Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

[MeiTanteixX]

Volume version Pocket stuffs

Copy-paste from DCW:
Looks like the under part was just dirt, rather than an object.

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

Volume version Pocket stuffs

Copy-paste from DCW:
Looks like the under part was just dirt, rather than an object.

There is no way that's dirt. Gosho would not go through all this trouble just to edit the volume version to make better dirt splotches. I posted this at DCW.

That shape is even more shogi-like than before, but now it's especially clear there is still more junk in the trunk. The second thingamajig is now more complicated so it absolutely is not another shogi piece as I earlier theorized. That deep shadow on the upper right part means it definitely has some bulk on one side, like it has a round base which tapers into another shape. I, without prejudice, scribbled a shape I thought best matched the shadows from my artistic perspective and it came out looking like a lopsided chess piece? Because it is kinda lopsided, a knight because that's the only one that isn't symmetric?

Spoiler: you should guess at the shape yourself before looking at my solution I think. Don't pre-bias yourself before you try.

Edit: the relative sizes are kinda questionable though, now that I look harder. It might be too small to be a chess piece even if the shape maybe fits. I'm not going to take it back or fix my artistic impression though because that would be twisting my "data" (more like my immediate innocent first reaction to the shape) to suit theories.

[MeiTanteixX]

There is no way that's dirt. Gosho would not go through all this trouble just to edit the volume version to make better dirt splotches.

Then do you think those other two "dirt splotches" in the first panel are objects too? If so, then what do you think those could be?(are they connected to the middle "dirt splotch"?)

[Chekhov MacGuffin]

There is no way that's dirt. Gosho would not go through all this trouble just to edit the volume version to make better dirt splotches.

Then do you think those other two "dirt splotches" in the first panel are objects too? If so, then what do you think those could be?(are they connected to the middle "dirt splotch"?)

Gosho went out of his way to even ignore the pocket seam lines in the second image so we have a "clean version" of the shadows cast. We are obviously meant to make a deduction that is deeper than the obvious shogi piece here.

[Zerozaki4869]

In my opinion that "Extra part" other than the obvious Shogi piece is something very pivotal to the dying message. As Check suggested in DCW that it's probably the knight due to the lack of axis-symmetry.
So the question is was it also held tightly along with the Shogi piece in Haneda's palm??

It makes sense as Haneda was participating in a chess tournament and he was a professional Shogi player. So it's very likely he had both of the sets.

This also means another thing, Rumi was very much present in the Kohji case and had tampered with the crime scene and evidence.This is a resonable suspicion, then the question is why? Why didn't Rumi just call the cops?
Kuroda once said that "That person wasn't like this." So what was the person(Rumi) like then?
A person who was seen loiterring around the crime scene and buzzed off just before the cops came??

[MeiTanteixX]

Kohji Case Incident Deduction

Kohji's and Amanda's actions 17 years ago (Up to File 1073):

Spoiler:

Kohji: ~ 30 years old ?
Amanda: ~ 80 years old
Asaka: Kohji's female companion

- Kohji borrows his companion's hand-mirror (which she inherited from her mother) to make himself look presentable for his meeting with Amanda. [Kohji is in possession of the hand-mirror which Asaka was seen carrying according to Hotta's intel in File 953. Kohji's companion inherited the hand-mirror from her mother, just like Haibara's sister]

- Amanda is invited to Kohji's room.

- Kohji and Amanda starts playing Chess (while sitting on the sofa) and orders room service (sweets) mid-game. [Just like how shogi players usually do while in the middle of a game, according to Sato in File 946. Amanda's fingerprints found on teacups, sofa, knife & fork like Conan said]

- While having a friendly chat, Amanda brings up safety insecurities, which leads to Kohji offering his well-trained companion (or his companion volunteering herself) to support Amanda as a "personal Security Police" (like a bodyguard) for a certain time period. [Asaka's hiring is unknown to Amanda's relatives/acquaintances, like Conan said, and Asaka becomes like a "personal SP" just like what Ran was compared with by Sonoko in File 954]

- Amanda opens the door and leaves Kohji's room, followed by Kohji's companion. The companion starts going with the alias "Asaka", through Amanda's advice. [Amanda's fingerprints found on Kohji's door handle and Amanda is seen calling her bodyguard "Asaka" like Conan said]

- Rum is invited to Amanda's room.

