episode 129 — the girl from the black organization and the university professor murder case
A few days passed since the death of Hirota Masami and Suzume was just trudging along as the days went by. She hadn't known the woman that well, but this was the first time she had someone die in her arms and she couldn't do anything to stop it.
She tuned out the lessons taught by the teachers and distanced herself from anyone who tried to talk to her, including Ran and Sonoko. She just focused on the case in London she was consulting on and sending over her theories and deductions. The teachers didn't speak up about this because they knew she liked to work on cases when she understood the lessons easily.
Today was different from her schedule for the last couple of days. She was picking up the Detective Boys, which consisted of the three kids she babysat on occasion: Yoshida Ayumi, Tsuburaya Mitsuhiko, and Kojima Genta. She figured it might do her some good to be around the kids.
Thinking back to when she made the call to the police after Masami's death, they had ruled it as a suicide because it was only her fingerprints on her gun. She didn't argue against their reasoning for once and just left it at that, but did commission a grave for the woman in a private lot. When she finds Shiho, she wants her to have a place to grieve Masami's death.
"Suzume-san!" She heard Ayumi's excited yell and smiled at the three—wait, five—children who were waiting outside the school for her. She raised an eyebrow at the extra children.
"Hey, guys," Suzume said, crouching down to their height and looking over at the two new faces. "Never seen you two before."
"Ah, this is Haibara Ai-san," Mitsuhiko said, introducing the young girl with them. "She just transferred. Do you know her?"
Suzume blinked. "Know her?"
"She said she lives in Beika 2-22, which is near your home, right?" Ayumi asked.
Suzume hummed. There aren't any apartment buildings or the like near my home...and I don't remember anyone by the name of Haibara moving in recently. "It seems we just have never run into each other," she said as an excuse for not knowing the girl. "It's nice to meet you, Haibara-san."
The girl said nothing, only staring at Suzume.
"And this is Toshiya-kun!" Ayumi said, pointing at the boy with them. "He put in a request to help find his missing brother!"
"Oh?" Suzume raised an eyebrow and got to her feet. "Then what are we standing around for? Let's go!"
"Yes!"
Haibara just continued to stare at Suzume, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.
~ — — — ~
They went to Toshiya's house which had a police car parked outside. The Detective Boys, sans Haibara, ran towards it in awe and started looking inside. Suzume just sighed as she looked towards the front door of the house.
"All right, if something comes up, please contact the station," one of the officers says to the woman.
"Thank you."
The officers walked through the gate and held it open for Suzume and the children. "Thanks," she said to them as she walked inside the gate.
"My, Toshiya," the boy's mother said. "Are they your friends?"
"Yes."
"Hello!" the other kids, sans Haibara, said.
"Come on in," Nakata-san said, letting them into the house. "Toshiya, would you like me to make you something?"
"No thank you," Suzume answered. "We won't be here for very long."
"Oh, is that right?" Nakata-san murmured. "I'll be in the kitchen, then."
"I'm sorry," Toshiya said. "My mom's preoccupied with my brother right now."
Suzume hummed in understanding. "How about we take a look at your brother's room?"
Toshiya led them up the stairs to his older brother's room.
"It's so neat and clean," Genta commented.
"Are we going to look for clues here?" Mitsuhiko asked.
"Best place to start," Suzume told them as the children set down their school bags.
They all scattered throughout the room to look around for anything that could indicate where Toshiya's brother vanished. Suzume sighed as Mitsuhiko and Genta awed over a pair of brand-name shoes. She glanced at Toshiya.
"Was your brother into that sort of thing?" she asked the boy.
"I don't know," he said. "But my uncle gave him those as a gift from the States. I got one, too."
Genta and Mitsuhiko put the shoes back and continued looking. Toshiya noticed Haibara staring at Suzume and looked back and forth between them.
After a while of searching the room, Genta sat himself down on the bed. "Suzume-san, we're getting nowhere standing here," he told her. "See, so maybe he ran away from home after all?"
"I doubt it," she said, looking through the desk's drawers. "This is your brother's wallet, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"If he was going to run away, he would have at least brought his wallet with him," Suzume said.
"So then, where is he?" Toshiya asked her.
"It was either some kind of accident or he got mixed up into something he wasn't supposed to," Suzume said with a sigh, shutting the drawer.
Ayumi looked under the bed and crawled under it, laughing soon after. Suzume looked over at the bed with a raised eyebrow as she pushed multiple painted canvases out from under the bed.
"What's with these pictures?" she asked as she continued to giggle. "There are so many strange pictures under the bed."
