In Detective Conan: Intercepting Miwako Sato at the Start

Page 127

Tatsuya Nishimura became excited: "These drinks are the culmination of our hard work!"

"Why can't I decide where it goes? Besides, I only sell it in small quantities and selectively to people who really know their wine."

"Most of that money was reinvested in the restaurant's operation!"

Yuki Takada stared at Nishimura and said slowly, "According to our investigation, you sold the 14th generation Ryusen at underground auctions at three times the asking price per bottle, and you have sold at least 80 bottles privately in the past five years."

"A week before his death, Tomohisa Ishikawa changed his will and contacted a lawyer to prepare to terminate his partnership with you."

Tatsuya Nishimura's face turned deathly pale: "He...he wants to kick me out? We've been working together for so many years?"

“Not only that.” Yuki Takada pulled a photo out of the folder. “This is a letter that was found in Tomohisa Ishikawa’s safe after his death. It details how he discovered your unauthorized alcohol sales and his disappointment. The letter ends with: ‘Tatsuya Nishimura is no longer the friend who shared my dreams.’”

Tatsuya Nishimura stared blankly at the photograph, his lips trembling: "He...he really wrote that?"

Yuuki Takada didn't answer, but instead asked a different question: "Where were you between noon and 1 p.m.?"

Tatsuya Nishimura took a deep breath: "I was in the brewing room in the hotel basement with Tomohisa Ishikawa. We...we had an argument about Juyondai Ryusen sake."

"Tell me in detail," Yuuki Takada gestured to the recorder to speed things up.

Around noon, the air in the brewing room on the ground floor of the Sakura-tei Hotel was filled with the slightly sweet aroma of sake koji.

Tomohisa Ishikawa stood in front of the huge wine vat, with his back to Tatsuya Nishimura.

“I received an email from Yano.” Tomohisa Ishikawa’s voice was eerily calm. “He was showing off the fourteenth-generation Ryusen he had just bought, saying he got it directly from you. The bottle with the serial number 0078.”

Tatsuya Nishimura stood there, nearly dropping the ledger in his hand.

“Ishikawa Tomohisa, I can explain…”

Ishikawa Tomohisa slowly turned around, his eyes bloodshot: "Explain what?"

"Explain why you betrayed our agreement? Explain why you turned our hard work into a commodity on the black market?"

"I'm doing this for the restaurant!" Tatsuya Nishimura raised his voice. "Do you know how much our sales have dropped recently?"

"The newly opened French restaurant across the street has taken away 30% of our customers! We need working capital, we need..."

"Shut up!" Ishikawa Tomohisa grabbed the tasting notes from the table and slammed them to the ground. "Twenty years! Nishimura Tatsuya! Twenty years! We started from scratch, and we've been through even more difficult times, but we've never sold our souls! Juyondai Ryusen isn't a commodity; it's our pride, it's our..."

“It was created by us together, and I have the right to decide its fate!” Tatsuya Nishimura interrupted him.

Tomohisa Ishikawa shook his head, his eyes filled with sorrow: "No, you haven't. You've long forgotten the original intention behind our brewing of Ryusen. It's not just a kind of sake, Nishimura. It's our friendship, the crystallization of our dreams."

Afterwards, Tomohisa Ishikawa walked to the safe and took out a document: "I have contacted a lawyer. Either you voluntarily step down from management and I will retain your shares and dividends, or we will completely dissolve the partnership, and Sakuratei Hotel will become history."

Chapter 159 Memories of the Past (Part 1)

Tatsuya Nishimura stared at the agreement in disbelief: "You...you want to kick me out?"

“You left first,” Tomohisa Ishikawa said softly, placing the pen on the table. “Sign it, for the sake of Sakura-tei Hotel, and for the friendship we once shared.”

In the interrogation room, Tatsuya Nishimura's eyes were vacant: "When I looked at him then, I suddenly felt that this person in front of me was so unfamiliar. Twenty years of friendship, and he was going to abandon it so easily."

"So you killed him?" Yuuki Takada asked bluntly.

The interrogation room lights were a stark white, illuminating Tatsuya Nishimura's haggard face.

He stared at the table for a long time before slowly raising his head. His eyes, which once shone with the keen insight of a winemaker, were now just empty spaces.

“Yes, I killed him.” Nishimura Tatsuya nodded calmly, his voice eerily calm. “Ishikawa Tomohisa, my friend of twenty years, died at my hands.”

Officer Yuki Takada didn't interrupt; he simply watched the man opposite him quietly.

"Do you know how much effort I put into researching Longquan wine?" Tatsuya Nishimura suddenly asked, a bitter smile playing on his lips. "That's the soul of our Sakuratei Brewery, and the starting point of everything."

Twenty years ago, in the spring, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.

