Conan: What alias? That's my struggle!

Lin Ye silently observed all of this.

Shinichi Kudo nodded to him, without showing any smugness.

Lin Ye stood up from his chair, walked to the tea station in the corner of the office, picked up a clean cup, put in a pinch of tea leaves, and poured in hot water. The water had been boiled that morning and wasn't too hot anymore, but it was enough for making tea. He placed the teacup in front of Shinichi Kudo and put it on the table.

"Have some tea," Lin Ye said.

Just two words. No lengthy thanks, no exciting handshakes or hugs. Just a cup of tea, two words, and the simple act of placing it on the table.

Shinichi Kudo glanced down at the cup of tea. The tea leaves slowly unfurled in the not-too-hot water and sank to the bottom. He picked it up and took a sip; the temperature was just right.

"Your way of expressing gratitude is really cold."

Shinichi Kudo doesn't mind; he's happy as long as the case is solved.

Lin Ye nodded and sat back in his chair. His expression had remained almost unchanged from the beginning, as calm as if none of this concerned him.

His main fear was that if he did too much, he would make too many mistakes and wouldn't be able to maintain his original personality.

"No! This is wrong!"

Shinichi Kudo hadn't finished his tea yet. Kogoro Mouri stood in the middle of the office, arms crossed, his expression like he'd just eaten an unripe persimmon.

He was unwilling to accept it, but he couldn't find any fault with Shinichi Kudo's reasoning.

Every step was broken down into its most detailed steps.

just.

Even if you're right.

Kogoro Mouri's voice was muffled, as if squeezed from his throat, "How do you explain the conflict between the diary and the suicide note?"

Shinichi Kudo put down his teacup, glanced at Lin Ye, and then turned to Kogoro Mouri.

"Let me guess, there might even be Dr. Hashimoto's fingerprints on the diary and suicide note? That would be easy to obtain in the daily work of a hospital."

He handled it with ease once again.

Kogoro Mouri opened his mouth, but Shinichi Kudo didn't give him a chance to speak.

"Dr. Miyagi wanted to make Dr. Hashimoto's life a living hell through his own death. He deliberately filled his diary with records of Dr. Hashimoto's bullying of him, deliberately avoided mentioning any specific conflicts in his suicide note, and deliberately left Dr. Hashimoto's fingerprints on his diary and suicide note."

"All the clues point to Dr. Hashimoto, but none of them hold up to scrutiny. This was a meticulously planned suicide!"

"The goal is not just to end my own life, but to use my own life to destroy another person's career, and to perish together with Dr. Hashimoto."

Shinichi Kudo spoke eloquently.

What a classic motivation.

It's just that people nowadays can't understand it.

The people in the office exchanged bewildered glances. Dr. Tanabe frowned, as if processing this statement. The head nurse lowered her head, her fingers twisting together.

"That's how it is," Shinichi Kudo's voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear. "Dr. Miyagi knew he was powerless to resist Dr. Hashimoto's oppression, so he used his own death to create evidence. If a person isn't even afraid of death, would they care about whether their methods are clean or not?"

He clearly had a pretty good grasp of the situation and knew how bad the relationship was between Lin Ye and the deceased.

Kogoro Mouri let out a cold laugh, a laugh filled with obvious sarcasm.

"It's all your assumptions, you brat. You have no evidence."

He spoke.

Lin Ye's gaze shifted from the teacup to Kogoro Mouri. Looking at that disgruntled face, a thought suddenly popped into his head—if he didn't know who Kogoro Mouri was, and that although this man was muddle-headed, he was by no means evil.

He was starting to suspect that Kogoro Mouri was the real culprit.

After all, in the world of Detective Conan, the person who is eager for evidence is most likely the murderer. This is a pattern that Lin Ye has summarized after watching thousands of episodes of Detective Conan.

Kogoro Mouri didn't notice Lin Ye's gaze. He was facing Shinichi Kudo, his chin slightly raised, and said in a tone of someone with experience, "Investigating a case requires evidence, it's not like playing house with kids in school. You say Dr. Miyagi committed suicide, then you need to produce evidence. A knotted rope, a locked door, those can all be explained, but you need to produce decisive evidence, the kind that leaves everyone speechless."

Shinichi Kudo smiled slightly. It was a faint smile, the corners of his mouth just curving upwards, but there was a light in his eyes, a light that Lin Ye had seen before—on television, in manga, and in every moment when Shinichi Kudo was about to say, "There is only one truth."

"Of course I have evidence."

Shinichi Kudo had barely opened his mouth, before his voice had even fully landed, when a deafening explosion erupted from the end of the corridor.

"Bang!"

That wasn't the sound of a door closing, nor was it the sound of something falling to the ground.

The sound was short, sharp, and had a metallic resonance, like a stone being violently thrown into water, creating ripples.

"What happened?!"

Everyone in the office froze. Dr. Tanabe's cup slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor. The head nurse covered her ears!

Her mouth was open, but no sound came out.

"Damn it! It's gunshots!"

Lin Ye's pupils contracted sharply the moment the sound rang out. Thousands of shooting drills in the training space had made his ears more sensitive to gunshots than to any other sound.

He could even pinpoint the location from which the gunshots were heard.

Therefore.

Lin Ye was shocked.

There was only one direction in his mind.

Gin.

Lin Ye sprang up from the chair, which tipped over and crashed to the ground with a loud thud. He ignored it and turned to run towards the door.

A white figure flashed at the doorway; he had already rushed out of the office.

"Stop!" Kogoro Mori shouted. "He's trying to flee!"

Lin Ye didn't stop. His footsteps echoed rapidly down the corridor, the hem of his white coat fluttering wildly around his knees. The patients and their families in the corridor were stunned when they saw him; no one realized what was happening. He ran past the nurses' station, past the elevator, and around the corner.

Gin's hospital room was at the very end of the corridor. The white door was slightly ajar, with a sliver of dim light shining through the crack.

Lin Ye pushed open the door.

The lights in the ward were off; the only source of light was the fluctuating numbers and waveforms on the monitor. Those numbers and waveforms flashed a green light in the darkness.

It's like a series of encrypted passwords.

The curtains were drawn, blocking out the streetlights outside, with only a sliver of orange light leaking in through the top crack.

The light shone directly onto the foot of the hospital bed.

Gin lay on the hospital bed, in the exact same position as when Lin Ye left. His short, silvery-white hair was spread out on the white pillow, almost blending into its color. The blanket covered his chest, and the IV line hung down from the stand, clear liquid dripping down one drop at a time.

just.

At this moment, he...

There's a hole in his head.