Stalker
Mouri Ran quietly looked up and saw Ichijō Mirai staring intently at Suzuki Sonoko.
In those red eyes there was a slight smile of distress, and a bit of...ease in treating not a stranger, but a familiar guest, a friend.
And this pair of eyes into the person, will not be able to help shaking: he, he seems to think I am a friend.
And then, for a long time, they can't help but feel even more shaken: is it really just a friend?
Mouri Ran was feeling bad: Oh no, Sonoko can't even resist...
Suzuki Sonoko doesn't even put up her defenses, falling into a pink bubble of love in a second, her tone even softer than last week when she was calling out to the cute cat on the side of the road, "Of course I can."
She held her chin, staring unblinkingly at Ichijō Mirai as she spoke sweetly with a slight drunkenness, "That blond gentleman has a rare brownish complexion."
...Blond hair and brown skin?
Ichijō Mirai's heart fluttered, remembering someone: Furuya Rei.
Furuya Rei, the NPC in the Police Chapter, was a blond-haired, brown-skinned person, and seemed to be favoring his player teammates at the moment.
He twitched his eyes and smiled in a joking tone, "Blond and brown-skinned? I think of a friend, is he a bit straightforward?"
During a brief exchange at the shooting range, Ichijō Mirai had noticed bruises on Jinpei Matsuda's face and a missing tooth, and on Furuya Rei's face, which looked like he had just been in a fight.
Furuya Rei, who can fight with classmates in the early morning, and is always the first to find the bright spot, quietly questioning 'Kujo-san, didn't you say we are important? How did you solve all of them by yourself!', is a person with a sharp and straightforward personality.
Ichijō Mirai's prying words were delivered in a jokingly flirtatious tone, signaling the possible presence of a listening device in his wristwatch: I'm just kidding, and I'm definitely not suspicious of the dear game company.
The signal in the dessert shop is quite good, and the call quality is also quite good. There is no monitor in the average watch, but Ichijō Mirai is not sure whether there is one in this watch.
"Straightforward?" Suzuki Sonoko repeated, shaking her head in denial as she thought about it, "No."
"That gentleman is a good-tempered gentleman, rather humorous, gentle, and polite in his speech, and he feels that his personality..."
She tried to think of an accurate description, and then her eyes lit up, "It's somewhat similar to Mirai-san's personality."
Her time with Amuro Tōru had been quite relaxed and pleasant, not at all offensive or unpleasant, somewhat like old friends who had known each other's temperaments and displeasure points for years.
Ichijō Mirai repeats, "Similar to me?"
He made a decisive judgment: he is not a good thing.
As one must have the self-awareness to recognize that one's own type is not a good thing, Ichijō Mirai smiled again and replied with a remark that meant he was listening carefully: "Really, I don't seem to recall."
Suzuki Sonoko thought hard again and remembered something, "He said he would come to see you some time in the near future, haven't you met him recently?"
"No," Ichijō Mirai shook his head, his tone relaxed, "Maybe something came up recently and he didn't have time to find me."
"You said you saw him at both the ramen restaurant and the sushi restaurant, and he happens to work part-time at both? That's quite a coincidence, but does the restaurant allow employees from another nearby restaurant to work part-time? It's a bit unexpected, I guess I'm still quite ignorant of Japan's customs."
"No, no, no," Suzuki Sonoko quickly denied, "it's not common in Japan, and I was surprised to see it at the time... it's a coincidence that we met twice in just a few days at different stores."
It's probably not a 'coincidence', it's an intentional meeting.
As for the reason...
Ichijō Mirai glanced at Suzuki Sonoko, who was very good at making conversation, and instead of agreeing with her, she simply said, "So it's just a misunderstanding on my part... I thought that after coming to Tokyo for so many days, I'm still a bit frustrated that I don't know anything about the place..."
He took the menu from Mouri Ran, "May I ask if your tastes are on the sweeter or lighter side, and would you like your coffee with extra ice?"
Suzuki Sonoko and Mouri Ran looked at each other, "Both sweet, extra ice please."
"Okay," Ichijō Mirai made a move to walk away, then stopped as if remembering something, "By the way, you two ladies often come here together, don't you?"
"I don't know if Auntie warned you yesterday, but the neighborhood seems to be a bit unsafe lately, as if someone is stalking and robbing, so you two should be more careful lately."
He smiled, "Recently there are car accidents and robberies, it's really not peaceful here."
It's not so peaceful, if there's nothing important, you two shouldn't come here so often, right?
Suzuki Sonoko frowned, "Stalking and robbing?"
She glances hesitantly at Mouri Ran before speaking hesitantly, "Mr. Mirai, I heard from Auntie that you're a detective, so I actually have something I want to entrust you with today."
"Ran and I recently..."
"It seems like someone is stalking us."
Someone's stalking us?
Ichijō Mirai really stopped walking, and his tone was as serious as a normal person would recognize, "Stalking? Please tell me more."
Suzuki Sonoko began to elaborate, "It's Valentine's Day soon, and there's been a lot of talk about having a Valentine's Day party or something, and I remembered that you, Mr. Mirai, have just arrived in Tokyo, so you might want to go to a party to get to know more people."
"But I was afraid that you might get the wrong idea because of the different customs, so I've been discussing it with Ran."
She tried to dispel the heat on her face, and when she got to the point, she looked serious, "And then she realized that someone seemed to be following us."
"At first, it was at Ran's house."
It was at Mouri's office.
Suzuki Sonoko was discussing Ichijō Mirai with Mouri Ran in an exclamatory tone of voice, and while exclaiming, "He's so handsome!" and "He's a good match!", she suddenly felt a subtle and indescribable intuition, an intuition that someone was watching and eavesdropping.
It's creepy.
They immediately left the bedroom, and when they realized that the only person at the door was Conan, who was passing by with water, and Mouri Korogō, who was receiving a request for a cat from a young woman who lived in the neighborhood, they assumed that the young woman had heard of Ichijō Mirai, and had heard the key word 'Mirai' or something like it, so they took a few curious steps towards the bedroom to listen to the story before taking their seats.
"But after that," Suzuki Sonoko recalls, "Ran and I had the feeling that someone was following us many times."
"While we were shopping together, in a coffee shop, or even on the side of a wide road!"
The reason for this hesitation is: "We haven't noticed a stalker."
"Even on the wide side of the road, we didn't see any suspicious guys when we realized that someone was following us, just cars and poles."
"...Is it an illusion?"
"But if it's an illusion, it's too often, isn't it?" Mouri Ran echoed, whispering the last clue, "It's probably not the stalker on the side of the road, it's Conan."
"Didn't we find Conan sneaking out from behind a telephone pole?"
That's true.
Suzuki Sonoko nodded her head in agreement, then shook her head in denial, "Kids don't bring a sense of voyeurism, I sometimes even feel a cool chill, like some kind of grudge!"
"Isn't Mr. Mirai a detective? I'd like to ask you to investigate for me." Once again, she changed from looking positive to trying to look positive, "Ahem, are you free tomorrow? There's a party we can attend together."
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
The drunkard's real interest is not in the wine.
He takes the commission, "Be careful about the illusion of being followed, it may be a hunch that something's wrong. If you don't mind a detective on Valentine's Day, I'd be delighted."