"Please, Tsuneo-kun... in the future, could you try not to say such bizarre things to the suspects?" Inspector Megure asked, his voice dripping with exhaustion.
The look that Kawakami had given him as he was being led away... it made Tsuneo look like his accomplice rather than the person who helped catch him.
"I didn't say anything," Tsuneo replied, shaking his head in flat denial.
"Oh!"
Jodie stepped forward, her voice characteristically loud and exaggerated as she addressed the group. "That was some truly wonderful reasoning!"
She had been playing along since she felt the bed being lifted while she was "unconscious." Between that and the safety rope tied around her waist, she would have had to be a fool not to realize what was happening. However, the bit about the floorboards—the evidence of the floor being cleaned to hide the bed's original position—that was a detail she hadn't anticipated.
Nearby, the forensics team had resumed their work. Since Kawakami had used his palm to rub the floor, there was a high chance he had left behind more than just a splinter.
"It's time to eat," Tsuneo said, checking his watch. He was getting hungry.
"OK, OK! I promised I would be the one to treat everyone," Ms. Jodie said with a wink, turning to lead the way out.
"Hey, what exactly did you write in that text?" Conan and Hattori trailed behind her, whispering urgently to one another.
"It was nothing," Hattori muttered, turning away to fiddle with Ms. Jodie's camera.
The woman had taken quite a few photos of them earlier; he needed to get that film out before she could develop it.
"Hey, don't go overboard," Conan warned, leaning his head to the side. With Hattori, you never knew when a "simple plan" would turn into a disaster.
Click!
Hattori finally managed to pop the film canister out, but in his haste, it slipped through his fingers and clattered onto the floor.
Jodie and Tsuneo both stopped and turned back at the sound.
"Eh?"
"Ah, sorry! Ms. Jodie, I don't know what happened, it just... popped out on its own," Hattori stammered, his face a mask of feigned confusion. He quickly scooped up the film and stuffed it into his pocket.
The hallway lights are too bright. This roll is ruined now anyway. I'll "help" you throw it away later!
"..."
Tsuneo, Conan, and even Jodie stared at the "Black Chicken" of Osaka with varying degrees of disbelief.
Do you honestly think your acting is natural?
Jodie, however, just smiled. "It's alright. We've caught the culprit anyway, so the photos of the scene aren't really necessary anymore."
Honestly, who do you think you're fooling?
A short while later, the four of them were seated in a private room at a nearby Yakiniku restaurant.
"This, this, and this... and that one on the wall menu... give me five orders of each," Tsuneo said, rattling off his choices so quickly the waitress looked dazed.
"Are we expecting more friends?" Jodie asked, counting the sheer number of dishes. Dozens of plates of meat? What was he planning?
"..."
"Ms. Jodie, what would you like?" Hattori and Conan picked up their own menus. Since the handyman hadn't bothered to ask them what they wanted, it was clear he hadn't included their portions in his massive order.
Today, the duty of the "grill master" fell to the high school detective from Osaka.
"Teacher, I'm really sorry about earlier—making you play the role of the victim and all," Hattori said, using the tongs to move meat onto Tsuneo's plate while talking to Jodie.
"Don't mention it. I actually had quite a bit of fun with the performance," Jodie replied with a wave of her hand and a pleasant smile.
"Speaking of which, Teacher... what about the answer to that text message?" Hattori paused his grilling, his eyes fixing on the woman beside him.
The message: [Who are you?]
"That's not fair," Jodie said, wagging a finger as she took a sip of her beer. "You haven't answered my question yet. Your English is clearly excellent, yet you're pretending you can't speak it. That makes me much more interested in your identity."
"W-what do you mean by that?" Hattori blinked.
"You can't fool me. When we were on the phone earlier, I asked you: 'You're not a mere boy, are you?'"
Jodie seemed to be getting into the spirit of things, calling the waitress over for another large mug of beer.
Conan remembered it clearly. Hattori had answered: "Yes, I'm just an ordinary high school student."
A negative tag question. In English, a "Yes" response to that question confirms the negative—it means "Yes, I am not a mere boy."
So that was where he slipped up...
"Hmm..."
Hattori shook his head with a chuckle and let out a sigh. "Ah... I wasn't pretending not to be able to speak English."
"But... silence worked better than your funnily disguised Japanese, didn't it?"
His English was sharp, clear, and arguably more standard than Jodie's own accent.
Hattori's point was simple: he wasn't hiding his English; he just thought staying silent was better than listening to Jodie's ridiculous, forced foreign accent when she spoke Japanese.
Jodie's eyes narrowed slightly as she set her glass down.
"If their negotiations fall through, you're the one paying the bill," Tsuneo whispered, nudging Conan.
"..." Conan was speechless. How can you be thinking about the bill at a time like this?
"Your Japanese grammar is perfectly correct," Hattori continued, staring straight into Jodie's eyes. "But your pitch and intonation are a complete mess. That's the best evidence that you're playing the amateur on purpose, trying to get others to lower their guard."
"Don't let your hands stop while you're testing each other," Tsuneo said, sliding his empty plate toward Hattori.
Stop trying to look cool; you're letting the meat burn.
"!!!"
Conan couldn't eat in peace. First, it was Hattori pressing Jodie, and now Tsuneo was throwing fuel on the fire!
You guys lecture me every day about staying undercover, and now you're the ones dropping your masks?
Conan gripped his stun-gun watch under the table, his eyes darting toward his power-kick shoes.
"So," Hattori said, his grip tightening on the tongs, his gaze becoming razor-sharp. "Are we allies... or enemies?"
"That's it, that's it," Tsuneo said, sounding genuinely pleased. "That's the relentless momentum I've been teaching you. If she pulls a gun, just cut her fingers off."
"Don't worry. I'll help you dispose of the body," Tsuneo added cheerfully.
After all that intense training and sparring, Hattori finally looked like he was showing some real backbone.
"..."
"This situation is quite the headache, wouldn't you say... Cool Kid?" Jodie looked at Tsuneo—who seemed to be enjoying the chaos far too much—and found herself momentarily at a loss for words. She turned instead to the fourth person at the table.
"You stand no chance."
Conan looked Jodie straight in the eye. He was half-tempted to give her a tranquilizer needle right now just to see if her face was a mask.
Tsuneo could knock you out with a single punch. Don't even think about trying anything.
"How about it? Should I tie her up and interrogate her slowly?" Tsuneo suggested. Having finished most of his food, his suggestions were becoming increasingly unhinged. "Maybe she has accomplices who would pay a high ransom for her return."
"Hey, I don't have any ill will toward you all," Jodie said, raising her hands slightly in a gesture of surrender, a small smile returning to her face.
This time, her voice was steady. Her intonation was no longer the erratic, "broken" Japanese Hattori had criticized. It was perfectly normal.
"Give me ten more orders of skirt steak!"
Tsuneo slid the door open and shouted toward the hallway.
"Coming right up!" a waitress chirped back.
The suffocating tension was momentarily broken. Hattori and Conan stared at Tsuneo, lost in thought.
Jodie, meanwhile, was busy performing some mental gymnastics of her own—while simultaneously counting the empty plates stacked on the table...
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