(Author's Note: This AO is the last episode of the mainstream "Detective Conan" anime which airs in the year 2021. The spin-off "Also Sprach Zarathustra" airs during the normal timeslot for Detective Conan, and then for whatever remains of the year Conan is on hiatus until January 2022.)
"It was a...right?"
"No, left! Turn left!"
"Where? Right there, or-
"Yes! Right there!"
Kogoro turned his blinker on, pressed on the brake suddenly, and then made the turn, probably to the chagrin of the car behind them.
Kogoro and Eri sighed in relief as they pulled into the parking lot for the scheduled meeting spot.
"I hope they're not mad because my dimwitted husband couldn't follow directions," Eri said as they got out of the car.
"What in the h**l are you talking about? Your backseat driving all the way here is what threw me off!"
Finishing off their styrofoam cups filled with chex mix and goldfish crackers, Conan and Nancy quietly followed the bickering couple.
Opening
(Angel Night by Psy-S, an opening to City Hunter, performed here by Garnet Crow)
(To act decisively is a prerequisite to victory! Seize the day or die trying! A most peculiar meeting in the winter, that time of year that chills the emotions to the point of murderous apathy! Perceiving the one and only truth! With the body of a child but the mind of an adult, my name is DETECTIVE CONAN!)
Irumine shon mashita ni mioroshi
Yoru wo nobotte ku ESCALATOR
Kooritsuita BIRU no tanima wo
HEADLIGHT no kawa ga nagareru
Saisho ni suki ni natta no wa koe
Sore kara senaka to totonoerareta yubisuki
Tokidoki damarigachi ni naru kuse
Dokoka e itte shimau kokoro to MELODY
ANGEL VOICE na wo yonde mimi sumasu ECHO
SHINING SMILE kaze ni chiru hanabira to KISS
ANGEL VOICE atarashii natsukashii ECHO
SHINING SMILE isogazu ni ari no mama KISS
Tort Brothers' Falling Out!
Stepping inside the room and closing the door behind them, they were immediately glad to be out of the cold.
"Finally!" Hakuno Naruhodo, age 35, said, straightening his collar. "I was starting to think you'd never show!"
His brother, Natsugi Naruhodo, also age 35, walked up to Kogoro and Eri and shook their hands. Following cue, Hakuno then did likewise.
They all took a seat in this room at the motel where they'd agreed to this meet ahead of time by email.
There was an awkward silence.
"I know what you're going to say," Natsugi said with a witty snap of his finger.
"Are you two really brothers?" Nancy asked, saying out loud what they were all thinking.
"We are," Hakuno said with a laugh.
While they had identical faces, their hair styles were different and on top of that Hakuno was skinny while Natsugi was clearly overweight, if not obese.
Kogoro, Eri, Conan and Nancy were in for a treat: they could now count themselves among few people, outside of their publishing company, to meet with the Tort Brothers, the pen name that Hakuno and Natsugi used when publishing their series of legal drama light novels that proved a smash hit in Japan, and with a sizable cult following overseas.
The name of the series was "Easy Money", and it followed the misadventures of a morally questionable lawyer named Jim Snyder who helped his clients win frivolous lawsuits. The series was set in the United States, and to boot there were 16 installments, the last of which wrapped up the series.
Scene Transition
"Aha! So that's why that was!"
"I know, right?" Natsugi said eagerly. "So we thought about having Lucy cut the cross-examination short, more or less throwing the case so as not to reveal Mr. Kim's past. We even considered there being an ABA investigation into her actions. We would've made her and Jim have to collude to wage a cover-up and keep them both from being disbarred. That story arc would've been a way to get them back on good terms, so that both of them could better understand the other's motivations and point of view."
"But in the event we decided against having Lucy go down the criminal road," Hakuno said. "Her moral clarity and strength of conviction is what sets her apart from Jim. We decided that their chemistry is actually strengthened by their clashing personalities. Provides more of a balance. It's understood that they should gradually see eye to eye more and more, but she should never have had to sacrifice her principles towards this goal. So in the end we had her do her job, even if it destroyed Mr. Kim's reputation and his right standing in the eyes of his family and friends. Of course, her questioning her actions and the strict procedures of justice was itself what brought her closer to Jim, since it made her think long and hard about the points he made, so I think we went the right route with that."
