Shinichi and Hattori returned to the secluded house in the silent woods. There was an aura of doom around the place, and the assassin wondered how he had never noticed before.
The sun was starting to set. The trip was a long one, and their halfway progress itself was about a day.
Inside the house, the younger couple had taken residence in the opening hallway yet again. Before opening the door, the two teens decided to listen in. They spoke in hushed whispers.
"Why did she have to let them stay?! This was supposed to be our vacation!" a female voice rang out, muffled.
"I know. Those two just need to die already! We have an insurance plan for over 200,000, and this house could go for a lot too." the male responded.
They continued talking badly about the older couple and eventually grumbled away.
"Well, …tha's some convenient exposition," Hattori stated simply.
"Yea, recently I've felt that's all I've gotten." Shinichi chuckled afterward, "We're in a TV show!" he joked, waving his arms.
They laughed as quietly as possible, and then Hattori took on a serious look and whisper-yelled, "Conspiracy!"
Laughter died down, and the night forest finally spoke. The stars shone brightly in the absence of light, and the canopy parted perfectly to display them. Humor soon turned to sentiment as they sat beside each other.
The child caught himself as his mind wandered. He had been so close to grabbing his friend's hand. Why would he even think to do that?
Hattori stood, startling Shinichi, and extended his hand to help the other up, "We should head inside. I'm sure dinner is almost done."
The detective's hand shook with invisible fear. 'What could have possibly scared him?' the assassin thought.
Inside, the inhabitants were chatting the guests up. Strangely, the plotting couple was nowhere to be found. The two teens were seen.
"Welcome back! We were just talking, "the woman spoke, "Dinner is almost ready."
Ran and Kogoro seemed happy enough and were happily chatting with the hosts. As the woman finished speaking, the oven blared, signaling for the food.
The dinner went by smoothly, the distasteful hosts never making an appearance. The two males found this slightly concerning, but the food did a great job of distracting them.
Despite being a traditional house, the rooms strangely had western beds. Shinichi and Hattori were in one while Ran and Kogoro were in the other. The first two had offered to take the guest room with only one bed.
The assassin had a bad feeling in his gut, and he could tell that his friend was also concerned.
"Can't seem ta get rid of this feelin'," the detective said quietly and almost to himself. The walls were quite thin.
"I know. Really does seem quite cliché though," the child replied, half-joking. His attempt at a joke was stopped when he noticed how serious Hattori seemed.
"I'm sorry, Kudo, can I…can I sleep on the floor?" he asked, even quieter than before.
This surprised the boy. It had nothing to do with what he personally was worried about, "Why? I guess you can If you want to, but won't you be uncomfortable?" he asked.
The detective only looked down in what could be identified as shame. He couldn't bring himself to speak the truth. A scream tore through the house. Relieved that it interrupted the interrogation, Hattori followed Shinichi through towards the young couple's room.
The door was hanging off its hinges, and the woman lay on the floor, unconscious. As they approached the bed, the man came into view, battered and staining the white sheets.
"Why do they always choose to do these things when we're here?" Shinichi asked rhetorically.
Kogoro barged into the room with blatant disregard for the door's longevity. He reacted very similarly to how the two teens would typically, but, having anticipated it, they didn't respond. He ran to the woman's body and deduced that she was still alive; she had just been knocked out by her fall.
He proceeded to bring her to the living room couch, leaving the teens alone. They began to search for clues, finding a few hairs, misplaced items, and some disturbed dust. By the time they had finished a thorough sweep of the house, police sirens sounded outside. Ran had called them.
Shinichi was almost giddy. He hadn't experienced this in such a long time that he felt excited. Hattori seemed identical, but it was clear that something else was still bothering him.
The two realized immediately where they were, the Nagano Prefecture, and that means Misao Yamamura. The clumsy detective strolled into the room, flaunting his new Inspector title and towing along a rookie. The young woman seemed absolutely transfixed by his confidence, which made the two teens doubt that she had ever actually been on a case with him.
The strange fixation was broken when Kogoro walked back into the room. Misao promptly forgot about his façade and sprinted over to him.
"Hey! Partner! Since you're here, we got a 100% chance of solving this, buddy!" he started yelling in the older detective's face.
The rookie allowed herself to frown at the sudden disappointment and began to actually work. She introduced herself as Ichika Maeda, a rookie with the Gunma Prefecture Police. The two teens accepted her pretty readily as she seemed competent enough. Her appearance was rather average, but she had a streak of pink running through her brown hair, and her left hand was wrapped with bandages. It was decided they wouldn't ask.
"Rookie! Let's investigate!" Misao yelled again. That seemed to be his only volume.
'Rookie' only hmphed in response and tended to her duties.
Hattori and Shinichi left the room as they had already swept it, but they allowed the police officers to be thorough. The assassin honestly just wanted to sleep. Being so far up on the mountain, there was little chance that a forensics team would be here soon. There had been an odd lack of the older couple since they had woken, and they decided to search.
"I feel like we were right, Kudo," Hattori said, "Why has it become so easy for me ta tell?" he seemed a bit conflicted. He had not been the one to kill someone, so why had he begun to develop those insights?
"I guess you've been hanging around me quite a bit. A large majority of criminals have something that is defining about them. I'm sure I do as well, but I can't say definitively." the child replied.
"You're probably right…I wonder if detectives have the same. I've heard criminals say before that they had 'smelled an officer'." the first observed.
The pair made it to a traditional room at the end of the hallway. Strange, why would they only have typical beds here? This observation seemed to be significant to Hattori, and he ran back to the crime scene. The boy stood there, slightly concerned. He felt tired, more so than usual. Earlier, he had chalked it up to his training and lack of sleep, but it was becoming so strong that he couldn't think.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he spotted a shadow moving towards him. It may have had defining features, but his eyes were becoming more unfocused by the second. His last thought was blank.