**Chapter 180: The Magician Enthusiasts Gathering**

When Fujino drove back from the crime scene, Sonoko and Ran had already been waiting at Café Poirot for a while.

Ran was wearing a mustard-colored sweater dress, with a black shirt underneath and a pink coat draped over her. Sonoko wore a green sweater, a black knee-length skirt, and a brown fuzzy coat, with black ankle socks wrapped around her legs.

"By the way, where did Amuro-san go?" 

As soon as Fujino entered the café, he overheard Sonoko asking in confusion.

"I haven't seen Amuro-san in a long time either," Ran said as she glanced around the café.

Hearing this, Fujino rubbed his chin and realized something.

It seemed he hadn't seen Toru Amuro in a long time either.

The last time he saw him was probably shortly after their encounter with Kaito Kuroba at the ski resort.

After thinking for a moment, he stepped forward and asked Azusa Enomoto, who was sweeping the floor: "Miss Enomoto, where's that waiter who looks like me? I haven't seen him around in a while."

Azusa, the waitress at Café Poirot, had long black hair, blue eyes, and a baby face, giving off a kind of big-sister-next-door vibe. She usually wore casual clothes with a white apron over them.

"Are you talking about Amuro-san, Fujino-kun?" Azusa thought for a moment. "He recently said he found a better-paying job, so he quit."

"Quit, huh?" Fujino rubbed his chin again.

So, the workaholic decided to stop working and leave? Did the organization give up investigating him? Fujino couldn't quite figure it out.

Given that they had even sent a truck to try to kill him and had Amuro Toru investigate him, it didn't seem like they would just let things end like this...

If they were the ones who had killed his parents, it wouldn't make sense for them to let him off so easily.

---

"Fujino, my boy, please take care of Ran," Kogoro Mouri whispered as he came up to Fujino before they left. "I can't relax with her going to a gathering with a bunch of strangers."

"Leave it to me."

"Thanks, Fujino." Kogoro Mouri patted Fujino on the shoulder.

"Ran! I want to go to the gathering too!" 

Just as Fujino was about to get in the car, Conan's soft voice called out.

Turning around, Fujino saw Conan acting weak and sick, trying to look pitiful.

"No way!" Kogoro Mouri walked over and picked Conan up. "You're already sick, and you still want to go out? Aren't you afraid of getting even sicker?"

Conan immediately threw a tantrum like a little kid, whining, "I don't care! I want to be with Ran! I want to go to the mountain villa and see the snow too!"

Fujino stood quietly to the side, recording the scene with his enhanced vision glasses.

Conan really looked like a sickly little elementary school kid, and not like he was faking it at all.

Maybe after pretending for so long, it became real?

Fujino thought about how, years from now, when he showed all the footage he'd recorded, Shinichi Kudo might just suffer a "social death" from embarrassment. He'd probably wake up in the middle of the night, scream "Damn!" and cringe at the memory.

"Dad, why don't we just let Conan come with us?" 

Ran, softhearted as ever, looked at the pitiful Conan and couldn't resist.

"You better not cause trouble for Ran." 

Seeing his daughter give in, Kogoro couldn't say much more and scolded Conan instead.

"But the snow..." 

Fujino glanced up at the dark sky.

Snowflakes were falling gently.

Before he knew it, winter had come again.

He could've sworn it was just summer a few days ago.

Well, that's the mystery world for you.

---

On the way to the mountain villa, Fujino, sitting in the driver's seat, looked back at the sickly Conan in the rear seat. "Conan, are you sick again?"

"He probably caught a cold when we went to Izu a few days ago," Ran explained. "He suddenly got sick last night after coming home from school."

Fujino glanced at Conan. Another cold?

Could this be some strange side effect of the APTX 4869 drug?

He remembered Conan had gotten sick the last time they went bowling too. The kid sure seemed to catch colds a lot.

Maybe he was cursed?

After all, Fujino had encountered some strange spiritual stuff before. Like the Soul Lotus.

The Soul Lotus was a rare item with powers far beyond normal reality. It even had a badge that could absorb the souls of the dead to enhance its power.