Tatsuya Nishimura stood in the tasting room of Sakuratei Sake Brewery, holding up his glass to the light and examining it carefully.

The pale golden liquid swirls gently in the glass, releasing a complex and elegant aroma of fruit and rice.

"Ishikawa Tomohisa, the aroma of this batch of Longquan sake is even better than last time." Nishimura Tatsuya excitedly turned to Ishikawa Tomohisa as he walked in. "Did you adjust the fermentation temperature?"

Tomohisa Ishikawa nodded, his face bearing his usual gentle smile: "It was only a slight adjustment of 0.5 degrees. It seems that Yamada yeast prefers low-temperature environments more than we thought."

"Tatsuya, try this." Ishikawa handed Tomohisa another sample cup. "I used a different rice polishing process, which may further improve the taste."

Tatsuya Nishimura took a small sip, closed his eyes to savor it, then opened them wide: "Wonderful! This texture... if only we could apply this technique to Longquan..."

The two looked at each other and smiled; their unspoken understanding needed no further words.

This duo—Tatsuya Nishimura and Tomohisa Ishikawa—are hailed as a "genius combination" in the sake brewing industry.

Tatsuya Nishimura excels in appreciation and innovation, while Tomohisa Ishikawa is skilled in technique and inheritance.

Twenty years ago, they had their own unique ideas and created the "Longquan" wine series, which led to the establishment of their own Yingting Restaurant. They also made Longquan wine, the result of their research, their exclusive treasure.

At that time, they were unaware that cracks were already quietly growing in the shadows.

“I always thought we were equal partners,” Tatsuya Nishimura continued in the interrogation room, his voice beginning to tremble. “Until three years ago, I realized that I had tried to use my knowledge to replicate the core brewing method of ‘Ryusen’ ​​sake, but I was never able to make it taste the same as Tomohisa Ishikawa’s.”

Yuuki Takada leaned forward, puzzled, and asked, "What do you mean? Didn't you guys develop Longquan wine together?"

“That’s how it appears on the surface,” Tatsuya Nishimura said with a wry smile. “But Ryusen sake has a crucial finishing touch, and it is precisely this unique secret method that makes the sake so pure and mellow. He always completes that final step of the process alone, never letting me be present.”

Tatsuya Nishimura clenched his fists involuntarily: "I only realized later that he had never fully trusted me. After twenty years of cooperation, in his eyes, I was still an outsider."

"This is impossible!" Tatsuya Nishimura stared incredulously at the sales report in his hand. "Longquan's sales have declined for six consecutive months. Why are you only telling me now?"

Tomohisa Ishikawa stood by the office window, his back to him: "I originally intended to solve this problem myself. Several major breweries have recently launched products similar in style to Ryusen sake, but at 30% lower prices. The marketing department believes... we may need to adjust the pricing of Ryusen sake."

“Lower the price? That would be admitting that our quality is no longer unique!” Tatsuya Nishimura said excitedly. “What we should do is improve the recipe and make Longquan sake surpass all competitors again. Just like we have always done.”

Tomohisa Ishikawa finally turned around, his face showing a worry that Tatsuya Nishimura had never seen before: "Tatsuya, things aren't that simple. Raw material costs have recently increased by 15%, and banks have tightened lending... Sakura-tei's financial situation is not optimistic."

Tatsuya Nishimura was stunned: "Why didn't I know any of this?"

After an awkward silence, Tomohisa Ishikawa said softly, "I have always been in charge of these management matters."

At that moment, Nishimura felt for the first time the invisible wall between them.

“I thought it was just a temporary disagreement,” Tatsuya Nishimura said to Yuki Takada, his eyes glazed over, “until about six months ago, when people from Daikyo Sake Brewery approached me privately.”

Yuki Takada raised an eyebrow: "Is it that Daikyo Sake Brewery that's expanding so rapidly?"

“Yes. They offered me an exorbitant price to be their chief brewer, promising me complete technical autonomy.” Tatsuya Nishimura paused. “I was tempted, but told them I needed time to think it over. That night, I told Tomohisa about it, thinking he would try to persuade me to stay…”

Tatsuya Nishimura's voice gradually lowered: "But he just looked at me coldly and said, 'If you want to go, I won't stop you.'"

Yuuki Takada keenly noticed the change in Tatsuya Nishimura's tone: "And then?"

“Then everything changed.” Tatsuya Nishimura’s eyes darkened.

"Do you understand what you're saying?" Ishikawa Tomohisa raised his voice, a rare occurrence for him. "You want to take the Longquan winemaking technique to Dajing?"

Tatsuya Nishimura quickly shook his head: "No, of course I won't!"

