Besides the machines, the people operating them were naturally important too.
Inspector Megure pressed, "Who was competing with the victim at the time? Bring him over for questioning."
The curly-haired staff member looked troubled. Just then, another player, "Lucas of Beido Town," took the initiative to walk over.
"It was me." The tall, thin man chewed chewing gum as he explained impatiently, "But in this game, players do receive feedback when they're hit, though it's very mild—about the same as a phone vibrating against your body. You're not seriously planning to count that as grounds to treat me as a murderer, are you?"
After a pause, he added self-mockingly, "Besides, even if this Game Machine really could kill someone, I should've been the one hurt—I took an entire combo. I had it much worse than him."
Inspector Megure looked disappointed. He had thought they could easily find the cause of death, but it seemed that lead had gone nowhere too.
Officer Takagi flipped through the documents in his hands and quietly reminded him, "There are no obvious external injuries on the victim. It really does look like sudden death. In a situation like this, if the family doesn't agree, I'm afraid we can't conduct a forensic autopsy directly."
Jiang Xia said, "The body shows signs of suffocation. He may have been poisoned."
Officer Takagi froze. "But he was playing a game at the time. He couldn't have eaten or drunk anything."
Jiang Xia glanced at Conan's Wristwatch. "Maybe it was injected. Compared to poisoning someone through food or drink, injecting poison is more likely to provoke resistance or angry shouting from the victim. But a Game Arcade is noisy. If you don't speak loudly, no one can hear you. And even if someone did shout, people might assume they were