The Last Voice

Lin Xinyi quickly suppressed that subtle sense of incongruity.

Meanwhile, the great detective Kudo's interest in Lin Xinyi grew ever stronger:

"Mr. Lin Xinyi, you seem to have a wealth of investigative experience."

"You must have solved quite a few cases before, right?"

"I'm very interested in this kind of reasoning that applies forensic medicine knowledge."

"If you have time, could you tell me more about your past cases?"

"..."

He seemed even more like he was interrogating a suspect than Inspector Megure had been, constantly asking questions Lin Xinyi had no way of answering.

Lin Xinyi remained silent throughout.

He automatically blocked out the noise around him, then looked around and observed the scene:

Inspector Megure was directing the officers at the scene to begin wrapping things up, while the onlookers discussed the brilliant deduction they had just witnessed with lingering excitement.

Officer Komatsu was unhurriedly packing up the Crime Scene Investigation Kit, while Kudo Shinichi still relentlessly pestered his mysterious "rival," Lin Xinyi, with question after question.

A grand performance had come to an end.

Yet it seemed everyone had forgotten the protagonist of that performance—the victim.

Gradually, Lin Xinyi's gaze settled once more on the corpse lying alone atop the white plastic sheet, not even retaining a complete human shape.

"Hm?"

Kudo Shinichi quickly noticed where Lin Xinyi was looking.

He could not help but feel surprised:

Lin Xinyi was once again fixing the corpse with that focused gaze.

Could there still be some unrevealed clue on the body?

He had already lost the first round by discovering the cause of the dismemberment one step later than Lin Xinyi.

If there were other clues on the corpse, and he, a famous detective who called himself a disciple of Sherlock Holmes, had failed to notice them entirely, then he would be utterly defeated.

"What is it, Mr. Lin?"

"Did you find something else?"

Kudo Shinichi's tone became somewhat strange—one could even say nervous.

Lin Xinyi did not answer directly. Instead, he turned back and studied him briefly.

The young detective's face was filled with drive.

He looked like an athlete who had just finished an intense competition, his heart full of anticipation for the next event.

But this was not a competition.

"Kudo."

After pondering for a moment, Lin Xinyi finally spoke:

"I didn't find any new clues on the corpse."

"However, aside from clues to solving the case, what else can you read from a corpse?"

"Uh? Well..."

Kudo Shinichi froze slightly.

What else could one see besides clues to solve the case?

Was this another deduction problem Lin Xinyi had set for him?

His interest was immediately piqued, and his bright eyes locked straight onto the corpse.

"Ah..." Lin Xinyi shook his head helplessly.

If he observed the victim with the eyes of someone studying a brainteaser, he would never find that answer.

Sure enough, after pondering for a while, Kudo Shinichi still failed to solve the "riddle."

He observed and thought while unconsciously stroking his chin. He nearly rubbed the skin off that sharply defined chin of his before managing to say a single word.

"Well..."

It was Miss Mouri beside them who hesitantly broke the silence.

Perhaps driven by a young girl's innate sensitivity, she unconsciously joined in solving this "riddle":

"She must have suffered terribly."

"Oh?" Lin Xinyi looked over in surprise.

Kudo Shinichi also turned to his childhood friend in confusion. "Suffered? What do you mean?"

"I mean..."

Ran gathered her courage and looked at the victim on the ground:

"The victim, this woman... she must have suffered terribly."

"She died three hours ago, around two in the morning."

"Why would she choose to commit suicide at two in the morning, when people would normally be asleep?"

"And look at her clothes. She was still wearing pajamas."

Under Kudo Shinichi's astonished gaze, Ran voiced a deduction that this great detective could not bring himself to say:

"It must have been because she was in too much pain."

"At first, she probably had not made up her mind to commit suicide. She was wearing pajamas, which meant she had only intended to sleep."

"But the pain made it impossible for her to fall asleep."

"Perhaps she lay in bed with her eyes open, thinking for a long, long time, until that pain finally crushed the breath from her lungs."

Ran gradually clenched her fists.

She had completely put herself in the place of that nameless victim, that woman she had never met:

"In the end, she could not bear it any longer."

"She no longer had the courage to live in this world, to face the pressure this world had placed upon her."

"So, in the stillness of the late night, she quietly left home alone and came to the banks of the Teimuzu River, where no one would be around."

"Perhaps she stood alone in that boundless darkness and thought for a long time."

"But in the end, the darkness still swallowed her."

By then, Ran's voice had become low:

"If someone had noticed her leaving in time, if someone had reached out a helping hand to her..."

"Perhaps things would not have ended like this."

"That's right."

Lin Xinyi gave her a look filled with admiration:

"The victim suffered terribly, and the pain she faced before her death was even more horrifying than we could imagine."

