Chapter 48

“Ah!”

A sudden scream caught Hoshino Ki’s attention.

Could it be that this villa really had ghosts?

Hoshino Ki didn’t believe it.

And so,

Hoshino Ki walked in the direction of the scream.

“Conan, I’m so scared!”

“Ayumi, don’t make a sound, stay close to me!”

“...?”

Hoshino Ki walked to a corner.

He saw two small figures hiding in the shadows.

If Conan was here,

then that meant...

this was...?

Hoshino Ki understood.

This was the villa from the legendary Haunted House Murder Case.

Therefore,

there were no ghosts here at all.

Everything was caused by people.

Five years ago,

a happy family of three lived in this villa.

One day,

the father severely scolded and criticized his son because he had failed his university entrance exams for three consecutive years.

In a fit of rage, the son killed his father.

By the time he realized what he had done,

the father’s body was already cold.

The son panicked, not knowing what to do.

Just as he decided to go to the police station to turn himself in,

his mother stopped him.

To help her son escape the responsibility of being a murderer,

and to ensure her son’s future prospects remained unaffected,

she locked him in the dungeon in the basement.

He had been locked up for five years.

The sighing sounds heard in the villa every night

were actually the son’s repentance and crying for accidentally killing his father.

Hoshino Ki understood everything now.

So this house really was a massive bargain.

After all that,

this villa didn’t even count as a haunted house.

Now, Hoshino Ki just needed to follow Conan,

and ensure Conan could successfully persuade the mother and son

to turn themselves in.

Hoshino Ki had truly secured this house...

However,

this mother and son were truly immoral.

The house wasn’t even theirs anymore,

yet they kept lingering and refused to leave.

Staying in the basement and scaring people every day—

what was the point?

“Conan, it’s a monster, right!?”

Ayumi looked terrified.

Her two small hands were clutching Conan’s shirt tightly.

“Shh! Don’t make a sound!”

Conan shielded Ayumi behind him, hiding their bodies in the dark.

At this moment,

an old woman pushing a cart emerged from around the corner.

The old woman was dressed in black.

She was tall and gaunt.

Her long white hair was draped over her shoulders.

She looked very terrifying.

And on the cart the old woman was pushing,

it looked like a plate of food was placed there.

The food was on a plate,

completely covered by a lid, making it impossible to see what was inside.

Next to the plate was a candle holder.

There were three candles stuck in the holder.

It was likely for lighting.

To avoid being discovered that people were still living in the villa,

the woman usually didn’t turn on the lights.

The reports of ghost fires passing through the villa

were likely just the light from the candles.

The electricity in the house was also in normal working order.

This indicated that people had been living in the house all along.

Hoshino Ki followed Conan and Ayumi,

all the way to the end of the path.

“Damn it, how did she disappear?”

Conan rushed over anxiously.

He discovered that the old woman was nowhere to be seen at the end of the path.

Only a lonely cart remained there.

Conan searched all around.

“I told you she was a monster! How could a human suddenly disappear!?”

Ayumi was trembling in fear on the side.

She held her hands in fists under her chin.

Her terrified eyes stared blankly at her surroundings.

“How is that possible! That was clearly a person!”

Conan was feeling around at the end of the path.

“What’s this?”

Suddenly, a suspicious spot caught his attention.

It was a secret door leading to the basement.

Following the usual tropes of the wealthy,

there must be some mechanism nearby to open the underground passage.

Hoshino Ki didn’t want Conan to use his telescopic suspenders to force the basement door open.

Conan’s telescopic suspenders were one of Professor Agasa’s inventions.

Their tensile strength was powerful.

They could be used as a tool to bind criminals.

This villa was already Hoshino Ki’s property.

Using that kind of forceful method,

heaven knows if it would damage the internal parts of the secret basement door.

Hoshino Ki walked in the shadows, avoiding the two.

He gently felt along the wall.

Finally, he found a protruding secret compartment on the wall.

This compartment was clearly a notch higher than the surrounding area.

Just as expected.

Hoshino Ki immediately pressed the compartment.

463

At this moment,

Conan had also just pressed the spring button on his belt.

The basement door gradually opened.

“Ah! Conan, you’re so amazing!”

Ayumi looked at him with admiration.

“Let’s go!”

Clearly, Conan didn’t care for the little girl’s admiration.

He was only interested in deducing and solving cases.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought a little girl into this kind of basement.

Not very gentlemanly at all.

Hoshino Ki followed Conan and Ayumi into the basement with light steps.

And hid himself with extreme speed.

Ensuring the four people present couldn’t detect him.

“It’s been five years, and you’re still like this.”

“You need to let go; the dead will never come back.”

“You need to look up and move forward.”

“Ahhhhhhh!”

In the dungeon,

the son was frantically smashing the food on the plate.

The food was smashed and splattered everywhere.

“I locked you here, not because I wanted you to keep dwelling on what happened back then.”

“You need to pull yourself together!”

The old woman looked at her son in the dungeon with anxiety.

She grabbed the bars of the cell.

And shouted loudly at her son inside.

At this moment,

a broom next to Conan suddenly tilted.

It looked like it was about to fall.

“Hiss!”

Conan and Ayumi were both in a flurry of panic.

Fortunately,

the broom landed on Conan’s leg.

It didn’t make any sound.

Conan breathed a sigh of relief.

He rested his arm on an iron cabinet nearby.

“Rumble!”

The iron cabinet tilted and swayed due to Conan’s push.

An iron bucket on the cabinet was about to roll off.

Hoshino Ki watched all of this indifferently.

He didn’t reach out to help.

This was a necessary step in the anime.

Conan and Ayumi had to be discovered.

“Thump, thump, thump...”

The iron bucket finally landed on the floor.

In the empty basement,

it made a harsh sound.

Hiding would definitely lead to being discovered.

Was this also the protagonist’s halo?

Originally, if the two had just hidden properly,

they wouldn’t have made a single sound.

One could only say Conan was too careless.

“Who is it!? Come out!”

“I didn’t expect there to be more than two rats breaking in.”

The old woman picked up a knife from the ground.

She pointed it in the direction where the bucket had fallen.

At this moment, she was extremely fierce.

She had completely lost the kindness and gentleness of a mother.

“Put down the knife in your hand; I already know who you are.”

“What?”

“The open window and the electricity in normal use prove that someone has been living here all along.”

“Although his appearance has changed,”

“the mole on his face hasn’t.”

“You are the mistress and the son of this house.”

“And the one who killed the master of the house...”

“Ahhhhh, shut your mouth!”

Conan really had no sense of self-preservation.

Even though he was in a child’s body,

he insisted on showing off and provoking the mother.

For a mother,

the most important thing is her son.

Now that her son had become like this,

it was nothing more than his inability to accept the fact that he had killed his own father.

Plus, after five years of confinement...