Thinking this, Conan could only force a smile at "Professor Moriarty" and say against his will, "Of course. You can go wherever you want. That's your freedom."
Then he cast another gloomy glance at Suzuki Sonoko, who had "voluntarily defected to the enemy," sighed, and silently turned away, trying to find where Irene Adler was.
As he looked around, Conan suddenly noticed that, at some point, a fat NPC had appeared ahead to block their way.
The manager NPC twirled his two comically upturned handlebar mustaches and looked down at them sternly. "Who are you? This is the staff area. Leave immediately!"
Mouri Ran hurried forward and nervously recited the lines they had prepared in advance. "Um, we're friends of Irene Adler. We wanted to visit her before the performance starts."
Jiang Xia recalled what Noah had said earlier about someone "blocking the way" and glanced at "Moroboshi Hideki" from the corner of his eye.
Noah silently turned off the NPC's path-blocking switch.
Up ahead.
As soon as Mouri Ran finished speaking, Conan cooperatively raised the bouquet they had prepared.
At the same time, he habitually entered cute-kid mode, doing his best to act like an innocent child who knew nothing of the world as he gazed up imploringly at the fat, stern manager. "These are flowers we planned to give her."
As Conan spoke, doubts kept surfacing in his mind. He remembered how he had repeatedly hit walls with all kinds of NPCs before—whether café clerks or police officers, everyone in this terrifying world seemed completely immune to cute children...
So while acting cute, Conan had already prepared two backup plans.
—While no one was watching, he planned to have Mouri Ran knock the manager out with one punch. Then the players could seize the chance to flee