As he spoke, Conan took advantage of the chance to escape the murderous aura of his childhood friend and trotted out of the room on his short little legs.
"Now that's more like it! Children have to be obedient!"
Mouri Ran was very pleased with Conan's attitude. Smiling, she left the room, leaving Mouri Kogoro and Hirata staring at each other.
Elsewhere, Narumi, who had been searching through the night with the villagers for the missing Kawashima, returned alone to her clinic.
When she reached the second floor, Aso Narumi heard a man's voice coming from the storage room.
"Kawashima!"
As one of the enemies who had killed her family, Aso Narumi would never forget Kawashima's voice.
Especially that unmistakable drake-like rasp.
Although she knew Kurumi was the one who had kidnapped Kawashima, and that Kurumi would secretly bring him here for interrogation,—
when she truly pushed open the door and saw Kawashima's lecherous face with her own eyes, rage surged through Aso Narumi, and all she wanted was to kill this man as an offering to the spirits of her family in heaven.
When the furious Narumi entered the room with an icy expression, Kawashima, thinking he had finally been discovered during the kidnapping, looked urgently at the island's beautiful female doctor and shouted excitedly, "Doctor Asai! Call the police! I've been kidnapped by this woman! Go on, hurry!"
Kawashima shouted at the top of his lungs, believing he could be saved. When Narumi showed no reaction, he instinctively assumed she had frozen because he was tied to a chair and there was another person standing in the room.
"Doctor Asai! Why are you just standing there?"
When Aso Narumi remained silent for a long time, and Kurumi instead smiled and greeted him, Kawashima finally realized the two women were together.
Kawashima's face immediately drained of color.
"Go on, scream! Mr. Kawashima, why aren't you continuing to call for help?" Kurumi teased, taking in his reaction as she waved the knife in her hand. Then she put on a look of sudden realization. "Oh! Has Mr. Kawashima finally realized there's a problem?"
Staring fixedly at the still-silent Aso Narumi, Kawashima demanded loudly, "Doctor Asai! You're working with this person? Why are you doing this? Do you even know who I am?"
As a flood of questions spilled from Kawashima's mouth, Aso Narumi finally spoke.
But she did not look at Kawashima. Instead, she looked at Kurumi, who had taken a recorded cassette tape from the recorder. "Kurumi, did this guy confess everything?"
"Of course!" Kurumi nodded. "From beginning to end. He even confessed everything about Kuroiwa and the others."
Learning that Kurumi had taken care of it, some of the anger in Aso Narumi's heart subsided.
She walked up to Kawashima and looked down at the once-arrogant village tycoon, sneering, "Mr. Kawashima, don't you understand yet? Did you really think no one would ever find out about the things you did?"
Frightened by the attitude of the normally gentle Doctor Asai, Kawashima was both shocked and furious. "Why? Why are you doing this? What exactly is your relationship with Aso Keiji?"
Kawashima could not understand why Doctor Asai was treating him this way.
He had clearly never provoked her over the past few years. And why did this have anything to do with Aso Keiji?
That had all happened more than a decade ago!
Seeing Kawashima's expression, Aso Narumi laughed in extreme anger. "Why? You killed my father, my mother, and my sister, then framed him by saying he went mad and murdered his own family! That's how you defiled my father's reputation, and you still have the nerve to ask me why!"
To be honest, Kurumi had never seen Narumi this angry before.
"Y-you... are you Aso Keiji's daughter too? Why didn't I know?" Hearing the hatred and loathing in Narumi's voice, Kawashima finally understood.
Without another word, Aso Narumi merely glared viciously at Kawashima and asked coldly, "Kurumi, what should we do with this man next?"
Aso Narumi did not know that Kurumi had already damaged Kawashima's spine. Seeing him tied to the chair with ropes, she could not help worrying that he might find an opportunity to escape.
However, what Kurumi said next left Aso Narumi astonished and Kawashima furious and terrified.
"Don't worry. I made preparations back at the Community Center. Now... Mr. Kawashima..." Kurumi looked at him. "Can't you feel your body anymore? Hmm... I mean, below your head."
Hearing Kurumi's teasing tone, Kawashima, gripped by a faint sense of dread, stammered, "What did you do to me?"
"What did I do?" Putting on an adorably surprised expression, Kurumi pointed at Kawashima's neck. "You know, the human spine is very important! If it gets injured, you'll probably end up like Mr. Kawashima here!"