Suzume went over and looked over a few of them, her eyes widening as Genta and Mitsuhiko also laughed over how odd some of them looked. Those aren't...
"Who drew this picture?" Ayumi asked.
"Picasso," Haibara answered quietly, speaking up for the first time.
"Yes. That's a copy of Picasso's "Crying Woman"," Mitsuhiko said.
"Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Utrillo," Suzume listed even more famous artists as she looked through the various paintings.
"They all look genuine," Mitsuhiko commented.
"My brother drew all of these," Toshiya said with a proud smile. "He was in the art club of his high school, and was good at copying other people's paintings."
"Hey, don't tell me he's been kidnapped and being forced to draw pictures," Genta said, getting to his feet.
"That's possible," Mitsuhiko said. "If the masterpieces are copied and exchanged for the real ones."
"No, that's not possible either," Suzume said, looking at one of the paintings. "His works are very good, but he needs a little more practice in regards to color and touch. It's not good enough to be counterfeit yet." She glanced at Toshiya. "And this isn't a kidnapping for ransom either. Because if it was, it would be easier to kidnap you than to kidnap your brother who is in high school." She lifted one painting. "This one bothers me the most."
Ayumi peered at it. "What? I've seen him somewhere before."
"It's Natsume Soseki," Suzume said.
"Yes. My brother was a great fan of Soseki! He liked that painting so much that he even entered it in the community exhibition," Toshiya said. "But, everybody was complaining about it because it was a copy of his picture. Only one weird woman praised it."
"A weird woman?" Suzume echoed.
"Yes, she was wearing a broad-brimmed hat and dressed in black from head to toe," Toshiya told her.
"When did you see her?" she asked him with a frown, hoping it wasn't one of them.
"About ten days ago."
"Was there anyone else with her?"
"Yes, there were two men."
Suzume sighed, not feeling too hopeful but had enough to figure that it probably wasn't them. If it is them, though... She shook her head. No, she wasn't going to think like that.
"Is there something wrong, Suzume-san?" Ayumi asked the eldest in the room worriedly.
Suzume glanced at the girl and gave her a (hopefully) reassuring smile. "I'm okay, Ayumi-chan," she said. "Just a little stressed." She looked back at Toshiya. "How about you take us somewhere that your brother is likely to go?" Toshiya didn't get where she was going with this by the confused look on his face. "His wallet and train pass are still in his desk drawer, and his bike is still at the front door. It's possible your brother was called out near here and kidnapped."
"I see," Mitsuhiko said. "So if we search the vicinity..."
"Maybe we'll find some clue," Genta finished the thought.
~ — — — ~
Toshiya took them to the various spots his brother may have been called to and to ask people if they ever noticed a woman wearing black, which included a cafe, an arcade, the train station, a playground, and some stores.
"Suzume-san, would you mind if I stop by at the convenience store?" Ayumi asked her, pointing behind her. "I'm thirsty."
Suzume watched a man walk inside the convenience store with a frown. She nodded and they all went into the store.
"A Seven Mild," the man Suzume noticed earlier said to the cashier, making Suzume look back at him. It was 330 yen for them, and his change was 770 yen, which didn't make sense to the teenager.
"What's the matter, Suzume-san?" Ayumi asked, noticing the look on her face.
"He bought a single pack of cigarettes with a thousand-yen bill," Suzume said. "Odd."
"Maybe he didn't have loose change?" Genta suggested with a smile as he held a large pack of pocky in his hands.
Suzume deadpanned. Oi, oi. I'm not buying you that... "If he had a thousand yen, he could've got it at the vending machine outside," she disputed. "He didn't need to go through the trouble of waiting at the check-out counter." She walked over to the cashier and smiled at her.
"Maybe the cigarettes he wanted were sold out," Mitsuhiko said.
"Can I see the bill that man paid with?" Suzume asked the cashier.
"What?"
"Please," Suzume stressed, her smile straining slightly.
The cashier reluctantly handed it over, fully expecting Suzume to run off with it. She didn't though, instead holding the bill towards one of the ceiling lights and narrowed her eyes. "There's no watermark on this bill," she said. "Call the police. This bill is a counterfeit."
She took off running out of the shop, ignoring the calls of the kids. She ran after the man before slowing to a stop, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible as she tailed the man.
"Suzume-san!" The kids caught up with her as the man turned and walked into an alleyway.
She ignored them for a moment, watching around the corner for a minute longer.
"What is it about the counterfeit that you were talking about at the convenience store?" Genta asked.
She held up a finger to her lips as she continued to watch the man. "That man bought a cigarette pack with a thousand yen, right?" she recalled to them. "He did that even though there was a vending machine right outside the store, going out of his way to line up at the counter. In other words, he used a thousand yen that the machine wouldn't accept. A counterfeit that the human eyes are likely to overlook."
