The guy who had volunteered to step in had secretly put on the male lead's costume and helmet, leaving only the lower half of his face exposed.
Suzuki Sonoko had taken one look at him and assumed he was Kudo Shinichi, so she had treated him as Kudo Shinichi all along. But now...
Suzuki Sonoko: "..."
She rubbed her chin, raised a hand to block Hattori Heiji's eyes from afar, and seriously examined the lower half of his face. Then she recalled Kudo Shinichi, whom she had not seen in a while. "Now that I look closely, he really does look a lot like him if you change the coloring..."
Although the "male lead" who had volunteered at the time seemed to have spoken in Kudo Shinichi's voice, without much of an Osaka accent, looking back now, Suzuki Sonoko could no longer be sure.
Human memory was unreliable to begin with. For the moment, she could not remember whether she had truly heard Kudo Shinichi's voice back then, or whether the man had looked so much like him that she had automatically filled in Kudo Shinichi's voice herself.
...No matter what, mistaking him for someone else was this Osaka high schooler's fault.
Suzuki Sonoko: "Why were you pretending to be Kudo for no reason?"
Hattori Heiji's mind spun faster than it ever did when he was solving a case. "At first, I was just worried your performance would fall apart, so I went onstage to help. Who knew you'd mistake me for Kudo Shinichi? I thought it was interesting, so I just played along."
Mouri Ran was half-convinced. "Is that so..."
As the high school students reviewed what had just happened—
Nearby, "Dr. Araide" silently pricked up her ears.
As a master of disguise, Vermouth was certain that although the