Phantom Thief of Heart!but conan

Chapter 913 Lavender Cottage

"Lavender..." On the other side of the corridor, Nanatsuki Koshimizu leaned against the wooden wall behind her that exuded the fishy smell of sea breeze, looking at Tokitsu Junya's back, whispering softly.

Although these arrangements were made by her, after Goro Akechi's "overcorrection", the cabin is now completely different from what she saw when she came to scout it before. Her memories also inevitably went back to the day when she received a call from her friend not long ago.

Her friend Xiaoxun is a child with a weak family relationship like her.

In Japan, it is extremely difficult for a minor to complete his or her studies and life on his or her own without the support of his or her family. Even if he or she wants to work part-time, he or she will be rejected for reasons such as not having a birth certificate to apply for various documents, not having a fixed address, and not being able to provide a landline phone number.

Her friend has a more delicate personality and a more difficult financial situation than her. It was already quite an effort for her to barely finish high school. Otherwise, at the same age, one would not have gone to college while the other would have to work as a maid in someone else's home.

She had been there to see Xiaoxun before, and heard that the wealthy man she served had built a garden villa on Shikoku Island. Out of curiosity, she followed Xiaoxun and observed the place from afar.

——It was not until half a year ago, when the young lady of the master's family passed away, that she accepted Xiaoxun's commission and went to investigate the truth. Only then did she find out that the garden almost submerged by lavender was a cage prepared by the rich man for his daughter who was addicted to drugs and suffered from mental illness.

In the pungent scent of lavender, Nanatsuki Koshimizu closed her eyes, covering her eyes that were beginning to emit golden light.

"Hey, Shijin!" Frightened by the shocking scene in front of them, the detectives came back to their senses and could not care about the cause of the strange scene for the time being. They could only rush forward and support Shijin Junya who was about to fall out of the window.

Hattori Heiji pounded his back twice to help him cough out the petals that were almost spraying out of his respiratory tract. At the same time, he reached out and tentatively touched the bulging artery on the side of Tokatsu Junya's neck.

"Such a fast heart rate." Hattori Heiji frowned when he just touched the hot blood vessels, "There's something wrong with this guy."

"…If what he spit out wasn't flower petals, but black mud or something, this scene would look a bit familiar." Conan, who was leaning on the windowsill and observing Shijin Runze, complained.

He had seen prisoners who were brutally punished by the Phantom Thief of Heart. According to his inference, who was allowed to spit out the black mud and who was not allowed to spit out the black mud should not be decided by the prisoners, but to a large extent, it was probably controlled by the Joker himself. Otherwise, no one could explain this kind of scene that was always just right.

——Combined with the demonstration of Asai Narimi that he had seen on Tsukikage Island, he guessed that the Phantom Thieves should be more mature in using this ability now.

"Black mud?" Hakuba grabbed two flying petals and crushed them under his fingertips. He raised his eyebrows when he heard Conan's description.

He grabbed some petals that had fallen on the ground and looked at them again, deep in thought.

Not only is the act of spitting out petals very surreal, the form of the petals that Tokatsu Junya spits out is also very surreal.

Even if someone really caught Tokatsu Junya and roughly stuffed a handful of flower petals into his bronchus and forced him to cough out the foreign objects, the petals coming out of his mouth should look like vomit. They should be stuck together into a ball with various body fluids and drip down. It should not produce the effect of a rain of petals.

But Shi Jin Runya just did it. The tiny petals that flew out even brought out an even stronger floral fragrance, and the fragrant breeze poured towards them from the window like concentrated perfume.

...When you think about it carefully, it's quite disgusting.

"Tell me, is there a possibility?" Hattori Heiji also noticed these unusual petals. He looked at the direction they were drifting away and the thick fog outside the window that was gradually blocking his vision. He pulled his baseball cap with a serious expression.

As he spoke, he grabbed the wooden stick beside the flowerpot in the corner with his backhand and swung it twice.

He always felt that something incredible would appear ahead, so for safety's sake, he decided not to go in unarmed.

After getting ready, he pointed to the fog outside the window and said, "Maybe the mud we saw before might not be mud. In some different angles or spaces, it looks like this?"

