I am in Mihua, and the ladies all like me

Serabelle put down the car and said, "So you called me anxiously to ask me to come over and tell me something important happened. What was it?"

"Oh, that's it."

Conan slapped his forehead when he was reminded that he didn't rush back in such a hurry just to drink tea.

"Do you know a man named Itakura Taku?"

Itakura Taku?

Serabelle didn't know.

So he also asked back: "Then do you know a man named John Riccitiello?"

"…I don't know, who is that?"

Conan was stunned by the question.

Serabelle looked at him disdainfully. "He's a Class A war criminal, the former CEO of EA, and currently the CEO of Unity. Not long ago, he announced that any game made with the Unity engine will have to pay him for every download that reaches a certain number of times. In other words, you can bankrupt your competitor's company by repeatedly downloading and installing the game. This is called cyber witchcraft, and it's much more effective than stabbing a villain."

"Oh……"

Conan nodded blankly to show that he understood, then blinked rapidly.

"No, why are you telling me this? I have nothing to do with him!"

"That's fine, isn't it?" Serabelle shrugged. "If I randomly give you a name, you'll be confused. So if you randomly give me a name, do you think I'll know it? And is this person famous?"

"Famous... not really." Conan considered his words carefully, "But he is indeed a very capable programmer, a game developer. According to my speculation, he may have been threatened by the Black Organization to develop a software."

"Oh, so he was the victim of the winery. So where is this Itakura Taku now?"

"Mortuary..."

"?"

Serabelle's eyes gradually became surprised.

"Although I have always thought that your ability to control radio waves is incredible, I never thought that you can now control radio waves not only with living people, but also with dead people?"

"How is that possible? It's all because of Uncle Maori..."

Conan took some time to sort out the cause and effect.

To put it simply, this programmer named Itakura Taku is capable but he is a slow learner and has severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. He took orders from three companies at once during the same period, but disappeared when the deadline was approaching. So, by coincidence, people from the three companies all thought of asking Uncle Maori to find This Itakura Taku.

Of course, they found it, but the person was already dead.

Afterwards, of course, the real murderer was accurately caught through reasoning and an anesthetic needle in the classic three-choice game, and the news about the Black Organization was accidentally discovered by Conan in the diary stored in Itakura Taku's laptop.

As for why she could go out with Uncle Maori to solve cases even though she had to go to school on a weekday, don't ask. The answer is that first-grade students finish school early. (In fact, high school students also finish school early, otherwise they would have no time to participate in club activities and would go home for dinner.)

"I copied down all the contents of the diary. They are all in here."

Conan pulled out a square thing from his tightly wrapped coat.

Serabelle took it and flipped through it, immediately revealing a look of surprise.

"Floppy disk? Why is Japan still using this thing?"

"Probably... because it's safe."

Conan scratched his head.

That's right, although computer information technology has advanced countless times in the past two decades, many Japanese government agencies and even commercial companies are still using the oldest floppy disks to store information.

Although this thing has a small capacity, slow reading and writing speed, and is not very durable, it is precisely because of its surprisingly small capacity that most viruses do not even have space to be installed, making it an absolute defense at the physical level.

"Mom, could you please help me get the computer upstairs? I remember we have an old laptop that can read floppy disks."

Conan said as he turned to the older girl sitting on the sofa on the other side.

"no problem."

Yukiko maintained her perfect smile, nodded, put down her teacup, and stood up.

Her steps were not big, but they were not small steps either. She just walked a little slowly.

However, when Yukiko arrived at the spiral staircase in the living room and was about to go up to the second floor, she suddenly paused when one foot stepped on the step.

"What's wrong, Mom?" Conan noticed that something was wrong with her.

"...Um, it's okay. I just can't remember where I put it."

Yukiko shook her head as usual and continued to walk up step by step.

Conan didn't doubt it, he said "oh" and looked away.

He didn't notice that every time Yukiko took a step up, an unknown liquid would slowly flow down the inside of her ankle, leaving a small, shiny stain on the steps under her feet.

Chapter 314 Your father has been replaced!

About ten minutes later, Yukiko came down from upstairs holding a notebook, along with a floppy disk reader/writer placed on top of the notebook.

"Why did you take so long to come down? You're so slow, mom~"

Conan couldn't help but complain.

But as soon as he finished speaking, Yukiko rolled her eyes.

"Xin-chan, how dare you say that if you don't go and look for it yourself? This is an old thing from many years ago. Besides, I wasn't the one using it before. This is your father's computer. God knows where he kept it. I had to search for it for a long time before I finally found it in the desk cabinet in the study."

"Oh……"

When the topic of his father came up, Conan immediately wilted.

He still knew some of the reasons why his dear mother came back from the United States.

It was nothing more than that his father, who couldn't resist the temptation, was dragged by a female fan to drink and didn't come back until midnight. According to Yukiko, he was drunk all over, his clothes were messy, and there were lipstick marks on his shirt collar and neck.

You can imagine what happened.

But after all, he is his own father. After thinking it over again and again, Conan decided to muster up the courage to help find out the answer.

He took the computer handed to him by Yukiko and asked casually while connecting it to the power supply.

"Um...so, Mom, when are you planning on returning to the United States? It's about time you reconciled with Dad, right?"

"reconcile?"

Yukiko narrowed her beautiful eyes and snorted coldly.

