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Chapter 824: What's With This Sudden Chaos?
Chi Feichei pushed Hassashi’s head back into his collar and closed the box containing the keychain.
Hassashi could keep it if he liked, but before that, the keychain still had to make another trip to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
Genoda Ryutoku watched as Chi Feichei calmly pushed the snake's head back into his collar, starting to suspect whether it was just a toy snake. Soon, his gaze landed again on the small box in Chi Feichei’s hand. “Mr. Chi…”
“Red Horse.”
Chi Feichei spoke two words—"Red Horse"—and not "Red Rabbit Horse."
Genoda Ryutoku wiped the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief, as if all strength had left his body. His head drooped, and his shoulders slumped. “Yes, it should be the Red Horse from the fire scene. You don’t have to keep it…”
“Master…”
Hassashi suddenly popped his head out from the collar, only to be swiftly pressed back by Chi Feichei’s quick hands.
“It will bring you disaster. No, no,” Genoda Ryutoku stretched out both hands to hold his head, staring at the ground in front of his feet, tightly shutting his eyes. “That serial arsonist, it might be me... I originally intended to give the Lucky Cat keychain to someone else, but for some reason, every time I opened the box, the keychain would have turned back into the Red Horse I used before. I don’t know why, I really don’t… I have sleepwalking issues, so maybe I was the one who did it…”
Hassashi popped his head out again, speaking quickly, “Master, stop pressing me down! I just wanted to see what’s wrong with this guy.”
Chi Feichei withdrew his hand.
Indeed, Genoda Ryutoku’s current state didn’t look good, as if he were having a mental breakdown.
“I’ll turn myself in to the police. But before that, I want to…” Genoda Ryutoku lowered his hands from his head and looked up at Chi Feichei, only to see the snake peeking out again from under his collar. He froze. “I want... I want…”
The snake flicked its tongue, and its eyes were bright and lively—it was real?!
Chi Feichei turned his head and looked toward the open space in front of the fire scene. “The police are already here.”
The blaze had already been extinguished. Firefighters were still inspecting and putting out any remaining smoldering spots. Not far behind the firetruck, a police car had just arrived and was now parked there.
“Ah, I see…” Genoda Ryutoku lifted his head, and upon seeing Chi Feichei walking in that direction, he set aside his fear of the snake and hurried to catch up. “I want to reclaim that keychain. You can’t keep it. Otherwise…”
“That will have to be taken by the police for investigation,” Chi Feichei interrupted, pulling out his phone, sending an email, and then clearing his sent folder without waiting for a reply before slipping the phone back into his pocket. “It needs to be compared with the Red Horse found at previous fire scenes.”
This guy was really long-winded. For someone like that to run an antique shop…
That shop likely wasn’t a scam. If he had time, he could check it out.
“R-right, that’s fine,” Genoda Ryutoku breathed a sigh of relief. “Letting the police take it is better.”
“I don’t intend to let you reclaim this keychain,” Chi Feichei said. “Since you gave it to me, it’s mine. Once the police finish their investigation, it still belongs to me.”
“Why?” Genoda Ryutoku couldn’t understand.
“I like it,” Chi Feichei replied calmly.
“O-okay…” Genoda Ryutoku wiped the sweat from his face. “But still, I can’t let you keep that keychain…”
Hassashi murmured, “Master, let me talk to him. I’ve never lost a negotiation with Kaito before.”
Chi Feichei reached out and pushed Hassashi’s head back under the collar. “If you’re the arsonist, you’ll be taken back to the police department, and even if I keep the Red Horse, it won’t cause me any trouble, right?”
Genoda Ryutoku stared blankly for a moment, then slowly nodded. That... did make sense. “Alright then, you can keep it…”
“Hey, listen,” a burly man with a buzz cut, holding a cigarette in his mouth, stood in front of the police car talking to Kogoro Mouri. “Mouri, when you meet an old superior, you shouldn’t be calling him ‘Fire Disaster Old Man’ like that!”
“An old superior?” Heiji Hattori turned his head curiously to size up the man.
“He’s Inspector Yumicho from the Arson Crimes Investigation Unit, First Division, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department,” Kogoro Mouri introduced.
Chi Feichei approached but saw the group chatting away. He stood with Genoda Ryutoku off to the side, neither interrupting nor deliberately observing Yumicho.
This was quite an interesting person.
As Kogoro Mouri’s former superior, Inspector Megure's past, including his wife and love life, had all been exposed. Yumicho, also a former superior of Kogoro Mouri, hadn’t even had his full name mentioned in the original story.