- Kohji remembers that he needs to return his companion's hand-mirror and goes to Amanda's room with the hand-mirror in his hand. Kohji accidentally witnesses Rum's crime scene [like Haibara suggested].

Rum's actions 17 years ago (Up to File 1073):

Spoiler:

Rum: 18 years old.
Asaka: 17 years old

- Rum is invited to Amanda's room, and is wearing glasses and a mask to disguise his face during the crime [like Sosuke in Ramen case (File 928-930) and Eri's kidnappers (File 984-986)].

- Rum gets confiscated for any kind of weapon and successfully passes off the prototype drug as medicine. [Like Senba in clenched scissor case (File 948-950)]

- Rum stealthily poisons Amanda with APTX4869 drug and cleans any mess from the struggle. [Amanda's room left tidy like Haibara said]

- As Rum exits Amanda's room, he stealthily takes down and force-feeds Asaka, who is standing guard outside [just like the bodyguards while Agasa was exiting with the same disguise in File 1073], APTX4869 drug. Kohji stands nearby, carrying Asaka's hand-mirror (since he wanted to return it), and witnesses Asaka on the floor with Rum over her.

- Rum chases Kohji to his room and gets locked out by Kohji. [Like Senba with his victim]

- Kohji clenches on the "Uma" shogi piece, as he's holding the scissor with the same hand and is cutting out "U MASCARA" letters off the mirror (while it's submerged under water), and then throws the shards in the sink. [Like the victim that Senba killed]
Kohji then throws the crockeries and cups on the floor and hides the hand-mirror among them. [similarly to how the victim tried to hide the message by throwing the "fusae brand" glass on Senba]

- Kohji then removes the knight chess piece on position G1 from his reset chessboard.

- Rum breaks through the locked door and attacks Kohji, and eventually force-feeds him the prototype drug. [leaves the defensive wounds like Conan said]

- Rum gets elbowed by Kohji during the struggle, which hits Rum's left eye and later leads to Rum getting a prosthetic. He leaves the crime scene messy as a result.
[Similarly to Danno from File 987, who nearly got a prosthetic from getting elbowed]

[jimmy_kud0_tv2]

Copy-pasted something I wrote in the Discord server:
Rum's actions 17 years ago(my current deduction):

Spoiler:

Rum(male): could be an 18-year-old.
Asaka(female): ~ 20 years old (same as the red-herring)

- Rum knocks on Amanda's door, Asaka opens it.

- He gets confiscated for any kind of weapon, successfully passes off the prototype drug as medicine. [Like Senba in clenched scissor case(File 948-950)]

- Waits for an opening and then ambushes Asaka and force-feeds her the drug, followed by Amanda.

- Rum cleans any mess from the struggle. [Amanda's room left tidy like Haibara said]

- As he is about to leave and opens the door, Kohji stands outside of it with Asaka's hand-mirror(since he wanted to return it) and sees Asaka and Amanda on the ground. [Kohji witnesses crime scene like Haibara said, Mirror belongs to Asaka like Hotta's info implied]

- Rum chases Kohji to his room and gets locked out by Kohji. [Like how Senba was chasing the victim]

- Kohji clenches on the "Uma" shogi piece, as he's holding the scissor with the same hand and is cutting out "U MASCARA", and then throws the shards in the sink. [Like the victim that Senba killed]
Kohji then throws the crockeries and cups on the floor and hides the hand-mirror among them. [similarly to how the victim tried to hide the message by throwing the "fusae brand" glass on Senba]

- Rum breaks through the locked door and attacks Kohji, and eventually force-feeds him the prototype drug. [leaves the defensive wounds like Conan said]

