Masks

Busted Magician

flashback

- Saturday, 09.10 A.M. Haido City Hotel, Tokyo -

I didn't know that playing with a detective could become this dangerous. Well, I have come to a close call each time he presented himself in my heists, but I managed somehow.

But this time, we collided each other coincidentally. I was tailing my target when the robbery happened, and it turned out that my target was one of the robbers. Jii was a living proof of that entire mess, being one of the hostages himself at that time. I was curious when Jii said someone was wearing a disguise –a perfect one at that- and captured all the robbers. Not to mention he was able to manipulate all of them into his trap, including the Bank's officer (my target, actually) that turned out to be their accomplice. To top it off, Jii was sure that the said person managed to breach the Bank's security system, even though he wasn't sure how he did that. Not only he managed to safe all the hostages in time (amazingly, that included the robbers too) he also put the police into a wonder, when the one who came out of the mess was someone else. Somehow, I get the feeling that this case was deeper than what it seems.

When it comes to this high level of a game, I had someone in my head –someone who is capable to do all that alone- so I went to check him myself. But he wasn't there. He was nowhere to be found at that time. Edogawa Conan was not in the Bank. Instead, it was Subaru Okiya -based on what he claimed himself as- to be precise, someone who's in disguise and claimed to be Subaru Okiya.

I recalled he is the man that live in Kudou Shinichi's house (yes, I do the usual checking of some certain detective, anything related to my favorite critic would come in handy at a time, especially when I disguised myself as him; the taller him I mean, not the shrimp one) a mysterious man with perfect background; too perfect it become suspicious. It was as If he was born just in one day.

As a disguise master, I usually checked my target thoroughly so that there's no way someone could tell me from the real one. That's why in this line of work, I could spot the difference between the real identity and a made-up one; between a disguise and a real face. And Subaru Okiya was a made-up one, including his face and his personality. All of him was fake. A fake identity that's been created with a high level of maintenance, and with help from professionals. At least I know he is a fake, though I didn't know the purpose behind creating that fake identity. When it comes to him, there is always more to it than what it seems.

Later when I sneaked into TMPD (Tokyo Metro Police Department) in wonder who in the world that person was, and what really happened to my target as she went missing just like that, I bumped into Hattori Heiji -the Detective from the West- and that only made my presumption becomes clearer; that Kudou Shinichi was the one behind this. What I could get from the police was just a piece of the puzzles, not all of it presented. Or in this case, someone was deliberately trying to hold some of the crucial information, with a really well-made cover story.

I didn't mean to actually threat him or anything, I don't usually probe at some other person's business, too. But there is no way I would let it slip this time. Not after I finally able to locate my real target. It needed more than a year for me to be able to get the information of that woman. She was one of them, she was the one who issued my father's assassination. She was the one who recruit phantom thief in search of Pandora in the first place, and she was also one of them who killed him.

I trailed all of my father's movement based on the hints he left in his 'inheritance' and that's where I found the record of their conversation eight years ago.

The day before they killed him.

Her voice echoed in my mind since; cold and piercing like ice, with no hints of emotions. When my father found her weakness, she mercilessly told him she will kill him, along with the information he held about her. I don't have any idea what it was, but Dad had told her that he was willing to help her to protect it, because he also has someone important like she was. But she declined.