Epilog

Conan smiled his usual grin upon finishing the examination of the floor and every garbage bin in the whole house. It had been a tiring process and without Ran's help he would have need twice as long, but the fact that they didn't find anything was a good sign. Smirking Conan wanted to leave the room of the crime, where some police officers still loitered around, searching for something. But before he could make a step, a pair of hands grabbed him and lifted him up to a girl's chest. "Conan-kun", Ran scold, the faint teasing undertone she started to use whenever she had to act her role as bigger sister, "You can't just walk around the crime scene. Come we will go back to dad.", and with those words, she carried him away. Upon exiting the room and making sure no one was able to hear them she whispered solightly annoyed, "How often do I have to tell you, that it looks creepy when you suddenly start to grin at a murder scene!"

"Sorry Ran-neechan.", the boy in her arms apologized, scratching his cheek, "but I just can't help it. You know how I love the feeling of having the culprit backed into a corner."

"First of, you don't have to call me Ran-neechan when nobody is around, we have agreed to that, right? And second I can't believe that they haven't noticed till now, so try to get rid of this habit or hide it at least." Ran scoffed angry, but Conan knew that her anger stemmed only from worry.

"We have also agreed, that I would call you Ran-neechan whenever we are in unsafe locations and I don't consider crime scenes and Kid heists to be particularly safe." Conan retorted.

After they have talked things trough, they came up with a bunch of rules, ranging from how to call each other up to what Shinichi was allowed to know. Conan didn't think much of it but Ran insisted that it would be suspicious for a child to know too much, so she forced Conan to promise her to turn down his encyclopaedia knowledge a bit.

"Ran-neechan?", a voice called out to her, bringing her back to reality and she noticed that they already arrived in the main hall, were everyone was gathered, the police still debating with the house owner and Kogoro, who the culprit could be. It was a huge buffet after all, intended as a sign of gratitude to all the sponsors of a huge project Ran couldn't quit remember and her father was invited as a special guest, even though there was no apparent reason for him to be there. After the delicious meal, the group consisting of 16 people left the dining hall, some went to smoke while others strolled around the house. A bell should chime when the dessert was ready, but 10 minutes before the ring of the bell, a scream erupted from one of the back rooms of the large mansion. Upon following the scream, Ran, Kogoro and Conan found the dead body of one of the most important sponsors for the project and, before the police even arrived, Conan had already spotted the strangulation marks left by a thin thread on the man's neck and has narrowed down the list of suspects, sole based on their clothing.

"We were the first to arrive at the scene, so the culprit must have fled the crime scene quickly before we arrived. However, pricy suits are not designed for running, so the clothing of the culprit must have strong wrinkles.", he explained to Ran after they were chased out of the room when the police arrived. Afterwards Ran, much to Conan's pleasure he no longer had to steal sheets of paper showing the facts and findings regarding the crime scene, asked the forensic team if the murder weapon had been found, which was not the case, so, Ran and Conan split up to search the whole house for it.

And now that they haven't found the thread, Conan concluded that it would still have to be in possession of the murderer.

"But I tell you that it has to be the butler! It's always the butler" Kogoro's loud voice insisted, only to be answered with an equally loud reply by the host of the dinner, "Francois may be a butler and a foreigner, but he has served me for more than a decade and since then I haven't heard a single word of complain. He is most definitely not the culprit. "

Kogoro, not willing to lose his prime subject, was about to retort, when a sudden dizziness overcame him, and he started to wobble backwords. After he slumped in the armchair behind him, his head tilted down, effectively hiding his face and everybody knew what was about to happen.

"Oh, it's sleeping Kogoro!" Takagi exclaimed and Inspector Megure only muttered a faint "Was about time."

"If you trust in your servant so strongly," Kogoro's voice started in a much politer way, "then I am glad to assure you of his innocence. The culprit is this case was not one of the employees, who served us this delicious dinner, but one of the guests who sat with us at the table."

