Detective Conan
A Mystery of Their Own
by Sgamer82

"A woman attacked a man. The man died. While the woman was responsible, the man's death was not, strictly speaking, a murder. In what way could that have come about?"

With that question, Subaru Okiya's game had begun. Now four of the five Detective Boys sat at a table in the living room of the Kudo house next to Professor Agasa's home. The fifth Detective Boy, Conan Edogawa, sat on the sofa next to Subaru.

Outside, a sudden rainstorm prevented any outdoor play. Weather reports promised it would pass over quickly, so it was simply a matter of waiting for the storm to go away. Fortunately it wasn't cold enough to be a snowstorm, despite the recent seasonal shift to winter.

Seeing the kids bored while they waited, Subaru had offered a game for the young would-be detectives: a murder case of their very own to solve. Framed as training them to be better detectives the children had agreed, the question was asked, and the game was afoot.

The rules were simple.

First, Conan was not allowed to participate in the investigation. According to Subaru, his case was based on an actual death that had occurred several years ago. Conan was excluded on the basis that he might actually be familiar with the case in question and already know the answer. Even if he wasn't, he would almost certainly solve it in short order, which would make the exercise pointless for training.

Second, they could ask Subaru any questions about the original case they could come up with. On the other hand, he would only reveal general details about the death that were publicly known. He would not offer any insight of his own nor would he reveal anything specific about the date the killing had occurred or the cause of death. He would confirm if they guessed correctly, but the children would not simply have the answer handed to them.

Finally, to win the game, the children would have to either successfully deduce how the situation Subaru described came about, or find the news article about the original incident. Subaru had written the answer down and sealed it an envelope along with a printout he made of the news article. It was given to Conan and would be opened after the Detective Boys offered their final answer.

Ai Haibara, who had not been excluded like Conan, made the first move.

"Is this a trick question?" Haibara asked. "For example, the woman's attack is actually completely unrelated to the man's death?"

"I promise there is no such trick." Subaru smiled. "This case is to train you. Just like Conan-kun doing all the work, a puzzle you could not intuit the answer to won't help you improve."

Haibara neither wanted nor needed detective training; but Ayumi, Genta, and Mitsuhiko nodded eagerly. Conan and Haibara both felt it was to their credit that they were excited rather than dismayed at the prospect of working out a puzzle without Conan. Haibara assumed she was meant to be a handicap for them. She lacked Conan's level of deductive reasoning skill, but was intelligent enough to make sure they didn't stray too far from the right direction.

If that was so, her work was cut out for her. The kids' theorizing quickly devolved into whatever random idea popped into their heads.

"Maybe she was some kinda monster that only scares people to death." Genta offered.

"A monster wouldn't be charged in court, Genta-kun," Mitsuhiko retorted.

"It certainly would not be an 'obscure' case if it was," Haibara added.

Things went in this vein a few more times. One of the children offering a theory, one of the others giving the obvious reason it wouldn't work, and Haibara either staying quiet or adding a sarcastic comment of her own. Eventually, one of them got impatient and a hand slammed down on the table to get the others' attention.

Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Haibara looked at Ayumi.

"Everyone, we're never going to solve the mystery like this," she told them. "We're all over the place and Ai-chan is the only one who even asked a question. Besides, Holmes says we shouldn't consider weird stuff until we rule out real stuff, right Subaru-oniisan?"

Conan looked annoyed, but Subaru only chuckled.

"That's quite the paraphrasing, but you are right, Ayumi-chan."

Ayumi took a pad of paper and pencil Subaru had given them for notes and passed it to Haibara.

"Here, Ai-chan, take these and write down things as we figure them out."

"You want me to be the secretary?" Ai asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You have the best writing and you're always organized," Ayumi told her.

Unable to actually argue with this, Ai accepted the pen and paper. None of them noticed the approving nod Subaru gave Ayumi.

"Fine. Just don't expect me to get anyone coffee," Haibara said.

"None of us drink coffee, Ai-chan," Ayumi told her.

"We all have hot chocolate anyway." Genta held up a steaming mug.

Haibara decided it would be for her own sake to avoid any further sarcasm for the time being.

After that things went a little more smoothly. The kids held off on further theorizing until they had more information. So they began to ask Subaru questions, with Ai dutifully recording his answers.

"Did the attack happen inside or outside?" Ayumi asked.

"Outside."

"Were the man and woman related?" Genta asked.

"Not by blood."

"Were they married?" Mitsuhiko tried.

"They were."