- Rum is about to clean the mess that Kohji created, but then Tsutomu shows up in the room and interferes with BO business. [Like he wrote to Mary]

- A fight starts, Rum vs JKD(Jeet Kune Do), Tsutomu leaves trails of himself(blood/etc). [Which is why Akai is under the impression that his father's body is missing]

- Rum gets finger-jabbed by Tsutomu and gets momentarily blinded, which forces him to retreat. [As demonstrated by Akai]- Rum's passage out(the broken door) is blocked by Tsutomu, so he flees through Kohji's balcony instead and jumps over towards the balcony to Amanda's room and escapes through there. [Just like Kokuri tried to do in the soul detective case]

Kohji's and Amanda's actions 17 years ago(My current deduction):

Spoiler:

Kohji: ~ 30 years old ?
Amanda: ~ 80 years old
Asaka: Kohji's sister

- Kohji borrows his sister's hand-mirror(which she inherited from her mother) to make himself look presentable for his meeting with Amanda. [Kohji is in possession of the hand-mirror which Asaka was seen carrying. Kohji's sister inherited the hand-mirror from her mother, just like Haibara's sister]

- Amanda knocks on Kohji's door, Kohji/his sister opens it.

- Kohji and Amanda starts playing Shogi(while sitting on the sofa) and orders room service(sweets) mid-game. [Just like how shogi players usually do while in the middle of a game, according to Sato in File 946. Amanda's fingerprints found on teacups, sofa, knife & fork like Conan said]

- While having a friendly chat, Amanda brings up safety insecurities, which leads to Kohji offering his well-trained sister(or his sister volunteering herself) to support Amanda as a bodyguard for a certain time period. [Asaka's hiring is unknown to Amanda's relatives/acquaintances like Conan said]

- Amanda opens the door and leaves Kohji's room, followed by Kohji's sister. Sister starts going with the alias "Asaka", through Amanda's advice. [Amanda's fingerprints found on Kohji's door handle and Amanda is seen calling her bodyguard "Asaka" like Conan said]

- Rum knocks on Amanda's door.

- Kohji remembers that he needs to return his sister's hand-mirror and goes to Amanda's room with the hand-mirror in his hand. Accidentally witnesses crime scene as Rum opens Amanda's door(when he was about to leave).

purely out of curiosity, is there a reason you have Kouji and Asaka as brother and sister even though it would still work the same way if they were just friends in the same room? What would be further ramifications of this?

[MeiTanteixX]

purely out of curiosity, is there a reason you have Kouji and Asaka as brother and sister even though it would still work the same way if they were just friends in the same room? What would be further ramifications of this?

I have a reason. But at the same time, there are no ramifications to this either.
The reason is basically as I've stated in my kohji case discussion update:

Spoiler:

Haibara was specifically relating her sister's experience to Kohji, about inheriting a hand-mirror from their mother. However, since we know that Asaka was seen with a hand-mirror, Haibara's sentence could be giving an actual clue. Rather than Kohji inheriting the mirror from his mother, it's possible that Asaka inherited it instead. Since Asaka was most likely seen with the hand-mirror while using it, it probably belonged to her, and was then lent to Kohji and later used for the dying message(as mentioned in my Kohji case discussion). Since Haibara was relating her story to Kohji's, it's possible that Gosho was using her sentence to hint that Kohji's sister inherited it from their mother.

Basically, I'm suspecting that the reason Gosho went on that specific tangent about how Haibara is connected to the same model of hand-mirror(and then making Haibara relate it to Kohji) was because Gosho was using Haibara's story as a parallell to Kohji's. That it's foreshadowing that Kohji's sister inherited it from her mother, and that Asaka(who was seen with that mirror) is that sister.

[MeiTanteixX]

(sorry for the double-posting)
I have come up with a new theory about the dying message that I think makes sense with the direction that Gosho is going with. Although I think that the "object" under the shogi-like shape(in Rumi's pocket) is awfully ambiguous, this finding works too well to be ignored(and since it completes my overall suspicion, I'm gonna temporarily stick with this).

