But had Tom installed some kind of surveillance device around him? He only had a slight cold, yet the other party had immediately sent Jerry over with something.
Conan pondered this inwardly, but his feet did not hesitate. He led Jerry straight to the agency's entrance, where he found a small bottle filled with some transparent liquid.
There was not much inside, probably only one or two hundred milliliters.
Jerry directly stuffed the bottle into Conan's hand, then stood to one side with an expectant expression, as though waiting for him to drink the medicine.
Conan remained somewhat wary of this unknown liquid.
He had originally only intended to open the bottle and take a quick sniff before handing it over to Professor Agasa for analysis, to see whether he could determine its contents.
Who knew that the moment he opened the cap and brought the bottle to his nose, before he could even smell anything, he saw lightning-like arcs burst from Jerry again as it lunged at him.
Only this time, its target was not some Vengeful Spirit, but the bottle of liquid in his hand!
Even though Conan had realized something was wrong, he was far too slow compared to Jerry.
Under the influence of that mysterious power surrounding Jerry, he even felt as if his mouth was being forced open against his will.
The next moment, he had swallowed the entire bottle of unknown liquid.
Only after he had drunk it all did Conan feel a burning sensation in his throat and finally catch the lingering smell of alcohol from inside the bottle.
"Tom sent me a bottle of alcohol and even specifically had Jerry make me drink it himself. What exactly is that guy trying to do?"
Startling Changes
In response to Conan's reaction, Jerry took out a small note it had prepared beforehand and handed it to him.
Conan already had a cold, and after drinking alcohol, his head felt even more muddled.
Fortunately, there was not much alcohol, so he was not drunk enough to collapse. He could still understand what Jerry meant.
He opened the note. There was a single line of printed text on it, making it impossible to identify the handwriting this way.
The message was simple. It told him to go back to his room and get a good night's sleep. When he woke up tomorrow, his cold should be cured, and if he was lucky, his body might undergo some pleasantly surprising changes.
Pleasantly surprising changes?
Conan frowned slightly. He had heard of medicinal wine before, but he had never heard that drinking alcohol could cure a cold.
Still, since it was Tom's decision, he would follow his instructions for now. When he woke up tomorrow morning, he should find out what changes would happen to him.
At the same time, he did not forget to put the bottle away. There was still a little alcohol left inside, and he could have Professor Agasa test it later.
After putting away the bottle, Conan went back inside.
He was not worried that Ran would notice he had been drinking. Uncle Mouri was currently in his room drinking to celebrate the ten-million-yen check his mother had forced on him. The room already reeked of alcohol, so a faint trace of it on Conan should not draw Ran's attention.
Ran indeed did not notice anything strange about Conan. She was still nagging her father for drinking too much today, then took Conan to bathe with her.
Conan had wanted to refuse, but in the end, he gave in.
Half an hour later, Conan emerged from the bathroom still red-faced, as though the water had been a little too hot.
Ran did not notice anything wrong, but Conan vaguely sensed an inexplicable flutter within his body.
Had the medicinal wine already begun to take effect?
Conan nervously returned to Ran's bedroom—he normally slept in the same room as Uncle Mouri, but Uncle Mouri had drunk too much today, so Ran let him sleep in her room for the night.
Conan had only wanted to lie down in the bedding spread out on the floor and think about what that strange flutter he had just felt meant.
But after Conan's previous "brief separation" from them, Ran had become rather interested in his parents' situation and kept asking him about his family.
Conan could only follow the identity he had previously discussed with his parents, adding a few details as he told Ran about them.
Ran did not become suspicious. She simply felt that Conan, this child, had it quite hard. She also failed to notice that the temperature in the room seemed to have risen slightly.
At that moment, she was still thinking about how to improve Conan's relationship with his parents.
But Conan had no thoughts like that right now.
No one understood the state of his body better than he did.
While bathing, his heart had been racing from nervousness, and he had not thought much of it then.
But as he finished bathing and gradually calmed down, he realized that his heartbeat showed no signs of slowing. Instead, it was continuing to accelerate.
Even his body temperature was steadily rising. Sweat had already formed all over him. If someone took his temperature now, he felt it would probably be over forty degrees Celsius.
