Ichijō Mirai sighed at Japan's specialty.
"The drawbridge smells of gasoline," he said with a straight face, "probably a unique feature of this drawbridge, but since your commission is not to be in danger, I suggest it would be better to leave."
"Otherwise, once someone burns the drawbridge, it'll be just like the last time, and the villa will fall into an isolated and closed state, in case there's a murder or something else bad happens..."
Why does it seem like everywhere they go, something happens? Like they, or one of them, had bad luck?
First of all, it can't be their own bad luck.
Ichijō Mirai ruled out the wrong answer first, and looked more serious, "If you have the cell phone numbers of your online friends, you'd better tell them as well."
"Oh, oh, okay," Suzuki Sonoko fumbled for her cell phone, furiously pressing the buttons to scroll through her contacts, "I'll call right away!"
She didn't even take a forensic look, as if Ichijō Mirai's next comment that the sun would fall would make her crouch down in a shivering crouch with her head in her hands, and as she scrolled through her contacts, she took a few steps to the side and whispered in a head-to-head voice with Mouri Ran.
"Is the smell of gasoline noticeable?" Conan had been listening for a while and had already taken off his mask, sniffed left and right in the air, frowned and put it back on, "I can't smell it..."
He had a bad cold and couldn't smell a thing.
But: "Mr. Mirai's sense of smell is very good, Ms. Ran and Ms. Sonoko didn't smell anything, only you did."
That's not normal.
For a normal human to smell gasoline right after getting out of the car, the odor must be so strong that even if they didn't notice it for a while, after Ichijō Mirai explains it, other people would be able to smell it if they put their minds to it.
The odor on the drawbridge must have been even stronger, and the partygoers who had passed the drawbridge and arrived at the villa must have smelled it as well.
The fact that gasoline had been poured on the only drawbridge was an oddity that even the most conscientious would have found strange, so why hadn't any of the partygoers called Suzuki Sonoko to explain to each other what was going on?
The gasoline had just been poured on, so no one else smelled it?
As one suspicion after another poured out, Conan's nose got a little stuffy and he moved.
He was standing at the entrance to the drawbridge, the closest person to it.
Ichijō Mirai took Conan by the back of the neck and carried him backward to the car, saying casually, "Well, I have a good sense of smell, and the wind is blowing in the right direction to bring in the faint odor of gasoline."
"There isn't much gasoline on the drawbridge, if you don't pay too much attention to it, a normal person probably wouldn't smell it, and if they did, they wouldn't be able to react to it as gasoline in the first place."
But Ichijō Mirai could.
He's serious. "Gasoline, a must-have for travelers, a good choice for destroying corpses, a good helper for criminals."
"No need to advertise the recommendation, often kill and set fire to the friends of the self-taught, used people say good, 100% positive feedback, oh yes the dead and have a criminal record of the score will not be accepted, you can pay more attention to the future will often encounter."
After all, it's a little detective.
Conan: "...Huh?"
"If you meet enough criminals, you'll always encounter gasoline," Ichijō Mirai moved his eyes, and instead of being serious, he gave a lighthearted smile with a witty tone, "Sorry, I've got an occupational disease, that was the criminal's point of view, you can automatically switch to the detective's point of view."
He looked sideways at Suzuki Sonoko who ran over to him in small steps, "What's the situation?"
Suzuki Sonoko held up her cell phone with a slightly confused expression, "I told everyone about the gasoline on the drawbridge, but..."
A male voice came out of the phone, "But that was on purpose, hahaha!"
"I didn't expect you to really notice, the four or five people who had already arrived at the venue didn't smell a thing when they passed by the drawbridge, and it wasn't until they arrived at the villa that they were told, 'I'm very sorry, as a magic enthusiast, you're not at all sharp, you didn't smell the gasoline scent or perfume on the drawbridge, so it seems like you're not very careful, and you're not a professional magician yet, so you don't need to think about organizing a magic show for a while,'" He said, "but that's intentional, hahaha! I'm not a professional magician yet, so I don't need to consider opening a magic show for the time being.
The male voice didn't sound very old, under thirty, and sounded rather surprised, as if he hadn't expected anyone to be able to smell gasoline.
"What a detective!"
