There was still time to kill, and Conan figured he knew enough concerning the two active murder cases. So he decided he would begin questioning some of the people here. Specifically, he wanted to learn about Kaito Kuroba and Akako Koizumi, but since one of them seemed less sociable (and possibly missing) than the other for the moment…
    
Soon after breaking away from the others in the cafeteria, the little detective found himself knocking on Koizumi’s door. He figured this would be the best opportunity - he wanted to speak with her and take a look at Touko Fukawa’s room.

It took a few tries, but eventually the door opened and he was looking up at an unamused redhead. After realizing who it was, her expression turned soft and inviting.

“Good afternoon, Conan-kun. Is something troubling you?”

He must have had an indecisive look on his face - now that he was in front of her again, that uncomfortable feeling came back. Why? What was it about her that made him feel so nervous?

“Uhm, I just wanted to talk to Akako-neechan! You seem to stay in your room a lot, so…”

He idly peered past her slender legs for an excuse to get into the room. It didn’t take long, fortunately, and soon he was squeezing his small body into the cluttered area.

“Wow! There are a lot of notes in here!” The room had been dimmed except for a desk lamp, but he could see the various papers pinned to the walls and piled on the tables. Koizumi didn’t seem to mind his intrusion and shut the door behind them.

“Yes, most of them belonged to the romance author who lived here previously. Would you like to take a seat?”

He wasn’t sure why he did, because it would be more efficient if he was scurrying around, but he climbed onto the chair at the desk and looked around. She was being awfully polite to him right now - a contrast to the loud, haughty persona she had outside. It sent chills down his spine.

“Ne, it’s really dark in here, isn’t it?” Conan glanced over the contents of the illuminated desk beside him. Papers had been stacked and pushed aside recently to make way for more papers and a very suspicious decorative box that he thought he had seen in the storage room during one of their first days here. Curious, he reached for the oversized jewelry case.

Koizumi’s hand slammed down on the lid and Conan had to retreat for the moment. The violent action snapped him out of whatever trance he had been in upon entering the room, and he had to strain to hear the woman’s words over the sound of his frantic heart.

“I just happen to like the dark, thank you.” Her voice was harsh for just a moment before she eased up again, lifting her hand and gently placing it on the detective’s head.

“Now, what did you want to talk about?”

“I…” Ahaha, this woman was scary, wasn’t she? He was gradually regretting coming here alone. Really, any other company would have been good right about now. “I wanted to make sure I knew everyone here, and I realized I didn’t know anything at all about Akako-neechan!”

Her smile looked frightening from the shadows cast upon her. Conan watched carefully as Koizumi moved to lean against the desk so she could see his face clearly.

“You want to hear about me? You really are a detective, aren’t you?” Something about her smile made Conan think she felt some sort of triumph regarding their conversation, but he really didn’t know what sort of victory she could have won.

“Where to begin…? Well, I go to Ekoda High School with Kuroba-kun and Hakuba-kun. My transfer was relatively recent - around last Valentine’s Day, I believe. Aside from servants, I live alone, and I have no living relatives.”

Huh. That was… “What happened to them?”

“Many of them were killed around the time of the Salem witch trials, and I suppose they didn’t have the opportunity to cleanly repopulate. Speaking of which, Conan-kun, do you believe in magic and witches?”

She wasn’t going to try and convince him that she was a witch, right? What, did she think he was a kid? (Well, she must have, but--)

So he just shook his head - a bit paranoid that opening his mouth could offend her in some horrible way. Thankfully, she responded with a dry chuckle.

“Is that so? Then what do you do when you see something unexplainable? Does it not cross your mind that it could actually be magic?”

“Of course not…” He wanted to scoff, but instead he cleared his throat and kept his tone light, “I mean, everything can be explained! There are tons of tricks people use to make it look like magic! Like what Kaitou KID does!”

“But,” she began persistently, “just because tricks and fake magicians exist, it doesn’t mean real magic can’t exist. Isn’t there a special term for that?”

“‘Devil’s Proof’?” At the pleased nod, Conan continued wryly. “I can disprove one act of real magic by showing how a normal human could do it, but I can’t disprove magic as a whole because I just haven’t seen someone do it yet. But if someone does just one act of real magic, I have to admit to its existence. Geez…”

She seemed to catch on to his elevating annoyance and frowned in response. “And you still believe there’s no such thing as real magic?”

“Nope!” The detective grinned childishly, which seemed to irritate Koizumi further. But after a moment, she returned to smiling and let out a short cackle.

“I see! Well, perhaps someday you’ll see such impossible feats displayed right before you… and you’ll realize the error in your mindset. By the way, would you like something to drink? I just finished brewing a lovely herbal tea before you arrived…”

Conan spoke with her a bit longer and managed to get off the topic of “witches” for the most part. The more his eyes adjusted, the more he let them wander the room. She didn’t call him out on it - after all, he was just a distracted child in a room with lots of distracting things. At one point he wandered around the room, and as she droned on about her distaste for magicians, he managed to sneak peeks inside drawers and under mattresses (he found a few pairs of scissors here and there which, if his theory was correct, concluded his initial reason for wanting to see the room).

The number of rough drafts in the room confused him, though. If his theory about Touko Fukawa was correct, these should have been taken when the survivors escaped the school. He didn’t have a taste for this genre of literature, but the fact that they weren’t all in the (already overflowing) trash can seemed suspicious. The writing seemed decent enough, so why leave them behind?

As for Koizumi’s personal touches, there seemed to be a lot of strange stuff. For one, there was something that vaguely reminded him of a cauldron in the corner, but the damn thing was about his height so it was difficult to investigate. Strips of paper with strange markings, a basket of fruit and other foodstuffs (likely to support her choice of staying in here all day), a few strange dolls…

Despite all that, Conan didn’t realize just how creepy and unnatural her belongings were until he was standing outside her door after a brief farewell. He acknowledged it in there, but then it just felt more… enchanting? Not at all worrying?

Maybe he shouldn’t have accepted that tea after all.