Conan, I'm an actor

“Even if you don’t know who her target is, you can still find a way to stop her…” Conan immediately realized something, “Is it because Asai realized it too? Is he hindering your intervention?”

"More or less. He wants to see how I stop that woman from making further mistakes." Kaito was also a bit troubled. "But I haven't figured out her modus operandi yet, so naturally I can't stop her. But I really underestimated you, little detective. I didn't expect you to figure out my identity so quickly."

"Because of your relationship with Kuroba Toichi, and the way Asai spoke to you just now." Conan rolled his eyes. "Also, Ran told me about what happened at the Twilight Villa. I guessed the relationship between your two identities, but I'm not sure yet."

"Damn it!" Kaito Kuroba said, looking at Conan in front of him. "How about we team up?"

"Cooperation?" Conan looked at the chubby face in front of him. "How do you mean by cooperation?"

"You find out her motive, and I'll figure out her modus operandi, okay?" Kaito said, looking at Conan in front of him.

Conan rolled his eyes. "Where am I supposed to find her motive? To find a motive, I would have to review a lot of case files and question the people around her. Although these people here are familiar with Tanaka, it's just the kind of understanding you get from online acquaintances, and they can't get any useful information. Besides, communications here have been cut off, so reviewing case files is out of the question."

“You’re right.” Kaito nodded. “You really are useless.”

Conan stared at Kaito, feeling his fist harden. Why was he so useless?

After sending Conan back, Kaito returned to the dining table. Everyone was chatting happily and quickly forgot that there was a "shadow mage" secretly watching them.

"I'll go boil some water. I'm going to take a bath soon, and I can't do without hot water." Tanaka stood up.

"Don't rush," Hamano Toshiya said. "Since this is a gathering of magic enthusiasts, why don't we decide who does what through magic tricks?"

"Through magic?" Tanaka's face lit up with delight. "Great! How do you want to decide? A magic competition, perhaps?"

Hamano Toshiya took out a white strip of cloth and walked up to Sonoko. "Please, beautiful Sonoko, help us with this. First, use this cloth to cover Sonoko's beautiful eyes. Does anyone here have paper and a pen with them?"

"Will this work, Mr. Magician?" Tanaka found the notepad and pen next to the telephone.

“Okay, now please write everyone’s name on each piece of paper, put them together, turn them over, and give them to Sonoko later,” Hamano said with a smile.

Tanaka quickly wrote down everyone's names on the sticky note and then handed the sticky note and pen to Sonoko, who was standing to the side.

“Now, everyone, please step back. Sonoko, please draw a circle, a cross, and a triangle on the back of this note,” Hamano said. “The circle represents the acting head of the department, the cross represents the person in charge of tonight’s entertainment program, and the triangle represents someone in charge of boiling water.”

"Actually, there's something I forgot to mention: boiling water is my job," Xu Lian said with a cough.

"It's okay, it's just a game, so it's better to include some punitive tasks," Hamano said with a smile.

Just then, Sonoko said she had finished writing and placed the pieces of paper on the table as instructed by Hamano Toshiya.

At this moment, Hamano Toshiya began his own predictions. As the predictions about the acting head of the department and the water boiler came true one after another, Hamano's face showed a hint of pride.

“You’re next! You’re in charge of the entertainment program, Mr. Asai!” Hamano Toshiya said with great pride.

"Wait a minute, the person in charge of the entertainment program is Doi." Araki Yoshizawa picked up the card. "See for yourself if you don't believe me."

"How is this possible!" Hamano Toshiya and Doi Takuki exclaimed at the same time.

Chapter 207 The Non-existent Third Person

"As a magician, checking the props you've prepared is a must," Shinjo said with a smile. "If a magic trick fails because of a prop mistake, the audience will have complaints."

The card written on Hamano Toshiya's card was indeed his. Some unknown event had occurred, and the original Doi had become him.

However, he definitely didn't want to perform magic tricks; he had already done his limit by performing a few small magic tricks with props before.

He came here today to have fun, not to be someone else's entertainment, so he chose to change the card to Doi's name.

Of course, his little tricks couldn't fool Kaito Kuroba. Just now, he switched his own card, clearly not wanting to perform.

However, he was quick and managed to switch the card back while the other man wasn't looking.

Seeing Doi's gaze, Shinjo shrugged indifferently, tacitly agreeing with Kaito's guess.

"Damn it, what good does it do you to commit murder!" Kaito's expression was almost contorted under the mask. "I really want to punch this guy."

