Conan: Death is Watching Me

Chapter 209 Cursed Mask 3: Extraordinary Items?

"Kirouto!"

When Gao Mo returned to the room, Professor Agasa, who had drunk a little alcohol, was still fast asleep. Ai, wearing pajamas and barefoot, got out of bed, her face slightly pale, and she cried out, trying to suppress the feeling of drowning.

"What's the situation now?"

"It seems like those cursed masks were stolen by someone."

Gao Mo touched Xiao Ai's forehead.

Very cold.

Did this trigger the sensing radar?
There are two situations that can trigger a strong reaction from Ai: one is encountering an organization leader, and the other is the evil spirit that Ai mentioned.

In a way, it can be considered a superpower.

"Did you see that thing?"

“No,” Ai said, picking up the black cat beside her. “But I can feel it, it’s right here in this house!”

"Let's go out first."

Gao Mo glanced at Professor Agasa, who was snoring loudly.

I'm sleeping so soundly.

The doctor really needs to lose weight.

"Where are the others?" The shouts outside grew louder, accompanied by a cacophony of footsteps.

By the time Gao Mo and Xiao Ai found everyone, all the corridor lights were already on, and the man with the mustache directed everyone to continuously check the situation.

Although he wasn't very good at reasoning, the man with the mustache had been a detective before, so he was adept at controlling the situation.

"What on earth happened? Why did they wake us up in the middle of the night..."

"Mr. Mori, Ms. Inaba is not responding!"

"And Teacher Su Fang!"

"Kido, take them to call Miss Inaba!" The mustachioed man hurried up the third-floor staircase. "I'll go check on Ms. Su Fang!"

"it is good."

Gao Mo led Xiao Ai to the west wing. Judging from Xiao Ai's increasingly intense trembling, someone here had already become a ghost.

The female secretary, Inaba Kazuyo, and Su Fang Hongzi... it's most likely the latter.

After glancing at the mustachioed man running upstairs, Gao Mo paused for a moment before going downstairs and easily opening the female secretary's room.

The female secretary, who had been drinking heavily, lay sprawled on the bed, still dressed, sleeping soundly like a log amidst the stench of alcohol, completely unaware of the commotion outside.

"Not her."

Ai looked up at Gao Mo, a strange expression appearing on her face as she tried to suppress her fear.

Isn't this unlocking action a bit too practiced?
And is it appropriate to just unlock the door and enter the house?

"At times like this, you shouldn't worry about anything else."

Gao Mo closed the door again, explained something to Xiao Ai, and then habitually glanced around.

The first floor, besides where Minaho and her female secretary live, is yesterday's entertainment room.

The main door was locked, and all the windows were locked from the inside. Considering that the masquerade hall was locked from the outside... it can be confirmed that the east and west sides were indeed partitioned off before the disturbance occurred, leaving only the 3rd floor.

"Ms. Su Fang!"

A loud shout came from upstairs, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

When Gao Mo arrived at the third floor with Xiao Ai, Conan had already entered Su Fang Hongzi's dormitory through the broken air vent, and a faint smell of blood wafted past their noses.

Ai, who had been trembling, suddenly calmed down, seemingly realizing something, and glanced at Gao Mo again with her small mouth open: "Kido, you..."

Gone.

That chilling feeling that made her feel cold to the bone was gone.

This time, we didn't even see the evil spirit disappear.

Xiao Ai looked depressed and helpless.

She didn't come here just for fun; her real purpose was to study the dead, but she hasn't even seen a ghost yet.

She made a huge mistake—she shouldn't have stayed with Gao Mo.

Gao Mo cannot see the undead because the undead have no chance to appear in front of him.

But without Gao Mo, she dared not approach the spirits casually.

The place gave her the feeling that an evil spirit, like the Tengu, had appeared.

"Meow~" The black cat lowered its head sullenly.

It wanted to help Ai, but it was even less courageous than Ai.

"How is Ms. Su Fang?" the mustachioed man asked Conan into the house. "Hey, hurry up and open the door!"

From the outside, all you could see was Su Fanghong lying on the bed covered in blood, surrounded by Xiao Buer's masks.

"There's a padlock!"

Conan first checked Su Fang Hongzi's pulse, frowned, and then found the padlock key on the table next to him to open the door.

"Uncle, Ms. Su Fang is dead!"

"No one else is allowed in!"

The man with the mustache stopped the others and stepped over the masks on the ground to check on Su Fang and Hong Zi's situation.

"The wound was on the neck, a single fatal stab... the time of death should be within 30 minutes."

"Did the teacher commit suicide?"

"It wasn't suicide, but the scene was definitely a locked room."

The man with the mustache looked at the padlock Conan had removed, and then looked around the room.

