The Loose Soul Murder Case

Chapter 1: Emiko Sasaki

"I... I don't even want to be here." Emiko muttered, looking out at the starry sky, and away from the boy, who stood across the bridge from her, "I'm missing out on my favorite shows, and anyway, my folks will want me to be home by nine."

That was when the boy across the bridge asked Emiko a question that she'd never heard anyone ask her before.

"Why do you watch those shows all the time?"

"You should know better than anyone." Emiko replied, still looking away, "It's the drama, the romance... I love it all, and it's all the stuff you never see anymore in the real world. Maybe at one time, people were like that, but not now... I mean, isn't that the same reason why you always play games?"

"I play games because they're superior to reality," the boy admitted, "but shows are different. You can't interact with them. They don't respond to you. A show can be a great sight, but it can never be an experience."

"I'll never get to experience drama like that..." Emiko insisted sadly, "Just go away. I'm not giving up my shows for any boy, and certainly not a boy who doesn't understand their value. Just... just..."

At that point, however, she'd looked back towards him, and something inside of her seemed to finally melt. In one hand, the boy was holding up a ticket for a studio taping of "Weeks of Wonder."

"I would never ask anyone" the boy said slowly, "to give up their world for a pathetic reality like this one."

"That ticket..." Emiko said with a smile, tears coming to her eyes, "It's for me... You got it for me. That's... That's the nicest thing that anyone's ever -sniff- done for me!"

"That's horrible." the boy said, however, "No one else has ever cared for you, or thought about what you wanted? Everyone has always tried to tell you what shape your life should take, or ignored you completely? Have you really suffered all of that, and no one has ever noticed the real you?"

"I guess it's not their fault..." Emiko muttered, looking away again, "I'm not really very cute, so..."

"There's only one problem with this ticket." the boy continued, however, ignoring the girl's reply, "There's only one of them."

"Huh?" the teenage girl replied, her blond hair starting to frizz a bit from the humidity of the river below the bridge, "Why is that a problem?"

At once, the boy moved forward, and Emiko's face started to turn red, as he took her hand in one of his, slowly placing the ticket in her palm, then closing her fingers tightly over it. The book was looking directly into her eyes from that point on, with every word that he spoke.

"The problem is that I can't come with you to the show." he said in a very serious tone of voice, "Emiko, you're a truly special girl, because you see things about the world that others ignore, to their own detriment. I want to be there with you, to hear about your dramas and your romances, but I don't want you to always be on the outside, looking in. Emiko... You've been hurt so badly by people who won't give you drama. Please, give me the chance to show you that drama can be real."

Emiko's eyes had been leaking tears up to that point, but just then, she began to cry much more openly, clutching the ticket in one hand, and yet, reaching both arms around the boy's torso.

"I want to believe it..." she said, "I want it to be true, but..."

"Shh..." the boy replied, putting his own arms on her shoulders as he spoke, "Please... Please, just..."

Emiko wished that she could have stopped the tears from coming out of her eyes and soaking her cheeks, but for some reason, that boy didn't seem to care. Could it be, she wondered? Could she really have stumbled into a real drama of her own? In that last moment, as their faces drew closer together, a glimmer of hope finally returned to Emiko's heart, after years of despairing of even finding what she'd sought. It was only then that her fingers opened, and the ticket fell from her hands, over the edge of the bridge, and probably into the water beyond. At last, her lips were pressed against those of a real boy; the lips of Katsuragi Keima.

The moment that the two kissed, there was a sound like a rush of air, and Emiko fell back onto the bridge, unconscious. Keima had to catch her, to keep her from hurting herself in her fall, but his job had been accomplished. Soon, there was a popping sound, and he looked up, to see that once again, Elsie had done her job, capturing the loose soul, just as she always did once it had left the body of its host.

"I'm got it, Kami-Ni-Sama!" Elsie exclaimed in delight, "The loose soul is caught!"

Elsie was a demon from the underworld, though a very cute and energetic one. Not too long ago, learning that Keima had a talent for filling the hearts of girls with love; a talent that he'd learned through years of "conquering" girls in video games, she'd approached him and asked for his help. He'd begun calling himself things like "the god of conquest" and "the god of games," and she'd needed someone who could conquer the hearts of girls.

