Chapter 442 - 53: I’d Be Sad

Chapter 442: Chapter 53: I’d Be Sad

"This is a case! Somebody must have treated Genta’s and Conan’s clay figures that Yimi made as voodoo dolls and tried to curse the real people!" Mitsuhiko deduced something completely unrealistic.

"Don’t say such scary things... Found one!" Ayumi carefully crept toward the tree, then suddenly brought her insect net down over the rhinoceros beetle clinging to it.

A patch of woodland like this was rare in the city, making it perfect for an elementary-school group outing, though as usual Professor Agasa was the adult supervising them.

"Ai-chan, have you caught one yet?" Ayumi turned and asked her best friend No. 2.

"Not yet." When Ai spotted one, she had pointed it out to Yimi and let her catch it. The result...

She turned toward Yimi and saw the girl resting her insect net over one shoulder, grabbing a rhinoceros beetle nearby with her bare hand, stuffing it into her mouth, and chewing it up.

Ai would never point one out to her again.

Over the past two days, Yimi had resumed her outings with the Detective Boys, but Conan, on the other hand, had started skipping the outings. In fact, he had even taken sick leave and wasn’t going to school.

Until he figured out who had dared investigate him and went straight to that person to film an episode of "Wonder of U" starring himself, Conan simply could not settle down—okay, not really.

In truth, Conan already had a few leads. The police headquarters where Uncle Kogoro had attended the meeting was full of officers who, to one degree or another, had received help solving cases from him while he was "Conan." If they compared notes, they could almost dig up his entire background.

Everyone might have looked as though they did not care much, but the only people who could become suspicious at a time like this were those officers. Dr. Araide, who had temporarily disappeared, had already confirmed that Conan was Kudo Shinichi, so there was no reason for him to collect fingerprints.

That was also what kept Conan most on edge. He had already learned from Jodie that Dr. Araide was Vermouth in disguise. For some reason, however, Vermouth did not seem to have told the Organization the truth.

"After these two days are over, I’m leaving." Holding an empty insect cage, Yimi suddenly said it out of nowhere.

"Leaving? Is Yimi transferring schools?" Everyone else looked at her nervously. Even Ai stopped in her tracks.

Mitsuhiko hurried to reassure her. "I was only joking just now. There’s no curse! How about I give you one of my treasured Kamen Yaiba cards?"

Ayumi also raised a fist indignantly as she comforted her. "Let’s catch the real culprit who ruined the clay figures! They broke somebody else’s things and didn’t even apologize."

"I’ll only be gone, at most, one week," Yimi added.

Professor Agasa broke into a sweat. "If you’re just going on a trip, you don’t need to say goodbye in that tone."

As long as Yimi gave a date for when she would return, everyone would relax. But over the past few days, her attempts to say goodbye to Kisaki Eri had not gone nearly so smoothly.

"I’m back." Yimi hugged the empty insect cage and greeted Eri with the phrase her aunt from the previous world had taught her.

Eri came out wearing an apron, took the little yellow hat off Yimi’s head, and rubbed her ears. "Welcome home. Dinner isn’t ready yet. You didn’t cause Professor Agasa any trouble while you were out, did you?"

"I was good." Yimi immediately caught her off guard, raised a paw, and said goodbye. "Queen, I’m leaving."

Eri pinched her little cheeks. "No. It’s already dinnertime. You’re not going anywhere now."

It seemed that every time Yimi said it, she got an answer like that.

Today, however, things were a little different. Eri took a deep breath, went into the kitchen to turn off the induction cooker, then sat down on the sofa and pointed to the spot in front of her. "Sit."

Kisaki Eri had a forceful personality and almost never avoided anything. That was why she had earned the title "Queen."

She had long prepared herself for the possibility that Yimi’s other relatives might come looking for her. She had even rehearsed what she would do, making sure that if such a thing really happened, she would seize the initiative through sheer force of personality. As a top lawyer, she would never allow herself to be put at a disadvantage in that sort of situation.

That was assuming she had not watched through a camera as her adopted daughter turned into a real cat, jumped out the window, then climbed back in through the same window several hours later.

Her heart was packed with questions, yet Eri had not asked a single one. Even the most important—"Where did you go that night?"—somehow felt difficult to bring up.

No, those questions were not truly difficult to ask. When Ran got into trouble as a child, she had never been able to muddle her way past Eri. But back then, Ran had also never acted as though she was saying, "I’m leaving. I’m going away from you forever," in a way that might actually be physically possible.

Even so, after spending two days going through information, asking her contacts again to search for Yimi’s former family, and even making rounds at several shrines, Eri had still decided she would ask Yimi directly and get everything straight. Avoiding a problem would never solve it.

Affected by Eri’s imposing air, Yimi cautiously lowered her bottom onto the seat opposite her and said in a crisp little voice, "Don’t hit me."

"I won’t hit you." Eri almost laughed, but she kept a stern face. "Tell me. What did you go out to do that night? Didn’t I tell you not to go near the window?"

"Catch bad guys," Yimi answered honestly.

"Be specific. What kind of bad guy needs a little child like you to catch them?" Eri was not very satisfied, perhaps because the little thing showed none of the panic one would expect after having a secret exposed.

Like the panic that little boy had shown when she once told him Conan was Yukiko’s second child.

Yimi wanted to say she was a detective, but after muttering to herself and checking her mission list, she discovered that she was not actually a detective at all. So she explained, "I went out, then I saw bad guys, then I called the police, then I let the police go, then I bought a drink, then..."

"Too many ’thens.’" Eri tapped her on the head, becoming the first person ever to point out the flaw in her sentences.

Eri straightened her back and made a writing motion out of habit. "Let’s start with this. Why can you turn into a cat?"

The moment she asked, she forcefully drew several horizontal lines across the notebook, as though that could take back the previous sentence even though she had not actually written anything.

"Because, I am a cat." Yimi’s honest answer seemed to be interpreted by Eri as some deeper expression of resentment.

Eri stood up and sat down beside Yimi. "I’m worried that you’re going off to do dangerous things, understand? Whether you can turn into a cat or what you really look like—what does any of that matter? The problem is where you went and what you were doing."

In Eri’s eyes, Yimi had only started saying things about wanting to leave after discovering the camera. Eri had always assumed that the little girl was hurt and had lost her sense of security after her secret was exposed.

The camera had been installed because Yimi’s teacher called Eri to report on the child’s behavior at school. When she heard that Yimi had actually written something like that in her diary, it was only natural for a parent to panic and take precautions. A child this age was not yet at the stage where privacy was the first concern.

Eri placed a hand over Yimi’s small hand. "And one more thing. Stop saying things about wanting to leave. I’d be very sad. Ran-onee-san and Uncle Kogoro would be very sad too, understand?"

Yimi drooped her ears. She pulled her hand free, then placed it on the back of Eri’s hand.

"But, I have to leave, this world."