Ai Haibara shook her head slightly, unwilling to say much more about it. "Forget it. It'll ruin my appetite for dessert later."
"Eh, Xiao Ai, why did you stop?"
"Yeah, yeah, why'd you stop halfway through?"
Sonoko and Ran were both endlessly curious, their faces full of confusion as they tried to find out what exactly eating children meant.
Ai Haibara narrowed her eyes. Seeing them press her, she said gravely, "A public letter in Europe once described a case like this: an old woman lured a child who had entered her house outside, then knocked the child unconscious. Just like the old witch in Candy House, she then..."
As she spoke, she rested her thumb lightly against her chin like a little girl and pondered, "Maybe that was the inspiration for the story of Candy House."
"..."
Sonoko, Ran, and Momiji, who had been secretly listening in, all went pale. Thinking back to what the old witch had done to the two children in Candy House, they were thoroughly terrified once they thought it through.
They had suspected that fairy tales might have some stories behind them...
But if those stories were real, wouldn't that be far too terrifying?
Thinking about how they had once giggled foolishly while listening to such stories, they all began to question life a little, goosebumps rising all over their bodies.
Conan: "..."
Why could an elementary school student say something so horrifying?
That wasn't reasonable, was it?!
And no one found something this unreasonable suspicious?
Fujino's reaction was much calmer. He wasn't a child anymore, so he had a natural immunity to this sort of thing. Besides, his grasp of history was decent enough for him to know that this was merely the norm.
Perhaps cannibalism had become exploitation and blood-soaked buns in