"I would never reconcile with him. If it wasn't for the fact that it was already midnight and he was so drunk that he couldn't sign the contract, he would have divorced me that day and come back... Well, it doesn't matter. If he dares to come to Japan, I will divorce him there!"

Conan "..."

It's been so long, but it seems like you're still angry.

It turns out that an angry woman is the most terrifying.

Soon, the laptop's power supply and floppy disk reader were connected, but it took a long time to start up. The main reason was that it had not been turned on for a few years. When it was Kudo Yusaku's office computer, he used it every day, but after going to the United States, it was basically left idle at home, and only opened when Kudo Shinichi occasionally needed to look up information.

It's a miracle that it can be opened after such a long time.

It took about five or six minutes to load, and then the classic and retro Windows 2000 desktop appeared on the screen.

"Oh, it's open!"

Conan was so excited that he was about to put the floppy disk into the reader/writer.

Fortunately, Serabelle stopped him in time.

"Stop, you've never used this old computer before, if you let it do other work now, it will freeze."

"Oh, that's right."

His childhood memories were evoked, and Conan quickly stopped.

The three of them waited quietly for a while, and when they estimated that the system programs were almost all loaded and the computer returned to a low-load state, Conan put the floppy disk into the reader/writer.

It is still a slow loading process.

An operation that can be completed within two minutes on any modern entry-level gaming computer took as long as ten minutes on this antique.

Finally, the notepad in the floppy disk was opened.

"Look, two years ago... two years ago..."

Conan moved the mouse to the diary to about 80% of the total progress bar, and read the text above.

"On March 7, a guy with a Kansai accent suddenly came to the company to look for me. I think his purpose was to get the software I was developing. But when he found out that my eyesight had seriously deteriorated, he gave up the idea and walked away. This guy was wrapped in black clothes, and I didn't want to see him again... and then..."

He turned the pages as he read, but after a while he did not see any mention of the man in black.

Conan's originally expectant expression suddenly deflated.

"Hey, what's going on? I thought I could find something in his diary, but there's nothing at all at the end."

"It's normal that there's no content." Yukiko joined in the fun, "According to what you said, Shin-chan, doesn't everyone in that organization exude an ominous aura? Ordinary people definitely don't want to have anything to do with them, so it makes sense that there's no follow-up."

"That's what I said..."

"Wait a minute, something's not right."

Serabelle stared at the diary scrolling down the screen for a long time, and suddenly hissed.

He pointed at the screen.

"I remember you said that the programmer named Itakura Taku was a patient with advanced obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the number of lines between each entry in his diary is different. If I'm not mistaken—"

Serabelle took the mouse from Conan and clicked the left button to frame the blank space between the diaries.

The selected rows turned into a dark blue background to show that they were selected, and white Japanese characters appeared on top of the background.

"this is……!"

Conan was stunned for a moment.

That’s right, due to functional limitations and the immaturity of the program, only the font color changing function was available at that time. The function of changing the background to any other color was not released until later, so the background color was white by default.

(Although the author's family used Windows 98 when he was a child, it is not clear when this font color change function was released. I just said it this way, and you can just listen to it.)

In other words, as long as the font color is changed to white, it will be impossible to be seen under normal circumstances.

Serabelle read the white words that appeared in the discolored background behind the frame.

"March 16. Today, the pen on the table moved another five centimeters."

"Someone broke into my house again today, April 15, but the police didn't accept the report at all."

"On June 11, I changed the door locks and installed surveillance cameras, but it still didn't work."

"July 6th, who is it? Stand up!"

"August 19th. I'm tired. I'll be killed sooner or later if I keep going like this."

"On November 6, in order to end this day of fear, I put a piece of paper in the drawer to express my feelings to the intruder and told him that I would accept any conditions."

"On November 8, I didn't expect him to reply to me so quickly. He wrote on my note that if I could complete the software within a year, not only would this terrifying life end, but he would also give me a large sum of money."

"On November 13, I switched to email communication with them. They said they could send the down payment first and stop showing up around me. I accepted the offer."

"On October 9, I couldn't continue. In fact, the reason I gave up was not entirely because of my worsening eyesight, but mainly for the welfare of all mankind."

"On October 23, the deadline they gave me was approaching, I put the unfinished software and the deposit check on the computer desk in the villa deep in the mountains of Gunma, planning to escape and live in seclusion abroad."

After reading the last paragraph, Serabelle stroked her chin.

"Today is October 27th, and the deadline for delivery has not yet arrived. The winery has also promised that Itakura Taku will not appear around him again, which means that they should not have received the news that Itakura Taku is lying in the morgue. In other words, if we go to Gunma Itakura Taku's villa now, maybe we can get the software that the winery commissioned him to develop?"

Chapter 315 Conan: I'm Just an Accident

As far as Serabelle could remember, he had never been to Kudo's house twice in one day.

But I did it today.

Serabel left the Kudo residence at around five in the evening, returned home, had dinner with Akai Mari and Sera Masumi who had just returned from school, and then set off for Beika Town.

As winter approaches, it gets dark earlier and earlier. In the past, it was still bright at 6:30 in the summer, but now it is completely dark and the deep night sky seems like 10 o'clock in the evening.

Fortunately, as a famous wealthy area in Tokyo, Beikacho has quite good infrastructure construction such as street lights.

When he arrived, the lights were still on in the windows of Kudo's house, and Conan was standing at the door of the villa with an expressionless face. White mist floated out of his mouth and nose with his breathing, and for some reason he was carrying a schoolbag on his back.