The Phantom Thief of Heart! But Conan.

Chapter 1133 The patient was cured, but the doctor went crazy

"Did you have fun today?"

"happy!"

"Well, so we have to go thank Dr. Agasa. It's quite tiring to spend the whole day here. Go thank him, and then we'll find a place to eat so we can wait for the fireworks to end."

"it is good!"

As Tang Ze spoke, he rearranged the slightly deflated balloon in his hand, restored it to its tied shape, and handed it back to Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya.

It does take skill to tie this long balloon into a complex fish shape. It's probably due to the skills of the amusement park staff that the balloon wasn't inflated very fully. After playing with it for an afternoon and an evening, the shape of the balloon collapsed.

Tang Ze, who noticed this keenly, quickly accepted the task of reorganizing the balloons and persuaded a few naughty children to be good.

Today, their attention is basically on Curacao. The doctor is as helpless as a dog owner who takes three huskies out for a walk after not having them out for a few days. It is better to respect the elderly and love the young.

Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya took the jellyfish-shaped balloon from Karasawa with shining eyes, his expression excited: "Brother Karasawa, you are awesome!"

"No, I just have a good memory. I remembered how to tie the knot after seeing it once. Well, they are still waiting for you."

"Ok!"

After watching Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya run towards Dr. Agasa, proudly shaking the balloon in his hand that had regained its cute form, Tang Ze stood up and sat down on a bench nearby.

When it comes to meal time, the restaurant in the theme park is always packed with people. The children, whose excitement has not yet been worn away by fatigue, do not intend to wait here and plan to take another ride on the Ferris wheel with Professor Agasa before the last ticket sale ends.

——It is not difficult to see from their enthusiasm that the one who really likes riding the Ferris wheel is actually Dr. Agasa himself. It is hard to say who is accompanying whom.

"You and Sister Sonia surprisingly get along well." Conan, who had been observing Curacao all day, sat down next to Tangze and pointed at the pendant hanging on Tangze's chest.

It was one of the dolphin pendants that Tang Ze had swiped from the dart stall earlier.

In the afternoon, they found a stall that allowed them to paint with oil paints in the children's activity area. Remembering the batch of white films, several children took Curacao and painted several of them.

The one on Tangze’s chest is painted with Curacao.

Apart from black, only blue was painted. The colors are not rich, and the color blocks are uneven. You can only barely see that the artist is trying to draw it like a killer whale. It is completely at the beginner's level.

What really surprised Conan was that this dolphin was given to Tang Ze by Curacao. It was not known whether it was because of that conversation or because Tang Ze had said before that the killer whale was more suitable for her.

Tang Ze reached out and fiddled with the dolphin, then smiled. "It's nothing strange. She's also an experimenter who's had contact with my parents. Don't Mingzhi and I get along well?"

"Emm..." Conan recalled and compared their ways of getting along, lowering half of his eyebrows uncertainly.

Holding the lanyard in his hand, Tang Ze observed this somewhat out-of-place pendant in the light.

It looks awkward and immature, and the colorist seems to have trouble controlling the coloring pen. The color blocks are of different shades, and you can see traces of the pen tip. If the author hadn't said it himself, not many people would be able to tell what it is.

For Tang Ze, who is already a professional painter, this is undoubtedly a clumsy work, but when Tang Ze looks at it, the expression on his face is relaxed and gentle.

Curacao has not experienced a normal life, nor has she had the spare time to learn and appreciate art. She is good at using colors to remember images, and she always has colorful color cards in her hands, but in fact, she doesn't know how to use colors very well.

Her world was filled with nothing but black and white. Such a small pendant was already an unprecedented life experience for her.

This is her fingertip reaching out from the cage of the past, and it is also the answer to Tang Ze's question.

While watching it, Tang Ze suddenly lost interest in continuing to play the role, and rarely talked about his thoughts sincerely.

