"Look out! Get back!"
Conan followed Tsuneo's sharp gaze upward. High above, an oversized advertising letter perched on the roof's edge was wobbling precariously. A second later, it tore free and plummeted straight toward them.
CLANG!
Tsuneo reacted instantly, snatching Genta by the collar and hauling him back. Beside them, Conan and Ai lunged forward, shoving Ayumi and Mitsuhiko out of the way.
From the ground, those glowing rooftop signs didn't look like much, but up close, they were monsters—over three meters tall and weighing dozens of kilograms. Dropping from the sixth or seventh floor, a piece of metal like that wasn't just a hazard; it was a death sentence.
"The department store sign…" Ayumi whispered, her voice trembling as she stared up at the empty gap on the roof.
"It—it must have been old screws," Mitsuhiko stammered, his heart racing with the adrenaline of a narrow escape. He squinted at the roof, but from their vantage point, nothing was visible. "It had to be an accident, right?"
"You're definitely having a run of bad luck, Genta."
"Yeah, you need to find someone to help you wash off that jinx."
Mitsuhiko and Ayumi offered their shaky comforts to Genta, who was still dangling from the mechanic's hand like a bewildered puppy.
The comfort didn't quite land. To anyone with a sharp eye, it was painfully obvious: that sign had been aimed directly at the spot where Genta had been standing, head down, preoccupied with his chocolate.
"This wasn't a coincidence, and it's not just bad luck," Conan said, kneeling beside the massive red letter 'R.' He pointed to a thick wire. "The power cable for this sign… it's been cleanly sliced with a knife."
The cable provided electricity for the neon lights, but more importantly, it acted as a secondary safety. Whoever had unscrewed the sign had cut the wire to ensure the 'R' wouldn't just hang there—they wanted it to fall.
"Then… why here?" Mitsuhiko's face paled. "Was the target really Genta?"
"The culprit's intent is clear," Ai said, pointing her slender finger toward a nearby machine. "The target was whoever stood in front of that Kamen Yaiba Gachapon machine."
It made sense. Genta stopped here every single day after school to stare at the toys. Since this was a busy department store with multiple exits and fire escapes, the culprit could drop the sign and vanish long before even a fast-moving mechanic like Tsuneo could make it to the roof.
"Does this thing actually drop anything good?" Tsuneo muttered. Ignoring the tension, he fished a few coins from his pocket and fed the machine, cranking out five capsules in rapid succession.
Machines like these were notorious for being 'kid-scams'—you could go through a hundred capsules before finding a single protagonist figure.
"Hey, is now really the time for that?" Conan grumbled as a plastic capsule was shoved into his hand. He gave the mechanic a look of pure exasperation. The man really has a one-track mind.
"So…" Ayumi looked at Genta with growing dread.
"Yeah," Conan nodded, his expression turning grim. "It looks like someone is legitimately trying to kill Genta."
"Come on," Tsuneo said, giving Genta's head a rough, reassuring rub. "Let's go get some eel rice. My treat."
Small problem. Don't sweat it.
"How could I possibly eat at a time like this…" Genta whimpered, his eyes brimming with tears. He squeezed his capsule open with a pop.
It was a Mole Alien. Of course it was.
Inside the Restaurant
Tsuneo sat with the five children around a large table, having ordered ten bowls of eel rice in one go.
"What?!"
"You're saying you saw that serial robber?" Mitsuhiko shouted, nearly jumping out of his seat.
Genta had apparently come face-to-face with the culprit who had been terrorizing the neighborhood lately, attacking elderly women and lone pedestrians.
Tsuneo frowned as he listened. How did I miss that piece of news?
"It seems someone has been so busy lately they've stopped patrolling the streets at night," Ai remarked with a soft, teasing chuckle, casting a side-eye at Tsuneo.
Conan nodded silently. Precisely.
"The guy looked exactly like the police sketch," Genta said, taking a massive, defiant bite of his eel rice. If he was going to die, he wasn't going to do it on an empty stomach—Tsuneo's logic was starting to make sense. "He had the mask and the glasses, just like the poster."
"Genta, did you report this to the police?" Ayumi asked, sipping her juice.
"Yeah, but I didn't go until a week after I saw him." Genta paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. "When I first saw him, the police hadn't put out the sketch yet. It was only after I saw the poster that I realized who he was. But… I can't for the life of me remember where I saw him."
He sighed, shoveling more rice into his mouth. At least the eel is delicious. If this is my last meal, I'm okay with it.
Conan offered a weary smile. For someone who claimed they couldn't eat, Genta was making record progress. Still, the memory lapse was the core of the problem. How could he forget the location?
"But I did find the guy who saw the robber with me," Genta added, recalling the events of a few days ago.
Five days prior, a violent mugging had occurred near Genta's house. A woman in her twenties had been struck in the head and robbed. Genta, being Genta, had run over to join the crowd of onlookers.
"While I was standing there, I saw this blonde guy in the crowd. He was the same guy who had been sitting next to me when I first saw the robber!" Genta nodded firmly.
He recognized the witness, but the original location remained a fog.
"And? What did you do?" Ai asked, glancing at Tsuneo. The mechanic was already working on his third bowl. No matter how many times she saw him eat, the sheer scale of his appetite was a marvel of nature.
"I immediately grabbed a police officer and pointed him out! But that blonde guy… he acted like he'd never seen me before. He told the cops he hadn't seen any robber, either."
Genta looked genuinely confused. "I don't get it."
"Are you sure you didn't misidentify him?" Conan asked, his detective instincts tingling. This was a massive discrepancy.
"I'm sure. When I saw the robber, that blonde guy was sitting right next to me. That's why I assumed he saw the guy, too." Genta, currently one bowl behind Tsuneo, finished his first serving and pulled a second one toward him.
"'Assumed'? 'Right next to you'?" Tsuneo paused his eating, looking up with interest.
"Yeah. I think I was really sleepy at the time. Everything was a bit hazy. When I finally snapped out of it, that blonde guy was just… there, sitting beside me."
Genta stared at the ceiling, trying to pull the memory from the depths of his mind. It had taken a full week for the police sketch to trigger the realization that the man he'd seen was the criminal.
"If you were sitting down and feeling sleepy… were you at the movies?" Mitsuhiko suggested. Finding the location was the key to everything.
"Or maybe on a train?" Ayumi added. "People get sleepy on commutes all the time."
"Based on your description," Ai summarized, "the person trying to kill you is almost certainly that robber."
"Something's off," Tsuneo said, setting his spoon down.
Other diners in the restaurant were casting curious glances at their table, wondering why a group of children and one young man were discussing attempted murder with such gravity.
"Genta, are you sure you didn't see the robber while he was committing a crime?"
Genta thought about it, then shook his head. "I don't think so. Like I said, I was drifting in and out of sleep. If it were a crime scene, the noise would've kept me awake, right?"
Tsuneo leaned back, crossing his arms. "And you're absolutely sure that when you went to the police, you didn't make a huge scene? You didn't, say, shout it from the rooftops so the whole world—including the killer—would know you were a witness?"
The five children stared at him, their expressions flat and unimpressed.
Who on earth would go to the police and turn it into a parade?
-------------------------------
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