"Hewwo, is this Kisaki Eri?"
"Call me 'Aunt Eri.' Where did you run off to play? How did delivering one piece of fruit take you this long?" Kisaki Eri did not sound very friendly. There would probably be bell peppers waiting for Yimi once she got back.
Yimi lowered her head and glanced at the cartoon digital watch on her wrist, playing dumb. "It's only four in the afternoon... two hundred and ten minutes."
Kisaki Eri was not buying it. "I suppose I should praise you for learning to tell time, but if you use it to talk back, I'm going to spank you."
"Nn."
"Is that Conan kid with you?" Kisaki Eri asked.
"No."
"Where are you now? I'll come pick you up right away."
"I'm going to Ran-onee-san's house in a little bit."
Kisaki Eri saw through her little scheme immediately. "You'll be eating bell peppers at Ran's place too. A girl shouldn't run around this wildly. Hurry home."
"Nn." Yimi put down the receiver and stroked the landline inside the phone booth.
The last time she had seen something this advanced was back in the Stand world. The Holy Grail world seemed to have them too, but she had not paid much attention.
"Are you going home?" Miyano Akemi crouched down and carefully studied Yimi's little face.
If angels existed in this world, they probably looked something like this. Though under bright light and at close range, one could faintly make out the little girl's vertical pupils.
Was she an alien like the ones in movies? Or something else? No, that strange sense of calm she gave off felt more like a god. Yet the child herself did not inspire any corresponding sense of divinity at all.
Thinking back on it, hadn't that big man's sudden death looked almost like divine punishment?
Yimi nodded. "Going home. I have school tomorrow. Kisaki Eri will get mad."
"Right. Tomorrow isn't the weekend." Miyano Akemi pressed a hand to her chest, the spot that had just been shot through from the back.
The excitement born from witnessing supernatural power cooled a little.
She could not bring herself to say, Please save my little sister.
This child had healed a fatal wound in a way ordinary people could never understand, and had also knocked Akemi flat in a few moves. But even such an extraordinary child had family who worried about her. She still had to go to bed early tonight because she had school tomorrow.
And Akemi's so-called "request" would ask a little child who had a peaceful life—and who had already saved her life—to face armed killers?
What good would a "god's" blessing do in front of a gun? Was she really supposed to ask a seven-year-old girl to test that? If gods truly existed, then why had the people in the Organization never been punished?
Yimi had pulled her out of hell. How could Akemi possibly reach out and drag this innocent girl right back in?
"Little girl."
Miyano Akemi opened her mouth, seeming to reorganize what she wanted to say twice before finally asking, "Could we exchange contact information? Do you have a phone number or something?"
She did not make her request, but she was afraid she would regret it if she could never find this child again afterward.
"I do."
Yimi took out a Colored Marker and wrote her cell phone number directly on Miyano Akemi's clothes. It was the phone Origami had bought for her.
Miyano Akemi looked down at the string of digits, whose format was rather different from the phone numbers she remembered, and fell into thought.
...
Nothing. Really nothing?
By the river, the rescue team Conan had called hauled the submerged Porsche 356A out of the water, but no one reported finding the drowned body of a little girl.
That counted as good news, right? It meant the girl was overwhelmingly likely to still be alive.
"Conan, you'll catch a cold like this." Looking at the child who was becoming increasingly familiar to him, Inspector Megure thoughtfully handed Conan a towel. Conan was soaked from head to toe.
Based on the time and route, Conan had quickly located Gin's Porsche 356A. Afraid of following too obviously, he had fired the professor's newest tracking device onto the car from a distance and kept well back, only for the signal to vanish completely at a certain point.
Fortunately, the answer was so obvious that it hardly required deduction. One look at the fresh break in the guardrail and the debris left by the car was enough to tell that it had plunged into the water, which explained why the tracker had stopped working.
Worried that Yimi might still be inside, Conan had jumped in without hesitation to see whether he could rescue her. Unfortunately, a child's body could not hold its breath and swim underwater for very long, so he had no choice but to call the police and have someone recover the car.
"I'll go take a look!"
Just as he usually did when tagging along with Mouri Kogoro, Conan suppressed his inner anxiety and acted like a troublesome brat, rushing into the recovered car to inspect it carefully.
There were signs of damage from inside. In the driver's seat... there was no mistake. It was the square-faced man in sunglasses from the deal that day. Yet the car's interior was surprisingly bare. They had probably anticipated something like this happening and made sure not to leave clues for the police.
Conan opened the storage compartment in front of the passenger seat and found a small, flat box.
What was this?
APTX4869. That was the name printed on it, but when Conan opened the box, it was completely empty.
Judging by the shape of the interior, it had probably held capsules or some similar kind of medicine. If someone from that Organization carried it around, there was a high chance it was poison, right? Making poison in capsule form left a particularly deep impression on Conan, considering he himself had once been knocked unconscious with a blow to the head...
That's right!
He vaguely remembered the person who had fed him the drug saying that after someone died from this poison, no trace of it could be detected in the body. Wasn't that exactly the other thing he had been looking into lately?
"Don't disturb the crime scene!"
Inspector Megure hauled him back out. "What is it with kids these days? You and that little girl both always show up at crime scenes before anyone else."
Little girl?
He and Yimi normally tagged along with Uncle Mouri together. Inspector Megure should not have referred to her like that.
"Inspector Megure, have you seen Yimi recently?"
Inspector Megure gave him a sidelong look. "I came straight from the scene she reported. One gambler was killed by another gambler, and apparently it was connected to that one-billion-yen robbery from a few days ago. Do kids these days really not get scared when they see a murder scene...?"
Yimi had not been taken away? Had he misunderstood everything?
"Inspector Megure, can I borrow your phone? Uncle Mouri is going to start worrying if he can't find me!"
"I suppose you can. I'm more curious about why you were all the way out here by yourself." Inspector Megure handed Conan his mobile phone.
"Conan, where did you run off to?!" Ran sounded extremely worried.
"No, Ran-onee-san. Did Yimi go to our place?" Conan asked nervously.
"No, but Kisaki Eri called a little while ago and said that little brat checked in safely. Why did both of you disappear at the same time?!" Mouri Kogoro's voice suddenly barged in from the side. "You brat, did you sneak some of my beer? Why is there an open can here?!"
"I didn't!"
So it had all just been a misunderstanding? Conan had to admit he felt enormously relieved. But why had both of his bugs caused this same kind of ridiculous mix-up?
Then again, they were not exactly false alarms. Both times, the bug really had ended up on someone he wanted to track.
Conan looked down at the empty box in his hand and tucked it into his clothes for now.