But as far as Fujino knew, this mystery world didn't have ghosts that could physically harm people.

And even if there were ghosts or spirits, they probably wouldn't mess with someone like Conan.

Any spirit that crossed paths with him was more likely to be scared off, given his knack for attracting death.

"Catching a cold and still coming to this gathering..." Sonoko complained from the back seat. "Why does this kid always cause trouble when he's sick?"

"Cough, cough..." Conan weakly coughed. "I'm just curious about magic, that's all."

Sonoko rolled her eyes at him and ignored him.

She pulled out a handkerchief, a red string, and a ring from her pocket and began performing a simple magic trick for Ran.

It was a trick where you cover the ring with the handkerchief and make it seem like the ring magically passes through the knotted red string.

Conan quickly saw through the trick.

"Ugh, this kid is so annoying!" Sonoko grumbled, putting away her magic props and crossing her arms.

"Don't take it to heart," Ran said with a laugh. "He's been grumpy ever since I said I was going to this magic gathering."

"Could he be jealous?" Fujino teased.

Conan's face, hidden under his mask, immediately turned red.

"Yeah, I think he might be." Sonoko nodded in agreement. "This kid seems to follow Ran everywhere. She's practically his nanny now."

"No way, he's just a little kid," Ran said, trying to change the subject with a smile. "But Sonoko, how did you get into magic all of a sudden?"

"Oh, it's because I met someone really amazing," Sonoko said, covering her face bashfully.

"Someone amazing?" Ran looked puzzled.

"Yeah, his name is Taku Daita. He's 21, and I met him in a chat room."

Sonoko blushed and smiled dreamily. "He's so polite and witty. Sometimes he even says things that are a bit bold. He's definitely an amazing guy..."

"An amazing guy," Fujino thought, imagining a certain fish-phobic boy peeping into a girls' locker room.

---

Soon, they arrived at the mountain villa.

Fujino was the first to get out and open the trunk.

"Are you sure it's okay for me to attend this gathering, even though I'm just a friend?" Ran asked as she stepped out of the car, sounding a bit unsure.

"Of course it's fine!" Sonoko smiled mischievously. "I told them I was bringing my 'girlfriend,' so they totally agreed."

"G-girlfriend?!" Ran's face turned bright red as she looked at Sonoko, swallowing nervously.

"Actually, I'm pretending to be a guy in the chat room," Sonoko laughed, breaking Ran's wild train of thought.

"But didn't your real name, Sonoko Suzuki, give you away immediately?" Ran asked, still confused.

"Of course not! We all use screen names in the chat room," Sonoko explained. "My username is 'Apprentice of the Magician,' and Taku Daita's username is 'Red Herring.'"

She then glanced at Fujino, who was unloading the trunk. "Oh, by the way, Fujino's hidden identity in the chat room is a middle-aged office worker named Sun Xiaochuan."

"Sun Xiaochuan?" Ran looked at Fujino with a strange expression.

"It's just a cover," Fujino said casually.

Fujino cleared his throat, grabbed his travel bag from the trunk, and then looked at the location for their gathering: the agreed-upon mountain villa.

The villa had three stories and was made of wood. Surrounding it was a forest of coniferous trees, with snow weighing down the pines, which still stood tall and straight.

In front of the villa was a wooden suspension bridge.

The sight of the bridge reminded Fujino of a previous villa at Sonoko's house.

Both had wooden suspension bridges and were nestled in mountain forests.

These rich people really have some odd hobbies.

After crossing the bridge, Fujino and his group arrived at the front door of the villa.

After ringing the doorbell, a middle-aged man with kind eyes, dressed in a brown sweater and blue pants, opened the door.

"You must be the magician's apprentice, right?" the man asked with a smile, instantly recognizing Sonoko's identity.

"I am, but..." Sonoko looked confused. "How did you know I'm a girl?"

"Just from the way you speak," the man chuckled. "You obviously look like a girl, but you're trying to act like an old man."

He then turned to a man and a woman standing in the entryway and asked, "Right?"

