SailorStar9: With Chapter 74 uploaded, this is Chapter 75 of this fic. (Sighs) Guys and girls, is it too hard for you to leave a review, instead of just putting this fic up on your favorited list and story alerts?
Disclaimers: I do not own Sailor Moon or Detective Conan, I only own this plotline and the pairing.
Pairing: Established!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami
Chapter 75: Ramen So Good, It's to Die For 2, Part One
Time passes...
"Did you see the God of Ramen Championship on TV last night?" Ran asked, she, Sonoko, Conan and Sera were walking home from school. "I wanted to try the miso ramen that made it to the final."
"I preferred the shio ramen." Sera piped in.
"The shoyu ramen that won the competition must taste the best." Sonoko insisted.
"Conan-kun, what ramen did you like?" Sera asked.
"The tonkotsu ramen, I guess." Conan blinked.
"The curliness of the noodles is just so exquisite." Ran gushed.
"The tonkotsu broth is so rich." Sera reminisced.
"The char siu pork is so soft." Sonoko drooled. "Talking about ramen made me want some." she muttered, the three high school girls' stomachs started growling.
"Shall we go then?" Sera offered. "To my regular ramen place. I promise it tastes good, though. After all, the flavor's apparently to die for."
At Ramen Ogura...
"Hello." Sera entered the eatery. "Boss, I brought friends today."
"Thanks for coming, Mari-chan." Ogura Katsumasa beamed.
"My name's Masumi, not Mari." Sera chided.
"Conan-kun." Ohashi Sayo recognized Conan. "It's been a while." she brought the group water. "Are you by yourself today?"
"I came with them." Conan replied.
"Here are your Judge of the Afterlife ramens." Ohashi served up Ran and Sonoko's orders.
"So, what's it going be?" Ogura served up Sera and Conan's orders. "Do you want an order of fried rice and pot stickers to go today, Mari-chan?"
"I told you my name is Masumi." Sea reminded. "I guess I'll have some."
"Could you pass me the vinegar in front of you?" Shono Yuna requested. "This one's empty."
"Could you pass me that soy sauce?" Mizushina Sosuke asked. "This one's almost out."
"The pepper's actually empty." Nakanishi Osamu patted the bottom of the pepper shaker. "Boss, could I get some more pepper?"
"Got it." Ogura looked up from the stove.
"Did the three people who just left come in together?" Conan looked up from his ramen bowl after Ohashi saw Shono, Mizushina and Nakanishi out.
"They're all regulars." Ohashi replied. "But they just happened to come at the same time today. What?" she stopped herself. "Do you think the three of them are suspicious? The other day, an incident happened while the three of them were here. A bunch of police officers came into the shop."
"A woman who lived in the neighborhood was a victim of robbery murder." Ogura supplied.
"Are the three of them suspects?" Sera asked, returning her empty bowl.
"The cops said something like that." Ogura recalled.
"Apparently, they were taken to the station." Ohashi added.
"But if they were here eating ramen today..." Sonoko deathpanned.
"Doesn't that mean they were innocent?" Ran wondered.
"The police still seem to suspect them." Ogura pointed out. "A couple of lady cops with slanted and droopy eyes come in practically every day."
"How did the three of them seem?" Yumi stormed into the eatery with Miike in tow and glared at Ohashi. "Did they seem doing better than normal? Did they have any expensive clothes or bags or accessories?"
"They could be for all I know." Ohashi stammered. "We're just a ramen shop. Even if they ordered two bowls of ramen instead of one, it wouldn't tell you much about their financial situation. "
"Yumi-san and Naeko-san?" Ran gawked.
"Ran-chan." Yumi blinked. "Conan-kun's with you, too."
"You chased the culprit of the robbery murder to this store?" Ran echoed. "Just the two of you?"
"A week ago, while Yumi-san and I were patrolling the area, we spotted a suspicious figure outside a house" Miike recounted. "I circled around and waited for them, but only Yumi-san showed up. There was a get-together at the shopping center that day, so most of the shops had their lights off and there weren't many passers-by."
"The only place open was this 'Ramen to Die For Ramen Ogura'." Yumi added.
"So, the customers in the shop then were the three people who just left?" Sera asked.
"Later, we stopped the three of them in the shop." Miike continued.
"We had Miwako and Takagi-kun go to the house where we spotted the suspicious figure." Yumi added.
"The homeowner was found dead and bleeding from her head in the entryway of her home." Miike recollected.
"In top of that, the windows were broken and the inside of the house was trashed." Yumi recounted. "The woman was a hostess. When you consider she was attacked on her way home from picking up something she forgot from her workplace, the victim probably ran into the robber at the entryway. It escalated into a fight and she was murdered."
"Wouldn't the last customer to rush into the shop be the culprit?" Conan pointed out.
"Actually, just like today, the three of them arrived at roughly the same time." Ohashi explained. "The lady cops didn't show up until a while later."
"I thought Yumi-san ran after the culprit." Conan blinked.
"Apparently, she tripped while chasing the culprit." Miike admitted.
"Yumi-chan, you can be so clumsy sometimes." Ogura teased.
