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Look.
Sonoko’s not actually an idiot.
Sure, she knows she might give people that impression - she primps and preens and likes pretty clothes, but it’s not like that makes her stupid. She takes pride in the way she looks, in keeping up to date with the latest trends and sometimes even creating a few when the mood strikes, with dressing up and experimenting with her appearance and looking exactly the way she wants. It’s a hobby. She’s allowed to like things, y’know.
(Maybe she likes being underestimated.)
Sure, she knows that sometimes she isn’t quite as quick on the uptake as certain other people who shall remain nameless but are basically full-fledged detectives . But, seriously, who has the time to memorize fifty zillion obscure facts just in case they come in handy if they stumble across a body? Not Sonoko, that’s for sure.
(Maybe her parents have made a point of gently nudging her towards more ‘ladylike’ pastimes.)
Sure, she knows that maybe she comes across as a little boy-crazy. But, really, take one look at Kaitou KID or Araide-sensei or Makoto Kyogoku and tell her she doesn’t have good taste. Because, like, seriously. Makoto is cute and sweet and maybe a little oblivious. Kaitou KID is mysterious, debonair in a handsome sort of way, and she doesn’t need to see his real face to know that he’s attractive. He’s flexible, like Makoto’s strong, and it’s just - hot, okay.
They’re good people, too - she can tell. She’s had a lot of practice watching people, figuring out their intentions, seeing through the masks they paste over their faces. She’s no Heisei Holmes, of course, but she’s been invited to high society events since before she could walk. She can recognize greed when she sees it, and it doesn’t take a detective to deduce that most of the people she would consider romantic partners strike themselves from the list as soon as she sees that glint in their eyes. At least she knows that Kaitou KID and Makoto won’t like her solely because she’s the daughter of the owners of the Suzuki Corporation and therefore is completely loaded .
(Maybe it’s easier to have crushes who aren’t within arm’s reach; it’s harder for them to disappoint her, to shatter her images of them beyond repair)
Sure, she doesn’t like studying textbooks - she’d rather be studying fashion magazines - but who does, honestly, except nerds with no life outside school? She studies enough that she passes, just enough that her parents aren’t disappointed - not that they’d disown her or anything if she failed a test or two, but her mother would give her a lecture, which is even worse. Besides, she likes studying with Ran - and even, on certain occasions (by which she means, ‘on days when they don’t run into a corpse’), Shinichi. She’s a social studier.
(Maybe she’ll never admit it, but she might - might - miss the way Shinichi explained their English homework.)
( Sometimes. )
(...He’d better stop hiding soon, that jerk. He’s making Ran sad, and anyone who makes Ran sad…)
(Well.)
(Sonoko has a lot of connections and no limit on the amount of money she’s willing to spend to keep Ran from crying.)
(Just saying.)
But, anyway.
Despite what people think, Sonoko’s not an idiot.
So, suddenly falling asleep in the middle of a murder case and waking up to find that she’d been the one to solve it, putting on a Shinichi-style deduction show with the help of that Conan brat?
Deduction Queen Sonoko, her ass.
Like she said, she’s not an idiot. She’s capable of connecting a few dots.
For example:
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Fact #1: Whenever she becomes 'Deduction Queen Sonoko,' it looks eerily similar to Ran’s dad’s ‘Sleeping Kogoro’ routine.
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She’s seen the videos, okay. She’s the Suzuki heiress - it’s easy enough to bat her eyelashes at a security guard and write a check for what, to her, is a negligible amount, but to him is probably more than he makes in a couple months. Whatever, it’s not like her parents will miss five hundred thousand yen.
Just like that, she has a copy of the security tapes that show her brief nap and the emergence of the ‘Deduction Queen.’
The similarities are obvious, even to her.
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Fact #2: Sonoko’s deduction skills are actually pretty shit.
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She’s not dumb, but she’s nowhere near Shinichi’s level.
Honestly, if she didn’t know any better, she’d say that Shinichi’s outrageous ‘deduction skills’ are pure dumb luck. But she does, and unfortunately his accolades are well-earned.
He doesn’t have to be so arrogant about it, though. She hates it when he waves his fan mail under Ran’s nose and forces her to acknowledge them - it’s happened before and it’ll probably happen again, because that bonehead’s idiocy knows no bounds.
Well, Sonoko can slap him upside the head next time he brings up his fangirls again - assuming Ran doesn’t get there with a stop sign first.
Maybe even if she does, because what gives him the right to toy with Ran’s heart like that?
Ugh.
Anyway, Sonoko has enough dignity (unlike Shinichi) that she can admit that while clothes and fashion and trend-predicting are her forte, detective work and logic puzzles are definitely not.
(Maybe she’d been jealous of Shinichi being so close to Ran when they were younger. Maybe she’d found a quiz book in the library about deductive reasoning. Maybe she’d decided to give it a shot.)
(Maybe that book had ended up ripped to shreds when she couldn’t understand the first ten questions.)
So unless she magically gains a hundred IQ points while she’s asleep, there’s no way she could’ve come up with that kind of deduction.
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Fact #3: She doesn’t transform into Deduction Queen Sonoko every time she takes a nap.
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Someone would’ve told her if every time she nodded off during class she was suddenly able to speak fluent English and come up with the answers to calculus problems.
Like, that probably would’ve come up in conversation at some point.
Even if her classmates had decided that it was too weird to mention (which was unlikely) or they decided to play a prank or something, Ran would’ve let it slip by now - because when it comes to people she cares about, she can’t keep secrets for long.
