0 Detective Conan Episode 798: The Moving Target

Episode 798: The Moving Target

Scenario: A drunken man was saved by Conan when he fell from the top of a building, before the man hit the other person who is standing right below the place where the man fell. It seems the man committed suicide, but the evidence lead Conan to think that someone else caused the man to fall.

One night, Conan is racing to an appointment. Suddenly he hears a woman shrieking at the sight of someone falling off the top of a roof, directly down towards a man standing in a street at the building's side. Reacting quickly, Conan uses his Power Shoes and Ball Dispenser Belt to kick the falling man off his downward path, right into a nearby dumpster, where he makes a soft landing. However, the man is totally intoxicated and unconscious, so he remains completely unaware of what has happened to him. Due to the account of a witness, the man - by the name of Sadao Fukurokoji - evidently wanted to commit suicide because in his drunken state he had babbled out that things were not going according to his desires at his company.

The next morning, Conan takes his friends to the scene upon their insistence. To their surprise, they encounter a detachment of the Investigation Section One there, led by Megure and Takagi. Because of his involvement as an eye witness, Megure and Takagi confide in Conan that Fukurokoji's fall last night was apparently attempted murder, because Fukurokoji was far too drunk to undertake any actions on his own. Investigating the roof from which the man fell, Conan finds two sets of scrape marks on the roof's saftey railing, proving that someone must have carried him up and thrown him off the roof. But the marks suggest that the culprit must have switched position for the drop-down once, the reason for which remaining unknown, for the moment.

Fukurokoji was deliberately thrown off a roof to his death on the street below, to make it look like suicide. Fortunately, due to Conan's intervention, he survives with none worse the wear but a few scrapes from his landing and the after-effects of his drunkeness.

As Conan looks down to the street, he spots the man on whose head Fukurokoji had almost fallen last night. This man, a somewhat slow-witted and unlucky, but ever-cheerful office worker named Hitoshi Komatsu, is showing his friend and colleague, Daisuke Yukigaya, the place where he was nearly killed. After a brief introduction to Conan as a fellow witness, Yukigaya takes his leave, and Komatsu bashfully comments on wondering how a overly successful person like Yukigaya could ever like an eight ball like him. Then he mentions that he was waiting in his place because he was expecting to meet an anonymous woman who had sent him a love letter, asking him to wait for her at the building at that time. This statement immediatley rouses Conan's suspicion that the killer's intention was to kill both Fukurokoji and Komatsu, making it look like an accident; however, Komatsu can't think of anyone bearing a grudge against him.

The Detective Boys ask Komatsu to show them the love letter he received, which he is keeping in his appartment for the day. As the Detective Boys scoff at the idea that Komatsu would meet a stranger who wouldn't provide her name, Komatsu declares that he merely went there to tell the writer that he couldn't go out with her, since he already has a crush on someone. Another puzzling clue is that the letter's writer asked Komatsu to bring the letter with him for their meeting, considering that following the murder attempt it would be hard to retrieve it, since it would be a crucial piece of evidence that the matter was in fact foul play.

Since Komatsu has gone hungry, he invites the kids to a restaurant he likes to frequent. There, the Detective Boys meet Sakiko Nagai, a pretty and happy-to-go young waitress who is Komatsu's secret love interest. Incidentally, the restaurant is quite near Komatsu's working place and was also frequented by Yukigaya, though he has not come by for the last two weeks. While Komatsu has to go to the toilet, Nagai tells the children that Yukigaya had actually asked her out for a date the last time he was here, but she had turned him down because she wasn't drawn to his success personality traits. In the course of that conversation, the Detective Boys are also surprised to learn that Nagai has her own crush on Komatsu, making this matter (as Komatsu believes) not a one-sided affair.

This is all Conan needs to suspect Yukigaya as the would-be murderer. However, as Takagi and Chiba later tell the Detective Boys, Yukigaya has had no previous affiliation with Fukurokoji, making his murder in addition to Komatsu's appear a rather pointless undertaking. But then Conan figures out the culprit's true identity and his modus operandi, and asks all concerned, as well as Megure, Takagi and Chiba, to meet the Detective Boys for a discussion of the case.