Yuji Kudo, the manga artist behind Detective Conan.

As expected, the man in front of them was just calm on the surface. At least during the process of him leading the Kudo family onto the cruise ship and reaching the deck, the old Kudo watched as he chatted up more than a dozen beautiful women and even gave them his room number.

"I'm starting to regret asking you to bring us on board. Could we have someone else instead? Hmm... preferably someone who can't talk."

Of course, he was rejected. With the thought that he was finally about to be free, the detective stepped onto the last escalator and looked at the view from the round windows on the side of the ship. Finally, he slowly appeared on a cruise ship the size of a football field.

"Dad, I took Higashino and Conan to buy clothes!" Sayoko took out her wallet and waved it in front of old Kudo.

"Hey, but I want to stay..." Conan hadn't finished his cutesy words when Old Kudo pushed his daughter, turned around and looked at him in confusion. Seeing that he had shaken his head, he could only sigh.

The future self possesses memories of the past, so the old Kudo's refusal to let him stay must mean that his daughter has something more important to do.

"Hey, your act is way too convincing."

Walking behind Sayoko alongside Higashino, Conan glanced at the elementary school student approaching and turned his head away with a hint of disdain.

"What are you talking about, I don't understand."

"Stop pretending, you must have been tricked by that organization too. By the way, how old were you before you shrunk? What was your real name?" Higashino pointed at Conan as if it were a matter of course: "Your acting skills as a kid are too bad. What kid would want to work with an old man at a time like this?"

“Aren’t you afraid of missing some important information…” Conan squinted his eyes: “What if Mr. Kudo runs into the people from the organization you mentioned later, especially in this kind of situation?”

"Are you out of your mind or am I? How could they possibly be on a cruise ship like this?" Higashino spread his hands: "Besides, Uncle is never home when he's making money. Do you expect me to follow him around every day?"

"This..." "Stop talking nonsense, just tell me, how did you shrink? That's the most important information." Seeing that Conan still didn't trust him, Higashino thought for a moment and said, "I'll tell you first, then you can tell me."

Higashino then quietly recounted how, when he went to deliver materials to an older sister he had known since childhood, he had encountered a man dressed in all white who was secretly trading guns at Edogawa Amusement Park.

“I followed them the whole way, but I was so focused on peeking at the people they were trading with that I didn’t notice the white-clad man’s accomplice who suddenly appeared from behind me. I was knocked unconscious and given poison, and when I woke up I was shrunken.”

He couldn't bring himself to utter a good curse, but as Conan listened to Higashino's narration, he guessed that there must have been a bunch of cameras filming when the kid was knocked unconscious.

"I...I saw the mysterious people conducting a private transaction while I was at Dorobiga Amusement Park with my childhood sweetheart. On a whim, I followed them, and then..."

"Stop, stop, stop. You're not going to say that you didn't notice your accomplices who came later, and that they were shrunk after being knocked unconscious and given poison, are you?"

Higashino looked at Conan with disdain: "You're not going to say that you happened to run into a genius inventor you knew when you left Paradise and went home, and then moved into your childhood friend's house under his guidance, are you?"

"You're really smart." Conan gave a thumbs up: "Our experiences are very similar."

"...You're treating me like an idiot." Higashino snorted twice and ran to Sayoko's side, ignoring him completely.

"Hello..."

【Everything I said is true.】(End of Chapter)