Chapter 59
“I just saw her!”
“She can’t have run far. Look again.”
“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! I’ll call for backup right away. She won’t get away.”
“Front-page headline, here I come!”
What a terrible group of people, An’an complained internally. Getting on the front page is so easy. She could think of many headlines in the blink of an eye: <Shocking! The Bizarre Case of the Missing Paparazzi>, <The Vanished Paparazzi: What They Did in the Hour Before They Disappeared>, <What Goes Around Comes Around: The Despicable Deeds of the Deceased>…
Miss An: The secret to going viral, easily handled.jpg
Come to think of it, giving an interview wasn’t a big deal. So what if the paparazzi’s questions were sharp? Suspect An was the kind of person who treated the Metropolitan Police Department’s interrogation room like her own home. She had nothing left to fear.
Even being surrounded by paparazzi would be better than her current situation.
Awkward.
There was nothing but awkwardness. The narrow storage closet could barely fit two people. Even the slightest rise and fall of their chests would result in physical contact.
An’an was already pressed against the door, the tips of their shoes touching on the floor.
Through the door, the sounds of the paparazzi walking and talking were clearly audible. It was obvious the storage closet’s soundproofing was terrible. The slightest sound, and they would be caught.
Silence. It was hard to say if they were forced to be silent because of the environment, or if the two of them simply had nothing to say.
The air in the storage closet was thin, and wearing a mask was suffocating. The girl tried to endure it for a few minutes, then gave up and took off her mask and hood.
The girl’s long, cascading hair fell to her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed a stuffy red, and the air she exhaled was warm and humid.
It made it difficult to look away.
Furuya Rei was silent for a long time before he said in a low voice, “Maybe you should put the mask back on.”
He had broken the silence. An’an subconsciously replied, her voice a whisper, “Why? It’s so stuffy with the mask on.”
Did he want to suffocate her to death? Her ex-boyfriend had such a venomous heart!
Because they were too close, Furuya Rei uncomfortably turned his head away.
The scene before him could only be described as vividly sensual, easily pulling him back into the memories of that day.
It hadn’t been that long, but their relationship had changed drastically.
At such a close distance, in the past, he could have pulled the girl into his arms and smelled the sweet fragrance in her hair.
The door panel behind her was so hard and cold. An’an pouted. In the past, she would have buried her head in the blond young man’s chest and righteously demanded to be held and comforted.
The two of them stood there, frozen.
Holding a single posture for a long time makes one’s body ache. An’an tried to shift her weight from her right foot to her left.
She accidentally kicked Furuya’s ankle. An’an immediately said, “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Furuya said, staring at the whorl of hair on the girl’s head, a bitter taste in his mouth. Have we grown so distant that we have to be polite about such a small thing?
An’an’s feet no longer ached, but her long hair, which had been messed up by the hood, was now being disobedient, brushing against the tip of her nose, an itch that was impossible to ignore.
She cautiously compared the narrow distance between herself and the blond young man and came to a conclusion: if she wanted to raise her hand to brush the stray hair aside, her hand would have to travel all the way from her ex-boyfriend’s lower abdomen to his chest.
The paparazzi were right outside the door. What little innocence she had left would be instantly destroyed.
The girl’s gaze shifted back and forth. Furuya followed her gaze and immediately deduced An’an’s current predicament.
An unsolvable problem. Because if Furuya wanted to help her brush away the disobedient stray hair, the path his hand would have to take would be no different from An’an’s, and even more ambiguous.
For an ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend, it was far too out of line.
No one dared to move. An’an frantically shook her head, trying to dislodge the stray hair with the force of her head alone. Unfortunately, hair and head are one and the same. The girl’s attempt was a spectacular failure, and she earned a “dizzy and seeing double” debuff.
Furuya Rei: “Pfft!”
He hadn’t meant to laugh, but An’an’s dizzy, spiral eyes were really funny. She looked so pitiful.
“Need some help?” he asked.
An’an hesitated. “Your hand… isn’t it a bit inconvenient?”
“I won’t use my hand,” Furuya said.
He lowered his head and blew gently.
A tiny puff of air brushed away the mischievous stray hair. The dark-haired girl subconsciously closed her eyes.
Their breaths mingled together. She licked her lips, leaving a glistening trail of moisture.
What a perfect environment for a kiss. The narrow storage closet forcibly shortened the distance between them, and the poor soundproofing made speaking a taboo. It would be better to let their breaths be swallowed by their lips, to be rolled and swallowed down their throats.
“…Alright,” Furuya said, his voice slightly hoarse.
An’an opened her eyes. The distance between them had been widened again.
“Thank you,” she said in a low voice.
After this, the atmosphere was no longer awkward, but it was even more unbearable than awkwardness.
Every time their eyes met, it was like a spark of static electricity, a long and drawn-out mutual torment.
This is so weird, An’an thought. So weird.
Haven’t we already broken up? Isn’t there a saying that ex-lovers meet like enemies, their eyes red with anger? What’s with this atmosphere overflowing with pink bubbles?
Then again, why was he at the hotel?
“For detective work,” Furuya explained. “Conan is also here. Sleeping Kogoro is at the death scene, deducing the real culprit. I saw a large group of paparazzi gathered downstairs and came to check it out.”
He had seen the girl running in a hurry from a distance and had, without thinking, hidden her in the concealed storage closet.
“I’m just here for work,” Furuya emphasized. “Nothing else.”