You see, Elsie was chasing spirits called "loose souls," which had escaped from the underworld. When they escaped into the human world, they would seek out people with empty spaces in their hearts, and take up residence inside of those people, and if they were allowed to remain in the person for too long, they could mutate, transforming into horrible, deadly monsters. Keima, she'd explained, would need to fill the hearts of real girls with love. If he did this, the loose soul would be forced out of the girl, and Elsie could capture it in one of her containment bottles. To make sure that he helped her, she'd tricked him into agreeing to a contract, which had resulted in a magic collar being put around his neck. If he ever broke the contract, the collar would activate and cut off his head. However, a similar one had been placed around her neck. Elsie, it seemed, had no choice as to the contract's terms, and would suffer the same fate, if they failed to catch all the loose souls.

It was a hard situation to be in, but up to that point, Keima had caught quite a number of loose souls, and every time, the human girl who he'd "conquered" lost all her memories of him, as though she'd never even met him before, though the feelings in her heart often remained, unexplained and mysterious, in her eyes. That was what he was hoping would happen in Emiko's case as well. The truth was, Keima was so obsessed with games that there was no real girl who he liked. He considered the game world superior to the real one, and was often dismissive of real girls, and the real world in general. He certainly didn't conquer real girls because he wanted anything from them.

"You're sure she won't remember this..." Keima asked, as he looked up at Elsie, who, once again, was resting on her broom with the bottle in one hand.

"Kami-Sama..." Elsie said, "You know the girls you conquer never remember you afterwards..."

Keima sighed, and pushed his glasses back up with one finger as he lugged Emiko's unconscious body back off the bridge, to a safe spot, where she wouldn't be in danger of falling into the water, or being run over by passing cars.

"This one was different than most..." he said at last, feeling a bit disturbed as he sat Emiko up against a wall, "If she remembers this, she'll feel disillusioned, and that can really harm someone."

For a moment, Elsie looked puzzled and clueless, but at last, she smiled, and remarked "that's very kind of you, Kami-Ni-Sama... You actually care about this girl."

"I-idiot!" Keima replied, standing back up, "I don't care at all for real girls! I just hope... Never mind!"

However, Elsie had a knowing smile on her face as Keima pulled his PFP back out of his pocket and began the walk back home. In her own mind, at least, she knew that Keima didn't want anyone to be hurt on his account, whether he cared about real girls or not.

"I shouldn't have to do this, anyway..." Mouri Kogorou complained as he drove along, with the Tsurumi River on his left side, and a line of good-sized buildings on his right. His daughter Ran, however, spoke up quickly with a wave of her hand.

"Now, now, dad, don't be like that." Ran said, both eyes closed and a smile on her face, as if to balance out her father's scowl, "Remember, we need to get that crack in the windows repaired sometime, and it's too far to walk."

"You two didn't have to come along." Mouri replied, with the same displeased look as before, referring not just to Ran, but to Edogawa Conan, the small boy who was sitting in the back seat.

"Dad." Ran said, her expression changing to a slight frown and a squint as she spoke, "Jerry's bar and grill is on the same block. We can't trust you to go alone."

"Sheesh. I'm not some hopeless drunk." Mouri insisted, looking out the window for just a moment, but that was when he saw something that made him put on the brakes. There were the flashing lights of police cars up ahead.

"Eh? What's going on?" Mouri remarked aloud, slowing down and parking the car by the side of the road, then quickly getting out, before almost being run over by a passing, red truck. While Mouri stood and shouted at the truck in anger, Ran had already gotten out of her side of the car, and looking in the back window, to where Conan was already unbuckling his seat belt.

"Conan..." Ran said with a worried look on her face, "Please don't get in the officers' way this time, alright?"

"Okay!" Conan replied with his customary smile, peering at her through his large glasses. He looked the same as always, with his white shirt, blue suit jacket, red bow tie, gray shorts and white sneakers. His hair still stuck up in parts, but was mostly neat. As always, he looked very curious and eager to find out what was happening. Conan tended to get in the way from time to time, but he had a good heart, and there were times when Mouri; a private detective, had relied on him for assistance in solving crimes.

