Chapter 136 There's Something Wrong with You
"There's been something wrong with you since last night." Conan concluded.
The insight he prided himself on seeing only scratched the surface. He saw Huibara's unusual silence, a change from her usual self. He failed to see the turbulent sea of conflict between the blonde actress and the defected scientist beneath the silence.
"Something's wrong?"
"You didn't even say a word to me this morning." Conan adjusted his sitting position and shortened the distance between them.
Why does that sound like a complaint? Heisei Great Detective, has he awakened some new attribute? A day without being venomously criticized is a painful one.
Huiyuan sighed: "She has been here."
"Who?" he blurted out, but the answer had already emerged in his mind.
"Who else could it be? The actress with a thousand faces who loves to dance in the dark. Your mother Yukiko's...good friend." Huibara raised an eyebrow.
Vermouth. The name doesn't need to be explained; the air is already frozen.
A flash of light passed through the lenses, and the detective's LED lights instantly lit up in those blue eyes: "What does she want?"
"Sending you warmth." Huiyuan pushed the envelope in front of him. "This is a huge gift package from your die-hard fans. Even Cheetah's rush to the house couldn't get there."
The envelope was thin, yet felt heavy. Conan tore it open.
Crash.
More than a dozen full-color high-definition photos cascaded out, and the protagonist of each photo was him.
Cross the road.
Order food at Polo Cafe.
Read the latest volume of mystery novels at Beihua Bookstore.
In the last photo, he's huddled in a phone booth, holding up a red bow-tie voice changer. The angle is incredible, but his facial expressions are completely off the charts.
"Ah, these photos are so professional that even sasaeng fans would call them 'teacher,'" Haibara's voice was as cold as ice, tinged with sarcasm. "The composition, the lighting, the sense of storytelling... package it all up and we can release a mini-edition, out-of-print Kudo Shinichi photo album. I've even got the title: 'Shocking! The Unknown Private Life of the Great Detective,' and it's guaranteed to have a million views."
Conan's face darkened: "She's spying on me."
"As expected of a famous detective. I thought you'd be moved to tears and give an acceptance speech like 'Oh my god, she loves me so much.'"
"That's not funny, Haibara."
"I'm not kidding." She jumped off the lab table and stepped barefoot on the cold floor. "You should feel honored. After all, the 'attention' from that legendary actress is extremely important. Of course, she said that this was sent to her, and she didn't know who took the photo."
Pay attention. These two words came out of her mouth, accompanied by the background music of death stare.
Conan examined the photos one by one, his brain's CPU overclocking, trying to reverse-locate the photographer's coordinates through light, shadow, and angle.
fail.
"When did she come? What did she say?"
"Friday afternoon." Huibara walked over to the coffee machine and brewed herself a cup of strong black coffee. The bitter aroma activated her field, forcibly purifying the tension in the basement.
"As for her lines..."
She paused. The image of the woman, leaning against the doorframe, her blonde hair soft, replayed automatically in her mind in 4K HD.
"'Take care, our little detective.'"
us.
The word pierced Conan's ears like a bullet. He chewed it over and over, tasting the arrogance and, even more, the thinly veiled threat. He could even picture Vermouth's azure eyes as she spoke those words, the look of complete control and composure, the look of seeing through everything.
"And then?" Conan asked.
"And then? He vanished from the face of the earth." Huibara took a sip of coffee. "He came and went without a trace. All he left behind was this envelope and a perfume that smelled like a biological weapon."
Allergen. She gave a precise definition of the smell.
Haibara did not mention the "Tina" she met by chance in the cafe on Friday, nor did she bother to explain how Vermouth ignored the security system of the doctor's house.
There's absolutely no need for that. Just feed Kudo Shinichi, this top-tier reasoning CPU, a keyword, and he'll run through all the programs at lightning speed, arriving at that single, mind-numbing conclusion.
Conan fell silent. A mind palace, similar to Sherlock Holmes's, was constructed within his mind, with Vermouth's 3D model placed in the center, undergoing a 360-degree scan and analysis.