Opposite not only a person, soon, another female voice sounded, jokingly said: "Really worthy of the first meeting to the girl compulsion to the heart of the handsome detective."
"Although we have not yet met, but as long as you think of the detective adults in the drawbridge side stop, this gentle smile expression changes, staid up, raised his hand to block the side of the young girl to continue to move forward, the voice of the explanation of the situation is not right look, I was handsome to seem to be also moved it."
She smirked and joked, "Right, 'Magician's Apprentice'?"
At the end, Ichijō Mirai raised an eyebrow and looked over at Suzuki Sonoko.
"Ah this, 'Magician's Apprentice' is my name on the internet," Suzuki Sonoko hurriedly covered her cell phone and whispered, then let go of the phone, embarrassed to the point of fumbling, "What, what does it mean ahahaha."
"It's props, it's okay, then we'll be there in a minute, hello? Hey seems to be a little signal bad to hear, then I hung up first wait see!"
She hurriedly hung up the phone, "They said the gasoline smell is specially set up test, that we...?"
A test?
Ichijō Mirai didn't think the gasoline smell he detected was perfume, but understanding ordinary people without occupational diseases, he didn't explain too much, and answered gently, "So, should we leave, or should we continue with the party?"
"You're the client, I'll listen to you."
When he asked, he already knew the answer: to the casual observer, it was just a gasoline-scented perfume sprayed in jest, so there was no need to travel half a day to come here, only to leave after a few minutes.
Suzuki Sonoko, however, hesitated.
She knitted her nose, a light line creasing her brow, and after much hesitation, she said, "Let's go in, then."
As Ichijō Mirai unsurprisingly nodded in response, she whispered, "If the drawbridge burns, the villa will be completely closed off, and in case of an accident, with so many people in... Let's go in, Mr. Mirai is here, even if there's an accident, you'll be able to stabilize the situation!"
Huh?
This is not the attitude of a normal person who believes in gasoline perfume, it's an attitude of concern that rightfully believes that Ichijō Mirai is right, and is just afraid that if there's an accident in the villa, something will happen to all of his friends.
Ichijō Mirai didn't realize it, but he looked over a few more times, met Suzuki Sonoko's dark green eyes, and paused, holding the words in his mouth for a few moments before nodding again, "Okay."
He stepped onto the drawbridge.
The bridge was sturdy, but hung high in the air, looking somewhat precarious, and every time the wind blew, it gently pushed the bridge.
The heavy wooden planks were intertwined with wrist-thick ropes, both of which were somewhat weathered and tanned by the long hours of sun and wind, and the gasoline was not sprinkled on the planks, but soaked into the ropes.
Ichijō Mirai scanned the not-so-wet ropes, recalled for a few seconds, and realized that a certain blonde classmate, open but shy and reserved, who had only approached him for play and left him no contact information, had been a cold and unfeeling one-player.
He thought for a few more seconds, recalled Gin's number, and tentatively sent a text message: [There?]
Just two or three seconds after he sent it, his cell phone vibrated: [There...]
[How many people are there?]
[Is it on the news?]
[Come back soon.]
Ichijō Mirai stepped out of the suspension bridge and onto the ground. He looked down at his vibrating phone and raised his eyebrows. [I know you are anxious, but don't be anxious first. If you are anxious, you should let me be anxious first. Who made me really anxious? I am really anxious, very anxious, but not for you. But you can be anxious for me. You should be anxious.]
Sent out, he waited for two or three seconds, slowly withdrew, re-sent the message: [Tonight at nine o'clock, I did not send you a message, please help to pass on to Furuya Rei, so that he will call the police for me, thank you ... ].
After thinking about it, he added a symbol that represented his friendly and courteous attitude: [:D].
Across the room, Gin belatedly sends a response, not sure which message it was in response to, or maybe it was in response to every message: [?]
Ichijō Mirai puts away his cell phone and looks towards the villa.
The villa was three stories high, and because of the snow that had fallen recently, the overall color was white, and the snow was spread out layer by layer all over the villa, but none of the windows were covered with snow, and there was not much snow near each window, so it looked like someone had cleaned it up.
Before ringing the doorbell, the door on the first floor of the villa was opened, and an older looking man peeked out and saw Ichijō Mirai and the others who had just walked up to the door, and immediately smiled, "Welcome, welcome, you've finally arrived," He said to Ichijō Mirai.
