Chapter 178 Tomorrow's Bloom

When the dust exploded, the ground shook, and the roof of the factory was hit by the falling chimney, and the entire half-collapsed building was shaken.

Kasugawa Shugo hurriedly grabbed Edogawa Conan, who was about to fall to the ground due to the sudden shaking, and grabbed the railing at the entrance of the stairs with one hand, and then managed to stabilize his body.

A lot of small concrete fragments and wall paint fell from above. The chestnut-haired man covered his head, which was hit several times in a row and had a slight headache, and simply picked up the boy next to him.

He remembered that when he looked from the outside, there were some small vents in the factory corridor that could allow children to pass through.

Thinking of this, he kept moving his hands and quickly dialed Takeda Daiji's number, which he had not been able to call because of the aftershock. The moment the call was connected, the other party quickly answered it.

"......Hello?" The man on the other side said cautiously. He didn't know whether the person who called this number was Kasugawa Shugo, or the drug dealer who sent them the video.

"Senior!" Even though he knew that Takeda Daiji on the other side couldn't see his face, Kasugawa Shugo quickly forced a sweet smile and said in a sly voice, "I'm out, now I'm on the rooftop..."

"You're out?!"

The shouting over there made the chestnut-haired police officer, who had turned up the volume button to the maximum, shrink his neck and hesitated, "Yeah... I knocked them out, now I'm on the first floor of the factory, and I'm going to the rooftop. You guys..."

"How are you now, can you still walk?" Takeda Daiji was stunned for a moment, and he didn't match the man covered in blood and hanging in the middle of the room in the video with the guy who now said that he successfully rescued himself after defeating the group of mercenaries and drug dealers. He listened to the other's slightly hoarse but energetic voice and frowned, "How are your injuries?"

"Don't worry, there's absolutely no problem." Kasugawa Shugo skillfully concealed the negative feedback from his body. Then, the man's expression became serious, "The factory is not safe. I will send the boy out from the vent on the south side of the second floor. Please send someone to pick him up."

"I don't..." Edogawa Conan's words of refusal were interrupted by the chestnut-haired officer's fingers on his lips. He pursed his lips, and waited for the man in front of him to communicate with the people outside before he spoke again, "I can protect myself and help you. You don't have to send me out first." He

looked at the chestnut-haired man in front of him stubbornly, and the latter looked at him in the same way. Not knowing what he saw from the boy's look of trying to prove himself and wanting to stay, Kasugawa Shugo's brows softened in vain.

"Sorry, sorry." He reached out and picked up Conan Edogawa, holding him heavily in his arms. The man blinked twice, and the soft light in his eyes faded and returned to his previous appearance. "It's too dangerous in there. There may be a second explosion at any time. If the environment is safer, I don't mind turning this place into a police academy training ground so that you can experience it in advance."

Please, I didn't say I was going to the police academy. Conan Edogawa twitched his lips, and then he realized that the chestnut-haired police officer in front of him was trying to change the subject. Before he could say anything, Kasugawa Shugo carried him down the stairs to the second floor.

The man lowered his voice a little, leaving only an inaudible tail sound vibrating in the empty staircase, "If you want to help me, tell Takeda-senpai and the others about the situation inside after you go out. I mean... theirs."

Kasugawa Shugo blinked slightly at the boy in his arms, smiling like a fox who succeeded in some sinister plot, "Conan is so smart, he must have figured it out."

Edogawa Conan pursed his lips and nodded.

Unintentional help, a weird atmosphere, and an inexplicable tacit understanding between the two, and exactly the same eyes. When the boy just connected these clues together, there was only one sentence in his mind.

What the hell is Japan's censorship doing!

However, using family background to determine whether a person can become a police officer is still too one-sided in a certain sense. Edogawa Conan looked at Kasugawa Shugo's bright eyes and couldn't help thinking.

"I wanted to tell my senior just now, but I still didn't know how to start... If I didn't say it, they might appear in their field of vision and they would be directly killed as bad guys... No, they are bad guys." Kasugawa Shugo stroked his curly hair, looking like he didn't know what to do, "So the mission is left to you!"

"Huh?!" The boy was stunned, and his eyes widened because of this sudden mission.

"Hehe... please, please, Conan, just take the senior's wrath for me." The man's chestnut curly hair was fluffier than usual because of the fight just now. He quickly found the top ventilation duct on the second floor, and while trying to lift the boy in his arms up, he did not forget to stick out his tongue slyly at him, "...you should be able to reach the window by standing up on my hands. Be careful, there will be others to help you downstairs..."