"Lucy and Jim's clashes in the courtroom, besides just being a product of common law's adversarial nature, could be thought of as a lover's quarrel," Natsugi said. "Both sides voice their frustrations with the other, but at least it's dialogue. They're being honest about how they feel, without blowing things too out of proportion, so I've always taken that dialogue to be constructive. And at the end of the day the ongoing conversation brings a greater reconciliation. And that's a beautiful thing. That's why I'm glad we set this work in America. At first it was just for stylistic reasons, but as the writing process went on I realized that their legal system was a more appropriate venue for the story that we were trying to tell. It's a system set against itself, which seems at first as a contradiction of terms but in fact this serves to ensure that every voice is heard, even if the wheels of bureaucracy do move a little slower as a result. They have to listen to more than just one side of the story, which is something I think our world is much in need of."
There was a pause.
"So that was me psychoanalyzing my own work in a nutshell," Natsugi said with a chuckle. "That was by far my favorite entry to write. Though Hakuno's instead was actually..."
Meanwhile, as Eri sat captivated at their every pretentious syllable, Kogoro (who'd never read the book and was clueless as to virtually the entire conversation) was silent for the past thirty minutes, waiting for the banter to end so they could get down to business.
Finally:
"I-I'm sorry to impose like this," Eri said, reaching into her purse, "but if you wouldn't mind signing my copy of your first work?"
"We'd be happy to," Hakuno said.
They both signed their names and gave it back to her.
Natsugi sighed. "Listen, don't get me wrong because it's been fun, and it's always good to hear from our fans, but we didn't call you all the way out here just to have a nice chat."
Kogoro nodded. "Of course. You said you needed my expert detective opinion on something?"
"A-Actually, we need to talk with your wife, if you don't mind," Hakuno said.
"...Oh," Kogoro said, his ego feeling a bit bruised by this turndown.
"We'd like your legal expertise on something," Natsugi said. "You will be paid, of course. So this'll be official. We'll expect full attorney-client privilege in whatever we disclose to you here today."
He turned to Kogoro, Conan, and Nancy. "And, um, this is a private that we'd much rather discuss only with her."
Now feeling even more offended, and yet not wanting to come across as a disagreeable fellow, Kogoro nodded politely, stood up, and went out the door. Conan and Nancy accompanied him.
Scene Transition
Kogoro leaned against the railing (they were up on the second story), taking a good look at the complex, with its several buildings and the nearby gas station.
"What's wrong, Uncle?" Conan asked.
"Hmm?"
"That look on your face. Is it because they didn't need the services of the great Sleeping Kogoro?"
"T-That's none of your beeswax, brat!"
"Yo, there's a hospitality room over here," Nancy called out from a few yards away.
Curious, they walked over and stepped inside the hospitality room.
There was a coke machine, a snack machine, several pots of coffee along with the usual coffee paraphernalia (i.e. sweetener and creamer), several lunch tables, and even a sofa.
Kogoro fixed himself a cup, and then very nearly spit it out as soon as it entered his mouth.
"This is room temperature!" he griped. "Why aren't these marked for time? What kind of suite is this?"
"Well, this is a cheap motel," Conan said.
Kogoro poured his out in the sink and tossed the disposable cup in the trash.
"Can this day get any worse..." he mumbled.
"Careful what you wish for, Uncle," Conan said.
"Yeah, yeah..."
Conan walked up to Nancy. "Hey, is your phone charged?"
"Huh? Yeah, why?"
"I need to check something. Mine's about dead."
"Okay...?"
She handed hers to him.
"Is there something about those two men that you're wondering about?"
"Huh? Y-Yeah..."
"Out with it," she said, knowing that otherwise he'd just clam up and leave her confused the whole time.
"W-Well, it's just something I'm curious about," Conan said. "I've never read 'Easy Money', but I've heard of it. And there are some rumors surrounding it."
"Rumors?" Kogoro chimed in despite himself.
"It's been speculated that the books are based on real-life lawsuits," Conan said. "On the website 2channal there's supposedly a subforum for fans of the series dedicated to investigating these claims. Well, they're probably a bunch of amateurs with no connections in the legal profession, so I'm skeptical that they might actually turn up anything relevant."
"I'm sure there's nothing to that," Kogoro said. "Anything something gains a big cult following, there's always going to be somebody somewhere raising a big fuss and positing some grand conspiracy theory about it. That's just the way it usually goes."
