"I know this sounds pretty absurd..." Natsuki Koshi anticipated his reaction and waved the envelope in her hand twice. "Take a look at this."
Tangze took the envelope, glanced at the large characters on the front—To Natsuki Koshi—and pulled out the letter inside with a subtle expression. Then he more or less understood what was going on.
The wording of the letter was extremely polite and tactful. It did not directly express dissatisfaction with Shinichi Kudo, but that sentiment practically overflowed from between the lines.
The sender claimed to have discovered a flaw in the reasoning behind a murder case Shinichi Kudo had solved a year ago. He hoped the recipient, Natsuki Koshi, would help correct this error and reinvestigate the truth.
"Ah, I get it. This is fallout from that 'variety show.'" Tangze paid a little attention to the sender's wording and understood the situation. "He thinks that if something like this happens, you'll step in, right?"
That had not actually been a real variety show, but a plan intended to uncover the true culprit in another sense. Since Tangze had lent a hand and brought an actual TV station into it, the whole thing had ultimately been edited into a special variety program and aired.
Natsuki Koshi's goal had been very clear: she had come to find Jun'ya Tokitsu, the worthless detective who had driven her friend to suicide. However, at Tangze and Natsuki's own request, the broadcast version had blurred her friend's identity to protect their privacy.
There had been nothing wrong with that, but it had weakened the intense personal emotions involved. The whole thing now came off more like a program where righteous detectives discovered an incompetent fool had wronged someone, then banded together to drag him out and make him apologize and repent.
"I