The windows were locked from the inside. The only suspicious thing was the other door to the room, but it was said to have been sealed off a long time ago and could not be opened at all.

An absolutely sealed room...

"Uncle, look at this!"

Conan found a piece of paper among the carpet masks.

"It's a criminal declaration left by the Cursed Masked Messenger—my curse has now come true..."

"It's a curse!" The expressions of the people outside changed drastically. "Teacher Su Fang was killed by a curse!"

Gao Mo stepped forward and picked up a mask.

In terms of details, it is indeed a masterpiece, without any flaws, but that's all.

I can't sense any curse being present.

"Kido, what do you think?" The man with the mustache stood with his hands in his pockets, deep in thought, but after a while, his brows relaxed and he surrendered.

There's no need to make things difficult for himself; his strength lies in summarizing.

Gao Mo absorbed all the furnishings in the bedroom into his mind, eliminating unnecessary information interference, and finally leaving only the room structure and the scattered masks.

When Conan and Mustache entered the scene, they seemed to have flipped through some of the masks, but it didn't have much of an impact.

Overall, the scene of death can still be recreated.

On the surface, the masks appear scattered and disorderly, seemingly centered around the bed and Su Fanghongzi's corpse, but upon closer inspection, they point to the second door opposite the foot of the bed.

Gao Mo approached to examine the sealed door.

There was nothing special about it; it had indeed been sealed off for years, and even the nails were rusted.

The only noteworthy feature of the entire room is the wooden slats above the door that allow ventilation.

"Kirouto?"

The man with the mustache, realizing that Gao Mo was no longer Kindaichi, assumed it was because of the presence of outsiders and hurriedly addressed the people outside.

"Please wait in the recreation room until the police arrive, okay? I suspect the killer might be among us."

"What nonsense are you spouting, Detective Mori?"

"Yes, why would we kill Ms. Su Fang?"

"Hmph, this is no nonsense. The fact that they were able to steal these masks is very suspicious. It means that the culprit is quite familiar with this place. Moreover, the doors are all locked. It's not just Ms. Su Fang's room; the villa itself is a secret room!"

"Boom!"

The man with the mustache punched Conan on the head again, saying, "Don't play dumb, you're the same! You've ruined the whole scene!"

"Ouch!" Conan clutched his head and glared at the mustachioed man.

This guy is a ungrateful wretch; he wasn't like this when we needed him to come in and open the door.

"What are you looking at?" The man with the mustache picked up Conan and threw him away. "Ran, keep an eye on this brat!"

This little brat always likes to wander around the crime scene, causing trouble for him more than once—for some reason, it's quite annoying.

“Kido,” the man with the mustache said seriously after dismissing the others, “this locked-room murder shouldn’t be the curse they’re talking about, right? Forget about laymen, but for people like us, it’s definitely someone deliberately using the idea of ​​a curse to commit a crime.”

I just don't understand how the murderer got in and killed someone? The door was locked with two locks as the medium had requested, one of which was a padlock, meaning it could only be locked from the inside. No matter how you look at it…”

There is no such thing as an absolutely secret room.

Gao Mo unfolded his mental palace.

His specialty is small-scale murder scenes, where clues are readily available, allowing him to perform spatial deductions directly.

"The first thing we can be sure of is that the murderer could never have entered this room."

"But how could the murderer kill someone if he didn't come in?" the man with the mustache asked, confused. "You have to understand, Su Fang Hongzi was lying on the bed with her throat pierced, and there were no signs of her being moved. Also, these masks, it's impossible that Su Fang Hongzi brought them in herself, is it?"

"The problem is these masks."

Gao Mo was not influenced by subjective thinking, but instead directly deduced the results from the scene.

"If Su Fang Hongzi didn't bring it in herself, how did it end up here? And why was it arranged like this... On the surface, it seems to be to replicate the curse legend, but what if the murderer deliberately brought up the curse to hide something..."

"Crack!"

Masks floated up in Gao Mo's mind, then overlapped one after another like a long dragon.

The mouth area of ​​the first mask was covered in splattered blood, while the others had only slight bloodstains around the mouth.

In his deduction, the dagger used to assassinate Su Fanghongzi was actually stuck in the mask's mouth.

Not only the blade, but even the hilt was covered in blood...

This gives us a glimpse into the killer's method of murder: he didn't enter the house with a sharp weapon to kill people, but rather used these masks.

The long dragon of masks in front of Gao Mo stretched straight from the wooden fence to the front of the corpse's neck on the bed.

The distance was extremely delicate; if they had moved forward just a little more, the dagger would have been plunged into Su Fanghongzi's throat.

But is it actually feasible?

Gao Mo picked up the first mask, which was splattered with blood.

There are traces of something like a rope passing through the eyes of the mask.

