The Phantom Thief of Heart! But Conan.

Among the people who came to Hachijo Island, Haibara Ai, who knew and understood the Phantom Thieves the most deeply, would definitely stand with Karasawa. Among the rest of the people, the professor and Karasawa were not that familiar with each other, and the Mori father and daughter and Sonoko might not understand the nature of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts very well. These naughty kids... are just naughty kids.

After counting carefully, he found that the people around Conan either knew almost no truth, or only knew the basics, or seemed closer to Tang Ze. After counting them over and over again, he couldn't find any opportunity to elaborate on his inner thoughts.

With a depressed look on his face, he boarded the plane back to Tokyo. Seeing Naomi Argento sitting affectionately next to Haibara Ai, he felt even more awkward.

How to say it, Conan knew that his sensitive nerves had been touched, and it was unwise to look back carefully at Tang Ze's behavior at this moment.

Contradictions must be prioritized. When the organization has not yet resolved such a big problem, it is not a wise choice to question the friends around him first, but his highly developed brain simply cannot stop.

He looked at Tang Ze, who was sitting on the other side of the aisle and covering himself with a blanket, and finally raised the question in his heart.

Is it possible that Tang Ze and Joker are the same person?

To be honest, he can come up with many arguments that can be discussed in depth, both for and against. The focus now is not on what he thinks, but Conan can't help but want to verify that this idea itself is not absurd.

However, as soon as he got home, before he even asked a few people, Conan's thoughts had shifted even further.

"Karagaze? You're asking what I think of Karasawa?" Takagi Wataru scratched his cheek after hearing Conan repeating seriously, "Of course he's a good kid with a good personality. Although we haven't had a chance to solve his problem yet, the case he was involved in is a false accusation. This is something that almost everyone who knows him in the Investigation Section agrees on. You're worried about the trial of his case, right? Don't worry, it will definitely be solved."

"You want to know what I think of Karasawa?" Maori Kogoro pointed at himself with a strange look on his face. "What else can I think? He's suffered so much injustice. I don't think I can change the trajectory of his life..."

"Shut up." Kisaki Eri glanced at Maori Kogoro, too lazy to listen to his long speech, and answered directly, "The fact that I took on this case is enough to explain my opinion. I never fight a battle that I am sure to lose."

"Zhen and Tang Ze keep in touch a lot? Yes, I know." Suzuki Sonoko said as if it was a matter of course. "Zhen and Tang Ze have a very good relationship, so there's no need to hide it from me. Zhen asks Tang Ze a lot of questions, and Tang Ze will share some of his ideas with me after asking for his consent. To be honest, without Tang Ze's many suggestions at the beginning, Zhen and I might not have become so familiar with each other so quickly..."

"You said you thought Tang Ze might be hiding something? What makes you think so?" Dr. Agasa kept an eye on Haibara Ai's movements while answering. When he saw her completely disappear on the descending stairs, he whispered, "Without Tang Ze's help, Ai wouldn't have recovered so quickly. With Tang Ze always taking care of her, Ai has become much more cheerful. So even if Tang Ze really didn't tell the truth about some issues, I don't think he has any ill intentions. Everyone has their own privacy..."

Before he could express his doubts, and only tentatively confirmed their thoughts on Tang Ze, Conan felt like he had a migraine. He couldn't help but think that since they had stolen hearts to this extent and were praised by everyone, young and old, men and women, it would be difficult for him to end the matter if he was not the Phantom Thief of Hearts.

There is no way, absolutely no way.

Due to Tang Ze's personality, he has a strong ability to read people's expressions. When he really has good intentions towards someone, it is very difficult to resist and question Tang Ze.

Now that Karasawa has lived in Tokyo for so long, and his social circle highly overlaps with Conan's own, it's like cutting butter with a hot knife, and he can get what he wants no matter how he cuts it.

So after a lot of attempts, Conan could only remain silent with Hattori Heiji on the other end of the phone, and they looked at each other in bewilderment, unable to see each other but feeling the atmosphere.

