Phantom Thief of Heart!but conan

Chapter 1099 The Lucky One

Silver bullet?
Vermouth lifted the ends of her hair.

The golden hair reflected a silvery-white texture under the light, like a handful of moonlight flowing into the palm of your hand.

"'Silver Bullet'... We all know its meaning, Gin. I think the boss might not be really afraid of a certain person."

Her gaze moved forward and fell on Gin's loose silver hair that was winding down on the seat.

Shuichi Akai's provocation must have angered Gin, and the repeated failures in his pursuit at the hands of the other party must have made Gin dissatisfied.

But Gin's strong desire to kill Shuichi Akai was definitely not just because the other party had defected.

Gin turned his head and glanced at Vodka with an extremely cold look. He closed his mouth tightly as if trying to pretend that he didn't exist, and glanced at Vermouth in the back seat.

"Even if you are relying on that adult's favor, you still have to be careful with some words."

"What's wrong? I wasn't the one who called Akai Shuichi the Silver Bullet."

"Shut up, Vermouth."

The following content cannot be told to outsiders. At least, people like Vodka who have not really touched the core secrets have no right to hear it.

Vermouth tilted her head, indifferent to Gin's warning, but she did not provoke him again.

Pampering? Maybe.

Those previous actions that took the initiative and exposed the organization's strength and resources had already caused a lot of losses to the organization. If someone else did the same thing, they would have been sent to hell by Gin a long time ago.

However, Vermouth knew very well how great the price of this "favor" was.

Just like Rum at this moment, he is extremely anxious about Curacao's disappearance, as if she is extremely important to him and is his right-hand man who cannot be given up. What is the truth?

She had no opinion of Curacao, nor did she think that Curacao would hold a grudge against her because of their past conflict, but deep down, she hoped that Curacao would not come back alive.

This is not hatred or a curse, but a blessing in Vermouth's view.

Back then, whether it was myself who decided to get rid of Curacao and pointed the gun at her when she was still a child, or Curacao who was pointed at by the gun, at that moment, it made no difference at all.

To some extent, she and Curacao are both people who have no control over their own lives and futures. They are like insects and ants covered in glass. At first glance, they seem to have no obstacles and are given sunshine and rain, but in fact they are completely dependent on others.

If given a choice, she believed that rather than returning to this glass cover, Curacao would definitely want to throw himself into a flame and leap into the gentle, indifferent moonlight.

I just don’t know where this annoying moonlight will shine.
----

"Well……"

After her eyelids trembled for a while, the silver-haired woman curled up on the hospital bed finally opened her eyes.

She felt a distinct sense of weakness in her limbs, and a faint pain spread from her abdomen. Her loose muscles and weak joints forced her to recall the last scene she saw before she closed her eyes.

The black-haired man standing at the head of her bed had a serious and stern expression. Before she could open her mouth to communicate with him, she was caught off guard and her arm was grabbed by him and injected with a needle...

So, was it a sedative? Or some kind of anesthetic?
After some effort, she finally slowly climbed up from the bed and had enough energy to observe her surroundings.

The dark-haired man with green eyes wasn't there, and she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when she realized that.

The room was dark and quiet without any lights on, and with her eyes adjusted to the light, she could only see the tiled grid on the ceiling and the curtains hanging around the windows and bed.

She just lay in this small enclosed space.

This is a hospital, and this is a ward.

For no reason, although she didn't know why she understood this, this thought popped into her mind the first time.

Am I sick? Or is there something wrong? Why am I in the hospital?
Who was that man I saw during the day? Why did he attack me? Or was I actually a patient, and I didn't even understand my condition, and that was a necessary treatment?
No, that's unlikely. I'm not a mental patient...

"really?"

"Of course. My logical thinking is clear. I...eh?"

The woman responded to the voice instinctively, and belatedly realized that the words just now were not her own thoughts or questions.

Looking up, the silver-haired woman stared blankly ahead.

The environment remained unchanged, but someone suddenly appeared in front of her bed.

...When did he appear? The curtains clearly didn't move, and I didn't hear any footsteps or the rubbing of fabrics.

The woman turned her head and shrank back warily.

She couldn't see the other person in the darkness, she could only catch a glimpse of a pair of golden eyes with a metallic luster.

"What's wrong? Are you thinking about why you are here? Do you have any disease?" The man standing at the head of the bed spoke again, his voice was the same as before, flat and indifferent, "Of course you are sick, ma'am. Think carefully, do you still remember who you are?"