"But that has nothing to do with Brother disappearing, does it?" Toshiya asked her desperately.
"On the contrary," Suzume said, surprising them, "it has everything to do with your brother. Remember the portrait of a certain person your brother drew?"
"Natsume Soseki," Haibara answered.
"Come to think of it, the thousand-yen bill has the face of Natsume Soseki on it," Mitsuhiko said thoughtfully.
"Then, is my brother..."
"Somebody saw through his talent for art, and has him confined some place, forcing him to make counterfeits," Suzume guessed with a soft sigh. I'm pretty sure this guy isn't involved with them, but I'd rather not take the risk. Not after Masami-san... She glanced at the kids. I can't get them involved in a dangerous investigation. I'll lose sight of the man if I don't hurry.
With a huff, she chased after the man, digging into her pocket and pulling out the counterfeit bill she managed to take from the cashier. Sorry... "Sir!" she called out, making him stop and glance at her. She held up the bill. "You dropped this. It's your thousand yen, right?"
His eyes widened and his pupils dilated in horror. He swiped it from her hand and stuffed it into his jacket.
"Suzume-san!" The kids caught up with her.
She turned and smiled at them. "See, he just dropped his money," she fibbed, giving them a tiny wink. "I went after him to give it to him."
Ayumi frowned. "That's no fun."
"But what're we going to do about looking for his brother?" Genta asked.
"It's getting late," Ayumi pointed out.
"We have no choice but to come back and continue tomorrow," Mitsuhiko rationalized.
Suzume looked at them. "You guys go on ahead to Toshiya's house and pick up your bags," she told them before walking off. "I've got something I need to check on."
She pulled out her phone after crossing the street, checking to see if her transmitter was working, and smirked when she saw the blinking dot. Hopefully, where he's going is where they're holding Toshiya's brother...
She followed her transmitter to a train station and went up to the newspaper stand worker. "Have you seen a man wearing black come here in the past few minutes?" she asked.
He blinked at her. "Yeah, that man wearing a black hat came here," he said. "He bought a can of 110 yen coffee with a thousand yen."
She sighed, scratching under her right ear. "That's what I thought."
"He wasn't friendly, and besides there was a strange seal stuck on the bill," the worker continued. "He was a weirdo."
"Do you know which way he went?" Suzume asked.
"I'm not sure. After he bought the can of coffee, he was using the phone over there." He pointed at the phone next to his stand. "He placed loose change on the phone and was talking on the phone until he used it all up. For around 10 minutes."
"Did he, by chance, ask you to give him the change in hundreds and tens?" Suzume questioned.
"Yes. But since I didn't have hundred yens, I mixed 500 yen and gave him 890 yen," the worker recalled.
The change at the convenience store was 770 yen. One 500-yen coin and two 100-yen coins, one 50-yen coin and two 10-yen coins. If the 890 yen change he received from the stand is added, the money that he can use to make the phone call would be five 100-yen coins and eleven 10-yen coins, Suzume thought it over in her head. Which is 610 yen in total. If he had more loose change on him, it would be more than that.
She stepped to the side as a man came over to buy a newspaper. He used more than 610 yen for a call approximately ten minutes long? Was it a long-distance call? Could it be he went somewhere far away to where his partner is waiting for him? She shook her head. No, if he calls from a public phone to a cell phone, it would cost 10 yen per 9 seconds. That's still a possibility.
"Hey, kiddo," the street cleaner said, getting her attention. "Are you an acquaintance of the man wearing the black hat?"
"Yes." Sort of...not really...
He gave her a relieved smile. "Oh, great. Please give this to him." He gave her a 50-yen coin.
"50-yen?" she murmured in surprise.
"He was in such a rush that he forgot to take this 50-yen change from the ticket vending machine," he told her.
"Do you remember which ticket machine it was?"
"The one for the Tohto Line, over there." He pointed.
"Do you know which button he pressed?"
"I don't know. He put in one 500-yen coin, and I saw a lot of loose change came out," he remembered. "But I was so concerned about the rubbish at his feet that I didn't notice anything else."
She smiled at him. "Thank you very much. I'll go after him." She waved goodbye to the two men before going over to the ticket vending machines, specifically the one for the Tohto Line. He probably got more than three coins as change. If he put in 500-yen and got change that included a 50-yen coin and three more... She grinned. The station would be 500-yen minus 320-yen, so the answer would be one 100-yen coin, one 50-yen coin, and three 10-yen coins, making a total of five coins. 180 yen would be the change. So, he's going to Daitohma Station.
