(Something about Toichi’s hidden room I never noticed before, since my image is still the one from the specials, for the most part.)

(The specials have it well lit, shiny steel and white, a workbench, the hidden closet behind the large mirror (without the lights around it, though another with), and overall looks clean and organised, if a little that it’s more like an office space you’d rarely come to except to work. Despite the jukebox and game.)

(The newer anime feels emptier, though still clean and orderly, with everything in shelves, but also more comfortable and a place to relax. Like, ‘I’m just going to chill here for a while before I need to grab my things and leave’.)

(Even Kaito is fine sitting there (listening to his father’s words).)

(Which is why I find it hilarious, looking back, to see the room is a mess of stuff everywhere. Very little space, miscellaneous items eveywhere, mice having set up a home, cracks in the wall. Very much a basement work area, and more busy and used. Not just Kid stuff, I can see Toichi practicing his magic in general down here, as well as researching various things. And the heck is up with that instrument (Cello? Did he play that, maybe?) behind the stairs in the top picture? Side note, stairs. And not ones that take him back to the painting room like in the anime, no, those go somewhere else, where, we’ll never know. The bottom one is a little messier, with things on the ground and toolbox open, since Kaito’s been there a while, doing the job himself, things were moved around.

…But something else I find interesting in the top picture, when the room was how Toichi left it… This will be delving more into headcanon right now, but there’s what looks to be a wine bottle and a cup on the small tale in the lower left. Might not mean anything, but I have to wonder why they’d be left out, if he even thought he might die. So… I don’t think he expected it at all. Most of the room looks lived in, as if he expected to come back to it. But he did leave a message, and the lock was set… My theory says Chikage took care of that. Toichi knew he could die at any time, but wanted to wait until Kaito was old enough to say anything, so he made a recording at some point in the event he did die. Chikage, after the murder, set the time on the lock and cassette and shut the room off. Because she was also aware when the room was opened, and didn’t go to check on Kaito after she knew it was, not because Toichi had set that into place, but because she had and knew Toichi wanted to tell Kaito the truth himself.)