The moon rose above the tips of the willow branches!
Eri Kisaki had already finished her bath. She was sitting on the sofa wearing a thin nightgown, her hands hugging her fair, slender jade legs. Her beautiful eyes were fixed tightly on the screen, but her gaze was somewhat hollow.
Yukiko walked out of the bathroom, draped in a pink yukata. Water droplets clung to her brown, curly hair. Holding a pure white towel, she tilted her head slightly and wiped her hair continuously.
"Eri, why didn't you turn on the television?"
Eri Kisaki snapped back to her senses and looked at Yukiko blankly for a moment. Suddenly realizing, she quickly turned on the TV.
"I was thinking about some things."
"Thinking about what? Thinking about that 'Great Detective' Mr. Kogoro?"
Yukiko sat down comfortably, crossing her legs in a flared-out fashion, and began to tease Eri Kisaki.
Eri Kisaki gave Yukiko a slight roll of her eyes: "There's no such thing."
"Is that so?" Yukiko looked at Eri Kisaki with a smile.
Eri Kisaki gave a bitter smile: "I already said it's not that. For that kind of gambler and drunkard, I don't have time to think about him."
"True, men are all bastards."
Yukiko leaned back against the sofa, pouting her moist red lips in a huff, appearing quite indignant.
Eri Kisaki was startled for a moment, her elegant brows furrowing slightly: "Yukiko, you couldn't have had a fight with Mr. Yusaku, could you?"
Yukiko shook her head: "It doesn't count as a fight, really. It's just that, suddenly, I feel a bit strange in my heart. Perhaps it's because he cares about his novels more than he cares about me."
"It's also possible that you are demanding too much."
Eri Kisaki's words made Yukiko fall into silence. Her hands tightly hugged her fair feet, which were propped up on the sofa, and she rested her head on her legs, lost in thought.
For a time, the entire house became quiet.
"Forget it, let's not talk about those things. Eri, what were you thinking about just now?"
Yukiko couldn't stand this kind of atmosphere.
"Me, just now?" Eri Kisaki was stunned for a moment, then became somewhat helpless: "Is the food I made tonight really that hard to eat?"
"Tonight's food?"
Yukiko was stunned, and then she burst out into wild laughter. Her crisp, clear laughter echoed throughout the entire house.
Eri Kisaki glared at Yukiko in anger: "You're not allowed to laugh~"
Yukiko laughed even more joyfully, her body trembling slightly. The bath towel tied across her chest was on the verge of falling.
"Be careful of exposure."
Eri Kisaki was too lazy to argue with this old friend.
Yukiko's laughter slowly stopped. Seeing the bath towel that had already slipped down quite a bit, her beautiful face reddened, and she quickly pulled it up.
"Eri, I'm not laughing at you. It's just that when I think of the kind of expression Heiji had when he was eating, I can't help but laugh."
In the next moment, the crisp and pleasant sound of laughter once again permeated the entire house.
Eri Kisaki was slightly startled. In her mind, she recalled Heiji's facial color when he ate the dishes she had made. Her moist, thin lips pursed slightly, curling into a moving arc.
In the next second!
Another string of crisp and heroic laughter rang out.
The cheerful laughter sounded exceptionally loud in the quiet night sky.
Kazuha and Sonoko were lying in Heiji's arms. The beautiful faces of the two girls were flushed red, and their lips were slightly parted as they caught their breath.
"Heiji, I'm hungry."
Sonoko lifted her head to look at Heiji, her beautiful eyes shimmering with a hint of pitifulness.
"I seem to be hungry too."
Kazuha also looked at Heiji pitifully. They hadn't eaten their fill in the evening, and they had just engaged in a bout of intense exercise; they were indeed lacking in energy.
Heiji was somewhat helpless: "I'll go see if there's anything that can be cooked."
After eating the food Eri Kisaki had made, he knew exactly what it was that he hadn't been able to remember.
In the anime, the dishes Eri Kisaki made were comparable to poison; the reactions of Kogoro Mouri and Conan were proof of that.
