Bourbon in Motion
"After all, pretty much every kid in the Junior Detective League knows what you did last night — and they all saw you go back to your room and go to sleep with their own eyes."
Conan opened his mouth, then hesitated, but before he could get a word out, Amuro Tooru pressed on with his analysis.
"Of course, that doesn't rule out the possibility that it really happened. If you weren't dreaming last night, then there's only one thing I can think of..." Amuro paused slightly at that point, and Conan instantly grasped what he was leaving unsaid.
"Holographic projection technology!" the two of them said in unison.
It was true — the near-flawless holograms at yesterday's performance really could have fooled his own senses, and Ayumi's and the others' as well.
But to achieve that level of effect, a huge array of equipment would surely have been required. Could the almost empty surroundings around the pavilion last night have accommodated any of that?
"But everything happened so suddenly yesterday, there wouldn't have been time to set up equipment for something like that," Amuro reasoned, having arrived at the same thought. "Besides, you said yourself that you do have memories of Mr. Kamisato walking you back to your room. A hologram is only a projection — it can't rewrite memories. So, Conan, you really were just dreaming!"
Having heard him out, Conan was inclined to agree that he must have been dreaming after all.
And yet that sensation of hovering on the edge of death had been so vivid, so real. Could a dream truly feel like that?
For now, Conan could only bury the doubt in the back of his mind.
Elsewhere — after watching last night's performance together, Bourbon and Vermouth had gone their separate ways. Vermouth had hurried off to report her findings from the Osaka investigation to the Organization's base, while Bourbon returned to his safe house, where — heedless of how late the hour had grown — he phoned Kazami Yuuya and demanded his report.
Kazami Yuuya could only seethe in silence. Roused from his sleep, he had no choice but to drag himself out of bed and grudgingly compile the files.
Though "compiling" was a generous word — the work was hardly troublesome at all, because the investigation had turned up so little. That, in fact, was why he still hadn't reported to Furuya-san up to now; he'd wanted to dig deeper before submitting anything.
But with Furuya-san demanding results this urgently, Kazami could only send over what he had, a guilty conscience gnawing at him the whole time.
Now, Bourbon stared down at the file Kazami had handed him and pressed a hand to his forehead with a headache coming on.
All that time spent investigating a single woman — and the results amounted to less than ten pages of paper.
He went through the file once more, carefully this time.
Natsume Xiayu's circumstances from a few years back were comparatively clear, but from the moment of the accident that left her comatose, the trail narrowed to almost nothing: she had simply lain sleeping in some hospital, and only awakened after her older brother disappeared.
What followed was her journey searching for that brother, and this portion of the record was even sparser — for some places, it noted nothing more than which country she had traveled to, with virtually no record of specific addresses or what she had done there.
Bourbon grew only more certain that Natsume Xiayu was no ordinary girl. But what, exactly, was her connection to Cointreau...
His gaze lingered on the entry for Natsume Xiayu's older brother in the file. Unfortunately, there was nothing but a name — Natsume Sora — not even a photograph.
If there had been one, he could have compared the man's face against Cointreau's, and perhaps confirmed whether Cointreau was, in fact, Natsume Sora himself.
But Cointreau seemed to be in circumstances similar to Vermouth's, which made it likely he was well along in years. So could he be the father, then? Or the grandfather?
Bourbon's speculation ran wild.
Beside him lay another file — the results of his own personal investigation into Kado Hatsune's fiancé.
It was his ticket to getting close to Mouri Kogoro...
"Ryota! Hatsune! Congratulations — you two are getting married at last!"
As the crowd's congratulations rang out, party poppers fired, and a burst of confetti came spraying down squarely onto the heads of the two standing at the center of it all.
In an instant, colorful streamers and flower petals went drifting through the air on all sides, and the entire venue was wrapped in a festive glow.
The groom-to-be, Banba Ryota, slipped an arm around the shoulders of his bride-to-be, Kado Hatsune, and the two leaned affectionately into one another, mulling over honeymoon plans for after tomorrow's formal ceremony. Both their faces were radiant with happiness, brimming with hope and confidence in the life ahead of them.
"Hey there, you lovebirds! I don't know whether to be happy for you or just plain jealous!"
From a seat not far away, Mouri Kogoro called over to the couple with a grin.
"Oh — Mouri! It's been ages." Banba Ryota, spotting his old high school friend, happily led Hatsune over to Kogoro's table.
Even Kado Hatsune had heard the name Mouri Kogoro before.
She knew the famous detective had a daughter — she just wasn't sure which of the two young women at his side she was. Hatsune let her puzzled gaze drift between the two girls.
"Hello, I'm Mouri Ran — Mouri Kogoro's daughter," she introduced herself, then hooked an arm around the girl beside her and explained, "And this is my friend, Natsume Xiayu."
"It's nice to meet you both." Xiayu nodded to the couple with a warm smile.
Then Conan, sitting off to the side, introduced himself as well: "I'm Conan — I live at Mouri-san's place."
Kogoro gave the boy's head a vigorous ruffle and elaborated, "Haha, he's staying with us temporarily. Special circumstances."