Friday, after school. The bell rang, and everyone practically flew out of the classroom. "[excited] Haibara, let's go! Hurry up or I'm leaving you behind!" Even as she said it, Ayumi was still waiting right beside Haibara's desk. Haibara glanced at me while putting her textbooks into her bag. "…Why don't you all just go home without me?" "[sad] Eh, again?" I stood up from my seat by the window and waved them off casually. "[serious] It's fine. Haibara and I have stuff to do at the professor's place." A lie, obviously. But there was no way I could tell them the truth. In the end, the three other Detective Boys headed home after Genta started making a fuss about being hungry. That left just me and Haibara in the classroom. The late afternoon sun streamed through the windows, dyeing the rows of desks orange. An empty classroom… it always felt a little strange. "[cold] Let's go." Haibara started walking first. I followed after her. We left through the gates of Teitan Elementary and headed toward Beika Station. This town—Beika—is in the western part of Tokyo. About forty minutes from the city center by train. A perfectly ordinary residential area, with the Arakami River flowing to the north. The shopping district has used bookstores, model shops, all kinds of places. Even on weekdays, there's a decent number of people around. It's mid-October now, and the air's starting to get chilly. But my everyday life is anything but ordinary. And Haibara Ai, walking beside me—she's the same. My real name is Kudo Shinichi. I was a high school detective, fairly well-known. Over four hundred cases solved. Even the Metropolitan Police relied on me unofficially. And now, here I am in this tiny body. The Black Organization—those bastards forced a poison down my throat. APTX 4869. A toxin designed to kill without leaving a trace, but in extremely rare cases, it has a side effect: cellular regression to childhood. Probability: less than one percent. Whether that's good luck or bad luck, I still don't know. To hide my identity, I go by Edogawa Conan, attend Teitan Elementary, and live at Mouri Ran's father's detective agency. Ran—my childhood friend. I've always loved her. But right now, I'm stuck in the body of a grade-schooler, and I can't tell her the truth. If I did, I'd drag Ran into danger too. Haibara Ai, walking beside me. She was shrunk by the same drug. Her real name is Miyano Shiho. A former scientist for the Organization, codename: Sherry. She's the one who developed APTX 4869. After betraying the Organization and escaping, she ended up in the same grade-schooler body as me. Now she lives at Professor Agasa's house. Both of us: seventeen and eighteen on the inside, six or seven on the outside. The only people in this world who know the truth are us and Professor Agasa. The one person I can talk to without hiding who I really am—that was our relationship. Or so I thought. "…Wait." Right in the middle of the shopping district, Haibara suddenly stopped. She looked back. But there was nothing—just the usual crowd. Housewives heading home from shopping, grade-schoolers in uniform, salarymen in suits. A perfectly ordinary shopping district at five in the afternoon. Nothing out of place. "[whispers] Lately… I've felt someone watching us." Her voice was low. Not her usual teasing tone. "It's just your imagination." I brushed it off, but my heart skipped a beat. Because Haibara's profile was dead serious. —Remnants of the Organization. Are they still active? Even if they are, they wouldn't make a move in a crowd like this. Still, just knowing someone might be watching… it's not a good feeling. "…Let's go." Haibara nodded silently. We didn't say a single word to each other until we reached the Agasa residence. The moment I opened the front door, something felt off. Normally, the professor's easygoing "Welcome back!" would greet us, but today the house was dead silent. "Huh?" I took off my shoes and stepped into the living room. A single note sat on the table. *'Gone on an overnight trip with fellow inventors. There's curry in the fridge—help yourselves. I'll be back tomorrow night. —Agasa'* The second I finished reading it, the words just came out. "[surprised] You've gotta be kidding me." "[sarcastic] Well, isn't that nice. It'll be quiet." Haibara was already in the kitchen, lighting the stove under the kettle. Looked like she planned to make tea. A night without the professor. Just me and Haibara, alone. It's not like anything was going to happen. We'd been alone plenty of times before, when the professor was out shopping. But tonight, it was the whole night. I sat on the living room sofa, feeling strangely restless, turning the TV on and off. My phone vibrated in my pocket. Who is it now, I thought, glancing at the screen—and froze. Mouri Ran. The phone kept buzzing in my hand. For three seconds, maybe four, I just held it, pretending to count. I couldn't answer. There was no way I could answer. How could I, in a grade-schooler's voice, say "Ran, it's me"? Sure, I could use the bow-tie voice changer to produce Kudo Shinichi's voice and take the call. But that would just mean piling on more lies. Where am I now? Why haven't I come back?