Detective Conan Episode — 377

“Nothing. Just thinking about folklore.”

“What’s that?” Ran asked.

Conan slipped away from the window and retrieved the notebook from his backpack (a copy he’d convinced the local police to let him borrow). The handwriting had grown shakier with each line. The final page was smeared—water damage, the forensics said. But Conan noticed something else.

He closed the book.

Suzuki lunged—but Conan was faster. A dart from his watch. The detective slumped, and moments later, Kogoro’s voice boomed from the shadows (drawn by Ran, who had followed Conan).

The rain over Tōno City didn’t fall so much as seep—into coats, into cobblestones, into the very legends that clung to the valleys like morning mist. Conan Edogawa stood at the window of the small ryokan, watching droplets race down the glass. Behind him, Ran and Kogoro argued about dinner.

Kenji Tono’s glasses.

The victim was a folklorist named Kenji Tono. He had been researching local yōkai legends, particularly the water imp known as the Kappa. Three nights ago, he had told his wife he was going to the pond to “record the truth.” He never came back.

By dawn, the confession came. Suzuki had been embezzling funds from the tourism board. Tono had discovered the truth and planned to expose him. The Kappa legend was just a convenient ghost story to hide a very human greed.

“The ‘Kappa’ wasn’t a monster,” Conan cut in. “It was a pulley system. You tied the second rope to a tree, looped it under the water, and when Tono knelt to take a photo, you pulled. He drowned in inches of water, and the current carried him to the deep channel.” Detective Conan Episode 377

Or rather, the man who had claimed to see one—and then vanished.

Later that night, unable to sleep, Conan walked the short path to the pond. The moon was hidden. The water was black glass. And standing at the edge was a figure—tall, hunched, holding something that glinted.

The case had begun simply enough: a request from the Tōno City Tourism Association. Strange occurrences near the Kappa Pond. Missing offerings. A severed livestock leg left by the water’s edge. Kogoro, ever the skeptic, had laughed it off as a prank. But Conan had seen the look in the client’s eyes—fear, not superstition. “Nothing