As soon as he finished speaking, Conan looked at the positions of everyone in the room, then at the manager's extremely unpleasant expression, and froze slightly. "...Am I late?"
"No." Jiang Xia smiled. "The timing is perfect."
Curacao couldn't help glancing at him. "..." Making an elementary school student who wasn't even as tall as his leg run all over a dark mountain in the rain, and near cliffs at that... Uzo was practically a heartless capitalist, the kind who paid wages in lifespan.
Mouri Ran was startled as well. She hurriedly grabbed Conan and scolded him, "It's one thing for you to run around normally, but today you actually dared to run around in the mountains!"
Inspector Megure had long grown used to this child who ran toward danger wherever it appeared. Overjoyed, he accepted Conan's gift and had the officers carefully preserve the balloon.
Everyone looked at the balloon Conan had brought back. It was soaked through, but a large dirty stain could still be seen on its surface. When they pulled aside the bag beneath it, they even found the corpses of two hornets.
Jiang Xia said, "There wasn't really anything wrong with your plan, but unfortunately, it happened to rain today—what should have been a balloon flying off into the night was soaked by the rain and quickly descended into the forest."
"Also." He pointed at the towel tucked into Aihara Shingo's waistband. "The honey on the study door handle should originally have been a thick layer, but by the time we noticed it, it was almost impossible to see unless you looked closely—because while we were checking the balcony, you secretly wiped the handle by the door."
"Let me see!" Inspector Megure strode over. Before Aihara Shingo could react, he snatched the towel from his