"I, I am..." The silver-haired woman opened her mouth and reflexively wanted to spit out the name that came to her lips. She made some mouth shapes, but no sound came out.

Who am I? I should have a name.

Ku... I am... No, that's not right...

Frowning tightly, she tried her best to mobilize her brain and think hard.

After a while, she finally finished the second half of the sentence in a daze.

"I am Sonya..."

"Yes. You are Sonya. Do you remember why you were in the hospital?"

"No, I don't remember. So this is indeed a hospital? Am I sick?"

"Of course. Why would someone who's not sick be in a hospital?"

Faced with this question that was so obvious that it sounded a little stupid, Sonya pursed her lips and shook her head instinctively.

"Of course, healthy people will appear in the hospital." Sonya asked in confusion when she met those golden eyes, "Why else would you be here? Aren't we all the lucky ones who have been chosen?"

----

"Her memory has regressed to many years ago?"

Tang Ze, who was waiting in Hondou Eisuke's ward, looked at Hoshikawa Teru who came out from the shadows. When he got this unexpected answer, his brows suddenly turned gray.

Curacao's amnesia is a plot inertia, but also a shock caused by the potential mask's first contact with the cognitive world. Combined with the bombardment of the Pramia Palace at that time, it was not like the state of the human world at all, so Curacao's brain naturally crashed.

However, what was printed out in the end was not memory clearing, but data rollback, which was a bit unexpected.

"About how many years ago? Before joining the organization, or when you first joined?"

"When I first joined the organization, I guess." Hoshikawa Teru sat down on the empty bed and put his glasses back on his face. "She said her name was Sonya, and she assumed that I, who appeared there, was also the 'lucky one chosen'."

In order not to alert the FBI, he used his own abilities to travel back and forth between the two wards, so he used the form of the Phantom Thief Suit.

Now that he had turned back into his normal self, he put his glasses back on without even thinking, his movements even looking anxious and a little embarrassed.

Of course Tang Ze couldn't miss his move.

"Does her appearance remind you of the past?" Tang Ze did not ask about Curacao's condition, but followed his words and asked, "The past Curacao should be in a similar situation as you."

Curacao's problems are not difficult to solve.

It would not be difficult to gain her trust if she did not recover her memory. If she recovered her memory, she would only understand more deeply that Tang Ze and she were in the same camp, and it would be even less likely that she would do anything confrontational.

He asked Hoshikawa Teru to go beyond the FBI and find out about the situation in Curacao, just to avoid any problems tomorrow, so as to prevent her from interfering and affecting the big show on Akai Shuichi's side.

So compared to her, Tang Ze is now more concerned about Xingchuan Hui, who seems to be touched and emotionally unstable.

The hand holding the frame froze for a moment. Knowing that his disguise skills could not hide from Tang Ze's insight, Xingchuan Hui gave up and put down his hand and sighed.

He understood why Tang Ze asked so many questions, and he also understood that even if he resisted answering, Tang Ze would have plenty of ways to get the words out of him.

The fact that he still shows concern for others even when others are unwilling to do so is a rare quality in Tang Ze that Hoshikawa Teru is extremely resistant to.

"It's about the same, I think." Reluctantly, Xingchuan Hui answered slowly, "When I was first taken away, I also thought I was 'lucky'."

The first eighteen years of his life were quite dark.

Needless to say, Tunkou Shigehiko never treated him as his own child. Not only did he have no love for him, he even hated him so much that he wished he would die.

But before he was discovered by Shigehiko Tsuchiguchi, his life wasn't necessarily that good.

"My mother wasn't bad to me, but my life was just like that before I was ten." Perhaps because he had made a start, when faced with Tang Ze's further questioning, Xingchuan Hui shrugged his shoulders and spoke more fluently, "She came here illegally and doesn't speak Japanese. I was just an accident."

To Teru Hoshikawa, his mother was not a bad person, but just a poor woman who sold herself out due to the pressure of life.

He didn't know why she traveled across the ocean to this place to be the lover of a man with a wife and children, but seeing that she was not used to the life here and couldn't speak the language, it was not difficult to guess what happened behind the scenes.

"Human trafficking, underground transactions... the black industry in Eastern Europe is indeed very developed in this area." Tang Ze was well aware of the amount of information behind this short sentence, but he only mentioned it briefly.