However, there was something about Conan that neither Ran, nor most people who knew him realized; that he'd once been known as Kudo Shinichi, and was actually not a young boy, but a very talented, amateur detective and a teenager; the same age as Ran. In fact, Ran had once been very close to Shinichi. They'd been very much like sweethearts since childhood. Still, when a strange poison had been used to transform Shininchi into a child, he knew that Ran wouldn't believe it was him, so he'd developed the identity of Edogawa Conan and made up a cover story. Mouri and Ran had since taken him into their home, and he'd become a helpful member of the family, it more ways than one.

You see, while Mouri Kogorou did have some talent as a detective, he also made many mistakes, and allowed his personality to get in the way a lot of the time. Most of the time, it was Conan who really solved the case; even though it usually meant knocking out Mouri with a special tranquilizer dart, and impersonating his voice. In fact, he had to do things like that rather often. After all, who would ever believe that a child had once been the most talented teenage detective in Tokyo?

Quickly, Conan had opened the car door and followed Ran outside, closing it behind him as he went, and the two had passed around the front of the car before Mouri had even finished shouting at the truck, which was long gone by that point. Still, Mouri let out one last "hmph!" as he led Ran and Conan towards the two police cars and one larger police vehicle, which were positioned by the side of the road, where a cement ramp lead down to the river itself. That was where most of the policemen seemed to be working, and pretty soon, Mouri was crouching near the top of the incline, looking down towards them. That was when the three of them spotted a detective, who they all knew.

"Hey!" Mouri exclaimed aloud, waving enthusiastically to the detective, "Megure!"

"Mouri!" Megure exclaimed, looking surprised for a moment, though his expression hardened just a second later. His brown hat and trenchcoat, as well as his white gloves made him stand out among both the uniformed and plain-clothes officers who were working around him. Some of them were fishing through the water, and others, examining a very wet body, which was lying next to the river, or talking with an old, bearded man in ratty clothes, who was standing near it.

"I should have known you'd show up." Megure noted a bit suspiciously, "You always seem to be around whenever a body turns up. Well, I suppose that as long as you're here, you may as well give me a second opinion on all this. It seems clear on most points, but there's one or two puzzling facts, that don't seem to fit in."

"No need to worry, Megure!" Mouri said, an overconfident smile spreading across his lips as he spoke, "I'll make it all clear in no time. So, you found that body in the water. I assume you suspect that tramp over there?"

"No, it looks like a suicide." Megure replied, pointing over his shoulder at the spot, just above the river, no more than a couple yards from the body. Sure enough, there was a bridge right over the river, just high enough that falling from it could indeed mean death; especially for a young girl, like the kind whose body was still resting next to the water, "The girl's name was Emiko Sasaki. She lives around here, and was known to enjoy television dramas and fresh sushi. She seems to have had a strange obsession with her hobbies, which made her something of a recluse. She had few friends, and usually avoided people in general. Not many people would have any reason to kill someone like that."

"Yes, that sounds right." Mouri admitted, pausing to think it over, "Also, suicides are often reclusive people; especially those with few friends."

Megure just shrugged his shoulders in response to that point, "I suppose I might be more depressed if I didn't have any friends. Still, there's one more piece of evidence that we haven't been able to explain, exactly."

"Oh?" Mouri asked, smiling eagerly, "Let's see it."

In just a moment, Megure was holding up a bag with a girl's hair ribbon inside, holding it out, so that both Mouri and Conan got a good look at the ribbon.

"Apparently, Emiko was wearing two ribbons on the day she fell into the river. One is still tied to her hair, and this is the other one. They're a matching pair; both the same make and color. However, this one was found in the water, near where her body was discovered."

"That is a bit odd." Mouri noted, "I suppose it must have come undone in the water, though. Those kinds of things happen."

"I thought so too, at first," Megure replied, "but look closer, Mouri. Can you see what I mean?"

For a moment, Mouri squinted at the ribbon, leaning just a little closer, until at last, with a satisfied, confident look, he straightened up, and said, "Yes, I see. The ribbon looks like it was cut in the middle. Some sharp object must have been used to cut the ribbon loose after she fell into the water."

"Not before?" Megure asked, looking just a little curious, but Mouri had an answer for that.

"I suppose it might have been cut before she fell, but in that case, why wouldn't it be on dry land? Did the wind carry it into the water, and if it did, why was it so close to the body?"