Not even shifting a tiny bit, the renowned detective continued, "But before reviling who of the present people committed the crime, I'd like to demonstrate how the murder was executed. First the state of the room. When we arrived, I had to break down the door, because I couldn't open it without force. The examination afterwards showed us that it was only locked with a bolt from the inside, even though it could also have been locked with a key, which we found in the victims pocket. However, it seemed the culprit didn't need to secure it further, because his plan has already failed!", Kogoro's voiced dropped to a low tone at the end of the sentence. Everybody in the room seemed to be taken aback by this revelation and as usual Megure asked the question, hanging in the air, "But the man is dead Mori-kun! So, how can you say that his plan failed."

"If you look at the crime scene, you will note that it has the perfect setup for a locked room suicide. The locked door, the torn goodbye-letter in this rooms trash can and the poisoned coffee on the table are all irrefutable evidence for the culprit's scheme. He likely lured the victim to this room, claiming to propose a deal, bringing along a cup of poisoned coffee as a token of his good will. He would only need to place the letter, lock the door with bolt and the victims key, which he still has in his left breast pocket, and escape from the room after the victim succumbed to the poison." The sleeping detective or rather the child detective, hiding in his shadow, explained.

In search for confirmation, Megure turned to the forensic team, which were quick to confirm the presence of the poison in the coffee.

"But Mori-kun, how can you escape from this room while it is locked? We are on the third floor, there is no tree outside and the door closes neatly!", Megure exclaimed, feeling the usual sense of Deja-Vue he got every time a detective explained him anything.

"This part of the trick will be demonstrated by Ran," Kogoro said, while all eyes turned over to his daughter, who stood behind the table, facing the door, "after all, she was the one who figured out this trick.", the siting detective revealed, his voiced tainted with pride," Ran! Show them!"

Ran scratched her cheek embarrassed, she still didn't quite understand why Shinichi insisted, that she would partake in solving the cases. True she had figured the trick out, but only after Conan had repeated every known fact twice to her, patiently waiting for her to solve the riddle. Since their "Big Night of Revelation", as Hattori called it, Conan had always tasked Ran with solving a small portion of the riddle and whether she got it right or not, she would have to reveal the trick to everybody. This was one of Conan's demands and he heavily insisted that Ran would continue doing it, claiming that it would make everything easier.

"No matter what happens, whether I die or regain my old body, your dad will lose the "Sleeping Kogoro". So, I thought it would give him some piece of mind, if he knew his daughter could continue his work. I don't want to force you to become a detective, but it can't hurt to be able to be one.", was what he said to her.

Yes, she didn't want to become a detective.

She wanted to be a mother and wife, waiting at home for her children and husband.

However, she was convinced that her husband would continue her father's legacy or rather his own legacy.

Snapping out of her memories, Ran started her explanation slowly, paying careful attention not to stutter, like she did when she first played her role.

"So,…even though the plan of the murder hasn't worked as intended,… he escaped like he planned. If you would all look over at my dad, I can start." Ran ended, still nervous as always, but she remembered Conan's word of encouragement, he would always tell her if she needed them.

As instructed, everyone turned their heads to look over at the still motionless man sitting in the armchair and wondering what would happen next.

After a nearly half a minute of waiting for Kogoro to do something, Megure asked confused, "Why should we look at Mori-kun?" turning his head to look back, only finding an empty table before his eyes, "Ran-kun?", he asked, voicing the confusion everybody of the spectators felt right now.

"Please focus your attention back on me.", Mori demanded in his usual deep voice, seemingly unfazed by his daughter's disappearance, "the mystery will soon be revealed."

After a couple of minutes, the door behind him opened and Ran entered the now unlocked room, still nervous, but wearing an amused smile on her face, when she spotted the startled faces of everybody in the room. Giving Conan, who sat behind the big armchair, a hidden Thumb-up, she moved to stand beside the armchair, hands crossed behind her back.

Shinichi smiled from behind his glasses over at his girlfriend, again surprised of how quickly she mastered her role.

"If I wouldn't have been here, maybe she would have become the Detective of the East.", he fancied, dismissing the thought quickly and concentrating back on his task. Bringing up the bow tie, he started to explain, "The trick is very simple, but that is what makes it so effective. Ran, like the culprit before, simply left through the window and entered again trough the adjacent one.

As his words seeped through to the spectators, they all quickly gathered at the window, everybody stretching their neck, to check if the solution could be really that simple.