If Yumicho had only appeared once, it would make sense. After all, minor characters didn’t deserve full names. But Yumicho had appeared more than once.
In other words, this “Fire Disaster Old Man” probably still had more story to come…
“Uncle, weren’t you with the Homicide Squad?” Heiji Hattori asked.
“I used to work in the Arson Crimes Investigation Unit too,” Kogoro Mouri explained.
“You sure made life tough for me back then, Mouri,” Yumicho said, placing a hand on Kogoro Mouri’s shoulder and staring at him. Suddenly, he chuckled. “Every time a fire broke out, you’d insist it was arson, charge into the scene, and trample the place until it was a mess. I got several warnings from the Fire Department because of you, remember?”
Kogoro Mouri gave an awkward chuckle and muttered under his breath, “You were no different…”
“But this time, it’s definitely arson,” Yumicho bit down on his cigarette and got back to business. “At the fire scene, they found another Red Horse—the same kind that has appeared at several previous fires. According to forensics, it’s identical to the ones found at the previous three fire scenes.”
A slender hand reached into their line of sight, the slightly bent index finger hooked around a keychain. Hanging from the chain was a red figurine of a person riding a horse, still swaying slightly.
A calm voice spoke: “Is it this one?”
Kogoro Mouri turned his head and saw Chi Feichei standing beside him. Cold sweat formed on his brow.
His apprentice had popped up so suddenly and said that so quietly, it was downright spooky.
“This is…” Heiji Hattori instinctively looked at Inspector Yumicho.
Inspector Yumicho's mouth hung open, and the cigarette dropped from his lips. Fortunately, he stepped back just in time, so the lit cigarette didn’t burn his clothes. Raising his head again, he looked at the keychain in Chi Feichei’s hand, then stared directly at Chi Feichei. “The Red Horses at the fire scenes didn’t have a person on them, but this one looks very similar. Where did you get it?”
Chi Feichei turned his head and looked at Genoda Ryutoku, who stood timidly beside him, almost fading from presence. “He gave it to me.”
Inspector Yumicho stared in surprise at Genoda Ryutoku. “Genoda?”
“Sorry, Officer Yumicho,” Genoda Ryutoku lowered his head. When he saw the still-burning cigarette butt Yumicho had dropped earlier, he couldn’t help but lift his foot and snuff it out for him. “I… I might be the arsonist…”
“Might be?” Inspector Yumicho was speechless.
“Officer Yumicho, do you know Uncle Genoda?” Heiji Hattori asked.
“You guys know him too?” Inspector Yumicho glanced skeptically at Chi Feichei. “And you—who are you?”
Chi Feichei: “…”
Only now does he think to ask that?
Conan: “…”
What’s with this sudden feeling of chaos?
Heiji Hattori: “…”
Everything’s gone off the rails.
Kogoro Mouri: “…”
Let’s take a moment, communicate, and sort this out properly.
Inspector Yumicho: “…”
At the very least, it wasn’t wrong for him to confirm the identity of the young man who brought Genoda over, right? Why did everyone suddenly go silent?
Genoda Ryutoku: “…”
Huh? What’s going on? The officer and everyone else suddenly went quiet—should I stay silent too?
“Ahem, well… Let me introduce everyone,” Kogoro Mouri snapped back to reality, deciding to clear things up one by one. “This is my apprentice, Chi Feichei. This is the high school detective from Osaka, Heiji Hattori. And this little guy is Conan, who’s temporarily staying at my house. Hassashi, this is Inspector Yumicho, my former superior from the Arson Crimes Investigation Unit.”
“So, he’s your apprentice. I almost forgot you’re a renowned detective now,” Yumicho mused. It wasn’t easy for Kogoro Mouri to get straight to the point so quickly—it was a rare, teacher-like moment. “So, what’s going on here?”
“Let me explain,” Heiji Hattori said seriously. “I took on a case from a client—the late Mrs. Kakuno, who died in this fire. She mentioned seeing a suspicious figure lurking around at night recently. So I asked Uncle Mouri, Hassashi, and Conan to come help investigate. We arrived here around 4:30 p.m. and met Mr. Genoda, who had brought an antique store catalog and the keychain to Mrs. Kakuno’s house. She refused to accept them, so Hassashi asked Mr. Genoda for them, and Mr. Genoda left.”
“Not long after, a bespectacled man who had been keeping Mr. Kakuno company went into the house. Mrs. Kakuno called him ‘Sensei.’ He seemed to be a feng shui master,” Kogoro Mouri continued. “And not long after Mrs. Kakuno invited the feng shui master inside, her older sister, Miss Gondo Keiko, came to visit. They only exchanged a few words before Mrs. Kakuno shut the door, leaving the fortune teller outside.”
