(Double Chap)
BONUS CHAPTER 3-4
Pisco suddenly understood.
Gin wasn't the type to make jokes during a mission—if he said something, it meant the mistake really happened. That camera flash in the banquet hall earlier hadn't been for some "alternate angle" slideshow like the host claimed. It had captured the scene where Pisco pointed a gun at the chandelier.
And that photo had reached the organization.
Cold sweat instantly beaded across Pisco's forehead. In the Black Organization, secrecy was sacred. Getting caught on camera committing murder?
That was how you ended up like Senator Nomiguchi: dead under a chandelier.
But… Pisco didn't want to die.
His mind raced. He forced a smile and spread his hands, trying to sound gentle and reasonable:
"Come on, Gin. You know I've always been loyal. If I really am exposed, I'll abandon this identity and go undercover elsewhere. Plus, if you kill me now, you'll never find Sherry. I know who rescued her. Give me a chance to atone, and I'll bring her back tonight."
Of course, Pisco wasn't naive.
He knew full well that getting caught on camera mid-murder was a capital offense. Even if he caught Sherry, his days were numbered. He was old, worn down, a fading cadre. This was just a delay tactic. If Gin gave him even a sliver of leeway, he'd use the pursuit of Sherry to spark some chaos and escape.
But even that plan needed some finesse.
Pisco hesitated. Should he tell Gin that Sherry had shrunk?
That piece of information was gold. He didn't want to share it.
Pisco, after all, was a wealthy type who lived in the light, far from the likes of Gin. He only knew Gin's reputation—relentless, efficient, always either working or heading to a job.
In other words: the ideal company man.
And company men loved racking up merit.
What if Gin heard the truth, shot him on the spot, and then reported the discovery of "Sherry has become a child" as his own? That would be it for Pisco—both his life and his credit stolen in a flash.
But if he kept quiet, then his value wasn't obvious. The organization might think, "If even Pisco could find her, why haven't we?" and just shoot him for incompetence.
He was trapped in a difficult situation: every route led to death.
His wrinkled eyes twitched. No option seemed safer than the others.
Then, at the edge of his vision, he caught a flicker of movement at the door.
Someone was peeking in.
The profile looked familiar—was that… Jiangxia?
Pisco stiffened in shock, then immediately perked up.
A third party! One more element of chaos!
And based on Gin's earlier message telling him not to provoke Jiangxia, this kid was someone even Gin found troublesome.
Perfect.
Pisco didn't think. He seized the moment and pointed at the door, blurting out, "It's him! He's the one who rescued Sherry!"
…Of course, he knew Jiangxia hadn't done that. The kid had been with him the whole time.
But he also knew this accusation would definitely catch Gin's attention.
Now Jiangxia wasn't just a guy Gin didn't like—he was a witness. A threat. A problem to be eliminated before Pisco.
It was a flawless setup.
…Except Gin didn't turn around.
He kept his gun fixed on Pisco, suspicious.
Pisco still had a weapon in hand. Gin figured the "witness" line was just a cheap trick to distract him.
Then, Vodka's startled voice came from behind.
"Why is he here?!"
...Wait—there really was someone?
Gin disarmed Pisco first, then finally turned to look.
And there was Ouzo—leaning casually against the doorframe, half-peeking into the wine cellar.
"So dramatic," Jiangxia said, eyeing Pisco with a look of hurt betrayal. "What, just because your sneak attack failed and I tossed you aside a little too hard, now you're smearing my name? We were interrogated by the police together, remember? You know exactly how little time I had to do anything. Now you're out here slinging baseless accusations just to wriggle out of trouble?"
Jiangxia had just arrived. He'd caught Pisco's panicked attempt to pin the Sherry escape on him and figured he'd better speak up quickly—before Gin bought into it.
Especially with Conan and Haibara Ai already gone, there was a real risk Gin might hesitate on the kill. If Gin didn't think Pisco had truly failed, he might not eliminate him tonight.
So Jiangxia stepped forward to stir the pot personally.
Pisco watched Jiangxia enter the wine cellar of his own free will and grew excited.
Naive kid. Caught peeking, then walked in to confront the villain with love and justice. Another self-sacrificing bear child.
But as Jiangxia kept talking, Pisco slowly realized something was wrong.
Jiangxia had just called "rescuing Sherry" a slander. Like… saving her was a bad thing?