"Good job, uncle." Conan thought to himself, looking up at Mouri with a smile. Mouri Kogorou's deductions usually weren't so sharp, until he'd had a while to think over the facts. However, even though Conan was pleased with Mouri's deduction, and agreed with it, as far as it went, there was another possibility. It was possible that the ribbon had been cut before Emiko's fall, and had either remained in her hair until she sank into the water, or else that she'd been over the water when the ribbon was cut.

"Yes, that sounds right." Megure replied to Mouri's conclusion, "But what do you think could have cut the ribbon? That's what I'm puzzled by."

"Any number of things, I suppose." Mouri replied with a smile and a shrug, "Broken glass, sharp rocks, little bits of metal. I'd say it just got caught on something underwater, and was eventually cut through."

"I think that's the most likely explanation," Megure admitted, "After all, her arms and legs are all scraped up, so she must have been dragged along some nasty rocks by the currents. It surprises me that her head is mainly unharmed, except for a couple bumps on top, but that's no reason not to accept your explanation. In fact, as things stand now, it seems like the other investigators looking into this case are of the same opinion."

"I suppose it really is a simple case after all..." Mouri observed, though his confident smile was starting to fade as he asked his next question. "Who found the body first?"

"An old tramp by the name of Ochi Kazuki." Megure replied, "He's still down there by the body, repeating his testimony, if you'd like to talk to him about it."

"I don't think so. It'll probably be a waste of time." Mouri replied, shaking his head, "Still, there's one thing I would like to hear. You must have heard his testimony once. Did Ochi think it was suicide?"

Megure closed his eyes for just a moment at that point, but after a second or two, he replied.

"Mouri, I don't think Ochi is the best one to give opinions on how this happened. His testimonies were a little jumbled, and he kept asking for money."

"A normal tramp, in other words." Mouri noted a bit dismissively, "Still, what did he think?"

"He didn't think it was suicide," Megure admitted at last, "but he wouldn't say what he thought it was. I don't think he knows what to think, really. When I asked him why he was so against the idea of suicide, he just told me that he saw that girl every morning as she went to school, and she often looked distracted, but not depressed enough to take her life."

"Well, you can't always tell how somebody really feels, based on something like that." Mouri replied with another wave of his hand.

"He also mentioned a boy that he'd seen her with a couple times recently." Megure continued after a moment, "He said she'd seemed a little nervous whenever she was with him, as though she weren't sure whether she wanted him around or not. Then, about three days later, he saw her again, without the boy, and she looked happier than ever. Still, I'm not convinced this boy was involved. There aren't any traces on top of the bridge to indicate whether or not anyone was up there recently, or how many there were. I suppose she might have killed herself if she'd discovered that the boy was dead, but..."

"That's him!" came a shout from the direction of the tramp, who was a man with mismatched clothes, a hood and a short beard. He was pointing with a well-gloved hand at the top of the bridge, and there stood a teenage boy in a red outfit and glasses, looking down over the edge at the scene of death, with a grim expression on his face, his eyes wide open, and his teeth gritted angrily, though whether it was anger over the death of a friend, or over the body being discovered, Conan couldn't yet tell. His own eyes had already narrowed a bit behind his thin glasses as he looked up at the bespectacled teenager, already feeling that there was something very suspicious and secretive about him.

Katsuragi Keima had been on a train, headed in the direction of a game store when he'd heard the news about Emiko, from one of the rumored voices flying around the train. Elsie had been with him at the time, but as usual, she was nowhere near as interested in their errand as he was.

"Kami-sama!" Elsie said at last, after over half an hour has passed on the train, "Why do we need to go all across town anyway?"

Else's light purple eyes just stared at Keima as he sat next to her in the train, playing on his portable game system; the "PFP."

"We're on a gaming errand, of course." Keima replied, not even glancing at her as he spoke, "Isn't that what I told you before we left?"

"But, Kami-sama..." Elsie whined, once again calling Keima by one of her favorite pet-names for him, "Why is it taking so long to reach the store? Don't we usually go to closer stores, like the toy and game shops closer to the school?"

"I had no choice in this matter." Keima just replied, looking up into the air for a moment, as though vividly remembering his earlier struggles with the telephone that morning, "When a game is rare, and only in small-scale distribution, one must sometimes go to these lengths, to find a store that carries it."

"Is it really worth it, Kami-sama?" Elsie asked at last, "I mean, you already have so many games..."

However, at that point, Keima briefly glanced at her, before looking back down, and pushing his glasses up once again, as he often did when he was about to say something that he considered very profound and important.