“I will develop a completely new series. Tomohisa, this is an opportunity for us both. Sakura-tei’s predicament is difficult to resolve in the short term, but the resources provided by Daikyo can allow us… to realize those ideas that we have never been able to try before.”

"Us?" Ishikawa Tomohisa sneered. "So you plan to go alone, disregarding our twenty years of cooperation and the future of Sakura-tei?"

“You can interpret this as me looking for new ways out for our technology!” Tatsuya Nishimura argued.

Tomohisa Ishikawa took a deep breath: "Tatsuya, actually, I entrusted our Longquan wine recipe to you a long time ago. If you insist on leaving, I won't force you to stay. But you must understand that once you step out of the Sakura-tei Hotel, some things will never come back."

The conversation ended unhappily.

Tatsuya Nishimura ultimately declined Daikyo's invitation, partly because Ishikawa Tomohisa's attitude had hurt him, and partly because of his own guilt. But he didn't realize that this was just the prelude to an even bigger storm.

Chapter 160 Memories of the Past (Part 2)

“A week later, Tomohisa Ishikawa convened a board meeting…” Tatsuya Nishimura continued in the interrogation room, his voice filled with suppressed anger, “I was excluded from the new management team. He claimed it was necessary for ‘professional management,’ but in reality, he deprived me of my participation in all core technology decisions.”

Yuuki Takada seemed thoughtful: "So you started to resent him?"

“It’s not just resentment.” Tatsuya Nishimura’s nails dug deeply into his palm. “I feel betrayed. For twenty years, I treated him like a brother and valued our shared dream more than anything else. And yet he abandoned me so easily.”

Over the next few months, Tatsuya Nishimura made several attempts to communicate with Tomohisa Ishikawa, but was always evaded with various excuses.

Rumors were circulating within Sakuratei Sake Brewery that Tatsuya Nishimura was about to leave for Okyo, and the employees were looking at him with strange eyes.

“I know it was Tomohisa who spread those rumors,” Tatsuya Nishimura sneered. “He turned me into an outsider in Sakura-tei.”

The rift eventually turned into an abyss, until the day Tatsuya Nishimura found the agreement on Tomohisa Ishikawa's desk.

"You...you want to kick me out?" Tatsuya Nishimura looked at the termination agreement in disbelief.

Tomohisa Ishikawa avoided his gaze and said softly, "You left first." He placed the pen on the table. "Sign it, for Sakura-tei, and for the friendship we once had."

Tatsuya Nishimura's hands trembled: "Just because I considered Dajing's invitation? Just because of that, you're going to negate everything we've done over the past twenty years?"

“Things are not what they used to be, Tatsuya.” Ishikawa Tomohisa’s voice remained calm, but carried an unyielding resolve. “Sign the agreement, and you will receive the compensation you deserve. But Sakura-tei, including all of Ryusen’s technology, will have nothing to do with you anymore.”

Nishimura stared intently at the agreement, then suddenly realized something: "You've been waiting for this opportunity all along, haven't you? Waiting for me to make a mistake so you could rightfully kick me out and take control of Longquan all by yourself."

"Don't talk nonsense." Ishikawa frowned.

“Then tell me,” Nishimura’s voice was hoarse with excitement, “tell me what the final finishing touch of Longquan is! Since our cooperation has ended, at least let me understand why I have given everything for the past twenty years!”

Ishikawa Tomohisa remained silent for a long time before finally shaking his head: "That's a secret of the Ishikawa family, and I cannot tell you."

At that moment, Tatsuya Nishimura felt something inside him completely break.

The interrogation room was completely silent, with only the faint sound of the recording equipment running.

"So that's when you decided to kill him?" Officer Takada asked softly.

Tatsuya Nishimura slowly shook his head: "No, at the time I just stormed out of the office in anger. The murderous intent... arose later."

Yuki Takada waited for him to continue.

"That night, I got completely drunk and accidentally came across old photos from when we first took over Sakura-tei."

Tatsuya Nishimura's gaze softened for a moment. "How young and hopeful we were back then... Tomohisa and I, we vowed to make Sakuratei the best sake brewery in all of Japan..."

His voice choked up: "Then I saw the date on the back of the photo and suddenly realized something—Longquan wine didn't really take shape until more than a year after we started working together. But we had already brewed a small batch of wine with the prototype of Longquan wine in the early stages of our collaboration."

Tatsuya Nishimura looked up, his eyes filled with pain and realization: "So, that so-called Ishikawa family secret technique is a complete lie. Tomohisa and I developed all of Ryusen's techniques together during our collaboration! What right does he have to monopolize it?"

The next morning, still hungover, Tatsuya Nishimura returned to Sakuratei Sake Brewery.

The workers hadn't started work yet, but Ishikawa Tomohisa was the only one who habitually arrived at the brewery early to check on the fermentation process from the previous night.