"Dr. Asai, since we're here, let's do a check-up."
The gatekeeper, Keisuke Kumiko, pushed Ai behind him.
Ai was licking her lips while eating a cream ice cream.
Keisuke Kumiko had bought it for her on the way here. After all, she was like a little girl and wouldn't stop asking for food.
The sudden push almost made the ice cream hit her nose.
Ai rolled her eyes, wiped the cream off her nose, and spoke politely to Asai in a well-mannered child's voice.
"Hello, Aunt Asai. My name is Ai. Please guide me well."
"Good girl, this child is so cute."
The honest doctor patted Ai's head and then walked into the clinic's back room to prepare the tools for the physical examination.
"Sorry, I haven't cleaned up here for a while, so I might take a little longer."
Her voice came from inside.
After she left, Ai turned to look at Kumiko.
"Hey, why are you suddenly asking me to get a check-up? What does this mean?"
"Nothing, I'm just checking if your body is normal after shrinking." Kumiko said.
"Oh." Ai understood what Keisuke Kumiko meant. "I've already done it before, and I'm completely normal. The drug has no side effects other than making me smaller."
"Is that so?"
Keisuke Kumiko thought for a moment and then said:
"I have a question for you."
"Go ahead."
"Edogawa Conan and the people around him—do they know about the timeline confusion you mentioned?"
"Why are you suddenly asking this?"
"Just curious."
Kumiko pretended to be casual.
Of course, he had to be sure, because according to his speculations, this honest doctor might kill someone soon.
But Kumiko wasn't sure if this doctor would go through with her original plan if Conan didn't come here.
Keisuke Kumiko's trip was definitely not in vain.
One of his goals was to see if the doctor would commit murder.
If she ended up in a detention center, he certainly wouldn't miss the chance to make money.
After all, it's going to cost a lot of money, right?
"Of course Kudo doesn't know. He still thinks what he was injected with was just poison or a simple rejuvenation drug."
"Why didn't he take the medicine? How is it possible that he doesn't know?"
Slurp~ "You might have misunderstood a concept."
Ai looked at Keisuke Kumiko's curious expression and finished the ice cream in two or three bites.
Then, playfully imitating what Kumiko often did, she raised a finger and waved it gently.
"It's not the people who take the drug who know its true effects. Only those who have truly transcended the concept of time can understand the situation they are in."
She paused.
Then she continued.
"Do you know the 'brain in a vat' theory?"
"Of course, I do."
Keisuke Kumiko nodded.
The brain in a vat is a science fiction concept.
It means placing a brain in a nutrient solution so it can maintain basic physiological activity. Additionally, this brain has a certain level of consciousness and can think about the world like a normal brain.
If we introduce virtual elements into this brain, it might believe it exists in a virtual world.
This concept has led to many famous sci-fi works.
For example, The Matrix, Source Code, Inception, and even many Japanese manga, like Naruto's Infinite Tsukuyomi, also have this concept.
Now, it seems that the potion developed by the Black Organization is similar to this concept—everyone affected is unable to detect the changes in time.
"So far, has anyone escaped from this concept of time you mentioned?"
"Very few of us: my deceased parents and me. Also, the leader of the organization must know. I guess their direct descendants are involved as well. Now, you are one more."
Ai spoke lightly.
"Everyone believed we were developing a poison, including Edogawa Conan. Some knew it had a superficial rejuvenation effect, but only a few understood its true effect."
"Then how did you find out?" Keisuke Kumiko grew more curious.
By his reasoning, Ai was a mid-level member of the organization and shouldn't have known such fundamental secrets.
"It's simple. I experimented before."
Ai said.
"I studied based on the information my parents left behind. At one point, I was dissatisfied with how the organization was using the drug in human experiments—none of the test subjects could withstand the drug's effects. In the end, without exception, all of them exploded and died."
"So I took some guinea pigs and did my own experiments."
"In that experiment, all the mice died except for one, which unexpectedly regressed from an adult mouse to a juvenile form."
"I knew it was due to the drug's rejuvenation effect, so to gather more information, I started observing the mouse's state."
Life is cruel. The little white mouse had a short lifespan, and in the end, it died.
At the moment it died, the only person connected to it—Ai—suddenly realized that she had taken care of it for at least a year, but in normal time, only a few days had passed.
"That's when I understood the drug's true effects."
Keisuke Kumiko nodded.
What Ai said was basically what had happened in the original work.
Kumiko vaguely remembered that, in the Detective Conan anime from his past life, Ai had once said that the purpose of her research and drug development wasn't just to maintain eternal youth.
Moreover, Detective Conan's author, Gosho Aoyama, had also stated that the Black Organization's goal wasn't simply immortality.
Now, it seemed that in this real scientific world, the Black Organization might be playing a much bigger game, just as the original author hinted.
However, what exactly was happening had little to do with Kumiko at the moment.
Kumiko wasn't sure if he would have any future connections with the Black Organization. After all, he was now tied to Miyano Shiho, and Miyano Shiho had taken his surname and become the new Kumiko.
Maybe one day in the future, he would come face to face with the Black Organization.
But at least for now, he was safe.
Gin still hadn't found Ai, so there was no impact on him.
"Now that I think about it, if I kill you, would I be able to escape the time loop?"
As if joking, Kumiko looked at Ai's small body with bad intentions.
"After all, you just said that when the little white mouse died, you, the only person connected to it, realized there was a time issue. In other words, when the creature that took the drug dies, its relatives are freed."
"Oh? Are you going to do it?"
Ai straightened her flat chest.
Keisuke Kumiko smirked and suddenly asked, "Why did you give me all this information? What you said must be very important, right?"
"Oh, take a guess."
Ai tilted her head, her mischievous smile unchanged.
Kumiko didn't respond.
In his vision, he could see that the little girl's favorability and trust in him had reached an incredibly high level.
Although he didn't know why, she must trust him a lot.
It was a strange feeling.
In the past, Keisuke Kumiko had always been a loner and had never felt trusted by others.
"I just wanted to test you," Ai suddenly said.
(End of Chapter)