~ — — — ~
After buying a ticket herself to follow after the man and getting on the train, her phone began to ring and she winced when she saw the contact. "Hey..." she drew out nervously.
"If you weren't going to be home, you could have told me," the man told her, sounding more amused than annoyed like she expected him to be. "Working another case?"
"Kidnapping and counterfeiting," she told him quietly, making sure she didn't disturb anyone on the train. "I'm heading to Daitohma Station right now to follow up on something."
"Wait, you're on the Tohto Line heading for Daitohma?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. Why?"
"I'll meet you at the station in Daitohma. I just got done with an assignment, and it's starting to get dark," he said, leaving no room for arguments. "I don't want you there alone, okay? Wait for me."
She sighed. "Yes, sir," she muttered before hanging up. "Why did I save your ass again?"
~ — — — ~
"Suzume!"
She looked over at the call and smiled at the familiar face, his bass case hanging off his back. "Do you ever go anywhere without that thing?" she asked, amused.
He shook his head, ruffling her hair good-naturedly. "I'm not starting this argument with you again," he said. Wise decision. "What are we looking for?"
She sighed. "I asked around while waiting for you, and no one saw a man in a black hat," she said.
"Maybe start with a real estate agency," he suggested with a shrug. "Need a base of operations if they're making counterfeit bills."
She pointed a finger at him and they went to do just that.
The real estate agent opened a binder, flipping through the pages with a raised eyebrow. "A warehouse?" he repeated.
"Yes." Suzume nodded. "Have you rented a warehouse that's inconspicuous, in the suburbs and won't be suspected no matter what is done there?"
Her companion sweatdropped at her straightforward questioning. "Maybe tone it down there," he muttered in her ear, making her give him a look.
"No, we haven't rented any warehouses out recently," the agent said.
"Maybe look back a few years," Suzume's friend suggested.
The man sighed and shut his binder, giving Suzume a look. "You're getting in the way of business," he said bluntly, making her friend narrow his eyes. "Take your kids and go home."
Suzume's eyes widened and her friend frowned. "Kids?" she echoed, having a feeling she knew exactly who she was talking about.
The agent pointed outside. "They're kids you're looking after, aren't they?"
The two turned and saw the Detective Boys pressing their faces against the glass, looking at her in annoyance while Haibara and Toshiya were looking at her normally. However, Haibara's eyes widened slightly at the sight of the man accompanying Suzume.
Suzume sighed and looked back at the agent. "Thank you," she said before walking out of the building. She looked at the kids with narrowed eyes and jerked her head, walking back into the building.
"You can't keep giving us that excuse," Mitsuhiko said to her in an attempt to justify them ignoring what she said.
"When did an order turn into a debate?" Suzume muttered to herself and her friend chuckled, patting her on the shoulder comfortingly. "Did you follow me?"
"We came after you because Ai told us to," Mitsuhiko said, pointing at the girl browsing the magazines.
"Well, Haibara-san isn't the adult of the group, now is she?" Suzume asked, raising an eyebrow at the kids in front of her.
"She said you would leave us behind to pursue the man yourself," Ayumi said.
Suzume frowned and the man next to her chuckled. "They have you pegged, don't they?" he asked her with an easy-going smile.
She glared at him. "Not helping," she grumbled.
Toshiya looked at the real estate agent. "Mister?"
"What is it?"
"Isn't there a novelist who lives near here?" Toshiya asked.
Suzume's friend tilted his head at the boy. "What do you mean?"
"After my brother disappeared, he called us once at home," Toshiya said, and Suzume held back a sigh.
"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Genta asked, taking the words from Suzume's mouth.
"It's my grandmother who took the call," Toshiya said with an embarrassed blush. "She's hard of hearing and besides, my brother talked so fast that she couldn't understand what he said. All she could make out was his words, I'm with a lot of people like Soseki."
"People like Soseki?" Suzume repeated.
"Did you tell the police about this?" Mitsuhiko asked.
"Of course. But they couldn't find anybody like that no matter how hard they searched," Toshiya said. "So, they said that maybe Grandma made a mistake, or that it was a crank call."
"But wasn't your brother a fan of Soseki?" Ayumi questioned.
"If so, there's nothing to worry about, is there?" Genta said.
"But Grandma said my brother's voice was trembling and cut off halfway," Toshiya told them, looking afraid for his brother.
So he managed to make the call when they weren't around, but got caught and had to hang up, Suzume thought, sharing a look with her friend.
"Come to think of it, a man who looks like Soseki does live near here," the real estate agent remembered. "He's the owner of the bookstore on the corner. His nickname is One-Thousand-Yen."
