Not only did Kurumi's personality and temperament perfectly suit her tastes, but her breathtaking beauty and devilish, fatally seductive charm had once made Vermouth think that if she were a man, she would use any means necessary to possess this beautiful girl.
Especially when Kurumi showed that pitiful expression while being bullied by her—it made Vermouth feel that even devouring Kurumi completely would not be enough.
At that thought, Vermouth stuck out her tongue and licked her pink lips.
She was starting to miss that taste again.
Just as Vermouth reminisced about the happy times and madness they had shared, Kurumi's words over the phone interrupted her memories.
"Big Sister Bei, how much do you think it would cost to buy an art museum that's about to be abandoned?" Although Kurumi was a transmigrator, her memories of the Conan series had grown blurry with time.
Aside from a handful of especially classic cases, what Kurumi remembered most clearly were the episodes that could be called childhood nightmares.
For example, there was one episode where Conan looked through a keyhole, only for an eye to suddenly appear on the other side.
That scene had scared Kurumi badly back then.
A few days ago, while Kurumi was wandering the streets out of boredom, she passed by an art museum.
Only then did Kurumi suddenly recall that this was the art museum where the scene involving Divine Punishment had taken place in the original story.
That director was very kind, and his love for the artworks in the museum came from the bottom of his heart.
Kurumi greatly admired that.
So, in order to keep that old gentleman from being arrested for murder like in the original story—and even losing the art museum he treasured most—Kurumi felt that she had to do something.
Besides, Kurumi genuinely thought the painting called Divine Punishment looked cool, and she wanted to buy it for her collection.
That was why Kurumi had called Vermouth this time. On one hand, she wanted to report that she had completed her mission. On the other, she wanted to use the organization to purchase this art museum and turn it into another safehouse for the organization in Tokyo.
Vermouth was stunned for a moment when she heard Kurumi's question.
She could no longer figure out what was going through Kurumi's adorable little head.
"So this, so that..."
After Kurumi explained her idea, Vermouth let out an "Oh~."
She did not mind helping Kurumi with such a small favor.
After all, buying an art museum on the verge of closure would not cost the organization much. With the influence she and Kurumi held within the organization, even if someone below wanted to object, there was nothing they could do.
What was more, an unprofitable art museum that secretly served as a safehouse for an organization member would provide excellent cover. With that layer of protection, the organization would gain another safeguard in Tokyo.
After roughly calculating the acquisition cost in her head, Vermouth said with a smile, "That won't be a problem, Kurumi-chan~."
Hearing Vermouth's tone from the other end, Kurumi knew that woman was definitely about to make her do something embarrassing again.
There was no helping it. Vermouth was her big sister, after all.
Having already guessed what Vermouth would ask for, Kurumi gave up resisting and said, "Fine, Big Sister Bei. What do you want me to wear this time?"
"Last time, it was a vacuum cheongsam patched together from two curtains. The time before that, it was a maid outfit that barely covered anything top or bottom. The time before that..." After spending several minutes condemning Vermouth's atrocities, Kurumi, who had completely abandoned all sense of shame, no longer cared.
"It's nothing much. I just found quite a few new little things these past two days. I want to see Kurumi-chan looking all cute in them~" Vermouth was not embarrassed in the slightest by Kurumi's words and was practically blooming with laughter.
She could not wait to see it.
"..." Great! Kurumi now wore an expression that said, Whatever. Bring on whatever you've got. After gritting out, "Why, thank you so much!" she hung up.
Tossing her phone aside, Kurumi sighed helplessly.
Vermouth was great in every way, except she was always thinking about how to play with her.
Indeed, playing with that witch Vermouth was thrilling, but compared to being the one played with, Kurumi wanted to turn the tables and become the one playing with her.
"Honestly, one day I'll make you lie beneath me!"
Viciously fantasizing about the day she would turn things around, Kurumi could not hold back any longer. Slightly wet, she began entertaining herself.
The Observer in the Dark
Medieval Art Museum was the name of the art museum Kurumi had taken a liking to and wanted the organization to acquire.
In Kurumi's view, using the organization's immense wealth and power to purchase an art museum on the verge of bankruptcy was not difficult at all.
According to the intelligence she had gathered, the museum had recently been acquired by an entrepreneur named Manaka. Apparently, Manaka had deceived its former owner, who had thought Manaka would continue operating the museum. Instead, after obtaining the land, he had gone back on his word and planned to convert the museum into a restaurant.
