"What was that girl doing?"

"I don't know, but it was so creepy, right?"

"Yeah…"

The passing high school students' hushed conversation caught Conan's attention as he and the Detective Boys walked on their way to Agasa-hakase's house. It had been an especially boring day, going over elementary-level education was beginning to become nearly unbearable, and there hadn't been any cases in a while. He always happened upon odd or strange things that somehow led to something else, and if someone was acting strangely, perhaps there was a good reason. A reason that may be interesting enough to spice up the pure monotony of existing and waiting for any new information on the Organization. At this thought, he glanced over at the girl walking beside him. Apparently, she noticed, and their eyes quickly met.

"What?" She asked, annoyed. Haibara didn't necessarily enjoy elementary, either. She did, however, seem to find it more amusing to discover ways of exploiting their surroundings and situations to further make him suffer.

"Eh, nothing. Just thinking." She raised an eyebrow.

"About what?" He couldn't tell what kind of intention lurked behind the words – if she were genuinely curious or was waiting to find a way to tick him off.

"About…" He stopped himself, looking away. Saying "about you," would certainly imply something he didn't intend. Conan mentally sighed, appreciative of his brain for closing his mouth in time to catch the error before it occurred. Now Haibara was glaring, though, because he had simply trailed off and left her hanging.

"About what?" She asked again, a bit more adamant and an angrier tone to her voice.

"School, about school." He answered quickly, trying to get her to de-escalate. Before she could retort (it appeared she was just more annoyed by his anti-climactic answer), the three actual elementary students stopped, causing both shrunken individuals to nearly run into them.

"Um…" Ayumi's voice came first.

"Is that nee-chan… dancing? Like a bird?" Genta's question rung out next, loud as ever.

"Shh! She could hear you…" Mitsuhiko pushed at Genta's arm while hushing his friend. Conan and Haibara peered around the children.

A young woman, a foreigner, stood not far away. Well, she was actually going in circles, but at a speed in which one might pace back and forth. Her lips were moving, and she was muttering something to herself. Her head kept tilting upward, her eyes taking quick glances around her and then up at the sky. She was rolling her wrists and shaking her hands out beside her, her fingers outstretched. Conan's brows furrowed.

Haibara's eyes were locked on the person who had clearly become quite the spectacle. Most people were hurriedly passing by, refusing to make eye contact or staying huddled with their small group of friends, whispering to each other while maintaining plenty of distance. Typical, really.

"Is that onee-san okay?" Ayumi asked, turning in toward the group. Haibara smiled gently at her inquiry. Nothing like how she'd regard Conan, of course, he thought snidely to himself, not quite having moved on from the earlier incident.

"She's probably scared or upset right now. It looks like she's alone and no one is helping her." With that, Haibara stepped forward, slowly approaching the young woman. Conan followed, leaving the other three to trail behind. Haibara put her arm out as a signal for them to stop.

"Excuse me? Do you need help?" the young scientist asked, her voice soft.

The young woman's flighty actions didn't stop, only changed in response. She faced Haibara, her arms now pulled in toward herself, flicking her fingers against her thumb while one foot shifted against the pavement. She open and shut her eyes a few times, shaking her head a bit, as if she were trying to focus.

"I… I don't… I'm sorry. I don't know what to do." The foreigner responded, to the mild surprise of the listeners, who were anticipating more of a language barrier.

"Start by taking a deep breath." Haibara instructed calmly. The young woman nodded and shakily pushed her mid-length, dark brown hair from her face. She took a breath, held it, then let it go. When she opened her eyes to look again at Haibara, they widened considerably, and she gasped.

"You're- I'm- We're-" The beginnings of sentences that didn't make any sense further confused Genta, who had been watching the interaction with a growing inability to keep his thoughts to himself.

"What's up with this nee-chan?" He asked loudly. Mitsuhiko immediately went in on reprimanding him again.

"This can't be real!" Haibara flinched a bit at the young woman's sudden outburst, as she dropped to the ground, now eye level with the children. Conan was beginning to think that making a call to the police to come collect this person may not be the worst idea if they couldn't just lead her to a police box.

"What can't be real?" Haibara asked tentatively, trying to work out what exactly she was dealing with. The woman in front of her grabbed a handful of her own hair at her scalp and stared. Suddenly, her demeanor dropped, as if suddenly the energy she just had simply evaporated. Her eyes moved from Haibara to Conan, then to the children.

"The Detective Boys, right?" She asked. Conan and Haibara exchanged looks.

"Yeah! But how do you know that?" Mitsuhiko asked, excited to be recognized. The woman tipped her head far to the side, touching her ear to her shoulder.

"I just do." She snapped her head back to an upright position. "This has got to be a dream, right?" Her fingers pushed against the pavement, then dragged back and forth, as if verifying the feeling. Her eyes narrowed. "But I thought you wouldn't be able to feel pain…" She muttered absentmindedly. She then scrunched up her face. "What to do now…"

"Anyway, is there somewhere you need help finding, onee-san? Perhaps we can take you to a police box and they can help you if you're lost." Conan spoke up, noticing that Haibara had withdrawn a bit with the seeming recognition coming from this erratic individual.

"I think you can help me." She replied, a smile growing on her face. "I'm looking for Agasa Hiroshi. I'm his relative and I came to surprise him!" Conan clenched his teeth at this, an uneasy feeling rising up in his stomach. Hakase did tend to know a lot of random people somehow through distant relatives, but something about this seemed rather off. Haibara tensed, beginning to fear the situation.

"Sorry-" Conan began, but Genta's voice overpowered his.

"Oh, Hakase? We were just going to his house! I didn't know he had any other foreign relatives besides Haibara." Conan wondered if he could go back in time and shut the overweight kid's mouth. The foreigner's face lit up.

"Yes! That's fantastic! Can we go together, then?" The woman popped back up to a standing position and bounced slightly up and down.

"Yeah! This onee-san's funny!" Ayumi said, giggling.

"I don't know that Hakase will enjoy such a surprise. Perhaps we should call-" Haibara's voice, much more tense than before, cut through as she pulled out her phone.

"No! It's supposed to be a surprise. It'll be totally fun!" The woman interjected, outstretching her hand, but not reaching the device in the young scientist's hand. "Plus… he already told me about you all. Including you, Ai-chan." The woman's grin did nothing to comfort Haibara, who was now trying to determine the likelihood of Agasa-hakase actually having shared about the Detective Boys and the fact she lived with him with some unknown relative. She certainly hadn't overheard such a thing, but he did manage to order things behind her back every now and then…

"Let's go, then! I'm getting hungry." Genta announced, beginning to walk away. The Detective Boys followed, with a reluctant Haibara and Conan trailing behind, keeping a watchful eye on the strange person they found themselves taking back to the Hakase's house.