He remembered that when he came in from the toilet door, he happened to meet the man in black walking out the door. At that time, he had the bloody sharp knife on him.
The bathroom has no windows, and there is only one road leading here. In other words, if there were really corpses or wounded people, the bleeding person must have been in this bathroom at that time.
But……
Conan looked at the time on his watch. From the time he fainted to now, only a little over fifteen minutes had passed.
Such a short time was not enough to clean up the scene until there was no smell of blood at all.
Have the men in black never chopped anyone down?
But what's with all the fresh blood on the knife?
No matter how you think about it, the logic just doesn't make sense.
Conan pressed his temples, intending to reorganize his thoughts from the beginning, trying to guess what the purpose of the man in black was and whether he was still nearby.
But at this moment, a roar suddenly came from the distance outside. The sound seemed to be venting pain, hitting the corridor and spreading far away.
Conan was shocked, and his first reaction was that someone was committing murder.
But he also vaguely felt that the emotion contained in this roar was different from the screams he often heard.
…Perhaps it’s because this is an exhibition hall and the terrain is different, so the sound is affected by the corridor?
While thinking about it, people had already rushed over following the sound.
…
The mission was successfully completed and there was still some mask time left. Shiraishi was ready to leave the hell exhibition hall and disappear somewhere where the two of them could not see him.
After possessing the [Personal Mask] function, in addition to the initial attempts, Shiraishi also made some minor attempts later to learn more about it:
The [Mask] state can be activated up to 3 times per calendar day, and the cumulative time cannot exceed 30 minutes.
And even if it is not used up on the first day and there are a few minutes left, the countdown will still start from 00:29:59 on the second day - in other words, if it is not used that day, it is wasted.
Every time the status is turned on, there is 5 seconds of blur protection.
If within these 5 seconds, Shiraishi fails to find a suitable blind spot to appear, he will be unable to appear, and will be forced to return to his body, and one charge will be consumed.
Similarly, when you want to remove the mask, you cannot remove it normally if someone is staring at you. You can only force it to disappear by taking off the mask, or dragging it until [the mask] is available.
In this case, a cloud of smoke will explode around the white stone, hiding its whereabouts.
Of course, this is not without cost.
After trying it, when the Q version assistant held a calculator that was taller than her and showed Shiraishi the numbers on it, Shiraishi was shocked to realize that a large part of his meager savings had disappeared during the experiment - this was actually still
fee charge.
From then on, Shiraishi began to pay attention to various hidden locations and urged his employees to develop smoke bombs.
In addition to being stared at by others, when being photographed by a "surveillance probe that someone is watching" or a "surveillance probe that will save the image for a certain period of time", it cannot disappear directly.
...It is obviously a world with many souls floating around, but it still pays so much attention to maintaining the superficial "science".
And now, in the hell exhibition hall where Shiraishi is now, there is a camera installed.
So he planned to enter the short passage connecting the exhibition hall and the corridor and say goodbye in a low-key manner.
"Thank you." Just as he was about to turn the corner of the aisle, Boss Manaka suddenly said:
"Also, I may be rude to ask this, but...who are you?"
When asked this question, Shiraishi responded conditionedly: "You're welcome, I'm a red-collar worker..."
Having said this, he belatedly lowered his head and looked at himself.
——He was dressed in black from head to toe, and even the tie hanging in front of his neck was a pure black tie.
"..." He was silent for a moment, and then changed to a more descriptive word, "I am in black tie."
…
He turned the corner and was about to remove the mask when suddenly there was a "squeaking" sound from the front of him as rubber and marble rubbed against each other. A child's feet scraped the ground and he suddenly stopped in front of him as if he was drifting.
Shiraishi looked at Conan and clicked his tongue regretfully, thinking that it was only a few seconds away... he should have tied it up tighter just now.
Conan once again raised his anesthesia table out of habit.
He originally wanted to ask Shiraishi where he hid the wound, but before he spoke, he felt that he shouldn't be so arbitrary and should first ask what happened to the blood on the knife.
Unexpectedly, before a word was uttered, the man opposite suddenly showed a sneer, then he held the corner of the decorative curtain on the wall next to him, raised his hand, and blocked Conan's sight.
Shiraishi is extremely skilled in this action - when he was a child, he often used the curtains at home as a cloak and kept trying to find the most perfect swinging shape.
After breaking several curtains and receiving a few beatings, he was finally able to swing the curtains into a perfect arc, allowing them to circle around him, and then reveal the person, creating the effect of a shining entrance.