“I see,” An’an said, a little uncomfortable. “I was just asking casually. You don’t need to explain to me.”
“I wanted to say it myself,” Furuya replied. “An’an can just listen casually.”
Since he had said it like that, the girl was at a loss for words. She changed the subject. “I wonder when we can get out.”
Furuya: “When Sleeping Kogoro has solved the case and Inspector Megure is leaving with the culprit, they will definitely disperse the crowd. We can take the opportunity to leave then.”
He said it so lightly. The hotel was quite a distance from Beika Town. An’an couldn’t get back easily.
This was the trouble of being a celebrity. She would probably have to hitch a ride in the suspect’s police car.
Furuya: “I drove here.”
The girl gave a noncommittal “oh.”
Furuya had to be more direct. “I can give you a ride back.”
No need to feel burdened. After all, they were really going the same way.
“That’s not a good idea,” An’an shook her head. “I don’t know where to sit.”
The passenger seat was not for an ex-girlfriend. Sitting in the back would be like treating her ex-boyfriend as a driver. After much thought, she could only sit on the roof of the car.
An’an: Wouldn’t that be even more conspicuous?
It’s a crime to be so prone to making headlines. She just wanted to live a peaceful life.
“How about you lend me the car to drive?” An’an had a flash of inspiration. “I don’t mind being your driver.”
“As long as you don’t mind me driving without a license.”
A driver’s license? An’an had never even taken the test.
With her skilled tractor-driving skills back home, it wouldn’t be a problem. She could even fly an Osprey.
Furuya tactfully refused, on the grounds that driving without a license would lead to detention.
The dark-haired girl looked at him strangely for a long time.
“I’ve been wanting to ask,” she paused. “You like to read the criminal law to me as a bedtime story, and you have a critical attitude towards driving without a license. Why do you do that job?”
Furuya Rei, the outstanding police academy graduate, was speechless. “…”
This was hard to explain.
“A person’s true face is often not what the public knows,” the blond young man said lightly. “You’ve seen Bourbon with your own eyes. Are you doubting your own eyes?”
Bourbon was like a taboo word, breaking the ambiguous atmosphere. The atmosphere cooled down.
“My eyesight is very good,” An’an said, staring at the tips of her shoes. “Compared to Bourbon whisky, plum wine is much better.”
Furuya was suddenly reminded of that night. The night wind blew through the corridor, and the scent of plum blossoms had taken his breath away. The girl who had brought the floral scent was smiling at another man.
“Speaking of which,” Furuya asked, pretending not to care. “What kind of person is An’an’s distant cousin?”
Hiro? An’an thought for a moment and said truthfully, “A very good person.”
“Very yasashii, very good at taking care of people, and his cooking is first-rate. Besides not dipping his dumplings in vinegar, he has no flaws.”
Furuya listened to her praise with a cold face.
Is he that good? he thought critically. Then why was An’an left alone in the hotel?
She had almost been caught by the paparazzi. She had clearly not been protected well.
An’an was still praising her “distant cousin.” Furuya didn’t want to listen anymore. He wanted to shut her mouth.
He should have kissed her just now. It wasn’t too late now. It would be a shame to waste such a perfect environment.
The blond young man’s thoughts were like boiling water, his romantic jealousy and possessiveness on full display.
An’an couldn’t smell the vinegar in the air. She was really grateful to Hiromitsu and had accidentally praised him a few more times.
If it weren’t for Mentor Scotch’s comfort and companionship, the breakup period would definitely have been much harder to bear.
Withdrawal is very difficult… and it’s easy to have unrealistic illusions.
For example, right now, An’an had thought several times that he would kiss her, and had mentally rehearsed several response plans.
The storage closet was deadly narrow. It was definitely impossible to push him away. So it wasn’t that she had no backbone and deliberately didn’t resist. It was the environment that didn’t allow it.
When a person wants to find an excuse, there are always countless reasons.
The two people in the storage closet had different thoughts. Not a single one was thinking about how to get away from the paparazzi and leave the hotel.
This problem, which should have been the top priority, was tacitly ignored by the ex-couple.
So much so that neither An’an nor Furuya had noticed that the corridor was already silent.
Sleeping Kogoro had, as expected, once again solved the classic “pick one of three” problem. Even though the undercover Public Security officer who had said he was here to help was nowhere to be found, the great detective still loudly proclaimed his famous line: The scheming frog keeps touching your belly! The culprit is you—Mr. Fan Ren!
(T/N: Another pun. “Fan Ren” means “criminal,” a different character from the uncle.)
Amidst the repentant saxophone music, Fan An’s real distant cousin, Mr. Fan Ren, knelt on the ground and cried.
Inspector Megure, while comforting him with “Don’t cry, learn from your distant cousin. She’s so calm,” put handcuffs on the culprit. A large group of people left the hotel.
The wailing police cars took away the suspect and the paparazzi, who had been ordered to leave by the hotel manager. The hotel returned to its usual peace.
The door to the storage closet was integrated with the hotel wall.
If you didn’t look closely, it would be difficult to find the flaw in the wallpaper pattern. You would just think it was an ordinary wall.
A guest passing by the corridor gave a strange look at the young man “facing the wall in contemplation.”
Hiromitsu, bathed in the suspicious gazes of others, was speechless. “…”
The paparazzi had been gone for almost half an hour. My two friends behind the wall, how long are you planning on staying in there?