Detective Conan: I'm a Boy, But They Treat Me Like a Big Sister — Chapter 63

Chapter 63: Two Detectives and Two Bystanders

Heiji Hattori did not give Kazuha a single opening to continue her previous train of thought. He squared his shoulders, fully prepared to keep pressing the group for Shinichi’s exact whereabouts.

Before he could launch his next interrogation, the sharp trill of a cell phone cut through the room.

It was the dedicated alert tone for the Osaka Prefectural Police. Hattori glanced at the caller ID, his expression hardening instantly as he stepped away from the group to answer.

“Hello? Big Brother?…A locked room? Over in Dotonbori?”

In the span of a single breath, the hot-blooded high schooler completely vanished, replaced entirely by a detective in deep work mode. He pinned the phone between his ear and shoulder, his free hand frantically patting down his pockets and scanning the coffee table for something to write with.

Dr. Agasa, startled by the sudden intensity radiating from the teenager, hurriedly fumbled around and handed over a blank notepad and a click-pen.

“All doors and windows are locked from the inside, no signs of a struggle… The victim’s shoes are in the entryway, but there’s an extra pair of unfamiliar slippers…”

Hattori leaned heavily over the coffee table. The pen scratched furiously against the paper, sketching out a rough diagram of the crime scene while he fired off rapid confirmations to the officer on the other end of the line.

Over in the corner of the sofa, a shadow shifted.

Conan had already poked the majority of his head out from behind a plush cushion. His eyes—still carrying the razor-sharp intellect of a high school detective despite his shrunken form—were fixed intently on the crude sketch taking shape on the notepad.

‘Hold it in, Shinichi Kudo,’he chanted to himself.’You’re a child now. You have absolutely no reason to understand a crime scene diagram.’

“That extra pair of slippers, are the left and right feet mismatched?”

A distinctly milky, childish voice floated out from the corner of the sofa before Conan’s brain could stop his mouth.

Hattori slowly turned his head. His brow furrowed into a deep V as he scrutinized the bespectacled brat squatting by the armrest.

“Whose kid is this? How did you…”

Halfway through his sentence, Hattori looked back down to re-examine the sketch he had just drawn. He had only marked the general positions and orientations of the two pairs of shoes with quick geometric shapes; he hadn’t written a single word about left and right feet.

This little brat had deduced the mismatch purely from the slight angle difference of the drawn rectangles.

He looked like he wasn’t even seven years old yet.

“Keep going,” Hattori commanded, his dismissive attitude doing an instant one-eighty.

Conan cursed himself internally, wanting to slap his own face for having such a fast mouth. Deduction was a thrilling rush for a fleeting moment, but exposure was an absolute death sentence.

But the arrow had already left the bowstring. He had to bite the bullet and play the part.

“Mister, I’ve seen this on TV! If slippers are mismatched, it means someone changed their shoes in a hurry! And the position of that ventilation duct is so strange…”

He broke down his deduction piece by piece, deliberately pitching his voice higher and speaking with the exaggerated enthusiasm of a kid who had watched way too much Sunday morning detective anime.

“You brat! Who are you calling ‘Mister’!” Hattori barked, a vein popping on his forehead.

But as he actually listened to the substance of Conan’s deduction, the irritation melted into pure excitement. He slammed a palm against the coffee table. “The ventilation duct! That’s it! The size is completely wrong!”

Just like that, the two detectives fell into a rapid-fire rhythm.

Conan took on the role of feeding crucial, pinpoint clues hidden behind a baby voice, while Hattori received those breadcrumbs and smoothly expanded them into a complete, airtight chain of deduction. One was acting his heart out to maintain his cover, while the other was completely oblivious to the charade.

Tōhō Getsukai couldn’t be bothered with these two case-obsessed idiots.

He withdrew his gaze from the impromptu detective agency and turned his attention to the ponytail-wearing girl who had been completely abandoned on the sidelines.

Kazuha Toyama sat in a plush chair, holding a ceramic teacup with both hands. She looked utterly, deeply bored. Her gaze shifted back and forth between Hattori and Conan a few times, trying to follow the rapid-fire logic, until she finally just gave up.

She puffed out her cheeks, letting out a soft sigh, and started using the lid of her teacup to trace aimless circles on the wooden table.

“Does he forget everything else in the world the second he starts discussing a case?”

Kazuha looked up abruptly. Her large, bright eyes met Getsukai’s calm gaze, and she immediately nodded her head in vigorous agreement.

“It’s exactly like that every single time! Last week we agreed to go eat takoyaki! He answered a phone call halfway down the street and just ran off! I waited in the shop for two whole hours all by myself!”

