Standoff at the Detective Agency, Part 3
Haibara had been watching Conan with quiet amusement — the way he insisted he was only calling Ran-nee-san as a formality, and yet was genuinely, dutifully dialing her number anyway to ask after that boy's condition. All talk, no conviction. It was almost cute.
Then something caught the edge of her vision. Albedo, who until that moment had been patiently observing the children chatter among themselves, went very slightly pale. A furrow creased his brow at some thought of his own, and his expression tightened with a tension she had never seen on that composed face before.
Haibara knew he was a member of the Teyvat Syndicate. The moment she registered that odd reaction, she shifted her attention to him without so much as a blink, careful not to alert anyone.
Albedo glanced once at Klee, then leaned in beside Professor Agasa and murmured something. The professor gave a small nod in reply — and with that, Albedo softened his footsteps and slipped out of the house, stirring nothing and no one as he went.
That only deepened Haibara's confusion. She knew exactly how this gathering of the Detective Boys had been arranged. It had all been agreed on beforehand: Albedo would deliver Klee here and then stay the night at Professor Agasa's house.
Granted, he belonged to that mysterious organization — but with Klee present, Haibara trusted he would do nothing unnecessary, and so she had raised no objection to him staying.
Which meant that his abrupt departure, taken without a word to Klee, could only mean one thing: he did not expect to be gone for long.
Having reasoned that far, Haibara paid no attention to whatever Conan was saying to Ran-nee-san on his phone. She rose, crossed to the professor's side, and asked him outright. "Professor — what did Albedo just say to you?"
"Hm?" Professor Agasa blinked at the sudden question, but answered in earnest all the same. "Oh, he just said something had come up that he needed to take care of. He'd be out for a little while and back right away."
Haibara's probing gaze settled on the front door, which had closed behind Albedo only moments ago.
That was strange. Given how dearly Albedo cherished Klee, he should have had everything squared away before bringing her over in the first place — how could something urgent possibly have cropped up now? And besides, she hadn't seen him receive a single message, nor was he wearing an earpiece of any kind.
At that thought she turned her head, meaning to share her discovery with Conan — and froze. He was standing rigid with the phone pressed to his ear, his face drawn tight with alarm.
Her curiosity evaporated on the spot, drowned at once by a cold surge of worry for Ran-nee-san and the others. She hurried to Conan's side and asked, her voice tight with concern, "What's wrong? Did something happen over there, at Ran-nee-san's?"
Conan nodded gravely and pressed a finger to his lips. Haibara stood silently beside him, every nerve focused on the voice leaking from the phone.
Meanwhile, Albedo — having just left the Agasa residence — was making his way toward the Mouri Detective Agency as fast as his feet would carry him, all while taking in the situation inside the office through the system's communication channel.
Albedo: "Traveler, what's your situation over there?"
Xiayu: She gave him a quick rundown of how things had stood when that Sawakuri Kaoru barged into the agency — stressing above all that the man wasn't just armed with a gun, but had explosives strapped to his body as well, and that his emotions were hanging by a thread. Right now he was frantically demanding that Mouri Kogoro name the person who had murdered his sister.
When she finished, Xiayu let out a breath of relief. "Thank goodness you were nearby, Albedo, and could get here in time. On my own, I really couldn't guarantee I'd take the culprit down without exposing my elemental power. Honestly, though — how does an ordinary civilian like Sawakuri Kaoru even get his hands on a bomb and a gun? If it weren't for that bomb, none of this mess would exist."
She couldn't help taking one last jab at Beika's public safety as she said it.
Paimon: "Right?! Exactly!" Paimon couldn't help chiming in. "Paimon just took a look — there are bombs everywhere! He's got a whole ring of them strapped around his waist. It's terrifying just to look at!"
Albedo: "Understood." With that single reply, Albedo devoted himself entirely to the road ahead.
Before long, he arrived at the building below the Mouri Detective Agency.
Inside the agency, meanwhile —
Ran had barely exchanged a few words with Conan over the phone before Sera Masumi plucked it from her hand.
So as not to rouse the culprit's suspicion, she tossed off a few idle remarks for his benefit, then set the phone back down on the desk.
Of course, the call was never actually disconnected.
Determined to let Conan, waiting on the other end of the line, follow what was happening, Sera Masumi maneuvered the culprit, Sawakuri Kaoru, into walking through the whole case all over again — the one he wanted Mouri Kogoro to solve.
The culprit's younger sister, Sawakuri Mio, had been a bestselling novelist who won the Naoki Prize while still in her twenties. But just last month, she had died at a hot spring inn in Gunma Prefecture. Because it happened inside a locked room, the police had ruled her death a suicide.
The three people who had been with her on that trip were the very friends her sister had met online through social media — the same three whom Sawakuri Kaoru had summoned to the agency today. He was convinced that one of those three had murdered his sister.
To help Mouri Kogoro grasp the situation, Sawakuri had even brought along supporting materials: a bloody handprint on the bath mat outside the bathroom door, and records of the victim's own posts on social media, where she had been live-texting the trip in real time as it unfolded.