Albedo's Painting, Part 2
Conan suddenly heard the suspect scream in raw terror: "A ghost! There's a ghost!"
"What?!" Conan whipped his head around toward the spot the man had been staring at — but there was nothing there.
He looked back at the suspect, only to find the man still frozen in fear, staring at something behind them, one trembling hand stretched out and pointing. "You — you're supposed to be dead already!"
Conan was completely baffled. He genuinely couldn't tell what the suspect was seeing that he himself could not.
Still, he refused to believe in ghosts. Any phenomenon that couldn't be explained right now was simply something a scheming mind had staged — and in the end, an explanation would always be found.
Some distance away, Mouri Ran heard someone shouting about a ghost, and her whole body flinched with fear.
Even Sonoko, watching the sky darken around them, couldn't keep the tension out of her expression.
She grabbed Ran's hands beside her, and the two of them huddled together, staring nervously in the direction the voice had come from.
Lisa took in just how frightened the two girls really were and smiled helplessly. She walked over and wrapped an arm around each of them, comforting them in a soft voice. "Don't worry, cuties. There's no such thing as ghosts in this world. Most likely someone over there is playing tricks to scare people — and besides, with Kaeya the knight over there, they're in absolutely no danger."
What Lisa didn't know was that someone truly was playing tricks — but it wasn't the murderer she'd imagined. It was Albedo, the very last person she would ever have suspected.
Under Lisa's reassurance, Ran and Sonoko calmed down considerably, no longer as frightened as they had been moments before.
Meanwhile, Conan glanced back once more and still found nothing out of the ordinary.
Unwilling to give up, he turned to study Kaeya and Noelle's faces — only to find them both equally bewildered, utterly lost.
Kaeya even glanced around behind them a few times, but clearly he didn't spot anything either.
What Conan failed to see, however, was that the moment his own eyes moved away, Kaeya shot Albedo a sidelong glance, the corner of his mouth curving faintly upward.
It was obvious Kaeya knew the suspect's strange behavior was Albedo's doing — though even he had no idea how Albedo had pulled it off.
Unable to contain his curiosity, Kaeya sent Albedo a private message, asking what exactly he had just done.
When the message arrived, Albedo's expression didn't so much as flicker. His gaze didn't shift by a single degree; he kept his eyes locked on the suspect as if standing guard with total focus, betraying nothing of the fact that he was attending to two things at once.
No wonder the man was so certain it was a ghost, Kaeya thought. He was nearly out of his mind with fear — who wouldn't panic at a lone head floating through the air?
Seeing that Kaeya had no further questions, Albedo refocused his attention on the suspect. Judging that the man still had some shred of sanity left, he decided to stoke the fire — quietly channeling elemental energy to send the head lurching straight toward the suspect through the air.
Sure enough, the suspect's terror deepened. His eyes blew wide, and the words began spilling out of him unchecked. "Stay back! I'm not scared of you at all!" Even as he shouted, he flailed his arms wildly.
"I wasn't afraid of you when you were alive, so why would I be afraid of you dead? I — I'm telling you, if I could kill you once, I can kill you a second time!"
The words sounded resolute, even brave — but paired with his darting eyes and trembling lips, the man was plainly a paper tiger bluffing for his life.
Then he drew a deep breath, swallowed hard, and — to Conan's horror — yanked a pistol from inside his jacket and fired three shots at the spot he'd been staring at all along.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Fortunately, before Conan could even react, Noelle had already scooped him up and carried him several steps out of the line of fire.
Otherwise, given the suspect's deranged state, even if Conan and the others weren't his target, there was no telling who might take a stray bullet standing where they'd been.
After firing his three shots, the suspect stared forward and suddenly let out a long, shuddering breath of relief — as if he truly had hit something.
Only now did he finally claw free of his terror and register what he had just done.
His eyes turned dark and cold as he glared at Albedo and the others. He no longer bothered trying to talk his way out — he knew perfectly well that nothing he said mattered anymore.
But that didn't mean he was out of options. All he needed was for these people to never speak of what had happened today.
He gave a cold laugh and raised the hand he'd just lowered, aiming it at the one who had blocked his escape and set this whole cascade of accidents in motion.
"Albedo, look out!" Conan saw it coming, eyes going wide as he screamed in terror.
He was already reaching for his belt to summon a soccer ball and stop the suspect — but once again Noelle scooped him up from behind and, heedless of his struggling, carried him away from the scene.
"Conan, please hold still — it's dangerous! We need to get somewhere safe first. This is no time for a little boy to be playing detective."
Noelle's attention had never once left Conan from the very start. She had no intention of letting him slip away under her nose again — which was exactly why she'd been able to intercept his reckless move in time.
The man had a gun, after all, and a whole crowd of accomplices hidden at his back. Conan's soccer ball might handle one person at most — but it could just as easily enrage them, and draw their attention to the small child hiding in their midst.
Nothing mattered more, Noelle decided, than getting Conan out of the danger zone. This was something Mr. Kaeya and Mr. Albedo could handle.
But Conan had no idea what she was thinking, and he kept struggling, desperate to break free of her arms.
Albedo evaded the bullets fired at him with effortless ease.
At the sight of that composed, unhurried expression, the suspect's fury only mounted — until he pulled the trigger and found the magazine empty.
He sneered and lifted his right hand in a small signal. At once, dozens of men emerged from the woods behind him, armed with every manner of weapon — several of them carrying guns.
At the sight, Conan's eyes went wide with shock. He recognized the men who had appeared as members of the syndicate, which meant the suspect commanding them was very likely a senior officer within the organization.
Conan stopped struggling. This was no time to make trouble for Noelle and the others.
Still, worry gnawed at him. He could guess that members of Kaeya and Albedo's mysterious organization were all highly capable — but with this many opponents, every one of them armed, could Albedo and Kaeya really win this fight?