Detective Conan: The System Takes Me to Zero's World

Judy and Cameron pushed open the door curtain of Iroha Sushi Restaurant and walked in. The sound of knives cutting fish came from the kitchen.

The warm yellow light in the store was filled with the fragrance of sushi rice, and a waiter in a white uniform was bending over to spread the tuna belly on the vinegar rice.

The boss, holding a bamboo curtain, rolled up thin sushi rolls with his fingers. Upon seeing the two people come in, he immediately stood up and smiled innocently: "Welcome! The booth in the back is still empty, so feel free to sit down!"

Judy didn't move, her eyes quickly scanning the store.

There are sticky notes on the menu on the wall, the soy sauce bottles are neatly arranged on the bar, and the TV in the corner is playing the evening news. Everything exudes the atmosphere of an ordinary small shop.

But Judy didn't loosen her grip on the hem of her clothes. "Don't bother, we're just here to ask something. Excuse me, does Mr. Wakita, who's wearing an eye patch on his left eye, work here?"

The boss stopped working on the bamboo curtain and slapped his forehead. "Oh! You mean Wakita? He's delivering food and hasn't come back yet. The phone at the sushi restaurant rang just now. He asked someone at the nearby convenience store to tell him that the family he was delivering to seemed to be involved in a minor dispute, and he was helping to mediate."

The boss fished his phone out of his apron pocket. When the screen lit up, he could see a string of missed calls in the call log. "I've called him several times, but no one answered. If you know the family, could you tell them to 'get back to work'? They always like to meddle in other people's business!"

Judy and Cameron looked at each other and saw understanding in each other's eyes.

Wakita Kensuke was not entangled in the dispute at all. It was obvious that he knew they were coming and escaped in advance.

Judy nodded politely to the boss: "We found this place because we couldn't contact him. It seems we can only wait for him to come back."

After saying that, she pulled Cameron out the door. The moment the wooden door closed, she lowered her voice and said, "He won't come back here. I'm afraid he has already abandoned the identity of Wakita Kanenori."

"Yeah." Cameron's voice also became deeper, and his eyes swept across the window of the sushi restaurant. "He was able to erase the traces so quickly. He was well prepared."

Judy suddenly remembered the fleeting glimpse she had just caught downstairs in the apartment building and frowned slightly. "Come to think of it, wasn't there a woman wearing black-framed glasses in that apartment building just now? Who was she? I think I've seen her somewhere."

"Are you talking about Ms. Wakasa Rumi?" Cameron immediately realized, "She's the vice-homeroom teacher of Conan's class. I met her once before at the crime scene."

"She is an elementary school teacher? Really?" Judy's brows furrowed even tighter, and the calm look behind the woman's glasses involuntarily emerged in her mind. She always felt that she was not like an ordinary elementary school teacher.

There was a low roar of a helicopter overhead.

In mid-air, a dark-colored helicopter was hovering with no markings on the fuselage. The airflow created by the propeller caused the branches on the roadside to shake violently, but it did not attract much attention from the pedestrians below. It seemed like just an ordinary aerial photography operation.

Inside the cabin, Rum had taken off his disguise, revealing his scarred left eye. He casually threw the eye patch on the seat next to him, holding a high-powered telescope in his fingertips, staring at the two people talking on the ground.

"Andre Cameron, Judy Stelling...the FBI agents the organization failed to kill have gathered together like cockroaches."

In James' car, Shushu's ears stood up and his little head rubbed against the back of Kudo Yuki's hand. There were some threads from her clothes stuck on his fur.

"Xiaoxue, there's the sound of a helicopter in the sky, and... it's a strange sound, not like an ordinary civilian helicopter." Shushu's nose twitched slightly, "Do you feel like the air around you seems to have become heavier? It's like something is staring at us."

Kudo Yuki raised her head slightly and looked at the sky. The roar of the helicopter was getting closer and closer, and the car windows were shaking slightly.

She spoke telepathically, her voice a little wary. "Shushu, turn on the system screen and see what's happening in the sky. Also, check the helicopter's route. An unmarked helicopter wouldn't be hovering so low over the city for so long."

Shushu's chubby little claws swiped in the air, and a light blue virtual screen instantly spread out in front of the two people.

The screen quickly captured the clear outline of the helicopter. Inside the cabin, Rum, wearing black headphones, stared at James's car through binoculars. His voice came through the communicator in a cold, hard voice: "Cohen, are you in position?"

