Having finally enjoyed a few days of leisure, Bai Yexiu was woken up one morning by Gin's relentless chain of calls.
Judging by his schedule, he had spent the past few days pulling shifts worthy of a model worker, so he should have been given even more downtime now. For Gin to call him at this hour meant there was probably some sudden assignment.
Naturally, Bai Yexiu wanted nothing to do with it; he only felt that Gin had shattered his sweet slumber.
Wrapped in his blanket with sleep-heavy eyes and a slurred voice, he muttered, "What is it now... Gin, don't you know that underage members need plenty of sleep? ...Ah—choo—"
"It's an emergency mission," Gin went straight to the point, completely ignoring whether he was awake or not.
"There's a surveillance job. The target's file has been sent to your email. Today, he's going to a restaurant to meet an Organization member. Though we don't know who is meeting him, whoever it is must be a mole. I'm busy right now, so you should know what to do."
After meticulously spelling out the details, Gin gave him zero room for refusal and hung up right then and there.
Forced to take on the mission, Bai Yexiu thought: "..."
He was still on vacation, for goodness' sake...
Reluctantly, Bai Yexiu dragged himself out of bed, feeling a surge of resentment. Given the chance, sooner or later he would take down this organization that treated people like sweatshop laborers.
Then again, those were just the venting thoughts of an exploited underling. If the Organization went down, his source of income would vanish with it.
So, he still had to do the dirty work...
Quietly accepting reality, Bai Yexiu changed his clothes, put on a disguise, and headed straight out.
On his way, he pulled out his phone to review the target's file.
He found that the Organization's Intelligence Division was reliable as always, having dug up even the target's personal quirks, complete with photos.
Skipping past the decidedly NSFW photo, Bai Yexiu successfully located the target's email address and sent over a virus program. He had developed this program himself a few years ago just for fun, but later discovered its wonderful utility in missions, so he had continued using it ever since.
The virus program could parasitize an inbox; regardless of whether the recipient opened the email or not, once the parasitization was complete, the sender could track the target's phone via the backend to pinpoint their location, acting essentially as a remote transmitter.
A Bai Yexiu original: Organization members who used it all swore by it.
Logging into the backend, he saw the target's little red dot moving rapidly along a Shinkansen route on the map, coming to a halt at Beika Station a minute later.
Checking the time, Bai Yexiu figured it was still early, so he decided to slack off at a sushi restaurant and only head out when the target was about to arrive at the restaurant.
Extremely satisfied with his upcoming itinerary, Bai Yexiu walked into a roadside sushi restaurant with a smile.
Years of experience had long since perfected his art of slacking off—he knew how to loaf around without getting caught, when to do it at the right moment, and how to do it openly so that even his boss would have no grounds for blame...
Twenty minutes later, Bai Yexiu walked out of the sushi restaurant, wiped the corner of his mouth, and pulled out his phone to check the target's coordinates.
Hurrying along while keeping his eyes glued to the target's movements on his phone, Bai Yexiu failed to notice a chubby boy hurtling toward him at high speed.
"Genta! Watch out, someone's in front!"
"Big brother, look out!"
Thud!
Bai Yexiu managed to steady himself just in time. Had his reflexes not been so good, he probably would have been knocked straight onto his backside by this heavy impact.
It seems walking while looking at your phone is still a bad idea... especially with a small knife clipped to your waist like that.
If not for that sudden collision, he would have completely forgotten about the knife still strapped to his belt. In that situation, with the blade still right there at his waist, did he even want to keep his kidneys?
Mentally chastising himself, Bai Yexiu glanced down at the culprit standing right in front of him: "You okay?"
At that moment, a boy and a girl among the kids bowed solemnly toward Bai Yexiu: "We're so sorry!!"
Looking into the distance, a familiar figure made Bai Yexiu freeze.
Isn't that fake kid over there?
Conan came running over in a breathless rush, not even looking at who was there as he bowed deeply to Bai Yexiu as well: "I'm sorry!"
When the fake kid raised his head and realized it was someone he actually knew, he froze too: "Brother Ryuzawa?"
Bai Yexiu hadn't forgotten that he was still wearing Ryuzawa Ryuya's disguise. He reached out and ruffled the fake kid's hair: "Haven't seen you in days, and the first thing you do is call me brother?"
If not for politeness, if not for keeping up appearances, who'd call you brother...
Conan gave his classic half-moon eye.
"Eh? Is someone Conan knows?"
One of the girls asked. Bai Yexiu looked over at her: "You could say that."
Looking at the child before him, Bai Yexiu felt a sudden, inexplicable sense of familiarity, yet he knew full well he didn't know any of these kids other than Conan.