"Yeah," answered the woman, who had round glasses, a single ponytail, and wore a red dress with black stockings. Her pure voice carried a slight mature tone as she laughed. "I can't help but giggle every time I see her pretending like that."

"Same here," chimed in the man next to her, dressed in a white suit.

Hearing that, Sonoko blushed deeply, almost embarrassed enough for steam to rise off her face.

"So, I take it this is the 'girlfriend' you mentioned?" the woman with glasses asked, looking at Fujino, finding him vaguely familiar but not giving it much thought.

"No, no," Sonoko waved her hands, still blushing. "He's actually a member of our chatroom."

She then pulled a girl, Ran, forward. "This is the friend I brought."

"A chatroom member?" The woman looked surprised. "Wait, don't tell me he's that guy you brought into the chat a while back—Sun Xiaochuan?"

"Sun Xiaochuan?" A woman's voice interrupted.

A woman with a mature appearance, dressed in a light blue sweater and a dark blue skirt, walked over. She had a beauty mark on the corner of her mouth near her chin. She looked surprised. "I always thought Sun Xiaochuan was some middle-aged office guy. I didn't expect him to be so young."

"You did a good job of pretending too, Ms. Tanaka," the man in the white suit teased.

"If you ask me, you're the best at pretending," the woman with glasses said to the man in the suit. "I always thought you were a woman. Who knew you were a guy? And I even discussed lingerie and perfume with you! How infuriating."

"Hey, you can't blame me. You're the one who brought it up!" he replied.

As the group laughed and teased one another, they began introducing themselves.

The woman with glasses introduced herself as Naoko Kuroda, username "Phantom." The more mature-looking woman was Kikue Tanaka, username "Ikasama Child," and the man in the suit was Riya Hamano, username "Vanished Panny."

Yes, Hamano was one of the two people who had been trash-talking Fujino online just a few days ago.

As for the middle-aged man, his name was Yoshinori Ara, username "Silent Ventriloquist," and he was the one whose child was a fan of Fujino the detective.

It was he who had provided the villa for their gathering.

Besides them, there was also a man dressed in black.

This man wasn't part of the chat group; he had been hired by Ara to work for this event.

"Ahem," Fujino cleared his throat. "Hello, everyone. I'm Sun Xiaochuan, real name Fujino."

Damn it, that username still annoys me. I should have picked something else.

Ashimoto Reeds... maybe that would've worked.

"Fujino... You're not *the* detective Fujino, are you?" Naoko Kuroda murmured in surprise before her eyes lit up with excitement. "I thought you just looked like him, but it's really you!"

"Detective?" Kikue Tanaka froze for a moment, her expression stiffening, though the tension quickly disappeared.

"Just call me Fujino," he said, waving his hand, but his eyes lingered on Kikue Tanaka, narrowing slightly.

"Well, that explains why Suzuki spoke so highly of Detective Fujino," Naoko suddenly quipped, turning to Hamano. "Didn't someone here give a long-winded critique of Detective Fujino in the chat recently?"

"Uh..." Hamano's face twisted awkwardly. "I didn't know he was in the chatroom at the time."

Question: What do you do when, after trash-talking someone online, you meet in real life, only to find out they're the one who single-handedly took down a criminal gang?

Urgent!

"Haha, no worries," Fujino smiled slightly, pronouncing each word clearly. "Ignorance is no crime."

"That expression..." Conan watched the fake smile on Fujino's face and shivered, as bad memories flooded back.

He knew Fujino's style well.

It was the type where Fujino wouldn't confront you head-on but would stab you in the back later.

There wasn't a single "pure" bone in his body.

Conan had suffered from it himself.

Thinking of this, he looked at Hamano with deep sympathy.

"By the way, where's Doi... Red Herring?" Sonoko suddenly asked after scanning the area. "He's not here yet, is he?"

"He's already here, just upstairs unpacking," Ara pointed toward the upper floor.

Footsteps sounded as a chubby man in a blue hoodie descended the wooden stairs.

(End of Chapter)

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