The window was obviously very unusual.
After a few seconds of staring at each other, Tanaka Kikue was the first to explain, "You mean why the area around the glass window is clean and free of snow? Actually, it's the mechanism."
"It's because most of the people at the party are magic enthusiasts, even though some of them only have theoretical knowledge and not much hands-on ability, they all more or less love magic and are eager to perform it themselves."
She smiled, "and also interested in 'no one can decipher the magic I've conceived'."
"So it was suggested that... ah, the chat room owner, codenamed 'Escape King', who I believe also chatted with you privately, 'Magician's Apprentice'?"
Suzuki Sonoko shook her head, "No,"
"I don't know him very well," she had been standing behind Ichijō Mirai's side, two or three steps behind him, a position where she could grab the arm of the person in front of her in a hurry or duck behind him no matter what happened.
This stance was unconscious, and even more unconscious was the fact that she subconsciously repeatedly looked into Ichijō Mirai's eyes as she said, "He didn't tell me about the real magic show in a private chat, and I don't know about the gasoline for the drawbridge or the glass window."
"Huh, that's weird," Tanaka Kikue exchanged a glance with the others, thought about it, and laughed again, "Maybe it's because he's too busy,"
"Anyway, he chatted with me privately and suggested that we all take advantage of the party to really look at ourselves as magicians and try to perform magic tricks, the most important thing for a magician is the speed of the hands, the power of observation, and the speed of reaction... so he sprinkled some gasoline on the drawbridge..."
"And then he left a note in the villa," she said with an air of helplessness, glancing at her companions who had already read the note, and shrugging her shoulders, 'it was printed out in advance, and it said something like, 'Haha didn't notice the smell of gasoline on the drawbridge, did you? If it were true, you'd have been burned to death walking across the drawbridge unawares, you stupid rookie magician' or something like that."
"How childish."
Kuroda Naoko nodded in agreement, then explained, "The window is also a kind of mechanism,"
"'Escape King' arrived at the villa a day early, and changed all the windows in the villa from thick glass windows that could withstand the wind and snow to very brittle glass windows. We experimented with the bathroom on the first floor, and even the two girls, Tanaka and I, were able to easily break the glass by hammering it with our fists."
"He said it was some kind of special glass for his magic trick," She said with a reminiscent expression and a bit of disdain, "It sounded a lot like an escape trick,"
"I hope not, I don't want to know what an escape trick is that requires us to escape through a window, and I don't want to go out in the cold instead of staying in the warmth of the villa."
Ichijō Mirai's eyes twitched.
He shifted his eyes for a few seconds to the side of the villa, where he could barely see the corner of the living room window, and then back again, traces of the expressions of all the people, and caught some fluctuations in many of their faces when Kuroda Naoko said 'escape magic'.
Some had fewer fluctuations and only frowned for a few moments, while others had bigger fluctuations and frowned very tightly, showing a disgusted expression that lasted for a long time, nearly ten seconds, and only when Kuroda Naoko was finished did he manage to suppress his strange expression.
The former is Ara Yoshinori, whose gender is blurred out on the internet, and the latter is Hamano Toshiya, who opens the door, and Kuroda Naoko is a little uncomfortable as she says it, subconsciously rubbing her hand on her neck.
Tanaka Kikue is not fluctuating.
Ichijō Mirai gathered up their respective reactions, and instead of asking first, he looked sideways at the snow on the periphery of the villa, and politely asked all of them, "It's indeed a bit cold out there, and we've brought along a child with a cold, so why don't we go in and talk first?"
Standing at the door all the time and asking questions can have a certain subtlety of cross-examination, making the person being questioned wary and wary.
Why don't you sit down and have a long talk.
...Actually, it's okay not to have a long talk, anyway, Ichijō Mirai is not a detective who needs to solve a case, he doesn't need to solve 100% of the unsolved problems.
Ichijō Mirai smiled without changing his face as he carried the suitcase to the door.
Suzuki Sonoko didn't object either, nodding her head in agreement without thinking, even before she heard what Ichijō Mirai was saying, but only at the moment when she realized that it seemed to be a suggestion.
Mouri Ran and Conan also nodded their heads in agreement.
Mouri Korogō had a problem.
He grabbed Conan by the back of his shirt collar, "Why are you holding your sister Ran's hand again without realizing it? You've got a cold, stay away from her, don't infect her!"