"For how long?" Haibara threw in.

"At least 10 years."

So it went. Subaru patiently answered questions and, once or twice, actively stopped Conan from offering any hints. Eventually, they got tired of questions and began trying to work things out.

"So to summarize what we know," Mitsuhiko began, consulting Ai's notes, "A husband was attacked by his wife in broad daylight. The husband was not hurt in the attack itself, but somehow died soon after."

That had been the tricky part. Subaru would not answer any questions about the specific cause of death, since it was their job to figure that out. The most he would offer were frustratingly vague yes or no answers if he didn't outright refuse to answer at all.

"If they were married," Ai said, "Then an affair would be the most obvious thing to provoke an assault."

"Maybe the wife was just really mean to her husband," Mitsuhiko suggested.

"Or the husband was mean an' the wife got mad back," Ayumi added.

Haibara had also privately considered the option of an abusive relationship, but dismissed it. Giving children a murder case to puzzle out might be questionable, but Haibara didn't believe Subaru would give them a case quite that dark.

"I have a question, then." Genta raised his hand, as if he were in class. Subaru nodded to acknowledge him.

"Which of them is right?"

"I don't think it works like that Genta..." Conan said.

"I don't see why not," Subaru replied. "It's no different than if they each asked me about their theory individually."

"In answer to your question, when people who knew the couple were questioned later, none of them had noticed any signs one was actively harming the other. However, the wife did yell at her husband during the attack and was heard to say he had been cheating."

They all nodded. That meant Ai's theory was the correct one.

Things became quiet after that as the kids each considered their own ideas. However none of them, even Ai, had a conclusive theory to the crime itself.

"Why don't you try re-enacting the crime?" Subaru suggested when he realized they had gotten stuck.

The kids nodded. Ayumi and Mitsuhiko stood up to be attacker and victim. While figuring out their positions, they devised more questions.

"Where did she attack from?" Mitsuhiko asked.

"From behind." Ayumi placed herself behind Mitsuhiko.

"Did she have a weapon?" Ayumi asked.

"Actually, she did not."

Ayumi tried to reenact the crime based on that. She approached Mitsuhiko from behind and gently pushed him to simulate an attack.

"It seems to match..." Haibara said.

"But something's missing," Ayumi replied as she sat back down next to Ai.

Rather than sit back down, Mitsuhiko took out his smartphone and began typing into it.

"Maybe we have enough now to find the original case," he said to the others. "We can beat the game that way, right?"

"Of course." Subaru nodded.

As Mitsuhiko was intent on his phone, Ayumi did something peculiar. She began staring at Mitsuhiko.

"Yoshida-san?" Haibara said.

"I think I know what we're missing," Ayumi said absently. Everyone in the room watched as she got back to her feet.

Everyone except Mitsuhiko, who was so intent on his phone he was ignoring everything else. That proved a mistake when Ayumi got behind him.

"How dare you cheat on me!" Ayumi screamed suddenly.

Everyone watched with wide eyes and covered ears as Mitsuhiko, caught off guard by the shout and Ayumi's light follow up shove, tried to turn around to face Ayumi and back away from her at the same time. What resulted was Mitsuhiko's legs getting tangled underneath himself and sending him tumbling to the floor.

"Tsuburaya-kun!" Haibara cried out.

Fortunately, Mitsuhiko didn't seem to be hurt. He was, however, shook up badly by the sudden scream in his ear and fall to the floor. When he looked up at Ayumi, he was clearly holding back some tears.

"Ayumi-chan?" Mitsuhiko yelled. "What was that for?"

"That's what we were missing!" Ayumi said excitedly. She offered her hand to Mitsuhiko. Once he was on his feet she continued.

"The lady attacked her husband without warning from behind while yelling at him," she explained. "We couldn't act it out right because you knew what I was doing. But when I scared you-oh, sorry about that, Mitsuhiko-kun-you probably acted a lot like the husband did!"

Everyone was surprised by Ayumi's logic. They all eventually decided it was sound, even if Ayumi's methods left much to be desired. Mitsuhiko was mostly worried about his phone. He breathed a sigh of relief that it had not been damaged in the fall.

"Thank goodness," he said. "My father would have been furious if I'd let it fall and the screen cracked open or some... thing..."

Mitsuhiko trailed off and suddenly he, Ayumi, and Genta were staring at one another.

"What was the weather like?" Genta asked suddenly.

Everyone seemed dumbfounded by the seemingly non-sequitur question. Everyone except Subaru Okiya. He was smiling.