"Let me teach you something useful. In this life, there are games which are very common, and some are common because of their quality. Others only because of the marketing. Yet, all common games share a common disappointment, no matter how wonderful the games themselves may be. You will understand this better, as you realize the truth; that the effort that one puts into acquiring a game increases its value within your heart!"

At that point, Keima's left hand shot out in front of him, as though pointing to something on the other side of the bus, and then drew back, until it was postioned partway over his hair. Elsie had seen Keima do things like that before in his enthusiasm for games, and whenever he did, she was astonished by his eagerness and spirit; so great that she could almost see the dramatic-looking cliff over the seaside, and the large, cloth hat that Keima held onto, to keep it from blowing away in the sea breeze. In fact, she was so impressed that bright sparkles came, for a moment, into her own eyes, and she forgot all about the aggrivation of having to ride the train for over half an hour.

"Kami-Sama!" Elsie exclaimed in delight, as she started to catch some of Keima's enthusiasm, "This must be a very special game to make you go to such lengths!"

At that point, however, Keima's expression returned to normal, and he went back to looking into his PFP screen as he replied, "Actually, it's just an edition I don't have yet."

"Waah!" Elsie moaned in disappointment, puffing out her cheeks in a pout, as she folded her arms, and a look of indignation came over her face. However, that was when Keima heard a name he recognized from one of the people, who were chatting nearby.

"...heard she was called Emiko, or something like that. Poor kid."

"What'd she die of?"

At that moment, Keima snapped to attention; his eyes locking in the direction of the speakers; two young women, one of whom had a bag of groceries on the seat next to her.

"Not sure, but I heard the policemen saying it might have been suicide."

At once, Keima's eyes went all glassy, though he just remembered to pause his PFP, as the indirectly-delivered news hit him like a lead weight. Could it be a different Emiko? Emiko wasn't an uncommon name. Still, they were in the same section of town. What if it -was- the same Emiko that he knew? Could Emiko really be dead, so soon after he's succeeded in his conquest, and had she really killed herself?

"Was it... was it me?" he muttered under his breath, "Did I do something to cause this? Is it even..."

For a moment, and only a moment, Keima actually considered continuing on to the game store to pick up his game, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to focus until he knew whether it was really Emiko who the two women had been talking about; if she'd really died as they'd said, and why. In just a moment, when the doors opened, he put his game into his pocket, and motioned for Elsie to follow him, though she looked very confused as she did so. In only a few minutes, the two were at the scene of Emiko's death, and one of his questions was answered.

Keima cursed in his thoughts as he stared down at the body of Emiko, with her arms and legs all cut, and her face obviously still recognizable. Elsie came up behind him just a moment later, and the moment that she saw the sight below, Keima heard her sharp intake of breath. Without even looking at her, he could feel her wide-eyed, horrified stare, and even knew that she had tiny tear droplets falling from her eyes. However, Keima was too angry to care by that point. In a flash, he'd turned to face Elsie furiously, and began speaking to her under his breath.

"Tell me that you wiped her memory." Keima almost hissed.

"Yes! It always happens that way!" Elsie almost squeaked, fighting back more tears.

"You're sure!" Keima half-whispered, clutching one of Elsie's arms as his stare grew more penetrating and alert than ever.

"Kami-Sama..." Elsie gasped, more hurt by his continued gaze than by his grip, "Of course... Of course! It happens the same way every time."

Once again, Keima cursed under his breath, then asked, more to himself than to Elsie, "Then why would she kill herself? It doesn't make sense. I filled all the spaces in her heart. She shouldn't have been depressed."

By that point, though, Elsie was sniffling, and unable to provide any really coherent replies, so in just a moment, Keima was rushing down the other side of the bridge, towards the place where the policemen and investigators were gathered.

Mouri had kept his eyes fixed on the boy for all the time that he'd been running in their direction, because there was something that he just didn't like about the kid.

"What... what happened here?" the boy in the glasses gasped out, apparently out of breath from his brief sprint.

"We're still piecing the specifics together." Megure explained, turning to face the teenager with a frown, and folding his arms sternly, "However, if you have some information about this girl, that might shed some light on the reason for her apparent suicide, you'd better tell us."

