Chapter 45 If so, knock once~

Outside Ayumi's apartment on the thirtieth floor.

Chi Feichi noticed the signs of tampering on the door lock, gently pushed the door open, found it was locked again, inspected the style of the lock, and pulled two paperclips from his pocket...

Pick it again!

In high-end apartment buildings of this kind, except for the ground-floor entrance, exit, and elevators, security cameras were not installed anywhere else.

The door lock already showed fresh traces of having been forced open, so picking it again would only mask those traces. When the time came, he could claim the door had been unlocked all along, and the perpetrator would likely never be certain if the mechanism was truly broken.

Outside Ayumi's bedroom window, the red-eyed crow was still watching the show.

The muffled voices of a group of children could be heard from inside the wardrobe.

"But Ayumi, why aren't you answering us?"

"Did you forget? She can't make a sound, can she?"

"Ayumi? Are you listening?"

"Are you unable to speak? If so, knock once; if not, knock twice. Find something to tap against your badge."

The bedroom door was quietly pushed open. A man wearing a safety helmet entered with a gloomy expression, walking softly toward the wardrobe.

The voices of the children inside the wardrobe were quite loud, completely masking the sound of the man's footsteps.

"It's Ayumi! One knock, it's definitely her!"

"So she really still can't talk..."

"I think she must be terribly bored and just wants to hear our voices..."

"Alright then, let's keep encouraging her!"

"Wait a minute, something feels off. If she can't speak, using an alarm clock to substitute for her voice is understandable, but the alarm clock chime just now was a full five minutes slow. Besides, today isn't the fifth..."

The red-eyed crow widened its eyes, intently focusing on the tense scene unfolding before it.

Out of the corner of its vision, however, it seemed to catch sight of a snake silently slithering through the doorway.

That snake looked somewhat familiar...

Shortly after, the person it had been following also walked into the room with a calm and unhurried gait. Surprisingly, the helmet-wearing man inside didn't seem to hear the footsteps at all.

Hachiya noticed the strange gaze, turned its head, and immediately spotted the two crows pressing against the window glass to watch the spectacle.

That crow really was like a lingering ghost!

The snake and the crow exchanged a glance, then turned their heads in unison to stare at the helmeted man.

Chi Feichi followed casually behind the man, sizing him up.

The man was dressed in heavy, tightly wrapped clothing, with his neck shielded by a thick, high collar, and a safety helmet on his head. Apart from his face, his entire body was protected, making it difficult to render him unconscious with a single blow.

Added to that was the steel pipe in his hand. With a lethal weapon at the ready, any carelessness could easily result in a counter-kill.

It was best to subdue him first, and then administer a follow-up strike...

Inside the wardrobe, the children's voices continued to drift out.

"Could Ayumi be trying to tell us something?"

The man reached out and grabbed the wardrobe door.

Chi Feichi reached out and placed a hand on the man's shoulder.

Conan's voice continued, "Ayumi, did something troubling happen to you?"

Inside the wardrobe, seeing the crack widen, Ayumi grew too stiff with fright to move. She wanted to call for help, but not a single sound escaped her throat.

Outside the wardrobe, the man felt a sudden hand land on his shoulder, sending a chill shooting straight to the top of his head. Before he could even react or turn around to look, his lower ribs were struck a heavy blow. While wincing in pain, his right wrist was seized as well, and the world before his eyes began to spin rapidly.

Through the detective badge, Mitsuhiko's voice rang out, "Ayumi, if so, knock once..."

"Thud!"

The man was slammed to the ground, his head making intimate contact with the floor. Even protected by the safety helmet, the impact left him seeing stars.

Far away at Teidan Elementary School, Mitsuhiko muttered, "...?"

Did she really need to knock that hard?

A sound loud enough to shake the dust off the ceiling must have required hitting the wall with a hammer, right?

"Caw—!"

The crow watching the spectacle at the window was startled and quickly flew away.

The red-eyed crow watched as Chi Feichi turned his head toward it, its feathers briefly ruffling. In the gaze fixed upon it, the chilling coldness from the moment of the takedown slowly receded and returned to calm, though it was still somewhat terrifying to a bird...

Chi Feichi withdrew his gaze after a brief glance, used one hand to pin the man's right arm behind his back, and used the other to remove the safety helmet, directly pressing the man's head down to knock him out.

"Thud!"

The man immediately transitioned from a starry-eyed state to a black screen.

"Uh... should that count as one knock or two for Ayumi?"

"Ayumi, what are you hitting things with? That was so heavy, are you angry..."

"No, stop talking for a second!" Realizing something was wrong, Conan cut off the others and shouted anxiously, "Ayumi! Can you hear me? What's going on over there?!"

Chi Feichi opened the wardrobe and lifted out a bewildered Ayumi, taking the detective badge from her hand with his other hand. "It's fine, the situation is resolved. I'm calling the police, you guys go back to class."

With that, he terminated the communication.

"Wait..." Conan failed to stop him in time, left momentarily speechless.

Since Chi Feichi was there, there was no need to worry, but could he at least have explained what happened over there?

Cutting off communication unilaterally without a word was thoroughly unfriendly to anyone with a strong sense of curiosity!

...

More than twenty minutes later, the police arrived at the apartment.

Ayumi lingered in Chi Feichi's arms, having eaten the soup dumplings he brought, and her emotions had already stabilized. However, because her voice was hoarse and she couldn't speak, Chi Feichi had to explain the sequence of events to the police.