"I'm saying, is there a possibility that Tang Ze's true ability is actually a lie to you?" Hattori Heiji asked with a hint of uncertainty, "Could it be that his ability is actually hypnosis or something like that? His evaluation is too high..."

"So, does that mean that you and I have a bad relationship with him?" Conan couldn't help but ask.

As a friend, Tang Ze is so considerate that people can feel the tacit understanding that does not require words to explain, and a glance is enough to convey each other's ideas. In addition, Tang Ze's attitude of always being willing to negotiate, and many of his actions that make people feel his kindness towards themselves, make people trust Tang Ze as easy as eating and drinking.

The most important thing is that there is not much deliberateness or performance in this. He is the kind of friend who really remembers all your quirks. It is so comfortable to get along with him that it is hard to resist him.

For example, the questions mentioned above were asked one by one by him when he was delivering the souvenirs brought back from Hachijo Island to other people on behalf of Tang Ze who had gone to school.

If Conan had not felt an intuitive call and noticed too many details that could not be ignored, he would have thought that his idea was completely ridiculous.

"But Kudo, if Karasawa and Joker are really the same person in a sense, then many of our questions can be answered, right?" Hattori Heiji couldn't refute it. After thinking about it, he couldn't directly persuade Conan to give up, so he had to change his words.

Many of Tang Ze's problems are very contradictory.

For example, the organization's attitude towards him, and what kind of connection does he have with Akechi Goro. If Akechi is not lying, then under the premise of the connection, Karasawa should be the one who knows the most about the organization among them, but why does he provide almost no relevant intelligence clues?

Tang Ze's physical condition and fighting strength are also the same. Haibara Ai's concern for him does not seem fake. Tang Ze has had emotional problems more than once. With such unstable factors, why would the organization allow him to spend his student life freely in Tokyo after killing his parents?

These are questions that one can come up with many self-convincing ideas when trying to find logic, but they are also like foreign objects that have fallen into clothes, always causing slight tingling or itching. Detectives have noticed these problems for a long time.

It was mainly because it wasn't polite to talk about a mutual friend behind their back, especially one who had provided a lot of help. The two of them had hardly had any in-depth discussions on the subject...

"If he is Joker, then the organization's solution is easy to understand." Conan touched his chin and pondered, "Perhaps the organization is not unwilling to do anything to Tang Ze, but it is unable to do it."

It would certainly be easy to deal with an ordinary high school student, and it would not be difficult for the organization that could easily ruin Tang Ze's life and send him to Tokyo to deal with him.

But just a few days after Tang Ze transferred to Tokyo, the Phantom Thief of Heart began to become active.

"Indeed, the organization might have already taken action against Tang Ze, but due to Tang Ze's identity, they couldn't let him die directly. Instead, they used other means to kill him without anyone noticing." Hattori Heiji said over the phone, thinking in a similar way, "But by this time, Tang Ze had already formed a connection with the Phantom Thief of Hearts, so the organization's methods failed."

Even the detectives who can communicate directly with Joker, the mysterious thief, are not very clear about the limits of his abilities and what specific effects he can achieve.

Based on past experience, the only thing that can be confirmed is that he has strong combat capabilities, even possesses unimaginable self-healing abilities, and is as capable as a detective in collecting intelligence and organizing reasoning.

Thinking from another perspective, the assassination attempt against Tang Ze may have always existed, but it just hasn't worked.

"Joker's self-healing ability is amazing. He once got shot on purpose to protect a classmate of mine in elementary school, hoping that the other party would suffer some setbacks and learn a lesson. However, when I went to check on him a few hours later, all his wounds had healed." Conan's face became strange when he thought of this.

If their two guesses were partially reasonable, it was simply a ghost story from the organization's perspective.

The assassins kept going but never succeeded. They might even think they had succeeded, and Tang Ze would go to school alive and kicking the next day. It was like a ghost...