The boy didn't say anything, even once he'd caught his breath. He just looked at them all with a horrified, angry expression on his face. At last, however, just as he was opening his mouth, a young girl came rushing towards him from behind, crying her eyes out as she careened in his direction, and not looking where she was going.

Mouri stepped casually to one side, and out of the way as the girl collided with the boy, and soon, both of them had flown through the air, and come in for a pretty rough landing on the sidewalk. Soon, the two seemed to be on top of one another, and having some trouble disentangling themselves, with the boy looking more furious than ever, but not with the same, glaring intensity that he'd had before.

"Idiot! Look what you did!" the boy was shouting, and the girl seemed to be merely replying with shouted apologies, and trying to pull herself loose from him.

"They both look like idiots." Conan thought to himself as he watched the two struggling on the ground.

However, just then, an odd sound began to come from the pair; a sound that Conan had never heard before.

"Doro doro doro doro doro..."

It was only at that point that the girl began to wipe the tears from her eyes and sit up, and that was when Conan noticed something very odd about her. She was wearing a sort of hairpin, that was shaped like a plastic, cartoon skull. Of course, that was odd by itself. Conan had never seen a hairpin quite like it before, but the eyes of the skull were also blinking red, on and off, apparently from little electric lights inside of it, and it seemed to be what was making the noise.

The boy in the red looked more aggrivated than ever, even once he got loose from the girl and got back to his feet. He cursed briefly, mouthing the words "not now!" Conan noticed that immediately, but by that point, the girl had tapped her hairpin, and it has stopped flashing and producing light.

"Who would have a hairpin like that?" Conan wondered to himself with a wry look in its direction, but by that point, the boy and girl seemed to be whispering to each other, and after a few seconds, the girl did something that worried Conan. She started pointing at Ran, who was looking at the two of them curiously.

"Even if I had time, I would still refuse." Keima insisted angrily, "She's just a plain, normal girl, with no special parameters at all."

"Kami-Sama!" Elsie insisted, "You've got to do it! She has a loose soul, and if it matures inside it, the whole city could be destroyed!"

"Even so, to conquer such a plain person would be worse than being destroyed." Keima griped, looking off to one side angrily, "She's the sort who always gets the attention of normal guys, and goes out with normal guys. We she just let one of them conquer her."

"There's nothing wrong with her, Kami-Sama!" Elsie insisted, pouting in anger a moment later.

"You still don't understand the high standards of a god of gaming..." Keima muttered, pushing up his glasses again.

"Huh?"

"Whenever a gal game is made, it presents a girl who has strong parameters; often one who belongs to a type, or category of girl personalities." Keima explained, "There are shy, librarian girls, stuck-up, rich girls, anxious athletic girls, girls with deep, inner troubles, which must be cut through, girls of high stations, low stations, girls who are already popular, and so on..."

As Keima had been describing each type, his pose changed, Elsie noted, to match the typical pose of that type of girl in games. She still looked very lost, but Keima continued, unperturbed.

"Some girls are meant to be side characters, who make interesting friends for the main girl, but that girl over there doesn't even fall into that category. She's nothing more than one of the girls who passes you in the hallway as you head to your next encounter!"

"You should at least give her a chance, Kami-Sama!" Elsie exclaimed, but by that point, Keima was looking off to one side.

"Furthermore," he continued as if Elsie hadn't even spoken, "she already has a boyfriend, to whom she's very devoted, but he doesn't visit often enough. No one would buy such a foolishly-structured game."

"Wow! Amazing, Kami-Sama!" Elsie exclaimed, her eyes full of sparkles again as she stared at Keima in awe, "How could you know so much about her?"

"Hmmph!" Keima replied, but with a slight smirk, to indicate that he was pleased by the praise, "Well, she's obviously both friendly and beautiful. She's been approached by boys. She's been looking up and to the left wistfully every time she looks over here. I remind her of someone; clearly a teenage boy, and if she thinks of him fondly enough, a boyfriend. However, he's not dead, and there was no breakup, or her wistful memories would be tinged with sadness. Finally, the fact that she has a loose soul, and so empty spaces in her heart indicates that the boy is probably not around often enough. It's so simple that anyone could see it."

"That's so cool, Kami-Sama!" Elsie gasped again, still staring at Keima in amazement, and it had put him in a slightly better mood.