"Ayumi had a cold and didn't go to school. I came by to check on her, found the door unlocked with signs of tampering, felt something was wrong, and came in to deal with the culprit."

Takagi Wataru held his notebook ready to record. After waiting a moment and finding no further elaboration, he looked up in confusion, "And then?"

"I called the police, you guys arrived," Chi Feichi thought for a moment, "End of story."

En—end of story?

Takagi looked at the brief lines scribbled in his notebook, which differed vastly from his usual records, and broke out in a sweat. "Um..."

"Is something wrong?"

Megure Juzo walked over with the culprit in tow, glancing skeptically at the contents of Takagi's notebook. Though he had expected Chi Feichi to be laconic, facing those few sparse lines of text still left him full of unspoken complaints. After a moment of silence, he reached out and patted Takagi's shoulder. "Takagi, my boy, you happened to be on leave during the case involving the magician enthusiast, so you haven't dealt with Feichi before. Just verify the details that absolutely must be verified."

Takagi instantly recalled the police station's legendary "Crime Method Manual" and understood. He glanced at the notebook again. "Right, then..."

Although the two sentences in the notebook were brief, the cause and effect seemed to have been adequately explained.

Ordinarily, he would need to ask about the finer details of the event, but details could always be extracted from the perpetrator later, yielding even more thorough information.

In other words... nothing else needed doing?

"Ah, well, I suppose that's it for now. Please feel free to drop by the Metropolitan Police Department to give a formal statement when you have time; we'll contact you then." Takagi looked at the investigative record and still felt a faint sense of strangeness.

Would he really be okay submitting an investigative report that literally said "I called the police, you guys arrived, end of story"?

He could only silently pray that the duty of filing this wasn't assigned to him when Chi Feichi came in to give his statement later...

"Ayumi!"

Ayumi's mother rushed back, darting through the door with an anxious expression. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

Chi Feichi set Ayumi down.

Ayumi ran over, showing no lingering trace of fear on her face. Since she couldn't speak yet, she merely smiled to indicate she was fine.

She was remarkably thick-skinned; giving her psychological trauma would be quite a challenge...

Ayumi's mother, however, had been terribly frightened and was still feeling lingering tremors, offering her sincere thanks to Chi Feichi. "Mr. Chi, thank you so much! If you hadn't come by to check, I shudder to think how things might have turned out..."

"It's fine, I still need to head to the hospital, so I'll be leaving first," Chi Feichi said by way of farewell, squatting down and extending an arm. "Hachiya, let's go."

Ayumi wouldn't have come to any real harm anyway; she had just been startled.

"Is that Mr. Chi's pet?" Takagi turned around in curiosity. He hadn't noticed any pets earlier, but now he saw one.

He had originally expected a small, cute cat, dog, or hamster, but instead...

A gray-and-black patterned snake crawled out from beneath the sofa, leisurely slithering past his foot...

Once Hachiya wound its way up his arm and slipped into his sleeve, Chi Feichi stood up and explained to the frozen Takagi, "I brought it along to check on Ayumi."

Takagi: "..."

Ayumi's mother didn't dare to get close, watching Chi Feichi leave with a mixture of relief and lingering guilt. "So Mr. Chi had to rush off to the hospital after all. It seems I delayed him..."

"Hospital?" Takagi asked, puzzled. "Is Mr. Chi feeling unwell?"

"Mr. Chi receives treatment at the Fourth青山 Hospital." Ayumi's mother was filled with gratitude and felt no awkwardness discussing the matter.

Takagi nodded, then suddenly froze.

Wait a minute, isn't the Fourth青山 Hospital a psychiatric facility?

...

Out on the balcony, the red-eyed crow stared intently as Chi Feichi departed, its gaze burning with intensity until the figure vanished completely. Only then did it calm down, tilting its head in thought.

The primary target had a good relationship with this little girl named Ayumi, so "borrowing" that small communication device to play with again might not be entirely appropriate.

However, since Ayumi communicated with other children, it meant the other kids probably had them too...

It could easily just take the communication devices from the other children instead!

Downstairs by the apartment building, Mamiya Mitsuru had been waiting in the car for a while.

After getting into the car, Chi Feichi offered a brief apology.

The vehicle quickly pulled away, brushing right past the Junior Detective League members hurrying over from school.

The red-eyed crow flapped its wings, signaling two crows to follow the vehicle ahead while it led the main flock to land in a tree beside the apartment, its gaze locked onto the four approaching children.

Conan had just finished contacting Ayumi and slipped the detective badge into his pants pocket.

Noticing this, the red-eyed crow spotted an identical badge hanging on Genta's clothing. "Attention! It looks like all four of these children probably have a small communication device each. However, since they might know our target, we shouldn't overdo it—just taking the two we can see will be enough. Number Three, Number Eleven, move out! We'll go ahead first, catch up with us after completing the mission!"

In the air, a flock of crows fluttered in a flurry right over the heads of Conan and his companions.

One of them dropped to the ground, blocking Conan's path, lowered its head to peck at Conan's shoelaces, quickly loosened them, untied the knot, and hopped away to the side with brisk strides.

Another flew over to Genta, fluttering and buzzing around him to find an opening, quickly pecking at the detective badge on Genta's clothes.

"It's just a crow..." Conan resignedly waved his hand to shoo the bird back a bit and squatted down to tie his shoe.

Because he was squatting, his pants pocket gaped open slightly.

The crow had kept its eyes fixed on Conan's pocket all along. Seeing the badge exposed, it thrust its beak forward, snatched it up, and bolted.