Conan: The Man Behind the Romance

Chapter 107 Will Vermouth fall in love with Kudo Shinichi?

Kudo Shinichi suspected that Hotaru had hidden the evidence of the crime in the bakery, and that the cell phone he had on him was not his at all.

As for why he couldn't detect it during conversations with other people, it might just be because he has a strong ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

There isn't a very close network of relationships between the gang members, so it's possible that they could have fooled them.

Unfortunately, there was no phone number for his family members in the phone.

Kudo Shinichi actually wanted to ask this as a point of doubt: Did you guess that there would be such an investigation, so you deleted the difficult numbers in advance?
But he estimated that if he asked this question, he would only get one answer from Yingsheng:
"Because I live alone."

This is definitely it.

It would be better to take him directly back to the bakery. Didn’t Chiba and Shin say that he might have set a dust explosion trap there?

Then let him walk in front.

"Tsk, that's a little annoying, Mr. Detective. I have to apologize a lot."

Yingsheng shook his head, put down his hands, took the wallet and mobile phone from Kudo Shinichi, and walked towards the bakery first. In less than half a minute, he returned to the door of the bakery, pushed the door open, turned on the light, and stood aside.

Shinichi Kudo stood outside the door and looked inside carefully, and found that it was just a very regular display. Most of the rows of glass display windows were empty. Under the warm yellow light, even the unsold bread that had long gone cold looked quite delicious and tempting.

"When it's open, the rich aroma here can simply melt people's hearts." Yingsheng said with a smile.

"Do you come here often?" Kudo Shinichi walked in and went straight to the several unsold loaves of bread.

"I work nearby after all. What are you looking for? Do you need my help?"

"No need. Aren't you a member of the Nichan Society? Does this count as work?"

Kudo Shinichi took out a piece of bread, squeezed it, and found nothing unusual. Feeling unsafe, he simply tore it open to check, but there was still nothing.

"We, the lower-level Yakuza, don't have a good life, you know? Without bonuses, we only make 200,000 a month. I want to switch to baking bread."

Yingsheng looked at the way Kudo Shinichi was destroying things and shook his head: "By the way, have you come here to inform Boss Gaoshan? The money I left as an apology is not enough for you to keep thinking like this."

"Did you keep any money?"

"Although I'm just a small fry, I also want to be a gentleman. The address is in the back kitchen, where I borrowed it before. Perhaps you would like to go and take a look?"

"Of course I will go, but later."

"Do you suspect that I want to lead you away? I should really say that you are close to your goal. Unfortunately, I really don't know what you are looking for. Can you tell me?"

"What were you doing here before?" Kudo Shinichi not only did not answer, but asked another question.

“Knead the dough.”

"Kneading dough?"

"Didn't I just say that I want to change my career and bake bread? I'll come here to practice secretly at night."

"........."

Kudo Shinichi didn't want to talk to this man anymore, so he asked other policemen to come in and search with him. They even searched the flour bags in the back kitchen and pulled open the fermenting dough to check. During the search, Megure Jusan and Chiba Kazunobu also came through the main gate. After learning about what was happening here, they immediately joined the search.

Looking at everyone busying around, Yingsheng yawned out of boredom.

"Tianshu, are you really okay?"

Xiaolan asked nervously in the headset. Yingsheng looked around and found that it was ridiculous that no one was paying attention to him, so he just spoke directly:
"We didn't do anything in the first place, there's no need to be nervous. It doesn't matter if I confess what happened before, I just don't want to talk about it. Vigilantes and the like are so weird."

"Hmm... That's true... By the way, what did Shinichi mean by Mr. Harada?"

"Didn't I tell you at noon that someone was setting up a trap to cheat people? It seems that Mr. Harada is the mastermind. Mr. Detective wants to investigate this now, but unfortunately I only know the name and can't provide any help. It's too much trouble, so I just pretend I don't know."

"So that's it..."

Xiaolan paused for a moment, and said in a somewhat tangled tone: "Hey, I wanted to ask you before, Tianshu, did you rescue anyone?"

"You guessed it, right? Actually, I really didn't want to say it before."

Yingsheng sighed, "It's all Mr. Detective's fault. He came too quickly. This blatant crime involving human auctions doesn't require detective reasoning. Logically, the police wouldn't look for him, and his energy should be focused on another person."

"so……"

Xiaolan's tone was sympathetic: "Is the person being auctioned really Xuesong-san?"

"indeed."

"The person who was set up to cheat her out of money, owed gambling debts that she couldn't repay, and finally sold her daughter, was Yukino Nami?"

"Yes, Alice, have you heard of the saying? A child with gold in his pocket walks through a busy city. Xue Song Nana's money came too easily, and she herself is a person who doesn't know how to restrain herself. Sooner or later, she will be targeted. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon."

"Besides, it also affected Xuesong-san."

"It was only a matter of time, so I wasn't too surprised. I rescued her from the cage, put her in a lounge, locked the door, and only left the underground casino after making sure she was safe. I went outside to see what was happening, and somehow, I was noticed by the detective."

Xiaolan was silent for a few breaths: "How can we help Xuesong-san?"

"I don't think it's necessary, because... well, she seems to have a good impression of Mr. Detective."

"Eh???"

"It's easy to understand things like a hero saving a beautiful girl."

Yingsheng's tone was quite helpless. Liu'er Mihou's acting was really superb. Could there be some sincerity in his feelings?

"But it's probably one-sided on her part. You don't need to..."

"But weren't you, Tianshu, the hero who saved the beauty?"

"I was the masked man at the time, and you heard everything I said on the communication channel. I said I would go back and take her away, and then I broke up with her. I'm thankful that she doesn't hate me."

"Actually, I feel like even if you take her away, it's not impossible. The Nican Society has no organization at all. Even if they don't let her go, they can't stop us."

"Then our identities will be exposed. After all, we have to entrust her to someone. We can't just send her home and leave her alone. Otherwise, she might commit suicide."

"Does Tianshu really not want us to be exposed?"

"Do you want to?"

"No, it's just that... compared to saving people, this... could be a little more flexible."

“So now this is the best of both worlds.”

"Well, that's right, that's it..."

(End of this chapter)