That wasn't very "Detective Conan protagonist" of him.
Also—why weren't Gin and Vodka attacking?
Even if they didn't want to kill Jiangxia right away, they should be interrogating him, right?
Pisco felt Gin's gun still steady on his own head.
And Jiangxia?
Smiling calmly. Completely unbothered.
Something was off.
His whole body broke out in cold sweat, shirt soaked. A wave of fear rolled through him.
The brief flicker of suspicion from earlier resurfaced—and bloomed.
He stared hard at Jiangxia. His voice rasped, dry and cracking with disbelief. "You're…"
"That's right," Jiangxia interrupted, nodding solemnly. "I'm the generous benefactor who slipped you that extra purple commemorative handkerchief. Without me, you'd still be stuck in a police holding room. You're welcome."
"???"
Pisco almost exploded.
Are you kidding me?!
You are a member of the organization!
"Then why did you still—!"
Bang.
Gin pulled the trigger.
No hesitation.
Photographed mid-murder. Failed to complete the mission. Needed Ouzo's help to escape police custody. And even now, he was trying to mislead Gin with false intel in a desperate bid to escape.
Truly worthless.
Letting him live was an insult to the organization.
The gunshot was muffled. Blood sprayed from Pisco's forehead and out the back of his skull. He collapsed, face twisted in a grimace. His limbs twitched once, then fell still.
With Pisco's death, the wave of killing intent that had been directed at Jiangxia vanished.
On the ground, Senator Nomiguchi's ghostly shikigami, which had been riding that intent like a boat, lost its anchor. It flopped to the floor.
The mermaid, who'd been waiting nearby to scoop up stray killing intent like it was a designer purse on clearance, pounced instantly and clutched it tight.
Jiangxia ignored the mermaid, the shikigami, and even the now-useless killing intent.
His eyes were locked on Pisco's body.
After a moment, a thin, pale soul emerged from the corpse—translucent, drifting, hesitant.
The spirit floated toward Gin, as if compelled.
But the closer it got, the more it trembled.
Finally, after brushing against Gin's pant leg with a visible shudder, the ghost zipped back toward Pisco's body at lightning speed.
It clung to the corpse, unmoving.
Like a shikigami reattaching to its spiritual USB port.
"…"
—
Jiangxia stared silently, the light in his eyes dimming.
…Not a ghost embryo. Just a shikigami.
Although this one was slightly braver than most, it was still just a run-of-the-mill shikigami.
Ghost embryos were different from clingy leg-shikigami. Shikigami had almost no residual intellect—only obsessive instincts. They loathed the people who killed them, clinging to their corpses like spiritual barnacles. To collect a shikigami properly, one had to punish its murderer.
But ghost embryos? Entirely different species. They retained many "human" traits. You could trick them, bluff them, pressure them, tempt them—morally dubious, sure, but very effective. If you tried hard enough, there was always a way to abduct one.
Jiangxia had assumed that if Pisco was elite enough to become a ghost embryo, he might disguise himself, throw a sack over Gin, whack him a bit symbolically, and trick the ghost with some light coercion. Soft and hard tactics in one elegant package.
But now, only a shikigami had dropped.
Jiangxia's hopeful heart sank to rock bottom. His desire to scam ghosts evaporated instantly.
…First Tequila, now Pisco. Neither dropped a ghost.
Could it be that code-named members of the organization had a much lower chance of ghost-embryo formation than he'd assumed?
Ugh. What a useless organization. Jiangxia narrowed his eyes darkly, muttering villainously in his heart. It felt like he should be cracking his knuckles ominously… but with people nearby, it didn't seem appropriate for a mature adult.
He sighed, glancing at Gin—who was still leaking a massive amount of killing intent—and couldn't help but take another long look at his superior's terrifying aura.
Then he thought of Vermouth. And the very promising boss. And Miyano Akemi, who was probably also from the organization...
Jiangxia sighed again and quietly took back his earlier insult.
…Forget it. At least the organization had consistent killing intent. Even if they were useless in life, they were solid suppliers of ghost-farming targets after death.
In the wine cellar, Vodka was smashing wine bottles nearby, intentionally targeting high-proof spirits like Spirytus. He was prepping the place for arson.
Jiangxia's hand, dangling at his side, subtly lifted. He lazily stroked the thickening killing intent floating beside him.
He was just about to mentally yell at the ghosts to work faster when a shadow loomed in front of him.