Upon hearing this, Kawashima's emotions gradually shifted from fear to overwhelming rage. "You! You devil! What exactly did you do to me?!"
Even so, there was still a faint glimmer of hope in Kawashima's heart, hoping Kurumi's words were merely meant to scare him.
Unlike the enraged Kawashima, Aso Narumi's face filled with the exhilaration of having finally avenged a great wrong.
Aso Keiji's Gift
As a proper doctor, Aso Narumi naturally knew exactly what damage an injured spine could cause to the human body.
Watching her enemy howl all kinds of filthy insults at them like a beaten dog, Aso Narumi knew that if she let him keep barking, the people outside searching the village for him might notice.
"Kurumi, do you have anything to plug his mouth with?" Aso Narumi looked at Kurumi, who picked up the rag that had previously gagged Kawashima and handed it to Narumi.
"You... you two bitches will get what's coming to you!" Though he could not move his body, Kawashima clenched his teeth and tightly shut his mouth to prevent it from being gagged, trying to resist Narumi.
Aso Narumi viciously pinched Kawashima's cheeks with one hand while using her right hand to force the rag into his mouth.
Yet even as the rough, filthy rag scraped his lips raw, Kawashima still squeezed his eyes shut and refused to open his mouth to the bitter end.
Seeing Kawashima being so uncooperative, and Narumi's face turning red from exerting too much force, Kurumi could no longer stand by.
She walked over to Kawashima and gestured for Aso Narumi to hand her the rag.
"You scum!" Narumi cursed Kawashima. Feeling a little tired indeed, she handed over the rag.
Ignoring the foul stench coming from it, Kurumi clenched the rag in her right hand and pulled a lighter from her pocket with her left, holding it beneath Kawashima's nostrils.
Kurumi turned back toward Narumi with a grin. "When dealing with people like this, who think they're so tough, we usually use other methods."
As she spoke, Kurumi flicked the lighter on.
The instant the flame shot out, nearly half of the orange-red fire went directly into Kawashima's nostrils.
This immediately made Kawashima, who had been closing his eyes and playing ostrich, open his mouth in agony.
However, before his cry of pain could leave his mouth, Kurumi swiftly stuffed the rag into his wide-open mouth, sealing it completely.
The searing pain in his nostrils, coupled with his gagged mouth, left Kawashima unable to scream. His face turned bright red from the pain, and veins bulged across his forehead.
Tears rolled from the corners of his eyes. Kawashima, already on the verge of collapse, began to cry.
Although Kawashima's miserable appearance made Narumi feel slightly sorry for him, once she remembered that he and the others had murdered her family, a twisted sense of vengeance surged through Aso Narumi's heart.
Ignoring Kawashima as he lowered his head and wept quietly, Kurumi called Aso Narumi outside.
"Who's the next target?" Kurumi asked, already aware of the remaining participants.
Faced with Kurumi's question, Aso Narumi thought for a moment.
Of the four criminals who had slaughtered her family back then, apart from Kameyama, whom she had frightened to death several years ago, and Kawashima, who was no different from a dead man now, only the current Village Chief Kuroiwa and the reclusive Nishimoto remained.
The order in which they dealt with those two would not affect their later plans. However, considering that Nishimoto firmly believed in her father's curse and spent every day paranoid and suspicious, Aso Narumi felt he should thoroughly enjoy the fear and unease brought by this "curse."
"Kuroiwa." At the mention of her enemy, Aso Narumi's tone became cold-blooded.
Kurumi was quite satisfied with Narumi's response and smiled. "Good. Then next..." At this point, Kurumi looked toward the room behind them. "Let Kawashima, that piece of trash, make use of whatever value he has left."
The following morning, the villagers, who had searched all night for Kawashima, finally postponed the search until that morning because of the darkness.
Village Chief Kuroiwa felt that openly announcing Mr. Kawashima's disappearance would undoubtedly cause tremendous panic among the islanders.
But when he tried his best to cover up the matter, Mouri Kogoro stopped him and chose to call the police.
He believed Kawashima's disappearance and the recorder inside the piano were absolutely deliberate. Combined with the warning letter signed by Aso Keiji, and the fact that the police Mouri Ran had brought over the previous night had confirmed one of Aso Keiji's envelopes was missing from the warehouse, it not only caused panic among certain people, but also further convinced Mouri Kogoro and Conan that this island likely harbored some unspeakable secret.
Especially Nishimoto, Hirata, and Kuroiwa, whose reactions had been the strongest.
