Model worker and his little darling

He originally planned to find Koizumi Akako and Kuroba Kaito, but Ran dragged him to investigate the paranormal events at Teitan High School, so he ended up tormenting Conan instead.

Anyway, I've seen Conan act strangely several times, so one more time won't make a difference.

"Hehehehehehehe".

A strange laugh suddenly echoed through the quiet corridor. Then, a girl in an old school uniform, with long hair obscuring her face and holding a rag doll, appeared.

Conan shuddered as he realized that the doll in the girl's hand was the same one he had picked up.

Ok?

The one he was holding is gone!?

"Little brother, thank you for finding my little sister."

Conan swallowed hard and touched the watch-shaped tranquilizer dart on his wrist, guessing it wouldn't be of much use.

Having just experienced Hideaki Hosaka's baptism, he had become immune to these supernatural things and felt little fear. Instead, he wanted to study them carefully.

Most importantly, deep down I always felt that it was all a lie.

Perhaps, as Pingqing said, a strange magnetic field caused all of this, or perhaps there were other factors at play.

After all, in this scientific age, so-called monsters or ghosts only appear in TV dramas or novels.

There may be things in this world that cannot be explained by common sense, but they wouldn't appear so frequently in such an ordinary place.

She took a deep breath and then gave a sweet smile.

"Big sister, why are you here all alone so late?"

"Little brother, I've actually been here all along, wandering around here for 30 years. I'm so lonely all by myself. Will you stay here and keep me company?"

30 years?

What happened here 30 years ago?

Conan took a step forward, looked up at the girl, and tried to see her face clearly.

"Hehehe... Little brother is so obedient."

"Big sister, what happened here before?"

Conan continued his questioning, secretly reaching out his small hand to test the area, and sure enough, it passed right through the girl's body. His gaze fell on the doll in the girl's hand; he had touched it earlier, and it was real.

???

He felt as if those black button eyes had blinked.

The girl took a couple of steps, seemingly looking around. "Hmm~, I don't remember. I only remember being trapped here."

Seeing Conan chatting with the female ghost, Hirai clicked his tongue. He had to admit, Conan was incredibly brave. Even in this situation, he still wanted to extract information from the woman in drag.

It's not interesting if it doesn't scare Conan.

Pingqing curled his lip, ending this absurd farce.

"It's almost dawn, I have to go. See you next time, little brother."

As soon as she finished speaking, the girl's body gradually became transparent until it disappeared, along with the rag doll.

Conan was the only person in the entire corridor; the girl and the doll seemed to have never been there.

Conan stared at the spot where the girl had disappeared, his mind racing.

He had expected it to be terrifying, but it ended so quickly, and even the thing he had touched, which was real, disappeared.

And so, Conan stood there, recalling everything that had just happened, trying to find a loophole in it.

Its daybreak?

I looked up at the bright moon; it was still a long time before dawn.

Conan was a little dazed; he remembered that what he had just seen seemed to be a red moon.

"Conan..."

Conan shook his head and realized that he was being held by Hirai.

"Ahem, Brother Pingqing..."

Upon hearing Conan's voice, Hirakiyo stopped in his tracks and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Great, you're okay."

Meeting Ping Qing's worried gaze, Conan looked at him with confusion, "What's wrong with me? Aren't we in the classroom?"

Pingqing patted Conan's big head. "Just now you suddenly froze on the spot, and no matter how I called you, you didn't respond. So I took you out of the classroom to find a shrine. If something had happened to you, I would have been in big trouble. I should have known better than to bring you to school at night."

Conan understood. The reason why Hirai hadn't left was that he had accidentally fallen into some kind of... hallucination. That must be it.

"Brother Pingqing, I'm alright now."

What happened to you just now?

Conan organized his thoughts and recounted everything he had seen.

Pingqing opened his mouth, looking so shocked that he couldn't speak.

"I suddenly disappeared? A girl with a rag doll appeared? And everything you could touch disappeared too?"

Hearing the hesitation in Ping Qing's tone, Conan nodded affirmatively, "That's what I saw."

He then glanced at their location; they were almost out of the school grounds. At Ping Qing's speed, it wouldn't take long for him to walk over.

After checking the time, Conan sighed softly.

"I thought a lot of time had passed, but it turned out that only a few minutes had gone by."

Pingqing still seemed unable to accept it. "This is probably similar to a dream. Perhaps after you saw the red moon, you fell into... the illusion you mentioned, which is why you saw everything that followed."

Conan blinked. This explanation seemed to make sense, since only he had seen those things.

Pingqing stared at Conan, making Conan feel a chill run down his spine.

"Brother Pingqing, why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm wondering if there's something unusual about you, otherwise why would you attract these things?"

The two are now walking down the street, with vehicles and pedestrians passing by from time to time—a perfectly normal world.

Conan once again clung to the coattails of materialism, saying, "Those are all falsehoods. Besides, this was just an accident. How could it be something I brought upon myself?"

There was still a bit of bravado in that statement, after all, he had just gone through it.

"If I remember correctly, you've encountered a female ghost before, who said it was some kind of inner demon."

Conan was stunned as his dead memories suddenly resurfaced.

The female ghost knew he was Shinichi Kudo, said he was her nightmare, and said she would continue to look for him. But since she hadn't appeared for so long, he forgot about it.

"Hmm... well, I don't know how to explain it either."

It couldn't be that he was half asleep and just imagined it.

That thing did indeed leave wounds on him.

"Forget it, let's not think about these things anymore. Let's go back and get a good night's sleep, and then we'll find a shrine to cleanse ourselves of bad luck, or find a medium."

Seeing that Hirai had already started arranging the exorcism package, Conan quickly refused, "There's no need to go to such trouble. Didn't you say that the shrine and the medium don't use anything, it's just for peace of mind?"