"She probably just wanted to inform you," Huiyuan said, turning around and leaning back against the operating table. Her icy blue eyes reflected the lab light clearly. "Everything you did, every move, was broadcast live in her private room. It's like..."
Her words stopped mid-sentence. Just like me, locked in those eyes, with nowhere to escape.
"We must strengthen our defenses." Conan's tense nerves were instantly transformed into action orders. "The doctor's security system needs to be upgraded to version 5.0! I'm going to install three more high-precision infrared sensors, and..."
"it's useless."
Haibara Ai interrupted him. Her voice was emotionless, like a voice assistant invented by a doctor reporting the weather.
"Whatever she wants, she always gets. After all, she is Vermouth."
The oxygen level in the basement instantly dropped to zero. The CPUs of the two pseudo-primary school students were overloaded, frantically processing this sudden storm of information.
"Habara." Conan looked up, his eyes fixed on her cute little face, "What did she... do to you?"
Huiyuan paused for a moment. Then, a "commercial fake smile.jpg" emoji appeared on her face.
"Personal threats? Not really."
She took a step forward, bent down, and looked at the photo on the table at eye level with Conan.
"She was just giving me a friendly reminder. Some things, once lost, can never be found again."
Conan looked up and met her eyes.
He sighed, looking away, lowering his head to stare at the spread-out evidence. These photos and documents clearly showed how his daily life in Beika Town, where he had thought himself safe, had been easily infiltrated.
Huibara stood up, picked up the coffee on the table and drank it in one gulp.
"Haibara. Don't see her again. Not even once."
There was no wind or waves in Huiyuan's ice-blue pupils, no yes or no.
"Order me? Great Detective?"
"It's a request, but also... a warning." Conan was a little excited, his voice became higher, and he tore off the last layer of wallpaper of the elementary school student's character.
"Do you even know what you're doing? You're playing with fire with Vermouth! That woman is a lunatic! She's the kind of actress who treats playing with people's hearts like an Oscar! She let you go this time out of her bad mood, but what about next time? What about the next time? What's your life? A chip you can throw onto a gambling table and lose without a care in the world?!"
He rarely acted like this, especially in front of her.
This burst of machine gun fire was more like system garbled code caused by fear overload than a reprimand.
He is afraid.
I fear the worst possible outcome. I fear that this invulnerable ally will one day wake up and evaporate along with the morning mist of rice popcorn, leaving not even a trace of water behind.
"We have other intelligence channels." Conan forced himself to calm down, trying to use logic to pull her back to the safe zone, "We have Bourbon. He is a public security officer, lurking in the core of the organization, and his intelligence is the most stable."
"Bourbon? Amuro Toru? Or... Furuya Rei?"
Conan's pupils trembled. Grass (a type of plant). She knew it all.
"That's right." He said slowly.
"So what?"
Haibara's reaction was so calm that it made Conan feel uneasy.
She walked up to Conan, her gaze penetrating the skin of "Edogawa Conan" and reaching the innocence of "Kudo Shinichi".
"Kudo, don't you understand yet?"
"Because he's Rei Furuya, the ace of the Japanese Public Security Bureau, the intelligence you get from him always comes with a beauty filter. The names of these filters are 'National Security' and 'Citizen Protection'."
Haibara's words are the code of a top hacker, precise, deadly, and able to bypass all defenses.
"Furiya Rei's primary KPI is to maintain the state apparatus and annihilate the organization. And you, Kudo Shinichi, are a powerful, yet extremely unstable 'civilian collaborator' in his grand plan."
"If an organization is planning a terrorist attack, they will tell you. If they prevent it, they will get credit and you will feel involved. It's a win-win situation."
"A low-level mission. Yes, Bourbon will leave it to you."
"It's a clear function. It lets you gain some experience points while helping him clear out a few waves of small fry. He's happy, and so are you. It's a win-win situation. The plan works."
Huibara spoke slowly, her tone still calm and without any emotion.
"but."
The air in the basement suddenly became tight.
"He absolutely, absolutely won't tell you the core game settings. For example, the real ID of 'that gentleman'; what new kryptonite items the organization has released besides APTX4869; and Rum's next...service suspension and maintenance announcement."