Manaka's actions had enraged some of the staff here, as well as the kind Director Ochiai.
However, with the museum already having been sold, no matter how much Director Ochiai and the others despised Manaka's conduct, they had no way to stop their beloved museum from becoming history.
That was only on the surface, though.
Kurumi, who remembered part of the plot, knew that the seemingly frail old man would don a suit of medieval armor and imitate the painting called Divine Punishment, killing Manaka and nailing him to the wall.
Unfortunately, Kurumi's memories of this plot were far too distant, so she could not be certain about certain details, such as when Director Ochiai would make his move.
Kurumi could have used the organization's intelligence network to find Manaka and quietly eliminate him before the plot unfolded. That would certainly save her plenty of trouble.
But if she did that, the museum owner would die one moment, and the organization would make a grand acquisition the next. That would inevitably make anyone observant suspect some sort of conspiracy.
Although the organization, which had always acted with cunning and caution, did not worry about such things, Kurumi did not want this matter to give those within the organization who were hostile toward Vermouth and herself an opportunity to suppress them.
One morning afterward.
Kurumi took a finely made black Western-style dress from her wardrobe and put it on. Looking at her slender, pale legs beneath the short skirt, she thought for a moment before taking out a pair of black fleece-lined tights and putting them on as well.
After getting dressed and walking before the mirror, Kurumi picked up a hair tie and skillfully arranged her long hair into her signature twin braids.
Looking at herself in the mirror, Kurumi examined herself from head to toe before showing an enlightened expression.
She found a small black Western-style hat and placed it at the upper right side of her head. Looking at her complete form in the mirror, Kurumi nodded in satisfaction and turned to leave the bedroom.
She hailed a taxi to the museum. In the backseat, Kurumi paid no attention to the driver occasionally stealing glances at her through the rearview mirror. As long as he got her there, that was enough. If he really had any ideas about her...
The driver could not see King Crimson sitting in his front passenger seat, looking arrogantly smug.
After driving for some time, Kurumi's taxi slowly stopped on the street in front of the museum.
Once again grumbling that Japan's taxi fares were downright predatory, Kurumi withdrew King Crimson and walked into the desolate museum with displeasure.
The once magnificent hall had inevitably become old and worn.
Even with employees who genuinely loved the place maintaining the building, their lack of funds and new exhibits meant they could not resist the bleak sight of dwindling visitors brought by the passage of time.
Since this was not Kurumi's first visit, she did not ask the staff responsible for receiving guests. Instead, she strolled through the exhibits with light steps.
Among the scattered visitors, Kurumi noticed a girl wearing a red women's blazer and a yellow skirt.
Ordinarily, a woman dressed like that would not have caught Kurumi's attention.
But when she saw the girl's indescribable unicorn-like hairstyle, Kurumi did not even need to ask to guess who she was.
In all of Conan, the first woman Kurumi could think of with such an iconic hairstyle was undoubtedly the heroine who had trained karate until she became even stronger than the senior disciple of the Water Break School—Mouri Ran.
As expected, coming here every day to wait these past few days wasn't in vain! Seeing someone familiar, Kurumi felt as though she had finally waited for the boss to spawn after camping this place every day.
Since Mouri Ran, the heroine, is already here, then the muddleheaded detective Mouri Kogoro and Kudo Shinichi must be somewhere around here too. Having determined that the plot would unfold today, Kurumi merely needed to quietly wait for things to happen.
She walked down the corridor leading to the exhibition area called Hell Chamber. Standing at its entrance and staring into the pitch-black exhibit room, Kurumi could see the light from the corridor behind her stretching her shadow long across the floor.
"Facing away from the light, yet walking alone into darkness..."
For some reason, those words suddenly came to Kurumi's mind.
With a soft scoff, Kurumi stepped without hesitation into the room, whose name and atmosphere alone were enough to frighten away visitors.
Various artworks of different shapes could vaguely be seen arranged along both sides of the dark space. Through King Crimson's exceptional vision, Kurumi could see that every one of them had a dark style.
It truly suited the name Hell Chamber.
"So... the first thing to do is..." Kurumi looked at the surveillance camera mounted on the wall. Having already figured out its blind spots, she walked without hesitation to the depths of the room and waited silently.
Time passed second by second. After growing so bored that she played rock-paper-scissors with King Crimson, then leaned against the wall for a short nap, Kurumi abruptly opened her eyes upon hearing footsteps and instinctively looked toward the source with the sharp gaze of a hawk.
