"Hey, Ran, look! Isn't that the Great Detective from your family?"
Kazuha, who had been eating while scrolling through her phone, suddenly looked up from her bowl. Whatever she had seen made her turn the screen toward Ran Mouri in surprise.
Ran instinctively glanced at the phone and found that Nichitv's social media platform had begun promoting the detective variety show.
Unlike the promotional poster they had seen that afternoon, this one used a different composition. Aside from the detectives gathered in the foreground, there was a dark silhouette in the background. Backlit and mostly obscured, the figure looked like some kind of final boss.
Still, that distinctive hairstyle and suit made his identity easy to recognize even without seeing his face.
"It's him." Ran shrugged and lowered her head again. "I knew about this."
More than knew. She had even ridden in the same car as Heiji Hattori to see him that morning...
"Is that so...? How surprising. You seem so calm." Kazuha turned to study Ran's expression. "Hasn't he been missing for months already?"
As someone who had grown up alongside a high school detective obsessed with solving cases, Kazuha felt that she and Ran were kindred spirits. To some extent, she could understand Ran's feelings.
If Heiji Hattori had gotten wrapped up in such a troublesome case that he had to leave his old life behind and disappear for months, she would have worried herself to death too.
Seeing how unexpectedly composed Ran was, Kazuha furrowed her brow curiously, glanced around, then leaned close to whisper, "What's with that reaction? Did you two fight? Or... have you fallen for someone else?"
"Cough, cough, cough..." Ran choked on her soup and hurriedly grabbed a tissue to cover her mouth. She looked at Kazuha, half amused and half exasperated.