Chapter 207: Too Bad We Can't Bathe Together
Five o'clock in the evening.
Natsukawa stood on the balcony in his long trench coat, gazing silently at the flowerbed below. The once-lively blooms were now battered and wilted, hunched against the cold wind and drifting snow.
"You've really had it rough," he murmured. "Having to put up with weather like this."
It had been a perfectly clear morning. But looking at the sky now, Natsukawa already understood what had happened.
Conan had triggered another plot flag. And this time, it was a winter arc.
He walked to the balcony railing, pushed aside a curtain of frost-bitten ivy, and looked across toward the Mouri residence. The windows were dark, the curtains drawn. Nobody home.
The thought of heading to the Genbei Hot Spring Inn in Mikami Town later left him with a creeping sense of dread.
"I really hope it's nothing."
Natsukawa exhaled slowly. Stumbling into a murder investigation while trying to enjoy a relaxing soak was the last thing he wanted. Still, the weather nagged at him — that particular kind of unease he'd learned not to ignore.
He should have asked Kogoro about his plans for the day. But it was too late for that now. All he could do was face whatever was coming head-on.
Besides — what were the actual odds? You couldn't expect to run into Conan Edogawa everywhere you went. That would be absurd.
"Papa, let's go already! Hot springs! Mikami Town! Let's go!"
Small hands grabbed his from behind. Natsukawa turned to find Anya beaming up at him, bundled in a thick pink sweater that made her look like a stuffed animal. A knitted beanie sat slightly crooked on her head, and her fluffy earmuffs framed her face like parentheses.
His mood lifted immediately.
"Aunt Yoru is home! If we don't leave now we'll be laaate!"
She tugged his hand with both of hers, bouncing on her heels. Natsukawa couldn't suppress a smile. The girl's pale green eyes sparkled with barely contained excitement — she'd clearly been looking forward to this all week.
"Alright, alright. Anya is the cutest," he said, and scooped her up before heading downstairs.
Yoru had just arrived. She stood in the entryway in a soft pink coat, a few snowflakes still melting in her dark hair. Natsukawa stepped forward, brushed them away gently, and took her hand in his.
"Even in winter," he said, "you still manage to be unfair to everyone else."
Yoru's eyes narrowed. She pressed her free hand lightly against his chest — not quite a punch, not quite not one either. For a moment, the two of them simply looked at each other, and the warmth between them was enough to make the entryway feel several degrees warmer.
Anya, perched on Natsukawa's arm, was not moved.
She looked at the clock on the wall. Their reservation was at seven. It was an hour's drive to Mikami Town. If these two kept staring at each other like characters from a shojo manga, they were going to be late.
Thanks to Ai Haibara's recent and thoroughly exhausting math tutoring sessions, Anya could now handle addition and subtraction within one hundred with ease. Calculating travel time was, frankly, beneath her.
"Papa! Aunt Yoru! You can do the lovey-dovey stuff at the inn!"
The color rushed to Yoru's face instantly. She turned away, straightening her coat collar with great dignity. Natsukawa only laughed, gave her hand a warm squeeze, and steered them both toward the living room to grab his bag.
"I'll get my things. One minute."
"One minute," Yoru agreed, and glanced around the living room. "Where's Ai? We're about to leave and I haven't seen her yet."
Over the past several days, Yoru and Ai Haibara had developed a careful, quiet sort of familiarity. Yoru had made a point of stopping by after her shifts, sitting with the girl over tea, listening more than she spoke. She understood, in a way she didn't explain to others, what it felt like to build walls around yourself just to feel safe.
Natsukawa had told her everything. She hadn't objected. In fact, she'd quietly asked her colleagues in the First Division to run a search for any missing child reports matching Haibara's description.
Nothing had come up. No match in any of the paper files. No parents filing a report. Japan's records system wasn't exactly state-of-the-art, and after days of searching, Yoru had reluctantly set the matter aside for now. She could only hope that if someone was looking for Ai Haibara, they would eventually find their way to the right desk.
"Ai's spending the night at Professor Agasa's," Natsukawa said, reappearing with his jacket over one arm. "She needs a follow-up check on her condition. I've already arranged for the restaurant around the corner to deliver meals to the house."
"She's not coming at all?" Yoru's brow creased slightly.
"She's fine. The professor has a background in medical research — he assessed her himself and said there's nothing to worry about. She just needs more time to adjust." He said it with the tone of someone reciting a version of events that was convenient for everyone involved. "The check-up is important. We shouldn't delay it."
Anya, standing slightly behind the two adults, muttered under her breath.
"It's clearly just homework."
Nobody heard her.
She thought about the weight of the workbooks stuffed into her little backpack and felt a surge of righteous fury. A hot spring trip. Skiing. Relaxation. That was what this was supposed to be.
Instead, Ai Haibara had packed her enough practice problems to last a week and smiled while doing it.
Anya's eyes narrowed.
This couldn't go on. She needed leverage. Something she could use, the way Conan used evidence — strategically, efficiently, to shift the balance of power.
One day, she decided. One day she would find something on Ai Haibara.
The road to Mikami Town was not kind.
Snow had been falling steadily since late afternoon, and the mountain roads had narrowed to a single lane in several stretches. Oncoming cars had to negotiate carefully to pass, and more than once they crept along at barely a crawl.
"This hot spring inn is hidden in the middle of nowhere," Natsukawa muttered, watching the GPS recalculate for the third time. He felt a small, irrational flicker of relief. Surely neither Conan Edogawa nor Kogoro Mouri would end up on a road this remote.
