Part One: Frustrations of a Teenage Detective, Trapped in First Grade!
Teitan Elementary School
Tokyo
1126 JST

Two times one is two.
Two times two is four.
Two times three is six.
Two times four is eight…

My brain seethed with boredom as the rest of the class droned their way through the multiplication table…again… I knew my cover required me to be here, pretending to be just another elementary school student, but this simplistic classwork was such a waste of my time!

I rested my head on my desk and tried to imagine what I'd be doing right now over at Teitan High School…if I still looked like my own teenage self, instead of a little kid. Would I be mixing chemicals in chemistry lab? Giving a presentation on The Tale of Genji or Shakespeare's Hamlet? Eating lunch with my best friend, Ran Mouri…?

It's true what they say: you don't really appreciate what you have until it's gone. I used to take high school for granted – mostly because I had long ago decided to devote my life to becoming Japan's greatest detective! At sixteen, I was already solving cases that stumped the Tokyo police force. By seventeen, I'd become a legitimate consulting detective. The police came to me when they got stuck, and it was a rare week that didn't see my name in the papers at least once.

But, where was that famous high school detective now? Trapped in first grade, thanks to a cruel trick of fate that shrank me – seventeen-year-old Shinichi Kudo – down to a seven-year-old pipsqueak: Conan Edogawa. This fate came in the form of an experimental poison, APTX 4869, forcibly administered when I was attacked by a couple of Black Operation agents, codenamed Gin and Vodka.

They'd thought the poison would kill me. They had no idea that pill would shrink my body, but leave my keen detective's mind intact.

Needless to say, I've been tracking those shifty goons ever since, hoping they might lead me to a cure that can restore me to my former self and allow me to resume my own name, my own life…

Until then, I must live undercover, keeping my true identity a secret from everyone but my eccentric neighbor, the absent-minded inventor Hiroshi Agasa. I can't risk telling anyone else, not even Ran. It's my deepest fear that, if she were ever to find out that little Conan Edogawa was really Shinichi Kudo, she too would become a target of the Black Operation.

Or worse, a victim.

So, I sit here at this tiny desk, surrounded by little kids, day after day, week after week, forced to relive all the spelling tests and multiplication quizzes I thought I'd put behind me ten years ago!

Luckily, Ran's father is the retired policeman turned private detective Kogorou Mouri: a bombastic, irresponsible man with a habit of jumping in without thinking things through. His lazy ways make it easy for me to slip in and keep solving those cases that leave Tokyo's Police Department baffled…with a little help from the gadgets Professor Agasa invents to help me overcome my tiny stature and child's voice…

In my mind and in my heart, I'm still the great detective I was before I was attacked. But, to keep my cover, I have to let "Uncle" Kogorou have the credit for the cases I close. No longer do people read of the brilliant deductions of teenage prodigy Shinichi Kudo. Now Kogorou Mouri, the "Sleeping Detective," is the one who makes the papers.

In a way, he's become another mask to me. Another guise. Another lie…

But, I shouldn't be too harsh. After all, Ran and her father were kind enough to take me in after my transformation. Believing me to be Professor Agasa's relative, they've allowed this young stranger to share their home, their food, and their lives. In return, I must keep my secret so the Black Organization won't find my trail…and my friends.

Criminals may think they're clever, but to commit a crime, and hope to get away with it, they must weave web after web of lies. Wielded with skill, the detective's tools of evidence and deductive logic cut through those lies, leaving only one truth. Until I find the cure I seek, I remain the living proof of Sherlock Holmes's most famous axiom: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

...Four times four is sixteen.
Four times five is twenty.
Four times six is twenty-four—

"Conan-chan, sit up straight and join in with the rest of the class!" the teacher scolded.

Reluctantly, I lifted my head from the desk and added my voice to the droning chant.

Four times seven is twenty-eight.

I knew if I didn't get a new case soon, my brain was literally going to melt.

To Be Continued...


NEXT TIME – Part Two: Reckless Impulse of a Wounded Ego

Stay Tuned!

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