Chapters 3577 and 3589 [Caught in the crossfire]
The busy, top-notch hairstylist has left.
Two female high school students were left standing there dumbfounded, a fake elementary school student with a slight twitch at the corner of his eye, and another male high school student who also looked dumbfounded.
Standing there for a long time, Sonoko Suzuki looked at Ran Mouri, who also looked at Sonoko, her voice trembling slightly: "Could it be...could it be those secretly taken photos..."
"It wasn't taken by a criminal."
"It was taken secretly by Ms. Judy herself!"
"The reason James helped her cover up the lie..."
"It's because, as an FBI agent, he doesn't want to damage the organization's reputation!"
"So Ms. Judy really is a pervert!!"
The two of them, one speaking and the other back, pieced together what they believed to be the truth.
Conan hesitated for a moment. He wanted to say a few words for the unfortunate FBI agent, but after careful consideration, he couldn't figure out what those comics were all about.
"It couldn't possibly be an FBI mission, could it?" The mini detective scratched his head.
"Or perhaps Vermouth likes these things, and Judy bought these comics in order to get closer to her and cater to her tastes?"
"No, that's not right. If that were the case, why would Ms. Judy just throw those comics away? She should have kept them to discuss common topics with Vermouth and, incidentally, tricked her into giving her fingerprints by borrowing the books."
"Strange, what on earth is going on..."
Suddenly, a strange new problem arose. Although he felt that the problem was a little strange, Conan still pondered it with great interest.
Meanwhile, two high school girls nearby were getting angrier and angrier as they talked. Sonoko Suzuki turned around abruptly and said, "We're not far from the hospital right now, let's go back and find her and get to the bottom of this!"
Ran Mouri nodded, but then paused, as if remembering something. "But we have no evidence—Judy and Mr. James have already come up with such a plausible excuse, they probably won't admit it easily. After all, the comics were just Mika's account, and those comics that were thrown out have already been taken away and destroyed."
Sonoko Suzuki: "That's true..."
Faced with a formidable enemy, the two were momentarily frustrated, but then focused on their thoughts once more.
...
While the high school girls were racking their brains.
On the food street in the distance, an ordinary-looking man was carrying a fast food meal he had just bought. He looked at his phone, scrolling through news articles with a mixture of frustration and irritation.
—The gunfight at Full Moon Wharf, the standoff between police and criminals in an abandoned factory, the serial stabbing in the rain, the murder in the underground parking lot… Even a case from more than 20 years ago that should have been buried long ago was dug up and reported on by reporters.
Throughout the story, Tokyo is bustling and lively, but the grand explosion he orchestrated that destroyed the bridge is somehow lumped into the dockside gunfight and fails to make a ripple.
"Even though I was only there to test the bomb, isn't ignoring me to this extent a bit too much?"
When there are no expectations, it's fine, but once there are expectations and all sorts of wonderful fantasies in one's mind... the more a sad report is relegated to a small corner, the more indignant he becomes.
"Ha, you stupid cops, you probably don't know this yet—this explosion you've ignored will become the prelude to a sensational police officer murder case in the not-too-distant future."
"But then again, there was only one explosion, and one with zero fatalities... Doesn't that seem a bit underwhelming for my future spectacular performance?"
"Hmph, it's time to make those despicable guys feel a little threatened..."
As he thought about it, he made some kind of gurgling noises.
—I'm hungry.
I was so busy scrolling through the news that I didn't go out to buy lunchbox until a little late.
"Never mind, let's eat first." A bomber with a healthy lifestyle temporarily put aside his troublesome matters and decided to wait until he was full and had a good night's sleep before looking for a suitable opportunity the next morning.
...
The ability to postpone troublesome matters until the next day is a wonderful skill possessed by many people.
The two high school girls were the same, of course.
After wandering around the shopping district all day, Suzuki Sonoko still couldn't figure out a way to prove the existence of those comics. Adding to her woes, Jodie-sensei was about to return to America. Finally, she sighed and snorted.
"Alright, considering she didn't do anything substantial besides taking photos secretly, let's leave it at that for now."
"But if this teacher doesn't change her ways, or if she returns to Tokyo one day, then I, the beautiful girl detective, will never let her perverted crimes go unpunished!"
While bursting with inspiration, Sonoko Suzuki waved goodbye to her classmates and got into the car to go home.
...
Conan quickly returned home.
After thinking for a moment, he made a phone call, described the general situation, and then asked, "Hattori, what do you think?"
"What do you think?" Hattori Heiji, seemingly in the middle of a meal, asked疑惑地问道, munching on tempura.
"What do you mean by 'how to look at it'? It's just a few comic books. Maybe that woman wanted to infiltrate the school but didn't know how to blend in, so she just bought a few comic books for reference. Many foreigners like our comics because pictures are much easier to understand than novels with lots of text."
Conan listened intently for a while, then suddenly sensed something was off. His eye twitched. "I'm not talking about ordinary school-themed manga, I'm talking about... those special manga that can only be bought by people over 18!"
Heiji Hattori frowned: "What's so special about this manga? Is it some kind of gilded mecha manga that requires a pilot's license to... cough! cough cough cough! Wait... wait a minute!"
The Kansai detective, rather oblivious to matters of the heart, choked on his food. After a long while, he grabbed the receiver again and, ignoring his parents' strange looks, whispered, "You, you're talking about... those kinds of comics hidden in the corners of bookstores, only accessible to those who are a certain age?"
Conan was utterly speechless at his colleague's slowness: "What else?"
"This..." Hattori Heiji took a deep breath, suppressing his embarrassment, and reasoned seriously, "Maybe she's a foreigner and doesn't know the layout of our bookstores, so when she was buying school comics, she accidentally picked up that kind of comic?"
Conan also lowered his voice: "But Ms. Jodie is an FBI agent who came to Tokyo specifically for work. She should be very proficient in Japanese. How could she make such a basic mistake?"
"Also, while Xiaolan and the others were shopping, I sneaked into a bookstore and took a look. The comic book covers were all very explicit, and they were obviously not serious comics. To put it another way, even if Ms. Judy's Japanese is really bad, she can't possibly not recognize those pictures, right?"
Hattori Heiji's voice rose instinctively: "You sneaked in?!...What's it like inside?"
Hattori Heizo and Mrs. Hattori: "...?"
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