Cohen's flat response came immediately over the communicator. The background was filled with the sound of the wind high above, and the faint creaking of sniper rifle parts could be heard. "The gun is already set up, and the scope is locked on the back seat of the car. Want to shoot? Just pull the trigger."

Kudo Yuki's breathing suddenly became heavier, and her fingertips quietly pressed the emergency button on the inside of the car door - that was the emergency signal trigger button that she and Shushu had debugged in advance. As long as it was pressed, the location would be sent to nearby companions.

But before she could exert any strength, Rum on the screen suddenly interrupted her harshly into the communicator: "Wait a moment."

Rum turned the telescope and aimed the lens at Cameron and Judy standing on the side of the road at the corner of the street.

A man wearing a dark grey hooded jacket and a black mask slowly approached the two of them. Only his eyes, slightly tilted upwards, revealed a chill in the evening light.

Cohen on the screen said nothing more, but the lens of his sniper rifle shifted slightly, clearly retracting his aim. He never disobeyed Gin's orders, and his previous words, "Just pull the trigger," were merely a pretext to help Rum gauge the situation below.

Rum's knuckles turned slightly white as he gripped the binoculars. His gaze was fixed on the hooded man, and doubts welled up in his mind: "Who is this hooded man? He's deliberately hiding his face so tightly! Let me see his face!"

He even raised his hand to adjust the focus of the telescope, trying to see the other person's outline through the gap in the mask.

Subaru Okiya seemed to have noticed something and raised his head inadvertently - his eyes happened to meet Rum in the helicopter cabin.

Their eyes met briefly in the air, and they were both stunned for a moment, with surprise clearly written in their eyes.

The moment Rum looked into those eyes, his pupils suddenly contracted, and a forgotten memory suddenly burst into his mind.

Seventeen years ago, Akai Tsutomu grabbed his collar, his fingertips almost digging into his skin, and said with a sneer, "I'll take away your troublesome left eye."

Cold sweat instantly covered his back. He clenched the binoculars tightly, screaming frantically in his mind: "Akai Tsutomu?! How is this possible! Didn't that man disappear a long time ago? How could he appear here? Absolutely not! I must be seeing things!"

Cohen's voice came through the communicator again, a bit impatient. "Who is that hooded man anyway? He's been making cunning moves from the start, sometimes sidling up behind Cameron, sometimes circling around to Judy. It's impossible to pinpoint a sniper position."

He looked at the image through the scope and added, "There are more people now, and he's retreated behind the car, so it's impossible to find an angle to shoot."

Rum snapped back to his senses, a fierce flash in his eyes behind his glasses. He immediately corrected himself, "No, he wasn't trying to avoid sniping. Didn't you see his hands? They were pressed against the car body—he was trying to hear instructions from the people inside by vibrating the car body. And their leader, James Blake, was in that car."

"Is that James?" Cohen retorted directly. "He was clearly sitting in the black car behind us. He just got out and was leaning on the side of the road smoking, wasn't he?"

Rum's face darkened instantly. He immediately raised the telescope and turned to the car behind him. Sure enough, there was a man wearing the same suit as James leaning against the car in the camera.

His confusion intensified, his fingers tapping unconsciously on the cabin wall: "Who is in that car up ahead? Who is it? Even Cohen couldn't tell who it was, and who made the hooded man listen to instructions so intently..."

At this moment, the picture on the screen suddenly moved - the door of the car in front opened, and a "James" walked out.

He was wearing his signature beige suit and his hair was meticulously combed, but if you looked closely, you would find that his movements were more agile than usual and there was a bit of youthful sharpness hidden in his eyes.

This is Conan's disguise.

He deliberately got out of the car facing James's face and walked calmly towards a small restaurant with warm lights not far away.

It was dinner time and more and more people were walking on the street. No one noticed that this "James" had a miniature communicator hidden in his sleeve, and Subaru Okiya's eyes were always on him.

After James' figure completely disappeared in the traffic at the corner of the street, Subaru Okiya slowly walked around to the back of the car and opened the back door.

After he sat down, he raised his hand to take off his knitted hat, revealing his neatly trimmed hair. He turned his head to look at Conan who was sticking his head out from behind the passenger seat, a faint smile on the corner of his lips: "Well, now you can tell me. Little brother, are you really sure that the man named Wakita Kanenori is the key answer to the organization's second-in-command, Rum?"

