"Are you kidding me!"
Upon hearing Senichi's words, Horikoshi's expression became ferocious. "You, a Muggle, are just talking nonsense!"
"Huh? Don't you feel my esper ability?"
Senichi looked at Horikoshi strangely in all seriousness. "When espers activate their abilities, there is a mutual sensation between them. I can sense it with other espers, so why don't you feel it?"
As Senichi spoke, he lightly tapped his right fist against his left palm and suddenly said, "Ah, I get it. Actually, you must be a Muggle, right? Just pretending to be an esper..."
Surprisingly, due to some self-taught acting skills, Senichi's expression at the moment did carry a hint of that flavor, although the exaggerated expression added a touch of mockery.
"That's enough!"
Horikoshi stood up abruptly. "If you detectives are going to act crazy and play dumb like this, then there's no need to continue our conversation."
"Wait." Senichi blocked Horikoshi's way. "My esper ability is not fake."
"Just by talking?" Horikoshi scoffed. "If that's the case, everyone would be an esper."
"Well, you did just prove your own esper ability." Senichi smiled, and his gaze instantly sharpened. "So, let me confirm my own esper ability by using a method that will send you to prison."
"Hmph." Horikoshi heard Senichi's words with a cold tone. "You claim I'm the culprit, then provide evidence!"
"Well, let's start from the beginning." Senichi smiled. "Before that, I have to say, at the beginning, you probably didn't intend to commit murder. Perhaps when you were hiding the scarf near the riverbank, the victim happened to see you.
Thinking you looked like a little troublemaker, he probably went to confront you. After all, your actions of hiding something looked suspicious, and suspicion implies profit. Maybe he had seen you on TV before? After all, you are a celebrity.
In such a situation, you naturally wanted to quickly get rid of him, but he stubbornly held on. So, a conflict erupted, and since the other guy was a troublemaker, he must have had a combat advantage over you. When you were knocked to the ground, you picked up a stone and smashed it onto his head."
"I didn't go to that place," Horikoshi coldly denied.
But Senichi didn't argue further with Horikoshi. Instead, he stared at him intently and said in a deep voice, "Your esper ability is fake!"
"No!"
"Because it was a personal experience, when Professor Okabe and Makise set a trap to expose your lack of esper abilities, you felt trapped with no way out and framed it as a discovery through esper abilities to salvage the situation!"
"That's not it!"
Horikoshi's eyes widened and he resembled an angry beast. "Just because I knew the details about the body, you concluded that I'm the murderer? You're underestimating esper abilities too much!"
"Exactly, that's it."
Without letting Horikoshi finish, Senichi rudely interrupted him. "Not only do I underestimate esper abilities, but I also disdain them because they don't really exist."
Senichi looked at the visibly angered Horikoshi and smiled. "After all, if even esper abilities can make mistakes, it just goes to show that it's nothing special."
He then nodded to the director on the side, who manipulated the machine, and soon the video from the previous live broadcast began playing again on the screen.
"What are you trying to do?" Horikoshi frowned.
"I'm exposing that you're not an esper and proving that my esper ability is genuinely real," Senichi mocked and taunted. He then walked to the TV and said, "This is the segment where your esper ability was activated and you described the details of the deceased. Listen carefully; there's a mistake."
"Impossible." Horikoshi coldly denied, "My esper ability cannot make mistakes."
"The jacket. You said the jacket was green, right?"
Senichi waved to the director again, and the video fast-forwarded to the segment where the deceased was discovered, pausing once more.
The video clearly showed the man lying on the small boat and was wearing a blue jacket.
"What are you talking about?" Horikoshi chuckled. "It's clearly gree..."
As he spoke, Horikoshi's words were cut off halfway, as if a duck with its neck squeezed, unable to utter a sound. He slowly raised his trembling right hand and took off the glasses he had been wearing on his face.
"It seems you've finally realized. With so many detailed pieces of information, why did you get the color of the jacket wrong?"
Senichi smiled when he saw the other's actions. "I suppose you've been wearing glasses with yellow lenses when you encountered him, so you consistently mistook the color of his jacket for green.
In other words, you didn't see the crime scene through esper abilities; you observed the body directly with your naked eyes. Or is the so-called 'mind's eye' also equipped with yellow lenses?"
According to the well-known principles of the three primary colors, yellow plus blue equals green. If the person constantly wore yellow sunglasses, white would appear as yellow, and blue would appear as green.
This was also why Senichi locked onto the culprit early on. After all, in his past life, he had studied drawing, and not understanding such basic principles of color after so many years of learning art would be absurd.
Facing Senichi's questioning, Horikoshi stared at him coldly and said slowly, "I just described the scenes I saw in my mind. Besides, everyone has different ways of expressing colors.
Don't elderly people often mix up the descriptions of blue and green colors? I inherited this way of speaking from the older generation."
At this point, Horikoshi smiled slightly, but his eyes were filled with mockery as he looked at Senichi.
"Hehehe..."
Hearing Horikoshi's words, Senichi shook his head slightly and couldn't help but laugh. "I've discovered that you've taken advantage of language to the fullest. Being eloquent is not enough to describe you. Using esper abilities as an excuse for inexplicable matters is truly unbeatable."
In situations where there is no solution, using esper abilities as an excuse is indeed an all-encompassing tactic. It can be pushed onto anything, making it a perfect excuse.
"What does it have to do with you not believing in esper abilities? I've said it many times; I'm just truthfully describing what I've seen."
Horikoshi's lips curled with a mocking smile. "And just based on this, can you prove that I killed that man?"
"No, I cannot."
Facing Horikoshi's inquiry, Senichi pondered for a moment, then smiled and shook his head before calmly answering.