As he looked at this group that felt so intimately familiar to him, five words flashed through his mind: Junior Detective League.
This sudden flash of keywords left Bai Yexiu momentarily stunned.
Before he could dwell on it further, however, his peripheral vision locked onto a familiar sight: the target.
Suddenly turning his head, Bai Yexiu saw the man walk into a restaurant by the side of the road.
Looking at the group of children who gave him such a strong sense of familiarity, Bai Yexiu decided to execute a double-tap: interrogate this bunch of kids while keeping an eye on that target.
"How about big brother treats you all to something?" Bai Yexiu put on a kindly smile. Conan's expression shifted, and just as he was about to refuse, the actual children eagerly snapped up the invitation.
Watching Bai Yexiu lead a bunch of kids forward toward the restaurant, Conan felt those spine-chilling words from the other day resurface in his mind.
Come to think of it, this Ryuzawa didn't seem to have any malicious intent; maybe he was just overthinking it. Yes, he must be overthinking it...
The fake kid self-hypnotized as he ran to catch up with his companions ahead.
At the dining table, the others tucked into the delicious food, while Bai Yexiu had no room left in his stomach for anything else and simply sipped his juice.
He had eaten too much sushi earlier, and his stomach was still full.
The fake kid asked with a puzzled look: "Ara ara? Aren't you eating with us, Brother Ryuzawa?"
"I ate beforehand," Bai Yexiu replied evasively while keeping his eyes on the target, completely unbothered by Conan's probing.
"Then why did Brother Ryuzawa treat us to dinner?" Conan immediately pressed on. But before Bai Yexiu could answer, Kojima Genta beside him threw a punch right at him: "Conan, why are you asking so many questions?"
This successfully diverted Conan's attention away.
"It's fine, I don't mind," Bai Yexiu said, looking at Conan with a benign smile.
Conan's expression changed yet again—that feeling made it seem like he was about to be silenced in the next second...
Bai Yexiu paid no attention to Conan's chameleon-like complexion changes as he kept watch on the target and chatted idly with the children.
At that moment, an Asian man walked into the shop and headed straight for the surveillance target. Recalling briefly, Bai Yexiu remembered this person's codename was XYZ Cocktail; he had seen him before on the list of resident members in the UK branch.
A resident member from the UK—what would he be doing in Tokyo out of the blue, unless it was an unexpected situation like his own, or else... he was a mole.
After talking with XYZ Cocktail for a few minutes, the target made his move—he strode right out of the restaurant doors.
Not good!
Bai Yexiu stood up, pulled a banknote from his pocket, and left it on the table: "Pay for yourselves, keep the change. I just remembered I have an urgent matter."
With that, Bai Yexiu also strode out of the restaurant, looking as though he genuinely had somewhere critical to be.
Gin's remark about "you should know what to do" implied that this person could be eliminated directly without needing to stage any "accidents."
Lurking in an alley, Bai Yexiu waited for the right moment and yanked XYZ Cocktail into the alley as he passed by.
XYZ Cocktail felt a powerful force grab him by the back of the collar, and the next thing he knew, his entire body was airborne. Before he could react, he found himself slammed hard onto the ground, landing squarely on his backside.
Immediately afterward, a foot pinned down his chest, and the muzzle of a handgun was pressed directly against his forehead.
When he saw who the assailant was, XYZ Cocktail was thunderstruck:
The person who had subdued him—a teenager who looked like a middle school student—was gazing at him with a gentle expression.
?!
Before he could recover from his shock, Bai Yexiu shoved his phone right in front of his face so he could clearly read the two words Gin had sent: Obliterate.
"Farewell then, Mr. Mole." Watching the terror in the man's eyes, Bai Yexiu smiled and pulled the trigger.
After dealing with the person, Bai Yexiu sent an email to the nearby peripheral members, instructing them to come and handle the cleanup.
Because it was difficult for Bai Yexiu alone to carry the corpse of an adult—unless he had a sack, he could barely drag it for a short distance—and since he had neither subordinates nor a partner working missions with him, he had no choice but to call nearby peripheral or codenamed members to handle body disposal tasks like this.
On his way home, Bai Yexiu couldn't help pondering his conversation with that group of kids at the restaurant earlier. It should have been his first time seeing any of those children except Conan, so how could he feel so familiar with them? Even before they stated their names, he had already known who they were—it was practically metaphysical.
Could it be that he had awakened something extraordinary?
Yet Bai Yexiu still suspected whether he might have lost some memories; otherwise, how could he understand that group of kids so thoroughly on a first meeting?
With that thought, Bai Yexiu placed a call to the Boss; there were some questions he needed to ask.
"Hello? Father, I have a few questions I'd like to ask you."
...