Tokyo: Rabbit Police and Her Evil Partner

Chapter 260: Pavilion Ghost
Yuan Yuzi felt that he was definitely angry, but because of his tsundere personality, he was unwilling to lose his temper. He might be secretly holding a grudge in his heart, thinking about finding a chance to retaliate.

She was just about to say a few words of comfort, to tell Fushimi-kun the principle of being tolerant and understanding how important it is to be kind to others, but she saw Fushimi-kun suddenly raised his finger: "Shh... something's wrong."

Come again?

Yuan Yuzi looked around and saw no one around. She was worried that she might be beaten, so she quickly covered her ears with her hands.

Fushimi Shika looked impatient, and pinched her wrists with both hands, pinched her little face with her palms, and forced her to turn her head and let her look at the pavilion in the rain: "Did you see it?"

Only then did Yuan Yuzi notice that there were three figures sitting around the pavilion in the garden.

Lightning pierced through the dark clouds, dimly illuminating three pale faces. They could not be seen clearly through the rain. One could only vaguely see that they were all wearing white hunting robes, black hats, and holding cypress fans. They did not look like living people.

Yuan Yuzi thought of the legend of Chongde's vengeful spirit. Her heart trembled and goose bumps appeared all over her body. The cold wind from the mountains blew towards her face with moisture. She shivered subconsciously: "That, that...what is that..."

"Go and see?"

Fushimi Shika left as soon as he said he would, he held up his windbreaker and rushed into the garden in the rain. Gen Yuzi wanted to stop him, but she was a step too slow, so she had to bite the bullet and follow him, holding up her windbreaker.

The two men approached, and the pavilion became quiet.

Gen Tamako huddled behind Fushimi Shika and peeked out. Her eyes fell on the faces of the figures and she realized that they were all puppets. Their heads had carved facial features and were painted with a layer of white paint. Their faces were very smooth, as if they had been waxed.

Since it's not a ghost, there's nothing to be afraid of. Gen Yuzi breathed a sigh of relief. She stood up straight, loosened Fushimi Shika's clothes, put her hands on her hips and began to investigate.

"That's weird. When we came here for a walk this morning, these three dolls weren't there yet..."

As he said this, Gentamako assumed Conan's standard thinking posture and asked casually, "Fushimi-kun, what do you think?"

Fushimi Shika shook off the rain on his windbreaker. He bent down to look at the dolls, and inexplicably felt a strong sense of disobedience. Facing Yuan Yuzi's question, he ignored it and reached out to pick up the collar of the doll.

Under the collar of the hunting robe was a piece of rough bark. The craftsman who made it seemed to be lazy and only refined the facial features, while the limbs and torso were particularly rough. Fushimi Shika looked at it for a moment, and then he knew where the sense of disobedience came from.

They don't look like carefully crafted handicrafts, but rather like some kind of pure natural plants.

The bark patterns are natural, and they look more like three human-shaped dwarf trees than puppets. They were covered with hunting clothes and their heads were modified to become what they are now.

In order to verify this conjecture, Fushimi Shika tore open the hunting robe, and Gen Tamako was startled. The two looked closely and saw that under the hunting robe was a thick and twisted tree trunk, and the hands holding the cypress fan were two branches. The hem of the clothes covered the roots rooted in the rock...

Looking at the body together, the head at the top looks like some strange fruit.

"This...what?"

Yuan Yuzi studied gardening and flower arrangement. Most gardeners can control the growth direction of plants and make them grow into their ideal appearance. Some farmers also use steel wire to pull tree branches to make them grow in a specific direction... Even though Yuan Yuzi knew that this was not uncommon, she was still shocked by the strange plant in front of her.

Fushimi Deer lowered his head and touched the roots of the tree with his foot. The roots did not move at all and really took root in the ground.

The floor of the pavilion was made of stone, and the tree roots had grown in through the gaps between the bricks. Yuan Yuzi also tried to shake it with her hand, but found that it was growing out of the floor and could not be shaken at all.

Now things became even more bizarre. If it were just three puppets, Yuan Yuzi could reasonably speculate that someone had secretly placed them here to play tricks; but now there were three "small trees" rooted in the floor tiles, how could they be moved at will? It couldn't be that they grew like this in half a day, right?
Yuan Yuzi originally thought that those rumors were just hearsay, but now it seems that this notorious old house really seems to be hiding some incredible secrets.

Fushimi Shika moved around and studied the three tree men. At this time, Gen Yuzi's nose moved slightly, and she moved closer to one of the tree men, sniffing it like a puppy, with a puzzled look on her face: "This smell... so familiar..."

Fushimi Shika also sniffed, but smelled nothing. But he was used to it. Gen Yuzi had sharp senses, and people's physiques were really different.

"Can you smell what kind it is?" he jokingly said.

Yuan Yuzi didn't care. She frowned and thought about it for a while, comparing the taste with her memory, and finally came to a conclusion: "This is the tea made by Mrs. Kiko!"

"you sure?"

Fushimi Shika was a little upset because he had drunk the tea as well. He originally thought it was some kind of precious tea, but now it seemed that it was not the case...

Gen Yuzi sniffed it again, confirmed it again, and said, "Really, exactly the same! It's just that the tea brewed by Madam Kiko is a little stronger, and the smell of this doll is a little lighter..."

Hearing this, Fushimi Shika immediately scratched his throat and vomited out his dinner. Although the tea he drank in the morning must have turned into urine now, the dinner might not be clean either. Just in case, he vomited first, not caring about his appearance.

Gen Tamako was also very disgusted, but she felt that Princess Kiko would not harm them, and it was a bit embarrassing to vomit in someone else's pavilion, so she did not pick her throat.

Besides, maybe they just happen to smell the same? There are things in the world that smell the same...

But then she thought of Sherlock Holmes' famous words: there is no such thing as coincidence in this world, everything is the result of countless inevitable combinations... Thinking in this way, Mrs. Kiko is very suspicious. She clearly knows the source of the legend, but she has been hiding it.

For a moment, all kinds of speculations emerged in Yuan Yuzi's mind. She simply sat down by the pavilion, biting her thumb nail and thinking hard.

Seeing this, Fushimi Shika did not disturb her, but started knocking around the pavilion.

Listening to the knocking sounds, Yuan Yuzi suddenly had an idea and remembered the legend that Ono Xuan mentioned in the morning.

"Whenever the mountain rain soaks the Shuiqin Cave, if someone knocks on the pillars of the Yuyue Teahouse three times with a gilded tea ladle, the sound of tea grinding can be heard from underground."

"Twelve pale faces sat around drinking tea, the main seat was the vengeful spirit of Sutoku wearing a straight robe and a standing black hat."

……

"I understand!"

Yuan Yuzi took out a pen from her windbreaker pocket, lay on the ground, put her ear to the ground, and kept tapping the floor tiles with her pen. After listening carefully for a moment, she stood up again and tapped the column with her pen. She could only hear the faint sound of stones rolling and rubbing under the floor tiles.

"There's nothing under the gazebo!"

Yuan Yuzi's eyes lit up. This was her unique expression of excitement after solving the puzzle: "The sound of the water piano might be the sound of rainwater flowing back. The sudden rise in the water level might have triggered some mechanism, so the tree man appeared in the pavilion..."

Fushimi Shika also guessed this, but he couldn't prove it, after all, his ears weren't as good as Yuan Yuzi's. They were about to study it carefully when a piercing scream suddenly came from the lobby, breaking through the rainy night and sounding particularly shrill under the rumbling thunder.

(End of this chapter)