I've Been Brainwashed!

The empty construction lot where the children were playing happened to be right next to Mian Guan Yi Yi's home.

Though Conan had the body of a child, his mental age was already that of a high schooler. Sneaking into someone else's construction site to play baseball with actual children made him feel rather uneasy.

As Conan played with the children, he guiltily surveyed the surroundings.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly caught a flash of reflected light—naturally, it was not the reflection from Okiya Subaru's glasses, but from somewhere farther away.

Looking more closely, he found that the glint came from next to the construction site.

The top floor of an imposing villa.

Shielding his eyes with a hand, Conan looked over and saw an elderly man with graying hair standing behind one of the windows. The man was broad and sturdy, holding an old-fashioned pair of binoculars before his eyes. The flash had come from the binoculars. Though Conan could not make out the face behind them, the man somehow seemed very unfriendly, even sinister.

"..." A wave of goosebumps silently rose on Conan's skin.

It was one thing to watch them play baseball, but why stare at them through binoculars?

...That was a little scary.

Could he be annoyed by how noisy they were? Sound did carry easily in a place like this, and excited children's voices were especially piercing.

As he thought about it, Conan suddenly realized something and looked at Okiya Subaru.

—The group of "children" would be fine, but if this graduate student got caught, even a few days of detention might affect his ability to finish that headache-inducing thesis.

Conan was just about to warn this somewhat strange adult.

But before he could speak, Kojima Genta howled and swung