Most of the other vehicles on the road were SUVs loaded with ski equipment strapped to roof racks. As they passed a ski resort, the slopes came into view through the trees — white and wide under the floodlights, dotted with figures carving trails through the powder.
Anya pressed her face to the window glass.
"So many people!"
"I'll take you tomorrow morning," Natsukawa said. "It's too late tonight, and it's not safe for a beginner in the dark."
"Really?!" She spun around, eyes wide.
"Really. Now close the window. It's colder up here than in the city, and if you lean out like that you'll get a chill. Then you'll have to watch from the lodge while everyone else skis."
The window was shut immediately. Anya folded her hands in her lap and sat very still, the picture of obedience.
They arrived at the Genbei Hot Spring Inn at just past seven.
It was a small inn — modest in scale, tucked down a side road that the GPS had initially skipped over entirely. Traditional wooden architecture, warm light spilling from the windows, the faint sulfurous mineral scent of the hot spring hanging in the cold air.
Natsukawa pulled in and cut the engine.
He sat still for a moment after that.
"Papa?" Anya tilted her head. "What's wrong?"
Yoru followed his gaze to the car parked near the entrance — a very recognizable, very limited-edition Mercedes that did not belong to any of them.
She glanced back at Natsukawa. He was staring at it the way a man stares at something he had hoped, unreasonably but earnestly, to not exist.
"It's nothing," he said finally. "It just feels a little too coincidental."
"That's Uncle Mouri's car!" Anya announced brightly, having spotted the vehicle from the back seat. She paused, glanced at the expression on her father's face, and decided she didn't particularly care. The onsen was waiting, and they were already running late. "Papa, let's go inside, it's freezing!"
Natsukawa got out of the car, retrieved Anya's small rolling suitcase and Yoru's bag from the trunk, and left his own change of clothes in the back seat. He'd get it tomorrow. It was one night. He was an adult with reasonable priorities.
They were nearly at the front door when it opened from the inside.
"Oh! Natsukawa-san! Yoru-san!"
Ran Mouri stepped out onto the engawa, her face lighting up when she saw them. Then she spotted the small pink figure peeking out from behind Natsukawa's coat.
"Anya-chan too!"
Anya stepped forward, planted herself at Natsukawa's side with great ceremony, and waved back. She had chosen a position that made her clearly, definitively present. She was not going to be noticed as an afterthought.
"I didn't expect to see you all the way out here!" Ran descended the steps, delighted. "Are you here for the onsen?"
She glanced around behind them, puzzled. "Where's Ai-chan?"
"She stayed back in the city — follow-up appointment with Professor Agasa. Just the three of us tonight," Natsukawa said, then added, since Ran seemed to be doing a headcount, "It's a family trip."
"That's wonderful! Come inside, the owners are expecting guests. It's so cold out here—"
The front door slid open again and an older couple appeared at the threshold, clearly drawn by the sound of voices.
The man was compact and weather-worn, somewhere in his late sixties, with a neatly trimmed white beard and the unhurried manner of someone who had been welcoming guests for decades. The woman beside him had kind eyes and wore a deep indigo yukata.
"Welcome!" The man bowed. "I am Kitamura Genbei, proprietor of the Genbei Hot Spring Inn. This is my wife, Kitamura Kayo. We're very glad you could join us tonight."
He noticed Ran standing comfortably with the new arrivals and smiled. "Miss Ran — are these acquaintances of yours?"
"Yes! Natsukawa-san lives right across the street from us in Beika. I never expected to run into them all the way out here." She laughed. "What a coincidence."
Kitamura Genbei nodded warmly and gestured inside. "Please come in and get warm. Mr. Mouri and young Conan-kun are in the sitting room. The onsen is still being cleaned — it will be ready shortly, and I'll come and let you know personally."
The sitting room was a large tatami-floored space with low furniture and a television set that was currently turned up loud enough to carry down the hall. The final act of some drama series was playing — something involving a woman in white standing at the edge of a frozen lake under a grey sky.
Kogoro Mouri was fully horizontal on the tatami, his head propped on his arm, deeply invested in whatever was happening on screen. Conan sat nearby in a similar posture, though with rather less emotional commitment to the drama.
Ran called her father's name twice. Then a third time.
Finally, she stepped in front of the television.
"Dad."
Kogoro jolted upright. "I heard you! I heard you from the start, I just — the ending was right there, you can't pause a live broadcast, Ran, a rerun is completely different—"
He trailed off, composing himself with some effort, and turned to greet Natsukawa with the easy warmth of a neighbor who genuinely liked him.
"Natsukawa! What a coincidence. If I'd known you were coming out this way, we could have driven together."
"It really is something," Natsukawa agreed, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
Fate. It's all fate.
He kept that thought to himself.
"We got a voucher for one night at the Beika Department Store last week," he said instead, which was true enough. "The timing worked out — snowing weather, a proper hot spring. It seemed like the right evening for it."
Conan, listening from his seat on the tatami, tilted his head slightly. Something in Natsukawa's tone was a fraction off — just barely, the way a story is when someone has edited the interesting parts out. But what he said wasn't wrong, and it lined up with Conan's own feelings about the evening.
Snow. A mountain hot spring. Pine trees in the dark outside the shoji screens.
He was genuinely looking forward to it.
He did, however, note with some regret that the Genbei Inn maintained separate bathing facilities for men and women.
A missed opportunity, truly.
(End of Chapter 207)
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