"Like for example," he said haughtily, "I'm sure there are fans who think I'm not actually a deductive genius but that rather somebody just puts me to sleep and uses me as a mouthpiece. Ridiculous, right?"
Oi oi, Nancy thought with a deadpan look.
That hit a little too close to home, Conan thought with the same look.
Scene Transition
Eri, Hakuno, and Natsugi stepped outside, where Kogoro was waiting.
"So how'd it go?" Kogoro asked Eri.
And then he noticed the shell-shocked expression on Eri's face.
T-That bad, huh, he thought.
"If you'll excuse me for a moment," Natsugi said, scooching his fat body past Kogoro and heading over to the hospitality room.
Scene Transition
"Thank you for hearing us out," Natsugi said, sitting on the bed, finishing off the small bag of teriyaki-flavored potato chips that he got earlier.
"N-No problem," Eri said, still downtrodden by whatever it was they said to her.
Hakuno opened the door and stepped back inside, having returned from the bathroom.
"That took you a while," Natsugi said.
"You could've just used the bathroom in here," Conan said.
"Huh?"
"The brat makes a good point, actually," Kogoro said.
Hakuno shook his head. "The bathroom in here's clogged up. Well, all sorts of shady characters frequent these motels, so there's no telling what they're flushing down the toilets here."
He turned to Eri. "So, as for what you told us, we'll keep that in mind as we come to a final decision as to-
"No, it's already decided," Natsugi said with great resolve. "We're doing it, bro. No matter what. We gotta make this right."
Hakuno nodded reluctantly. "Alright then."
There was a long pause.
Then Hakuno looked at his watch. "Oh look at the time, it's two past four."
And with that, Natsugi got up. "Whelp, excuse me again. Fat guy passing through."
And once again he brushed past them aiming for the hospitality room.
"Oi, what did they tell you to get you so upset?" Kogoro whispered.
Nancy shook her head. "She can't tell you. Attorney-Client Privilege. Right?"
Eri nodded.
Hakuno rubbed his hands together nervousy. "So, before you go, who here's up for a little-
"YAAAAAGGGHHH!"
*CRASH*
Natsugi was the first to jolt up. "What the h**l was that?"
He dashed out of the room, they followed him.
Natsugi, a few feet ahead of the rest, quickly turned the doorknob and charged into the hospitality room.
A few seconds later:
"N-NATSUGI?! NO! NO! This can't be happening! Somebody, QUICK! Help me get this off of him!"
And with that, Kogoro and the rest came running inside.
The coke machine had fallen on top of Natsugi, crushing him to death.
Scene Transition
"Ah! Mouri-san!"
The Inspector overseeing this investigation was Sango Yokomizo, who was of course one of Kogoro's fans.
"Inspector. It's been a while."
Hakuno looked on in horror as Natsugi's lifeless body was carried out on a stretcher, held up by two of the strongest officers available for obvious reasons.
Yokomizo watched as the body was slowly taken down the stairs. "What on earth happened here?"
Scene Transition
"...I see," Yokomizo said. "I guess the question here would be, why did it suddenly fall on him?"
"I-I think I have an idea," Hakuno said.
"Go on."
"Actually, it's...kind of embarrassing, so if you could promise me that the details of this won't be made public I'd appreciate it."
"I can't make any guarantees, but of course we'll try to show the most consideration to your brother's memory as possible. What is it?"
"...Most likely he was shaking the machine out of frustration," Hakuno said.
"Huuh?" Eri said.
"Truth be told, though we're twins our parents split up when we were little. Each took custody of one of us, so we didn't see a lot of each other until we were grown. Raised by our mom, Natsugi has had a weight problem since he was young. More than that, actually. He has an eating problem. He's always snacking throughout the day. I was rather happy to hear that he'd switched from drinking regular coke to drinking diet coke, because even the tiniest step forward was better than nothing. Around 4 every day he drinks a diet coke. He keeps a six-pack of such at his house all the time for that purpose, and sometimes he calls and asks me to restock them for him."
"When he can't get what he wants to eat," he continued, "he sometimes gets frustrated."
He pointed to the machine. "This machine's old, so you can't see it very clearly, but when the machine's out of something the button glows pink. I'm guessing he didn't see that, put in his money, and then pushed the diet coke button, just for it to be out of such."
