Volume 26

Chronology
‹ Volume 25	List of Chapters • List of Cases	Volume 27 ›

Volume 26
Information
Release date:	February 18, 2000
Chapters:	254-263
ISBN:	ISBN 4-09-125496-9
Publisher:	Shogakukan
English release date:	November 18, 2008
English ISBN:	ISBN 1-4215-1678-0
English Publisher:	Viz Media
Featured Detective & Keyhole
Inspector Samejima Chris Vineyard
Aoyama's death & Conan side images

Volume 26 was released on February 18, 2000 in Japan.

Cast

Characters
Conan Edogawa Ran Mouri Kogoro Mouri Hiroshi Agasa Ai Haibara Ayumi Yoshida Genta Kojima Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya Heiji Hattori Kazuha Toyama Sonoko Suzuki Tomoaki Araide Juzo Megure Wataru Takagi Shinichi Kudo Yusaku Kudo Yukiko Kudo

Gadgets

Gadgets
Voice-Changing Bowtie Stun-Gun Wristwatch

Chapters

Dangerous Cave Case

File 254 - An Infatuated Heart

Conan is eventually saved thanks to Ran's blood donation. He wonders how Ran discovered the truth and what he should do. Heiji and Kazuha come to visit Conan at the hospital, and Heiji suggests Shinichi should tell Ran the whole truth, as she's waiting only for it. During the night, Haibara sneaks into Conan's room and takes aim at him with a gun.

School Play Murder Case

Gadgets introduced

Voice-Changing Face Mask
	Used by Haibara to disguise her voice as Conan's

File 255 - The Intruder's Sudden Arrival

Haibara tells Conan she was actually spotted by the Organization after the hotel case with Pisco, and she made a deal with them : her life spared in exchange for Shinichi's and all his relatives' death. Eventually, Haibara shoots...a bunch of flowers at Conan, mocking him but telling him the possibility that there could have been another Black Organization member at the party that night. She talks about Ran's discovery but doesn't really recommend that Shinichi should tell Ran the truth. She suggests either that solution, or to remain silent, or... The day after, Conan seems back up and about, though with a little cold, and insists to attend Ran's school play in which she will headline. A strange man strongly resembling Shinichi sits in the audience, smirking, being attentively watched by Conan. Kogoro and Kazuha came as well, and a group of friends, all of them working at Beika Hospital, are having a drink, waiting for the play to begin. During the play, as Ran is on stage, dressed as a princess, Sonoko tells Dr. Araide, who is supposed to play the knight charming, to prepare to enter the stage, but is flabbergasted as the knight isn't Araide. As the unknown knight and Ran are about to kiss each other, one of the hospital employees screams out in pain and drops dead.

File 256 - Concealed Truth

The victim, Kohei Kamata, died after swallowing cyanide, probably put in his drink. His comrades from the hospital are suspected one after the other, along with Ayako, a girl from Ran's high school who was serving drinks at the refreshment. She is the hospital's president's daughter and had recently broke off her engagement with Kohei. She served him coke instead of iced coffee, hoping he would come to see her while changing drinks. Mai, Kohei's friend, had proposed to fetch drinks before the beginning of the play, and she gave all of them to her other comrades Yota and Yumemi, sitting next to Kohei.

  Show spoilers »

Sonoko and Dr. Araide can't reveal for now who is the mysterious knight, though they know it. The other mysterious man looking like Shinichi was actually Heiji in disguise, hoping to lure Ran and have her allay all her doubts concerning Conan and Shinichi. But Heiji was confounded by Kazuha. Meanwhile, he investigates the murder, just as the knight, and refuses to conclude to a suicide. Eventually, the knight takes off his helmet and reveals to be Shinichi.

File 257 - Revival Under the Threat of Death

Shinichi astounds everyone, Ran in first, and sheds light on the case.

  Show spoilers »

The culprit is actually Mai Kogami, she had prepared two ice cubes with some cyanide inside each, and she discreetly put one in Kohei's iced coffee, and one in her own iced coffee, as she didn't know which one would go to Kohei, while fetching the drinks. Then she drank her iced cofee very rapidly, before the ice cubes could melt, whereas Kohei took his time but ate the cubes after finishing, as he would do in general, eating therefore the cyanide. Mai went to the bathroom before the play to discard the airtight wallet in which she had put the ice cubes along with dry ice to keep them cool. She fetched the drinks just before the lights went off to prevent Kohei from going and changing his drink once the play would begin, in the dark, when he'll realise it is coke and not coffee. After she drank her coffee, Mai took her poisoned ice cube who hadn't completely melted, and put it in her jacket's hood, explaining why she didn't put her hood on in the rain, not to get poison on her head. Heiji confirms it by showing the cleaned rust of a 10-yen coin after it has been in contact with the poison in Mai's hood. Mai confesses to killing Kohei, she wanted to avenge the death of an old cancerous man Kohei was treating but that he had killed on purpose by changing his treatment, thus speeding up the progression of the disease, in order to add quick results to his PhD medical thesis. When Kohei said, drunk, that he couldn't get it how a 18-year old could have dumped him while he as a doctor could decide the life and death of anyone, Mai stole cyanide at the hospital and planned her murder.

