Spoilers through Detective Conan File 1139. The culprit and full solution revealed in the next chapter are outside this review’s scope.
File 1139 gives Conan, Kansuke Yamato, and Takaaki Morofushi the evidence they need to move beyond the supposed haunting. A missing lighter, Tamaki Ito’s powerful laser pointer, marks around the car, and a childhood badge become the central clues. The three appear to have reached a conclusion, but the chapter leaves the explanation for the continuation.
File 1139, Sifting Through the Ashes, appeared in Japan on February 5, 2025, in Weekly Shonen Sunday issue 10. It is the third part of the Nagano fire case, which began in File 1137, and is collected in Volume 107.
The investigation after Kitakura’s crash
Yuta Kitakura is taken to hospital after his Mini strikes a tree. His right arm had caught fire while he held it outside the window. The car has no seat belts, leaving him exposed to the impact and with a bleeding head injury. Shichisuke Kasai, Kaori Nanjo, and Tamaki had been in the van traveling with him.
Yui Uehara is joined by Yamato and Takaaki after Conan asks for their help. The timing makes the incident suspicious: the vehicle behind Kitakura’s car overtook it before the fire started. That sequence is the reason to investigate deliberate interference rather than accept an ordinary traffic accident.
What the witnesses and their videos establish
The police question Kasai, who was driving the van, Kaori in the front passenger seat, and Tamaki in the back. Tamaki suggests that ice cream eaten at the lodge caused Kasai’s stomach trouble. This offers an alternative to the earlier theory that someone tampered with his coffee; neither suggestion should be mistaken for an established cause at this point.
The Detective Boys explain the ghost legend, and the officers watch the recordings of Tamaki’s sleeve fire and the smoke from Kaori’s back. These are videos of the earlier incidents, giving the investigators a chance to examine actions that were difficult to follow in the moment.
Reconstructing the night Takehiko died
Three months earlier, the five Compass Detective Club members were staying at the lodge while scouting locations for their haunted-site videos. After they had been drinking, Tamaki fell asleep. Kaori, Kasai, and Kitakura went to buy more alcohol, leaving Takehiko Nanjo with her.
A large earthquake struck while the three were out. Worried about the people at the lodge, Kitakura returned first. When Kaori and Kasai arrived, the building was burning and Kitakura was outside holding Tamaki. Takehiko was missing; the later investigation found that he had been trapped beneath a fallen cupboard.
That account makes the gap between Kitakura’s return and the others’ arrival important. It gives him a role in the earlier emergency, but it does not establish what he did inside. The fire, the skull injury discussed in File 1138, and the surviving friends’ suspicions still need to be reconciled.
The belongings and the evidence left at the car
Yamato and Takaaki check the group’s belongings. Kasai has matches because his electronic lighter is missing. Tamaki has a powerful foreign-made laser pointer and a coin purse. Kaori has ethanol-based disinfectant gel and Takehiko’s charred smartphone in a plastic bag. The phone contains a photograph of all five friends as children with their detective badges.
After taking charge of the belongings, the officers send the others away by car and keep Conan with them. The three continue looking for evidence, apparently having worked out the culprit. This is a meaningful distinction: a deduction still needs the physical evidence that can demonstrate it.
They find a clean area beneath the rear door of the vehicle and tape in the woods that matches the Mini’s body color. Takaaki invokes the idea of turning a roundabout course into a direct one and adversity into advantage. Conan then brings out the Compass Detective Club badge from the Mini’s glove compartment and identifies it as the key to the motive.
Why the laser pointer attracts suspicion
The description of Tamaki’s pointer as foreign-made may be a deliberate clue about its unusually strong output. The working theory is that a beam directed at the car or clothing could explain a fire without an obvious flame nearby. But possession of the pointer is not the completed proof, and the chapter has not yet explained its positioning or use.
Kasai’s missing electronic lighter supplies a separate possibility. The earlier theory was that someone such as Tamaki could have used its quiet ignition behind Kaori during the second incident. That remains a tentative reading of the smoke scene. The important question is which object explains which event, rather than assuming all three incidents used the same method.
What the chapter reveals about the Nagano officers
Conan is treated as a partner
After their brief appearance in File 1137, Yamato and Takaaki finally take an active role. The most satisfying sign of their confidence in Conan is practical: they keep him at the scene when everyone else leaves. He is part of the investigation, not merely a child overhearing its results.
That partnership may also prepare readers for the Nagano focus of the 2025 film One-eyed Flashback. It works as a reading of the timing and character emphasis, rather than a confirmed statement about how the manga leads into the movie.
A relay ribbon and Yui’s feelings for Kansuke
In the car, Uehara tells the children about growing up with Yamato and Takaaki. She is six years younger, while the school memory places her five grades behind them: she was in first grade and they were in sixth. When she cried because she had not won the red first-place relay ribbon, the two boys worked together to get one for her.
Ai Haibara reads the story as the beginning of Uehara’s feelings for Kansuke. Ayumi Yoshida asks which boy she liked, and Haibara singles out Kansuke, leaving Uehara flustered. The teasing gives the childhood scene a present-day consequence: it connects the kindness of that day to the feelings she still struggles to discuss.
The appeal is in how long those feelings have lasted. Uehara has even been married in the intervening years, yet this childhood affection remains part of her relationship with Kansuke. The young Yamato, before the loss of his eye, also makes the flashback especially striking; it is easy to hope the film might explore more of that earlier period. That hope is separate from what this chapter actually reveals.
The badge is the question to carry forward
By the end of File 1139, the investigation has moved from apparently unconnected fires to specific objects, recorded actions, and traces on the vehicle. The badge adds a different question: why would a keepsake from a childhood group lead someone to attack an old friend? The next chapter is positioned to explain both the mechanics and that motive.
The related articles below cover Volume 107 and Files 1138 and 1140.
Further reading (contains spoilers): Kansuke Yamato and Yui Uehara's relationship.
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