Ever since Kudo returned to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, he spent most of his time in the autopsy room. As others walk in and out, he just silently examines the two corpses which still have some warmth to them.
First is Dr. Hasegawa-san, who originally was here to carry out a postmortem for someone else. It appears that she may have gotten a concussion serious enough to take her life away from her, possibly due to a fight with the intruder. The other forensic pathologist happens to be currently under medical emergency care in the Beika General Hospital.
When Inspector Kudo came back, it was discovered that Hasegawa had just stopped breathing. In order to maintain the original conditions of the crime scene, he had to order others to not move the bodies, so she still lies on the cold ground. That is to say, dead bodies will be brought here in the end anyway, the only difference is whether or not they'll be moved onto the autopsy table.
As for Takahashi, except for his corpse being moved to the autopsy room, there hasn't been much change to the death scene at the prison cell. Although they all think that Takahashi committed suicide, but they still recorded all the details of the death scene properly as they would have with any other ones. After quite some time of examining the corpse, Kudo still couldn't solve the mystery behind the death of Takahashi, so he has three officers stand next to the two bodies and keep guard and then he heads toward the direction of prison.
Bright light shines down on him during the whole way. In contrast to this happens to be those criminals who rather cringe in dark corners, not knowing what to do, or just lazily lie down listlessly. People here are of all sorts; actually, they're not all that different from those living normally in the colorful world outside with distinct and unpredictable mentalities. The only common thing between them which distinguishes them from those outside, is the fact that they violated the law.
Seeing that once in a while there's one or two criminals who notice his arrival and decide to spit as a symbol of their dissatisfaction, Shinichi Kudo just continues to walk forward without any expression on his face. He knows very well that some of them were caught by him, while others solely hate him for being a police officer who takes an opposite stance from them. The route that he took in order to get to this Inspector position of his allows him to know very well of the fact that within the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, there are also some who withhold a distinct stance.
Youth has already faded. The body now bears the weight of heavy armor. We see that the longer one wears a mask, the harder it is to remove. And the ears, and the eyes now are clear. So now he realizes, the world is not all about good and evil, nor is everything either black or white. Even so, he still upholds justice and fights time after time for faith and belief, to punish those who break the law and bring them to the face of justice, as if doing so could fill those empty gray holes in his heart.
It's him who chose this sort of life and the fate that accompanies; life didn't choose him, and neither did fate just come up to him and knock on his door like that.
For Kaito Kuroba, it happens to be the same. Perhaps it's the same for virtually everyone.
Perhaps it's because he has been with Kudo for a significant amount of time, originally Kuroba who was very uncomfortable with the police has gotten used to coming in and out of this place. Except, he still felt a little resentful when Kudo brought him here. Yet not long after does he realize, what he resents may not be Kudo bringing him along with himself, but rather having to own up to the fact that he who believes in art being the essence of life indeed has the same kind of face, an ugly face, as do other criminals.
Finally reaching an empty prison cell, he stops and walks in after the warder leading the way unlocks the door. He looks around to get a general glance of the place. So far, he hasn't discovered any other details which deprives it from the definition of normal besides that clear blood stain on the wall. Ten minutes pass, Kudo Kuroba still hasn't found any evidence which can overthrow the whole thing with Takahashi committing suicide. For some reason, he just stands in the middle of the prison cell and stares at the blood stain, as if this enables him to see a different truth.
At least, that's what it seems like to the warder. He can't really understand what the legendary *Heisei Holmes* is thinking. All that he knows for sure is that Takahashi suddenly went nuts and kept pounding his head on the wall when he saw that no one was near his prison cell at the time. When people heard the noise and rushed in, he had already died. Not to mention, Inspector did check the camera recordings to see that it matched his testimony perfectly. So it seems to him that it's just a waste of energy to continue investigating.
