Haga Kyosuke did not speak loudly, but the theater's structure amplified his voice well, and his question echoed through the entire space.
Suddenly, the main door creaked as someone pushed it open a crack.
Haga Kyosuke looked toward the silhouette cast inside, his expression turning complicated for a moment.
In theory, this mysterious Mr. Kurosawa should have been helping him. He had given him countless inspirations and refined his methods... If he had not gone through all these cases beforehand, Haga Kyosuke would never have believed that his previous methods could have fooled Jiang Xia.
In the past, when he occasionally saw news about Jiang Xia, Haga Kyosuke had wondered whether the media were once again using their usual fondness for exaggeration.
But after actually experiencing it several times, he realized that the newspapers' praise of this detective was, in fact, still too restrained—even bystanders could never truly understand the reality of it. Only as the culprit, when truly standing opposite this detective, could one genuinely feel that enormous pressure bearing down head-on, as if Jiang Xia knew everything they had done inside and out, and every defense they made was nothing more than a struggle in the palm of this detective's hand.
For one instant, Haga Kyosuke even felt that this detective had seen through his methods and spotted the Mr. Kurosawa behind him, and had only not mentioned it because he lacked evidence... just like tonight, before Inspector Megure asked, Jiang Xia had remained silent without saying a word.
"In other words, if that Mr. Kurosawa hadn't been there, I'm afraid I would have been exposed on the spot, then died in that filthy house in a rush."
From this point of view, that Mr. Kurosawa was undoubtedly his benefactor, and could even be considered his mentor.
Yet