Chapter 449 - 60: No Reason to Refuse Anymore

Chapter 449: Chapter 60: No Reason to Refuse Anymore

For the moment, it seemed that nobody besides Conan and Yimi knew Irish and the others had been buried under the meteor.

At the last moment before the helicopter fled, Irish seemed to have given Kogoro one long, meaningful look. Inspector Megure had already suppressed the question of whether Kogoro’s shooting had been appropriate, but since they were dealing with a criminal group capable of acquiring a helicopter, the police naturally conducted as thorough a search as they could. Predictably, they found the spy flash drive.

At Inspector Megure’s suggestion, Kogoro decided to take the whole family away on vacation for a while and lie low.

On the bus, Conan sat beside Yimi and stared out the window, wondering whether he should study the Bible a little to broaden his knowledge as a detective. Yet common sense told him there probably were not any cats like Yimi in the Bible either.

At some point, the bus stopped.

"Yimi, wake up. We’re here." Ran gently shook Yimi awake and took her hand.

She also reached her other hand toward Conan, only to get a glare from Kogoro as he moved the luggage. "How old is this brat already? It’s time he realized he’s a little man. Stop holding his hand all day long."

At that, Conan awkwardly pulled back the hand he had already extended halfway and deliberately made himself look pitiful and aggrieved.

Damn Uncle Mouri! Even if you suspect I’m Kudo Shinichi, Ran and I are genuinely a couple. What’s wrong with holding hands?

"Stop nitpicking over everything. What does a seven-year-old child know?" Kisaki Eri shot Kogoro a look as she helped with the luggage.

Kogoro snorted. "Of course a seven-year-old doesn’t know anything."

But he did not continue.

Ran had no time to comfort Conan because she was busy keeping the still-drowsy Yimi upright as the girl’s head bobbed. "All right, all right, don’t go limp on me. There’ll be lots of delicious food waiting once we reach the inn."

Ran, at least, was delighted. A family of four plus Conan, going away on vacation together in peace and harmony—never mind how unpleasant the reason was, and never mind that their destination was only a little mountain village. This was a scene she had wanted for a very long time.

"Delicious food." Yimi patted her cheeks to wake herself up.

She had originally meant to say goodbye to Kogoro and Kisaki Eri, but somehow she had been swept along on this vacation instead. Eri, who understood her well, had expertly seized on Yimi’s weakness for tasty food.

Without Yimi knowing, Kogoro and Eri had also talked quite a bit. That day, plenty of passersby had seen Yimi and Conan ride off on horseback. Before Conan ran into Yimi, he had also been hiding from Ran, so naturally Ran had noticed something was wrong.

Ran had been too worried about the two children to do anything at the time, but the onlookers had taken out their flip phones and snapped several pictures. Ran could easily ask one of them for a photo and send it to Eri, who had been deeply worried about Yimi.

After getting off the bus, Yimi looked left and right. Seeing nothing but mountains and forest, she raised her face toward Kogoro in confusion.

Eri patted her on the head. "Don’t be impatient. Mountain roads aren’t easy to travel. Uncle Mouri still has to call the innkeeper and ask him to drive over and pick us up."

"Oh~" Yimi turned around, her ears drooping slightly, and once again brought up the topic the other woman probably did not want to hear. "Queen, I still need to, say goodbye to you. At most, one week."

"Say goodbye? What does Yimi want to do?" Ran approached uneasily.

Eri slowly crouched down instead and waited for Yimi to continue.

"Find Mama." Yimi gave an answer that was very difficult to refuse.

"..."

Eri knew that this child had always been special. Compared with her, the undefeated Queen herself seemed almost painfully ordinary.

And precisely because she was ordinary, no matter how special Yimi might be in Eri’s eyes, she was still only a child. What responsible parent in modern society would allow a child to set off on a trip with no clear purpose?

"At most, one week. Then I’ll come back to see you." Yimi emphasized it again.

"Come to think of it, we’ve never met Yimi’s mother," Conan suddenly said in a childish voice, hoping to learn something.

But the moment Yimi looked at him, Conan felt his scalp prickle. He vaguely remembered having a nightmare yesterday in which he was investigating a murderer who used superpowers, yet no matter what he did, he could never prove it.

Yimi, however, only looked at him because she had included him among the people she needed to say goodbye to. Just as she had realized before, Yimi no longer thought Conan and Child Emperor were the same person, just as Tatsumaki was not Madoka.

By the same logic, Yimi finally realized that Diego might only have sounded a little similar as well. Even though the "Diegos" of every world were basically bad people, it seemed she had been misunderstanding him all along.

"Sorry." Yimi lowered her head and apologized to Conan for spending all this time mistakenly believing he owed her a game console.

"Huh?" Conan looked completely baffled.

Before any of them could continue, the sound of a van rolling over the road slowly approached and interrupted everyone’s thoughts. It finally stopped in front of them.

Immediately afterward, a handsome, sunny-looking young man with red hair stepped out of the driver’s seat. "Good morning. You must be the Mouri family, right? I’m Murakami Shiro, the innkeeper you spoke with earlier."

"Ah, hello." Ran politely greeted him as well, only to notice from the corner of her eye that the little sister who had just been worrying her suddenly leaped up like a startled cat and scrambled behind Eri.