At that moment, Conan had already run outside the villa, looking at the distance between the hidden stakes and the rooms, and fell into deep thought.

Kidd said that after the woman named Tanaka arrived at the villa, she drove this wooden stake in when no one was looking, but he didn't know what the stake was for.

"Damn it, I have absolutely no clue. She couldn't possibly have hanged someone with such a short wooden stake." Conan was getting a little frantic at this point.

If he could get through to the outside world by phone, he could ask the police for clues about the Xishanwu murder scene and maybe find some leads. Now, with just a wooden stake, he's truly at a loss.

Just then, my phone rang in my pocket. Judging from the number, it should be that guy, Kidd.

"what happened?"

Have you found any clues?

"No, clues aren't that easy to find."

Conan was somewhat speechless. "But what about you? Any progress?"

"No, that guy kicked me out to prepare for the show." Kaito was also speechless. "These guys really have no sense of crisis at all. I already told them that someone was watching them in the dark, and they still split up to act."

“Acting together won’t do any good. Miss Kuroda and Miss Karen can’t keep an eye on Miss Tanaka all the time. Sooner or later, she’ll find an opportunity.” Conan was quite calm. “She might even use them to create an alibi.”

Just then, he noticed a hole in a large tree, seemingly left by someone using it as a target for archery practice. However, according to Araki Yoshizawa, he was only there on vacation and had never mentioned liking archery.

“From this angle, from this direction…” Conan turned his head to look at the location of the room, “Could it be a compound bow, or a crossbow?”

"What crossbow? What are you talking about?!"

"Could you get into Ms. Tanaka's room and rummage through her bag?" Conan asked. "You're a thief, you should be good at that."

"You bastard..." Kaito quickly realized, "This is her murder weapon? How did you figure that out?"

“There are arrow marks on the tree stump. I suspect they were left by the murderer when they were experimenting with their method.” Conan suddenly thought of something. “By the way, you spent a lot of time with them. Do you know who Ms. Tanaka’s target is?”

Besides stopping the perpetrator, another way to prevent murder is to protect the victim.

It's much easier to keep an eye on the victim than on the perpetrator; at least the victim won't easily detect your intentions.

"I still don't know, but that Sonoko-san has a satellite phone on her." Kaito yawned. "What's your relationship with that girl named Suzuki Sonoko like? If you're on good terms, maybe you could ask her to lend you her phone..."

Just then, the sound of shattering glass rang out, coming from the direction of the small house.

Everyone heard the sound of glass breaking, and when they rushed to the restaurant, they saw an arrow with a note attached, pinned to the living room wall.

"What does it say?" Kaito asked, staring at the arrow.

He was certain that Tanaka had been inside the hut just now, and the arrows had been fired from outside. Could it have been a trap set up outside?

"You all must die, Shadow Mage, I report for duty." Huang Yize read the words on the note, his face deathly pale.

"Sonoko-neechan, you have a satellite phone over there, right?" Conan asked Sonoko. "Could I borrow it for a moment?"

"Here you go, what do you want to do with it?" Sonoko didn't seem to care about a satellite phone. Although she disliked Conan, she was still quite lenient with her best friend's child because he was Ran's child.

"I'd like to see Shinichi. He already went to Inspector Megure to ask about the situation," Conan said. "I want to ask him if there's been any progress."

Ran looked at Conan, a hint of surprise flashing across her face. Then she realized that he was using her future self as a shield again, and a helpless expression appeared on her face.

Meanwhile, Kaito, disguised as Doi Takaki, also noticed Ran's change in expression. Recalling the way she looked at the high school student named Kudo Shinichi at the Twilight Villa last time, he had a guess.

However, he felt that his guess was too absurd, so he quickly dismissed it.

Conan, having obtained the satellite phone, quickly got two clues: two of the people attending the magic enthusiasts' gathering had registered social media accounts with fake information. One of them was naturally Kaito Kid, now known as Doi Takuki, and the other was unknown.

"By the way, is there anything unusual about Ms. Tanaka?" Conan asked, frowning.

"Tanaka? That Tanaka Kikue? Is there anything unusual about her?" Inspector Megure asked hesitantly. "Do you suspect she's the murderer? What evidence do you have? Kudo, we need evidence to conduct our investigations."

The routine investigation has been conducted, and the police have found nothing unusual about Ms. Tanaka. To find clues, a more in-depth investigation is needed, one that goes beyond ordinary questioning.

"Not yet, but there is something I want to say," Conan said. "Just now, someone attacked everyone in the cabin and sent out threatening letters. The culprit probably used a crossbow or something similar."