He tried to stretch his hands up a little, clenched his fists, and rested the front of his fists on the wall, using his wrists, which were the most fragile compared to other parts, as support, and let Edogawa Conan step on them and climb to the vent which was more than half a meter higher than his hands.

"As for how to tell them... I can't think of it either, so Conan, please figure it out yourself."

Edogawa Conan hesitated and stepped on the other's wrist, which seemed unable to bear his weight. Unexpectedly, it was steady. After he put his whole body weight on it, the arm of the model worker in the General Affairs Office did not even shake much.

"How should I explain this?" The boy thought about the picture and felt helpless.

He really knows how to give people difficult questions.

Conan Edogawa climbed up the vent in distress. The guilt he had felt for his "escape" was gone because of Kasugawa Shugo's inexplicable mission. The boy looked at the other person's honey-like eyes and realized belatedly that the chestnut-haired police officer in front of him was just like Tsukiyama Asari, who was particularly good at coaxing children.

He lowered his eyes and carefully opened the window of the vent. The cold wind outside instantly rushed into the corridor, blowing away the slightly pungent smell inside.

The boy took off the pistol on his waist and wanted to pass it to the police officer below. When he turned around, he saw a flash of silver light passing by the corridor from the afterglow.

"Be careful!" Edogawa Conan realized instantly that it was the reflection of the gun, and hurriedly shouted to Kasugawa Shugo who was still trying to support himself. The latter had no time to react. The moment the boy spoke, the bullet was fired from the gun and directly penetrated the chestnut-haired police officer's forearm.

He groaned, and his arm instantly fell down trembling with pain. The boy who was originally stepping on the man's wrist also swayed and fell down along with the other's movement. Edogawa Conan was ready to meet the impact, but in the next second he felt his body lighten.

Kasugawa Shugo's hand did not fall down because of the gunshot wound, but tried to support himself on the wall and caught Edogawa Conan who was about to fall.

After the gunshot, Ikawa and Iwama, who had been on guard, reacted instantly. They immediately raised their guns and shot in the direction of the approaching person, forming a tight protection line for the chestnut-haired police officer behind them.

The boy reacted immediately after being caught. He did not dare to stay on the other's injured arm any longer, and quickly reached out to grab the window sill and tried to climb up.

"Sorry, I almost let you fall... There should be someone down there, did you see it?"

Edogawa Conan responded softly, and jumped down according to the instructions of the police who had come to meet him, and was steadily caught in the other's arms.

Ikawa, who was shooting at the stairs with a gun, suddenly thought of something that happened more than ten years ago because of the chestnut-haired man's apology. His movements paused for a moment, which immediately gave the group of mercenaries on the opposite side the opportunity to fire several shots at the few people. The bullets flew past Iwama's shoulder, causing the latter to curse and quickly come back to his senses.

Kasugawa Shugo used the remaining bandage to bandage his arm and cursed them for being so reckless to shoot in the dusty stairwell. Fortunately, the saturation of the flammable dust inside was not as high as one floor, otherwise when the bullet was fired from the gun, all of them would be blown to pieces by the dust explosion due to the sparks generated by friction.

He took the pistol that Conan Edogawa handed to him when he left, and signaled them to return to the stairwell and go to the rooftop from the stairs.

After the signal, Kasugawa Shugo walked in first. Iwama lowered the gun in his hand a little and was about to follow, but he felt that the friend who almost made him get beaten into a sieve just now pressed his shoulder and signaled him to wait outside the corridor for a while.

......?

"Do you have to whisper with your son in this place at this time?" Iwama gritted his teeth and lowered his voice. The other party seemed to have not heard his question. He turned around and followed the chestnut-haired policeman who was about to reach the third floor. Feeling that he was out of place at this moment, the mercenary could only angrily make an extremely rough gesture in the direction where the man left, and then intuitively lingered at the door for a while.

Kasugawa Shugo paused. He was sensitive enough to sense that there were only one footsteps left instead of two. He stopped at the next corner and turned to look down.

Only Ishikawa was standing at the back, several steps lower than him. The man's hat had been thrown away somewhere in the previous fight, leaving his eyes completely exposed.

The same eye color, but reflecting a sharp golden light under the bleak light, made the two pairs of eyes no longer similar.

Ishikawa put his fingers on the armrest and spoke in a casual tone, but probably because the two of them rarely had so-called casual chats in the past and now, his tone was particularly stiff, with a hint of torture.

"Are you still taking that medicine?"

Kasugawa Shugo widened his eyes slightly.