"Do you two know each other?" Ran was surprised.
"She used to come to our shop before we moved with her boyfriend with the round glasses. "Ogura explained.
"Ex-boyfriend." Yumi insisted.
"You haven't gotten back together?" Miike whispered. "Things seem to be going well."
"I don't care about him." Yumi huffed. "He always said he was busy when I tried to ask him out. It sure is strange, though. Why do so many guys with round glasses like ramen?"
"My brother wears round glasses and he loves ramen." Sera piped in.
"And if they have stubble, it's almost guaranteed." Yumi agreed.
"My brother has stubble, too." Sera added. "He's pretty handsome, so if he shaved and dressed properly, he'd probably get all the girls. But he normally wears tracksuits."
"He looks like a failed entrance exam student, but he's exceptionally smart." Yumi sighed.
"His memory is exceptional, too." Sera nodded.
"He instantly remembered my phone number." Yumi recalled. "He always says 'I'm best in Japan at memorizing those kinds of things.'"
"'No, even maybe the best in the world.'" both Yumi and Sera chorused.
"Stories about idiots aside," Yumi steered the conversation back on track. "I only tripped because of the hose. While I was chasing him, the culprit threw a hose at me. It was about two meters long. It got caught on my legs and I tripped. It was a thick hose with a three-centimeter diameter. The victim probably used it to water their flowerbeds. It was missing from her yard."
"At first, we thought it was the murder weapon." Miike added. "When we first saw the culprit, they were swinging the hose around in the entryway of the victim's house. Since there were signs that packing tape had been stuck to the end of the hose, we thought they had taped something to it and bludgeoned her to death."
"But there wasn't any blood on it anywhere." Yumi frowned. "They were swinging the hose so intently you could hear it in the dark; almost as if they were conducting some kind of ritual. If that hose wasn't the weapon, what else would they have been doing with the hose next to the body?"
"Then, what killed the woman?" Conan asked.
"She was pushed." Yumi answered. "When she ran into the robber in the entryway, they got into a fight."
"Mizuno-san confirmed that when she fell, she most likely hit her head on the edge of the stairs." Miike remarked.
"Weren't there be signs that packing tape had been stuck to the end of the hose?" Sera wondered. "if the culprit had taped something to the end of the hose and used it to threaten her, maybe the victim fell while trying to avoid it."
"That's not possible." Yumi refuted. "The woman was still wearing her shoes, so it's clear she ran into the robber before she entered the house. They didn't have time to put together some kind of weapon."
"Which means the culprit taped something to the end of the hose after they committed the murder." Sera concluded. "They prioritized taping something to the end of the hose and swinging it around over running away. Wait, how did you know the hose came from that house?"
"Because the shape of the faucet in the yard matched the shape of the end of the hose." Yumi replied.
"So, when you chased the culprit into this ramen shop, the three of them were here." Sera added. "You examined their belongings, right? Apparently, they were taken to the police station."
"They willingly accompanied Miwako and Takagi-kun." Yumi confirmed.
"Then, didn't one of them have packing tape on their person?" Sera asked.
"Actually, the culprit threw the tape at me when they threw the hose." Yumi chuckled nervously.
"Do you know what the three of them had on them at the time?" Conan inquired.
"I wrote down what Takagi-kun told me." Yumi pulled out her mobile phone. "The hostess Shono Yuna-san had a wallet, cigarettes, a lighter, a cell phone, chewing gum, a handkerchief, tissues, and her housekey inside her bag. The part-time worker Mizushina Sosuke-san had a coin purse, a cellphone, a mask, his housekey and a glasses case inside his jacket pockets. The office worker Nakanishi-san had a wallet, a housekey, a cellphone, company documents, and a hand towel in his clothes pockets and briefcase. Nobody had anything of value."
"You searched the inside of this shop, too, right?" Sera pressed.
"Briefly." Miike nodded. "But we didn't find anything."
"How about gloves?" Conan thought of something. "If one of them is a robber, shouldn't they have had gloves?"
"Forensics found some suspicious gloves in the sewer on the way here." Miike responded. "They were pretty dirty, so they weren't able to determine who wore them."
"They concluded that Miike and I had let the culprit escape and the three suspects were released." Yumi complained. "We've still upset about it, so we've been investigating the three of them. Is it true that none of them have been acting differently since the murder?" she turned to Ogura.
"I'm not sure." Ogura pondered. "Shono started putting a lot of vinegar into her ramen for some cosmetic reason. Mizushina started ordering dumplings all the time. And Nakanishi started ordering two bowls of ramen instead of one."
"What did the robber steal from Tonda-san?" Conan asked.
"We're not sure." Yumi admitted. "There were signs that someone tried to break open the safe, but there was still a bunch of cash inside it."
"Someone had gone through the dresser drawer where she kept her jewelry." Miike supplied. "But a lot of them were still left."
"Maybe it was the earrings." Ogura suggested. "Tonda-san used to come here sometimes. One time she came here really drunk and loudly bragged about them. Now that I remember, there was another customer around the time of the incident."
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.
