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

Kudo Yuki whispered through telepathy, "Mouse, we should go."

"Can I take another snack before I leave?" Mouse's voice was full of cravings. His chubby little paws were secretly tugging at the zipper of his canvas bag, and the tip of his tail was still wagging gently. "That Sichuan fritillary and tangerine peel pastry is so delicious. Can I take another one to eat on the way?"

Kudo Yuki suppressed a laugh, secretly slipped her hand into her sleeve, found the mouse's location, and gently tapped its little head.

"Don't be greedy, go take care of the important business first."

The mouse reluctantly withdrew its paws, sullenly hopped back into its bag, and muttered, "Okay, okay, then next time you make pear soup, you can't leave out my share, you have to put in double the amount of rock sugar!"

Kudo Yuki suppressed the smile on her lips, turned to look at Akai Mary, and said in a serious tone, "Aunt Mary, I'll go find Ai first. I'll let you know as soon as I have the analysis results."

She glanced at the nearly empty snack box in Sera Masumi's hand and added, "If the Sichuan fritillary and tangerine peel pastries aren't enough, I'll bring some more another day."

“No need to trouble yourself.” Mary Akai waved her hand, the worry in her eyes being overshadowed by her anticipation of clues. “You guys hurry up and get the blood analysis done; that’s more important than anything else. By the way, I wrote about Elena’s little incident from back then in the letter; maybe it will help Shiho recall some details related to the drug.”

Sera Masumi immediately put down the snack box, grabbed her coat draped over the back of the chair, and quickly walked to Kudo Yuki's side: "Yuki-nee, let me walk you downstairs! Lately, I've felt that the owner of the convenience store downstairs has been acting strangely. Maybe he's up to something. I'll keep an eye on him for you, just in case someone follows you."

As she spoke, she grabbed Kudo Yuki's wrist, her fingertips displaying the tenacity unique to young people.

Ever since she learned about Akai Mary's abnormal physical condition, Sera Masumi always wanted to share the burden of vigilance, even if it was just to accompany her for a short distance.

Kudo Yuki didn't refuse and followed her lead towards the door.

The two walked downstairs side by side, and the evening breeze blew by.

Sera Masumi continued to nag, "Sister Yuki, please be careful on your way. Remember to message me when you get to the doctor's house! If you encounter anyone suspicious, don't force it, contact me immediately!"

"Okay, little housekeeper." Kudo Yuki smiled and nodded in agreement, then turned and walked towards the intersection. Using the light of the street lamp, she glanced at the side pocket of her canvas bag and said to the mouse with telepathy, "When we meet up with Ai, we'll ask the professor to help analyze it. Maybe we can follow the clues to find the organization. It's much more useful than just staring at the snacks."

The mouse pouted from inside the bag, but didn't argue: "Okay, okay, I'll listen to you. But after we find a clue, you have to buy me a piece of cheese as compensation!"

Kudo Yuki looked up towards the direction of the professor's house in the distance, where the streetlights formed a warm yellow glow in the night.

She silently resolved in her heart: [No matter how many conspiracies the organization harbors, no matter how much shady business lies behind this new drug, as long as I collect clues step by step—the blood flocculents, the wax letter, the listening device—I will eventually find a way to crack it.]

The taxi stopped downstairs at Professor Agasa's house. Kudo Yuki paid the fare, and as she opened the car door, a cool evening breeze blew in.

She pressed down on the side pocket of the canvas bag, her fingertips able to touch the little bulge that the mouse was pushing up; clearly, the little guy was still thinking about the cheese.

"Don't move, we'll see Ai soon." Kudo Yuki responded telepathically and stepped lightly up the stairs in front of the apartment building.

A rustling sound came from the zipper of the canvas bag. Without even thinking, you knew that it was the mouse secretly playing with the zipper with its chubby little paws.

Kudo Yuki shook her head helplessly and raised her hand to ring the doorbell of Professor Agasa's house.

Hurried footsteps came from inside the door, the lock clicked, and the door was slowly pulled open.

Ai Haibara's face was hidden behind the door, still wearing a light gray cotton nightgown. She had obviously been awakened by the doorbell, and her eyes showed only a bewildered wariness: "Sister Yuki, it's so late, what happened?"

Kudo Yuki sidestepped the door frame, gathered the canvas bag in front of her, and glanced at the scattered drafts of lab reports in the entryway: "Sorry to wake you, Aunt Mary asked me to bring something, it might be related to the medicine your mother left behind."

Ai Haibara's gaze instantly fixed on the canvas bag that Yuki Kudo was protecting. Even the lingering sleepiness in her eyes vanished. She stepped aside to let him pass: "Is it related to my mother? Is it... a belief?"

Kudo Yuki nodded and followed her into the living room. She placed the canvas bag on the coffee table, then reached out and unzipped a corner of the zipper, revealing the wax letter that Akai Mary had entrusted to her.