Having found a willing listener, Kazuha began to air her grievances without an ounce of mercy.

“Did he apologize?” Getsukai asked softly.

“No! The very first thing he said when he finally came back was ‘Kazuha, you’re still here?’… Still here?! Am I just a piece of waiting room furniture?!”

Getsukai couldn’t hold back a soft chuckle.

Kazuha blinked in surprise, then a bright laugh escaped her lips as well, though she quickly transitioned back into an aggrieved pout.

“And last month! I got new bangs cut and practically flaunted them in front of him all day. Guess what he said?”

“What did he say?”

“‘Kazuha, why does your face look weird today?'”

Getsukai could vividly imagine the exact expression Kazuha must have made at that moment. It was likely a strong, overwhelming urge to shove Heiji Hattori’s face directly into a sizzling okonomiyaki iron griddle.

“Another time! I bought a really cute new dress, and he…”

“Let me guess.” Getsukai interrupted her gently, propping his chin on one hand. “Did he ask if you changed clothes because your school uniform was washed and hadn’t dried yet?”

Kazuha froze for two full seconds, her eyes widening to the size of saucers.

“How did you know?! He really said exactly that! Word for word!”

Getsukai smiled inwardly. There was no need to guess; the dialogue library for a dense, oblivious male lead only possessed a handful of stock lines. It was just different packaging for the exact same flavor of stupidity.

The more Kazuha talked, the more animated she became, leaning forward in her chair until the physical distance between them shrank considerably. The faint, pleasant scent of her citrus shampoo lingered right at the tip of Getsukai’s nose.

“And he never compliments me on looking good! Not once, ever since we were kids! Instead, he tells me things like ‘Kazuha, your Aikido has improved again.’ Why would a girl want you to compliment her Aikido?!”

“You know Aikido? That’s amazing.”

“N-no, it’s nothing special!” Kazuha stammered, suddenly a bit flustered by the genuine praise.

Getsukai gracefully picked up the teapot and refilled her half-empty cup, the warm steam rising between them.

“Yuekui-san…” Kazuha suddenly lowered her voice, her large brown eyes leaning in even closer to study his features. “Are you really a boy?”

“Really.”

Kazuha stared at his excessively refined, flawless face for a long, quiet moment.

“…But you’re better looking than any girl I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you. I know.”

Kazuha giggled, her signature ponytail bobbing cheerfully with the motion.

“Yuekui-san is so interesting! And you actually listen when people talk! That idiot Heiji—whenever I try to talk to him about anything normal, he starts zoning out within three sentences!”

Getsukai merely smiled, offering no verbal defense for the Osaka detective.

Perhaps it was the passive ‘Social Aura’ skill he had extracted from the little fox, Iroha Isshiki, last time; it was operating at maximum efficiency in this first-meeting scenario. Combine that with Kazuha’s own zero-defense, straightforward personality, and her favorability rating was currently skyrocketing.

But the true critical factor wasn’t a system skill. It was the sheer contrast.

Heiji Hattori had spent over a decade establishing a baseline state of ‘being ignored’ for Kazuha.

Getsukai only needed to do one simple thing to break through her defenses.

Listen to her seriously. It really was that simple.

“Yuekui-san! You’re the first person to listen to me complain about this so seriously! My friends back in Osaka all say I’m just overthinking things, and that boys with Heiji’s personality are just naturally like that!”

“They aren’t entirely wrong; boys with that specific personality really are like that.” Getsukai raised his hand, his slender fingers moving smoothly through the air, and very naturally tucked a stray strand of hair falling by her cheek behind her ear. “But you aren’t overthinking things. You just want to be taken seriously.”

Kazuha froze completely. The tips of her ears turned a shade of red vibrant enough to bleed.

This gentle action. These validating words. This intimate distance.

Even though it was someone she was meeting for the very first time today, why did he make her feel… so incredibly at ease?

Over in the living room, Heiji Hattori slapped his hand hard against the coffee table. “That’s it! The killer left through the ventilation duct and then locked the grate from the outside!”

Kazuha didn’t even twitch. She didn’t turn her head toward the sudden noise.

Her entire attention, her entire world in that specific moment, was completely and utterly locked onto the silver-haired youth sitting opposite her.

‘Hmm, the classic childhood sweetheart is no match for the newcomer setup,’ Getsukai mused inwardly.

However, this time, the newcomer wasn’t some gentle, unassuming transfer student.

It was him.

Getsukai cast a brief, sidelong glance at the big and small detectives celebrating their breakthrough not far away, the corners of his lips curling upward into a very faint, very dangerous smirk.