At 5:53 p.m. on Monday, the Māori Detective Agency was still open and an ordinary car was parked on the street opposite the office.

The two men sat in the car and looked in the direction of the Maori Detective Agency, which they were FBI plainclothes agents who had come to spy on the Maori Detective Agency.

Underneath the car, the manhole cover covered in the shadow by the car was suddenly jacked up, and one hand pushed the manhole cover aside, and then knocked on the car's turf.

The agents in the car seemed to be prepared for this, and immediately pulled the rear seats back to the maximum, and then opened a lid under the car, which was located just above the well.

"I'm here for a shift change," Akai Shuichi stepped on the bulge in the well, grabbed the outstretched hand of the detective in the car with both hands and climbed into the car.

Although they have a system of six shifts and three shifts (six shifts and three shifts, that is, each person works 8 hours and then rests for 40 hours). But the two agents on duty do not change shifts at the same point in time, but are staggered by four hours from each other. One of the agents had a shift change of 2 a.m., 10 a.m., and 6 p.m. (this is Shuichi Akai's shift). The other agent was six in the morning, two in the afternoon, and ten in the evening (this is Judy's shift)

"Haven't they come out yet?" Shuichi Akai and the agent who was about to leave work asked.

"Still hasn't come out," the agent shook his head. "They stayed at home all day today."

"Staying home all day?" Shuichi Akai frowned. "Didn't you even take out the garbage? Are you sure they're really home? ”

"Didn't pour." The agent continued to shake his head. "But we confirmed that they were home, at least that Maori Kogoro sat in front of the glass for an afternoon."

………… At the same time, within the Maori Detective Agency.

"How long are you going to sit here?" Mori Kogoro sat on a chair, playing video games, and said boredly.

"I'm bored too," said Mao Lilan, who was wearing only a black short-sleeved shirt on his upper body and a pair of hot pants on his lower body, and kept punching at a black sandbag hanging from the office. "But at least stay here until eight o'clock before you can go upstairs, otherwise it will be different from Mr. Maori and Miss Xiaolan's schedule—it will be seen as abnormal."

The two of them are not the real Mori Kogoro and Mori Ran (the real thing has been invited away by Yukiko Kudo), but the shadows sent by Officer Twilight.

Kogoro Mori is played by Officer Takagi, while Mori is played by Officer Sato – their almost authentic makeup is the work of Yukiko Kudo.

However, even if the makeup can be fake, it is obvious that the acting ability of Takagi and Sato will not be able to reproduce Mori Kogoro and Mori Ran to life, so they try to reduce the time they spend with the outside world as much as possible, and even hang a sign at the door of the office that they will close.

Just then, the office's doorbell rang.

“？” Takagi and Sato were stunned at the same time, and looked at the door in surprise.

"Hello," said politely Shuichi Akai, who was wearing a mask and barely visible from the outside, outside the door. "Is the Maori detective here?"

"We're resting today," Officer Takagi had prepared for this, took out a cassette tape, put it into the tape recorder next to him, and Mori Kogoro's voice rang out. "Come back in a few days."

"What did you say?" Shuichi Akai pretended not to hear clearly and asked again.

"Today we are resting," Officer Takagi played again. "Come back in a few days."

Outside the door of "......", the corners of Shuichi Akai's mouth under the mask were slightly hooked, and then he left.

……………………

"What?" The agent was stunned. "Got dropped?"

"Hmm," Akai Shu nodded, who was walking on the road. "Whoever is in there, it must be a fake."

The reason why Akai Shuichi pretended that he didn't hear clearly just now was because he wanted to be able to get Mori Kogoro to say the same sentence twice.

And the two answers he heard were exactly the same in tone and at the same speed - if they were really real people, there would have been a subtle difference anyway.

So the sentence just now must not have come from the mouth of Mori Kogoro, but from a recording device that can only mechanically repeat the previously recorded sentences.

"Let's remove the surveillance first," Akai added after a moment's thought. "If you keep going, you're just being teased by those guys."

A few minutes later, the sedan started up and hurried away, leaving behind a manhole cover that had been re-covered.

Under the manhole cover, a man in a black suit breathed a sigh of relief, then said to the air as if he was mentally ill.

"Mr. Fujiwara, I'm done."

Underneath the chassis of the departing sedan, a small black patch was glowing faintly red.

……………………

At the same time, Tachibana House.

"Meow~" The cat adopted by Qianyu and Gray Yuan Ai wore a collar and climbed into the orange house. The collar was very tight, and it had been deeply cut into the cat's flesh, creating a deep depression - this collar was not worn by Qianyu or Gray Yuanai: Qianyu would not wear such a thing for cats, and Gray Yuan Ai would not wear the collar so tightly.

Not far away, a man wearing sunglasses, a mask, but shorts and short sleeves held a radio direction finder in his hand and headphones in his ear, slowly pacing forward.

Soon, the man turned his gaze to the orange house, where the radio direction finder showed the cat.

The man walked around the orange house to confirm this, and he took out the phone.

"Hey, Chief, we've got it."

"Good work," the young man (Hotaru's brother) smiled approvingly across the phone. After hanging up, he was visibly smugly lying on the back of his armchair. "I've found you, Icewine!"

The previous attempts to search for the homes of Chiba and the others ended in failure due to the mismatch between Chiba and the others' anti-reconnaissance consciousness and the doorcode and the surname of the householder, and then Hotaru came up with this solution after hearing them discuss the problems they are currently facing.

The cat roams the neighborhood during the day and runs back to Chiba's house during dinnertime. So as long as you find the cat's whereabouts during the day and track it, you can get the specific address of the orange house at night.

Although Qianyu is not at home now, as long as he comes back, he will fall into the net of the police department, and even if he inserts his wings, he will not be able to escape this fate.

"Find a craftsman in the middle of the night to pry his mailbox open and see if there are any valuable clues inside." The young man dialed the man again. "Then try to see if you can break into the house with the lock."