"That's fine, since it's all a misunderstanding, you guys go in first, Conan and I will go back first," he gathers Conan back, the first half of the sentence is still polite, and as if he remembers something, the second half of the sentence is matched with a sunken face, "However,"
"I'm a famous detective!"
"If there's anyone among you who's got a grudge against my daughter..."
Mouri Korogō didn't say the rest of the sentence, but only raised his clenched fist, smiled a few times, and then eased his expression, "Then you guys go in first, it's windy outside, don't catch a cold."
"We're leaving first, go back, go back quickly, don't send us off, it's windy, you'll catch a cold!"
Conan didn't even get to say a word before he was carried away by the back of his neck.
Mouri Ran took a few steps after him, but was expelled again, and could only hold the suitcase honestly, looking back at the background of his father's departure, while speaking hesitantly, "Well, shall we go in?"
The wind was blowing the drawbridge unhurriedly, and Mouri Korogō was walking with a big grin. He was talking to Conan with his head down as he walked on the drawbridge, and he wasn't paying too much attention to his movements, which caused the bridge to sway slightly as he stepped on it.
Ichijō Mirai glanced at the drawbridge a few more times, swept his eyes over the expressions on the others' faces, and replied, "Go inside."
They entered the villa.
The fireplace in the villa was lit, and was steadily producing a warm heat, and not long after the door was closed, the cold air that had been blown into the living room by the wind warmed it up, and the room warmed up.
There were three or four cups of coffee on the table in the living room, and it looked like the people in the villa were drinking coffee and chatting before the door was opened. The light in the kitchen was on, and a young man with a pot head came out of the kitchen with a few cups of tea.
He put three cups of coffee on the empty seat, settled down on the side of the seat, did not say anything, only nodded, a silent greeting, like a silent and more anxious hardworking laborer.
Open the door to the middle-aged man also saw, so said: "A few people first drink a hot drink and then go up to choose a room right? It's so cold outside, it's not easy to drive here, have some hot drinks to drive away the cold."
Then he introduced, "Oh, this is not a partygoer, but a maid I hired, Sugama Kiyohiro."
The laborer nodded again in response.
"My villa hasn't been used for a long time," Yhe middle-aged man gestured for everyone to be seated, "cleaning and such needs to be prepared in advance, so I've hired a temporary maid who won't bother us."
Ichijō Mirai parked his suitcase next to the sofa, sat down, and asked, "Are you the owner of the villa?"
"I heard that the 'Escape King' had replaced all the glass in the villa, and I thought it was his."
"So he chatted with me privately," the middle-aged man laughed, "If the villa is his, I really think that guy is likely to change the windows quietly without saying a word, will not disclose to us in advance want to be a real magician for a while."
Just as the police have no aversion to detectives at the scene of a murder, he didn't feel any discomfort with Ichijō Mirai's questioning, and even took the initiative to cooperate by handing over a piece of printed paper, "This is his message about the smell of gasoline at the drawbridge."
Ichijō Mirai paused for a few seconds, gazing from the middle-aged man's genuinely unreconciled face to the silence of an attitude that naturally did not seem to be responding to cross-examination, but rather was like drinking and eating.
He reached out and took the note, "Okay."
The note, in printer's type, simply stated that the drawbridge smelled of gasoline, and jokingly mocked the idea that people who didn't notice it weren't very good magicians.
"He asked me to borrow the key two days ago," the middle-aged man added, "and asked me to leave it at the door of the villa when I went to clean it so that he could replace the glass, so I guess that's when the note was left."
"I have not seen his face," he took the initiative to explain, "only called once, it was when he asked me to call, I am not a very good temper, no matter what friends ask for what will be agreed to people, the villa is my, although I do not often live, but the group to change the glass of this kind of thing, I am not very happy,"
"It's just that when he called..."
"Just-"
The middle-aged man hesitated, first looked at the other companions, and then some swallowed to explain, "I think he seemed to be about to cry as if, and kept pleading with me, saying something like if I did not agree he would die, and so on."
"I think he's in some kind of trouble, like some kind of special condition, and he's running out of time, so he's giving it a shot to see if he can become a real magician..."
