The Strange FBI Agent
Xia Yu had assumed that with Lynette's intervention, the culprit would be caught ahead of schedule—meaning there would be no scene of Conan shouting in front of the cameras at the tournament venue that he was Sherlock Holmes's disciple, and perhaps Sera Masumi would never notice the resemblance between Conan and a young Kudou Shinichi, and would never come to Japan at all.
Yet to her surprise, during the post-match interviews, Glas's younger brother Apollo had brought up Conan anyway, calling him the disciple of Sherlock Holmes who had cleverly cracked the cipher—which still put Conan's face in front of the media.
"Xia Yu! Over here!" Sonoko waved and called out when she spotted Xia Yu walking into the restaurant, only to come to a standstill at the entrance, lost in thought.
"Xia Yu, come, come—let me introduce you. This is Sera Masumi, a student who just transferred into our class. She's a detective too, just like you!" As soon as Xia Yu sat down, Sonoko launched into the introduction with barely contained enthusiasm.
"This is Natsume Xiayu. She's a detective as well, same as you, Sera, so I'm sure you two will have plenty to talk about. Oh, and Xia Yu actually lives right upstairs from this very restaurant!"
Once the introductions were out of the way, Suzuki Sonoko launched into a vivid, colorful retelling of how she'd mistaken Sera Masumi for a groper on the bus, how Ran had ended up trading blows with her over it, and how the fight had turned them into fast friends.
"Jeet Kune Do?" Xia Yu murmured after listening to Sonoko's tale. She studied Sera's face for a moment, as if a thought were stirring, then turned her gaze toward Mouri Ran and said, half to herself, "Come to think of it, Ran—don't you think Sera looks a little familiar?"
"Does she?" Ran hadn't thought so at first, but the moment Xia Yu mentioned it, she too felt a flicker of recognition—though no matter how she racked her memory, she couldn't place where she'd seen her before.
Sera Masumi, catching this, looked over at Xia Yu with curiosity of her own.
"Hmm..." Xia Yu furrowed her brow, studying Sera Masumi closely—and then it clicked. "Oh! I think I know why she looks familiar. Sera looks a bit like that weird FBI agent!"
FBI. At those words, Sera Masumi's heart clenched.
The person who looked like her—the one Xia Yu was talking about—couldn't possibly be her big brother, could it?!
Really, what else could you expect from a detective? She was far, far too sharp.
"The FBI? Xia Yu, since when did you and Ran know anyone from the FBI? Why am I only hearing about this now?" Sonoko asked with mock indignation. "Are we even best friends anymore?"
"Sonoko..." Xia Yu gave her a helpless look. "Have you forgotten? Ran and I mentioned it once when we were chatting. It was back during that bus hijacking when we went skiing with Conan and the kids—there was this odd passenger we ran into. When I brought him up with Ran later, she said she'd run into him recently too, and that's how we learned he was FBI."
Ran had also told them about the time she and Kudou Shinichi had crossed paths with the man while traveling in America.
Knowing Sonoko, though, her attention back then had been entirely consumed by Ran and Shinichi's "love proven through adversity" moment—she probably hadn't spared a single thought for Akai Shuichi, who'd been nothing but scenery in the background of that story.
"Ah..." Sonoko scratched her head, looking a little embarrassed. "Come to think of it, that does ring a bell. But Xia Yu, why did you call him weird?"
At that, Sera Masumi was all but certain the man they were describing was her big brother, who worked for the FBI.
She'd had no idea Ran and the others had known him for so long. But why on earth would they call him weird? Her curiosity piqued, Sera quietly perked up her ears as Sonoko asked the very question on her mind.
"Because if Ran hadn't told me the man was FBI, I honestly would have suspected he was a stalker. On the bus, I could feel him quietly watching me the whole time, and for a while afterward, he'd occasionally turn up around those kids from the Detective Boys. Tell me that isn't suspicious."
"It must have just been a coincidence—he never showed up again after that, remember?" Ran explained with an awkward laugh.
True, the FBI agent had said some strange things to her when they met, but her instincts told her he really had been looking out for her at the time.
"But does he really look like Sera?" Ran steered the conversation back to where it had started. She tried picturing the man's face, but somehow she couldn't see the resemblance at all, and she turned to Xia Yu with a puzzled frown.
"It's the eyes—the eyes," Xia Yu clarified. "The first time I saw that FBI agent, he was wearing a surgical mask, so his eyes left a much deeper impression on me. The moment I saw Sera today, those eyes were the first thing that came to mind."
Then she turned to Sera Masumi and said, with complete sincerity, "You two really do have similar eyes. Oh, that's right—I heard you used to live abroad, Sera. Do you happen to have any relatives who work for the FBI?"
Sera Masumi laughed stiffly and waved her hands in frantic denial. "Of course not! I lived in England with my mother before this—we don't have anything to do with the FBI."
Never in her wildest dreams had Sera imagined that on their very first meeting, someone would connect her to her own big brother. For now, the priority was clear: put as much distance between herself and that suspicion as possible.