“That Miss Gondo Keiko is a fortune teller,” Conan added in his childlike voice. “When she saw Hassashi, she looked absolutely terrified and ran off immediately.”
“Oh?” Yumicho looked at Chi Feichei. “Do you know Miss Gondo Keiko?”
“About six days ago, I ran into her at the entrance of my apartment building,” Chi Feichei explained. “She gave me a crystal ball and introduced herself, along with her profession.”
“After the fortune teller left, we stayed at the gate, sitting in Hassashi’s car to monitor the area,” Heiji Hattori continued. “Mrs. Kakuno later claimed it was all in her imagination and refused to let us look into it further.”
“We waited for two hours and saw that the feng shui master hadn’t come back out. So we went into the yard to check things out,” Kogoro Mouri glanced toward the Kakuno family’s patriarch, who was still lying on a stretcher. His expression grew complicated for a moment, and he lowered his voice. “And through the living room window, we saw something… difficult to talk about.”
Inspector Yumicho raised an eyebrow at Mouri’s hesitation. “Difficult to talk about?”
Kogoro Mouri leaned in and whispered to him, “We saw Mrs. Kakuno having an affair with the feng shui master!”
Inspector Yumicho’s expression darkened, a black line almost forming across his forehead. “Mouri, what are you doing dragging kids around on cases like this?”
Compared to that, sneaking into someone’s yard to spy on them having an affair seemed even more disgraceful…
Wait a second!
Inspector Yumicho widened his eyes, staring at Kogoro Mouri. “The footprints in front of the living room window—were those yours?!”
“Shh… shh…” Kogoro Mouri quickly gestured for him to lower his voice, glancing around to make sure no one else had noticed, and gave an awkward laugh. “I was just about to tell you…”
Inspector Yumicho gave him a sideways look. “Someone will come to collect your shoe prints later!”
“What?” Kogoro Mouri looked deeply offended, staring at Yumicho. “You’re not suspecting us, are you?”
“It’s to distinguish your prints from the arsonist’s!” Yumicho roared, rubbing his temples as a headache came on. “And after that?”
End of Chapter
Chi Feichei pushed Hassashi’s head back into his collar and closed the box containing the keychain.
Hassashi could keep it if he liked, but before that, the keychain still had to make another trip to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
Genoda Ryutoku watched as Chi Feichei calmly pushed the snake's head back into his collar, starting to suspect whether it was just a toy snake. Soon, his gaze landed again on the small box in Chi Feichei’s hand. “Mr. Chi…”
“Red Horse.”
Chi Feichei spoke two words—"Red Horse"—and not "Red Rabbit Horse."
Genoda Ryutoku wiped the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief, as if all strength had left his body. His head drooped, and his shoulders slumped. “Yes, it should be the Red Horse from the fire scene. You don’t have to keep it…”
“Master…”
Hassashi suddenly popped his head out from the collar, only to be swiftly pressed back by Chi Feichei’s quick hands.
“It will bring you disaster. No, no,” Genoda Ryutoku stretched out both hands to hold his head, staring at the ground in front of his feet, tightly shutting his eyes. “That serial arsonist, it might be me... I originally intended to give the Lucky Cat keychain to someone else, but for some reason, every time I opened the box, the keychain would have turned back into the Red Horse I used before. I don’t know why, I really don’t… I have sleepwalking issues, so maybe I was the one who did it…”
Hassashi popped his head out again, speaking quickly, “Master, stop pressing me down! I just wanted to see what’s wrong with this guy.”
Chi Feichei withdrew his hand.
Indeed, Genoda Ryutoku’s current state didn’t look good, as if he were having a mental breakdown.
“I’ll turn myself in to the police. But before that, I want to…” Genoda Ryutoku lowered his hands from his head and looked up at Chi Feichei, only to see the snake peeking out again from under his collar. He froze. “I want... I want…”
The snake flicked its tongue, and its eyes were bright and lively—it was real?!
Chi Feichei turned his head and looked toward the open space in front of the fire scene. “The police are already here.”
The blaze had already been extinguished. Firefighters were still inspecting and putting out any remaining smoldering spots. Not far behind the firetruck, a police car had just arrived and was now parked there.
