Conan: Science Cartoonist Kudo Yuji

"Really? Our motorcycles are indeed of very good quality. I heard the boss is also planning to make cars."

The man introduced himself to Jintaro and Yuji: "My name is Shiota Heihachiro, and I am a maintenance worker at Hōdatsu Motorcycle Shop No. 3."

"And what about this...this deceased person?" Yuuji paused upon hearing the man's name, then brought up the person lying behind the offering box.

"He is Saihei Ryukawa, a salesperson in our store. We took a few days off from work in Kyoto to go on a picnic in the mountains of Aichi."

Shiota Heihachiro took out a bamboo basket covered with a sanitary napkin from behind him, and under the cloth was a rice ball.

"You came on foot, I didn't see any of your vehicles?" Yuuji immediately feigned surprise: "It took us most of the day to get here by car."

"No, we came by motorcycle, but the motorcycle broke down, so we left it at a restaurant in the town over there."

Shiota Heihachiro shook his head helplessly and explained that they had called their colleagues at the store, who would probably arrive that evening on their new bikes with replacement parts, which was why they decided to go into the mountains first yesterday.

“If I hadn’t insisted on going into the mountains, we would have stayed at that restaurant last night, and we wouldn’t have ended up sleeping at this shrine. Saihei wouldn’t have died… It’s all my fault!”

Shiota Heihachiro slapped himself across the face, which made Jintaro's face twitch. He nudged Yuuji and whispered.

"Based on the cases you solved in Kyoto before, could he be the murderer?"

"I don't know, but if he is the person I remember, I think the murderer is someone else."

"The person in your memory?" Jintaro rolled his eyes. "You're spouting nonsense again." Yuuji ignored him completely, instead leaping around and pointing towards the main hall of the shrine.

"Let's go through the specific details of this murder case."

"Around eight o'clock last night, our group drove to the shrine entrance and paid our respects to the shrine's owner, this..."

"My name is Neishi Matsu."

“Okay, Mr. Neishi, you were originally sleeping in the room on the left, so you rented the room on the right to us. About an hour later, Mr. Shiota and Mr. Ryokawa entered the shrine, and you rented the room on the left to them and went to sleep at the stall.”

“That’s how it is.” Genshi didn’t understand why he was responding to this girl, but he just couldn’t help it.

“When Marina and I got up in the middle of the night, the moon was about halfway through. Kyoto and Aichi are not far apart, so the time difference shouldn’t be too big. It’s November now. Based on my observation records, and considering the half-hour difference, that means Mr. Shiota and Mr. Ryokawa were still awake around 11 a.m., so Mr. Ryokawa must have been alive at that time as well.”

Yuuji casually uttered something that surprised everyone: almost no one observes the moon to tell time, let alone observes it at all.

"It won't be more than half an hour from when we returned to the room to when we fell asleep again. Mr. Shiota, do you know when Mr. Ryokawa left the room?"

"I don't know, I just heard him say he needed to go to the bathroom when I was half asleep..."

Yuji Kudo nodded: "The shrine's toilet, just as I thought. If Mr. Ryokawa and the others have never been here before, then there's only one reason they would go out at night." (End of Chapter)