A Little Outrageous, Yet Perfectly Reasonable

"So bad..."

Ai Haibara pouted, realizing that Fujino was definitely teasing her, and muttered a complaint under her breath.

Although I feel a little resentful, I do agree with this statement.

For a fleeting moment, she did feel a little panicked.

Fujino knew herself all too well; there were bound to be some problems with her identity and various explanations, making it inevitable that this kind of Great Detective, who liked to overthink everything, would discover the clues...

It's unexpected that she'd shrink, but treating her like Grace or something is just too easy!

And upon closer inspection, it actually makes sense!

It's a bit outrageous, but it's also quite reasonable.

"Alright, Ai, it's okay even if you are Grace."

Fujino continued to pat the little cat's head, "This is your home now, and it will always be your home if you want."

Akemi chimed in, "Yes, Fujino is right."

Ai Haibara: "..."

Suddenly, a new identity was added to his list of suspected identities.

That's what she said, but Ai Haibara actually felt a little flutter in her heart.

Although she wasn't Grace, she was indeed Sherry who had escaped from the organization.

This made her feel safer and even warm inside.

Ai Haibara felt a bit conflicted, nodded, and simply hummed softly, "Mm."

"Anyway, let's take a look at these postcards and find out the client's target. I'll also ask some acquaintances to help out, since it's really difficult to find the target with so many postcards."

Fujino took out a stack of postcards, spread them out on the table, and asked Ai and Akemi to help out as well.

Child star, looking for mother, and postcards—these sounds familiar, especially after hearing the request.

After thinking about it carefully, he probably already knew which case it was.

It should be the case involving that small client.

He remembered that Kazuki Kinugawa's mother was now a waitress at a hot spring, and when she was talking to her colleagues about Kinukawa, she accidentally revealed the details of how Kinukawa was abandoned.

Later, perhaps out of jealousy or something similar, one of her colleagues impersonated Kinukawa's biological mother and blackmailed the agency by claiming that Kinukawa's father was a murderer.

Then a gossip reporter found Kinukawa's mother's colleague and planned to use this as leverage to completely drain her dry.

That's roughly it, but it's hard to say exactly.

His memory of this part of the story was somewhat vague; he wasn't sure how he found it or where the client's biological mother was.

If we let Conan search, he'll definitely be able to find it based on his memory.

However, he felt a little apprehensive about troubling Conan and his husky.

If you want the White Wolf's help, he can't do it without a specific name.

Let Ai help me out.

Akemi was a fan of Kazuki Kinugawa, and since Fujino usually didn't involve her and Ai Haibara in the investigations of their requests, she took this request very seriously. She picked up some postcards and looked at them. "None of these postcards have addresses written on them. Finding the addresses won't be easy..."

"Yes, that's true."

Fujino picked up a postcard and nodded slightly. "There's only a postmark on this, but postmarks come from all sorts of prefectures, so it's unlikely to find a specific prefecture. Besides, the notes don't offer any clues. Although we can investigate by combining the date of the signature, even considering the TV broadcast time, it's an extremely massive undertaking. We can't even rule out the possibility that another prefecture has been connected to a TV station from another region..."

"In that case, wouldn't it be impossible to investigate?"

Akemi Miyano sighed, "It's almost impossible to find it before tomorrow."

"It's not that there are no breakthroughs at all."

The detective's cipher assistant, boosted by his earlier words, began working diligently and immediately offered his suggestion. "Perhaps we can start by investigating the origin of these postcards; that might lead to a breakthrough."

"Start with postcards?"

Fujino looked at Ai and asked, "What method? Explain in detail?"

"These postcards are usually pictures of a certain place or cartoon images of other things. Cartoon images are difficult to work with, but pictures of places are easier to work with."

Ai Haibara spread out the postcards and explained, "Perhaps to prove where you've been, postcards usually have pictures of the local scenery printed on them, or they're postcards sold separately in a particular place. If you can find the scenery in these postcards, or the region where these postcards were sold, then you should be able to find the corresponding region of that person."

As she spoke, she picked up a postcard. "The problem is that there aren't many landscape postcards here. The only one is just the sky, and there's a dark arm under the sky. It's impossible to tell where it is. It must have been done on purpose."

She picked up a few more postcards and continued her reasoning, "There are three postcards like this here. If they were purchased as gifts, they wouldn't appear so frequently. So, it's possible that she works at a hotel or inn and is using leftover postcards. In that case, it would be easy for the postmarks to be all over the country. She could simply ask tourists who visit the inn to mail the letters after they return home, and achieve the same effect."

"If we can find where this landscape is, we might be able to find the area where that person is located..."

After some deduction, the cipher assistant showed the postcard to Fujino and Akemi: "Can you tell where this is?"

Fujino: "..."

Akemi: "..."

Ai Haibara: "..."

However, she was met with silence.

A very quiet silence.

After a moment of eye contact, Fujino broke the silence and asked Ai Haibara, "Ai, how did you come up with all this?"

Ai Haibara: "..."

She sensed something odd about Fujino's gaze, and thinking about it, she realized she might have overdone it...

Did they go too far?

Will my identity be questioned again?

After a moment of silence, she subconsciously touched the bangs with the hair clip hanging from them, and hesitantly replied, "It just came to mind when I was thinking about it?"

"..." Fujino thought hard about Ai Haibara's reasoning and felt that it was a bit outrageous, but also very reasonable.

Okay, I still don't quite understand the thought processes of people in your Conan World.

But it's not a big problem.

Black cat or white cat, as long as it catches mice, it's a good cat...

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, Fujino reached out and patted the cat's head, "Ai, your idea is pretty good. It looks like it should work."

"Oh... I'm glad I could help you."

Ai Haibara was basking in the reward of the coded message for her great achievement.

Sensing a bit of pampering, she didn't dare say anything more.

If I say anything more, my disguise will probably be exposed.