The Culprit Falls
Fortunately, Kaeya had only meant to make a bit of trouble for Akai Shuichi on a whim — he had no real intention of doing anything serious.
As a result, with Conan's help, Inspector Megure and his team managed to track down the culprit without too much trouble.
"Nakamura, why would you do this? Was I not good to you?" Takano Hideki shouted, pointing at Nakamura Mahito in utter disbelief.
Once Nakamura saw that the game was up, he stopped struggling.
He glared at Takano with pure resentment. "Good to me? When have you ever been good to me?! You've always treated me like some errand boy — calling me over whenever you needed something, waving me off the second I was useless, ordering me around like a servant. That's what you call being good to me?!" His voice rose and rose, until the last sentence came out as a full-throated roar.
Clearly, Nakamura Mahito had been nursing a great deal of resentment for a long time.
Takano, stunned by the accusations being hurled at him, stammered out a reply. "Th... then you could have just refused..."
Then some thought seemed to strike him, and his confidence came rushing right back. "Besides, if it weren't for me hooking your family's company up with all those perks, would you have had anywhere near the money you throw around? And you dare say I wasn't good to you! Hmph, ungrateful wretch!"
"So a handful of your filthy money means you get to trample all over my dignity, is that it?!" Nakamura Mahito didn't believe for a second that Takano had ever been good to him; he remained sunk deep in his own wounded thoughts.
At that moment, an officer standing a short distance away stepped forward, ready to escort Nakamura back to the station for his official statement.
Nakamura's already fragile composure shattered at the officer's approach. He abruptly drew a handgun and leveled it at the man.
Seeing this, the officer immediately raised both hands, careful not to provoke him any further.
Nakamura kept the gun trained on the officer to hold him at bay, then swept the muzzle toward everyone else nearby, forcing them all to back away.
Inspector Megure and the others, terrified that Nakamura might fire recklessly in his panic, had no choice but to comply, retreating a few steps. In that same instant, Matsuda Jinpei seized the culprit's moment of distraction to retreat several more paces of his own, and, shielded by the bodies of the others, slipped cleanly out of Nakamura's line of sight.
Megure caught Matsuda's maneuver out of the corner of his eye and allowed himself a small breath of relief before focusing all his attention forward, ready to do whatever it took to keep the culprit's attention fixed on him.
Conan, too, had positioned himself in Nakamura's blind spot, aiming his watch at him — waiting for the man's grip on the trigger to loosen even slightly before firing the tranquilizer needle.
Nakamura swung the gun toward Takano Hideki, and then, to everyone's astonishment and confusion, abruptly whirled it around toward Xiayu.
"This is all your fault — everything, it's all because of you!" he snarled, glaring at her with such venom that it was as if she had personally ruined his life.
Xiayu: "...I'm sorry, what? We met today. How exactly have I wronged you?"
"Oh, I'm sure you think you're blameless!" Aether fixed a cold, indifferent gaze on this man who clearly had no idea how close to death he was standing, sneering as he delivered his verdict. "A useless man like him, forever blaming everyone but himself — I'd wager that in his eyes, anyone better than him commits a crime simply by breathing."
Inspector Megure's pupils quaked. He frantically signaled Aether with his eyes to say less, to stop provoking the culprit.
"Shut up! What would you know? You don't know anything!" Stung by Aether's words, Nakamura wrenched the gun away again and — as Conan and Akai Shuichi stared at him, thunderstruck — pointed it at Cointreau.
"It's all her fault my plan fell apart! If it weren't for her, I would have succeeded long ago, and none of this would have happened..."
From his rambling, disjointed tirade, the others finally pieced it together: Nakamura Mahito had already made one attempt before — back when Xiayu and Takano Hideki first met — and had been thwarted by Xiayu then, too. No wonder he'd said what he did earlier.
"Oh, really? Then that's on your own rotten luck and sloppy planning. In short — you simply weren't good enough." Aether continued his deadpan character assessment of Nakamura, utterly unmoved, while Inspector Megure signaled so hard his eyes nearly went into spasms. Nothing could stop him.
At last, Nakamura's emotions, shredded beyond all recovery by Aether's merciless commentary, snapped completely. He leveled the gun at him and prepared to fire.
Matsuda Jinpei, seeing it unfold, abandoned all pretense of hiding. He launched himself at Nakamura, seizing the man's wrist and wrenching it upward to keep the pistol from spraying bullets into anyone innocent.
In the same instant, Conan's tranquilizer needle buried itself in Nakamura's neck.
A flash of pain in his throat — and Nakamura's consciousness began to fade, his finger twitching on the trigger by pure reflex.
BANG!
The gunshot made everyone flinch, but the muzzle had been aimed upward; the round struck only the chandelier overhead, and no one was hurt.
Matsuda smoothly relieved Nakamura of his weapon, then stared in bewilderment as the man suddenly crumpled, boneless, to the floor.
Hadn't there been a flash of white light just before his eyes? And then Nakamura had simply lost consciousness.
Matsuda Jinpei glanced over — and found himself meeting the gaze of Conan, hands clasped innocently behind his back, his face a portrait of wide-eyed puzzlement. It couldn't actually have anything to do with this kid... could it?
"Creak—"
With one thing after another finally behind them, and the culprit safely in custody at last, Takano Hideki's taut nerves could finally begin to unwind.
Then he caught sight of his angel laughing and chatting with the man beside her, and irritation flared. He started forward, determined to cut in — and, while he was at it, arrange the time and place for his next confession.
He'd barely taken a few steps when a strange noise reached him from above.
He looked up on instinct — just in time to see the very chandelier the gunshot had struck sway once, then finally surrender to its wounds. With a sharp crack, it plunged straight down toward where he stood.
Takano Hideki's mind couldn't catch up with his body; all he could do was stand frozen as the chandelier drew steadily nearer.
His last thought was: So Nakamura managed to pull it off after all...
CRASH!
Before the chandelier could land, Takano Hideki felt himself seized and flung clear, well out of the chandelier's path. The person who'd tackled him had even thoughtfully twisted mid-fall to take the brunt of the landing on their own back, sparing Takano any injury against the hard floor.
It had all happened far too fast. It took several seconds for the people around them to process what had just occurred, and then they rushed forward to help the two of them up.
"Mr. Takano, are you all right?"
Once hauled to his feet, Takano Hideki smacked the side of his head, boxing the grogginess out of his skull, and finally managed to focus on the person who had just saved his life.
A girl with shoulder-length gray hair was looking at him with gentle eyes, anxiously asking after his condition.
Once she confirmed that Mr. Takano was unharmed, Noelle returned to Xiayu's side.
Takano Hideki kept watching her the whole way, his gaze trailing after Noelle's every step.
Meanwhile, Akai Shuichi studied the shattered fragments of the fallen chandelier, brow furrowing, then looked over at Takano Hideki — a man who'd had a near brush with the thing and yet hadn't suffered so much as a scratch.
Every last piece of it seemed to have deliberately avoided both Mr. Takano and the girl who'd saved him. Coincidence?
Conan had noticed the oddity as well, but he didn't dwell on it — after all, the chandelier had fallen right before his eyes. He simply chalked it up to a stroke of luck for Mr. Takano and Noelle.