Chapter Text
"-Ayumi Yoshida!"
Ayumi reacted to this accusation with a smile. "You think I wrote the letter, Mitsuhiko-kun? I'm interested in seeing what logic you have to back that up."
"I admit, I am also curious about what led you to this deduction," Shinichi said. "Once you lay out your case, I will judge if it's correct."
"It was Suzuki-san's words that first made it click to me, even if it wasn't in the way she expected it." Mitsuhiko took out his reproduction of the love letter. "Consider the line 'since you're a girl, you probably don't feel the same way'. If a boy had written this letter, why would they write this?"
Shinichi's eyes widened. "We've investigated this case on the premise that a boy would naturally write a love letter for a girl. Yet that line does contradict that. Suzuki-san suggested that a girl was used as a courier. You went a step further, and deduced that the author of the letter was a girl in the first place."
"I could certainly understand why anyone would fall for Ai-chan, but we did all this so we could find out who wrote the letter. So I'll ask the question that you asked earlier- why would I investigate a case if I knew I was behind it?" Ayumi pointed out.
"Hey, Kudo-nii-kun. Remember when Ayumi-chan first brought Miyuki-san as the witness? I remember her saying something rather strange," Mitsuhiko said.
This caused Shinichi to remember that meeting, earlier in the morning. "She had said that she remembered other girls near the shoe locker. But before we heard anything on that, Yoshida interrupted her."
"You told Miyuki-san to only focus on the men that were near the lockers," Mitsuhiko said, looking at Ayumi. "Did you really not consider that any girl could have been the one?"
"When I heard that it could have been you or Genta-kun, I absolutely had to know for sure," Ayumi said, unusually serious. "That's why I wanted to investigate."
Observing Yoshida-chan, she is definitely telling the truth. So before we can close this case, we have to eliminate every possibility. "We saw from the video footage that Kojima-kun forgot where his shoe locker was, and hadn't even opened Haibara-san's locker. Nothing more and nothing less than that."
"Yeah, that does sound like Genta-kun," Mitsuhiko said dryly. "We've been friends for years and he's like a brother to me, but he really needs to keep his focus."
"Then there is you. You were near there as well. But it didn't seem like you knew where you were. Or even much of anything happening outside your head." Shinichi decided now was the time to put forth the realization he had earlier. "You're envious of me, aren't you."
There was an immediate reaction, as Mitsuhiko's face became pinched and he clenched his fists. "You might have heard Osahiro-san's names for me earlier. 'Junior detective', amateur. He's far from the only person that sees me that way."
Shinichi didn't say anything, but listened to the teenage boy. It was clear that this was something he'd been wrestling with for a long time.
"I look up to you, Kudo-nii-kun. When I really got to know you, I saw that you're such a cool detective, and it made me want to be like you!" For a moment, Mitsuhiko's eyes glittered with a youthful admiration that Shinichi had seen so many times as Conan.
"That's right! He's always been there for us,"Ayumi said. Then she frowned. "But Mitsuhiko-kun, you're a pretty good detective too! You don't have to be jealous of him!"
"No, it's nothing that he did. When we started high school, we started the detective club with me as the president. At first I was so excited to share this passion of mine with so many others." Mitsuhiko shook his head. "But not many applicants were interested in me. They were interested in what you might have told me, Kudo-nii-kun. They wanted to meet you. Soon, I was known as 'the boy that tagged along with Shinichi Kudo'."
"I understand. Trust me, I really do, Mitsuhiko-kun." Even to this day, Shinichi found that he couldn't reach the level of his father, who mostly wrote books but still showed up at some of Shinichi's cases to prove that he still had his superior deductive abilities. "Which is why you need to hear this: you will never be the kind of detective I am. Because you can only be the kind of detective that you are."
This caught Mitsuhiko's attention, which let Shinichi drive the conversation back to the case at hand. "You were the one to deduce that Yoshida-chan was a suspect in this case when that hadn't even occurred to me. So show me the kind of detective you are, Mitsuhiko. Close this case with your own hands."
The motivation visibly returned to Mitsuhiko, as he put his hand to his chin. "There is something else I noticed about that video footage. Ayumi-chan was the one that used the video player. She fast-forwarded it until she reached the part with Osahiro-san."
"That's a good point. Was there something you wanted us to see? Or something you didn't want us to see?" Shinichi asked.
Ayumi shifted uncomfortably. "Truth be told, I had heard from Misa-chan that she saw a boy drop off a love letter in Ai-chan's locker. I did a little investigating of my own, and found Osahiro-san. I wanted to confirm with my own eyes what kind of person he was, and if he had really given a letter to Ai-chan. That's why I wanted to see the video footage. I do feel really bad that we ended up digging in his emotional wounds as a result. I want to apologize to him."
Once again, I can tell she's not lying, but she does seem to be hiding something. But what will Mitsuhiko's next approach be?
"You're naturally a kind person, Ayumi-chan. I noticed that you seemed to be open to the idea of reassuring Osahiro-san, if he had written the love letter," Mitsuhiko said. "But what I'm wondering is why you were so invested in finding out in the first place. Why poke your nose in Haibara-san's business?"