Another five minutes pass, Kudo comes out the prison cell without saying anything at all and goes for the surveillance room again. This time, he doesn't hurry nor rush at all when he investigates all videotapes for the past few days relating to Takahashi. About another three or four hours, Kudo calls for that warder that previously accompanied him to give him some instructions, and then he leaves again—
This time he still decides to use higher than normal levels of electrical currents for dream exploration in order to save time. It may be that he's already used to this sort of abnormal equipment on top of him being too tired in the first place, just a few seconds before The Dream Exploring Machine starts doing the real work, he has already fallen into light sleep.
This time, the dream setting is still Suzukawa's office. Him now already happens to be barely conscious. All that he hears is Suzukawa raise his tone a little in pitch for once to ask him all excitedly: "Kuroba-san, what do you think of jin..."
As his mind stays hazy, the plain office transforms into a laboratory in an instant. Dark blue light sort of shines down on all equipments and also the two people tied to the two ends of the human-fusing machine. With a closer look does it become evident, those are their original bodies which they haven't seen in a while.
This scene then suddenly becomes that mirror of truth. Through those human eyes in the mirror, he sees a magnified blood red.
Maybe it's because of a visual shock, he closes his eyes and crouches down. Then he opens his eyes, only to see a water droplet flow out from the faucet and into the sink. Somehow, in the sink there's some hairs as thin as needles that suddenly get magnified in his view. Those hairs then instantly become strands of blood; the smell of rusted iron immediately comes for the face—
It is because he didn't rest well enough so his eyesight worsened? He literally missed that small red dot on Takahashi's back just because there's a birthmark.
If that happens to be a precognitive dream, then maybe there's some other secret in it.
With this thought, he pretends to take a restroom break, but in reality—
There's a part of the videotape that shows that Zoukai Takahashi had switched his room once. At the time, there were two warders who accompanied him. One walked ahead of them to lead the way and didn't really communicate with him. The other happened to pat him on the back before he walked into the prison cell. When that scene gets magnified and replayed, one could see that in fact that warder's middle finger and ring finger of his right hand were tightly close to each other. That is to say, they were that way from the very start of when them three entered the frame.
Therefore one can predict, this particular warder may have placed something that wasn't so visible between the middle finger and ring finger of his right hand; for example, a thin needle that isn't all that easy to notice. That is to say, Kudo Kuroba happens to have found a small empty bottle taped to the inner side of the cover to the toilet tank. According to examination, there happens to be some poison residue left over. It Kudo Kuroba may say so, it seems that the murderer failed himself by being too "smart". True, keeping it with him or just throwing it in some trash can does make it too easy to get caught, and there wasn't any time for him to deal with it by bringing it out.
Then in the end, the toilet tank does seem like the better choice, but hiding it in such a peculiar location actually sort of aids the investigation process since his opponents happen to be Kudo who started detective work as far back as twelve years ago, and Kuroba who happens to have served as a phantom thief for many years and is a pro at hiding. He got it wrong from the start by bringing in this sort of special poison made by the organization that he belongs to, and running to the restroom to prepare before attempting his mission. If instead he just prepared the needle ahead of time before coming, and then just flush it down the toilet, there wouldn't be anything to really worry about. At least, there wouldn't be any strong evidence that could prove it was him who did it.
A bunch of people surround and get ahold of him, and then immediately a towel gets placed in this warder's mouth. Kudo takes out that stun-gun wristwatch that he often used when he was Conan and puts the warder to sleep with a tranquilizer dart, leaving the warder with no chance to fight back. Then, they throw him in jail and find that he hid a poison capsule in his teeth after removing the towel from his mouth.
Like they expected, after he wakes up, they face much difficulty trying to get him to open his mouth and answer questions. After all, that's a person who was brave enough to commit suicide at anytime if he failed at accomplishing his mission.
So Kuroba uses hypnosis once again, yet the results were pretty much the same as when he used it on Takahashi. Natsuyama happens to be another minor organization member who was simply told to follow orders—
"What did you say…."
"You heard me very clear. No matter how many times I repeat it, there's not going to be any changes." As Haibara says so, she wipes the table where he just spilled his coffee. "Over the past few days, I've been analyzing the data. It's up to you to decide whether or not you want to believe it."
