Chapter 170: Familial Feelings
"Brother Akikawa, we must call the police immediately."
"Urgh—!"
Just as Conan finished processing his thoughts, he turned to look at Akikawa Kyousuke and spoke at the same time.
However, before he could finish his sentence, he saw Kyousuke, who had been leaning against the wall, suddenly vomit violently with a loud retching sound.
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"The sight earlier must have been too much for him," Conan thought as he observed Akikawa Kyousuke vomiting uncontrollably.
That scene... If not for being a detective like me, accustomed to seeing corpses, I'm afraid most people wouldn't be able to handle it.
Moreover, Akikawa Kyousuke had grown up under his mother's strict house arrest since childhood. His actual mental age was much younger than his physical age.
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Conan waited on the side for a while, and eventually, he saw Akikawa Kyousuke stop vomiting.
He then noticed Kyousuke wipe his mouth with the back of his hand before turning his head to look at him.
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Conan couldn't help but awkwardly look away when he saw Akikawa Kyousuke's red, swollen, and watery eyes, still filled with sadness. Tears had formed due to the strain of vomiting.
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Clearly, the artist once again attributed this "coincidence" to himself.
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"Call the police."
Conan heard Kyousuke's hoarse voice before following him outside.
Once they had left the hot springs area, Akikawa Kyousuke quickly called the police.
Conan listened to Kyousuke's somewhat incoherent report to the police.
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Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Conan snatched the phone from Kyousuke's hand and loudly informed the officer on the other end,
"We found bags containing decomposed bodies in the Kosenan hot springs pool!"
After Conan reported their location to the officer, he hung up and handed the phone back to Akikawa Kyousuke.
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"Conan-kun, why don't you seem scared at all?"
Kyousuke took the phone and asked Conan, confused.
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Conan froze for a moment, then scratched his head and awkwardly smiled.
"Because I've seen many cases with Uncle Kogoro before, so I'm used to it. Haha..."
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Conan clumsily brushed it off, then turned and ran toward the reception desk.
It seemed he was going to report the situation to the Kosenan staff, but in truth, he just wanted to distance himself from Akikawa Kyousuke.
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Akikawa Kyousuke watched from a distance as Conan ran to inform the staff, gripping his phone more tightly.
He realized that nothing good ever happened when Conan was around.
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Originally, Kyousuke just wanted to work as an ordinary artist.
But during his very first acting role, the lead actor died, and Kyousuke was even considered a suspect.
Now, the day after that case was resolved, another decomposed body was found in the hot spring pool.
There was no need to think further: as the first witness, he would undoubtedly be caught up in endless trouble.
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However, Akikawa Kyousuke wasn't the killer, and in the end, he wouldn't face any consequences.
But the real problem was the phone in Kyousuke's hand—it had a listening software installed.
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Conan, the "primary school Shinigami," had the protagonist's aura.
No matter how much he wandered around the crime scene, no one would ever suspect him.
But since Kyousuke had been involved in several cases, it was inevitable the police would grow suspicious of him.
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"The key incidents behind all this really have nothing to do with me," Akikawa Kyousuke thought irritably.
'I wonder how Sera Masumi's investigation is going.
It'd be fantastic if the handsome detective could catch the killer directly, saving me from being doubted by the police.'
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"But if the case isn't resolved, both the killer and the police will be a headache."
As Kyousuke considered the situation, his mind drifted back to the dismembered limbs he had just seen.
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'There were no signs of life in the severed arms and legs inside the bags, which means the victim was dismembered after death.
In this case, it's unlikely that the killer dismembered the body out of resentment.
If someone truly wanted to torture the deceased out of hatred, they would dismember the body while the victim was still alive.'
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The dismemberment wasn't out of hatred.
But that didn't mean the killer bore no grudge against the victim.
These two facts weren't mutually exclusive.
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Kyousuke had only seen a severed arm and leg, so there was no way to determine the killer's motive for "killing" the victim.
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'Moreover, the killer's act of dumping the body directly into the hot spring pool is very strange.
Because in this case, the body would undoubtedly be discovered.
Especially since just the day before, a body had already been found in the women's hot spring.'
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Murder wasn't difficult—disposing of the body was.
If the killer decided to dump the body, the most reasonable action would be to compress it first.
This not only reduced suspicion but also made transportation easier.
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The killer had already dismembered the body.
Yet, despite this, they chose to dump it directly into the hot spring, proving that their goal wasn't to dismember the body for convenience.
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Upon thinking this, the killer's purpose behind the dismemberment became clear—it was to destroy evidence.
A complete corpse would reveal too much information, so the killer had to take the time to dismember it.
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Combining this with the killer's behavior of discarding the body in the hot spring, Kyousuke suddenly began to doubt.
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'Was the person who dismembered the body really the killer?'
'If it were the killer, to cover their crime, there were certainly better places to dispose of the body than the hot springs.'
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'It feels as though they deliberately wanted the body to be discovered.'
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'If that's the case, then the killer must be someone else.
The dismemberment was merely an attempt to destroy evidence, which is why such a complicated act was carried out.'
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Akikawa Kyousuke reached a conclusion in his heart.
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'Why does this suddenly feel familiar?'
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There had been another killer who, to cover something up, had manipulated the body and crime scene.
It was very similar to the scene where I traveled back in time.
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Akikawa Kyousuke had altered the crime scene before because he had no memory, and all the evidence pointed to him as the murderer.
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'If my judgment is correct, then the person who dismembered the body must have been worried that allowing the body to be discovered would have an extremely negative impact on them.'
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(End of Chapter)