"I won't conquer her." Keima said at last, doing his best to look thoughtful for just a moment, "Still, if we can discover what happened to Emiko, I may agree to help her with her boyfriend. After all, he can surely fill the spaces in her heart, just as well as I can, if he has proper training."

Elsie still looked a little disappointed, but in just a moment, they'd turned back towards the place where the detectives were still talking hurriedly.

"I don't know." Mouri said at last, "I'm starting to think that kid must have something to do with it. He's been acting suspicious ever since he got here. I wonder what he's up to."

"Why not ask him?" Megure asked with a sideways glance, "I don't think he'll have anything important to offer, but it couldn't hurt to try. After all, we still haven't been able to get anything out of him, and I'm sure he knows more about Emiko than we do."

"Right. Good idea." Mouri replied, walking over to where Keima was standing; just a little closer to Ran than he liked.

Soon, though, Mouri cleared his throat, and using his deepest and, he felt, most intimidating voice, he spoke to Keima very solemnly.

"It won't do any good if you try to hide important facts. Just by not saying anything, you're already giving me information. You can't hide the truth from me, so why not just confess what's really going on here?"

"What are you talking about?" Keima asked, looking more irritated than confused, but Mouri's expression was growing more pompous than ever as he replied.

"Surely, you've heard the name of the great Mouri Kogorou."

For a moment after that, Keima continued to look irritated, but at last, his expression twisted a little, then turned to a thoughtful look, as he nestled his chin in his left forefinger thoughtfully.

"The harrier pilot from xenopunk? No, that was Doki Kogorou. I've got it! You must mean that one NPC who sells you flowers by the bus station in Tomi Tomi Surprise!"

"You punk kid!" Mouri almost shouted with a scowl on his face, "I'm not some lousy character in a game!"

"Even for a real person, you're presumptious. If you're not in any games, don't expect me to know who you are." Keima just replied, his irritated frown returning, "I am a citizen of games."

By that point, of course, Mouri had lost his temper, and was yelling and screaming at Keima, no longer the least bit concerned with seeming intimidating. However, Conan didn't care about that anymore. He was more interested in hearing what Ochi Kazuki had to say about how the body was found. In only a few seconds, therefore, he'd slid down the concrete to where the tramp was standing, and seemed to be scolding one of the police officers.

"Gramps!" Conan exclaimed to the tramp in his most child-like voice, "Is it true you found the body all by yourself?"

The man looked a little perplexed at first, as though he wasn't sure whether he should be talking to the child, or shooing him away from the crime scene, but at last, he bent down with a friendly smile on his face, and stroked Conan's head as he gave his answer.

"Yes. That was probably my finest hour. Only time in recent memory that I did anything without expecting money in return. I hope..."

"Did?" Conan asked, still looking just plain curious, "What did you do, gramps? I thought all you did was find the body and call the cops."

"No, that's not all." the tramp replied with a pleasant shake of his head, "You see, when I first saw the body, it was floating in the water, and I knew I had to get it out somehow, so I used the rope I'd found that morning, tied it around one of the bridge supports, and swam out to reach the body. Once I'd caught hold of the body, I turned her over in the water. She wasn't breathing, but with these drowning cases, you never know what that might mean, so I tied the rope around her and pulled us both back to dry land. That's the whole story. Now, maybe you should..."

"But gramps..." Conan asked, doing his best to sound disappointed over being sent away so soon, "Where's you get the rope?"

"I found it just a little ways upstream from here." the tramp replied, "It was a little frayed, but it looked nice and strong, so I decided that if nobody else wanted..."

"Thank you, gramps!" Conan shouted as he ran off, towards the spot where the body was. He looked at it for a few seconds, but aside from the one missing ribbon, which Megure still had, there didn't seem to be much in the way of clues. However, that changed when he got a good look at the length of rope that had been used to retrieve Emiko's body.

Sure enough, just as Ochi had said, the rope was frayed, and in two spots more than anywhere else. However, Conan noticed something else about the frayed spots; something that the other investigators apparently hadn't realized.

For a moment, Conan just looked up at the underside of the bridge, feeling perplexed as he wondered what kind of person would try to commit suicide in that way, and if she had, then how had she dies of asphyxiation? Had it been drowning? Then what about the bump on her head?

"Something's wrong here." Conan realized silently as he ran the facts over in his mind, "I don't think this was a suicide after all."