Transmigrated into Conan, his ability is Rhodes Island

"A gentle breeze sings softly."

Akihara Kazuhiro also looked away. Several years had passed since that incident, and this place was ultimately not a utopia. Fairy tales are eventually shattered by reality, and lambs in the slaughterhouse must eventually face the butcher's knife.

He's about to "graduate" too.

He was somewhat confused, wondering whether he was lucky or unlucky compared to the children who were taken away halfway through.

"The river flows gently."

He stood silently behind the children dressed in the same clothes as him, waiting for the start of a ceremony, a ceremony to declare his complete surrender.

The priest stood before the crowd, holding the holy book in his hands.

"...May your heart turn to the light, may your soul embrace holiness, Akihara and Hikari, are you willing to dedicate yourself entirely to the Lord's cause?" The priest's voice was solemn and deep.

Akihara slowly raised his eyes and looked directly at the priest, his gaze as calm as a stagnant pool.

"I am willing."

The ceremony continued, with a series of prayers and vows, and the other children, except for Akihara, couldn't hide their excited smiles.

Akihara watched coldly, the summer heat and the heavy black robe unable to prevent him from feeling a chill run through him. He was shoved onto the steps, and the person opposite him adjusting his camera was the town's photographer—his mother was a devout believer, so he often visited this church.

"Children... no, I should say monks, future priests, look at the camera."

Looking at the black hole-like lens, Qiuyuan felt as if the black hole was slowly rotating, gradually devouring the life around him, perhaps due to a slight heatstroke.

A drop of sweat fell into his eye socket, and he blinked.

He recalled a time when he knew nothing, sitting in a library with peeling walls, and accidentally stumbled upon a book. The donor probably hadn't considered whether a child that age could understand it; Akihara certainly didn't understand it at the time.

"Photography is an art of elegy, an art of twilight... All photographs 'evoke thoughts of death.' To take a picture is to participate in another person's inevitability, fragility, and variability. All photographs witness the relentless passage of time precisely by capturing and freezing this moment."

Akihara Kazuhiro's gaze pierces through the lens, transcends time and space, meeting the eyes of himself sitting in the corner of an old library, encountering these words for the first time. At that time, he couldn't yet understand what these heavy sentences between the pages meant; he was simply drawn to them... Years later, a bullet from his childhood pierces his forehead.

Smile, children!

The shutter clicked, and Akihara Kazumitsu was forever imprisoned in that frame.

In case anyone forgets which photo it is, I'll post it again. Actually, it's a screenshot from a game, emm, I can't mention the name of the game (look away).

My heart is full of hope.

……

Amuro Tooru's gaze met that of the boy frozen in the photograph, but it was clear that this silent photograph could not reveal any secrets to him. The Akihara of the past could only remain silently in the past, and the key to unlocking the mystery was still hidden in the unknown fog, waiting for him to explore it himself.

He put the photos away and slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

At this moment, he stood outside the door of the solitary confinement cell. To be precise, it was an abandoned solitary confinement cell.

Compared to the archives, a long-abandoned solitary confinement room is obviously easier to infiltrate.

Amuro Tooru didn't try to find out the location of the archives room indirectly. Firstly, the ordinary staff would be completely unaware of it, and secondly, alerting the church personnel would be counterproductive. Relying on his top-ranked observation and logical reasoning skills from the police academy, and having observed the layout of the church and the orphanage, he deduced the location of the solitary confinement cell step by step.

Unsurprisingly, the iron gate was rusted. However, it wasn't very bad, probably because the gate was of unexpectedly good quality. Since he didn't have WD-40 or any other type of lubricant on hand, Amuro had to use vegetable oil—which he'd "borrowed" while helping out in the kitchen.

Hina tugged at the black hair clip she lent him in the keyhole a few times, and click, the door opened.