Shinichi asks Megure and everyone in the high school not to say any word about his presence here, hoping the Organization will never hear about it. When Shinichi tells Heiji he'll never understand why human beings kill each other, he feels the usual intense pain preceding his shrinking, and tries to escape but passes out in front of everybody.

People

Yota Mitani
	27 years old Audience member Beika General Hospital guard

Mai Kogami
	28 years old Audience member Beika General Hospital clerical employee

Yumemi Noda
	27 years old Audience member Beika General Hospital nurse

Kohei Kamata
	Victim (poison) 28 years old Audience member Beika General Hospital doctor

Ayako Ninagawa
	18 years old High school senior

Elevator Murder Case

File 258 - Momentary Rest

To his great surprise, Shinichi didn't shrink, and was merely taken to the sickroom. It is revealed that Conan was actually Haibara in disguise, wearing a voice-changing mask to speak with Conan's voice. She tells Shinichi that though she doesn't understand why the prototypical antidote she made out of some baikal and gave him at the hospital lasted longer than usual, Shinichi should be very careful and tell Ran the truth before something bad could happen. Shinichi says he want to enjoy some time with Ran first, and invites the latter to a dinner in a five-star restaurant. Shinichi tries to tell something very important to Ran but remains shy and hesitant. When he eventually takes the plunge, people start screaming and saying someone was murdered in an elevator.

Translation changes

• In File 258, Shinichi is shown to still retain some of his habits as Conan. One such example is him referring to Ran as Ran-nēchan. As the Viz Media versions of the manga tends to omit the usage of Japanese Honorifics, (save for the manga version of "Solitary Island of the Princess and the Dragon King's Palace" in Volume 36 and "A Friendship That Can't Be Bought" in Volume 39), Shinichi instead is asking for Ran to hold his hand when they cross the street on the way to school.

File 259 - A Tranquil Time

Ran allows Shinichi to rush to the elevator as she observes he's having great trouble keeping his concentration and forgetting the hustle and bustle around them. Shinichi promises to come back as quickly as possible. The victim, Taiji Tatsumi, a famous game company president, was shot in the head while in the elevator, after he had left his employees to go home. Shinichi doesn't believe in the mugging theory and starts suspecting Satoru Ooba, probably the next heir to the president's company after his wedding with Sakurako, the president's daughter. Shinichi tries to confound Satoru while Ran is told by a waitress that some twenty years ago, a high school couple was sitting at the same table Ran and Shinichi currently are, and that the man proposed to the woman in front of everyone. But Ran doesn't believe Shinichi could do such a thing. Meanwhile, Shinichi feels increasingly feverish and his heart bangs against his chest, meaning that he'll soon become Conan again.

File 260 - The Memorable Place

Shinichi tries to put up with the intense pain while disclosing the truth.

  Show spoilers »

Yusaku's confession to Yukiko.

Satoru Ooba indeed murdered his boss in front of the elevator. His alibi is worthless as he and Sakurako were in the dark, closing their eyes and exchanging a passionate kiss, Satoru's arm around Sakurako's neck blocking her hearing, therefore she could neither see nor hear Satoru opening the elevator where Tatsumi was waiting, and shooting the president dead. What's more, the gun was a silencer wrapped in a plastic bag and closed around Satoru's wrist with rubber bands, protecting Satoru's clothes from powder, and from leaving his fingerprints, as he wore a plastic glove. Tatsumi was waiting in the elevator for Satoru, who had told him to hide and start removing his jacket, as Satoru had secretly proposed Tatsumi to disguise as the company's mascot Satoru would bring near the elevator. This was unknown from the company's other employees, who all thought Tatsumi was heading home, and never imagined he would play the mascot and amaze them right after by removing his mask and showing himself to everybody. Sakurako didn't see the elevator's light at all and even if she heard a faint noise close to her ears, Satoru had planned it to be right when the company's party would begin and confetti cannon banging would cover the noise of the shot and lure her. Afterwards Satoru offered Sakurako a necklace and while she was in the washroom to put it on, Satoru kept speaking with her all the while moving towards the garbage pipe and discarding his silencer. He therefore had a perfect alibi even at the party : not to be suspected of hiding evidence, he gave his jacket to an employee and declared as he had said to the employees that it was him to impersonate the mascot during the party, and he even put the plastic bag, glove and rubber bands in the mascot's eye and, remarking it was blinking, explained his colleagues that the items were probably part of the mascot's mechanism. But Satoru made a mistake : in the dark, he commented on Sakurako's beautiful pink earrings whereas he couldn't know their color, as she had bought them today, on a whim, and she met Satoru in the dark, which means that Satoru was able to see the color only thanks to the elevator's light, while he was shooting. Satoru confesses being the murderer to revenge his father, who committed suicide after he was told the merger of his company and Tatsumi's was actually a buyout planned by the latter, making redundant hundreds of Satoru's father's employees. Years later, Satoru avenged the death of his father by taking the president's life, company and daughter.