"I know that even without the organization, someone like her, born on the fringes of civilization, wouldn't have had a good outcome. She was probably born in some turbulent small country, abandoned because of a congenital disease. To exaggerate, without the organization's 'nurturing', she might have died even earlier. Even without my parents and me, the tragedy that befell her would still have happened... Seeing her like that, I still feel a little sad."

When the story becomes reality, and those sufferings that seem so suspended that they are even somewhat humorous actually fall upon a specific person, Tang Ze's heavy mood is genuine when he stands in front of this person who has been teased by fate.

"Because of her tragic past?" Seeing his friend rarely expressing his tendency to be depressed, Conan was stunned for a moment, then immediately reached out and patted Tang Ze's wrist soothingly, "I can understand your thoughts, but you did nothing wrong, Tang Ze."

If you only come into contact with the present Curacao, even if you understand that she must have a tragic past, it is difficult for others to sympathize with her because of her current identity and attitude.

But when Curacao appeared in front of them, his memory was not completely lost. Instead, he looked at them ignorantly in the state of a child.

Fragments of the past appeared before my eyes so vividly that I could feel that this tall and mature woman was once a ragged, hungry little girl. This shock was completely different from hearing the pain narrated orally.

"I can't say." Tang Ze accepted Conan's comfort, but his tone did not change. "I know, I was just a child at the time and hadn't recovered yet. It's really not my fault, but regarding this part of her ability, I feel that I have a certain responsibility."

The words had been spoken openly, so there was no need for Curacao to hide anything anymore. So through Tangze, Conan learned what abilities Curacao was valued for, so he more or less guessed Tangze's logic.

"Do you think she became a subject of cognitive science experiments because of her memory problems?"

"Yes. A super-hyperthymesia-like ability that can be freely controlled and deployed... doesn't it sound familiar to you?" Tang Ze sighed slowly. "Her fornix disease is very rare, and it positively affects her memory. My developmental disorder actually works on a similar principle. The memory area takes up too much nutrients, hindering the development of other parts, resulting in obvious emotional and cognitive impairments. The organization's choice of her may have had nothing to do with me, but in the end, I definitely played a role in her becoming what she is today."

This is the part that makes Tang Ze feel complicated.

The time his parents contacted the Organization to treat him was similar to the time when Curacao was brought back to the laboratory by the Organization. Although his recovery was most likely due to the special effect of X-Alloy rather than the treatment, it would be self-deception to say that the training on processing memory information after regaining consciousness had nothing to do with Curacao.

Theoretically, Tang Ze understood that without him and without the appearance of the Tang Ze couple, Curacao would not be able to escape the fate of being manipulated by the organization. If he really played the role of a catalyst in it, the feeling would be another matter.

"I'm confused, Kudo." Karasawa rarely uses his real name. "They say I overthink things, that I'm taking on problems that aren't my own. Instead of feeling pain from my experiences, I'm consumed by internal conflict over cause and effect. It's really hard to wrap my head around this. But I really do feel I should take some responsibility for this."

Including things that happened in the past, the tragedies that happened to his blood relatives.

Including many choices in the previous life that should have been made to do better and avoid further harm.

Even if he only saw a few fragments, it had already shaken his heart and made him unable to help but think about and connect with the "previous round"...

Is it really not my fault? Is it really my fault?

These troubles that cannot be shared with others are Tang Ze's main psychological demons during this period.

After confirming that Tang Ze was just talking and there was no big emotional fluctuation, Conan reached out and grabbed Tang Ze's palm.

Conan's body is only the size of a seven or eight-year-old child, so of course his hands are very small. Even though Tang Ze, who didn't understand why, didn't resist, he still used both hands to complete the action.

He turned Tang Ze's palm over, pushed his fingers toward the palm, and wrapped the slightly clumsy dolphin in his palm.

"I've noticed. This is probably the reason you're always so eager to do what's right. Your problem is more like PTSD than the aftereffects of autism." Conan shook his head. "You're better at psychology than I am. You must understand."