"Aunt Mary said that it contains little stories about Aunt Elena from back then, which might help you remember the details related to the medication."

Ai Haibara held the edge of the sealing wax letter, not in a hurry to open it, but instead looked at the scattered experimental reports on the coffee table, on which was a sketch of the molecular structure of APTX4869.

The faint pencil marks left by the pen tip are traces of her repeated revisions before going to sleep.

Ai Haibara tightened her grip on the wax-sealed letter, staring down at the still-wet ink marks on it. Suddenly, she remembered the voice her mother, Elena, had left on the cassette tape—the same gentle yet unspoken touch in her writing.

Professor Agasa brought over a steaming bowl of hot milk on the coffee table, but she had no interest in touching it. Instead, she traced a half-circle along the edge of the envelope with her fingertip and then tore off the sealing wax.

The unfolded letter carried a faint scent of sandalwood.

Mary Akai's handwriting fell on the paper:

Zhibao, see the words as the face.

Your mother always hid a lemon candy in her lab drawer, saying she'd share it with me and Tsutomu after the experiments, but your older sister, Akemi, always secretly took one. Once, she told me about the "silver bullet," saying she wanted to make a drug that could relieve people's pain, and even drew a simple molecular structure sketch with "A gift for Shiho" written on the back…

Ai Haibara's fingertips paused, the molecular structure of APTX4869 on the draft paper seemed to overlap with her mother's handwriting in her memory.

She looked up at Kudo Yuki, her eyes filled with shock and realization: "Yuki-neechan, the sketch my mother drew back then had a side chain structure that looks a lot like the one I've modified now! But she said back then that this part had to 'avoid being swallowed by darkness,' and I never understood it..."

Following Ai Haibara's gaze, Yuki Kudo looked at the draft paper and lightly touched the side chain of the APTX4869 molecular structure with her fingertip.

"'Avoiding the devouring darkness'... Could it be related to the 'ES Dark Amber Project' that the organization has been hiding all along? That thing works by controlling consciousness, so maybe Elena Miyano had already foreseen that the drug would be used as an auxiliary tool for brainwashing."

Ai Haibara clenched the letter, her voice trembling slightly: "'Avoid the devouring darkness'... Mother must have known all along that the organization was going to use drugs to do bad things, which is why she deliberately left this sentence behind."

Kudo Yuki sat down on the sofa, tapping her fingertips lightly on the lab report on the coffee table. She telepathically told the mouse in her bag, "Don't keep clinging to the zipper, or you'll fall out. The floor at the professor's house isn't soft-hearted."

"Okay, okay!" The mouse's voice was tinged with impatience, but it still obediently retracted its paws, its chubby little paws rubbing against the canvas bag. "Then, after we find the clues, the cheese has to have strawberry jam on it!"

Professor Agasa walked over with a second cup of hot milk, his glasses fogged up slightly. "Ai, if you're tired, take a break. Yuki's been running around all night too. We can analyze it tomorrow."

The doorbell in the entryway suddenly rang again, this time the ringing was urgent and brief, as if it was deliberately pressed and then released.

Kudo Yuki walked to the entrance and looked through the peephole.

Standing outside the door was Akemi Miyano, wearing a dark coat, clutching a sealed bag in her hand, her eyes filled with obvious urgency.

"Akami?" Kudo Yuki opened the door and made way for her.

Akemi Miyano quickly walked in and handed her the sealed bag. "Xiaoxue, this is something that Supervisor Kuroda asked me to give to you. He said it was something Aunt Mary left behind. It contains Uncle Tsutomu's old notes, which might match up with the clues about Mother."

Hearing the sound, Ai Haibara came over from the living room. When she saw the sealed bag in Akemi Miyano's hand, her pupils contracted slightly: "Sister, the sealing wax on this bag... is the same as the one on Aunt Mary's letter."

She reached out and took the sealed bag. As soon as her fingertips touched the opening, she remembered her mother's words on the tape: "Akemi, protect Shiho. If you come across anything with sealing wax, be sure to hand it over to someone you can trust."

The little mouse poked its head out of the canvas bag, sniffed the opening, and exclaimed, "Xiaoxue! There's a strange smell in here, different from the one I smelled in the tissue lab last time!"

Following its words, Kudo Yuki reached for the sealed bag, her fingertips able to feel the edge of the notebook inside. She looked up at Miyano Akemi: "Didn't Manager Kuroda say anything else? For example, did the notebook mention 'Project ES Dark Amber'?"

“She didn’t say anything specific, only that I must give it to you personally.” Miyano Akemi shook her head, her gaze falling on the letter in Haibara Ai’s hand. “Aunt Mary mentioned in her letter that Mom hid lemon candies… I seem to remember that. When I was little, I always saw Mom keeping a sugar jar in the lab drawer. Every time I secretly took one, she would pretend not to see it.”

