"Ran-onee-san, open the door."
Yimi stood outside the Mouri Detective Agency, knocking on the door, but nobody opened it for her.
"Mmph."
She simply used psychokinesis to turn the doorknob from the other side and opened the door for herself. Naturally, nobody came out to greet her.
After delivering the fruit, she had run over here to play. Yimi had not forgotten that her quest required her to become a detective. Kogoro was a detective, but Kisaki Eri was not, so she had to study Kogoro's work carefully.
Except for drinking and smoking.
Kogoro also seemed to like watching television, though he watched programs the little cat did not enjoy.
Yimi sat in Mouri Kogoro's usual office chair and turned on the television with the remote. It was already tuned to the horse-racing program Kogoro often watched.
"Um, excuse me. Is this the Mouri Detective Agency?" A worried female voice came from the doorway.
It belonged to a demure young woman wearing glasses like Conan's and with her hair in two braids.
She looked around the office. Naturally, in such a serious public place, she would not take a little girl seriously, even if the girl's white hair made people instinctively glance twice.
"I'm a detective." Yimi hurriedly jumped down from the chair and went to greet the customer.
She remembered that whenever customers came to the agency before, Ran was the one who received them. Ran would pour tea for the guests.
Yimi picked up the teapot and shook it. It was completely empty.
She only remembered that Ran served guests tea. She had forgotten where Ran actually made it.
"Wait here." Yimi crawled under Mouri Kogoro's desk.
She pulled out a can of beer, popped it open with a hiss, poured it into the teapot right in front of the young woman, then poured the beer from the teapot into a guest cup.
"..."
The young woman pushed the cup aside. In the soft, uncertain voice typical of an introvert—or perhaps one she had deliberately made gentler because she was talking to a child—she asked, "Little girl, aren't there any adults home?"
Yimi sat across from her. "I'm with the Detective Boys. You can hire me too."
She then remembered that Kogoro would first ask people to introduce themselves, so she asked, "What's your name?"
"My name is Hirota Masami." The young woman lowered her head and instinctively reached to lift the teacup, only to draw her hand back after seeing the bubbling liquid inside.
She forced a smile at Yimi. "I think something like this is better left to an adult. My father actually disappeared a few days ago. I heard the most famous detective in Beika Town was Sleeping Kogoro, so I came here to hire him."
Yimi nodded, immediately stood up, pointed at Masami, and put what she had learned from Kogoro into practice. "I know. The culprit is you!"
"Huh?" Hirota Masami's mouth fell slightly open, her eyes darting left and right.
She quickly recovered and slapped the table. "Please don't make such an awful joke! I'm genuinely worried about him. If Mouri-san went out, how long will it be before he comes back?"
"Don't know." Yimi sat down again.
Hirota Masami opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to say something else.
"Gokai Teio! Champion again! Gokai Teio!" the excited horse-racing commentator shouted from the television, accompanied by cheers from the spectators.
Hirota Masami suddenly closed her mouth. For an instant, she wore an expression Yimi found very familiar, as if a bolt of realization had struck her.
"I'll come back again tomorrow." She hurried away.
"Guh..." Yimi made another strange noise.
Detective work really was a confusing profession. Finding cats and dogs was one thing, but apparently detectives even had to help find people.
She leaned against the window and watched Hirota Masami leave, then thought for a moment.
Whenever she had seen Kogoro work before, he accepted a commission and then completed it. If the little cat helped her find the missing person, would that count as being a detective?
Yimi sniffed the cup Masami had touched and ran out of the agency.
* * *
Hirota Masami was a false name. Or rather, even her appearance was a disguise. In reality, she was a mature twenty-five-year-old woman named Miyano Akemi.
Her story about searching for her missing father was really more about finding an accomplice who had run off with the money.
She was a peripheral member of the Black Organization—the same organization whose drug had shrunk Conan. Unfortunately, her younger sister was considered one of the Organization's core members.
A few days ago, the Organization had promised that if she could contribute one billion yen, they would let her younger sister leave and live a normal life. Naturally, the only way to get that much money was to rob a bank.
So she had joined forces with two other gamblers and successfully carried out the robbery. But afterward, one of them had actually taken all the money and run. Hiring a detective was meant to help her track that man down.
As for why the horse-racing program gave her a sudden flash of inspiration, the runaway man owned four cats whose names corresponded exactly to the four characters in Gokai Teio.
Using that clue, she contacted the other, burly accomplice and found the man at the racetrack.
"How can you be so selfish?!"
"Wait!"
Ignoring her attempt to stop him, the hulking man who had arrived after being notified locked an arm around Hirota's throat and ended the man's sinful life on the spot.
"Why did you kill him?!"
"He got what he deserved. He actually dared keep the wealth we all worked to obtain for himself." Only after the fact did the hulking man take two steps back, then force out an explanation.
He hurriedly searched around the room and pulled out a rope. "Why don't we make it look like suicide? Officially, none of us know each other at all, so nobody will suspect me, right?"
The marks from a rope and an arm strangling someone were completely different...
But Miyano Akemi did not say that. Instead, she gave a small nod. "Let's do that."
She had not wanted to kill anyone, but it had already happened...
Besides, the amount she needed to hand over to the Organization had to be exactly one billion yen, no more and no less. In other words, later she planned to drug the man in front of her too, then run away with the money just as Hirota had.
As she watched the hulking man move the corpse, Miyano Akemi noticed the four little cats Hirota had kept, meowing pitifully.
"What are you, doing?" A child's curious voice came from behind her, from the door that should already have been closed. Akemi was so frightened that for an instant her gaze went completely blank.
"Damn it! How did this brat get in?!" The hulking man immediately dropped the corpse and reached for Yimi.
"Wait! You'd even hurt a child?!" Miyano Akemi came back to herself and hurriedly stepped in front of Yimi.
The man shoved her aside. "Idiot! She saw what we're doing. There's no way we can let her leave. I've already killed one. Killing two makes no difference!"
This guy was way too aggressive. The little cat had not even provoked him, and he already wanted to kill her.
Yimi frowned and extended her psychokinesis, giving his heart a squeeze.
"Gaaah—" Just like the criminals before him, the man simply dropped dead in front of Yimi.
The unexpected development stunned Miyano Akemi again. At first she could not even tell whether the man was truly dead. But the little girl had entered the room, seen a corpse already halfway to being hanged, and shown no emotion at all. That was far too incongruous.
Still, this was clearly no time to think about any of that.
"I'm sorry, little girl." She raised a hand and struck hard at the back of Yimi's neck.
She had no choice but to knock her unconscious first so Yimi would not scream.
* * *
"Aniki, after she gives us the money, are we really going to let Sherry leave the Organization?" Vodka casually asked from the driver's seat.
Gin did not even look at him. He answered coldly, "That was a stupid question."
The instant he finished answering, Vodka suddenly felt a sharp pain at the back of his neck. A wave of dizziness made him accidentally wrench the steering wheel to one side.
Splash!
The car smashed through the guardrail and fell into the river below.
Gin: "?"