"Telling you all this is like kicking you, a high school detective, straight into an epic dungeon of professional difficulty. He's protecting you, Kudo. Gently, in the manner of an adult and a police officer, he's bringing you back to the novice level."
Conan opened his mouth, then closed it again, unable to utter a single syllable.
refute?
How could he refute it? Every word Huiyuan said was a precision-guided logic missile, penetrating his firewall and bombarding the backend database.
Conan's argumentative module has crashed due to overload.JPG
Without looking at him again, Huibara turned around and walked straight towards the stairs leading to the first floor.
Conan was completely silent. He wanted to call her back to say something, but he didn't know how to start.
Huiyuan stopped at the stairs and turned to look at him. In her deep blue eyes, all that remained was the calmness of someone who had seen many things clearly.
"Vermouth, it's different."
"She's not a police officer, she's not a partner in justice, and she doesn't even care about the rules of the game."
"She is pure chaotic evil. She is the most mysterious, deadly, and freest bug in the mess that is the Organization."
A series of cold "three no's" stripped Conan's naive fantasy on the spot.
"All of Vermouth's actions follow only one principle: her mood."
Huibara sighed, walked back and stopped by the coffee machine.
"What information did Furuya Zero give you?"
"It's the official press release. It's completely pixelated, sensitive words removed, and guaranteed to be completely safe and harmonized. It's reliable and clean, but you'll never see the true inner workings of the organization. Honestly, even someone like me who's been away from the organization for a while can see right away that this isn't the core information."
"What about the one Vermouth gave me?"
Conan's expression froze instantly.
"Maybe it was some trash talk with a smile on the phone."
"Maybe it's a meaningful look when we meet."
"Or maybe it was a crumpled receipt she threw into the trash can."
"Those are the real data that were just pulled out from the core of the organization's server. They're still warm and have garbled characters."
"Yes, Vermouth is dangerous, deadly, and full of lies and traps. But the truth she can give us," she emphasized, "is something that Rei Furuya can never give you, and will never dare to give you."
The logic chain was cold, cruel, and perfectly closed. Conan felt his defense towers being destroyed one after another by the opponent's mouth cannon AOE, and the crystal was in danger.
Huibara sighed and finally put an end to the debate.
"Bourbon is a storm spotter. He stands in the safe house and tells you the wind speed, path, and hazard warning level with precision. His job is to issue reports."
"And Vermouth, she is the storm itself."
"If you want to know when this storm will tear us all to shreds, you have to rush into the eye of the storm yourself. Instead of standing thousands of miles away and listening to a weather forecast with an extremely high delay, great detective."
Conan felt a tightness in his chest.
KO
She is right.
The most efficient way to play.
The highest risk play.
The only possible way to beat the game.
However, the barrage of emotions filled his rational screen, making it impossible for him to type the word "agree".
"So... you're going to risk your life to draw an SSR card? Just for some who-knows-what information?"
"Do you think I like adventure, Kudo?"
The sharpness in Huiyuan's voice was gone. Only a hint of fatigue and an indivisible sadness remained.
“This is my factory setting.”
"Since I was born into that organization."
"It started when I wrote the code for that potion myself."
"My fate is locked with 'them'. Vermouth's search for me wasn't a random event. She knew we were of the same kind. We could smell each other in the endless darkness."
She turned around. On her face was an expression that Conan was very familiar with: the sadness and self-mockery that Huiyuan often had when she first came to Beihua.
"This cup of poison is only for me to drink."
"I have to drink it too."
"This is... the only thing I can do for my sister, for you, and for everyone I've implicated."
"Atonement."
All the messy worries, anger, and complaints in Conan's mind collapsed in an instant and shattered into garbled data on the ground.
He understood.
This is not a tactical choice at all.
This is the only ending that Haibara Ai has set for herself.
What else can he say?
What can he stop?
The laboratory fell silent again.
In the air, above the danger, there was an additional layer of suffocating tragedy.
For the first time, the two souls trapped in the bodies of children saw each other's awareness and the insurmountable server firewall called "fate" so clearly.
Huihara withdrew her gaze, walked to the laboratory table, and picked up an empty glass test tube.
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