Upon hearing this, Ai Haibara's eyes suddenly reddened, and she lowered her head to open her notebook.

The first page features a simple family portrait with the words "For Mary, Tsutomu, and Akemi and Shiho" written next to it. The handwriting is that of Tsutomu Akai, with strong yet gentle strokes.

Turning to the middle, a note tucked inside fell out, bearing only one sentence in Miyano Elena's handwriting:

The core of Dark Amber lies in 'mind control', and the blueprints are under the floorboards.

"Drawings?" Kudo Yuki picked up the note and suddenly remembered the preliminary drawings that Wakasa Rumi had given her before. "Wakasa Rumi gave me a sketch before. Now, with this added, we might be able to piece together the complete structure of the 'ES Dark Amber' instrument."

Mood welled up in Ai Haibara's eyes as she looked up at Akemi Miyano, choking back tears as she asked, "Sister, did Mother... know all along that this would happen?"

Akemi Miyano walked over and gently patted her back, her gaze falling on the note, a warmth rising in her eyes: "Mom has always been very careful. She must have been afraid of something unexpected happening in the future, which is why she hid the clues so discreetly."

Dr. Agasa nodded, wiping the fog off his glasses with his sleeve: "Now that we have Mary's letter, Mr. Tsutomu's notes, and the sketches given by Professor Wakasa, we're one step closer to the truth of the 'ES Dark Amber Project'."

Kudo Yuki bent down and took the hamster out of the canvas bag. The little guy was still thinking about the strawberry jam and cheese, his chubby little paws tugging at her fingers: "Yuki, Yuki, have you found enough clues? When are we going to buy cheese?"

Kudo Yuki gently scratched the mouse's chin and responded telepathically: "Once we've sorted out the clues about 'ES Dark Amber,' I'll go buy cheese with strawberry jam so you can eat your fill."

"I want double the strawberry jam on the cheese!" the mouse said, its voice laced with a pleading tone.

Kudo Yuki replied telepathically: "If you keep causing trouble, I'll leave you at the professor's house to keep Ai company while she looks at the lab reports."

Dr. Agasa's gaze fell on the side pocket of the canvas bag, and he lightly tapped the bulge with his fingertip: "The blood sample in this storage device needs to be refrigerated as soon as possible. I'll go get the incubator from the lab to avoid affecting the subsequent analysis."

Ai Haibara, still clutching the letter, immediately nodded upon hearing this: "I'll go with you, and while I'm at it, I'll retrieve the sidechain structure data of APTX4869 and compare it with the sketches Mom drew back then."

The two turned and walked toward the laboratory. The door to the entrance was gently pushed open again, and a figure carrying the cool night breeze walked in.

Subaru Okiya leaned against the doorframe, his gaze sweeping over the shoes scattered in the entryway before finally settling on Akemi Miyano. His tone was as gentle as the evening breeze: "Looks like I'm not too late, Akemi."

Akemi Miyano paused slightly in her hand holding the sealed bag, then nodded gently, showing little surprise in her eyes. Between her and Subaru Okiya, there was now only a calm familiarity: "I just received Uncle Tsutomu's notes, and I was planning to read them with Yuki and the others."

Subaru Okiya's gaze shifted to the wax-sealed letter and lab report on the coffee table. His eyes lingered for two seconds on the molecular structure sketch of APTX4869 before he walked over to the sofa and sat down: "How is Mother's health?"

“Aunt Mary is nice, but she always worries about Uncle Mubu.” Kudo Yuki put the mouse on her lap, and the little guy curled up in a ball. “There’s something important I need to give you a heads-up.”

Subaru Okiya inquired, "A preventative measure? Is it related to the 'ES Dark Amber Project,' or... is there some new activity from the organization?"

Kudo Yuki swiped her finger across the phone screen, showing everyone the photo sent by Ogino Ayami.

"Today, Zhenchun and I went to have tea and ran into a male reporter. He originally wanted to blackmail us with photos, but unexpectedly, Aunt Mary and Zhenchun were both captured in the shot."

"The police have promised not to release the photos, and the reporter is dead, but there's no guarantee that others might still have backups. Once the photos are leaked, Aunt Mary's situation will be even more dangerous than Conan's."

Subaru Okiya's gaze fell on the photos on Yuki Kudo's phone, and his tone became a bit somber: "The reporter is dead. The most dangerous thing is not the obvious backup, but the organization's possibility of investigating further through the reporter's interpersonal relationships? Their sensitivity to 'suspected drug users' is much higher than that of the police."

Akemi Miyano clutched the sealed bag and looked at Ai Haibara: "Shiho, when you and the doctor analyze the blood samples, be sure to turn on the laboratory's signal shield. Last time, Administrator Kuroda said that the organization has recently been adjusting the signal tracking frequency."

Ai Haibara nodded in agreement and turned to go back to the laboratory.

To be continued...