The bizarre method of murder is something that would be impossible to accomplish under normal circumstances; it is only theoretically possible.

However, judging from the crime scene, there is only one possibility.

No matter how unbelievable it may seem, the facts are the facts.

Gao Mo subconsciously tightened his fingers, only to find that the thin wooden mask was unusually hard. He couldn't budge it even slightly with his strength, and it couldn't even leave a scratch.

Extraordinary items?

Gao Mo wasn't entirely sure, but there was definitely something wrong with the mask of Shoble in his hand.

He was no stranger to supernatural items; his notebook itself had always been a supernatural item. But he never imagined he would encounter other supernatural items in a murder case.

A bit of a headache.

He still prefers the simpler world of Detective Conan.

"call!"

Gao Mo's emotions fluctuated slightly. After taking off his mask, he turned to look at the man with the mustache.

At this moment, the projected text on the mustache was fully formed—[Solve the mystery of the locked room and find the culprit] and [When will Kido be able to investigate cases as honestly as I am?]

"..."

Gao Mo suppressed his thoughts.

"I'll go out and see."

"Conan," Ran called out wearily, "Why are you running around again? Dad will beat you again... Come on, let's go to the bathroom together."

"Is Ran afraid of the curse and doesn't dare to be alone?" Conan's reply came from the stairwell.

"How...how is that possible?"

Xiao Lan blushed as she looked down at Gao Mo, who was going downstairs.

"Kido-kun, the curse must be fake, right?"

Gao Mo was stunned for a moment, unsure of what to say.

The curse seems to be real.

“How could it be true, Ran-neechan?” Conan said without hesitation. “Someone must be deliberately using a curse to cover up a crime… Isn’t that how it always is?”

Conan's gaze darkened slightly as he spoke.

He heard everything from outside the room.

It seems that Gao Mo is also unable to solve the mystery of the locked room.

The criminal can't kill anyone without going inside. Although we don't understand what's going on yet, based on the current situation, the murderer can be tentatively identified as a guest in the west wing.

That is, photographer Masaki Katagiri, professional baseball player Mamoru Matsudaira, fortune teller Haruka Nagara, secretary Kazuyo Inaba, and maid Minaho.

The murder occurred around 2 a.m. At 2:30 a.m., the murderer deliberately changed his voice and called his uncle on the internal phone, and then his uncle woke everyone up...

All five people in the west wing had the opportunity to commit the crime.

Because the key to the masquerade room is kept in the entertainment room, anyone can use the key to steal the masks.

Then there's the motivation.

Ms. Su Fang didn't feel quite right.

“Kido-nii,” Conan asked thoughtfully, stroking his chin, “Did Inaba-san reveal anything? You seemed to have tried to get information out of her before…”

"She didn't say anything."

Gao Mo stared at Conan for a while.

This guy seems to have fallen into the killer's trap.

Conan's investigative methods differ from others. He usually focuses on the present, gradually piecing together clues, and finally connecting them all with a flash of inspiration.

Now, he starts from the overall picture, performing calculations and deductions like an AI.

"It's best to step back from these kinds of cases first, otherwise it's easy to be blinded by the killer's scheme and fall into the killer's mental trap due to preconceived notions."

"What?" Conan snapped out of his daze, and after confirming that Gao Mo was talking about him, his gaze sharpened slightly. "Did I have a preconceived notion?"

"Why did the murderer have to kill from the west wing? Just because it's impossible to travel between the east and west sides? You should have checked the padlock; it's an absolutely locked room from the west wing."

Gao Mo continued downstairs to the recreation room.

"If we eliminate the impossible, the truth must still exist. Why don't you go and take a look on the third floor of the east wing?"

……

The police arrived at the villa an hour or two later.

Takagi followed Megure, his eyes still blurry with sleep, clearly having been pulled out of bed.

Being a police officer in the Conan world is definitely a terrible thing.

It's low pay, lots of work, and dangerous.

The romantic tales of Metropolitan Police Department detectives are just the surface; behind it all lies years of grueling, arduous work.

At this time, Gao Mo had also collected the texts projected by everyone in the villa, and all that was missing was the police.

Takagi is still the same as ever, dreaming about Sato—[Who exactly does Officer Sato like?]

The same old case-solving method used by Megure for thousands of years.

Masaki Katagiri – [What is the truth behind the car accident 20 years ago?]

Matsudaira Mamoru – [Does Nagara-san like me?]

Haruka Nagara – [Is there truly a curse, or is it simply because the Grim Reaper is present?]

Touya Aikawa – [The Great Detective Isn't That Good]

Twins — [About to lose their jobs]

Inaba Kazuyo – [Hopefully, the curse won't befall me?]

(End of this chapter)