----

"The style is a bit psychedelic." Zhu Fujingguang, who was walking at the end of the team and was in charge of guarding, pushed down his eye mask. "Is this a dream of flowers? Or a fairy-tale paradise?"

The impression space on the island was completely formed with the surge of fog. Now, the high and low lavender purple and the winding vines formed a small jungle of only purple and green. Under the tall flower trees were small fungi like lily of the valley. A strange fantasy, but with a poisonous beauty permeating it.

"Although I was a little prepared, I still admired such a great scene." Standing in the middle of the team holding a camera, Kenji Hagiwara sighed like a tourist, "It's a world imagined by a sentimental woman. I feel like Alice fell into the rabbit hole."

"Alice this big? What you said gives me goose bumps." Jinpei Matsuda, who was holding a lollipop in his mouth, clicked his tongue and rubbed his arms.

After awakening the mask, he realized that Tang Ze was not lying when he took him to the bomber's hall. Those special lollipops made by the group members in cooperation with Haibara Ai were indeed special medicines that were of some help in combat.

Perhaps it was the sequelae of long-term smoking addiction, or perhaps it was the influence of that experience, but whenever he entered the cognitive world and prepared to fight, he would hold a lollipop in his mouth.

When the leader Tang Ze heard him say this, he turned his head and glanced at him.

Tang Ze knew that he might really have goose bumps, but it was not because of Kenji Hagiwara. It might be because he remembered the amusement park.

The "rabbit and Alice" in that amusement park is not something that children should watch, especially when this metaphor comes from Kenji Hagiwara's mouth, it will naturally trigger his instinctive chills.

"Because of the young lady who died in the Lavender House incident, she had a long history of drug abuse." Tang Ze interrupted their jokes at the right time and explained, "Koshimizu Nanatsuki is well aware of this fact. Even if she didn't lose her friends, this Lavender House didn't leave a good impression on her."

A girl who lives in a villa covered in lavender and seems carefree, but is actually imprisoned here, separated from her family, and always thinking about committing suicide...

The acidic style, which reminds people of death and hallucination, as if eating mushrooms, is definitely not a random shot by Nanatsuki Koshimizu.

"If you insist on calling it a fairy tale, it's probably some kind of dark nursery rhyme." Tang Ze looked at the shadows made up of flowers and grass leaves and drew the knife from his waist. "After all, the more beautiful the mushroom, the more likely it is to be poisonous."

"boom--"

Zhu Fu Jingguang, who was at the rear, fired a shot, shattering the gathered petals. He looked at the blood-like purple liquid that fell to the ground as it shattered, and then took root and sprouted again after landing, blooming new flowers. He nodded in agreement: "Indeed, it looks very poisonous at first glance."

————"Well, although we don't know what happened yet, our guess about the program is still correct. It is indeed the lavender house case on Shikoku Island." Bai Ma covered his mouth and nose and looked at the fields of lavender in front of him, and said pertinently.

"It's about that lavender-loving, the daughter of a manufacturing upstart named Ishikawa, who died in her own villa, right? Now that you mention it, I have an impression of it." Hattori Heiji put his hands on his waist and used the wooden stick in his hand to poke the dense flowers in front of him. "But, um, I always feel that the details of this case..."

He turned his head and looked at Tokatsu Junya, who was almost submerged in the petals and almost like a human-shaped petal fountain, lying unconscious on the ground. He then looked at Koshimizu Nanatsuki, who had followed them silently like a cat, and raised his eyebrows.

"As expected, I can't hide it from the detectives." Nanatsuki Koshimizu smiled brightly, "Yes, the case I mentioned on the boat is the Lavender Cottage case. The girl who was almost killed by the detectives' wrong reasoning is my friend."

"So, the confused detective who caused the disaster, could it be..." Hattori Heiji looked at Tokatsu Junya who was still spraying flowers, "Speaking of this situation, it couldn't be you who did it? Although it seems that he can't die like this, can you ask him to stop for a while, it's a bit mentally polluted."

