The Secret of the Square
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| Chapter 1096 | |
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| Title: | The Secret of the Square |
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| Japanese title: | 四角の秘密 (Shikaku no Himitsu) |
| Original release: | June 15th, 2022 |
| Shōnen Sunday issue: | #29/2022 |
| Volume: | 103 |
| Pages: | 16 |
| Anime adaptation: | Episode 1145: The Hotel Serial Bombing Case (Part 2) |
The Secret of the Square (四角の秘密 Shikaku no Himitsu) is the 1096th chapter of the manga of Detective Conan. It was written by Gosho Aoyama, drawn by him and his assistants and first released in Shōnen Sunday #29/2022 on June 15, 2022 and has been published as part of Volume 103 on April 12, 2023.
Contents
Characters
Gadgets
Settings
Featured
Plot
Conan, Sera and Eri only have ten minutes left before the bomber contacts them again, but they remain calm. Eri suggests that they simply evacuate the six possible rooms in which a bomb could be planted without the bomber finding out. Aruto Kureishi and Seiko Ronda are puzzled as to why she is telling them this, as they were suspects in the case. Conan asks them if one of them is the perpetrator, which they both deny. That leaves Danji Rinzaki as the bomber, who they can ignore for the time being during the evacuation, as he is unlikely to blow himself up. Eri splits up the group so that they can check out as many rooms as possible as quickly as possible. Kureishi is to go to room 2410 on the 24th floor; Masumi is to go to room 1214 on the 12th floor and room 1124 on the 11th floor; Conan goes down to reception and secretly tells them about the operation; Ronda is to accompany Eri to the 14th floor, where they cover rooms 1412 and 1420. The group sets off and splits up.
Ronda follows Eri, but the lawyer goes with her to the 13th floor, where all the guests from the possible target rooms are already in one room, together with Megure and Takagi. The whole operation was just a bluff to fool the real culprit, while in reality Eri had already contacted the police. She has also already cracked the code: it is actually a typical case of a rail fence cipher, in which the syllables are entered diagonally offset in a zigzag pattern in several lines. The pattern is determined by the first syllable of the code in the square, because the square is a reference to a computer keyboard; on Japanese keyboards there are hiragana on the keys as well as Latin letters. The "Te" from the first code is located on the W of a keyboard, which is why the code is lined up in a W pattern. The "Mo" from the second code is located on the M of a keyboard, which is why the code is lined up in an M pattern. The "Hi" from the third code is located on the V of a keyboard, which is why the code is lined up in a V pattern. The third code therefore spells out 2114, Rinzaki's room. This is where the bomb is located. Eri has already sent Sera a message so that she can explain everything to Rinzaki.
Sera and Mary don't have time for explanations, so Mary simply knocks the author out with a palm strike. They find the bomb under the bed, which Mary recognizes because Rinzaki had previously mentioned a crease in the bedspread when he found the note with the code. The bomb was made by an amateur, Mary realizes, who defused it in less than three minutes. Meanwhile, Sera brings the unconscious Rinzaki downstairs; Mary says that Sera should take him straight to the police because she smells marijuana in his room. Rinzaki was probably just smoking cigarettes to cover up the marijuana smell. Sera leaves the room with Rinzaki on her back and walks down the corridor. The mysterious sunglasses man secretly watches her.
From what Eri says, Ronda realizes that the culprit must be bellboy Aruto Kureishi, which Eri confirms. He had lied when he claimed never to have entered the room; Kureishi knew where the humidifier was, although it could not be seen from the door. Kureishi had entered the room and placed the bomb under the bed, which he had brought to the room hidden in a suitcase along with Rinzaki's luggage. He had the key copied when he had to spend an hour looking for Rinzaki's key. He had made the imprint for the duplicate key with the soap that Rinzaki had later complained was missing. Eri expects Kureishi to be on the roof to throw the disposable cell phone used to make the bomber calls off the roof during the explosion. This would portray Rinzaki as the bomber, which is why he previously committed the attacks in hotels where Rinzaki was banned from staying. However, no one appeared on the roof, as Chiba reports. Eri realizes that Kureishi can also throw the cell phone down from one of the rooms.
In fact, Kureishi is in room 2014, directly below Rinzaki's room 2114, where he is confronted by Conan. Conan had checked with the front desk to see if any of the rooms above or below room 2114 had been booked by a suspicious person wearing sunglasses and a face mask who obviously did not want to be recognized, and sure enough, there was one person who was conspicuous: the guest from room 2014. Conan had been waiting near the room and scurried through the door behind Kureishi. Kureishi interjects by saying that he talked to the bomber when they called earlier, but Conan replies that the call was recorded and played back via a timer app. As an indication of this, it could be observed during the conversation that the bomber had only reacted to Kureishi's interjection, but had completely ignored Conan's simple question. Kureishi asks who Conan actually is, whereupon Conan introduces himself as a detective. Kureishi pulls out a knife and asks Conan if he also knew that Kureishi is a drug dealer who was blackmailed by Rinzaki and wanted to blow him up as revenge. Conan uses Kureishi's monologue to knock him out with his stun-gun wristwatch. At the same time, he had also called Takagi to the room, who takes the unconscious culprit into custody.
The evacuation of the hotel seems to have been averted, but the sunglasses man triggers the hotel's fire alarm, which is why all the guests have to be evacuated anyway. This means that Masumi and Mary also have to go out into public in front of the hotel. They kneel down in the crowd and Masumi puts her arms around Mary, but they are still seen by the old man with the oxygen mask, who is watching from his car. The sunglasses man gets into the car and asks the old man if he could catch a glimpse. The old man confirms this and says that it felt like he was dreaming.
Continuity
Referencing
- A Coincidental Meeting (Manga: 1094) : Flashback to the scene with Rinzaki holding the cipher paper and to the scene where the bomber made a call to the reception.
Sherry's Soliloquy
Sherry's Soliloquy (シェリーのひとりごと Sherī no Hitorigoto) is a collection of comments Gosho Aoyama has Ai Haibara say on the official Detective Conan website, Conan News Agency (こなん通信社 Konan Tsūshin-sha) in the course of every new chapter's publication.
Soliloquy of File 1096:
また出たわね、ベーダーさん！（もうべーダーさんって呼んじゃう）
There he is again, Vader-san! (I'll call him Vader-san from now on)
(June 17th, 2022)
Animal Crossing Promotional Hints
With every new chapter, players can receive these hints written by Gosho Aoyama in Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: New Horizons by interacting with four characters named Spade (スペード), Heart (ハート), Diamond (ダイヤ), and Clover (クローバ), who appear in Gosho's Dream Town.
Adaptations
The Hotel Serial Bombing Case (episodes 1144-1145)
- Several scenes are not included in the anime:
- Eri explaining that she just had a hearing about labor problems before she met Conan and Masumi.
- Masumi making comments after she read Rinzaki's work on his laptop.
- Eri convincing others to not rely on the police and try their best to evacuate people from the potentially targeted rooms, while proceeding with Conan, Masumi and Ronda, leaving Kureishi behind.
See also
References
- Summary translated from the German version as of December 25, 2024.
| Volume 103 | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1092 • 1093 • 1094 • 1095 • 1096 • 1097 • 1098 • 1099 • 1100 • 1101 • 1102 |