"That's it!" The Detective Boys cried before grabbing onto the man's arm. "Take us there!"
Suzume facepalmed and her friend laughed awkwardly.
"No, I'd advise you not to go to his place," the agent warned.
"What?"
~ — — — ~
Nonetheless, the persistence of the kids made the agent take them to the bookstore. Suzume and her friend made the kids remain outside with the agent as they went in to talk to the owner.
"You've got to be kidding! Counterfeit my foot!" he screamed at them. "Stop playing jokes with me. Get out of here!"
Suzume sighed. "Let's go, Hikaru," she muttered, throwing the owner a glare before leaving the shop.
Hikaru stared after her for a moment before looking at the owner. "Talk to her like that again, and you won't like what happens," he warned him quietly before leaving the store as well.
Unknown to them, Haibara snuck into the store behind them and was reading a book behind one of the shelves as the owner muttered to himself, looking mildly terrified at Hikaru's threat.
"A thousand yen, they said. I'm not that cheap," he grumbled, sitting behind his counter. "Why isn't Natsume Soseki on the 10,000-yen bill?"
At that, Haibara left the shop as well.
"That's why I told you not to come," the agent muttered to the grown-ups of the group, who shared a shrug.
"What's with that man, anyway?" Genta grumbled.
"He sure smells fishy," Mitsuhiko said, crossing his arms.
"I doubt he has anything to do with the incident," Suzume spoke up, putting her hands in her jacket pockets. She glanced at Toshiya. "I checked the warehouse of the bookstore. I didn't see a printer for making counterfeit bills."
"Talking about printers, the newspaper agency in front of the station was installing one," the agent recalled, a hand to his chin.
Hikaru raised an eyebrow. "Newspaper agency?"
The agent pointed across the street. "See, the building next to the police box. The agency is on the 3rd floor. We handled that building two years ago, too."
"What were the people there like?" Suzume asked.
"A lady who is always wearing a broad-brimmed hat is the president of that small agency," he said, making her eyes widen.
"What?"
"But, they're printing out information magazines on this town, not counterfeit bills," the agent dismissed the notion. "They couldn't possibly do something like that here. After all, it's right beside the police box."
Hikaru gained an uncomfortable smile, a bead of sweat on his temple.
"So, that's the story. I don't know what this is about, but it's already nighttime." The agent began to walk away. "Quit playing detective already and head on home, you guys!"
"Could that newspaper agency be..." Ayumi trailed off.
"But, it doesn't have anything to do with Soseki, does it?" Mitsuhiko asked.
"Rinse one's mouth with stone and sleep with one's pillow in the water," Suzume quoted, making them look at her. "This is the famous ancient event that Soseki took his name from. It means eccentric. Normally we rinse our mouths with running water and use stones for pillows, right? But to use it reversely, you'd have to be quite eccentric. To make counterfeit bills, one would usually want to go to the suburbs and avoid the eyes of others. But, they deliberately placed their stronghold in a bustling station front right next to a police box. At first glance, it would look like the action of someone eccentric. But what better way to hide than in plain sight?"
Hikaru hummed. "Toshiya's brother probably wanted to say that."
"Which means that Brother is...!"
"If it's what Hikaru and I are thinking, he's most likely inside that newspaper agency," Suzume said with a nod.
~ — — — ~
After failing to convince the police next to the newspaper agency, Suzume had to give Hikaru a single glance before he pulled out his phone to make the call to someone who would believe them, especially if she was involved. He handed the phone to Suzume once it was through, and she explained the situation.
"What?! Counterfeit bills?" Megure demanded. "Is that true, Suzume-san?"
"Yes, though I don't have proof. It's very likely," she said. "Please be careful during the raid. They may threaten the hostages to save themselves."
With that, she hung up the call and handed the phone back to Hikaru, who took it without a word. She frowned and let out a sigh, leaning into his side. He looked at her with a frown.
"You okay?" he asked quietly, widening his stance ever so slightly to better support both their weight.
She nodded. "Yeah, just thinking about Masami-san," she murmured. "Any luck about the girl she mentioned?"
Hikaru hesitated. "I asked someone about it," he said vaguely. "You may not like it."
Suzume looked up at him with a frown. "What is it?"
"Well—" He cut himself off when he looked to the side and saw the kids gone. "Well, that's not good."
She looked over as well and her eyes widened. "Oh, I'm so getting them grounded for this!"
~ — — — ~
Suzume and Hikaru went up the stairs and came across a room where they heard the kids talking inside. "Well, at least they're okay," she muttered before freezing when she felt a gun aimed at the back of her head. A glance to her right saw that the same happened with Hikaru with another man.