It was an unconscious habit Kurumi had still been unable to change after all these years.
The strange clattering of metal rang through the dark room.
The eerie sound, the pitch-black atmosphere, and the dark-themed exhibits were enough to frighten any normal person.
But Kurumi was not, in a sense, a normal person.
Through King Crimson's vision, Kurumi could clearly see a shadow in the darkness putting on a suit of medieval armor.
Director Ochiai...
So Fierce!
May I ask: if an old man in his seventies or eighties, clad in armor and wielding a longsword, injured a fat middle-aged man, then lifted him one-handed and nailed him to a wall with his sword—
Would anyone believe something so astonishing?
If it had been the Kurumi of the past, she probably would have laughed and considered it utterly unrealistic.
But now, seeing Director Ochiai in medieval armor display strength completely incompatible with his age and carry out the murder with smooth, flowing movements, Kurumi, hidden in the shadows, could not help crying out inwardly, So fierce!
Blood flowed from Manaka's wounds and dripped onto the ground, the crimson liquid slowly forming a small red pool beneath his now lifeless body.
His face, twisted hideously by terror, had been permanently frozen in that final moment.
"It's finally... over..."
Director Ochiai's panting voice came from within the helmet.
Looking at Manaka before him, whose death perfectly mirrored the painting called Divine Punishment, Director Ochiai trembled faintly despite all his rehearsals and mental preparation. Now that he had truly killed his enemy, the tension and panic following the burst of adrenaline shook his aged body.
At that moment, if not for the fact that this spot he had deliberately chosen was still within the surveillance camera's view, Ochiai himself might have collapsed to the ground from weakness.
Suppressing the weakness within his body, Ochiai, still in armor, followed the posture he had rehearsed beforehand and slowly walked out of the camera's range with his back to the bloodstained corpse.
That bastard Manaka had already died by his hand, and the "clues" he had deliberately left behind had no problems either.
Sweating profusely beneath his helmet, Ochiai panted as he considered how he should face the police questioning afterward, as well as the other bastard he had chosen to take the blame.
Clap, clap, clap...
Just as Ochiai was about to remove the armor and put it into a prepared bag nearby, applause suddenly sounded from the darkness deep within the exhibition hall.
How is that possible? Why is someone here?
Ochiai's eyes widened in shock beneath his helmet.
He stared in disbelief toward the source of the sound, overwhelmed by the feeling that he was finished.
Director Ochiai had never believed Manaka's body would remain undiscovered.
Because he had never intended to conceal the crime from the beginning.
Manaka's death had to be discovered, but only after Ochiai had made every preparation—not now, when someone had caught him red-handed.
Having his crime discovered, Ochiai had never expected that an ordinary person who witnessed a murder before their very eyes would neither panic nor secretly call the police. Instead, they calmly applauded, as though watching a performance they found immensely satisfying.
This utterly unreasonable scene only made Ochiai more flustered.
He even wanted to run, or perhaps...
Forget it. Since things have come to this, it's what I deserve. Feeling that all his efforts had been rendered meaningless in an instant, Ochiai gave up.
He stood there calmly, already imagining himself being taken away by the police.
Yet even knowing that his actions had been completely exposed, the elderly Director Ochiai did not have the slightest intention of silencing the witness through murder.
Yes, he had killed someone.
But that was because Ochiai believed he had to kill that man no matter what, in order to protect his beloved museum and the artworks he regarded as his own children.
Now, Manaka, who had wanted to turn the museum into a restaurant, was dead. Next, Ochiai would be arrested by the police as a criminal caught in the act. After that, what would become of this museum? Ochiai was lost.
Kurumi, who slowly emerged from the darkness, did not know what Ochiai was thinking at that moment.
But based on Director Ochiai's sincere love for this place, Kurumi could more or less guess what he was worried about as he stood there looking resigned to his fate.
"Director Ochiai, why did you have to do this?"
A girl's voice filled with regret, accompanied by a graceful figure, appeared before Ochiai.
Seeing the figure before him, Ochiai immediately recognized her as the beautiful girl who often came here to admire the exhibits and had wanted to purchase Divine Punishment.
Having his name spoken outright, Ochiai shook his head. Although he wondered why the girl was here, since she had already recognized him directly, there was no point in continuing to wear the stifling helmet.
Removing the fully enclosed helmet, Director Ochiai's aged face revealed a bitter smile. "So it was you, young lady."
Before you continue