Shigehiko Tsuguchi is a man full of bad habits, so it is not surprising that he is greedy for money and sex.

But he also has a sensitive identity. Not only is he a politician, but he is also a politician who relies on his wife's family to climb up the ladder. He cannot satisfy his desires through simple means.

At this time, a girl from a foreign country who couldn't even speak Japanese, was young and beautiful, had no other means of making a living, and had no channels to reveal his secrets to anyone. She was like a bird in a cage for him to enjoy. She was undoubtedly a perfect choice.

"Yeah, I think so. She didn't tell me that." Without saying anything more, Xingchuan Hui shook his head, "Her willingness to keep me is the most daring risk she can take."

The reasons behind this are hard to pin down.

Perhaps after escaping from Tōguchi Shigehiko, she lacked the means to make a living and had no money to do so. Or perhaps the girl from Eastern Europe was also an Orthodox Christian and could not easily terminate the pregnancy...

In short, Xingchuan Hui was born in an environment that was not suitable for raising children.

Even if he didn't elaborate, Tang Ze could roughly imagine what he looked like during that time.

His mother had no means of making a living, did not speak the language, and only knew a few daily conversations. It was difficult for her to support herself and him. It might have exhausted her energy to enable him to find a school and learn the basics of listening, speaking, reading and writing. We could no longer demand that she spend any effort in educating her child.

"When Tsuchiguchi Shigehiko found me and took me away, his attitude was very bad. It wasn't until he threw me into the organization's base that I realized he was my father. At first I thought my mother got into some trouble and I was taken away to pay off a debt or something..." Hoshikawa Teru laughed at himself twice, "So when I was first sent to the organization, I really thought I was lucky."

Of course, the organization is a den of wolves and tigers, but his purpose in the past was to undergo experiments, so naturally, basic food and clothing had to be guaranteed.

To have enough food to eat, a clean bed, and to sleep peacefully...

Compared to these things, not having the chance to continue going to school is really insignificant for a child who has a hard time surviving.

"Curaçao's situation may be a little more exaggerated than mine." Thinking of Curacao's expression in the dark just now, Xingchuan Hui couldn't even force out the mocking smile on the corner of his mouth. "She said her name was 'Sonia', and she didn't use the English pronunciation. She herself may be a child brought from somewhere else."

"Yeah." Tang Ze nodded, "In other words, she encountered a similar situation as you and underwent many experiments, but she showed some abilities during this period and was promoted by the organization."

But Xingchuan Hui didn't, and became a completely expendable cannon fodder.

He is probably in a similar position to the now-hardened Kusuda Rikumichi next door.

"I think I know why she lost her memory." Xingchuan Hui did not refute Tang Ze's statement, but just curled his lips, "She has been taking KA for too long. In fact, the situation is a bit similar to when you first saw me."

"What do you mean?" Tang Ze frowned, and the image of Tsunobuchi Shigehiko in the hall flashed through his mind in a very hellish way.

"KA series drugs will suppress people's emotions. You know its effects better than me." Xingchuan Hui glanced at Tang Ze meaningfully, "In order to ensure the stability of the user's state, it is often necessary to deliberately create a negative environment to maintain that inhumane emotional state. For example, a completely silent dark environment, a closed space, cold, noise..."

"Oh, that's what I mean." Tang Ze nodded suddenly.

When I first met Hoshikawa Teru, he found an intruder in his room. Instead of turning on the light, his first reaction was to raise his gun and shoot. It seems that this is not entirely an abnormality caused by long-term mental control.

This may be the most normal state for those who are being controlled.

"So, strong sound and light stimulation can easily cause problems for the user. She has experienced high-intensity physical activities, collisions, explosions, sound and light stimulation, plus, you know..." Xingchuan Hui tilted his head, "The part that I was most uncomfortable with was not being taken away from there, but seeing that hall."

Tang Ze, who suddenly appeared at Tunkou's house, did not appear out of nowhere, but took a shortcut to get there.

Of course, that shortcut belonged to Shigehiko Tsuguchi.

Since it is essentially a high-end nightclub and a place of debauchery, the hall of Shigehiko Tsuchiguchi is very light-polluted.

Gorgeous neon lights, bright environment, noisy music...

"I wasn't describing how I felt at the time. I was really about to vomit," concluded Teru Hoshikawa.

“…That’s what happened.”

"Ok?"

"I suddenly understand why some people can lose their memory just by looking at a shiny Ferris wheel..."

(End of this chapter)