He sighed. "And I'm guessing that when that happened, he got mad and starting shaking the machine violently, but he accidentally sent it falling on top of him. A machine like this, it easily weighs over 500 pounds, maybe closer to 1000 pounds even. It's no wonder, then...The reason I picked this motel was because I knew it had coke machine that dispensed diet coke."
"But the room you got had a minibar," Nancy pointed out. "Why didn't you just put a can of it in there?"
"Truth be told, I didn't want to offend him," Hakuno said. "If I did that, the implication would've been that he needed it, like a diabetic needs his insulin shot or something. So I sought to subtly provide him access to the snacks he wanted by scouting this place out ahead of time. But if I'd only known that this would happen...!"
Kogoro put his hand on the man's shoulder.
"Neh, what's this?"
Conan pointed to a large bag-like object lying on the floor beneath where the coke machine would've been situated.
Kogoro shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes strange objects get lodged under vending machines. And they might stay there for years and years as far as we know. Anyways, Inspector, about the..."
Conan looked up. Above where the vending machine was, there was an air vent.
It's winter right now, he thought. So that vent should be dispelling warm air into this room. That means...could it be?
He stepped outside. Nancy followed him.
"The brother did it?" she asked.
Conan nodded. "And I think I know how."
"How do you know this wasn't an accident?"
"Because earlier, when he was in there getting chips, he inserted money and selected a different bag of chips from the one he got. Instead, the machine jammed and it didn't fall off the rack as it was supposed to. That, I imagine, would've been more frustrating than a coke machine. Because with the latter, if its out of one drink then you can just get settle for another, without having to pay again. With the former, on the other hand, he'd have to pay twice to get anything from the machine. That would've been more frustrating, in my opinion. Additionally, unlike with the coke machine it might've actually been possible for him to get his original bag of chips by shaking the machine until they fell off the rack."
"But he didn't do that?"
Conan shook his head. "He just said 'dang it' and then put in more money and selected something else. That's why I don't think he would shake the coke machine. If that's the case, then...his brother had to have been lying."
Scene Transition
"Inspector, we've confirmed that the machine was out of diet coke," an officer said.
Yokomizo nodded. "Very good."
He sighed. "Well, it looks like this was nothing more than an unfortunate accident."
*ping*
Making strange gurgling noises as usual, Kogoro fell backwards and then slid against the wall, unconscious. Conan stood near the doorway outside and readied his bowtie.
"Hold on a second, Inspector," Kogoro/Conan said. "That's what the killer wants us all to believe."
"Then-
"Yes, this was no accident," Kogoro/Conan said. "It was murder, plain and simple. Of course, only one person here would have a motive to attempt such a thing. And that person would just happen to be you, Hakuno-san!"
Hakuno gritted his teeth. "What the f**k are you jabbering about?! I thought you were some bigshot smarta*s detective! Why would you say something so stupid as-
"I can assure you, I am not mistaken," Kogoro/Conan said. "You do have an alibi, of course. You were with us when we heard Natsugi-san scream and the coke machine falling on top of him. He left the room alive and well, and you did not up until the time that we heard the scream. We were your witnesses as to such, the proof that you didn't simply push the machine toppling forwards at him."
"However," he continued, "your alibi was but the product of a clever trick you employed against us and your brother. Before your brother stepped out to get his diet coke, you stepped out to 'use the bathroom'. Likely you deliberately stomped up the toilet ahead of time so that you'd have an excuse to leave your motel room to seek out the common area restroom. In fact, you headed straight to the hospitality room. Ahead of time you prepared an airbag, which you went and taped to the air vent above the vending machine. Because it was being filled not only with air but with hot air, it would expand rather quickly. Once it reached a certain volume, it would tip the machine over, making it fall forwards. You likely experimented ahead of time, figured out how long it would take, and then timed it just right so that Natsugi-san would be standing in front of it as it was about to fall. The coke machine is immediately to the left when you enter the room, and he was singlemindedly focused on procuring his drink, so he didn't notice the large air bag behind it. And then it was too late."
