Hattori Heiji: So are we being hunted by those vampire vines?
Detective White Horse: The situation is a little bad.
Kudo Shinichi: Can you come to my place?
Hattori Heiji: I'll think of a way.
Detective White Horse: I hope I can escape before being sucked dry by those vines.
Toru Amuro: We also came across a safe room.
Hattori Heiji crawled quickly in the ventilation duct on all fours, with an expression on his face full of tension. Just looking at his eyes and expression made people feel a depressing atmosphere.
An unknown object behind him hit the wall of the ventilation duct, making a crashing sound.
It's like a crisp sound that can only be made by a hard object, rather than the dull sound made by the collision of human bodies.
He came to the ventilation duct above the room where Kudo Shinichi was staying, and jumped down without hesitation.
On the team map, the two green dots overlap.
"...What a coincidence." Hattori Heiji joked with Kudo Shinichi in the room.
"Are there any clues about this room?" he asked Kudo Shinichi, who was the first to enter the room.
There is no doubt whether Kudo Shinichi has checked the room.
For detectives looking for clues, the first thing they do when entering a new location is to search to see if there is any useful information.
"See for yourself." Kudo Shinichi pointed at the wall.
Unlike other rooms they had entered, the walls of this room were splattered with dark blood stains.
Not only the walls, but also the beds, tables, chairs, bookshelves, and even the books on the bookshelves had more or less blood stains.
Almost the whole room was dyed red.
"This amount of bleeding... more than one person must have died." Hattori Heiji looked at the thick layer of dried plasma on the wall. When he touched it with his hand, a dark brown object could peel off, but even if it peeled off
One layer, but the bottom is still dark brown.
The original iron-grey color of the walls can no longer be seen.
The whole room was filled with a rancid smell, and at the same time, there was also a faint fragrance.
"I even doubt whether there will be a corpse hidden in this room." Hattori Heiji guessed.
"I've looked for it, but it's not there." Kudo Shinichi gave a negative answer.
"Then are there any other clues? Don't tell me that you didn't find anything when you came here first." Hattori Heiji said.
"You can search for it yourself." Kudo Shinichi had a complicated expression.
He did find something.
"I only found a suicide note." He said delicately.
"Suicide note?" Hattori Heiji turned to look.
"It's soaked in blood and can no longer be read." Kudo Shinichi held a corner of a piece of paper and carefully showed its true appearance.
Two-thirds of the area was soaked in blood and turned brown, and the writing was covered with plasma.
Only a few faint words can still be seen.
[Death is not the end, but the beginning of freedom.]
"Being killed? Or can you only kill someone and then commit suicide? Looking at the situation in the room, I personally prefer the latter." Hattori Heiji said.
But compared to suicide notes and so on...
The more critical question is——
"Why don't the vines dare to approach this place?" Hattori Heiji touched his chin with one hand and was puzzled.
"Is it related to the fragrance?" Kudo Shinichi guessed.
In addition to the rancid smell, this room also has a fragrance, which feels like...
Rose incense.
Kudo Shinichi focused his attention on the small box on the bookshelf nearby.
He reached out and picked up the box and opened the lid.
Inside is a box full of rose petals and golden hair strands.
For some reason these rose petals look as if they are fresh, just picked not long ago.
Fresh and gorgeous.
Those hair strands look like real gold.
He touched the bottom of the box with his hand and suddenly turned the bottom to his face.
The bottom of the box is engraved.
[My rose, please sleep with me.]
"The roses mentioned above are not those vines, are they? Those rose vines belong to the owner of this room?" Hattori Heiji guessed.
"Maybe." Kudo Shinichi was noncommittal.
There was another noise in the ventilation duct.
The two of them looked up and happened to meet the gaze of Baima Tan, who was looking down.
The white horse detective jumped down easily.
"What did you two find? Why is it safe here?" Baima asked.
"I found a suicide note that cannot be read, and a small box containing rose petals and golden hair." Hattori Heiji said, indicating to the other party to read the two clues.
Detective Bai Ma picked up the so-called suicide note that he could no longer read, and then picked up the box.
Soon I saw the clues on these two things.
"Death is not the end, but the beginning of freedom..." White Horse Detective whispered his so-called last words.
"My roses... do those rose vines actually have an owner? They should be products of the laboratory, so their owner is a researcher?" Bai Ma Tan guessed.
"But it's also possible that it's an experimental subject like Rose." He said as if talking to himself.
"I think it's more like an experimental subject. If it's a researcher, Rose Vine shouldn't have this attitude. You know, most of the researchers were killed by the experimental subjects. The experimental subjects have a hateful attitude towards the researchers. It's impossible.
Such an attitude of being cautious and not daring to get close." Kudo Shinichi analyzed one by one.
"Indeed..." Hakuba Detective and Hattori Heiji nodded to agree with Kudo Shinichi's reasoning.
"We are both experimental subjects, why are we so cautious? If what is said on the box is true, Rose Vine should have fallen into a deep sleep with the other party. Why is it still active?" Hattori Heiji asked.
"This blond-haired experimental subject, together with the rose, reminds me of the fairy tale The Little Prince. The little prince and the rose belong to each other..." Detective White Horse said suddenly.
"So the little prince is dead, but the rose is still alive, so he doesn't dare to go near here? Is he afraid of being hurt by seeing things? Or is he timid about being close to home?" Hattori Heiji said with a teasing smile.
"Is it the room or the things in the room that makes it cautious?" Kudo Shinichi also raised a question.
"Do you want to try? Although you might die if you try." Hattori Heiji asked.
"The ventilation duct is no longer safe. If it is indeed something in the room, we can continue to investigate from the ventilation duct to other rooms with the items."
"If it wasn't something that made it cautious... we might have turned into three corpses that had been drained of blood in the ventilation duct." Detective White Horse analyzed.
"Don't enter the ventilation duct first, go outside and take a look." Kudo Shinichi took a deep breath.
"If you're outside, you can still run back quickly. You can't escape in the ventilation duct," he said.
"Let me try." Hattori Heiji stood up very proactively with a suicide note in one hand and a small box in the other.