"Mitsuhiko-kun, we all had a bad habit of poking our noses into other peoples' romantic business when we were kids," Ayumi said cheerfully. "We tried helping out a lot with Takagi-san and Sato-san, and they're married now!"
"Normally, I would accept that answer. But when I consider your strange actions with Miyuki-san's testimony, and wanting to see the video footage yourself, I'm considering a different possibility." Mitsuhiko once against referred to his reproduction. "If you wrote the love letter, then you dropped it off in Haibara-san's shoe locker before anyone else. Then we saw that she took a love letter out of her locker later in the day. But then you heard that a boy did the same thing in the same area. So you must have wondered if Haibara had taken a different letter, instead of yours."
"You're talking like you've already proven that I wrote the letter," Ayumi said. "But it's not signed. So no one knows who wrote it."
At that moment, Genta entered the room. "Mitsuhiko-kun, I checked the video footage again! Near the start, there's a moment where Ayumi-chan is by the shoe lockers!"
"What was she doing, Genta-kun?" Mitsuhiko asked. Shinichi, out of the corner of his eyes, noticed that Ayumi had gone pale for the first time.
Genta sighed dejectedly. "I was looking as close as I could. But just then, the bell rang for classes, and a swarm of girls blocked my view of Ayumi-chan. Sorry I couldn't help out more."
"No, that helped out a lot," Mitsuhiko said, giving his friend a warm smile. "I'll tell you more later. For now, I'm studying with Ayumi-chan and Kudo-nii-kun, if you want to join in."
"Nah. But call me once you're done studying!"
After Genta left the room, Mitsuhiko's face shifted into a serious expression as he faced Ayumi again. "Another suspicious action. Maybe by itself it would be a coincidence. But with everything else, it becomes a pattern."
"There's something else to consider. If it really is you, Yoshida-chan, why won't you just tell us?" Shinichi asked gently. "I don't see a reason why you'd need to hide this from us."
"I'm considering the feelings of the person that wrote the letter!" Ayumi exclaimed. "You should do the same!"
"So you won't admit it until we prove it, then." Mitsuhiko closed his eyes in focus. "We've already opened the idea that it could be a girl that wrote this love letter. But you're right, it's not the same as proving it was you. But looking at this letter closely, I can see where you signed it."
Shinichi raised an eyebrow at this. "Explain, Mitsuhiko-kun. This letter has no signature at the bottom. So where did you get the idea that Yoshida-san's signature can be found on it?"
"You have to look at the greeting of this letter. It reads 'dear Ai Haibara', but it has several strange parts about it."
The introduction floated in Shinichi's mind. "Yes, I confirmed this when Haibara-san showed us the original love letter."
At this, Ayumi's eyes widened. "She really did that?"
"The person that wrote the introduction did it in such a way that would reveal who they are. This led me to the conclusion that it was Ayumi-chan," Mitsuhiko said. "Because the original introduction of this letter was 'dear Ai-chan'!"
Ayumi gasped, rearing back in shock. At the same time, a bolt of deduction hit Shinichi. "I understand. Yoshida-chan is the only person that ever calls Haibara-san by that name. If that had been in the letter's introduction, it would be an immediate giveaway."
Mitsuhiko opened his eyes, and showed his reproduction of the letter to the other two. "Like this, the strange parts of the letter suddenly made sense. The reason why the 'H' in Haibara is so close to the first name is because it was originally a dash."
Picking up the deduction, Shinichi continued, "The weirdly rounded capital A must have started out as a C. The b in Haibara with a strange accent was meant to be another h."
"It must have been around this time that you realized that you would give yourself away, and quickly rewrote the introduction. But since you wrote this letter with a pen, you couldn't exactly erase it, leaving this evidence for us to find." Mitsuhiko pointed his finger at Ayumi. "Well, did I get it all correct, Ayumi-chan?"
The look of shock faded from Ayumi's expression, to be replaced by a smile. "That is very well done like always, Kudo-kun and Mitsuhiko-kun. Which is why it actually pains me to say that there's a big problem with that explanation."
Ayumi raised her right hand, still covered in bandages. "I burned myself, remember? I couldn't have written anything even if I wanted to."
"Right, you did burn yourself!" Mitsuhiko fell into a panic. "If you couldn't use your right hand, you couldn't have written anything. But then how did you-?!"
It looks like he was taken off guard by that counterattack. But Mitsuhiko is also so close to solving this case. I suppose even a great detective needs help sometimes.
"Are re re! If I remember correctly, Yoshida-chan told us she burned herself during home economics class," Shihichi said casually. "That would have been in the middle of the day, right?"
"And if my deduction is correct, she put the love letter in Haibara-san's locker in the morning," Mitsuhiko said thoughtfully. "So it still could have been you, if you burned your hand later."
The teenage boy looked at his own right hand, and suddenly his eyes sharpened. He turned his hand to everyone else, showing the dried ink on it. "This is it. The proof that will prove one and for all who wrote the love letter."