He greeted Ichijō Mirai, "I don't know your real name, but I've heard a lot about you."
He also greeted Suzuki Sonoko, "You're actually quite good at execution, we thought you wouldn't be able to say no to invitations in reality."
Suzuki Sonoko: "Huh?"
Just now, the female's jibe had already made her realize that something was wrong, and now, her wrongness had intensified and soared all the way to the top, "What, what do you mean?"
She glanced at Ichijō Mirai with a dry smile, "Ahaha, how did you recognize me as 'Magician's Apprentice'? I thought you'd be too shocked to recognize me..."
A young woman approached, and as she spoke, the same voice that had appeared on the phone reappeared, "Why are you talking at the door and not coming in?"
Laughing again, she answered Suzuki Sonoko's question, "Aren't you recognizable?"
"The first day I met you, I knew that 'Magician's Apprentice' was a cute girl who wasn't too old."
The woman looked to be in her mid-twenties, wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and her eyes curled up in a smile, "And a cute girl who's quite concerned about her age and is in a frenzied state of mind, isn't that right, Tanaka?"
Another woman approached, she looked older, her hair was short and wavy around her neck, she smiled a bit, "Of course, I'm trying my best to hide it, but it's pretty obvious, whether it's 'masquerading as a male' or something else," she held out her hand, "I'm not sure if it's a good idea."
She held out her hand, "Hello, my name is Tanaka Kikue, and I'm 'The Fake Child'."
"Hello, my name is Naoko Kuroda," the first woman with glasses extended her hand, 'and I'm 'Illusion'."
She also helpfully introduced the male who opened the door, "This is Yoshinori Ara, 'The Silent Ventriloquist',"
"He's not much, he's very sincere, but..."
As she said that, Naoko Kuroda's eyes raised, glancing at a male who was slowly following behind her, "That guy, see? Just like you, he uses the opposite gender on the internet, 'The Disappearing Bunny'."
"My real name is Toshiya Hamano," Toshiya Hamano said as he stepped to the door, throwing up his hands in surrender, 'Please, please, please, I'm just blurring the genders a little bit, I'm at a loss when it comes to discussing private topics with me,' he said, looking out the door.
He looked out the door and scratched his chin, "Let me see,"
"Ah, the wife of 'Magician's Apprentice' has arrived! It must be the pretty lady with the long hair?"
He looked at Mouri Ran.
Mouri Ran was stunned for a moment, and since he wasn't sure exactly what Suzuki Sonoko had said on the internet to disguise her middle-aged man with a wife and children, he nodded hesitantly, "Da, probably?"
"Then," Naoko Kuroda looks down at Conan, 'this little brother must be the 'son'?"
"The lively 'son' who would leap into some cat's den or dog's hole at the drop of a hat and go crazy."
"And finally," Tanaka Kikue looked over at Ichijō Mirai, who had been listening with a smile on his face and observing them without moving, his hand clasped to cover the lower half of his face and his eyes curled up, 'this is the 'husband', isn't it?"
Ichijō Mirai: "?"
He looked over with a smile and passed on a question mark .
"'Magician's Apprentice' always says she's a male with a wife and children, but she often mentions another handsome and attractive male in her daily conversations, so we often tease her that she's a 'monogamist'," Naoko Kuroda also covered her mouth, revealing only a pair of eyes curled in a grin, 'meaning 'to have a wife and a "meaning 'to have one wife and one husband',"
"Huh."
She looked over at Suzuki Sonoko, feigning surprise, "Why, is there something on the floor?"
Laughing again, "If you're looking for a hole to get into, unfortunately, we checked in advance, and there's absolutely not a single crack or hole in the doorway."
Suzuki Sonoko: "..."
Without even asking, just listening to the banter, she was about to turn into a crab, and now she was so embarrassed that she could not even look at Ichijō Mirai without jumping off a cliff.
"In all seriousness, I'm afraid Ms. Mouri is the 'husband'," Ichijō Mirai said, smiling without changing his expression, "She's a very good fighter, and she's been practicing."
She introduces herself, "Hello everyone, this is my first time meeting you, my name is Ichijō Mirai."
After a cursory process, he went straight to the point: "May I ask if anyone has cleaned the windows in advance?"