"Please, have some."
Although he wasn't used to entertaining guests at home, Shimizu Koji was perfectly capable of making tea.
The tea leaves, naturally, were ones already in the Kudo household.
Professor Agasa didn't stand on ceremony. After chatting with Koji for a bit, he quickly realized that Koji wasn't a very talkative person.
They sat down on the sofa, two cups of tea on the table between them, thin wisps of steam slowly rising.
After thinking for a moment, Koji took the initiative to speak.
"Professor Agasa, I think Kudo-senpai may have some misunderstanding about me. After all, we've never actually met—I've only met his younger brother once."
"Younger brother?" Agasa echoed reflexively.
As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized Koji was referring to Conan. His expression didn't change, and he smoothly covered it up.
"Oh ho ho, you mean Conan."
The two of them had chatted briefly at Agasa's front gate earlier and had more or less gotten acquainted. With Agasa's naturally warm personality—and his age—it didn't take long before he started calling Koji by name.
"Yes. That kid Conan is smart, but he's not very mature yet," Koji continued calmly."I think when he explained my situation to Kudo-senpai, he probably mixed in a lot of his own subjective impressions. That's why Kudo-senpai asked you to take care of me."
"But in reality, I've been living independently for a long time."
Koji's expression was serious. He appreciated Agasa's kindness, but he genuinely didn't need special care.
Especially after learning that Agasa himself lived alone, Koji even suspected Kudo Shinichi had gotten things backward.
The professor got out of breath after running just a short distance, lived alone at his age, and—judging by his physique—probably wasn't the best at taking care of others. If anything, he looked more like someone who needed taking care of.
Listening to Koji, Agasa nodded with a smile and picked up the shopping bag beside him.
"I understand, I understand! Koji-kun, you're already an adult who can live on your own!"
…That tone sounded like he was humoring a child.
Koji gave him a strange look, but at this point there was nothing more to say.
"These are some handmade sweets my friends from my hometown sent me. And this one—eh?"
Agasa took out a box of sweets and placed it on the table. Then he rummaged through the other bag for a moment before pulling out what looked like a medicine box.
His expression stiffened.
"Uh… sorry. I meant to bring some local specialties too, but it looks like I grabbed the wrong thing."
He laughed awkwardly and scratched his head, preparing to put it back.
Koji, who had been watching quietly, glanced at the label on the box. He froze for a moment, his gaze turning distant.
What Agasa was holding was a box of stimulant-type psychiatric medication.
Koji didn't know why Agasa had it, but it wasn't anything illegal. There was nothing strange about owning it.
Normally, Koji wouldn't have paid it any attention.
But suddenly, he remembered how he had felt when facing Gin—that state when his Sharingan activated.
An abnormally clear and excited mind, his body feeling as if it were overflowing with adrenaline, commonly described as being "pumped full of energy."
In some ways, it really did resemble the state of someone under the influence of stimulants.
Could this be… a shared factor?
"Koji?" Agasa called.
"Ah—sorry, Professor. I was just thinking about something."
Agasa didn't ask further. His purpose for the visit had already been fulfilled. After chatting a bit longer, he left the sweets behind and headed home alone.
Once outside the Kudo residence, Agasa turned back with a cheerful smile. The door had already closed behind Koji.
"Honestly, that Shinichi kid said Koji was ill-mannered and difficult to get along with, told me to be more tolerant."
"But where's Koji ill-mannered? Where's he strange? He's perfectly polite! Compared to him, Shinichi's the ill-mannered, strange one. Though… he really does have it rough."
Agasa sighed softly and shook his head, his resolve strengthening.
Koji's seemingly impenetrable attitude worried him a little. Even as an old man, he feared he might be rejected—just as Conan had said Koji once rejected Hirota Masami's kindness.
But the ever-clever Professor Agasa quickly came up with an idea.
Not long after Agasa left, Koji washed up, tidied himself, changed into a black casual jacket and slim-fitting pants, then rode his bicycle out again.
As usual, he went to the Suzuki Private Hospital to check on Miyano Akemi.
He visited her room, listened to the doctor's report on her recovery, and overall things were stable and improving. There were no serious complications for now.
However, if Miyano Akemi remained unconscious for too long, the future would be uncertain—but that was no longer something Koji or the doctors could decide.
When leaving the hospital, Koji made use of his unfounded connection to the Suzuki family's eldest daughter and easily obtained some stimulant medication.
He had a bold idea he wanted to test.
Of course, he had no intention of relying on drugs long-term to activate his abilities. He wasn't some kind of superhero.
Although his swordsmanship was exceptional, and he still possessed remnants of "superpowers" from previous worlds, Koji knew very well that his body was still just flesh and blood.
Otherwise, he wouldn't need to dodge bullets.
In his previous world, as a member of the Uchiha clan, he had died quickly—as always. After arriving in this world, the chaotic flow of time gradually blurred his memories of those past lives.
He didn't care.
For him, forgetting was nothing new. He died too fast for memories to linger anyway.
However, with the reappearance of the Sharingan, fragments of his memories as an Uchiha began to return.
Normally, an Uchiha's eyes were no different from ordinary people's—but under certain conditions, they transformed into crimson eyes marked with tomoe.
Recalling the countless red eyes he saw before his death, and combining that with his own experience, Koji could easily infer that the activation of the Sharingan was linked to the user's emotions—especially intense emotions during life-or-death situations.
And although this world lacked something called chakra, given that chakra in his old world could be cultivated through training, two possibilities emerged:
Either it was energy produced by the physical body—
Or it was mental energy.
If that were the case, his hypothesis had an eighty percent chance of being correct.
For ordinary people, emotional agitation and mental excitement were relatively easy to achieve.
But for Shimizu Koji, that was the difficult part.
Having experienced too many brushes with death, he genuinely couldn't think of much that could make his heart surge with excitement anymore.
Last time, he had cared deeply about Miyano Akemi's condition—but even then, his emotions hadn't gone out of control. He had likely just barely met the threshold needed to activate the Sharingan.
And that situation had been special.
One of Koji's goals in mastering the Sharingan was precisely to prevent that kind of uncontrolled activation from happening again.
Therefore, if he wanted to verify his theory as soon as possible, relying on medication—for now—was unavoidable.