This reminds Inspector Megure of a case he dealt with about twenty years ago, during which a man was found dead, it was Satoru's father who had actually faked his suicide, in order to have Tatsumi accused of killing him, in an elevator, just as Satoru did with Tatsumi. This occurred exactly at the same place as now, and Megure was helped to deduce it by Yusaku Kudo, Shinichi's father, who was having dinner with Yukiko at a high-class restaurant at the time.

Shinichi doesn't listen to Megure and rushes to the washroom, refusing to get back to a child's state. Haibara, still disguised as Conan, tells him it's too late and gives him Conan's clothes. Later on, Conan tells Ran Shinichi had to leave due to an important case but Ran starts crying and refuses to listen to Conan anymore. The latter insists and tells Ran Shinichi will come back and stay with her, even dead, and he wants her to wait for him until then. Ran is solaced by these words and invites Conan to eat a dessert with her, while Kogoro is waiting angrily and in impatience on the hotel's car park.

What Shinichi wanted to tell Ran was indeed a love and wedding declaration, just as his father who proposed to his mother when they were high school students, at the same place, a long time ago.

People

Taiji Tatsumi
	Victim (gunshot) 58 years old Game company chief executive

Satoru Ooba
	31 years old Game company department head

Sakurako Tatsumi
	26 years old Taiji Tatsumi's daughter

Music Box Case

File 261 - Touching the Music Strings!?

Some time after the "comeback of Shinichi", Conan asks Haibara for some more antidotes, as he would like to meet Ran again in his adult form to tell her the whole truth. Haibara refuses and says it's too late, and it could be dangerous for Conan to swallow another prototype that could kill him. Haibara and the Detective Boys seem delighted to see Conan again, though the Boys are completely ignorant of who Conan really is. Conan looks with dejection at Mouri's agency and complains about how he'll still have to play that game with Ran and Kogoro for the moment.

In the stairs, he hears the music of "Haru Yo Koi" ("Oh Spring, Come") and when entering the agency he sees Ran, Kogoro and a client named Haruna listening carefully to a music box. Haruna Yuki, the young fine arts student, explains she had difficulties to make friends at university therefore she sent a mail at random with her messager asking if the receiver would like to befriend her. A man named Shugo then became her new messager friend and he and Haruna proposed to meet each other some day. But on d-day Haruna found none except a bag with a music box and a messager, probably Shugo's one, and thought Shugo wanted to end the relationship by offering her a present. But suddenly Haruna received some other mails on her messager, from an unknown person, calling her a liar, a thief, etc. to the point Haruna went to see Kogoro and wondered if she hadn't done a mistake when she took away the bag with the box. Conan and Ran help Kogoro to figure out the three notes that sound weird in the tune : ACA. Conan points out that this may be a message from Shugo to Haruna, as the music mechanism has got missing pieces right on these three notes' location. He suggests Kogoro calls Inspector Takagi who can easily get the identity of Shugo's messager former owner, by investigating telephone lines. Takagi tells them that the messager's mails originate from the Ogata family, whom Takagi got in touch with, and they agreed to meet Haruna to explain to her.

Haruna and co turn up at the Ogata's and Haruna is cheerfully welcomed by Shiro, the younger son, but quite reticently by the others, Minoru first, the older son, who believes Haruna came to steal the family's treasure : four old hand-made stamps worth 200 million yens. Haruna and co are invited to stay for dinner and the night, and they learn that Shugo Ogata is actually the family's late grandfather, who was ill and felt really lonely, and accepted to chat with Haruna, whose name and character were the same as his late wife, the family's grandmother. Yet, Shugo passed away recently. Haruna still wonders who is sending her abusing mails. During the night, Ran sees a spooky shady figure looking like a bent old man with a stick, moving stealthily in front of her room, and she screams. When everybody rush over to ask what happened and check the rooms to see if an intruder really sneaked into the house, a huge noise of something heavy falling catches their attention and they hurry to the grandparents' room where it came from, to find Minoru severely injured by a koto, probably beaten in the dark by the stranger Ran saw. Haruna is terrified as she receives on her messager a mail from Shugo saying he was waiting for her.