"Of course," he continued, "it would've been problematic had the police seen the airbag taped to the vent. They would've known straight away what happened. So you had to be the first to enter the room, so that you could remove it from such. Ahead of time you taped several sharp nails to the back of the coke machine, so that as the air bag made contact with the machine it was also punctured several times at once, so that it'd deflate quickly. So when you threw the bag down on the floor beneath where the machine was standing it no longer had noticeable amounts of air in it. In the short time frame granted to you you had to likewise remove the nails and the tape."
"That's the damning evidence against you," he concluded. "You didn't have time to dispose of the nails and tape. Either it should be in that trash can over there, or, even better, on your person as we speak. Perhaps in your pocket. You wouldn't have had time to put on gloves and then take them off afterwards, so your fingerprints should still be on them, along with the airbag."
Yokomizo turned to Hakuno. "Is all this true?"
Hakuno sighed. "D*MMIT! D*MN you, Mouri! If not for you, I...!"
"Why did you do it?" Yokomizo asked.
"I believe my wife knows the answer to that," Kogoro/Conan said.
"I...can't say," Eri said.
"Fair enough. Hakuno-san, tell me if I'm somewhere in the ballpark here. Years and years ago, you and your brother were employed in the mail room at the so-called Koyama Law Firm. I was able to find out about this via a dated webpage listing you both as employees of such, and based on your highly unusual surnames I do not believe that I've got you mixed up with somebody else. While there, one of your jobs was to organize the shred room, since there were many confidential legal documents that couldn't simply be thrown out. You came across many papers summarizing of various lawsuits. Some of those seemed quite frivolous, laughable even. You and Natsugi-san probably had a good chuckle from reading some of those. But then you had an idea: why not write legal dramas based on these cases that seemed too unbelievable to be real?"
"There was a problem with this, of course," he continued. "Upon joining the firm you were both made to sign confidentiality agreements. Writing about these cases would've been a violation of such. So you waited, about five years after quitting your jobs there, so that the attorneys involved in those cases would not remember the details of such. Then you began publishing your novels, under an anonymous pen name. A new installment was released exactly every three months, which is a strong indicator that you'd written them long beforehand. You made lots of money off of your books, but you also had to live in fear that somebody might find out the truth."
"Recently your brother decided to come clean," he concluded. "He invited my wife here so as ask what the legal consequences for multiple violations of a confidentiality agreement would be. He wanted to know what would happen to the two of them once they came clean. But once he was informed of such, that he might possibly go to prison even, he still insisted on following through. Hakuno-san was not willing to go down with the ship for his brother's change of heart. So he killed him, to keep him silent...Am I right?"
"...More than right, actually," Hakuno said. "Everything you said was spot on. A couple of months ago, our publishers convinced us to hold a face-time chat with a select few fans who were willing to shell out 100,000 (Yen) each for the chance to see us and ask us questions. No photography or recording was permitted, of course. After the event, a member of the audience approached us and told us her story. Her daughter, years ago, filed a lawsuit which was one of those we came across in the shred room. One that we had a laugh about and decided to record for future reference. It later became the subject for our seventh book. Some fans found out about it, somehow; the character based off her in the book was highly unliked by the fans, so they vented their anger on the real her once she was found. She was sent hundreds of hateful and threatening letters, and finally she killed herself. My brother couldn't sleep for weeks after that. And finally he decided there was no choice but to come clean and face the music. But I...d*mn him, he didn't ask me what I wanted! So I...yeah, I did it. I killed him, to keep his big mouth shut forever. But now it looks like all I accomplished was to pile sin on top of sin."
Ending
(In the Storm of my Mind by Sayuri)
On that day they trekked to the mouth of the great river
Leading the procession, the elder donning black vestments
His wrinkled face, an old, sad story etched into its creases
With a thousand yard stare, he uttered the old utterances
"Take to heart, ye of few days, what you have witnessed!"
His words carried no weight as we played quietly in the back
The years passed, and our style of play grew more refined
Anywhere, anytime, you were the only company I needed
But watching you gasp for air was a sudden slap in the face
It was from then that I could hear the crescendo of the bells
Trapped in the storm of my mind none can hear me scream
I know our bodies shall be threshed at the foot of the altar
And our ashes sprinkled on the lips of the grinning demon
This happy dream is naught but the vapors of a dying flame
I want to cherish these moments always, but I am reminded
The strongest among us must yield to the turning of the hour
Its ticking, like nails on a chalkboard, like cascading thunder
The stroke of midnight shall do us apart, forever and ever.