So this was the effect of the medicinal wine? Such a small bottle had such an absurdly obvious effect!
Conan gritted his teeth to keep himself from making a sound, but his increasingly ragged breathing still caught Ran's attention from the bed.
Ran had been talking to Conan about his parents when she suddenly sensed that something was wrong with him on the floor.
She leaned over in confusion and saw Conan drenched in sweat, clutching at his heart as he gasped for breath, his eyes already slightly unfocused.
"Hey, Conan, what's wrong?" Ran assumed some illness had suddenly flared up. She hurriedly reached out and touched his forehead, immediately realizing that his entire body was burning hot.
So hot. This was definitely far above forty degrees, right? Even the hot water they had just used to shower was not as hot as Conan was now!
This situation had completely exceeded the understanding of an ordinary high school student like Ran. She hurriedly reached for her phone to call emergency services.
But for some reason, the emergency line was constantly busy tonight. She tried several times in a row without getting through.
"Conan, I'll go find a doctor nearby right now!" Ran said, quickly getting up to find a doctor at a nearby clinic.
Conan had wanted to stop her, but he could not even get out a complete sentence now. He could only watch as Ran changed clothes and prepared to leave.
At that moment, he even felt as if he had returned to the day when the man named Gin had forced him to swallow poison.
Wait?
The feeling of being forced to swallow poison?!
Tom did not feed me another dose of APTX4869, did he? If my body regressed again, wouldn't I become a newborn baby?
Conan did not think Tom would do something like that, but the next moment, he suddenly felt his soaked pajamas tightening around him.
The change made his eyes widen, and an unimaginable emotion surged up within him.
Could it be that he was not shrinking, but changing back into his original form?
What exactly had Tom made him drink?
Under normal circumstances, this could indeed have counted as a pleasant surprise.
But Ran was right beside him now. If he changed back into his original form at a time like this, would his identity not be completely exposed?
More importantly, he absolutely could not let Ran go out to find a doctor. If those doctors saw him restored to his original appearance, there would be no way to hide anything!
Under these circumstances, returning to his original form would be a truly terrifying change!
At that thought, Conan did not even know where he found the strength. He reached out and grabbed the hem of Ran's pants as she was about to leave, forcing her to stop.
"Conan, what are you doing..." Ran had already been frantic with worry, and being suddenly tugged like that made her somewhat angry. She turned around, intending to scold Conan properly and tell him to lie still instead of moving around.
But only then did she suddenly notice that Conan's appearance seemed to have changed considerably from before.
If Conan had previously been a child shorter than one meter, then now he looked like an older elementary school student, perhaps in fifth or sixth grade.
The pajamas that had once been quite loose on him now looked almost comical from how tight they had become.
But even more unbelievable was Conan's gaze. The instant she met his eyes, she thought of the boy who had disappeared from before her one or two months ago.
"Shi... Shinichi?" She stared at the boy in front of her in stunned disbelief, feeling as if her brain could no longer process anything.
Tom Was Actually Pretty Nice
Ten minutes later, Shinichi Kudo, wrapped tightly in a blanket, was explaining everything to Ran while sweating profusely.
He hid nothing—from the reason his body had shrunk, to why he had hidden at the Mouri household, to the Black Organization, including the fact that the mother who had picked him up yesterday had actually been his real mother, Yukiko Kudo, in disguise.
Even regarding Tom, he followed what they had discussed before and described him as an ally seeking revenge against the organization.
Although he had not prepared at all beforehand, Tom had pushed him into this situation. Naturally, he could no longer keep pretending. He could only honestly explain everything to Ran and seek her forgiveness.
To be honest, once he started talking, he felt as though everything had become much easier.
He no longer needed to deceive Ran, nor would he have to worry about her becoming suspicious of his identity in the future.
If there was any regret, it was probably that he could no longer bathe with Ran in the future?
In any case, Shinichi Kudo quickly threw that thought aside.
No, now that he had returned to his original appearance, he could not keep living at the Mouri household either. Since his parents probably had not left Japan yet, should he ask his mother for a human-skin mask and take on another identity?
When he had gone to Hawaii with his father to learn all kinds of skills, why had he not thought to learn his mother's craft as well? Then he would not have to go through all this trouble now.