"You got your hand dirty when you wrote the reproduction," Shinichi said. "You did it like that because the letter itself had been written in a rush."
"Exactly, Kudo-nii-kun. Which is why I have only one more question." Mitsuhiko pointed at Ayumi's rolled up sleeves. "Will you show us your sleeves? You were near the shoe lockers this morning. So if your right sleeve has dried ink on it, that will clear everything up."
At first, Ayumi didn't answer. Then, a proud smile spread on her face, as she unrolled her right sleeve, showing the dried ink on it. "You really have become a great detective, Mitsuhiko-kun."
Shinichi let out a sigh of relief. "This case ended up being more complicated than I thought it would be. I ask again: why did you feel the need to hide this?"
"Like I said before, we've always had a bad habit of poking our noses into other people's romantic problems. So maybe it was selfish of me, but I didn't want Haibara-san to get dragged into this," Ayumi admitted. "She's a very private person. So if possible, I wanted to settle this between the two of us."
"But someone else delivered their own love letter on this same day," Shinichi said. "And you doubted if your letter had been received. So you had to confirm it with your own eyes, even as you tried to misdirect us from you."
"This whole situation got really out of hand. I never meant for anyone to get hurt," Ayumi said sadly. "And now, I couldn't even keep this secret. I will confess to everyone, and apologize for causing trouble."
"There's no need to do that, Ayumi-chan. That's the entire reason I had this private meeting.," Mitsuhiko said. "I knew you had good intentions from the beginning. So we can keep this a secret, between the three of us."
"If you ever want to tell Haibara-san how you really feel, I suppose I could poke my nose in your business," Shinichi said, smirking. "But until then, I promise not to interfere."
"That's rather uncharacteristic of you, Kudo-kun." The door to the classroom opened, admitting Ai Haibara inside, with Genta behind her.
"How long were you listening?" It was a statement, not a question.
"I told you that I would go home soon. When you didn't come, I came here to get you instead," Ai explained. "And I saw Yoshida-kun walking away from this classroom. I heard people talking in here, and ended up listening to quite a bit."
Ayumi approached Ai. "You know everything, then. That I wrote the letter, and put it in your shoe locker."
"I did hear that part, yes. But even without it, I knew it was you from the beginning." Ai's cheeks turned pink. "This letter is unmistakably you, Ayumi-chan."
"You did tell us not to be too harsh on the person that wrote the letter," Shinichi noted. "That was your way of looking out for Yoshida-chan, even as she looked out for you."
Ayumi nervously folded her hands together. "If you want to talk about the love letter privately, we could go somewhere else. I'll accept whatever answer you give me. Because I want to support you, no matter what!"
"The boys already heard everything, so no point in doing that." Ai met Ayumi's gaze. "Even after all the time we've known each other, there's a lot I haven't told you. That I haven't told anyone, really. Because a part of me is afraid that if I do, you'll run away from me."
"That would never happen, Ai-chan. Because I love you," Ayumi said, grabbing Ai by the hands. "I've felt this way about you since we were children."
"If this isn't too personal a question, when did you start feeling this way?" Mitsuhiko asked.
"When we were stuck in the cave that one time. I was so scared the entire time, and I wanted desperately to be saved," Ayumi explained. "And then Ai-chan came to the rescue, with Professor Agasa and the police. I was so relieved that I hugged her, and I think a part of me never wanted to let go."
"Woah. Now that I'm listening to this, I can definitely see how Ayumi-chan wrote that letter," Genta said, sounding impressed. "When did you grow up so fast?"
Ai ignored this, and Shinichi could see that she was thinking hard about something.
Eventually, Ai said, "You've always been one of the bravest people I know, Ayumi-chain. I admire that about you." Ai placed her hand over Ayumi's hand. "One day, I'll be able to tell you everything. If you're willing to stay by my side even after that, then nothing would make me happier."
The atmosphere was broken by the sound of Mitsuhiko whistling, a grin on his face. "Well done, Ayumi-chan! Your letter reached its intended destination after all."
Genta put an arm around both girls. "You'd better believe that the Detective Boys will always be here for you, whether you like it or not!"
"What a nosy group of friends I landed myself with." Yet Ayumi had a small, sincere smile on her face.
Shinichi, observing all of this, had his own smile on his face. This is how the case of the mysterious love letter came to a close. In the process, Mitsuhiko found his own path as a detective, and is growing in his own way.
Mitsuhiko had a glow about him that Shinichi recognized as the satisfaction that detectives felt when they solved a case and reached the full truth. All previous traces of envy and conflict had vanished from him.
I can't say what the future holds for Ayumi and Ai. It's true, Ai has a lot of baggage that still weighs her down, even all these years later.
Even as Ai shrugged off Genta, she was still holding hands with Ayumi, and her face had a blush on it. Ayumi herself couldn't stop beaming.
But I have a feeling that they're going to be just fine. Because when I see these two, I see something familiar- myself and Ran, when we were their age.
The End