Dies irae

Chapter 3

Mouri went to Kanagawa the day after Yokomizo's call. Conan couldn't get any information on the last victim because Mouri went so careful to not be heard by the detective boy. But, Conan will get it fast enough.

And 'fast enough' meant today, actually. The Detective Boys decided they would go to Kanagawa to do "camping" — read investigating the newest case of the prodigy killer. So, on Saturday early morning, Conan and his friends waited next to Professor Agasa's yellow Beetle.

Agasa desperately tried to change the kids' minds once he knew the real motivation for the trip to Kanagawa, but it obviously was hopeless. So they went to Kanagawa.

As they arrived in the city, the Detective Boys looked for the Rikkai Middle School on their phones. They rode once again to the school.

However, they had to hide and stay outside the school as they saw police cars parked near the building. They all decided they would just wait there for the police to leave.

The Rikkai team was staring at their captain talking to the men in suits. Their conversation lasted for a while until Yukimura came to the tennis court with the men beside him.

"So this is Detective Yokomizo and mister Kogoro Mouri."

"Kogoro Mouri? As in the Sleeping Mouri?" Yagyuu asked, pushing his glasses up with his finger. The boy looked excessively hyped to his teammates as if he was the main character of one of his beloved crime novels.

Mouri laughed loudly.

"Haha! that's me indeed."

Sanada gave the man a doubtful look. The vice-captain suddenly wondered if he was really as competent as people were saying.

Yukimura seemingly had seen the doubt in Sanada's eyes and gave Sanada a reassuring smile.

"Anyway... They would like to have a word with you too. About... what happened the other day."

The latest victim has been found nearby Rikkai University — by one of its students. The victim was Yuya Hashimoto but not a student of the school.

Yuya wasn't even from Kanagawa but from Tokyo. So, the police were more than confused to find his corpse so far from his home, near a school that had that h nothing to do with the poor boy.

The police arrived fast enough to avoid students gathering to see the ordeal. Yukimura failed to avoid that horrid sight of a bloody undressed boy with wide-open eyes — as a first year student from the club came to him — panicked — asking for help. That image has been printed into his eyes since.

Something was bothering Rikkai captain more than anything else: he couldn't help but find a striking resemblance between the victim and Ryoma Echizen, the Seigaku rookie. When he looked more into the case and the other victims, the feeling got stronger and unshakeable. All of them reminded him of the Seigaku rookie. And this always brought him a strong wave of nausea everytime he thought about it.

The crime was already all over the news, so Conan didn't have to do much investigation to know everything he needed. The fact the latest victim was dropped at Rikkai of all other places was compelling to the young boy.

Maybe the serial killer dropped his victim there as a warning to someone linked to the school. This was Conan's first theory.

Sanada could see his captain was bothered by something. Yukimura seemed out of place during the club training. The other members of the team also noticed it but decided to leave him be, guessing he needed some time to process the eerie sight from the morning.