"That's it for your detective games," the guy holding the gun to her head said with a smug grin.
She huffed and spun around, grabbed the gun, pushed it away from her, and punched the man across the face. He fell to the floor, instantly knocked out. She looked over and Hikaru was setting down the man he had put in a chokehold.
"You good?" she asked him.
He nodded.
"Let's get this over with," she muttered, picking up the gun and cracking the door open to see the woman aiming a gun at Ayumi's head. She threw the gun in her hand and it knocked the one from the woman's hand to the floor.
The woman grit her teeth. "Who is it?!" she demanded, turning to look at the door.
"Same as the Daruma doll, huh?" Suzume muttered, repeating the woman's earlier words, as Hikaru opened the door all the way, revealing them to be perfectly fine. "Hilarious. Fukuzawa Yukichi's eye is not drawn in because the sculptor that was carving him got hurt," she explained.
"What?"
"See, the man over there with the white beard and his hand wrapped up?" Suzume asked, nodding her head at the man. "He's the real sculptor, isn't he? You panicked and made Toshiya's brother take his place because the sculptor got hurt just before completion. After seeing his talent for art at the exhibition, you lured him out and kept him confined here."
She looked off to the side. "The ink beside the printer and the container with magnetic steel powder inside it. Seeing that you've got all these prepared, I'll bet the next step is putting it through the machine. You plan to pass it through the counterfeit detection machine and use these counterfeits that are difficult to detect even by appearance through the change machines of banks, game centers, and pachinko parlors, to change them in large amounts.
"By the time your actions are made public, you plan to be somewhere far away." She gave a feral grin. "Isn't that right, lady in the black hat?"
The woman snarled. "Who are you?!"
"I'm Kudo Suzume, a detective," she said before waving a hand at Hikaru. "This is my good friend Midorikawa Hikaru."
"Suzume-san!"
"It can't be! Inuyama and Kurosaki got rid of you two!" the woman said.
Hikaru tugged the two unconscious men into sight. "So their names are Inuyama and Kurosaki, huh?" he mused, dropping them onto the floor again with a smile. "They weren't very hard to take down."
"Take down?"
Suzume crouched down next to a box and began pulling out its contents. "Yep. The gun I threw at you a few minutes ago was Inuyama's gun," she said with a hum.
"Threw it?"
"Are you a broken record now or something?" Suzume muttered before standing up, the cans in her hands. "Yeah, I threw it. Like this!"
She threw the two cans of paint at the men at the woman's sides, hitting them in the face and knocking them to the ground. The woman gasped and ran for the gun, but Haibara grabbed it first. The girl aimed the gun and fired a shot next to the woman's head, through the window of the building.
The woman fell to her knees while everyone stared at Haibara in shock.
"Haibara Ai, huh?" Suzume muttered and Hikaru let out a chuckle.
~ — — — ~
Suzume sighed as she and Hikaru walked Haibara home, and the girl was still "crying" after Megure scolded her for using a gun.
"How much longer are you gonna keep the crying act going?" Suzume asked the girl, who immediately stopped.
"APTX 4869," Haibara said and Hikaru fell still, looking at her in shock. She met his gaze evenly. "Do you know what it is?"
"What are you talking about?" Suzume frowned.
Haibara gestured to Hikaru. "What about you? Scotch."
Suzume's eyes widened and looked at him. "You don't mean..."
"She's the one who made it," Hikaru said quietly. "She's a member of the Organization."
Suzume tensed at that. "You're a child."
"I took it not too long ago," Haibara said. "Through the accidental effects of the self-destructive program of the cells, everything from bone structure, muscles, internal organs, to bodily hair, all but the nervous system, regress to that of the childhood year." She smirked at them. "It sure is a mystical poison."
Suzume never thought a child could appear so intimidating... "Haibara-san..."
"It's not Haibara. It's Sherry," the girl said. "This is my code name. Well? Surprised?"
Suzume blinked at her and sighed, her shoulders slumping. "Next thing I know, dinosaurs are gonna be coming back to life," she muttered, walking past Haibara towards her home. "It'll take a lot more than that to surprise me, Haibara-san."
Haibara looked surprised and Hikaru let out an amused laugh that caught her attention. "It'll really take a lot more than that to get a big reaction from her," he said, still chuckling. "Who are you staying with?"
Haibara gave him a distrustful look. "Why should I tell you, Scotch?" she asked stubbornly.
"I'm going to leave you two behind and lock you out, Hikaru!"