[Internal Thought]: It was clearly stir-fried tomato and eggs, yet it was so sweet it pierced the heart; it was clearly deep-fried chicken wings, yet the taste was like bitter gourd.
Thinking of that flavor...
"Heiji, why has your facial color changed?"
Kazuha and Sonoko looked at their lover with concern.
"It's nothing. Put on your clothes and go next door; being at home will disturb my mother."
After the three of them finished dressing, they went directly next door.
As it happened, Yukiko and Eri Kisaki hadn't eaten much either, so naturally, they raised both hands in approval.
The night passed, and Heiji had conquered four women.
Heiji opened his eyes, which were slightly flickering with a sharp glint: The last day of the S-rank mission; it's time to pull in the net.
After washing up, he planned to go downstairs to eat breakfast.
At that moment, his mobile phone rang.
"Heiji, the ingredients have already been bought. We want to eat Japanese rice porridge (okayu) with chicken and egg; come over quickly and cook it." Yukiko's expectant voice came through the phone.
Heiji's face went dark: Do they take me for a kitchen boy?
"No time. I'm going out."
"It's okay if it's a bit later; you can go out after you've cooked the porridge." Yukiko's tone was pitiful.
"Kazuha and Sonoko can cook it too; let them do it."
Not seeing the two girls early in the morning meant they were either downstairs or next door. And since Yukiko called personally instead of the two girls coming up to call him, they were clearly next door.
"No, Heiji must be the one to cook it."
After his two stints in the kitchen yesterday, Heiji's culinary skills had already conquered their stomachs.
"What's the reward?"
"Reward?"
Yukiko was stunned.
"If there's no reward, it's a waste of my time."
"You... isn't it a gentleman's duty to serve four great beauties?"
Yukiko was suppressing her anger.
"Then go find the Night Baron. He likes being a gentleman. I'm hanging up."
Heiji prepared to hang up the phone.
"Wait, at worst, I'll just forgive you."
Yukiko felt she was suffering a great loss.
Heiji's face went dark: "Then you should just continue being angry."
After saying that, he hung up the phone directly.
Listening to the busy tone on the phone, Yukiko was somewhat dumbfounded: "Hateful Heiji, he doesn't have a shred of grace. Hateful."
Kazuha and Sonoko exchanged a helpless glance and turned to walk into the kitchen.
Although they weren't like Ran, who knew how to do everything, they still knew how to simmer porridge.
Eri Kisaki looked at Yukiko helplessly, a hint of doubt flashing in her eyes: Yukiko seems to be very familiar with Heiji; their relationship is so strange.
After hanging up the phone, Heiji directly got into his car and put on his headphones.
"It looks like we've lost again this time."
"Regarding the 12th-order spherical Rubik's cube, the three of us could only complete the majority of it. The remaining quarter is simply impossible."
"I have some confidence in reasoning, but this Rubik's cube isn't something that can be handled by observation and logic alone."
"Without a powerful deduction capability, there's simply no way."
"Perhaps, it was fundamentally just a prop the Night Baron used to toy with us."
The voices of Hattori Heizo, Kudo Yusaku, and Toyama Ginshiro rang out in the headphones; their voices carried a trace of fatigue and a trace of helplessness.
Heiji's brows furrowed: "It hasn't been cracked yet?"
A knocking sound at a door rang out in the headphones.
"Come in."
Hattori Heizo's voice rang out.
"Sakata? Is something the matter?"
Immediately following was Toyama Ginshiro's voice.
"Report: Yesterday, I did not return to the police station at all."
As Officer Sakata's voice rang out, the audio in the headphones fell into a patch of silence.
"Night Baron, eavesdropping doesn't seem like the behavior of a gentleman, does it?"
Listening to the voice in the headphones, a smile curled at the corner of Heiji's mouth: The bug has finally been discovered.
Immediately after, he took off the headphones and crushed them directly.
Looking at the bug in his hand, the three men in the office gave a helpless smile.
"In this game of cat and mouse, as it turns out, we are the mice."
Kudo Yusaku let out a sigh.