All Parties Converge
At this very moment, Diluc had no idea that the drinks Venti had been knocking back hadn't cost him a single one of the mora he'd provided — in other words, Venti had been drinking on the house, entirely at someone else's expense.
"Ehe~" Venti lifted his head at the familiar voice and greeted it with a smile. "Why, if it isn't Master Diluc."
Kir shot him a sideways glance. Had Venti *just* addressed Diluc with an honorific? And besides — Venti was nominally a division head of the Teyvat Syndicate, wasn't he? Since when did subordinates get away with being this cheeky to their superiors?
"I heard that this Venti is the head of the Mondstadt division of the Teyvat Syndicate. You don't seem to show him much respect, do you?" Gin posed the question to Diluc — the very same doubt that had been nagging at both Kir and Vodka.
Diluc had been on the verge of ushering Venti out of the bar, but at Gin's question he turned his head slowly, brows knitting faintly, a flicker of puzzlement and displeasure passing through his eyes.
He held Gin's cold, hard gaze for a long moment before answering in a low voice. "I have no idea where you picked up your information about this bard's true identity, but there's one thing you've most certainly got wrong — I have always respected him."
With that, Diluc wasted no further time. He took Venti by the arm and walked straight out.
Gin was left standing there, his expression unreadable as the words sank in.
And off to the side, Kir couldn't help rolling her eyes skyward with all her might.
Even at the very end, she grumbled inwardly, he never once called Venti anything but "Venti." How is that supposed to count as respect?
She was finding it harder and harder to fathom just what kind of tangled web of relationships bound the members of the Teyvat Syndicate together.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Amuro Tooru and Mouri Kogoro, after conducting a thorough search of the house, had discovered that the owner had taken a keen interest in the bank robbery from five days earlier.
At that point, Ran remembered something: Kenzuka Kei's older brother — actually her lover, though Kenzuka had lied to Ran about it — was the bank employee who had been killed in the robbery. Their suspicion deepened: the murdered homeowner and the "robber" who had been holding everyone at the Mouri Detective Agency were, in all likelihood, two of the three bank robbers themselves.
Next, they cracked the password on the study computer, and what they found inside confirmed their theory completely.
There was even a group photo on the computer revealing that the last of the robbers was a woman — and in the email inbox, they found a message she had sent containing her address.
Amuro Tooru therefore proposed that they track down this final robber first. If they found her, there was a good chance they would find Kenzuka Kei and Conan as well.
By that time, Haibara Ai had already put on the spare tracking glasses, and Professor Agasa and Okiya Subaru had settled into the driver's seat and the passenger seat of the car respectively.
Sera Masumi, for her part, was geared up and astride her motorcycle. She snapped her helmet on and took off, arriving in short order at the address Ran had given her.
As for Conan, who had been "drugged unconscious" — while Kenzuka Kei had gotten out to refuel the car, he had finished going through her personal effects and confirmed what he had suspected: she was the one who had killed the two bank robbers.
Before long, just as Kenzuka returned to the car and settled behind the wheel with her attention fixed on the road, Conan's voice rang out without warning.
The shock nearly sent her through the roof. And beneath her look of sheer disbelief, Conan explained with a smile that he had never actually drunk the beverage at all.
Then, in that disarming, adorable way of his, he added, "I'd guess you're just dying to kill that woman — to avenge your lover, right?"
After Kenzuka frantically, half-convinced denials failed to hold up, Conan laid out the full chain of his reasoning: how she had used text messages to lure Mouri Kogoro away, and the clever mechanism she had rigged to gun down the robbers without ever leaving gunshot residue on her own hands.
When Conan finished, Kenzuka Kei gave a helpless little smile and confessed to everything.
Conan then offered to help her locate the final robber — on the condition that they do things his way.
Once Kenzuka nodded her agreement, the two of them paid visits to all three suspects together.
Through sheer relentless badgering, Conan managed to talk his way inside each house to investigate, and at last he confirmed it: the third suspect, Miss Tekawa, was the final robber.
Just as Kenzuka was anxiously pressing Conan about which of them the last robber really was, Professor Agasa's group, following the tracking glasses, was on the verge of rendezvousing with him.
Amuro Tooru's team was likewise drawing near the final robber's residence — with a worried Sera Masumi trailing close behind them.
At that very moment, Diluc and Venti, having finally escaped the clamor of the bar, were driving unhurriedly toward that same destination.
Venti, seated beside Diluc, gently rolled down the passenger-side window. The cool night air came rushing in as if it could hardly wait, brushing tenderly against his cheeks. He let his eyes drift half-closed, the corners of his mouth curving up of their own accord, and surrendered himself utterly to the pleasant comfort of the evening breeze.
There was not the slightest trace left of that tipsy, muddle-headed bard from the bar.
With his eyes nearly shut, he gave himself over entirely to the countless delicate threads of information carried on the wind. Suddenly, a look of keen amusement spread across his face. He opened his eyes and exclaimed with delight, "Wow! What a coincidence! All sorts of interesting people have just gathered around here — even the main character is on the scene. Come on, let's go join the fun!"
At those words, Diluc, behind the wheel, stole a glance at Venti in the rearview mirror, his face betraying not the faintest intention of agreeing. And yet his foot quietly pressed down on the accelerator, steering the car in exactly the direction Venti had pointed.