Mouri Ran, who was tidying up the desks, had an epiphany when she heard that. "So that's how it is. Just what I'd expect from him."
"..." Conan had not meant that, but he could not summarize his thoughts for the moment. Going by instinct, he said, "Don't you think this is... kind of strange?"
"Are you saying this is entrapment?" Mouri Ran understood immediately. She laughed. "You're still young, so you don't understand. Shinichi would deliberately say certain things when solving cases too, provoking criminals into taking action and getting themselves caught faster—this is probably an essential detective skill. Like ripening an abscess, then cleaning it out completely."
"?" Conan protested, "When have I ever..."
Halfway through, he suddenly stopped. He seemed to have done similar things before.
And quite a lot, at that.
...Am I being hypocritical? After a moment of silence, Conan quietly reflected. That's true. We can't camp out at the Yoshino residence every day. If we fail to get there in time one day and Mrs. Yoshino meets with misfortune, there'll be no undoing it.
Looking at it that way, what Jiang Xia did was no different from how he used to warn off those criminals. It was just a somewhat violent kind of kindness. I must have been overthinking it...
Though Mrs. Yoshino's case was merely one unremarkable case among countless others, Conan was not the only one who kept thinking about it for no apparent reason.
During class the next day, Mouri Ran propped her cheek on her hand and stared at an illustration in her textbook. "..." For some reason, that tall man who had come to Jiang Xia with a commission a few days ago seemed strangely familiar. Especially the way he had turned around as he left...
*Where have