The Mokuba Manor Fire
Conan glanced over at Haibara and found no flicker of recognition on her face at the name. So this person had nothing to do with her, then. But if that was the case, where on earth had he heard it before?
Suddenly, a light flashed through his mind.
Wasn't this the name of the doctor who had later taken over the treatment of Rena Mizuna — of Kir?
And now, at school of all places, he had run into someone connected to that man. Coincidence... or something else?
"Ah! Qiqi, your hands are so cold! Are you feeling unwell?"
Just then, Ayumi had brushed against Qiqi's hand by accident. The temperature of it — far colder than any ordinary person's — startled her, and a thread of worry rose in her chest. She couldn't help wondering whether Qiqi had never fully recovered from whatever had happened to her before.
Her hands are always this icy... that has to be really uncomfortable, Ayumi thought to herself.
Without a second thought, she reached out with both hands and clasped Qiqi's, pressing them together between her own warm palms, hoping the heat she gave off might take just a bit of the chill out of them.
"Ah... my body is... fine." Qiqi looked down at the hands Ayumi had captured and explained slowly, in her flat, halting voice. "This is just... a little... aftereffect. And... Qiqi has to... exercise every day. Otherwise... Qiqi's body... feels bad."
At that, Haibara found her gaze drifting to Qiqi's face, and sure enough, the girl's complexion was pale — the unmistakable pallor of poor circulation. Her health really was frail, it seemed. Haibara made a mental note to keep a closer eye on her condition from now on.
Everyone else in the Detective Boys around her was thinking exactly the same thing.
Genta looked at Qiqi's face and tried to comfort her. "Don't worry about it! Y'know how the saying goes — something something 'not dying means good fortune,' right? And hey, Qiqi can still eat tasty eel rice, so it's not all that bad!"
"It's 'a brush with death brings blessings to follow,'" Mitsuhiko corrected primly, though he nodded along with Genta's point all the same. "As long as you're alive, good things are bound to happen sooner or later."
Worried about Qiqi's condition, the Detective Boys unanimously decided that today they would walk her all the way home — no sense letting anything happen to her on the road.
But just as they stopped at the entryway to change into their shoes, they happened to run into a classmate from another class who was hoping to commission the Detective Boys for a case.
Kaito Shioura walked with them for a stretch of the way, and along the road he explained what he wanted.
His father was the landlord of an apartment building, and one of the tenants had been behaving suspiciously every night lately. That was why he wanted to hire the Detective Boys — to find out what this tenant had been up to.
Before they parted ways, Kaito Shioura arranged to meet the Detective Boys at his father's apartment the next morning, Saturday, so they could begin their investigation together.
With Shioura seen off, the Detective Boys continued on toward Qiqi's home.
Having made a new friend that day, Genta eagerly invited Qiqi to join them at the Shioura family's apartment for the investigation tomorrow.
Under the expectant gazes of the others, Qiqi thought for a moment, then said that she would need to ask her current guardian before she could decide.
Genta and the others were a little disappointed, but they understood. If anything, it only made them all the more impatient to meet this "Brother Baizhu" of Qiqi's.
And so, amid everyone's anticipation, before long they arrived at Qiqi's house.
By lucky chance, Baizhu was not at the hospital at the moment — he was home.
The moment the two sides met, the Detective Boys wasted no time in putting the question to him.
Baizhu pondered it for a while, and in the end he agreed to Qiqi joining the Detective Boys' investigation the next day — though with one added condition: he would be coming along too.
The children agreed readily, without the slightest objection to the condition. After all, on their past cases, big-sister Ran and the others had often tagged along with the Detective Boys anyway.
"Then let's meet here tomorrow morning!" Genta said brightly, naming a spot.
"Wonderful. I'll bring Qiqi there on time," Baizhu agreed with a gentle smile.
On the way home, Genta rubbed his hands together in delight. "This is great! Now we get to work a case with our new friend Qiqi!"
The next morning, Baizhu arrived with Qiqi punctually at the appointed place, where they met up with Genta, Conan, and Haibara Ai.
From there, the group set out together for the address Shioura had given them — Mokuba Manor, 2-chome 23, Beika-cho.
What greeted them, however, left everyone stunned. There was no apartment building in sight. In its place lay nothing but charred, crumbling walls and scorched ruins, fire-gutted to the last timber, with police officers milling about the scene, combing it for evidence.
While the children fretted over what might have become of Kaito Shioura, a police officer came over and assured them that the boy had suffered only minor burns — nothing serious — and was currently resting in the hospital.
"Inspector Yuminaga," Conan said, naming the officer at once.
Clearly, this was a policeman he had crossed paths with back in the days when he'd been trailing along after Kogoro Mouri on cases.
Baizhu, standing behind the children, watched Conan and Inspector Yuminaga fall into the easy, familiar chatter of old acquaintances, and a peculiar expression crossed his face as he looked down at the little boy. Just how much of Japan's entire police force has this child personally met...?
Once Conan had spotted Inspector Yuminaga, he began asking him about the case. The inspector, for his part, answered Conan's questions quite cooperatively, and even shared a few details and leads about the fire.