"Diego!" Yimi shrieked.

Then she darted back out from behind Eri and hurriedly grabbed Conan, the detective. "The killer is Diego!"

"?"

Nothing had even happened yet. How was there already a killer?

"Have you been watching too many cartoons, you brat?" Kogoro grabbed her and moved her aside, though he still gave Murakami Shiro an extra glance.

...

...

Despite the adults objecting so strongly, Yimi held firmly to her conclusion.

Diego was way too evil. Every previous world had only had one Diego at most, but this time two had appeared at once! The kitty had almost let down her guard against him. She could not relax for even half a second.

After everyone settled in, she secretly tailed Murakami Shiro to the village head’s house—which also happened to be the home of Murakami Shiro’s father.

"What exactly are you doing?" Conan, who had been dragged along, stared at her with dead fish eyes.

Yes, even though she was a mythical creature, this little brat was exactly like a real child in practically every way.

"What are you two doing?" An unfriendly voice sounded, and then both of them were grabbed by the collars.

Kisaki Eri glared at them angrily. "You are not allowed to just barge into somebody else’s house. Understand?"

The two little things had started sneaking around before they even reached the inn. As the adult, Eri naturally had to come and catch them.

Kudo Shinichi had been kept firmly in line by Kisaki Eri since he was little, so even now Conan could only lower his head without saying a word.

Yimi, however, spoke back under Conan’s shocked stare. "Queen, you, barged in too."

"Wasn’t that because of you two?" Eri raised a fist.

"Please, Dad! Please be my guarantor!" Murakami Shiro’s pleading voice suddenly came from inside, interrupting Eri just as she was about to lecture the children.

"If I can’t borrow this money, my inn really won’t survive!"

"Enough! I absolutely refuse!" The village head slapped the documents off the table. "I’ve never thought much of you since you were a child. Why can’t you be more like your younger brother? You’re a grown man, and you even married into your wife’s family!"

At those words, all the resentment Murakami Shiro had accumulated since childhood erupted at once. He grabbed the decorative dagger from the table and stabbed it toward his own father.

"Gah!"

"?"

Conan hurriedly pushed open the door and stared at Murakami Shiro in shock.

You really are the killer?!

"N-No! That’s not..." Seeing that there were witnesses—and more than one—Murakami Shiro shakily threw down the dagger and clutched his head, regretting what he had done in a moment of impulse.

"Call an ambulance!"

Eri hurried forward to try to save the man, only to see Yimi walk over with astonishing boldness and yank the dagger out of the village head’s chest with a wet squelch.

"Yimi, don’t!"

Before Eri could finish, a faint white light appeared.

Eri and Conan stared directly at the scene before them, frozen for several seconds.

The village head patted his newly healed chest in horror, then glared at his son. "Get out! Now!"

"...Dad, I just lost my temper for a moment."

"Get out!"

"..."

The village head did not call the police, which left Yimi deeply dissatisfied. The little kitty was now firmly convinced that no Diego was innocent.

People in the small village seemed rather superstitious. The village head did not react with overwhelming terror to the disappearance of his wound either. Instead, he simply developed a little more reverence for Yimi and the others who had come to visit, and naturally they received the highest level of hospitality.

That night, Yimi finally found another chance to speak. "Queen, I need to say goodbye. I’ll only be gone for one week at most."

"..."

Eri held tightly to her little hand and still said nothing.

But she knew that this time, she probably had no reason left to refuse.

During the day, Yimi had forgotten to suppress Love Train when she used it. Eri and Conan had not followed the light and seen the victim to whom the wound was transferred, but for just an instant, they had vaguely seen a man wearing a crown of thorns place his hand on Yimi’s shoulder before vanishing.

It was as though he had appeared for no other reason than to reassure Eri, an ordinary woman, that even if this child ran into a mountain of blades or a sea of fire, she would not be harmed in the slightest.

* * *

"So even Gin is a traitor. That bastard knows quite a lot about the Organization."

The man who said this was Rum of the Black Organization, one of the most central members among its inner circle.

Beside him, a man checking over his equipment agreed. "Because of him, that flash drive has probably fallen into police hands... Sir, may I ask what ’that person’ thinks about this?"

Rum gave him a cold sidelong glance. "I don’t think that is something you should be asking about."

"My apologies, sir." The man immediately lowered his head.

As someone even more important to the Organization than Gin, Rum’s identity was known to very few people even within the Organization itself. One of his trusted subordinates had no business being this talkative.

The problem was that Rum had previously sent one of his own trusted men—the man who had once served as Gin’s driver—to keep watch on Gin after noticing something unusual about him, only for the man to end up dead while tailing Gin. Rum had sent his other trusted subordinate away on a different assignment.

This man was no good. He would have to find an opportunity to replace him. If necessary, he could even...

"Guh!"

Rum was still thinking when the new driver beside him, who had just drawn a dagger to inspect it, suddenly screamed and fell flat on his back.

A bloody hole had appeared in his chest. The blood that sprayed out splattered all over the blade of the dagger.

"?"

Rum stared at the scene in confusion. There was nobody else in the room.

Had this man killed himself?

Why? Just because Rum had reprimanded him once?