"Because drowning is one of the most painful ways to die in the world."

"Before a drowning victim completely loses consciousness, there is roughly a minute of respiratory distress. During that time, large amounts of cold water enter the lungs, and every breath causes pain like a thousand blades cutting through them."

"And when I pried open the victim's hand just now, I also noticed something..."

"There were faint rope marks in the webbing between her thumb and index finger."

"Between the thumb and index finger?"

Kudo Shinichi looked at his own hand in confusion.

"How could there be rope marks in a place like that?"

"There were clearly no signs of binding on the victim's wrists. And even if someone wanted to tie her hands, they would not tie them there."

"Because those were not rope marks left by binding."

Lin Xinyi held out his hands, spread his thumbs, and lowered them toward his waist.

He pretended there was a rope loop tied around his waist, then hooked his thumbs between the "rope" and his abdomen, caught the "rope" with the webbing of his hands, and pulled down hard.

"So that's what it was..."

Mouri Ran understood once again before Kudo Shinichi did:

"Those were pressure marks left when the victim tried to loosen the rope loop around her waist."

"Because she regretted it at the final moment of her life."

"She wanted to live. She wanted to return to this world."

"So she desperately tried to reach down and untie the rope loop fastening the weight around her waist, but..."

"But she realized it too late. By then, everything was already too late." Lin Xinyi spoke heavily. "Her muscles had already begun to cramp from the cold water, and her consciousness was gradually fading as her breathing stopped."

"Even that rope loop, which should have been easy to escape under normal circumstances, could not be undone in that situation."

"And so, amid that intense pain, the victim could not even consciously grasp the rope."

As he spoke, Lin Xinyi released the rope that did not exist.

He pressed both hands tightly over his chest, his body trembling faintly, as though a furnace of burning coals raged within his chest:

"Once the victim entered the stage of losing consciousness, she could no longer think of saving herself."

"Driven by instinct, she began desperately pressing both hands over her chest and lungs, where the pain was most intense—perhaps she thought that applying external pressure might ease it somewhat."

"But it did nothing. Her hands remained tightly pressed to her chest, clenched into fists by the agony and spasms."

"So now we can see that the victim's arms were clenched into fists, and several of the cuts on her arms align perfectly with several cuts on her chest, joining into a single line."

With his hands over his chest and his fists clenched, Lin Xinyi recreated the victim's final posture before death:

"Her consciousness was completely extinguished, and her life came to its end."

"And that final struggle before her death loosened the rope loop even further, allowing her corpse to break free under the force of the current and eventually rise to the surface."

"Hah..."

Lin Xinyi let out a long sigh:

"This was the last voice the victim left behind."

"So that was it..."

After thinking it over, Kudo Shinichi frowned slightly.

He found the answer to this riddle somewhat difficult to accept:

Indeed, the pajamas proved there was a strong chance the victim's suicide had been an impulsive decision, and the rope marks on the webbing of her hand showed that she had tried to save herself before dying.

But what did any of that mean?

Those unimportant details merely reconstructed this woman's death more thoroughly. They were of no help at all in solving the case!

Though Kudo Shinichi had been somewhat moved, he was even more confused.

Seeing his reaction, Lin Xinyi thought for a moment, then turned directly to Mouri Ran beside him:

"Miss Mouri, I've realized that you have more talent than Kudo for becoming a top forensic examiner."

"Huh? M-Me?"

Mouri Ran opened her mouth slightly in surprise.

People had praised her for being pretty, gentle, and skilled in martial arts, but no one had ever praised her for having talent in criminal investigation.

"Mr. Lin, don't joke around..."

"My deductive ability is far inferior to Shinichi's. How could I possibly become some famous forensic examiner?"

Mouri Ran said awkwardly.

"No, you misunderstand. Forensic examiners and detectives are not the same."

"Forensic examiners do not need any innate deductive talent. Those are things that can be made up for through experience and knowledge."

"What a forensic examiner needs most is empathy for the victim."

Lin Xinyi spoke with utmost seriousness:

"For a forensic examiner, examining corpses and investigating cases are simply ordinary daily work."

"This work is not interesting. It can even be called tedious and dull."

"And tedium inevitably leads to carelessness, while dullness often cools one's passion."

"So throughout a long career, only those who can truly feel the victim's suffering can genuinely understand the responsibility resting on their shoulders and speak for every victim with the greatest patience."

"Miss Mouri Ran, you happen to possess that ability."

At that, the air quietly fell silent.

Mouri Ran did not become smug from the praise. Instead, Lin Xinyi's words stirred her empathy for the victim once more.

That gentleness seemed to be her innate gift.

And Kudo Shinichi also quietly fell silent:

"The ability to understand a victim's suffering..."

Vaguely, the great detective seemed to have learned something.