Tangze bent down, leveling his gaze with the elementary schooler drenched in cold sweat.
Conan looked pretty funny like this, mouth hanging open and eyes wide, frozen like a terrified hamster, Tangze thought.
Getting hit by that tranquilizer dart had not been an accident, of course. He had deliberately thrown himself into it because Sonoko was nearby.
Based on his previous guess, the Red Faction's main characters could all trigger Co-op. There was no way Tangze would not try it on a protagonist as major as Conan, but Tang Ze Zhao's identity was somewhat awkward.
The day he transferred schools had happened to be the day Shinichi Kudo began missing class. They had never met as classmates, and Tangze's current situation of being surrounded by the Organization was not suitable for slowly getting acquainted with Conan either. Conan was the kind of reckless fool who would climb into Gin's Porsche to plant a bug. Things could easily go wrong.
So Tangze figured that since the conditions for triggering Co-op involved keywords like agreements, deals, and contracts, getting hold of someone's weakness counted as a kind of deal too, right?
Conan's greatest weakness was the identity he wore so openly, something everyone in the Red Faction knew about.
The weather was fine today, perfect for stripping away a disguise. The murder case had arrived neither too early nor too late, at just the right moment, so Tangze had taken the chance to stage his little accident.
"Looks like you're a child with secrets, Conan." With his back to the others, Tangze made a rather unkind, sinister expression. He stared until Conan broke out in another wave of cold sweat, then straightened up with a smile.
"Ran!"
"N-no, wait...!" Conan lunged forward in alarm, trying to stop Tangze from saying more, but being not even as tall as Tangze's waist, all he could reach was Tangze's elbow.
"What is it?" Ran Mouri looked over in confusion.
Don't! Conan clutched Tangze's forearm tightly, dangling from it and kicking his legs futilely as he wailed inwardly.
"Could I borrow this little guy for a while?" Tangze held up the Conan clinging to him, lifting him to his chest with both hands under his chin. "He was a huge help with the case today. He's very capable, so I promised to treat him to some cake."
"Did this kid cause you trouble? You don't have to be so polite." Ran Mouri looked at Conan, who was standing there blankly, and seemed a little embarrassed.
"No, no. He found some very important evidence today and made a major contribution. He's quite an impressive little detective, isn't he?" Tangze set down the Conan whose emotions had gone through such violent ups and downs that he had nearly crashed, then smiled and patted his round little head.
Conan blinked after Tangze patted him. His system rebooted successfully, and he immediately shouted in a childlike voice, "Yes! I want cake! Big brother is taking me to eat cake!"
Conan secretly let out a breath. As long as Ran did not find out, anything was fine.
Tangze did not know Shinichi Kudo. Even if he found Conan's behavior strange, surely he would not connect it to his real identity... right...?
After all, an adult turning into a child was far too contrary to common sense...
A sliver of wishful hope rose in Conan as he considered it inwardly.
Ran Mouri had no guard up against Tangze, her considerate and mild-tempered new neighbor. Instead, she worried that the troublesome brat might stir up some kind of problem.
After giving Conan a few reminders, she let Tangze take the fake elementary schooler away.
The museum's main entrance had already been surrounded by reporters who had rushed over at the news. Inspector Megure, who was in charge of the case, was being blocked at the entrance and interviewed. Tangze watched the spectacle from afar, decided to avoid the main entrance, and pulled Conan out through a side exit.
Tangze did not break his word. He really did find a dessert shop in the shopping district.
"You don't seem inclined to talk to me, so I'll go first." Tangze stirred his warm coffee and rested his chin on one hand as he looked at Conan, who sat across from him staring fixedly at his cake plate. "Since there's a 'Sleeping Tang Ze Zhao,' the title 'Sleeping Mori Kogoro' was your doing too, wasn't it? I rarely saw Mr. Mori in the social pages before. You'd only been staying at their house for a few days, and Mr. Mori suddenly appeared out of nowhere..."
"!" Conan's hands tightened abruptly on his knees as he raised his head to meet Tangze's eyes.
"Looks like I was right, little friend." Tangze held a sugar cube between his index and middle fingers, making a V sign. "Next question: is your name really 'Edogawa Conan,' and are you really an elementary schooler? Has no one ever told you that your acting is truly terrible?"
Conan's disguise issue was one of the more indescribable flaws in the Conan manga.
Conan's behavior was far too absurd. A first-grade elementary schooler wandered in and out of murder scenes as if no one could stop him, made emergency plane landings, kicked satellites with a soccer ball... to the point that nearly every intelligent character even vaguely connected to the Red Faction would discover that Conan was Shinichi Kudo after just a few rounds of probing.
Even Mori Kogoro, whose neck had been turned into a pincushion, had caught on. His disguise only worked on idiots.
Conan was practically browsing the internet under his real name in the Red Faction. On top of that, whenever he felt like it, he would take a temporary antidote and swagger around in his original body. In the end, just to patch things up, Gin had somehow been given the bizarre trait of being unable to remember people he had killed. It was practically the Great Memory Erasure Technique.
Conan watched the sugar cube disappear into the coffee. He held back, but in the end could not help muttering, "Is it really that bad...?"
"It can only fool careless people." Tangze gave an impartial assessment. "You're attending school now too... Take a serious look at the children in your grade, then look at yourself. Smart children, smart older kids, and smart adults are all smart, but they act completely differently. Let me guess..."
Tangze picked up another sugar cube and slowly waved it back and forth before Conan's eyes. "You definitely aren't an adult, but you're not that young either... A high school student?"
Conan's alarmed gaze followed the movement of Tangze's fingers. It was rather amusing, like a cat.
Tangze tossed that sugar cube into the coffee as well. The falling cube splashed up a little coffee, and Conan watched the white sugar slowly dissolve and sink. Somehow, it felt like a metaphor for his own fragile disguise.
"A high school student, a detective, a Tokyo high school detective..." Tangze pinched another sugar cube and held it over the cup. Tilting his head as if in thought, he slowly said, "Hmm, I don't know how you did it, but the Tokyo high school detective whose whereabouts have recently become a mystery—"
With a soft plop, Tangze loosened his fingers, and that sugar cube fell into the coffee too.
Conan slowly scooted backward, pressing his back against the chair. He did not know whether he was trying to get away from Tangze's terrifying words or simply give himself some physical support.
Knowing when to stop, Tangze swallowed the name that had already reached his lips and did not continue explaining his chain of reasoning.
He winked his right eye and took a sip of the coffee he had sweetened to an excessive degree.
When he set the porcelain cup down again, its base struck the saucer with a crisp clack, like a chess piece slamming down onto a board.
"Checkmate," Tangze concluded.
The second chapter will be later. I still haven't finished work; I'll write it after I get off and lie down.
Before you continue