...Maybe if her classmates decided she was faking it for attention, maybe then they wouldn’t mention her ‘act,’ just to spite her - which, y’know, that would be fair. Sonoko hates being manipulated, too.
But they’d be forgetting one thing.
She’s the hot heiress of a major corporation - she doesn’t need more attention.
In fact, a little less attention would probably mean fewer kidnapping attempts, which would be great. It’s not like she’s some flakey rich American socialite named Serena Sebastian or something pretentious - the kind of person who’d actively cause scenes that just ask for kidnappers to take advantage.
And besides, the fact that someone thought of the murder methods in the cases she’s ‘solved’ - let alone said, “Hey, this is a plausible and not at all stupidly overcomplicated way to murder someone!” - and then actually used them is absolutely absurd.
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Fact #4: Shinichi is pretty much the only person Sonoko’s ever met who could make that kind of absurd deduction and actually be right.
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Look, Sonoko’s not saying that Kudou Shinichi is somehow involved, but Kudou Shinichi is somehow involved.
Who else in Japan - no, the entire world - attracted mysteries orchestrated by people who think, just as a random example, that using a corpse to fake a series of vampire attacks is a good idea?
Let alone manage to figure that out?
That’s got Shinichi’s special brand of luck written all over it.
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Fact #5: Shinichi only contacts Ran and the brat, or sometimes the police - but only if it’s absolutely necessary, and only over the phone. He hasn’t shown up in person since their school play, and his presence there had been debatable because Sonoko has met his mother and that had seemed exactly like her brand of humor.
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It’s strange, because the Shinichi she knows mainly solves mysteries so he can look cool. Sure, there’s the whole ‘helping the victim get justice’ thing or whatever, but really it’s mostly because Shinichi’s an arrogant schmuck who loves the attention. So him not showing up in person to do his little ‘deduction show’? Major red flag.
(It’s almost like he needs some kind of medium to talk to people.)
And this, of course, can all be traced back to a very specific day: His and Ran’s first date.
(Sure, maybe it wasn’t actually an official date, but it was close enough , okay. After watching them pine after each other literally since preschool, Sonoko deserves that victory.)
And, normally, Sonoko would put this kind of ghosting down to a first date gone horribly wrong, except.
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Fact #6: Shinichi and Ran are practically married.
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Even if Shinichi had managed to somehow screw up so badly that the date had ended in disaster (never Ran - Ran’s an angel) and decided to avoid Ran until she stopped being mad, he’d have come back at the first sign of Ran’s tears.
Because, despite all his faults, Shinichi wouldn’t want to make Ran sad.
Which implies that right now he has to.
He’s made her sad before accidentally, sure. But until now, it’s always been Shinichi opening his big fat mouth and sticking his foot in it - except that it’s never been more than a week before he realizes what’s wrong and starts trying to fix it.
(It’s been over a month.)
And before Shinichi up and disappeared, Ran had never just been purely sad - it had always been mixed with anger or irritation or jealousy.
She’s never been really, truly, achingly sad the way that she is now.
Now she stares out windows longingly whenever it storms, the rain causing her unhappiness to swell and force its way to the surface from where she buries it deep so that she doesn’t bother anyone. That’s one of the reasons Sonoko drags her along on shopping trips or to one of her family’s summer houses - Ran should be able to just care about herself for once in her life, to sit back and relax and have fun instead of worrying about whether her father’s drunk away all their disposable income.
(That’s why she hates it when the brat tags along - there’s always someone dead or kidnapped or whatever, and then Ran worries about everyone, and Sonoko’s not too proud to admit that, yes, having Ran there makes her feel safer, but that’s not the point. The point is to let Ran relax for a little while, to maybe pamper her as much as she’ll allow. Sonoko’s got the money to do it, and what better reason to spend her absurd amount of pocket money than to give her best friend everything she deserves but would never do for herself?)
Anyway, Shinichi and Ran are practically married, and Shinichi would not intentionally make Ran sad. Therefore, he wouldn’t willingly disappear without a trace after their first maybe-date.
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Fact #7: There’s a Missing Person file for Kudou Shinichi.
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It’s amazing what the secretary at a police station will tell you if you give her tips on how to style her niece's hair and occasionally bring her expensive pastries from the fancy shop downtown.
The police have pretty much stopped looking for him at this point, of course, but the file exists. Something about only having three days before all the leads go cold, but Sonoko’s pretty sure that they’re taking the brat’s word and Shinichi’s sporadic phone calls as proof he’s alive.
What’s weird, though, is the way that the file is very carefully updated every few weeks with meaningless rambling. It’s supposed to be a cold case, and no one’s officially looking into it as far as she can tell, but the possibly-coded updates still show up.
Anyway, it’s not like anyone’s really seen ‘Shinichi’ after the play. Not really. Ran said she’d had dinner with him at the super fancy restaurant at the top of the Beika Center Building, but.
Sonoko has some suspicions about that ‘Shinichi,’ too.
Because, if she takes all these facts into account, there’s really only one conclusion she can draw.
Kudou Shinichi?
Probably dead, but covering it up so he can continue his stupid detective work as a spirit.
(The brat’s probably helping him do it, too.)
Ugh.
Now she has to figure out how to bring her best friend’s boyfriend back to life.
Only Kudou Shinichi could somehow continue to be a pain in the ass from beyond the grave.
It’s a good thing Sonoko has an in with that necromancer in Ekoda.