Episode 1103: The Teen Novel That Smells Like Guilt
Scenario: This time, Kogoro took over an unusual affair, from a well-known novelist who specialises in teen novels particularly, named Chu Masamura. He requested Kogoro to investigate regarding a deceased, who is called Taizo Yasuki, who died recently during a car accident. He persistantly emphasised his need, to ascertain all of the late Yasuki's friends and acquaintances, especially those "questionable" ones.
Kogoro thus set off to work, he inquired around the Yasuki residence and saw a man dressed in a formal suit, talking to Yasuki's mother, and that person turned out to be the new Haido City assembly member, who is named Hiroki Kataoka. So Kogoro interviewed him with some questions within his office. Kataoka confessed the fact that Yasuki and he were classmates during high school, but not very close, apparently. But no matter how Kogoro inquired further, the assembly member insisted on the same statement, so he had to call off the investigation forcibly right there. Before leaving, Kataoka handed Kogoro some flyers to help spread the news about him being the new assembly member for Haido City.
Afterwards, Kogoro learned that Yasuki loved reading books in bookstores, but when Kogoro reached out the bookstore owner, the owner said that Yasuki had quit the bookstore for some time already, with the reason of writing his own novel. Everything had returned to the starting point - novel, so Kogoro visited his client Masamura's apartment. As he pushed the door open, what he saw was only Masamura's cold dead body lying in front of the apartment entrance.
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| Right beside the victim, there was a tiny notebook deposited, which has "215, 222, SAME" written on it. |
Kogoro felt exceedingly confounded, and was still reckoning the meaning with regards to the casual characters on the notebook, and failed to notice the culprit behind him... The culprit sprayed pepper particles onto Kogoro's face and knocked him down afterwards.
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| The content in Masamura's notebook. |
In Haido Central Hospital, Kogoro was being awakened by Ran and Conan. Inspector Megure was accompanying him as well, whilst checking out Kogoro's condition. Although he was prayed by the culprit with pepper sprays, his health issue was not problematic. When Conan asked him about the culprit's identity, Kogoro murmured that he did not get the chance to see the face of the culprit. Just at this instant, Conan perceived that the door of Kogoro's sickhouse slid faintly, but when he went to check, no one was outside. Is this an illusion or a reality？According to Megure, Masamura has been receiving threatening letters for months now; most of them were telling him to cease the serialisation of his new novel, which was about a group of boys attacking adults with metal bats as though it were a game, and the setting was from 20 years ago. On the other side, Takagi called upon Yasuki's house and inquired of Tasuki's mother, about the mystical novel he had been writing before his death. The name of it was "Middle-aged Man Hunting Days".
Based on this title, Kogoro was able to surmise that, Masamura probably plagiarised Yasuki's manuscript when he showed him for suggestions; this explains why he would only dare to begin serialising this novel after Yasuki's death. What is more, after some time, he started to receive numerous threatening letters, which made him think that the plot within Tasuki's novel might not be made-up, but rather, a real-life experience of his. In this aspect, the people sending those threatening letters might be the other perpetrators who were involved in that incident 20 years ago. Therefore, Masamura approached Kogoro to investigate Yasuki's friend circle, in order to back up his assumption.
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| Everyone discussing about the case in the hospital. |
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| Kataoka's fliers and the threatening letter. |
The content of the threatening letter is as follows:
- Cease serialisation of your novel "Scary Little Monsters" in "Del Mondo" magazine immediately.
- If you refuse to comply, consider yourself forfeit!
- Not just yours either. Your family and friends, too. Consider yourself forfeit!
It was time for Kogoro to take the temperature, and the nurse walked into Kogoro's sick house and remarked that Kogoro really looked like his late father, and he showed a photo of her and his father. In that photo, she was holding a stuffed toy shark in her hand, smiling along with her father. Later on, Conan solved the "code" written on Masamura's notebook. He offered that all clues were inside the novel that Masamura was serialising - 215 is the date of when that described incident in the novel took place. It was also snowy on that day; the man that the boys attacked had a stuffed shark, which matches the romanji, S-A-M-E. But there was still a mystery unsolved regarding the 222.
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| The same novel by Kaori Shinmei in episode 493. |
Takagi confirmed the alibis of the two suspects; they all had one when Masamura was murdered. Kogoro also pondered deeply: how could the culprit enter Masamura's apartment with him on guard due to the received thretening letters? After some thinking, Conan dashed into the library and was searching for something on the computer; it was about the incident from 20 years ago. But he realised that there were not even a tinge of snowflakes falling on the 15th of February, and instead, the attack actually happened on the 22nd of February, according to the online newpaper Conan found. After looking depper into it, he figuered out the truth completely, and was about to reveal the unmitigated tragedy...