"Before we talk about this, you guys actually jumped out of the window." Conan covered his forehead, "Although it's not very high, this is the second floor after all."

"Didn't you jump down with them? You jumped directly onto the runway from the very high stands," Hattori Heiji squinted at him, "The child is fine, so there's no chance that we will be in any trouble."

What's more, even if he didn't shrink, Kudo's physical fitness might be the worst among everyone here.

"It's impossible to resist jumping out of the window in such a wonderful scene, right?" Bai Matan smiled and turned his head again to look at the seemingly endless lavender bushes.

After seeing the petals drifting into the white mist, faintly emitting a stronger floral fragrance, without even thinking twice, Hakuba Tan and Hattori Heiji both chose to hold onto Tokitsu Junya and directly climb out of the second-floor window.

No matter how he looked at it, the strange scene before him seemed to have been spit out by Tokatsu Junya. He didn't believe that any detective could resist coming out to investigate the situation.

"How are they the same... never mind." Conan shook his head, feeling the familiar dizziness, curled his lips, and hesitantly took out his cell phone.

No matter how you look at it, this situation is definitely related to the Phantom Thieves. Should we look for them?

If it weren't for their medicine to help me this time, would I have fainted halfway through the journey?

"Wow, ahem, Conan, look at this room..." Hattori Heiji turned his head to observe Conan's work, and noticed the hotel behind him again, and then his eyes widened involuntarily.

The old wooden walls were replaced by courtyard walls painted in soft gray-purple. Through the exquisite European-style floor-to-ceiling windows, servants and housekeepers coming and going were busy setting the dining table, as if they were preparing for a banquet.

And where they had just jumped, the hotel windows were no longer visible. Instead, there were tall walls with white, tower-like towers standing there.

At the top of the tower, sat a girl in a white dress.

She has long golden hair, tied into an exquisite hairstyle with a bright red bow. Even from such a long distance, one can clearly feel the girl's delicacy and cuteness.

Just like the most stereotypical image of a carefree heroine in a fairy tale, she sat sideways on the windowsill, with a shiny leather shoe on the foot hanging outside. Although she was sitting by the window, she swung her legs casually as if she was swinging on a swing.

Everything was so dreamy, so dreamy that there was no sense of reality at all, so dreamy that Hattori Heiji couldn't help but rub his eyes, to make sure that he didn't get food poisoning on the road and fell into some kind of hallucination.

"Are you sure? What is this, a lavender castle?"

Nanatsuki Koshimizu turned her head and stared at everything in front of her in a daze.

The other detectives were simply confused by the changes in front of them, but she was the only one who knew clearly what would happen next.

The next second, the girl sitting by the window turned around.

The girl jumped down from the windowsill without hesitation, as if she had jumped off the edge of the bed lightly.

“Don’t, don’t do this—”

Having foreseen this scene, Nanatsuki Koshimizu immediately rushed out, stretched out her hands as far as she could, and tried to catch the girl who was falling from a great height.

The girl's blurry face kept changing in her eyes, her flying golden hair sometimes short and ear-length, sometimes in two low ponytails like Xiaoxun's, and sometimes, she looked like the lonely lady hanged in the bedroom.

Even the fluttering white dress was constantly changing, sometimes it was a delicate gauze dress, sometimes it was a rough linen dress, and sometimes it was a maid's dress wrapped in a simple apron...

Nanatsuki Koshimizu felt that everything in front of her was slowing down, and a noisy heartbeat was hitting her eardrums.

She seemed to hear a faint whisper coming from deep within her mind.

"Don't do this, don't... don't die, please, just hold on a little longer..."

The girl who fell to the ground with a bang fell into her arms, but in an instant, she turned into flying petals and fell all over Yueshui Nanatsuki.

It's like a rain, but also like a heavy hug.

Nanatsuki Koshimizu, who always had a smile on her face, knelt on the ground, raised her head blankly, looked at the empty, gray sky, and tears rolled down her eyes.

The tears slid down the corners of the eyes and stained the petals that fell on the face, turning it bright red.

The sharp-eyed Conan soon noticed that something was slowly growing out from under Nanatsuki's bangs...

(End of this chapter)