“Ah, I see…” Genoda Ryutoku lifted his head, and upon seeing Chi Feichei walking in that direction, he set aside his fear of the snake and hurried to catch up. “I want to reclaim that keychain. You can’t keep it. Otherwise…”
“That will have to be taken by the police for investigation,” Chi Feichei interrupted, pulling out his phone, sending an email, and then clearing his sent folder without waiting for a reply before slipping the phone back into his pocket. “It needs to be compared with the Red Horse found at previous fire scenes.”
This guy was really long-winded. For someone like that to run an antique shop…
That shop likely wasn’t a scam. If he had time, he could check it out.
“R-right, that’s fine,” Genoda Ryutoku breathed a sigh of relief. “Letting the police take it is better.”
“I don’t intend to let you reclaim this keychain,” Chi Feichei said. “Since you gave it to me, it’s mine. Once the police finish their investigation, it still belongs to me.”
“Why?” Genoda Ryutoku couldn’t understand.
“I like it,” Chi Feichei replied calmly.
“O-okay…” Genoda Ryutoku wiped the sweat from his face. “But still, I can’t let you keep that keychain…”
Hassashi murmured, “Master, let me talk to him. I’ve never lost a negotiation with Kaito before.”
Chi Feichei reached out and pushed Hassashi’s head back under the collar. “If you’re the arsonist, you’ll be taken back to the police department, and even if I keep the Red Horse, it won’t cause me any trouble, right?”
Genoda Ryutoku stared blankly for a moment, then slowly nodded. That... did make sense. “Alright then, you can keep it…”
“Hey, listen,” a burly man with a buzz cut, holding a cigarette in his mouth, stood in front of the police car talking to Kogoro Mouri. “Mouri, when you meet an old superior, you shouldn’t be calling him ‘Fire Disaster Old Man’ like that!”
“An old superior?” Heiji Hattori turned his head curiously to size up the man.
“He’s Inspector Yumicho from the Arson Crimes Investigation Unit, First Division, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department,” Kogoro Mouri introduced.
Chi Feichei approached but saw the group chatting away. He stood with Genoda Ryutoku off to the side, neither interrupting nor deliberately observing Yumicho.
This was quite an interesting person.
As Kogoro Mouri’s former superior, Inspector Megure's past, including his wife and love life, had all been exposed. Yumicho, also a former superior of Kogoro Mouri, hadn’t even had his full name mentioned in the original story.
If Yumicho had only appeared once, it would make sense. After all, minor characters didn’t deserve full names. But Yumicho had appeared more than once.
In other words, this “Fire Disaster Old Man” probably still had more story to come…
“Uncle, weren’t you with the Homicide Squad?” Heiji Hattori asked.
“I used to work in the Arson Crimes Investigation Unit too,” Kogoro Mouri explained.
“You sure made life tough for me back then, Mouri,” Yumicho said, placing a hand on Kogoro Mouri’s shoulder and staring at him. Suddenly, he chuckled. “Every time a fire broke out, you’d insist it was arson, charge into the scene, and trample the place until it was a mess. I got several warnings from the Fire Department because of you, remember?”
Kogoro Mouri gave an awkward chuckle and muttered under his breath, “You were no different…”
“But this time, it’s definitely arson,” Yumicho bit down on his cigarette and got back to business. “At the fire scene, they found another Red Horse—the same kind that has appeared at several previous fires. According to forensics, it’s identical to the ones found at the previous three fire scenes.”
A slender hand reached into their line of sight, the slightly bent index finger hooked around a keychain. Hanging from the chain was a red figurine of a person riding a horse, still swaying slightly.
A calm voice spoke: “Is it this one?”
Kogoro Mouri turned his head and saw Chi Feichei standing beside him. Cold sweat formed on his brow.
His apprentice had popped up so suddenly and said that so quietly, it was downright spooky.
“This is…” Heiji Hattori instinctively looked at Inspector Yumicho.
Inspector Yumicho's mouth hung open, and the cigarette dropped from his lips. Fortunately, he stepped back just in time, so the lit cigarette didn’t burn his clothes. Raising his head again, he looked at the keychain in Chi Feichei’s hand, then stared directly at Chi Feichei. “The Red Horses at the fire scenes didn’t have a person on them, but this one looks very similar. Where did you get it?”
Chi Feichei turned his head and looked at Genoda Ryutoku, who stood timidly beside him, almost fading from presence. “He gave it to me.”
Inspector Yumicho stared in surprise at Genoda Ryutoku. “Genoda?”
“Sorry, Officer Yumicho,” Genoda Ryutoku lowered his head. When he saw the still-burning cigarette butt Yumicho had dropped earlier, he couldn’t help but lift his foot and snuff it out for him. “I… I might be the arsonist…”
“Might be?” Inspector Yumicho was speechless.