He was about to say something, except Haibara interrupts him: "I don't know the specifics, but I think there's no doubt to this result." With that being said, she takes a sip of coffee and then continues: "By the way,"
At the same time, Futoumiya comes to UTokyo by himself as Private Detective Koda. Somehow, he cannot stop himself from coming to Suzukawa's lab again. As if there's some sort of magical power which draws him in, he longs for the truth. That is, even if he has investigated this place which can be described as ruins for quite some time and still hasn't found any breakthrough point. Even so, he continues to search and investigate with great delight, as if he never gets tired. He has no intention to slack off for not even a split second, and neither will he give up, all just because he believes that the secret behind this place will be uncovered with his own hands—
"Anyhow," she says as she's about to leave, "there's not that many coincidences in this world." She leaves a cold reminder and then walks to the neighboring Agasa Residence.
She sees three familiar old friends and Hakase sit on the couch chatting and eating watermelon. When they see that she has returned, all four eyes focus on her and they stopped with what they were originally chatting about.
"It's been a long time since you guys got a case, right?" As she says so, she observes their faces to see that so far there hasn't been any change to their expressions. "I have one in my hand that I just got, from the famous Inspector Shinichi Kudo." She puts an envelope with the words "to the Detective Boys" written on it that appears to have some width to it on the table. With the three having taken over the envelope, having read what is written in the letter inside, and having counted the total amount, large smiles appear on their face whereas confusion is written all over Hakase's face.
Hakase pulls Haibara to the side without knowing what to say all of a sudden.
"Well, there are times when our Tantei-san has to seek help from others."
Upon hearing Haibara say this, Hakase just gulps down the words that almost came out of his mouth. Eleven years have gone by since the Detective Boys was founded, and these children have now graduated from high school, so it should be fine.
Oh well, if there's any problem by any chance, as an elder in his sixties he doesn't really have the energy to take care of it anyway. It's time for children to go out into the world and have their own journeys.
That is to say, he's still a little concerned since not long after accepting the case, they immediately change into weird costumes for disguise and get scolded by Haibara.
In the end, he and Ai-chan still have to back them up—
It may just be that he's too nervous, but before the Detective Boys started off on their journey, what appears in his head when he takes a small nap at home are all those weird scenes relating to Suzukawa's lab. When he opens his eyes, none of it sticks around in his mind anymore. He keeps having this funny feeling, and it's not a good feeling, yet he can't seem to describe it—
All lights in the lab have darkened. Even if it's Futoumiya who's used to being in the dark, this still seems to be a rather dangerous situation.
Many machines are attacking him, leaving him with not even the slightest bit of time to take a good deep breath. It seems as if he might've accidentally triggered the system and activated its attack mode. Like he suspected, the main control system here indeed was never deactivated.
Yet he doesn't have any fear at all. Instead, he just enjoys going back and forth in battle like a wild animal.
*Once again, like I said before, I will get to changing it to Reiwa in the future when I make more significant edits.
Speaking of which, when I first wrote this and set this during summer, I totally forgot about the fact that Japanese schools have their school year start and end in spring. Yep, that's what happens when you're too caught up with finishing a story and forget that there's different school systems beside the American one. So my timeline, when you consider the fact that Japanese schools generally have graduation go on during March and have school start in April with a good amount of break time throughout each season, is literally messed up. I think I might just keep the time setting the same, and then just remember to add the detail that the three are college students on summer break, along with changing Shinichi and Kaito's age from 28 to 29.
Oh yeah, here's something that you probably want to hear more—the truth begins to get revealed in the next chapter. So be on the watch for updates if you've been dying to know what's behind it all. There's literally three more chapters to the main story+four parts to the epilogue=seven more chapters until this whole novel completely ends. Granted, the main ending comes in chapter 13. The epilogue is mostly first-person backstory+a change of perspective throughout the plot, but I say it's also pretty fascinating to read.