Chapter 441 - 52: The Horse Was Attacked

Chapter 441: Chapter 52: The Horse Was Attacked

These days, Kisaki Eri picked Yimi up from school almost every day and often took her out to have fun.

In contrast, Mouri Kogoro, who was usually only drawn into cases rather than seeking them out, suddenly became busy. The police headquarters had invited him and officers from several different regions to work on a case involving mahjong.

Yimi had already brushed up against this case once. When Eri took her to a theme park, a car on the expressway suffered brake failure. Yimi used her ability to help stop it, and the person inside had a seven-pin mahjong tile on him.

Security bars had been installed over the windows at home, with gaps so narrow that only Yimi’s fingers could fit through. Eri said she had recently been handling a lawsuit that had made her some enemies, so this was a way to ensure their safety.

Even though they lived on a floor that required an elevator to reach.

But Yimi had not gone out to catch anyone again after that day. She repeatedly studied that single short line of the mission, even more seriously than she reviewed an exam paper, and only then focused on the word "qualified" in "become a qualified detective."

Had she always been unqualified? But who decided the standard for whether someone was qualified? She had already caught so many criminals. How was she still unqualified?

Teitan Elementary.

First graders still had craft classes, much like kindergarten. In truth, their ages were not very far removed from kindergarten anyway.

"Yimi, you’ve taken a lot of clay. That’s not very fair to the other students." Kobayashi-sensei bent down and gently tried to persuade her, not quite daring to upset her.

"Mm."

Naturally, the clay used in craft class was not yellow mud but a white, modeling-clay-like material. Everyone’s creations would be displayed at the back of the classroom for a while.

Yimi had already given up on the vague mission, but before leaving, she wanted to leave a few things behind. Maybe it was only her imagination, but these past two days, every time she tried to say goodbye to Queen, Eri somehow interrupted her.

"It’s fine. I don’t need that much." Ai generously gave Yimi half of hers.

"That’s not how this works." Kobayashi-sensei helplessly tapped Ai on the head.

"Ah, is that me?" Genta, who was molding an eel, excitedly pointed at the little figure in Yimi’s hands.

She had not made him for any special reason. Yimi had only separated out a very small part of the clay to make Genta, and she still had plenty left for everyone else. The only reason she made Genta first was that he was the easiest...

One big round ball for the torso, one pointy triangular head, then four chubby limbs. There was no need for facial features. As long as the general shape looked similar, that was enough.

By the same logic, Ran only needed a crooked horn added to the top of a human figure’s head. Besides Yimi herself, who had obvious cat ears and a tail, the other members of the Detective Boys were all human-shaped figures that looked like something out of Human: Fall Flat. They gathered around the largest Genta and somehow looked like his followers.

As for the one with a toothpick stuck through its neck, that was obviously Mouri Kogoro.

Ai had absolutely no desire to determine which of the four little followers was supposed to be her. She kneaded her remaining half of the clay into the shape of a cat, but her gaze shifted toward Conan.

"Is that a dog?" Ai asked.

Making a dog in front of Yimi felt at least a little like deliberately provoking her.

"It’s a horse! It doesn’t look that bad, does it?" Conan did his best to shape the horse’s legs delicately, but clay alone obviously could not reproduce a horse’s distinctive mane.

The second FBI agent who was supposed to remain hidden that night had appeared in front of Conan.

Akai Shuichi. The person that man truly wanted to see seemed to be Haibara—or rather Miyano Shiho, the younger sister of Miyano Akemi. Unfortunately, the Haibara standing in front of him at the time had been Conan in disguise.

What surprised Conan slightly was that after he removed the disguise, Akai seemed to recognize at a glance that he was Kudo Shinichi.

Although Conan had never met Haibara’s older sister, he now at least knew that she was being protected by the FBI. When he passed this information on to Haibara, she did not seem particularly surprised. Still, presumably Haibara would not have any more pessimistic thoughts from now on.

The last thing that continued to bother him was that beggar.

Conan looked at the clay horse in front of him.

"Is this a dog?" Yimi leaned her head over and glared at him with open hostility.

"It’s a horse!"

Akai Shuichi had said he heard hoofbeats that night. Conan found it difficult to imagine such a sound appearing on a modern road. Perhaps he himself had vaguely heard something similar at the time, but he had been frightened badly enough that he certainly would not have paid attention.

Looking back at the image of a figure holding scales, the answer was obvious. The beggar with Gin’s voice was imitating Famine, the third of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, representing unfair trade.

That made Conan remember what happened on the bus. The three robbers seemed to have turned on each other over an unfair division of money. Was that connected to this?

But all three of them were dead. If the beggar’s goal had already succeeded, there was no reason to keep dressing that way. The weather was pretty cold too. Then there were the other questions: where had he come from, where had he hidden the horse, and what did the cat symbolize? Why bring a cat along to do something like this?

More than any of that, Conan wanted to know how this person had done what he did. Jodie had hit him hard that night. The hood of her car had been dented into a curve that could not be repaired.

"Class is almost over, so let me see how everyone’s work is coming along." Kobayashi-sensei clapped her hands and walked over to Conan, the closest student. "Very nice little dog. I’d give it an eight out of ten."

Conan could feel Yimi’s hostile gaze stabbing into him.

He hurriedly turned his face away and tried to change the subject, perhaps by inviting her over to his—well, Ran’s—home after school. Then he suddenly remembered that Mouri Kogoro had been invited to police headquarters for meetings about a case these past few days, and Conan himself was interested in that case too. He did not have time to help Ran babysit...

...

Then the next day, Conan’s creation at the back of the classroom lost its head.

"Conan, your horse!" Genta cried in shock.

Conan’s steps stopped.

Why did he remember it was a horse now??

Even though everyone was speaking Japanese, Conan still felt that something about this was strange.

"That’s awful." Ayumi covered her mouth.

Mitsuhiko declared, "This is a case!"

Ai stared with dead-fish eyes and lightly chopped Yimi on the head with one hand. "You still shouldn’t destroy someone else’s work, you know."

"It wasn’t me." Yimi angrily pointed at her own little figures. "Mine were, broken too."

"You’re right! I got flattened!" Genta noticed it too. The little figure Yimi had made in his likeness had been pressed into a lump.

Conan examined the damage carefully and, for the moment, cleared Yimi of suspicion. "From this angle, an adult probably did it. When they touched my... my dog, their arm accidentally pressed down on the Genta figure."

Judging by how dry and cracked the clay had become, it was probably done at night. Conan did not say that part aloud, because he had also found marks made by leather gloves pressing against the clay.

He waved a hand as though he did not care. "A teacher probably bumped into them by accident. Let’s not make a big deal out of it."

It was not until the flip phone he had acquired for use as "Kudo Shinichi" as technology advanced over the course of the past few days received a call from Ran, telling him that the Black Knight helmet from the stage play had been damaged, that realization struck him.

Someone was collecting fingerprints from "Conan" and "Shinichi" to compare them.