"There…there really are ghosts…" Ayumi said, her voice tearful. "That nurse…"
"I…I'm not filming anymore…I don't want the money…" Mitsuhiko's voice trembled, and his whole body was shaking.
Genta was also slumped on the ground, clearly terrified: "Too…too scary…"
Although Conan's heart also raced from the scene just now, he quickly forced himself to calm down.
He took the DV camera and started replaying the video footage he had just shot, especially the part on the third floor.
"Wait, look here!" Conan suddenly paused the video, pointing to a corner of the screen.
It was footage taken earlier in Room 210 on the second floor. When Genta burst through the door and the camera shook,
Outside the corridor window in the corner of the screen, two blurry figures flashed by. Although they quickly disappeared, it was vaguely clear that they were a man and a woman, wearing outdoor adventure clothing.
"And here,"
Conan then switched to the frame where the nurse on the third floor lifted her hand, zooming in on the image.
"Look at her wrist. When she lifted it, her sleeve slipped a little, and there's a very obvious, recently healed scar here. She's not a ghost at all!
Someone is deliberately pretending to be a ghost to scare us!"
Conan's deduction quickly made Genta and Mitsuhiko furious.
"Damn it! Who is it?" Mitsuhiko reacted.
"How dare they scare us, Detective Boys! We must teach them a good lesson!" Genta raised his arm.
Just then, voices and footsteps came from the main entrance of the hospital building.
The children quickly hid behind a pile of discarded construction materials.
They saw two internet celebrities, "Kyougari Sadao" and "Furei Yatsuko," walking out of the hospital, laughing and chatting, with triumphant smiles on their faces.
"Hahaha, did you see how those little brats were scared out of their wits just now? It cracked me up!" Sadao said, laughing loudly.
"Got it, got it! Their expressions were classic! Now we have new material to edit and post!"
Yatsuko shook the camera in her hand and echoed, "Scaring kids is so much fun. They're such cowards, a fake mummy scared them that badly."
Hearing their conversation, Genta and Mitsuhiko were enraged.
"So, it was them messing with us!" Genta's head seemed to get even pointier with anger.
"How despicable! To scare us like that!" Mitsuhiko was also indignant.
Seeing that the two internet celebrities hadn't gone far, Genta's eyes darted around, and he smiled.
"They like to scare people, don't they? Let's scare them back!"
The group immediately agreed. After whispering for a while,
Genta pulled Mitsuhiko, and the two quietly climbed back into the hospital through a broken window on the side.
Soon, they arrived at Room 210 on the second floor.
Genta quickly picked up the scattered bandages from the medical dummy and haphazardly wrapped them around himself and Mitsuhiko, even covering their heads, leaving only their eyes exposed.
After doing all this, Genta lowered his voice and spoke to Conan, who was hiding outside the hospital, through the Detective Badge, "Alright, we're ready!"
"Received." Conan's voice came from the badge. "They're currently at the edge of the green belt next to the hospital, seemingly checking the footage they just shot. Ayumi, Haibara, are you in position?"
"In position." Ayumi's voice was both nervous and excited.
"Mm." Haibara responded concisely.
Conan took a deep breath, adjusted his expression, then quietly slipped into the woods. He crouched down at a spot not too far from the two internet celebrities and began to fake cry.
"Waa…waa waa…"
The sound was exceptionally clear in the silent night.
Sadao and Yatsuko, who were engrossed in looking at the camera screen, immediately heard it.
They exchanged glances, a mischievous smile appearing on their faces.
"Huh? Looks like there's another kid who didn't run far?" Sadao whispered.
"Sounds like he's crying pretty badly. It'll definitely go viral if we film it," Yatsuko said excitedly, raising her camera.
Following the crying sound, the two carefully pushed aside the bushes and crept towards Conan.
"Little friend? What's wrong? Are you lost?"
Sadao asked with feigned gentleness, his camera lens already aimed at Conan's huddled back.
Just as they were a few steps away from Conan, almost reaching out to touch him—
"Waaahhh—!!!"
Accompanied by two strange cries, two mummies wrapped in bandages suddenly leaped out from the nearby bushes, flailing their arms and pouncing on them.
"Ugh ahhh!!! What is that?!"
Sadao and Yatsuko were scared out of their wits. Without thinking, they turned and ran desperately out of the woods.
However, their nightmare wasn't over.
Just as they were about to rush out of the woods and see the streetlights outside—
"Give me back my life—!"
Ayumi and Haibara, who had already ambushed themselves on both sides of the exit, jumped out.
They shone flashlights on their faces from below, making exaggerated ghost faces.
"Ghosts!!!"
The two internet celebrities let out a piercing scream, their eyes rolled back, their legs went weak, and they were so terrified that they fainted directly, collapsing to the ground, unconscious.
"Success!" Genta and Mitsuhiko ripped off the bandages from their heads, looking at the two unconscious people, and high-fived triumphantly.
Ayumi also turned off her flashlight and clapped her chest, laughing, feeling greatly relieved.
"Hmph, these two adults are even more cowardly than us!" Genta stood with his hands on his hips, looking smug.
Just then, Conan walked over. He squatted down and carefully checked the wrists of the unconscious Sadao and Yatsuko.
Both of their wrists were clean, without any scars.
"No," Conan stood up, his expression serious, "That nurse on the third floor had a scar on her wrist. These two don't. There must be another person!"
A while later, Sadao and Yatsuko slowly regained consciousness.
As soon as they opened their eyes, they saw the Detective Boys surrounding them, and Genta and Mitsuhiko still had some unremoved bandages on them.
The two instantly understood what had happened and immediately turned pale with anger.
"It was you stinky brats?!"
Sadao suddenly sat up, yelling in anger,
"How dare you pretend to be ghosts to scare us?! Don't you know that scaring people can scare them to death?!"
Yatsuko also pointed at them furiously: "This is outrageous! I'm going to tell your parents!"
Conan stepped forward, looking at them fearlessly, and retorted.
"You were the ones who first pretended to be ghosts to scare us in the hospital. We're just returning the favor, at most, it's even."
Sadao and Yatsuko were choked into silence, knowing they were in the wrong, their faces turning red then pale.
Conan didn't dwell on the matter but asked seriously.
"Neh~, while you were in the hospital, did you have any other companions who scared us? For example, someone with a scar on their wrist, wearing a nurse's uniform and long hair?"
Sadao and Yatsuko were stunned for a moment, then both shook their heads.
"Never seen them. There are only two people in our team."
Sadao said grumpily,
"We had just placed the mummy dummy in that room on the second floor, preparing it as material for our next video. We never went to the third floor, so we haven't seen the person you're talking about."
"Exactly!" Yatsuko echoed, "We just saw you intrude on our filming location, so we played along, planning to create some show effect. There was no third person."
The triumphant smiles on the faces of the Detective Boys members instantly vanished upon hearing this.
They exchanged glances, all seeing the uncertainty and suspicion in each other's eyes.
If that terrifying nurse on the third floor wasn't faked by these two internet celebrities… then what exactly did they encounter at that time?!