They both jumped at Suzume's shout and Hikaru quickly picked up Haibara to chase after the teenager. "I don't want to be locked out again," he muttered to the girl, who looked both shocked and terrified.
~ — — — ~
Rubbing his face tiredly, he met eyes with the distrustful Sherry, now Haibara Ai, courtesy of Professor Agasa. "Are we going to have a problem?" he asked her with a thin smile, his eyes speaking of his hidden threat.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Why are you hanging around someone like her?" she asked, trying and failing to hide the curiosity in her tone. "She's good and you're..."
"Not entirely good?" he finished with a cheeky grin, and she scowled. His smile fell and he leaned his head back. "Not entirely sure why she keeps me around," he said quietly. "She saved my life after I tried to kill myself after my cover got blown."
Haibara raised an eyebrow. She remembered hearing about the incident from her sister a few years back, who had heard it from her best friend in the organization, who shortly disappeared when his cover was blown. It had just been one mess after another of NOCs getting found out and the organization having to deal with the aftermath.
Scotch's death had been different than when Rye was compromised. One of the other operatives, Bourbon, was close with Scotch, closer than most of the organization members had originally believed. The man had nearly gone into a rage that he had to be knocked out and locked up for the following days.
"Believe me if you want," he said, interrupting her remembrance of events that have passed. "But when we're somewhere safe, like the professor's house or Suzume's house, you can call me Morofushi Hiromitsu, okay? That's my real name."
"Midorikawa Hikaru?" Haibara muttered thoughtfully. "Same initials for both names."
Hiromitsu nodded. "Suzume's idea," he admitted. "My supervisor agreed because of our other operative within the organization."
Haibara was confused before she realized who he was talking about. "Bourbon?"
Hiromitsu just gave her a sad smile before leaving her alone to her thoughts.
~ — — — ~
"You could have mentioned this earlier," Suzume groaned to Agasa, who just smiled at her nervously. "Then I wouldn't have been blindsided by a seven-year-old girl who knows more than she looks like she should!"
"I wasn't really thinking about that," Agasa admitted quietly, sweatdropping under her hard stare. "Besides, you were spending the night with Ran-kun when I found her!"
Suzume sighed, conceding after hearing that. "Alright, alright," she muttered. "Just give me a call next time, okay?"
He nodded at her.
Haibara walked into the room, looking at Suzume as she took a seat on the couch. "Your friend went to your house," Haibara said cordially.
Suzume nodded. "Yeah, he just got done with an assignment before dragging himself into the case," she said, shaking her head. "That man, honestly. He worries more than Ran does, I swear." She paused before looking back at Haibara with a frown. "You wouldn't happen to know who's been going through my house, would you?"
"The organization sent investigators to your house two or three times," Haibara admitted. "The fact that Gin left you alive after your encounter made the boss want to know what was different about you."
Suzume tilted her head. "Did you find out anything?"
"You're a Kudo," Haibara stated simply. "That was enough of an answer to understand why."
"So the entire organization knows?" Suzume asked.
Haibara nodded. "It's a screening for joining the organization," she said. "All members must have some kind of access to Flames to be part of the organization. It doesn't matter if they are weak or strong."
Suzume hummed thoughtfully. "Well, that'll make some future interactions very interesting," she muttered. "Why are you here, though?"
"I betrayed the organization," Haibara said, flipping through a fashion magazine Suzume wasn't aware she had. "One of the reasons why I gave that poison that was still in the testing stage to a human on my own accord was because I was getting sick of them. But, an even greater reason was my older sister."
"Sister?"
"She was killed." Haibara paused for a few seconds. "She was killed by the hands of the men of the organization. No matter how much I asked them, they wouldn't tell me why they killed her. And I went against them saying that I was going to postpone my research until they gave me a formal reason. Naturally, since I went against the organization, they confined me to a certain room in the lab. I was to wait until the higher-ups decided what to do with me. Thinking that I may as well drink the poison if I was going to be killed anyway, I drank the APTX 4869 that I had hidden on me. Fortunately, the poison I took in an attempt to kill myself..."
"Turned you back into a child," Suzume murmured.
Haibara nodded. "It freed me from the handcuffs that were on me, and I escaped in the tiny dust chute. Having no place to go, the only person I could think of going to was you, Kudo Suzume. I figured since you're you, you'd be able to understand and help."
Suzume hummed, crossing her arms. "You created a poison that killed who knows how many people," she said, making Haibara glance at her.
"I couldn't help it. I had no intention of making poison."
"Since she made the poison, she could come up with an antidote without difficulty too, right?" Agasa asked.
"The data for the poison is all in the research lab," Haibara said. "I couldn't possibly remember such a massive amount of data."
