Chapter 124 Another Identity - Disappearance You have to do this first, and then...
"Sister Lin..." Conan said weakly, "How on earth did you do that?"
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't figure out how Lin Xi became sworn brothers with someone who was suspected to be a member of the organization.
It's really terrifying, okay?
"Ah, this, you have to do this first, then this, then this, and finally this. Do you understand?"
Lin Xi gestured in the air with his hands and spoke seriously.
Conan:?
He doesn't understand.
Is Sister Lin teasing him like a child again?
"Alright, you still have a lot to learn about interpersonal relationships, Xiaoke." Lin Xi pulled his hair and shooed him back: "Sister Xiaolan is still waiting for you over there, go to her quickly."
This was the conversation between him and Lin Xi on Yueying Island that day.
Conan sighed.
At first, he didn't dare tell Haibara Ai about this.
Mainly because I don’t know how to start…
Could it be that your sister has already come into contact with people from the organization, and they are even on good terms?
Huiyuan would definitely stare at him with a death gaze and then question him——
Last time you said that Amuro was a good person?!
A kindhearted and idle amateur detective...
Conan couldn't help but want to cover his face when he thought of his previous comments about Amuro Toru.
What on earth made him make such a judgment!
And that guy Hattori too! What made Hattori make such a judgment?
Caused him to make a mistake in judgment!
Later, a few days later, when he told this to Haibara Ai again, Haibara Ai did react strongly, but it was different from what Conan had imagined.
"Punch?" the tawny-haired girl grabbed his shoulders. "Did the amateur detective really say that?"
"Uh, that's what Sister Lin said..." Conan felt a pain in his shoulder from being grabbed. "Do you know him?"
"It's her, not him."
After Haibara Ai corrected him, she fell into deep thought.
"You never told me this," Conan complained. "Can't we have more trust in our alliance?"
"Tell you everything? I already know the boss's email address. Do you want me to tell you too?" Haibara Ai said angrily. "Now that you know what the email address is, you can email the boss right away!"
"You can't just not tell me anything." Conan said frustratedly, "Right now, I don't know anything except gin and vodka..."
Haibara Ai was silent for a while.
"Actually, I only just remembered it recently," she said, frowning. "After I became smaller, my memory seemed to have started to suffer from some issues due to the effects of APTX4896. It wasn't until a while ago when I had a fever that I remembered her."
Conan remembered the day when he and the three children went to Lin Xi's house to visit the patient.
Huibara did feel a little dazed that day... although she ate a lot.
"Later, I thought about it carefully," Huiyuan Ai said, "and I found that I had forgotten only her and everything related to her. All other memories were complete."
"It seems to be a targeted amnesia...and it's limited to her."
Conan looked at the brown-haired girl and asked tentatively, "Are you...close friends?"
It seems that not remembering that person was a big blow to Haibara Ai.
Ai Huibara lowered her head.
"Edogawa, she's my family."
The voice was light and calm, yet carried a depth of conviction.
"You might find it hard to understand. To you, everyone in the organization is stained with sinful blood. They roost in the darkness like crows, choosing their prey. They are like a giant hand firmly controlling the economies and political power of Japan and the United States..."
"But it's a group. When you look at each person in it, you'll find it difficult to define them as good or evil. Each one is flesh and blood, vivid, unique, and struggling there for different purposes."
"Some of them were involuntarily, like my sister; others were like ducks in water, like Punch."
Conan was stunned.
He thought Haibara Ai would say that Punch, like her sister, had to stay in the organization out of necessity; but he didn't expect that she had no intention of exonerating Punch.
"She is the most dazzling flower blooming from the depths of darkness. Everyone—and I mean everyone—is involuntarily drawn to her. Her position in the organization is unfathomable, on par with Gin, and she acts with extreme freedom, almost to the point of being reckless. I speculate that she has lived in the organization since she was a child, and may have even met the boss himself."
Huiyuan Ai said calmly, without any emotional inclination, as if introducing a stranger's life, "Because when I first met her, she looked only fifteen years old. But she is extremely capable, proficient in fighting and shooting, has strong anti-reconnaissance capabilities, and is good at disguise."
Conan was stunned.
Only fifteen years old?
Is your status so high?
Do you have so many skills?
Huibara portrayed her as a superhero.
And that line, “Everyone is involuntarily attracted to her”—what does that mean?
"What about her physical features? You and she..."
"She has red curly hair, emerald green eyes, very fair skin, and light freckles on her face. She must be of foreign descent. She's about 1.65 meters tall." Huiyuan Ai said, "As for my relationship with her...she is considered my guardian."
"What?!" Conan was shocked.
He quickly reacted, "But, your sister..."
Shouldn't he be your guardian?
Huihara Ai slowly shook her head.
"My sister is just an outside member. I showed a talent for medicine at a young age and was even sent to study at a university in the United States. I have the potential to become a code member in the future... In my case, an outside member can't possibly become my guardian.
"And as I said, Punch is always reckless. She just does what she wants to do and doesn't care what anyone thinks. I suspect she's only acting as my guardian..."
Haibara Ai's eyes were blank.
“…It was just a spur of the moment thing.”
Conan pursed his lips, not knowing what to say.
From Haibara, Conan experienced for the first time what it meant to be helpless.