"But Mori-kun,", Megure was the first to turn around, a confused expression on his face, "the next window is at least two and a half meters (8 feet) away from this one. There is no way somebody could jump this far from this small ledge."

A smile creeped on Conan's face as he continued the explanation, "I did not speak about a window on this floor inspector. In fact, Ran did not jump at all but climbed up to the roof, entering the skylight to get back into the house. The trick is a simple as grabbing the ledge of the roof, climb up and come back down. Furthermore, this moonless night provided the perfect cover for this stunt, because you would need exceptional eyes to spot a person clad in a dark suit."

"But how can we know who is the culprit? Everybody who came down the stairs could have committed this crime! On top of that, we don't have reliable source to confirm who speaks the truth and who lies.", Megure interjected and Shinichi wondered once again if the bulky inspector had grown too dependent on detectives to solve his cases.

Sighting lightly, disappointed that nobody seemed to understand something this simple, he started again, "Ran. Please explain these gentlemen what the proof is."

"The clothes of the culprit.", Ran declared, still a little shaky from the adrenalin of the fall, but composed enough to not quiver as she spoke, "pricy suits are not designed for something like this, so the murderer's suit would show a lot of wrinkles. Besides, it's very likely that some of the vines, growing at this wall, have left traces of pollen or leaves on his clothing.", the girl concluded, even pausing for a moment before revealing the guilty person, raising the tension dramatically.

"IT WAS YOU!" she finished, pointing straight at a young man in a black suit with a blue tie, who flinched backwards at her words.

"What…!?" the man stammered, but quickly regaining his composure, "What nonsense! Who do you think you are talking too?"

"The culprit, of course!", Ran shoot back, her voice boiling with anger, "Do you even know what you exactly did? You killed a person, took him away from his family, his loved ones. Just think of his wife! Sitting at home, waiting for her husband to come back, wanting to discuss their holyday plans. Or think of his daughter, coming home from school, only finding her mommy crying, not understanding what is happening, not grasping that SHE WILL NEVER SEE HER FATHER SMILE AGAIN!"

The emotional outbreak was far from what everybody expected, of course, they knew how sensible Ran is to those kinds of things, but it still sounded like she talked about herself, even though both her parents were very much alive and rather healthy.

"Maybe, she really never saw her Dad smile like he used to, since her mother left." Conan couldn't help but fancy, quickly shoving the thought away, caging it with all those other questions he wanted to ask Ran, but had to wait for now.

After Ran,s outburst, the murderer didn't put up much of a fight, visibly shaken in his morality by Ran's words and not soon after the police escorted him out of the house in handcuffs. The traces of leaves, along with the piano wire, he had bound around his torso to hide it, were more than enough prove to convict him for years.

"Well Mori-kun, great work as usual.", Megure complimented the now awake detective, who, again, took the credit for the whole case shamlessly.

"Ahh, that was a piece of cake Inspecto, you know how…", he already started to boast, but Megure was quick to interrupt him by speaking up again.

"And thanks to you too, Ran-kun. It seems you're really taking after your dad and Shinichi-kun. Who knows, maybe you will even surpass them both.", the inspector added jokingly.

With flaring cheeks Ran only thanked modestly, "I'm glad I could help, but I don't think I will ever surpass either of them."

Conan wasn't too sure about this. Even though she would probably never catch up to him or FBIs like Akai Shuichi, he wouldn't put it past her to reach the level of other high school detectives like Sera or even Hattori.

But there was no doubt that she had already surpassed the old man!", Conan thought, sending an annoyed glance over at the old man who was marching to their car, signalling them both to follow him.

Conan only sighted, walking after the "renowned detective", but then a hand reached out to hold his and when he looked up, Ran smiled down at him with the loveliest smile he could ever imagine.

"Maybe things aren't as bad, as I think they are.", the shrunken teen thought to himself, "but just because she knows now doesn't mean I can let her wait longer.", he silently vowed, but nontheless confident in the future, because she was by his side.

Together they could achieve everything.


As always all right go to Gosho Aoyama, the original creator of the Detective Conan Universe.

I thank everybody again for reading my story and I really hope it entertained you in some way, even if that is by making you laugh over my poor writing skills.

Hope to entertain you again with my next story and till then,

Farewell