"Detective Ichijō," He said in a sincere tone, "do you think it's possible that he was in the final stages of some kind of illness, and his love for magic suddenly flamed up?"
"Like in a medical drama!"
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
Oh, that's why she didn't get angry at the interrogation, but instead cooperated, because she wanted to gossip.
"Maybe," He replied, "if he goes to the hospital now, he might meet some doctors who are despised by the patients and unknown to the patients, but unexpectedly, the doctor who operates exceptionally well, and performs the surgery after complaining about the doctor's magic regrets, and the doctor in charge of the surgery is the same doctor, and the surgery is successful after a few twists and turns, and the recovery after the surgery is unbelievably fast, and everyone rejoices, and so on."
He then asked the others, "But it's strange that he was about to cry at the request and said that he might die, did you notice anything else about Mr. 'Escape King'?"
The others shook their heads hesitantly.
"I can't imagine," Tanaka Kikue said, 'that 'Escape King' guy crying out or something..."
"That's not like him, is it?"
Those were Suzuki Sonoko's words.
Her eyebrows were furrowed, and her face showed some doubt, "Mr. Mirai, if my online persona is 'young man with a wife and children', then his persona should be 'arrogant ass-maniac', and he usually likes to instruct something from above, and it's very annoying, and he also says something snide when people are unfortunate."
Suzuki Sonoko wrinkled her nose in disgust and gave an example, "For example, when a magician died in an accident during a magic show some time ago, he made a lot of mocking remarks in the group, saying that he deserved it."
"Anyway, I was disgusted and he knew I was disgusted with him, so he wouldn't talk to me privately, which I wasn't really surprised by, but would plead until I cried..."
Tanaka Kikue said, "It doesn't feel like something he would do."
"That's why," the middle-aged man rushed out, "I was so shocked that I didn't hesitate before agreeing to his request and leaving the key on the porch in front of the villa like he told me to."
That means they don't know who took the keys, what they did in the villa, who replaced the windows.
And the drawbridge was doused with gasoline.
Ichijō Mirai nodded slowly, "I see."
He picks up his coffee cup and glances involuntarily at Suzuki Sonoko, thinking, "Okay, it's not an illusion, the anomaly has been verified, something will happen at the villa, like a murder.
It's just that... it seems like every time he agrees to Suzuki Sonoko's invitation, he gets a murder?
The murder rate is 100%.
Is that what 'Ichijō Mirai' expected?
Thinking of the delivery Suzuki Sonoko had conveyed, Ichijō Mirai only drank some coffee lightly before putting down the cup, "I'll go transport the luggage to the room,"
He stood up, holding his own suitcase in one hand, and Suzuki Sonoko's and Mouri Ran's suitcases in the other, his tone was gentle, "Go ahead, I'll take both suitcases up at once."
The middle-aged man stood up after him, without thinking, "Huh? But..."
But the detective is not present, they talk about what gossip ah!
They couldn't make any guesses at all, but they could barely make out a few possible inclinations.
Suzuki Sonoko also subconsciously stood up, and after receiving Ichijō Mirai's flickering glance, she subconsciously sat down again, and before her mind could react, her mouth already automatically moved, and she obediently opened the next topic, "Is there still someone missing?"
"'Escape King' isn't here, but I just counted, and we're only..."
"Oh, oh, oh, 'Red Herring' is upstairs..."
The conversation continues.
Ichijō Mirai carries the luggage upstairs.
As he walked up the stairs to the second floor and surveyed the hallway, he saw a young man who ran into him.
The young man looked to be in his mid-twenties, and it was unfortunate that after 'snow', 'villa', 'drawbridge', and 'murder' all overlapped with the previous case, there was one more overlapping element: 'fat'.
The young man was a fat man, with a bulging stomach, a wider head circumference than normal, and round cheeks, like a fat bear that had just hibernated after a good meal.
But he was unusually agile.
At the moment when he was about to be caught like a rabbit on a stump, he nimbly turned his body sideways and looked at Ichijō Mirai with a somewhat startled look, "Wait, wait, you're standing at the stairway without a word like a killer in a horror movie who's surveying the layout of a villa and preparing to kill!"
Quite perceptive.
Ichijō Mirai thought so and smiled innocently, "How come?"
"Do I look like a brutal murderer? I'm too kind to kill a live fish, Mr. 'Red Herring'."