They definitely knew something!
While the villagers suppressed their fear of Aso Keiji's Curse, which had spread across the island, and began searching for Kawashima, Mouri Kogoro sat in Village Chief Kuroiwa's office discussing matters related to Aso Keiji.
On the sofa by the wall, Conan, sitting beside Mouri Ran, could no longer sit still.
For some reason, he had an indescribable feeling, as though someone was deliberately targeting certain people in the village.
What exactly is going on? Conan silently shook his head as he watched Kuroiwa vaguely recount the tragedy that had happened years ago.
Something's wrong. This man named Kuroiwa is definitely hiding something...
Just as Conan was considering whether he had overlooked any clues, Hirata, the village chief's secretary, knocked and entered the room.
"What is it, Hirata?" Village Chief Kuroiwa noticed the paper box in Hirata's hand, which looked like cake packaging, and asked, "What's that?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Kuroiwa." Hirata, who did not understand the situation himself, could only apologize at the village chief's question. "I saw this in the hallway outside the door just now. At first, I thought it was clutter, but after I saw the note attached to the box, I brought it here."
As he spoke, Hirata held the box by its handle in one hand and took a note from his pocket with the other, walking over to place it on Kuroiwa's desk.
Picking up the note, Kuroiwa saw a line written on it: "A little gift for Village Chief Kuroiwa—Aso Keiji!"
Upon reading the signature, Kuroiwa was so shocked that he nearly lost his footing and fell to the floor.
"What?!"
Hearing Kuroiwa say Aso Keiji's name in shock, everyone in the room—Hirata and the Mouri family alike—stood up in surprise.
"This gift box was sent by Aso Keiji?" Mouri Kogoro carefully examined the seemingly sturdy box, trying to find clues as to what it contained.
"Impossible! This is definitely someone's prank!" Pale with panic, Kuroiwa stammered an order to Hirata. "Hirata, go! Throw this thing away for me!"
"Wait!"
Hearing that Kuroiwa wanted to throw away the box, Conan immediately stopped him as he leaned closer. "There's a smell of blood inside!"
Garbage sorting has started in several residential communities in my district these past two days, so I've been working overtime. Updates will only be possible at night.
And since I'm on duty tonight, I can conservatively estimate three to four chapters tonight.
Kira Yoshikage Calls It an Expert Move
The pale blue cube-shaped box was printed all around with beautiful, pleasing patterns.
With the exquisite ribbon as decoration, the box placed before everyone looked like a carefully selected cake box.
If someone received this gift on their birthday, there probably would not be anyone who would not be happy about it.
But if the sticky note on the box bore the signature of someone who had died in a fire more than a decade ago, then this "gift" would likely bring neither surprise nor happiness.
Instead, it would bring shock and fear.
"Kid, don't talk nonsense!" Mouri Kogoro looked suspiciously at Conan's serious expression and began to mutter.
It was not that he did not believe Conan, the child who sometimes acted like a little adult. Mouri Kogoro simply felt Conan's words sounded too far-fetched.
Still, Conan was one of his own. No matter how displeased Mouri Kogoro usually was with him, he chose to believe him.
So Mouri Kogoro leaned over and sniffed with his nose.
In front of him, Village Chief Kuroiwa, still shaken by the sight of Aso Keiji's name, nervously watched Mouri Kogoro. The sweat on his forehead was clearly visible.
"Mr. Mouri..." Village Chief Kuroiwa asked tremblingly, overwhelmed by shock.
Mouri Kogoro did not answer Kuroiwa's call. As he carefully smelled the paper box, his expression gradually became grave.
"Conan was right. There really is a smell of blood inside." As a former detective, Mouri Kogoro was naturally no stranger to the distinctive smell of blood. His tone was extremely serious.
"Dad!"
"Mr. Mouri?"
"No way!"
Mouri Ran, Village Chief Kuroiwa, and Hirata immediately looked at the suddenly serious Mouri Kogoro and cried out in surprise.
As their voices fell, the atmosphere in the room became incomparably heavy. In the silent space, even everyone's breathing could be heard clearly.
Mouri Kogoro carefully untied the bow woven from the ribbon and slowly opened the box.
As Mouri Kogoro moved cautiously, everyone in the room fixed their eyes on the beautifully wrapped gift box.
Second by second, time passed. The tense atmosphere around him made even Mouri Kogoro unable to resist swallowing.
Before you continue