—if she asked, I'd have to plaster over everything with lies. The call ended. The screen went dark. I placed the phone face-down on the table. "[gentle] Aren't you going to answer that?" The voice came from the kitchen. Without turning around, she was spooning Earl Grey leaves into the teapot. She probably wasn't even looking at my face. And yet, she understood everything. "[serious] Shut up. It's none of your business." "…I see." That was all. But behind that short reply, there was an air of understanding. Between us, there was a silence where explanations weren't necessary. For dinner, we heated up the professor's curry. Haibara made tea like she always does, setting two cups on the table. While we cleaned up the dishes, we somehow got to talking about today's class—and from there, the conversation turned to that case from the other day. "[sarcastic] Your reasoning on that locked-room case—your prioritization of the evidence was wrong." Haibara took a sip of tea and stated it flatly. "[angry] Hah? What do you know about the crime scene?" "[cold] I don't need to be at the scene to know. There were at least three possible 'motives' you overlooked, based on the data alone." "[serious] Motive alone doesn't prove anything. The physical evidence—" "[sarcastic] And there you go, obsessing over physical evidence and missing the culprit's psychology again?" An argument. But this was how we always were. Throwing words at each other without holding back, sometimes mixing in a laugh, and before we knew it, the clock had passed eleven. "…It's already this late?" When I said that, Haibara looked up at the wall clock too. Haibara shifted on the edge of the sofa. She held her cup cradled in both hands, staring at the steam for a while. I sat across from her in the armchair, absently looking out the window. Through the gap in the curtains, I could see the dark garden. The silence stretched longer than before. "[whispers] Hey… Kudo-kun." Haibara's voice pulled me back to reality. Still gazing into her cup, she said it—so quietly, impossibly quietly. "I like you." For a moment, my mind went completely blank. …What did she just say? No, I heard her clearly. But I couldn't process it. No—to be precise—I didn't want to accept it. "[surprised] …Huh?" I tried to laugh. Come on, this is a joke, right? There's no way you'd say something like that. Then Haibara raised her head. Her eyes, leaving the cup behind, looked straight at me. There wasn't a single trace of a joke in them. I couldn't laugh. Something slammed hard deep in my chest. At the same time, Ran's face surfaced in my mind. Ran's smile. Ran's voice. All of it—things the current me has no right to. "[scared] …What the hell are you talking about?" My voice shook. I hated myself for only being able to say something like that. Haibara—immediately, she smiled faintly. "[sarcastic] Just kidding." That smile. It was so obviously fabricated. And that made it hurt even more. Haibara lifted her cup to drink her tea. Her hand was trembling, just a little. My mouth moved on its own. "[serious] I won't let your feelings go to waste." I surprised even myself. That those words could come out so smoothly. Haibara's hand stopped. The cup clinked softly as she set it back on the table. She didn't look at me. After a long pause, she let out a quiet breath. "…Are you stupid?" It was a completely different tone from her usual sarcasm. I felt the guilt toward Ran spreading slowly, deep in the pit of my stomach. Even so, I couldn't take back what I'd said. Shrunk by the same drug, carrying the same secret, living in the same fear. Haibara is the only one who knows the real me. My name, my past, the enemy I'm fighting—everything. The weight of that loneliness… tonight, for the first time, I faced it head-on and accepted it. Only the scent of Earl Grey and silence remained in the living room. Looking out the window, the wind was blowing through the pitch-black garden, rustling the leaves. A quiet night. Nothing had changed. But something between us definitely had. Something irreversible—quietly, surely—had begun. I still hadn't realized what it truly meant. From this night on, my relationship with Haibara crossed the line of mere comrades. Where that would lead us… For now, I just watched as Haibara gazed silently out the window, beyond the steam of her tea. Her profile looked terribly, achingly adult.