Conan: Science Cartoonist Kudo Yuji

"It's time to continue practicing again."

After the lunch break, a group of children reluctantly gathered in the dojo. After replenishing their water, Mao Lilan walked to the front.

"Everyone, just hold on a little longer in the afternoon and you can go home."

Because it was getting dark, the lighting in the dojo was insufficient, so Yuchuan at the door quickly turned on the lights.

"Snapped!"

Less than two minutes after the lights were turned on, the entire building suddenly fell into darkness, accompanied by Xiaolan's exclamations and the children's cheers.

"As expected, the children will be happy when there are no classes." Conan sat on the ground with his hands on his hips.

"Don't worry, the building is very old, so if there are more electrical appliances, the circuit breaker will trip. I'll just go and take a look."

"Does that mean it can be fixed right away?"

This sentence came out of the children, and most of them wailed. After training in the morning and resting for a few hours, they were all sore all over.

The lights soon returned to normal, Ryota Tamagawa returned, and the children had to reluctantly train again, but the incident happened again not long after.

"Who! Someone help me! Someone come quickly!"

The children in training stopped again. The young detectives, who were sensitive to screams, ran the fastest, followed closely by Mao Li Ran and Tamagawa Ryota.

The group ran up the stairs, and halfway between the third and fourth floors, the children noticed the man in the jacket trembling slightly and slowly retreating from the door.

"Mr. Namishin!"

Tamagawa Ryota was blocked by the children at the stairs on the upper floor. He looked up and saw an acquaintance: "It's you, my voice sounds like you."

"Yuchuan! You're here!"

Mr. Namiyasugi pointed inside the room and said in horror: "Baiyuan he...he!"

"Bai Yuan? What happened to him?"

Tamakawa squeezed through the children and the moment he stood at the door, his face turned pale. He pulled Conan who wanted to go in.

“First…call the police first!”

As they were temporarily not allowed to go up to the fourth floor, the children had to return to the dojo on the first floor. Only then did they discover that the parents seemed to understand what had happened, so they took their children home one after another.

"It's better this way. The mess is not very convenient for solving the case."

Conan was quickly surrounded, and several elementary school students urged him to quickly identify the person.

"Anyway, Conan must have found out everything long ago." Mitsuhiko, Ayumi and Genta all confirmed this.

Ai Huihara pulled Rize aside and said firmly: "If you don't find out clearly, you will never agree to Xiaolan to come and help them."

"You guys..." The helpless boy had to tell everything he knew.

The person being sold in the Tamagawa Building is Baiyuan mentioned by the two people just now. The building has four floors. The top floor is used as an office by Baiyuan and Baiyuan's classmate Namishida. The second and third floors are rented out as dormitories by a multinational electronics company not far away, with door panels and anti-theft doors installed between the stairs and floors.

"Those bald guys are programmers. They come back at 2 or 3 in the morning and go out at 8 in the morning. There's no need to worry about them."

At Tamagawa Ryukan, due to the long-term economic downturn, Tamagawa Ryota actually owed him several months' salary, and Baiyuan had long since stopped renting the first floor to him. "Mr. Tamagawa, this is highly suspicious." Rize made her first judgment after hearing it: "It was originally my house, but now not only do I have to rent it, but the other party is also trying to evict me."

"But the reason is that he is not ambitious enough. He sold the house himself, and no one is obliged to rent it to him. And if he can make the gym flourish, I think the current owner will not refuse to continue renting it to him because he was the previous owner."

Haibara Ai looked at Rize seriously and said, "If the gym makes money, Tamagawa himself probably won't mind even if the rent goes up a little."

"That's right. It would be too scary if someone killed someone for something like this."

The girl did not continue speaking. Anyway, Tamagawa had nothing to do with her. Rize felt that it was pointless to argue with her classmates and friends over Mr. Momohara who had already collapsed on the fourth floor.

"The police are coming!"

The person who appeared at the gym's door was neither Takagi nor Chiba, but the unexpected Inspector Megure.

"Inspector Megure, why is it you?"

Several little ones all ran over. Speaking of the current police officers in the Metropolitan Police Department, the one who has the best "comradeship" with the children is probably Officer Megure. Even Takagi, Sato and Matsuda probably can't compare to him.

“I also want to know why it’s me.”

The fat police officer held up his hat and sighed helplessly, "Chiba is on a date, Sato is still on wedding leave, Shiratori's family is on leave today to discuss business, and Takagi is sending the injured Date Kou and that Yamamura back to Gunma Prefecture and hasn't come back yet."

There was not a single person in the entire Metropolitan Police Department's First Investigation Division who could be used today, so in a hurry, he, his immediate superior, had to take over temporarily.

"That's strange. Didn't you make it clear about the detention? Officer Chiba could have stayed." Conan looked at Megure in confusion.

"Actually, it's because I was lazy and didn't read their submitted reports. I just stamped everything at random." Officer Megure said helplessly: "It's already approved, but you still have to call Chiba back. I'm really embarrassed."

"That's true, but if there's a case somewhere else right now, we'll have to call those on vacation or dates back to work."

Conan's teasing made Inspector Megure laugh awkwardly. He took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then immediately called on the police behind him to cordon off the scene and collect evidence.

"Well, kids, now you should tell me what you know." Inspector Megure pretended to be surprised: "Or did you find nothing this time?"

"Really? Officer Megure actually looks down on us! I'm telling you..."

The fact was that Inspector Megure knew these kids too well, and he easily found out information that would have taken a long time to find out in the past. So he immediately asked someone to invite Namikawa and Tamagawa to the gym's lounge for tea.

"It looks like the criminal is among them."

After telling the children not to touch anything, Inspector Megure led the Junior Detective Team to the crime scene after the police finished collecting evidence.

"When the deceased was found, he was lying on the desk with heavy bleeding on his head. It was obvious that he was hit by a blunt object."

Inspector Megure held a photo and showed it to the children, then pointed to the desk and chair where the body had been taken away.

"It looks like the deceased died this afternoon, no more than three hours after he was found."

Because Haibara Ai deliberately blocked it, only Conan saw the photo. The wound on the deceased's head had obviously not turned black when the photo was taken.

"And, look."

Conan walked to the cabinet on the side of the office. White steam was rising from the cabinet. The whole room was filled with the smell of blood and a strong aroma of coffee. The only strange thing was that the coffee container was full of coffee, and obviously no one had drunk a sip.

(End of this chapter)