—Gin had half-turned, and his gun was aimed at Jiangxia again.
Jiangxia froze, instantly releasing the drifting killing intent. His face instinctively shifted into a flawless "innocent and confused" expression.
Gin's finger hovered on the trigger, his other hand absently flipping a box of matches. His tone was low and edged with suspicion.
"You were under police watch, cut off from all comms. You never saw the photo of someone shooting. So how did you know Pisco wasn't going to make it?"
…Unless Pisco's death had been entirely Ouzo's doing.
Even if not, Ouzo clearly knew about the photo—and had chosen not to act on it.
"…" Jiangxia paused—just barely. He had wanted Pisco's ghost drop for so long that he'd kind of taken it for granted…
Beside him, Vodka's bottle-smashing paused.
Then, with the subtle excitement of a loyal gossip watching his friend finally get caught cheating, Vodka looked over with an expression that screamed "I knew it!" He silently prayed Gin would get mad enough to shoot.
But the beautiful sound of a gunshot never came.
Instead, Gin glanced over at Vodka and coldly ordered, "Do your job."
"O-oh!" Vodka flinched and resumed smashing bottles with extra vigor, but also strained his ears toward the conversation.
Jiangxia finally spoke, to Vodka's disappointment. And he wasn't flustered or ashamed—in fact, he was infuriatingly calm:
"I overheard you in the hallway."
Gin frowned slightly.
He was habitually cautious. Before entering the wine cellar, he had checked the hallway and confirmed it was empty. And he'd only mentioned the reporter and the photo to Pisco after they entered. If Jiangxia had overheard that, he'd have had to sprint to catch up—but there'd been no footsteps.
…Unless his footsteps had been drowned out by the noise from the room above, where people were still milling about, chatting. Jiangxia was unnaturally quiet when he moved.
More importantly, Gin began to recall his own habits.
He never wasted time chatting with doomed targets like Pisco. Normally, it was just: extract info, shoot, leave.
He'd only bothered with banter because he'd spent half the night freezing on the rooftop, and after letting go of a long-sought prey, he needed a little psychological decompression. So he'd stayed to watch Pisco's expressions go from confused to horrified to pleading.
...If that hadn't happened, there would've been no photo mention at all for Jiangxia to overhear.
Which meant Jiangxia's story was plausible.
And had it been a lie, he could've come up with something harder to disprove—like claiming he'd gotten the intel from friendly police after Pisco left. But instead, he chose the riskier, simpler explanation.
That sort of brazenness was actually kind of credible.
Gin lowered his gun.
At the same time, he thought—somewhat indifferently—that even if Jiangxia had been behind Pisco's death, it wouldn't really be a problem.
After all, the fact that Pisco died so easily proved just how incompetent he was. If he'd been even slightly more cautious—destroyed the negatives, carried the handkerchief, paid attention to his surroundings—he wouldn't have fallen for anyone's trap, Jiangxia's or otherwise.
In the end, it was Pisco's own incompetence.
A man who lived off the organization's resources, survived by its connections, and spent decades climbing to his position… but contributed nothing of worth. Worse, he was even rumored to be trying to whitewash the next generation.
Gin's eyes darkened. The more he thought about it, the more Pisco's death felt like something the boss might've actually wanted.
There were plenty of urgent tasks tonight. Yet the boss had immediately ordered Pisco's elimination the moment the photo surfaced. And oddly enough, for such a critical operation—the assassination of Senator Nomiguchi—Pisco had been assigned to act alone. Meanwhile, younger, stronger cadres were relegated to minor cleanup work.
...Suspicious.
Gin cut off the thought trail. Overthinking wasn't necessary. He had a job to finish.
Next to him, the alcohol had already flooded the floor. The strong smell of spirits filled the air, rapidly evaporating.
Gin raised a hand, gesturing for Jiangxia and Vodka to leave.
He followed them out, struck a match, and tossed it into the wine cellar.
A moment later, a massive fire erupted, swallowing half the room like a furious beast. The flames spread fast, roaring like a hurricane.
Behind them, the heat surged—relentless and purifying.
*Goal #1: Top 200 fanfics published within the last 31 - 90 days by POWER STONES.
Progress: 8/60(approx) for 10 BONUS CHAPTERS
Goal #2: One BONUS CHAPTER per review for the first 10 REVIEWS.
Progress:3/10*