Double Chapter
Turns out Boss Ryoji's little tricks worked.
—Heihachi Mikami, the editor-in-chief of Astronomy Magazine, looked at the useless phone, then pictured those bones up in the mountain and felt a chill down his spine. "What a mess. I'm not playing along with this!"
He spun on his heel and stomped out.
Jiangxia, ghost still clinging to his leg, didn't bother stopping him.
Sure enough, five minutes later, the editor-in-chief came trudging back, face ashen. He threw up his hands irritably. "All the car tires are deflated. Every single one!"
Xiao Bai, perched on Jiangxia's shoulder, froze. He slowly swiveled to stare at Jiangxia: Did Master send a puppet to bite the tires?
Jiangxia calmly pretended to adjust his collar, pressing the peeking Xiao Bai back down. Of course it wasn't me this time. Obviously, it was Boss Ryoji's handiwork.
…
Now, with no working phone and no cars, if they wanted to call the police or leave, they needed a vehicle.
Robert suddenly remembered the truck he'd driven here. "Our truck's parked nearby — we can help call the police."
The editor-in-chief's eyes lit up again. "A truck has more than one seat, right? Take me down the mountain. I'm not staying in this creepy place another minute."
His underling, Hajime Futagawa, didn't say a word but shuffled next to Robert, obviously wanting out too.
A truck, huh…
Jiangxia glanced at the would-be escapees — and the three shikigami wrapped around their legs (two for Robert, one for the editor-in-chief). He also remembered the tiny chunk of puppet clay he'd jammed into the truck's keyhole earlier to stop Robert from slipping away.
No need to stop them. They weren't going anywhere anyway.
To be precise, no one was leaving until every last ghost was rounded up.
But… appearance mattered. So, as they turned to go, Jiangxia half-heartedly raised a hand. "No. There's a possible dying message by the body. The murderer of Mr. Kono might be among you. It's better to wait for the police to arrive."
The editor-in-chief sneered, "I'm innocent, not afraid of an investigation. When the police show up, tell them to come to my house. You have no right to detain people!"
He stomped off, looking like a grumpy old man scolding an anonymous prankster.
Truth was, he really wasn't afraid of the police. A whole year had passed since he'd shoved Kono down the mountain — he didn't think they'd find any solid evidence now.
He was much more afraid of the person who'd sent those creepy invitations — who knew if that rascal was planning to avenge Kono's murder.
Robert glanced at the editor-in-chief's back, hesitation flickering across his face. As a fellow tool person who'd also crossed a certain line, he had a gut feeling something was off. But after a second's pause, he led the two of them out anyway.
—Police resources were limited. If one of them slipped away in the chaos, the police would have to split their focus, chasing after runaways instead of hunting the real killer of Shinichi Takeda and Negishi.
Also, Robert wanted to loop back to the Spider Mansion to use their landline. He figured Shinichi Takeda's corpse should've been found by now — if he could tidy up the scene amid the confusion, he'd have an even better chance of slipping through unscathed.
…
Haibara Ai, watching the three of them insist on leaving, felt a twinge of worry at first.
But then she turned to Jiangxia, who was standing there with a slight frown — looking all serious, but not lifting a finger to actually stop anyone. Her instincts screamed something was up.
She'd never seen Jiangxia actually hit anyone, but the kids always shared weird stories when she tried convincing them not to be afraid of him — acts of bravery, they called them.
Any other detective might really have no choice if normal civilians insisted on leaving.
But Jiangxia was different.
Haibara was 99% sure that if he truly wanted to stop someone, those two would be sprawled on the floor by now — politely and efficiently silenced.
And yet… nothing.
She leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. "Do you have another plan?"
Jiangxia glanced at her and replied just as softly, "No. He's right — I really don't have the right to detain people."
Haibara Ai: "…"
Really? She didn't buy it for a second.
Sure enough, moments later, she spotted the same three people returning, shoulders drooping exactly like when they'd left. She shifted her half-moon eyes toward Jiangxia.
Jiangxia looked at the three shuffling back in, a faint "Oh, who could've guessed?" surprise on his face.
Haibara gave him a subtle once-over. Hmm. Not bad acting, actually. Better than Conan's 'I'm-just-a-kid' routine.
She made a mental note in her Jiangxia Observation Notes: No updates needed.
The three returnees looked like they'd eaten bitter melon for dinner.
Robert was fiddling with the truck key, shoulders tense. "The key won't go in. Looks like the keyhole's blocked."
The editor-in-chief's eyes popped. "It must be that maniac who slashed the tires!"
Robert's expression darkened too — but halfway through his rant, he stopped.
Wait… Was this really last-minute?
He remembered — driving the truck out tonight wasn't spontaneous at all. He'd planned it long ago to activate the hanging mechanism and cover himself with an alibi. Now he couldn't help wondering: had someone watched him commit murder this whole time?
Jiangxia studied Robert's flustered face. To keep his foreign friend from fleeing into the dark mountains like some spooked animal, he helpfully added a cover story:
"Perhaps the mastermind was lurking by the corpse all along. When they saw us, they ran off and sabotaged the truck… Very cunning."
With that, Jiangxia confidently released the hold on the tiny bit of puppet clay lodged in the truck's keyhole — since Robert had confirmed the key wouldn't work, there was no need to keep burning killing intent to maintain the clay.
One less puppet to juggle, more energy for ghosts.
No way to leave, phone line cut, and no other inns for miles around — so this hodgepodge of suspicious guests had no choice but to hole up for the night. They decided they'd walk to the nearest village to borrow a phone come morning.
One by one, they shuffled back to their rooms, minds buzzing about the death message Kono had left behind. The Detective Boys had blurted it out earlier, so each guest was secretly scheming how to handle it.
Everyone pretending they weren't.