“Officer Yumicho, do you know Uncle Genoda?” Heiji Hattori asked.
“You guys know him too?” Inspector Yumicho glanced skeptically at Chi Feichei. “And you—who are you?”
Chi Feichei: “…”
Only now does he think to ask that?
Conan: “…”
What’s with this sudden feeling of chaos?
Heiji Hattori: “…”
Everything’s gone off the rails.
Kogoro Mouri: “…”
Let’s take a moment, communicate, and sort this out properly.
Inspector Yumicho: “…”
At the very least, it wasn’t wrong for him to confirm the identity of the young man who brought Genoda over, right? Why did everyone suddenly go silent?
Genoda Ryutoku: “…”
Huh? What’s going on? The officer and everyone else suddenly went quiet—should I stay silent too?
“Ahem, well… Let me introduce everyone,” Kogoro Mouri snapped back to reality, deciding to clear things up one by one. “This is my apprentice, Chi Feichei. This is the high school detective from Osaka, Heiji Hattori. And this little guy is Conan, who’s temporarily staying at my house. Hassashi, this is Inspector Yumicho, my former superior from the Arson Crimes Investigation Unit.”
“So, he’s your apprentice. I almost forgot you’re a renowned detective now,” Yumicho mused. It wasn’t easy for Kogoro Mouri to get straight to the point so quickly—it was a rare, teacher-like moment. “So, what’s going on here?”
“Let me explain,” Heiji Hattori said seriously. “I took on a case from a client—the late Mrs. Kakuno, who died in this fire. She mentioned seeing a suspicious figure lurking around at night recently. So I asked Uncle Mouri, Hassashi, and Conan to come help investigate. We arrived here around 4:30 p.m. and met Mr. Genoda, who had brought an antique store catalog and the keychain to Mrs. Kakuno’s house. She refused to accept them, so Hassashi asked Mr. Genoda for them, and Mr. Genoda left.”
“Not long after, a bespectacled man who had been keeping Mr. Kakuno company went into the house. Mrs. Kakuno called him ‘Sensei.’ He seemed to be a feng shui master,” Kogoro Mouri continued. “And not long after Mrs. Kakuno invited the feng shui master inside, her older sister, Miss Gondo Keiko, came to visit. They only exchanged a few words before Mrs. Kakuno shut the door, leaving the fortune teller outside.”
“That Miss Gondo Keiko is a fortune teller,” Conan added in his childlike voice. “When she saw Hassashi, she looked absolutely terrified and ran off immediately.”
“Oh?” Yumicho looked at Chi Feichei. “Do you know Miss Gondo Keiko?”
“About six days ago, I ran into her at the entrance of my apartment building,” Chi Feichei explained. “She gave me a crystal ball and introduced herself, along with her profession.”
“After the fortune teller left, we stayed at the gate, sitting in Hassashi’s car to monitor the area,” Heiji Hattori continued. “Mrs. Kakuno later claimed it was all in her imagination and refused to let us look into it further.”
“We waited for two hours and saw that the feng shui master hadn’t come back out. So we went into the yard to check things out,” Kogoro Mouri glanced toward the Kakuno family’s patriarch, who was still lying on a stretcher. His expression grew complicated for a moment, and he lowered his voice. “And through the living room window, we saw something… difficult to talk about.”
Inspector Yumicho raised an eyebrow at Mouri’s hesitation. “Difficult to talk about?”
Kogoro Mouri leaned in and whispered to him, “We saw Mrs. Kakuno having an affair with the feng shui master!”
Inspector Yumicho’s expression darkened, a black line almost forming across his forehead. “Mouri, what are you doing dragging kids around on cases like this?”
Compared to that, sneaking into someone’s yard to spy on them having an affair seemed even more disgraceful…
Wait a second!
Inspector Yumicho widened his eyes, staring at Kogoro Mouri. “The footprints in front of the living room window—were those yours?!”
“Shh… shh…” Kogoro Mouri quickly gestured for him to lower his voice, glancing around to make sure no one else had noticed, and gave an awkward laugh. “I was just about to tell you…”
Inspector Yumicho gave him a sideways look. “Someone will come to collect your shoe prints later!”
“What?” Kogoro Mouri looked deeply offended, staring at Yumicho. “You’re not suspecting us, are you?”
“It’s to distinguish your prints from the arsonist’s!” Yumicho roared, rubbing his temples as a headache came on. “And after that?”
End of Chapter