"Where is it, then?" Suzume asked.
"It's no use," Haibara said, grabbing a newspaper. "Look at the evening paper three days ago." She held it up to show them the article she was talking about.
Suzume sighed. "The fire at the pharmaceutical company, right?" When Haibara nodded, she let out a groan. "I should have guessed that had them written all over it."
"There would be nothing left even if we go there," Haibara said, proving her point. "The organization got rid of it fearing that I would talk about it to someone. At this rate, every facility that I was involved in would be closed down."
"So they're after you?" Suzume questioned, an idea coming together in her head.
"Yes, they're probably going berserk looking for me," Haibara said with a smirk. "Without even knowing that I've transformed this way. But, if they keep using this poison to kill people, there is no guarantee that people who will regress like me will eventually appear. Then, the organization, which has a picture of my childhood days will definitely find me." She looked up at Suzume. "What will you do about it? Will you chase me out of here because I pose a threat to all of you? High school detective Kudo Suzume?"
Suzume stared down at her, deep in thought.
~ — — — ~
As Shirakura Akira is taken away by the police for the murder of Professor Hirota Masami, Suzume was frowning as she was stuck in her head. Why are their names the same? It couldn't be, right...?
She, Agasa, and Haibara had all gone to the professor's home to see about getting a floppy disk that he had received by accident from Haibara, which had information about the Organization that was supposed to go to Haibara's older sister.
"Why?" Haibara asked, snapping Suzume from her thoughts. She looked at the girl to see a tear slide down her face. "Why didn't you save my sister?"
Suzume froze. "You don't mean..." she trailed off in horror.
Tears pooled in Haibara's eyes. "Hirota Masami is an alias that my sister took from Professor Hirota's name," she explained, her voice wobbly. "With your power of deduction...you could've easily seen through what my sister was up to!"
Suzume couldn't speak, her vision blurring, and there was a ringing in her ears.
"Then why...why didn't you? Why?" Haibara began to wail, tugging on Suzume's shirt and burying her face into her stomach as she cried.
Suzume remained still, her thoughts running a mile a minute. Haibara is Shiho? Why didn't you see through Masami's disguise? Why did you have to be too late? Why didn't you try to use your Flames? Why didn't you call the police on the way there? Why didn't you try harder? Why didn't you—
~ — — — ~
He could feel her emotions going crazy, which in turn was making him more hostile towards his colleagues. He even had to excuse himself from the meeting he was in so he could figure out what was going on. Her emotions had never been this intense before. Pulling out his phone (the one no one but he was aware of), he dialed the only number saved in it.
No surprise, no one picked up. He tried again and no one answered. He sighed and dialed the number one more time, leaning his back against the wall. Hopefully, someone will pick it up. The rings stopped, and she spoke.
"Hello?" Her voice was groggy, as if she had just woken up and her throat was hoarse.
He frowned. "Are you okay?" he asked, even though he knew she wasn't.
"...I found Shiho," she whispered so softly he almost missed what she said. "And Masami-san was actually her sister...I don't know what to do, Pierrot-san."
He felt his heart squeeze painfully when he heard her voice crack with emotion. "I'm sorry I'm not there to help," he said, and he really was sorry. He wanted nothing more than to rush to Japan and hold the teenager in his arms, show her that he was there for her no matter what. "I wish I was."
"I wish you were, too."
He thumped his head against the wall he leaned against, ignoring the curious eyes of his colleague who came out to check on him. "Stay safe and keep me updated," he said softly. "I know you've run into them, so let me know if anything happens."
"Yeah."
He hesitated before hanging up the phone, stuffing it into his pocket with a sigh.
"...Are you okay?" his colleague asked worriedly.
He just shut his eyes. "Not as okay as I want to be," he said quietly.
Fun Facts —
— HA. My story, my changes! Because of this, I declare Morofushi Hiromitsu is still alive and in hiding!
— His alias, Midorikawa Hikaru, is actually the name of Hiromitsu's adult voice actor. I know, very creative, right?
— When Suzume gets overwhelmed with guilt, she mentally shuts down and just goes over the negatives over and over until something or someone snaps her out of it.
— Yes, Bourbon (AKA Triple Face) went into a Flame-induced rage after Hiromitsu's "death" and had to be locked up so he could somewhat calm down. This may get mentioned again in a later chapter. Might get played for laughs, might not. I'm not too sure yet.
— "When did an order turn into a debate?" I got this line from Gibbs in NCIS, either Season 1 or 2, I can't remember which. I think it was Season 1. It might not be verbatim, but I loved it enough to put it in.