"A rainstorm in the onset of winter had just passed through, much like the one we're waiting out."

"A winter storm," Haibara repeated.

"Rain and... and ice!" Mitsuhiko said.

Ayumi began hopping up and down.

"That's it that's it that's it!" she squealed. "The lady attacked the man-"

"-he got scared and tried to get away-" Genta continued.

"-then he slipped and fell because of a patch of ice-" Mitsuhiko offered.

"-at which point he must have cracked his head open or similar." Haibara concluded.

"Wait, that can actually happen?" Genta asked. "I thought that was just something our moms told us to scare us."

While the others around the table expressed varying degrees of dismay at Genta's comment, Conan Edogawa was grinning. The smile had not left Subaru's face.

"I found it!" Mitsuhiko cried out and began reading from his phone. "According to this Kaede Midorikawa-san, 32, was arrested and charged for the murder of her husband Minoru-san, 35. According to investigators, she attacked from behind, which caused Minoru-san to slip on a patch of ice on the sidewalk. This caused an injury to the head, which he died of on the way to the hospital."

The article went on to say that, just as deduced, the motive had been Kaede learning her husband was seeing another woman. According to her statement, Kaede had been trying to decide what to do and gotten so angry thinking about it she had attacked on impulse. Because he died as a direct result, she had been charged with murder. In remorse, she had pled guilty and the charges were dropped to manslaughter.

"How's 'slaughter' going down?" Genta asked.

"It's a term used for murders that weren't premeditated," Conan explained.

"So are we right, Subaru-oniisan?" Mitsuhiko asked.

"You are absolutely correct," Subaru told them. He nodded to Conan to open the envelope he held. Inside was a printout of the same story Mitsuhiko had found and a handwritten note confirming accidental death and how it happened. The Detective Boys cheered at their victory.

"Do we win anything?" Genta asked.

"As a matter of fact, I did make arrangements for something if you succeeded."

Subaru got off the sofa and gestured for them to follow him. He guided them to the Kudo house's library, a huge room filled with wall to wall books. He guided the kids to a particular section close to the floor.

"You may each take one book from this section of the library," Subaru told them, "I spoke to the owner of the house, Shinichi-kun, and he told me the books in this section should be suitable for your ages."

Haibara turned to glance at Conan.

"They're my collection from when I was a kid," he whispered to her. "My mom and dad would get me mystery books for kids from time to time so I'd have something to read besides Holmes."

"Did you ever read anything besides Holmes?"

"Not really." Conan shrugged. "So this way they get some fresh use."

"How generous," Haibara said as she started walking towards the shelf.

"Where are you going?" Conan asked.

"To claim my prize, of course," Haibara said with a grin, "I didn't risk carpal tunnel to come away with nothing."

Eventually the storm passed. While it was not cold enough for snow, it was cold enough that the wet roads and sidewalks had frozen over in some places. After they had each thanked Subaru for the game and providing the books, the Detective Boys headed home. Contrary to their usual excitable natures, the children tread slowly and carefully, mindful of the ice following their recent case. This left Subaru, Conan, and Haibara standing out in front of the Kudo house.

"That was a rather roundabout way to teach a lesson about running on icy ground," Haibara told Subaru.

"Is that what I did?" Subaru asked innocently.

Haibara said nothing and made to return to her home next door.

"Watch out for the ice yourself," Subaru called. This earned him a brief glare from Haibara as she closed the front gate of her home behind her.

"They did really well today," Conan commented. "Genta was surprisingly good at thinking of the right questions."

Subaru nodded.

"Mitsuhiko-kun did well researching the story. I hadn't entirely expected them to both solve the mystery and find the article. Overall, I was impressed the most by Ayumi-chan. Her idea during the re-enactment was a good one. There's also potential for leadership in her."

"You think so?" Conan asked. Subaru jerked his head to the house next door.

"Putting aside how she took charge early, Ayumi-chan was probably the only person in that room she would have listened to."

Conan chuckled. That much was very true.

"In all honestly, they may never reach your level of detective. Not individually. If they can hone their skills and work as a team, however, they could someday become the equal of any Great Detective worth the name."

Conan's eyes widened. That was high praise indeed, considering the source. The idea that those three might indeed grow up into detectives in their own right was not something he had considered too seriously.

He began to now. He considered it so intently that he never noticed the patch of ice that formed on the house's front porch until he was flat on his back.

"I guess you should've played the game, after all," Subaru said as he helped a groaning Conan to his feet.