He took advantage of her momentary pause to leap up (ignoring the now-throbbing bruises) and run over to the twins. "Li Mei attacked me! All I did was say that she was weird, and yeah, I shouldn't have said that, but she was about to kill me for it!"

The two of them looked back at him in stony silence. He kept going. "But I think the trauma helped me remember something important! I think it was Jonathan's last memories... I was in a forest, just minding my own business, when a voice – a female voice – said 'I never loved you, Jonathan. As your mother, who gave birth to you, I have the right to kill you as well.' And then I died."

This stunning revelation was met with dead silence. Maybe they didn't understand what this meant?

"So the murderer was definitely M... Mrs Hade. We should go arrest her," he finished.

"You're a nasty little ghost, aren't you?" Aki commented. She was smiling, but the hints of disgust were wrinkling her nose.

"G-ghost? Wh – do ghosts exist?" he asked desperately, at the same time searching for a way to get past the twins into the hallway so he could run.

"We didn't think so," Notaki said conversationally. The twins simultaneously stepped closer to him like they had planned it. "But it looks like we were wrong."

Too late. It was too late. He wasn't going to convince them of anything. The game was up. He let out what he hoped was a devil-may-care laugh. "How did you know?"

"Hmm...what did you think, was it very hard to figure out, Naoki?" Aki asked her brother sweetly.

"Not really, Aki," Naoki responded in the same tone. "He made so many mistakes..."

Jonathan growled. "If you're going to tell me, then spit it out already."

"First of all, you didn't act like an amnesia patient at all," Aki said, ticking it off on her finger. "When someone loses their memory they find themselves doing things that they don't remember learning how to do. They fall into their old habits and quirks and they don't know why. They don't form new habits or personalities. The way you were acting was totally uncharacteristic of Kangai. You weren't just showing a lack of memory; you showing completely different mannerisms, behaviors..."

"...and skills, like lying, which Kangai couldn't do to save his life," Naoki finished.

"Lying?" Jonathan asked, hoping against hope that they hadn't compared notes...

Aki put her hands on her hips. "You really thought Naoki wouldn't confront me about what I supposedly said about him? We may be investigators, but before that we're siblings."

"And before that, we're friends." Naoki looked sincerely angry now. Jonathan laughed nervously.

"You can't do anything to me," he said fervently. "I'm in your friend's body. Whatever you do to try and hurt me will just hurt him in the end."

Aki looked at him with an unreadable expression. "That's true. Which is why we're going to take you back to the forest, where you can switch back with Kangai." There was an unspoken If there is still a Kangai to switch back with.

"No," said Jonathan, crossing his arms and stomping his foot. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Unfortunately, you don't really have a choice," Naoki told him pleasantly.

Jonathan looked at Aki. All of her former friendliness had drained from her face. Now she glanced down at him like he was something she might find squashed to the bottom of her shoe. Jonathan looked at Naoki, hoping for a moment of compassion from him, but he seemed to have transformed into an ice statue. Hating himself, he looked back at Li Mei. She was looking at him with something like victory in her eyes.

He let his shoulders droop, all of the air flooding out of him. "Fine. I'll go."

The twins relaxed infinitesimally, and Jonathan barreled through the small gap that formed in between them before they had a chance to react. "Hey!" they yelled in unison.

He sent a wild laugh over his shoulder as he ran down the hallway. "Nobody can outsmart the great - " He ran headlong into something solid where he did not recall there being something solid...

Detective Gurski stood before him, blocking the narrow hallway. Kangai turned on his heel to break the other way but the twins and Li Mei had blocked that way off as well. Jonathan turned once again to the detective, and immediately backpedaled. Li Mei had been frustrated and the twins had been disgusted, but Detective Gurski seemed... absolutely fire-breathing furious. There was an almost tangible aura of pure, crackling fury around the detective as he slowly pulled a pair of handcuffs out from his belt.

Jonathan gulped.