He had seen Tang Ze's "illness" state, and he had previously inferred that this guy's psychological problems might not be caused by wrongful conviction or long-term surveillance and high pressure from the organization as many people thought, but might be in another direction.

Many of the traits displayed by Tang Ze are more in line with a sense of moral trauma, that is, the strong sense of self-blame, confusion and guilt that an individual feels after experiencing a catastrophic event because others died while he survived.

It is commonly known as "survivor guilt", which is a type of PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

People who are overwhelmed by this sense of guilt will have thoughts such as "Why am I the one who survived?" and "My survival is a plunder of other people's lives", and then tend to want to "offset" the suffering of others with their own sacrifice and misfortune.

There is a high probability that Tang Ze's desperate behavior of forcing himself to save others came from this.

Tang Ze, who was indeed diagnosed with PTSD after retiring, was stunned for a moment.

"I'm not a professional therapist, and I probably don't know how to channel this kind of emotion... But if this happened to me, I'd probably choose to accept this 'sin.'" Patting Tang Ze's clenched fist, Conan answered sincerely, "I think more than one person must have told you that you did nothing wrong, and you must understand this logic rationally, but you still can't avoid the impact of this trauma. So why not just assume that this is all your fault?"

Tang Ze turned his head and looked at Conan with some surprise.

"I sometimes have this thought. I know that murderers are caught and confess because they killed people, because they did something wrong. But sometimes, when faced with such a sympathetic murderer, I still can't help but wonder, if I had discovered it earlier, understood what the other person was trying to do earlier, would there have been a better outcome? Did I miss some signal for help and miss the last chance to save the situation..."

At this point, Conan's voice sank.

He thought of Asai Narimi.

The letter of commission sent by Asai Narumi to Mouri Kogoro was a clear signal for help, and Mouri Kogoro's reputation was the result of Conan's "construction".

To exaggerate a little, it is a target that Conan created to solve his own problems.

His original plan was to create a famous detective who was unrivaled in the world, and then through this channel, he would get in touch with higher-level and darker cases and find the shadow of the organization.

Of course, it is also his responsibility to take responsibility for the clients who are attracted by the banner he has raised.

He felt a little guilty for not arriving at Tsukikage Island in time and not investigating the meaning behind the name Keiji Aso.

Even though Asai Narumi managed to survive the sea of ​​fire in the end, it was not due to Conan's efforts, but the result of the intervention of the Phantom Thieves who saw through it all. Originally, everything did not have to fall into such an irreversible abyss.

"It's hard for me to let go of this emotion, so in the end, I just think, I'm just going to blame it all. Everyone makes mistakes, and admitting that I made a mistake means I still have room for improvement and can do better..."

"Kudo..."

Feeling that Conan was in a similar predicament to himself to some extent, Tang Ze called out to him hesitantly.

Tang Ze did not expect to get any answer from Conan, he just expressed his feelings and his confusion. He did not want to transfer the pain to another person as a way to ease his emotions.

Doesn't that mean the patient is cured and the doctor is crazy?

"It's okay, I'm trying hard. I think I'm better than before." Conan smiled broadly at Tang Ze, indicating that he was fine. He pointed at the pendant that Tang Ze was holding in his palm and said with heartfelt emotion, "Aren't you also trying hard?"

Conan is not a fool. From the various interactions between Tangze and Curacao today, combined with Tangze's thoughts, it is not difficult to see that Tangze has been working hard to help Curacao get out of the gloomy state.

Actively contact Huiyuan, contact him, contact everyone related to the organization and those in the past, such as Curacao, and spare no effort to try to save all the lives he can save...

If this is not considered hard work, then there is probably no one who works hard in this world.

If you can't avoid the guilt and can't get over it, then just assume that you haven't done enough, "atone," and work on yourself.

Isn’t this also a way of healing?