This theory is regarding the missing pieces of the message, rather than the mirror. It is based on two hypothesis.
The first one is that the other object in Rumi's pocket(under the shogi-like one) is a knight(horse) chess piece.
The second one is that the object is hinting to letters in the dying message.

If a chess piece signified a letter in the message, then it's a reasonable assumption that the letter-position in the chessboard, that it was found on, was one of the missing letters in the message.

Also, if it's a chess piece, it was most likely found on its starting position, since that would be its natural position and wouldn't seem suspicious to the culprit. Since there are two mirroring starting positions(letters) for each piece(excluding king, queen & pawn), I'm suspecting that the letter will be singled out because only that piece was on the chessboard and on its starting point alone(one letter). Leaving a chess piece alone also wouldn't warrant any suspicions, since one chess piece alone, standing on its normal position, can't coincidentally also properly reveal the culprit(that's like one-in-a-million chance type of deal). It would just look like Kohji forgot to put away the last piece from the chessboard, after resetting the game.

So, with that background out of the way, going with the first hypothesis(about the object being a knight chess piece), it would mean that it has the letter "B" in sp1(starting position) and "G" in sp2.

In conclusion, my current dying message theory is that the knight piece was found on sp2("G") and that together with the "UMA" shogi piece spells out "MUGA", as in Iori's first name.

In other words, that would mean that "Pirate's Spirit horse"(File 975) was truly a hint to figuring out Rum's identity, because the "horse" shogi piece(UMA) and the "horse" chess piece(G) together reveals his first name.

If Kohji and Amanda played Shogi, hence ordering sweets through room service(which Sato says Shogi players commonly do), then it's even more likely that they played chess, the international game that Kohji came to compete in(thus would confirm the existence of both shogi pieces and chess pieces + board).

Since Gosho indicated in the interview that Rum's real name hasn't appeared(A:"His/her name haven't shown up, in a sense!"), I'm assuming that at least his surname is fake(in this case, "Iori" is fake), so therefore, it's highly possible that the mirror message is Rum's real surname(like "CARASUMA"). Separating the full name into Surname(mirror) and first name(Shogi+Chess) makes for a smooth combination process for the message reader(and us fans).

Kohji's Dying Message (Analysis):

Spoiler:

Kohji's Dying Message (Analysis #2):

Spoiler:

[irishock]

I just realized that it's been 3 years since this arc began.. and we're still at this point. Lmao

[saucypanny]

if muga iori = rum wouldn't bourbon at least suspected something when he saw muga on poirot murder case? aside that muga is able to erase his presence. nevertheless meitanteixx's theory about another possible reading of the dying message is quite interesting, i personally hope muga will appear as key character in rum arc.

[MeiTanteixX]

if muga iori = rum wouldn't bourbon at least suspected something when he saw muga on poirot murder case? aside that muga is able to erase his presence. nevertheless meitanteixx's theory about another possible reading of the dying message is quite interesting, i personally hope muga will appear as key character in rum arc.

He suspected everything that was worth suspecting(like Muga trying to flee the scene). I don't think there's anything else to suspect besides that(or did you have something specific in mind?).

[saucypanny]

if muga iori = rum wouldn't bourbon at least suspected something when he saw muga on poirot murder case? aside that muga is able to erase his presence. nevertheless meitanteixx's theory about another possible reading of the dying message is quite interesting, i personally hope muga will appear as key character in rum arc.

He suspected everything that was worth suspecting(like Muga trying to flee the scene). I don't think there's anything else to suspect besides that(or did you have something specific in mind?).

maybe like suspect him as bo member specifically or roughly: why bourbon didn't recognize him? . but i guess it still wont work if even bo members doesn't know rum exact appearance.

[mtcc]

Spoiler:

Volume version Pocket stuffs

Maybe the shogi is Moko or 盲虎\虎

[MeiTanteixX]

Spoiler:

Volume version Pocket stuffs

Maybe the shogi is Moko or 盲虎\虎

why these?