It seemed like every step of her life was decided by others, and her life was driven by factors beyond her control, while she herself had never been able to make the decision...
Completely different from Conan himself.
"And then...?"
Conan has already vaguely sensed the tragic atmosphere of Haibara's story.
If nothing unexpected had happened, even if the child of a powerful organization cadre refused to develop the drug, he wouldn't have ended up wanting to commit suicide by taking the drug...
"Then one day, she suddenly disappeared." Huiyuan Ai said lightly, "disappeared without a trace."
"I was only thirteen years old and needed a new guardian to look after me."
"Who is it?" Conan asked involuntarily.
Huibara Ai glanced at him and said, "Gin."
"What?!" Conan was shocked again.
"You heard right, Gin is my guardian." The girl's lips curled up inexplicably. "He hates traitors with all his might... He's ruthless towards them, eager to find every undercover agent and kill anyone who betrays the organization. And yet, a man like him, with a minor under his command, actually defected... He must be dreaming of finding me and killing me himself."
Conan didn't come back to his senses.
It turns out that Haibara’s former guardian was Gin?
It was actually Gin who knocked him out with a baseball bat and drugged him?
After spending some time together, Conan found it difficult to connect Haibara Ai with that brutal killer.
Huiyuan Ai seemed to see through his thoughts and said quietly: "He is called a guardian, but in fact, I have only seen him a few times."
"Unlike Punch, Gin is very busy. He usually only shows up when I'm training..." Haibara Ai rubbed her fingers, where there were thick calluses before she shrank. "He believes that even researchers must have certain self-defense abilities. So he arranged all kinds of training for me, such as physical training, fighting, and shooting..."
God knows how she was at that time. After spending time in the laboratory, she would be taken away for training. After finishing her mental work, she would have to do physical training. She was so tired every day that she would fall asleep as soon as she lay down.
Conan was silent.
No, this was completely different from the gin he had imagined...
This was also completely different from the organization he had imagined.
A researcher like Haibara should be confined to the laboratory to conduct research in the organization, but Gin pulled her out to learn self-defense...
It feels like, in addition to seeing Haibara as a useful research talent, they also hope that she can grow sharp claws so that she can protect herself when encountering danger.
Conan got goosebumps at his own thoughts.
He shook his head, trying to drive the thought out of his mind:
"You didn't hear from Punch again in the organization?"
"I asked Gin," Huiyuan Ai said lightly, "Gin said she was dead."
Conan: ? ?
“… Really dead?”
"I guess Gin was joking." Haibara glanced at Conan, who was shocked again. "Are you surprised that a man like him would joke?"
"I think it's because he had a good relationship with Punch. When he said she was dead, his tone wasn't that of a calm statement of fact, but..." Huibara Ai was strangely silent for a moment, "but a vicious and resentful tone."
It was as if he, like her, was also an abandoned person.
Huiyuan Ai quickly imitated Conan and shook her head to get rid of this thought——
This is really terrifying.
"So," Conan said with difficulty, "Punch is not dead?"
He found it really hard to imagine Gin joking.
The words "joke" and "gin" are so strange to put together.
"..." This time Huiyuan Ai was silent for a long time, "I don't know."
If Punch was still alive, why hadn't he come to see her in all these years?
If she were still alive, what would she think when she knew that she had defected from the organization?
Will they bring her back?
Will he kill her with his own hands?
Huiyuan recalled the conversation she had with Gin:
[“You’d better not think about betrayal.” The silver-haired man looked at her with disdain.
"If you dare to betray..." He paused after the word betray, "I will find you and kill you and your sister."
His unreserved murderous intent made Miyano Shiho tremble at the time.
"I'm not Punch," Gin said. "Even that guy would kill the cadres he personally trained because of betrayal."
"However, if you really betray me and get killed by me..." He laughed cruelly, "I will also give you a funeral for Punch's sake."
"Hehe... I remember you like roses the most?"
Haibara Ai's fingers shrank slightly.
"Anyway, she disappeared. I never saw her again." said Haibara Ai.
"But, I feel..." Huiyuan Ai hesitated, "There seemed to be signs before she left."
Conan: "What do you mean?"
Huihara Ai: "That's right, she seemed to want to know that she was leaving. A few days before she said goodbye to me, something seemed to have happened. For a few days, she was not in a good state..."
"She has always been very careful in her work, and nothing she does will go wrong. But that day, I found a half-opened bottle of passion fruit and lemon tea in the refrigerator."
"She was supposed to put the passion fruit in the tea and chill it. But she didn't... The passion fruit wasn't covered with plastic wrap, it was just left in the refrigerator."
"And when she said goodbye to me and we hugged, even though she was trying to hide her reaction, her hands... seemed to be shaking."
The more Huiyuan Ai recalled, the clearer her memory of that day became:
"Although she didn't show it on the surface, I could feel that she was very tired."
Even though she was exhausted, she still kept it a secret from her, not wanting to bring any negative emotions to her...
Is it because she knows that she can't help at all with her abilities?
Huiyuan Ai thought bitterly, she had clearly worked very hard... If Punch came back to see her, he would see how much she had achieved, and even earned her own code name...
Even so, she still couldn't share Punch's pain or dispel Punch's fatigue.
I could only pat her on the back, trying to give her strength.
Even now it is the same...
She could only stay where she was forever, watching all the people she cared about leave her.
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