"Why? Do you all know each other?" Inspector Megure asked curiously.
Judging by the reactions of Mr. Urata's three companions, it seemed they knew this high school student selling drinks.
"Yes, Miss Ayako Ninagawa here is the only daughter of our hospital director," Yumi Noda explained with a nod.
"So, the one who served them the four drinks just now was...?" Maori Kogoro looked toward the three high school girls manning the drink stall.
"It was indeed me." Ayako Ninagawa's expression remained perfectly calm.
"I see. In that case, everyone connected to the deceased is present and accounted for," Hattori said with a smile, looking at the group.
Although he didn't say it outright, the subtext of his words was clear: The four of you are all suspects, and the murderer is among you.
"This culprit really has rotten luck!" Tsuneo looked at the people beside him.
Does this count as kicking a hornet's nest of detectives???
"What are you implying? Urata and I both ordered iced coffee, and I went to the restroom right afterward. I had no idea which cup he ended up taking," Mai Kogami defended herself immediately upon seeing the look in Tsuneo's eyes.
"However, you could have poisoned both coffees and just not drunk your own." Inspector Megure felt her argument was valid, but not sufficient.
"I drank all of mine." Mai Kogami stated that she hadn't left her seat after returning from the restroom, and her empty cup was still there as proof.
"I simply turned around and distributed the drinks she handed to me to everyone else, so I didn't have any time to put poison in them," Yota Mitani also defended himself.
"I didn't have that opportunity either," Yumi Noda nodded.
Every cup had a lid indicating the type of drink. Without opening the lid to check, and simply passing them along—holding them for only two or three seconds each—how could one perform such a sleight of hand unless they were a magician?
In fact, thinking about it carefully, with several people sitting side-by-side, trying to poison a drink with a lid while passing it along would be incredibly difficult to achieve.
"That may be true, but it's also possible that you prepared cream or syrup laced with poison beforehand," Maori Kogoro noted, eyeing the cream and syrup pods attached to the lid of the iced coffee Tsuneo had ordered.
Opening the lid to poison the drink might be troublesome and time-consuming, but swapping out these two small items was definitely possible.
"But if he drank that, wouldn't he have died immediately!" Yumi Noda, being a nurse, knew the potency of cyanide and retorted forcefully.
If the poison had indeed been placed in the cream or syrup, Kohei Urata certainly wouldn't have lasted long enough to finish the entire drink.
Maori Kogoro was rendered speechless by the rebuttal.
"I'm not yet sure what method the culprit used to make Mr. Urata ingest the poison, but what is certain is that the killer is among you four associates!" Hattori declared confidently.
Inspector Megure was still puzzled. If there really was poison in the drink, how on earth did Dr. Urata manage to finish it?
"Inspector, we found unused cream and syrup in Mr. Urata's pocket," Officer Takagi spoke up, holding the two intact items in his gloved hand.
"Unused?"
"Excuse me, but did Dr. Urata usually drink his coffee black?" Hattori looked at the group opposite him.
"No, I recall that he usually added both when drinking coffee."
The three hospital colleagues confirmed that Mr. Urata did not have a habit of drinking black coffee.
"I think what was inside this cup might not have been coffee at all." Tsuneo sipped his iced coffee, squatting down once again to inspect Mr. Urata's empty cup.
Average people aren't used to drinking black coffee.
The kind with absolutely no sugar... even if they drank it, most people would pinch their nose and down it in one go.
"Yes. It wasn't iced coffee in the cup; it was cola," Ayako Ninagawa said, lowering her head slightly.
"Huh?" Everyone looked at her in surprise.
"I thought that by doing so, he would definitely come back to me to ask for a replacement coffee."
"Maybe then... he would ask me why I broke off the engagement with him." Ayako Ninagawa's expression became somewhat complicated.
"Engagement... You're still in your third year of high school, right..." Tsuneo calculated the ages.
Kudo and the others were seventeen in their second year, so she would be eighteen at most.
As expected of the director's only daughter, engaging in strategic resource binding so early...
"Yes. I originally planned to marry him immediately after graduation. But suddenly, I felt very uneasy. Last week, I called him to call off the wedding. Since then, whenever I went to the hospital, he refused to see me."
Ayako Ninagawa began to explain the background of the situation.
"No wonder. My cup also had cola in it. I almost added the cream and syrup to it just now." Mai Kogami took the two items out of her pants pocket.
"I'm truly sorry," Ayako Ninagawa apologized.
"In that case, let's take all four of their drinks, as well as the cream and syrup, for testing. We'll talk after the forensic results come back." Inspector Megure decided to wait for the lab report.
"You guys noticed it too, right?" Conan stood at a distance with his hands in his pockets, speaking to Tsuneo and Hattori beside him.
"Yeah!" Hattori nodded. It seemed he had also noticed something unusual.
Tsuneo noticed Dr. Araide's gaze sweeping over them and couldn't help but offer a friendly smile.
Logically speaking, Conan, this elementary schooler who suddenly appeared at the Detective Agency, should have entered Araide's sights long ago.
Furthermore, since Vermouth and Yukiko studied under the same mentor, she would definitely know what Shinichi looked like as a child, and she knew about the miraculous effects of APTX4869.
It was excusable for her to suspect the identity of this Death God elementary schooler.
However, judging by the look in her eyes, she should still be in the observation phase.
"Inspector Megure, looking at it this way, that possibility is very high!" Maori Kogoro leaned close to the orange-clad stout officer's ear.
It seemed the Sleeping Detective had another miraculous hypothesis!
"What possibility?" Judging by Inspector Megure's expression, he clearly didn't have much trust in the 'Awake' Maori brother.
Are you sleepy? Do you want to take a nap first?
"It's suicide. Urata was dumped by a girl ten years his junior; the shock must have been immense."
"Before planning his suicide, he decided to meet her here."
"In the end, he couldn't get over his anger and committed suicide right in front of his former fiancée. It's not impossible." Maori Kogoro whispered a string of deductions into Inspector Megure's ear.
In summary, the final conclusion: Suicide!
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