File 262 - The Vanishing Sound

Minoru is actually alive and the Ogata call the police who search for the intruder but finds none. Ran believes it was Shugo but nobody seems to believe her ghost stories, Conan in first, who thinks it has to do with one of the family members, especially as it happened in the grandfather's room where the family's treasure supposedly is. After a deep investigation, Conan eventually finds out what happened.

File 263 - Spring Has Come?

  Show spoilers »

Conan tranquilises Kogoro and reveals that Shugo was already dead when Haruna found the bag with the box that day, the misunderstanding was deliberately maintained by Shiro, for Haruna not to discover the truth. Conan remarked Shiro was very eager to meet Haruna and knew many things she or even his family didn't know about her and about Shugo. Shiro was actually Shugo's closest confident and Shiro decided to keep on chatting with Haruna after his grandfather's death in remembrance of his grandfather and not to pain Haruna. But he decided some day to stop it and brought Haruna the bag with Shugo's messager and the music box Shugo had given Shiro (and that he expected Shiro would give to Haruna some day) for her not to be too sad when learning the truth, something Haruna didn't.

But he's not the one who sent horrific mails to her. Indeed, that person is actually Kazuko, the family's mother, who resented Haruna for getting some inheritance from Shugo and who didn't want her to meet her family and search for the treasure. When she saw Haruna eventually turned up to her house, she decided a plan to frighten her with the koto, but she'd never have expected her son Minoru to search the stamps instead of Haruna, as Minoru wanted to find them and put them away from Haruna. Kazuko cut a old-man-like figure in black paper and taped it outside on the window of the corridor in front of Ran's room. She then opened the gate, waiting for a car to drive past her house and lighting the window with its front beams, making it as if a man was walking past the room. Maybe Kazuko herself used her car to do it. When Ran shouted, she hurried with the others and pretended to open the door right next to Ran's room to search for the intruder. She therefore released the tack she used for her plan to make the koto collapse : she had tied the grandfather's room's lamp on the ceiling and tied it as well to another thread that passed through the koto's strings and held it in the air. She then pulled the threads through each room's door's interstices up to Ran's one, where she tied them to a tack to hold them, waiting for the door to be opened afterwards. She did this because the person entering the grandfather's room and looking for the stamps would probably need light and as the light cord was tied to the ceiling, the person, Minoru, groped for the stamps in the dark, on all fours, explaining why when the threads were released the koto fell from very high on Minoru and almost had him pass out. Of course when the koto fell the light cord was close at hand again. When everyone rushed to the grandfather's room, Kazuko stayed some time behind to remove the black paper of the window, invisible in the dark, and she taped the end of the threads to the blades of a fan, and when switching on the fan, the threads would be reeled in and vanish from anyone's sight.

As there are probably Kazuko's fingerprints on the tape, she eventually confesses trying to frighten Haruna to have her stand away from the family's house. Kazuko needed the stamps to be reserved for the family, as she realised they were overburdened with debt, to the point she had to pawn the koto in order to get some money, revealing the koto used in the plan was actually a cheap copy of it. Shiro suggests to sell the music box to get some money as Haruna doesn't want it anymore, but Conan reveals the box's secret : the ACA notes are actually to be undertsood according to the Japanese musical note system, that makes "I-HA-I" meaning "funeral tablet', hinting at the tablet on Shugo's memorial altar, inside which they find the four stamps.

Shiro decides to leave the box and the stamps to his family and instead resumes the "Shugo" role by dating Haruna for real, and Ran thinks about her own love relationship with Shinichi, hoping "spring" to come soon as well.

People

Haruna Yuki
	21 years old Art student

Kazuko Ogata
	50 years old Tsuneo's wife First lady of Ogata family

Shirou Ogata
	22 years old Second son of the Ogata family Tsuneo and Kazuko's younger son

Tsuneo Ogata
	53 years old Kazuko's husband Current head of Ogata family Shuugo and Haruna's son

Minoru Ogata
	Victim (beaten - injured) 28 years old Eldest son of the Ogata family Tsuneo and Kazuko's eldest son

Shuugo Ogata
	Deceased Tsuneo's father Haruna's husband Former head of Ogata family

Haruna Ogata
	Deceased Shuugo's wife Tsuneo's mother Former first lady of Ogata family

Cover in other countries

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  China
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  Finland
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  France
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  Germany
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  Hong Kong
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  Indonesia
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  Italy
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  Korea
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  Malaysia (Chinese)
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  Malaysia (Malay)
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  Norway
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  Rep. of China (Taiwan)
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  Singapore (Chinese)
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  Spain (Spanish, Volumen 2)
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  Spain (Spanish, Volumen 2)
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  Sweden
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  Thailand
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  United States
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  Vietnam

See also

• Manga
• Volume 21-30
• Detective Conan