The Whistling Bookstore 4

Chronology
‹ The Hotel Serial Bombing Case	List of Episodes	Stakeout 4 ›

Episode 1146 (Int. Episode 1204)
Information
Title:	The Whistling Bookstore 4
Japanese title:	汽笛の聞こえる古書店4(フォー) (Kiteki no Kikoeru Kosho-ten Fō)
Original airdate:	December 21, 2024
Filler case:	#432
Season:	29
Manga source:	TV Original
Case
Cast:	Conan Edogawa Detective Boys Ai Haibara Yujiro Tamaki Juzo Megure Wataru Takagi Kazunobu Chiba
Case solved by:	Conan Edogawa
Next Conan's Hint:	Numbers
Staff
Director:	Yasuichiro Yamamoto Nobuharu Kamanaka
Screenplay:	Yuki Notsuka
Storyboard:	Mitsuko Kase
Episode director:	Akira Yoshimura
Animation director:	Yui Ushinohama (supervisor) Kenichi Otomo (supervisor) Long Guang Ming Guang Yue Nadan Sun Wei Mao Yingxing
Character design:	Masatomo Sudo Kana Aoki (sub-character) Hiroshi Ogawa (design works)
Production cooperation:	Garden of Light Animation
Voice Cast: Minami Takayama as Conan Edogawa Yukiko Iwai as Ayumi Yoshida Wataru Takagi as Genta Kojima, Wataru Takagi Ikue Otani as Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya Megumi Hayashibara as Ai Haibara Shigeru Ushiyama as Yujiro Tamaki Chafurin as Juzo Megure Isshin Chiba as Kazunobu Chiba Natsuki Aikawa as Ami Komachi Nobuaki Kanemitsu as Kenichi Kirishima Yudai Mino as Delivery person
Music
Opening song:	Unraveling Love ~Sukoshi no Yūki~
Closing song:	Yume de Aimashō

The Whistling Bookstore 4 (汽笛の聞こえる古書店4(フォー) ,Kiteki no Kikoeru Kosho-ten Fō) is the 1146th episode of the Detective Conan anime.

Cast

Characters
Conan Edogawa Ayumi Yoshida Genta Kojima Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya Ai Haibara Yujiro Tamaki Juzo Megure Wataru Takagi Kazunobu Chiba

Gadgets

Gadgets
Wristwatch Flashlight

Case

Situation

Conan and the Detective Boys are having a leisure time at Ichiro Tamaki's bookstore café, when a woman named Ami Komachi enters the bookstore. As part of a recent purchase of used books by the bookstore, a novel named "The Lonely Sea," one of Ami Komachi's father's keepsakes, was accidentally sold to the bookstore. Ami asks if she could buy the book back, but unfortunately, the book was already sold to another customer.

Shortly after, that customer, a regular customer named Kenichi Kirishima, enters the bookstore. When the Detective Boys ask whether he has a book named "The Lonely Sea", Kenichi says he remembers buying it from the bargain items rack in the bookstore, and that he already sold it to yet another customer. He quickly pulls up an online listing on his phone showing the sold-out item.

After Ami, who gives up on finding the novel, and Kenichi leave the bookstore, Haibara tells the Detective Boys that she noticed that the listing for the novel was for 200,000 yen, even though the books from the bargain items rack should not be anymore than 500 yen. Yujiro Tamaki confirms the low value of the book by saying that the novel was only recently published, and it is not that rare to find.

A few hours pass, and the Detective Boys decide to go home, but Yujiro says that he will join them on the way home to drop off Kenichi's lost key. When Yujiro opens the apartment door, he and the Detective Boys find Kenichi lying dead.

Murder
290px	Location: Kirishima Residence, Beika Town Victim: Kenichi Kirishima Age: 32 years old Cause of death: Cerebral contusion Suspects: Unknown

The police arrive, and Conan points out that the blood marks on the table are in an L-shape, indicating that an object of that shape was placed there before the murder, and taken away afterward. The police also find a safe in Kenichi's apartment. The key that Yujiro was going to drop off is the key for the safe, and after unlocking the safe, lots of jewelry is found. Takagi mentions that the jewelry is similar to that of which was recently robbed from a jewelry store. It is confirmed that Kenichi was a part of that robbery.

Robbery (Past)
290px	Location: Unknown Jewelry Store Culprit: Kenichi Kirishima

Conan deduces that the reason the price of "The Lonely Sea" novel was so high was that Kenichi was involved in black market deals, specifically in the exchange of robbed goods. The book is used as a camouflage for the exchange. Meanwhile, the police use the apartment's security camera footage to narrow down the suspects who murdered Kenichi to two people: Ami Komachi and a delivery man.

Conan wonders why the murderer had to take a book from Kenichi's apartment, and then finds a notebook with a ripped page and some blood. After shining his Wristwatch Flashlight onto the page underneath at an angle, a page filled with numbers is revealed. Conan notes that each row of numbers has three numbers. One column of numbers keeps going up with each consecutive row, the other two columns have seemingly random fluctuations in numbers. Conan realizes what the numbers mean, but instead tells Yujiro that he should know what the numbers mean. Yujiro says that they are a book cipher, each row of numbers contains the page number, paragraph number, and line number. However, the numbers cannot be deciphered without the book.

Using the set of receipts that Kenichi stored away, the Detective Boys narrow the list of books down to those that are on the receipts, but not in Kenichi's apartment. This leaves 20, and Yujiro narrows it down further by using the average page length in each book. With three books left, and the bookstore having a copy for each of them, the Detective Boys, Yujiro, and the police head to the bookstore to decode the cipher.

People

Ami Komachi
100px	33 years old Customer

Kenichi Kirishima
100px	Victim (bashed) 32 years old Customer

Man
100px	Cheetah Express deliveryman

Resolution

  Show spoilers »

Conan decodes the cipher, and the next day, at an inconspicuous corner in Beika City, a suspicious man arrives at a set of coin lockers. As soon as he opens one of the lockers, Takagi, Megure, and Chiba surround him. The man tries to escape, but Takagi pins him down and arrests him for interfering with the police. The Detective Boys recognize the man's face as the delivery man found in the security camera footage.

The man claims that he didn't intend to kill Kenichi. One day, while he was delivering one of Kenichi's purchases, he saw a box which contained the secret to how Kenichi was carrying out black market deals. Out of greed, he intercepted them, until he was found out by Kenichi. In the scuffle that followed, he accidentally shoved Kenichi into the table as self-defense, but ended up killing him.

Conan says that by using the book cipher and the locker, members of the black market deals avoided direct exchange, and therefore it is harder for the police to discover these illegal exchanges.

Ami, whose father's keepsake novel was hidden in the locker, was able to get the novel back. She regrets having gone to Kenichi's apartment, which caused her to become a suspect. Meanwhile, Genta, while playing soccer with the rest of the Detective Boys, accidentally drops a bunched-up piece of paper from his pocket. Upon having Mitsuhiko open the paper, he finds that it contained a book cipher. Genta was using it to hide the location of snacks from his mother, but he forgot what book he used for the cipher. He tells everyone to help him search for the book, but Conan doubts it, saying in his thoughts that Genta will never be seeing those hidden snacks again.

Trivia

The cover of this hypothetical mystery novel.

• The book being sold is named The Lonely Sea (孤独な海); author is Yuki Takezuka (猛塚 祐樹), which is referenced from the name of this episode's screenwriter, Yuki Notsuka.

In other languages

Language	Title	Translation

See also

• Season 29
• The Whistling Bookstore (series)