As for Ran, her emotions had gone through a roller coaster over those ten minutes.
From initial anxiety, to shock, to anger at being deceived, and then worry upon learning the truth.
She had never imagined that the two men in black she had seen at the amusement park were connected to a powerful transnational criminal organization, and that they had forced him to take a poison that turned him into his current form.
Thinking back, the day Conan appeared was indeed the very day Shinichi Kudo disappeared.
She had been suspicious afterward. Ever since Conan arrived, her father had suddenly become a famous detective and inexplicably gained the title Sleeping Kogoro. Could there have been something fishy going on?
But at the time, Professor Agasa's voice-changing bow tie had fooled her suspicions.
Now it seemed that all the changes in their household over the past few months had been orchestrated by the shrunken Shinichi Kudo.
Ran, who had been worried about Shinichi getting caught up in such enormous trouble, suddenly became angry again.
After all, he had deceived her for so long. If Shinichi had not suddenly fallen ill today, who knew how long it would have taken before he told her the truth?
Thinking about how the two of them had just bathed together, Ran Mouri's hand tightened around her cup. If Shinichi Kudo had not still been sweating profusely, she probably would have punched him on the spot.
Shinichi Kudo, restored to his original appearance, nervously watched Ran's hand gripping the cup, afraid she would use too much force and crush it.
Only after a long while, once he felt that Ran had probably calmed down, did Shinichi Kudo continue explaining. After making assurances and playing up his misery, he finally managed to soothe her.
Once she had calmed down, Ran asked Shinichi Kudo about the current situation again.
"So, have you found the antidote now?"
After confirming that he had finally gotten past Ran, Shinichi Kudo wiped his forehead and shook his head. "I'm not sure either. Tom sent me this stuff. At first, I thought it was meant to treat my cold."
He clenched his fist. He could feel that he was still very weak, and he even vaguely sensed that he had only temporarily returned to his original form.
Just then, there was suddenly another knocking sound from Ran's bedroom window, startling her badly.
This was not the first floor. Who would come knocking on her window?
Shinichi Kudo, however, keenly recognized it as Jerry's sound and immediately told Ran to open the window and take a look.
Ran gave Shinichi Kudo a doubtful look, but out of trust in him, she still cautiously did as he said.
When she opened the window, she saw a note placed on the windowsill. Yet when she looked around, there was not a single person in sight.
Ran hurriedly took the note, shut the window, and turned back toward Shinichi Kudo.
She had found nothing, but Shinichi Kudo had seen it. Not long after Ran turned around, Jerry's little head poked up from beside the window. It greeted him, then made a farewell gesture. It seemed that its task for the night was over.
Judging by Jerry's expression, it merely seemed curious about Shinichi's current state and was not particularly surprised. It appeared to have expected this all along.
"It's a note. It looks like it says quite a lot," Ran said. She glanced at Shinichi Kudo and only opened the note after confirming that it was all right.
"I wonder what you think of the gift I sent you. Although you currently have drug resistance, and the duration probably will not be very long, it should still count as a surprise for you.
"The next time we meet, I'll tell you exactly what you drank today. But I imagine that now that your big sister Ran already knows your identity, you probably will not be in such a hurry to turn back into Shinichi Kudo before dealing with the organization."
Ran finished reading the note with a puzzled look, then looked toward Shinichi Kudo in front of her.
Shinichi Kudo let out a helpless sigh. The note had clearly been prepared in advance. It seemed that his reaction after drinking the bottle of alcohol had been entirely within Tom's expectations.
Tom's personality was truly awful.
He had previously suggested that Shinichi come clean to Ran, and Shinichi had still been hesitating. Tom had clearly seen that he was not prepared at all, so he simply pulled something like this and gave him a hard push from behind.
The situation now really was exactly as Tom had said. His parents and Ran all knew about his condition.
To avoid drawing attention, he really did not need to rush to become Shinichi Kudo again.
"This is the partner I mentioned to you. He was also the one who suggested that I tell you the truth. I had wanted to find a suitable opportunity, but I never expected that guy to pull something like this. Using such a precious antidote now is such a waste," Shinichi Kudo said with a bitter smile, repeating the proposal Tom had made to him.