Conan: Science Cartoonist Kudo Yuji

"I came to pick up the wall clock that was being repaired here in the mountains. I bought it from Sendai a while ago. American imports are very expensive."

Kawazawa tremblingly took out a pack of unopened Shikari cigarettes from his pocket. From the side, one could see that the militarist slogans originally printed on the cigarette box had been torn off.

He lit the cigarette tremblingly and took a deep puff. It seemed that this puff of smoke was the only way to calm himself down. The man slowly moved to the watch counter.

"Yamasaka repaired the clock very well, repainted it, and replaced the greenish copper pendants with new ones that shone brightly. I asked him to help me move it back."

"Move? Wall clock..." Yuko's eyes swept across the wall clocks on the next to her. Seeing that they were all the size of pigeon cages, she guessed where Shibawa Kotonoha's body was hidden now.

"Yes, but he didn't want to, and he said that even if I paid more, it wouldn't work because the clock hadn't been fixed yet." Kawasawa glared at Yamanaka, making him feel guilty and lower his head: "He also pushed me to go back and wait, and I didn't want to argue with him. At this time, Kotonoha was standing at the door with glutinous rice balls."

"It wasn't fixed in the first place. We only finished it yesterday morning." Yamanaka still insisted: "Didn't Kotonoha also say that she didn't think the clock was fixed either."

Of course, no one took his words seriously, because before it was confirmed whether he had killed his fiancée, it was normal for her closest people, besides her parents and Yamanaka, to say good things about her fiancée.

"She didn't even enter the house. She just put the glutinous rice balls at the door and left. How could she have seen it?"

"Wait, you said Shiba Kotonoha didn't go into the watch shop?" Yata frowned and glanced at the woman who had been aggrieved and frightened: "But Yamanaka clearly said that Mrs. Oda Jo also saw her suddenly disappear."

"That's right, Kotonoha probably met Mrs. Odano who was coming back from selling pickles at the corner, and they were talking." Kawazawa pouted at the beautiful woman, "Right, ma'am."

"I just met Kotonoha. Her father's watch is the most beautiful on this street. He talks about it every day. I want to buy a watch for my son so that he can study hard. His grades have been dropping recently, so I asked her about the quality of Mr. Yamanaka's watches."

What is the relationship between buying a watch and studying hard? Yuko thought that Oda probably thought that his son would be touched and study hard after knowing that he had spent a lot of money to buy him a watch.

"But didn't she have an argument with you? She didn't answer your question about whether the watch was good or not." Kawase put one hand on his waist: "You two were arguing about whether it was a watch or not, and Yamanaka hurriedly searched for it and said it was a watch his father-in-law sent for repair." "She just thought I shouldn't spend so much money on buying luxury goods for my son, saying that he can study just as well without a watch, but Junfu said that the students with good grades in the school all wear watches, so I had an argument with her."

Oda let his wife slowly wipe the tears from her face with her sleeve, saying that Shibawa Kotonoha was a gentle and considerate girl, and she shouldn't quarrel with her.

"I walked from the alley holding the pickle jar to the corner of the watch shop, and saw Mr. Yamanaka coming out of the shop. He was furious and wanted to buy a watch for Toshio. I wanted to tell Kotonoha to watch Toshio study hard, but when I turned around, I found that she was on fire and was still walking forward as if nothing had happened."

Obviously, what happened that night scared all three of them. No one dared to run over to help Yotsuya Shiba put out the fire, not even her fiancé Yamanaka. They just watched the woman disappear in the flames, leaving nothing behind.

"After we saw her disappear, we all went back home, although I don't remember how I got home." Chuan Ze added, "The next morning, I remembered that I hadn't taken the clock home yet, so I went to the south of the city and hired two hard workers to help me move the clock."

"So that means the Shiting family's watch is still in this watch shop."

Yuko felt that Yamanaka's suspicion had decreased, but it was Oda who made this woman start to feel uneasy. When they were talking at the corner, Shiba Kotonoha must have been dead and had been thrown into the wall clock and sealed.

[By the way, it is also possible that two people committed the crime, if Yamanaka and Oda were accomplices...]

"Regardless of what the situation is with Shiba Kotonoha, and the other things, let's go find her first."

A corpse can often tell investigators a lot, so Yuko looked at Mr. Kawasawa and said, "Would you mind moving the clock out of your house again?"

"What do you mean?" Chuan Ze was stunned for a moment, then suddenly changed his expression and said, "My wall clock?!"

It's not like he didn't know the size of the wall clock. A normal person definitely couldn't fit in it, not even a woman like Kotonoha Yotsuba, unless... (End of this chapter)