such reservations. The charcoal-grilled lizard had tasted decent, which gave them some confidence about what was coming next, and the rainbow-glazed pancake didn't look scary at all — despite its riot of colors, it seemed to be a hit with kids. They dug in eagerly.
And sure enough, it didn't let them down. The dish had a lot going on, but the flavors didn't clash — everything blended together just right. One taste and they couldn't stop singing its praises. Genta in particular polished off one slice and immediately grabbed a second.
Watching the others, Conan finally took a skeptical bite of his own. This was scientifically impossible. How could this many random things thrown together taste this good?
Xiangling was absolutely glowing at the children's reactions. "See? Pretty good, right? Hehe, looks like my cooking's just about won you all over~ Which means it's time for you to try the new dish I've been pouring my heart into. The grand finale — Slime-Glide Mushrooms! Ta-daa!"
Conan eyed the translucent, gel-like substance in front of him. Hey, hey — is this really not made out of a slime? Because it looks exactly like one.
"Whoa! That's so cool, it totally looks like a slime!" Genta declared, scooping up a spoonful before anyone could stop him.
"Wait!" Conan's protest came too late. All he could do was watch, a flicker of worry on his face, as Genta swallowed the strange dish. "So... how is it?"
"It's kinda weird," Genta said, struggling to put the sensation into words. "It's sort of cold, and a little bit sweet, and all slippery — it really does feel like I'm eating an actual slime!"
Mitsuhiko and Ayumi perked up immediately at that, and even Conan's curiosity got the better of him. They each ladled out a spoonful.
"Wow, it really is like eating a slime!" Mitsuhiko and Ayumi chorused. "Xiangling, your cooking is amazing!"
The children's blunt praise made Xiangling scratch her head, a little embarrassed. "Aww, thanks! I'll just have to work twice as hard from now on and make even yummier food!" She nodded firmly, as if sealing the promise.
Conan resisted the urge to sigh as he surveyed the spread of specialty dishes on the table. You're plenty hardworking already — no normal person could even dream up this menu. And how had she managed to give that Slime-Glide Mushroom that exact texture, that exact look? If he weren't absolutely certain that slimes didn't exist anywhere in this world, he'd have sworn the ingredients were the real thing.
Which gave him an idea. He tugged at Xiangling's sleeve and asked in his most innocent voice, "Xiangling, what's in this last dish? Is it really made from slimes?"
Xiangling just laughed. "Haha, no way — nobody actually uses slimes! That's my one-of-a-kind secret recipe, and I can't tell a soul. It's a secre-et~" She waved her hands cheerfully and refused to elaborate.
"Conan, there's no such thing as slimes, you know," Mitsuhiko said, ever the scholar.
"Yeah! You didn't actually believe slimes were real, did you?" Ayumi added.
"O-of course not. I was just asking, that's all." Conan obviously knew slimes weren't real — he'd only been trying to pry the actual ingredients out of her. But with Xiangling keeping mum, there was nothing he could do. It wasn't exactly a critical matter; his curiosity just went unsatisfied, and that left him feeling vaguely itchy.
Paimon: "Traveler, that was made out of Slime Condensate, wasn't it?"
Xiayu watched Xiangling's strained smile and answered, "Yep. It's made from the Slime Condensate we got as quest rewards and from wishes."
Paimon: "...Ugh."
Meanwhile, over in the Violent Crimes Division of the Metropolitan Police Department's Criminal Investigation Bureau, most of the staff were buried in the paperwork from the Shinkansen bombing incident a few days earlier.
The case was closed, and the bomb had been defused in time without any real damage — but there was still a mountain of documentation to work through: witness statements, the suspects' transaction records, the origin of the explosives, and so on.
Knock knock.
"Come in." Inspector Megure looked up at the sound and waved the visitor in.
"Matsuda? What brings you down here? Something the matter?" Megure was a little puzzled by the sudden visit.
Matsuda had, after all, transferred into the Violent Crimes Division three years ago and spent a stretch of time as his subordinate. But Megure knew full well that Matsuda had come in chiefly to hunt down the culprit behind Officer Hagiwara's death. Something unexpected had happened along the way, though the culprit had been caught in the end. Matsuda had been injured and spent some time recovering in the hospital, and not long after his discharge — with the EOD squad genuinely short-handed, and his reason for joining Division 1 fulfilled — he'd transferred right back out again.
He hadn't worked under Megure for long, but the inspector remembered him vividly: cool-headed under pressure, sharp as a tack, and the kind of man who threw everything he had at a job. He'd been a real help back in Division 1 — though his wild streak hadn't exactly endeared him to the colleagues, ahem. On the whole, though, Megure's impression of him was a good one.
"Inspector Megure, could I take a look at the witness statements from the Shinkansen incident?"
"Hm? That's not really a problem," Megure said. It wasn't exactly classified material. Still — "Why the sudden interest?"
"Ah, nothing much. I think I ran into an acquaintance at the time. Sato said they were one of the involved parties, so I figured I'd come ask around." Matsuda couldn't quite shake the girl he'd glimpsed on the Shinkansen. It had only been a flash, but her face looked so much like that man who had appeared out of nowhere on the Ferris wheel three years ago.
Back then, that man had simply materialized onto the Ferris wheel high above the ground, yanked him off just before the bomb went off — and then Matsuda had blacked out from the blast.
When he came to, he was already in a hospital bed, with no idea how he'd walked away with only minor injuries from a point-blank explosion and a free fall from that height. And when he'd questioned the colleagues on the scene, every one of them swore that when they'd found him, he was alone — no one had come anywhere near the Ferris wheel. If he weren't sure his brain was fine, Matsuda would have almost believed he'd hallucinated the whole thing.
He'd tried tracking down his savior afterward, of course. Nothing. It was as if the man had appeared from thin air and vanished back into it.
But this time he'd crossed paths with that girl, and his gut told him she had to be connected to the person he was looking for.
Matsuda jotted down the address from the statement, resolved to drop by when he found the time, said his goodbyes to Inspector Megure, and left.