I didn't expect that it would actually come in handy now... It turns out that he has many skills but not too much.
The moment his whole body was covered by the curtain, Shiraishi released the mask mode and returned to his body.
——Although the same result can be achieved by hiding behind the curtain, that would be too cheap.
When you can be handsome, of course you still have to be more handsome...
Shiraishi's sudden move to raise the curtain made Conan in the corridor nervous.
He immediately grabbed a steel vase and put it under his feet, turned on the switch of the foot-strengthening shoes, and was ready to deal with it at any time.
However, under his unblinking gaze, the curtain quickly expanded from a cone shape. After shaking twice, it flattened against the wall again, making it so flat that no one could hide in it.
...disappeared again?
Conan walked over and touched it warily. The bottom of his hand was flat and hard, and it was indeed a wall.
He opened the curtain again, looked at the slightly yellowed wall behind, and groped for a secret passage.
…
When Conan was busy, in the exhibition hall separated by a wall.
"...black tie?"
Boss Manaka repeated it subconsciously, and was surprised by this weird and difficult-to-pronounce name.
He was afraid that he heard wrongly and wanted to confirm again, but the figure had already disappeared.
There was a voice from the side: "Idiot, how could someone be called Black Tie (クロネクタイ), it should be Black Cat (クロネコ)."
"..." Although the pronunciation is indeed similar, the black cat seems a bit too vulgar...
Boss Manaka looked at the old man next to him and suddenly remembered something. He whispered: "I seem to remember... Are you a little deaf?"
"What did you say?" Director Ochiai was not angry, it was purely a question.
After asking, he slapped Manaka on the uninjured shoulder: "Speak louder, man. Where did the momentum go when you were negotiating with me a while ago?"
Boss Zhenzhong just stood at attention: "I just said - you are right!"
When he regarded Director Ochiai as a cold father, he did dare to target the old man everywhere.
But now that he knew the truth... he felt guilty just like when he was young when he saw Director Ochiai.
Boss Manaka's volume this time made Director Ochiai nod with satisfaction.
The old man touched his beard with a nostalgic look:
"When I was in junior high school, a cartoon created by a senior in the school began to be serialized in the Asahi Daily. Influenced by him, we all started drawing in our spare time. We wanted to be like him and have our hard work published in famous newspapers and magazines, and be updated.
The more people see it, the more people recognize it.
"At that time, a hero named 'Black Cat' appeared in many people's stories - because there was a black stray cat in our school.
"Haha, even though it is a stray cat, it has always been mysterious and very particular. When feeding it, the food must be placed in a clean place. If you throw it on the ground casually, it will not even smell it.
"And every time we lose something and make a wish to find it, the wish will come true.
"Unfortunately, when I went back to look for it when I grew up, I realized that this mysterious creature in the school had disappeared for many years."
Speaking of this, Director Ochiai's eyes fell back on the large oil painting in front:
"I often feed it, but I have never made a wish to it. This time, perhaps it was because it remembered those meals of mine that it stopped my ridiculous actions before I made a big mistake."
"..." Boss Zhenzhong thought about it for a while, but no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't connect a living person as big as just now with a cat.
It is said that old people are like children. Director Ochiai's imagination is really as rich as that of a child... However, at such an old age, if he wants to think so, let him think about it.
After all, if even souls can exist, why can't cats become humans?
...Eh, wait a minute.
The name I just heard, is it black tie or black cat?
When Boss Zhenzhong was frowning and pondering this problem, a child's voice suddenly came from the door:
"Uncle, grandpa, who was the person who came out of here just now?"
Zhenzhong and Luo Luo were startled at the same time. They turned to look at the door and saw a little boy wearing glasses sticking his head out and looking at them innocently.
Facing children, Director Ochiai's expression and attitude became much kinder.
And now, he is very grateful to Shiraishi, feeling that since the other person reported his name so generously, he probably doesn't mind being known to the world.
I heard that many gods rely on faith to gain strength. I can help him promote it: "His name is Black Cat, and he is..."
Boss Manaka was afraid that he would say something like "He is a righteous cat that transformed into a human being", which would make the mysterious man unhappy, so he quickly added the second half of the sentence: "He is a great Onmyoji!"
Onmyoji? Conan became more and more confused.
He also thought that if he had to classify a profession, the man in black should be a magician - the kind who specializes in escaping and transforming living people.