Conan: Science Cartoonist Kudo Yuji

After Masuyama Kenzo made the suggestion, the police immediately went to the water pipe and pinched it little by little from the top down until they found that they could not press it down when it was more than half a meter long. They found a pair of scissors and cut the water pipe open. Sure enough, it was an injection syringe, but the needle was no longer on it.

“He probably threw the needle directly into the toilet and flushed it down the hose, so it’s definitely not going to be found now,” Kenzo Masuyama said to the police. “But let’s arrest Neishi first, and then send the syringe to the hospital for testing. We should be able to find any residual poison.”

“I didn’t expect it to really be this person. A few years ago, he came back to the town alone and told everyone that he planned to reopen the family shrine. Everyone encouraged him…” The sake man who had been silent before finally spoke up.

Everyone knows that people who sell things in town don't want to offend the locals. If Genshi really is the murderer, that's fine, but if he isn't, he'll easily be seen by others as someone who colluded with outsiders to bully the people of his hometown, making it difficult for him to continue living in the area. That's why they didn't force him to talk about Genshi's situation from the beginning.

"He came back a few years ago? He must be quite old. Wasn't he in Aichi before?" Yuji looked at Neishi, who had already been pinned to the ground by the police.

“I remember my father telling me that when he was young, his family spent money to buy a wife from the mountains, and not long after, their son Genshirang was born.”

The man sighed as he mentioned his father: "He went to China with my father, but my father died. In the meantime, he took some money back to Aichi and gave it to my mother, and then took his son to China as well."

"What was your reason for killing him? Ryokawa Saihei was just someone who came to stay overnight. What was the point of killing him?"

Masuyama Kenzo paused in front of Neishi and poked the other's forehead with his finger: "He saw something he shouldn't have seen. Your thinking is clear and your logic is normal. You don't seem like a madman who kills for fun. You must have a purpose."

Genshi subconsciously turned his gaze away, not daring to meet the man's eyes, which only made his motive for murder seem more plausible.

“He’s so old, he couldn’t have killed someone for himself. Could it be his wife or son, as this wine seller said?” Yuuji asked the wine seller for confirmation, but saw the man shake his head and deny it.

“Mr. Neishi’s wife died when their son was about a year old. A British female doctor who was staying in town said that she had eaten poisonous wild vegetables and that it was too late to get her to a hospital in a big city, so she died in agony in the courtyard of the shrine.”

“Then he still has a father and a mother…” Yu’s words were interrupted by a denial.

“Old Genshi was killed by a wild bear while hunting in the mountains, and his mother fell headfirst into the corner of the shrine’s main hall one night and never woke up again.” The man with the sake noticed that everyone’s expressions had become very strange. “I know, he was pretty tragic.”

“I always felt that his experience was very similar to someone I had heard about.”

Yuuji shook his head pitifully, and then smacked his lips in an unladylike manner, saying, "But you're better off than him. He only has an old ox, while you have a shrine."

"The government is going to demolish the Neishi Shrine. It seems the high-ranking officials are planning to turn this mountain into a resort for American troops from the Kyoto area." The policeman coughed.

"Oh, I see. Well, you're the one who's worse off." (End of Chapter)