"Why does it seem more and more reasonable the more you talk about it? We haven't reached a conclusion yet." Hattori Heiji held his forehead and suppressed his thoughts that were constantly diverging in strange directions, bringing the topic back to "Kudo, what I want to say is that although Karasawa and Joker rarely appear together, it's not that they have never appeared together. I admit that there are indeed doubts about him, but our argument is difficult to support."

"Appearing is the best explanation." Conan shook his head. "If, I mean if, all my assumptions are true, have you forgotten that Joker has been an undisguised master of disguise, similar to Kaito Kid, since he became active in the public eye... I was thinking of other possibilities..."

If you look closely, if Tang Ze wanted to deceive them, he could have easily hidden it from them.

Bean bag sofas, cats and dogs, eating habits, these tiny details of life that Tangze has a way to disguise.

If he is really a joker, then his cognitive ability is definitely beyond everyone's imagination, and it is not difficult for him to disguise and deceive for a long time.

It is precisely because of his attitude that the detective remains indecisive and finds it difficult to make a judgment that puts aside his emotional thoughts.

To put it bluntly, Conan thought hard and racked his brains but couldn't figure out why Tang Ze did that?

"If he really is the Joker, what would happen if he told me directly? Would I send him to the police?" Conan slapped his forehead and began to ponder this question again. "At the beginning, when we lacked communication, this kind of thought was not surprising, but later, we trusted each other so much..."

Joker tacitly allowed him to enter their base, and he also cooperated with the Phantom Thieves' ideas and provided a lot of information.

Fundamentally speaking, he still doesn't fully agree with the ideas and style of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, but just look at the effective damage they did to the organization during their Pacific Buoy trip. They are definitely a group of good comrades, and it is far from time to engage in debate at this stage.

So there's no way he'd harbor any resentment towards Joker just because he's actually a friend of his? What if Tang Ze just tells him directly if he has any questions?

Hattori Heiji, equally baffled, pondered for a moment and couldn't help but suggest other possibilities: "Could it be that Karasawa doesn't want to communicate, but simply doesn't realize the connection between him and Joker?"

"Listen to what you're saying, Hattori, a double personality?" Conan complained, "This is definitely the worst trick in a mystery novel."

The reader follows the clues and deduces and reads bit by bit, and finally finds out that the reason the murderer was able to deceive the detective is that the murderer has a split personality, which is almost the same as deus ex machina.

"It's certainly possible, isn't it? Cognitive abilities, they possess cognitive abilities. Those psychological effects and symptoms, when placed on the Phantom Thief of Heart, will become real symptoms that affect reality." Hattori Heiji emphasized again, "After the split personality occurs, will Karasawa's abilities be activated unconsciously, and he will really 'create' a Phantom Thief whose mission is to eliminate evil? Who can say for sure? Speaking of which, think carefully about what Joker told you about his 'ideas'..."

If you think about it carefully, unlike Joker's mature wisdom, Joker's philosophy is somewhat like a young boy's second-year syndrome.

What about severing the cycle of evil? Only by solving the root of darkness can we truly curb its spread. Only by staying in the shadows can we achieve more. Detectives have their detective abilities, and thieves have their own methods...

Compared with his excellent execution and planning abilities, these declarations are childish.

But if we think about it from another perspective, his appearance might be the result of Tang Ze's emotions reaching a certain extreme, which triggered his thinking?

"You see, Karasawa's most important identity is actually his status as a criminal who was forced to transfer to Tokyo. Of course, we know this is all fabricated, and the real Karasawa is definitely not a criminal. But when he suffers from this unfounded accusation, will he develop emotional thoughts like, 'If you insist on calling me a criminal, then I will use my identity as a criminal to overturn everything and prove I'm right?'"

Hattori Heiji became more and more excited as he talked, and skipped the verification part and started making up, oh no, hypotheses.

"Take the identity of a phantom thief, for example. It's a very unique criminal identity, isn't it? The person must have committed a crime, but in the public's perception, the image of a phantom thief is always equated with freedom, mystery, and a special charm. It's reasonable for a juvenile delinquent like Tang Ze, who has been framed, to yearn for such an image, right?"