Conan rested his fingertips on his chin, his face devoid of his usual childish expression, instead revealing a composure belying his age. He winked at Kudo Yuki in the driver's seat before turning to Okiya Subaru and explaining, "What initially made me suspicious was his accent—that Wakita-san spoke with a very deliberate Edo accent."

"Oh?" Subaru crossed his arms, leaning forward slightly, his gaze behind his glasses inquiring. "Edo accents are quite common, but how can you conclude there's something wrong with them?"

"The key lies in the word 'deliberately'." Conan looked up at Kudo Yuki who was looking back from the driver's seat, and after receiving a nod of confirmation, he continued, "Among people from Edo, there are indeed many older people who can't pronounce the 'h' sound. For example, Yuantai's father always pronounces 'lunch' as ​​'hufan'.

But Mr. Wakita's pronunciation is so strange. When he invited us for snacks, he said, "Wakita-san, would you like to try one?" Later, he said, "I ate too much lunch." But the 'h' sound in 'lunch' was perfectly pronounced, while the rest of the accent was deliberately imitative, like he was deliberately impersonating an 'Edo old man,' which only made him look guilty.

At this point, Conan's eyes darkened. "And we all know that Rum's characteristic is 'one of his left or right eyes is a prosthetic eye.' Mr. Wakita always wears a black eyepatch, whether he's working at the sushi restaurant or occasionally going out. He never takes it off. This is too much of a coincidence."

Subaru Okiya listened, his fingertips tapping lightly on his knees, thinking to himself: "Where did this kid get the information about the second-in-command's identity? From Haibara? Or from Kudo Yuki?"

Conan seemed oblivious to his thoughts and continued to reason along the clues: "What really convinced me was his name. Mr. Cameron mentioned before that in order to hide his identity, Rum not only changed his appearance but also changed his name.

The last time Heiji-nii came to the capital, he told me, "A random pseudonym is probably just a rearranged arrangement of the original name's letters"—that's anagram formation. And then there's the information Amuro-san passed on, saying, "Rum is impatient and always strives for efficiency in everything he does."

"Impatient?" Okiya Subaru raised an eyebrow. "What does this have to do with the name?"

"It was my elder sister who reminded me." Conan looked at Kudo Yuki, who took over the conversation in a clear voice: "Impatient people often care most about 'time' and think that wasting time is wasting opportunities.

Speaking of famous sayings related to the saying "time is precious," Officer Takaaki Morobushi of the Nagano Prefectural Police often says, "Every moment is worth a thousand gold coins," or the more straightforward "Every inch of time is worth an inch of gold." However, the most international and easiest to break down into letters is actually the English proverb: "Time is money."

Conan immediately took over the conversation and took out a small notebook he carried with a string of Roman letters written on it.

"If you break 'Time is money' down into its letters and remove spaces and duplicate letters, you get T, I, M, E, S, O, N, and Y. Add the key letters J, K, A, and W from the romanization of 'Jikan wa kane desu' (the Japanese pronunciation for 'time is money'), and rearrange them, you get 'WAKITAKANENOR'—the romanization for 'Wakita Kanenori'!"

The car was silent for a few seconds.

Subaru Okiya looked at Conan's clear analysis and couldn't help laughing. He reached out and ruffled his hair: "Little brother, your observation and reasoning abilities are really amazing."

Conan shook his head as he was being rubbed, a smug smile on his face, but he silently added in his mind: "Actually, there's one crucial point I haven't mentioned yet."

Last time at the Yoshiwarasou Apartment, when Huibara saw Mr. Wakita, she subconsciously clutched the corner of my clothes, and her fingertips were trembling. That was her instinctive fear of the aura of the organization members.

It was my older sister who noticed her abnormality and quietly reminded me, otherwise I wouldn't have been so quick to pin my suspicions on Mr. Wakita... and Rum's habit of curling his fingers.]

Kudo Yuki seemed to see through his thoughts. She tapped the steering wheel lightly and said in a relaxed tone, "Now that all the clues are in place, what action will the FBI take next?"

Subaru Okiya put away his smile and looked at Cameron and Judy outside the car window, his eyes becoming serious. "Although I admire your courage, you should quickly borrow the car for cover. Even if you are wearing bulletproof jackets, you will be finished if you get hit in the head."

To be continued...