Meanwhile, the three "temporary" guests — Jiangxia, Ai Haibara, and Kazuha Toyama — squeezed into Professor Agasa's suite.
Jiangxia sat cross-legged on the tatami with six matches laid out before him: four long, two short. He fiddled with them idly, arranging and rearranging them, yawning as he went.
He'd been up all night picking up ghosts, and although he'd popped a ghost mint at dawn to recharge, the sky had darkened again. Time for sleep — or another mint.
But he wasn't desperate yet. Just a bit drowsy. And since the case wasn't going anywhere tonight, stalling didn't hurt.
Besides, pacing out the case gave him an excuse to take it slow…
Next to him, Ai Haibara, night owl by trade, was also toying with the matches, lining them up like the death message left by Kono.
She yawned too, covering her mouth. It was oddly contagious — every time Jiangxia yawned, she followed.
After the third synchronized yawn, Ai Haibara squinted at Jiangxia. "Are you that sleepy?"
She knew his routine well. Except for the occasional night spent out "cruising with his cadre" (her words, not his), Jiangxia was annoyingly healthy. He slept early, even earlier than Professor Agasa. You could look out the kitchen window at 11 p.m. and see his light off, like clockwork.
So what was up tonight?
Jiangxia propped his cheek on one hand, holding a match in the other. "Didn't sleep well — ran into Conan on the way here, then someone got murdered at dawn, so I had to stay up all night."
Ai Haibara: "…"
The Detective Boys, who'd been eavesdropping, stared too.
A single thought passed through the children's innocent minds: Is Brother Jiangxia calling Conan a grim reaper? Wasn't that his own problem?
But then again… they paused. Conan really did show up whenever there was a body.
Wait, no — Conan wasn't even here tonight, yet a skeleton popped up at the base of the mountain.
So maybe it was Jiangxia who was cursed worse.
Haibara's mind went one layer deeper than the kids'. She thought back to before Conan was Conan — back when he was Shinichi Kudo, the famous detective who magnetized murder scenes.
They'd barely known each other back then, and Jiangxia rarely ran into corpses. So, yeah — maybe it really was Conan's pot to bear.
Except… Conan wasn't here tonight. So Jiangxia must've just brushed up against that yinbi's bad luck aura and carried it off like lint.
Thinking that, Ai Haibara reached over and patted Jiangxia's back, like dusting him off.
Then she peered at his drooping eyelids. "Why not nap for a bit? The death message won't run away. No one can leave tonight anyway, and dawn's still hours off."
Jiangxia shook his head. "Can't. Three shikigami are still clinging to people's legs, and I think a new one's about to appear. There are still mysteries left — I can't sleep like this."
"Hm." The scientist in Ai Haibara got it — when you're chewing on a problem, sleep just bounces off your brain. She didn't push it further.
Instead, she padded to the mini-fridge to rummage for something useful.
She picked up a can of coffee. Hesitated. Put it back.
Then she grabbed a carton of milk instead. Coffee would just jack him up, and it barely worked anyway.
Milk had that gentle, innocent buddhist vibe — maybe Jiangxia would drift off thinking about the problem, wake up a few hours later, solve everything in a snap, and catch the culprit before breakfast.
The more she thought about it, the more she liked her plan.
She nodded to herself, clutched the milk, and tiptoed out to find the innkeeper for a mug and the microwave.
Halfway down the corridor, passing the second door on her right, Ai Haibara paused.
The door to Hajime Futakawa's room was ajar. The lights were on, but the room was empty.
Weird. It was the dead of night — where did that tool person run off to?
She peered inside. A neat twenty-square-meter studio. Curtains open. No one home.
Her eyes drifted to the window — it faced the back mountain.
And there, in the dark tangle of trees, a figure was trudging deeper into the woods. Etsuko Nonoyamiya.
"…?"
If it'd been Genta or Mitsuhiko, they'd have jumped out the window like a bear child chasing snacks.
But Ai Haibara knew better. She dropped the milk with a gentle thud at the door, leaned down to "pick it up," and slipped back for a better look.
Nothing moved. The figure vanished into the brush.
She clutched the milk, bolted back to the suite, and burst in. "I just passed Futakawa's room — door wide open, nobody inside. From the window, you could see Nonoyamiya wandering around the woods."
Kazuha Toyama, half-asleep on the sofa, jolted up. She blinked at the tiny girl, startled by how calm she sounded.
A first grader, calmly reporting a missing suspect. Kazuha felt a pang of second-hand experience.
She glanced at Jiangxia — so this is what happens when you keep an innocent tool by your side for too long.
Behind every high school detective, there's always an innocent alarm bell that eventually evolves into a small cadre.
She quietly fingered her phone, the "1" and "0" buttons worn smooth, and looked at Ai Haibara with a weird sense of kinship.
Jiangxia didn't waste a second. He stood up, shook off the sleepiness, and led the way down the corridor.
Passing Futakawa's room, he stopped for a peek out the window — pitch-black woods, no sign of Nonoyamiya. But his gut told him this pot wasn't empty yet.
They reached the front desk and found something even weirder.
—It wasn't just Futakawa and Nonoyamiya missing. The innkeeper, Amatsu, and the editor-in-chief, Mikami, had vanished too.
Kazuha's face went pale as she remembered all the empty rooms she'd passed. That eerie, echoing lobby.
It reminded her of one of those ghost stories she'd read — the kind where, if you weren't careful, everyone would disappear, leaving you alone to face the murderer in the dark.
*Goal #1: Top 200 fanfics published within the last 31 - 90 days by POWER STONES.
Progress: 25/60(approx) for 10 BONUS CHAPTERS
Goal #2: One BONUS CHAPTER per review for the first 10 REVIEWS.
Progress:4/10*