"Crossbows?" Inspector Megure was taken aback. "Then you'd better be careful. Crossbows are just as deadly as firearms, if not more so."

Chapter 208 The Test for Karen

Just then, an argument broke out downstairs, and the sudden appearance of crossbow bolts made the previously relaxed atmosphere tense. Hamano Toshiya said he wanted to leave, while Tanaka and Kuroda said it was more dangerous outside and it would be better to stay in the cabin and wait for rescue.

"We're waiting for rescue. There are still several hours until dawn. That guy is hiding in the shadows and might have already sneaked into this house!" Hamano Toshiya said nervously.

“Even if you want to leave, you can’t now,” Huang Yize said helplessly. “You can go down the back mountain, but there’s a nearly vertical slope with a drop of more than 70 meters. Even in normal weather, you need to use mountaineering equipment, let alone in this kind of weather.”

Hearing that he couldn't leave, Hamano calmed down, but he was clearly flustered and his words were somewhat incoherent.

On the balcony, Xincheng stroked his chin; the crossbow bolt from earlier was his handiwork.

"You knew who the assassin was all along, didn't you?" Yue Shui walked in from outside. "Aren't you afraid of getting burned?"

"Playing with fire?" Xincheng lay on the bed. "I only did some trivial things, far from constituting a crime. But you, why don't you go and challenge them?"

"Shall we have a match?"

"Haven't you always wanted to prove your abilities?" Shinjo looked at Yue Shui, "to try to stop the murderer, or to figure out the murderer's methods."

"That Conan is the high school detective Shinichi Kudo, and that Doi must be special too, right? Who is he?"

“How come you see?”

"That magic trick, Tanaka Kikue was probably Hamano Toshiya's assistant. The head of the department, the water boiler operator, and the performers for the entertainment were probably all arranged in advance," Koshimizu said. "There were two sets of cards in total. The set that Tanaka wrote was later switched with the set that had been written in advance."

"And then? The marks were drawn by Sonoko. Don't tell me Sonoko is also their assistant. That silly girl doesn't seem like someone who can be an assistant."

“Because the playing cards she was given had already been marked, and the pen Tanaka gave her was out of ink. Because she was blindfolded, she thought she had made marks, but she hadn’t.” Koshimizu stared at Shinjo and said, “In the magic tricks performed by Hamano Toshiya and Tanaka Kikue, you should have been the one to perform the magic trick last, but you chose to pass the task to that Doi Takuki.”

"I just didn't want to perform magic, so I just found someone to turn down the job."

“If that were all, I wouldn’t suspect you.” Koshimizu stared at Shinjo and said, “When everyone was relatively unfamiliar with each other, you assigned Doi to take care of Conan and pointed out that he was a doctor. Whether you judged him to be a doctor by observing him or you investigated him beforehand, it means that you value him very much and even think that he is someone who needs to be targeted.”

“I was indeed targeting him, and the reason is related to his identity,” Xincheng said with a smile. “It has nothing to do with this case, and I had no idea that a murder was about to occur here.”

“No, you knew all along. You even knew who the murderer was and what the motive was.” Yue Shui pointed to the radio on the table and said, “You should have known that Nishiyama Tsutomu was murdered long ago. It must have been last night. You asked me to take the radio with me when you left this morning. Ara Yize isn’t a rich man; he wouldn’t have a TV in the guest room. I don’t like crowds, so I would have listened to the radio to pass the time. At that time, I would have heard the news of Nishiyama Tsutomu’s murder, but unfortunately, I only heard the rebroadcast.”

Shinjo clapped slowly, a smile appearing on his face, seemingly acknowledging Koshimizu's reasoning.

"What do you want to do?" Yue Shui stared at Xin Cheng and asked, "What is your purpose?"

"You need to investigate Doi Takaki's identity yourself, and you also need to investigate this case," Shinjo said, looking at Koshimizu in front of him. "Knowing that the person outside the window is me, you are far ahead of them."

"You want me to solve the case?" Yue Shui stared at Xin Cheng, his face full of disbelief. "Are you kidding me? You're putting the people here in danger just for this reason?"

"Since you know me so well, you should know that it's unrealistic to persuade me to give up now. So, hurry up and solve the case, young lady," Shinjo said with a grin.

"You're such a jerk!" Yue Shui stormed to the door, but then stopped abruptly. "Aren't there any restrictions?"

"No," Shinjo said with a smile. "But since you asked, let's add one more thing: you can't reveal my identity. If Conan knew who I was, this game would be over."

"I see."