"So this is what they call a 'female best friend,' huh?" Miwako Sato glanced at Shirakawa in the distance, then turned to Tae Aizawa, muttering, "It's quite rare, though. I've only heard of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law conflicts; I never expected a father-in-law and daughter-in-law conflict."
"I'd say it's normal, actually," Kogoro Mouri interjected. "To show up dressed like that to meet your future father-in-law... even if it were me, I wouldn't approve."
"Huh?" Sonoko Suzuki exclaimed in surprise. "She's only twenty?"
"That's right," Takagi examined Tae Aizawa's driver's license. "That's what it says on her license."
"Then she's about my age," Sonoko stroked her chin, feigning shock. "Does that mean I'm next?!"
"She's certainly self-aware..." Fujino thought to himself, glancing at Sonoko. He remembered that Sonoko was indeed the next one to be attacked. If that's the case, then all they needed to do was wait for the rabbit; the culprit would reveal themselves without needing any deduction.
"By the way, Ran," Kogoro Mouri suddenly asked, "Before you saw her, did you see anyone suspicious?"
"Hmm..." Ran pondered upon hearing this. Despite still feeling a bit shaken by the scene, she took a closer look at the body. After trying to recall and thinking for a moment, she suddenly remembered something: "Actually, when I arrived at the parking lot just now, I did see a man with a square face walking out of the parking lot."
"A man with a square face?" Kogoro Mouri frowned. "Then could that guy be the culprit?"
"Ran, did you get a clear look at the person's face?" Miwako Sato quickly pressed Ran. "For example, what clothes they were wearing, or more detailed features?"
"The person this young lady is talking about must be me," Before Ran could speak, a man with a square face, exactly as Ran described, walked out from the crowd. "I'm Yoshio Teikin, the security guard here. At that time, I was going to the restroom. The culprit probably killed this young lady around that time, right?"
"Going to the restroom... You didn't kill her yourself, did you?" The speaker was a pot-bellied middle-aged man with a mustache and round glasses. The man walked over, suspiciously looking at Yoshio Teikin. "By the way, I remember you're a security guard who transferred from the company across the street half a year ago... You weren't sent by the other company to kill someone and tarnish our company's image, were you?"
"How could that be?!" Yoshio Teikin was momentarily stunned and quickly retorted, "Even if I transferred from the other company, setting aside whether I'm a so-called spy or not, there's no way I would commit murder!"
"That's hard to say. Who knows how much benefit you received from them," the man said sarcastically. Turning his head, he coldly said to Noriyuki Shirakawa, who had previously cursed at Inspector Megure and was now weeping over his girlfriend's death, "Noriyuki, what kind of man are you, crying like this? To become like this over a woman—you've disgraced our Shirakawa family!"
"Dad..." Noriyuki Shirakawa's face was filled with resentment.
"Hmph," the man snorted coldly, turned, and walked away, sternly admonishing, "Good, take this opportunity to find a new girlfriend. This time, you must find a woman without blemishes to be worthy of our Shirakawa family's status!"
"That guy must be the owner of this department store, right?" Sonoko glanced at the departing man, annoyed. "Just as expected of a family; such terrible personalities are all exactly alike."
"Indeed..." Fujino agreed.
He could only say, they truly were a family. Their outrageous traits were simply identical. Indeed, being outrageous seemed to be hereditary.
"Hey, hey, Sonoko," Ran glanced at the body again, then turned to Sonoko and asked, "Do you feel like there's something a little strange about her?"
"Strange feeling?" Sonoko hadn't looked closely at the body. After all, it was quite frightening no matter how you looked at it... But with Ran bringing it up, she mustered her courage to take a look, then nodded. "It is strange, but I can't quite pinpoint what's strange about it."
"It should be said that everything about her is wrong, right?" Kogoro Mouri, who overheard their conversation, glanced at Tae Aizawa and scoffed. In his eyes, someone who deliberately tanned their skin and dressed like that was inherently strange. In comparison, he was more concerned about the 'blemish' that old man just mentioned.
Turning back, he asked Shirakawa and Konno, "By the way, may I ask what the gentleman just referred to as a 'blemish' was?"
"It's probably that incident from about a year ago?" Yuri Konno thought for a moment and replied, "She hit and killed a little boy with her car then, which is why she was fired from the department store."
"Hit and killed a boy with her car?!" Kogoro Mouri was clearly stunned upon hearing this, then asked in surprise, "Then how is she still dead here?" His implied meaning was, why hadn't this woman been sentenced yet?
"I heard about this incident from Yumi in the Traffic Division," Miwako Sato suddenly recalled an accident Yumi Miyamoto had gossiped about with her, then explained, "She said there was a little boy waiting here for his mom to return from shopping, who suddenly rushed out from behind a car with his soccer ball, and unfortunately got hit by the car."
"This is a parking lot, so the car's speed wasn't very high at the time, but because the impact hit a vital spot, the boy eventually died in the hospital... Afterward, the girl responsible was sentenced to one year of probation." Miwako Sato then stroked her chin, recalling, "I remember the little boy's name was Akira Sakurai, I think."
"Only one year of probation?" Kogoro Mouri was surprised.
"It's probably because she was a minor," Fujino explained. "At the time, she was only nineteen, a minor, so the judge would handle the sentencing with discretion. As for whether she truly wasn't the main party at fault, no one knows. No one witnessed it, and the victim is dead, so it's pretty much like that... But even so, the sentence was still too light."
"I see..." Kogoro Mouri suddenly understood. "No wonder that boss didn't want his son to date a girl with a criminal record."
"You two, what are you talking about?" Shirakawa heard someone badmouthing his girlfriend, and his temper flared up again. "Even though she once hit someone, she was truly a good girl! And it wasn't her fault that she hit that little brat then!"
Kogoro Mouri: "......" *Do you have some misunderstanding of what a good girl is?*
Fujino: "......" *Why does that line sound so familiar?* *Hmm, smokes, drinks, dropped out of school, and ran over a kid.* *Right, right, a good girl acts like that, huh?*
For this kind of outrageous person who likes dark-skinned girls, saying anything else outrageous wouldn't seem strange anymore. The whole family is outrageous...
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