Alright. I'm going to warn you now that there is a character death on this chapter. I mean, it's a murder, and this story is a mystery. So, someone's gotta die. I suppose it's early for a character to die, but just listen to me. I just wanted to make a note that I have nothing against any character I ever kill off or treat badly in any of my stories, ever. I love all of the characters in the Vocaloid fandom, even the annoying ones. Ah, and in Japan, the summers are warm, so the summer in this story is too, because, well, most Vocaloids are from Japan. So, without further interruptions, here's the prologue or really, the first chapter.

Lazy Summer's Murder

A Summer to Remember

Summer is a time for fun.

It's a time when kids get out of school, forget everything they learned, annoy their parents, and have fun with their friends. A time when the weather warms and beaches get busy. It's green and full of life, and it's a time when nearly anything can happen. Although it's not my favorite season, I can't say I dislike it. I mean, the only thing I can say I'm not a fan of is the mass tourists who visit the city.

But for the people of that town, the reasons they dislike summer are different. Summertime there is boring. Slow, like a sloth. Cicadas call so loud it makes you want to wear earplugs. And the humidity, to top it all off, is nearly unbearable.

On the particular summer when the "incident" occurred, I lived in that small, suburban town. I was away from my parents, and out of school for the summer. I don't think I could even tell you how glad I was to be out on my own for once, especially when I was only sixteen. It was a totally lucky break, for my mother and father to let me go. And unexpected, too, my parents are strict. I was happy to be away from the city, where almost nothing is ever slow and relaxing. I was away from those pesky tourists.

Now, this story, the one I'm going to tell you, it's not one of those happy-go-lucky summer romances. It's not in any way a happy story, where the characters are just a group of teenage friends having fun. This is not a "slice-of-life" story, even though it's taken directly from my life without exaggeration.

This, if it was a work of fiction and not my reality, would be considered a drama.

Anyway, I had expected it to be my first uneventful summer in quite a while, but it turned out to be something I really hadn't expected.

Or maybe I had expected it. Maybe that's the twist, right there, the key to the whole story. The whole mystery, solved in one sentence. I knew it would happen. Hah, but it's not nearly that simple. I can't say I was surprised when the police showed up at my house. I suppose I knew inside that it was just too lazy of a summer. There was so little entertainment. You had to drive forty minutes just to get to a movie theater. It was really a bit too calm. It was one of those summers where you knew anything could happen, but it didn't seem to want to. But really, when anything can happen, it does.

When that detective showed up at my doorstep… I can recall the exact feeling of insightful dread in the pit of my stomach. I knew something would interrupt my peaceful summer. Something always did.

I hadn't predicted her death, I'm no fortune teller. But I had predicted, no, I had expected that something exceedingly substantial would happen. Call it intuition. And, you know, it wasn't actually a very big deal if you think about it, as one human's life is indispensably insignificant. There are so many people in the world, it isn't at all a tragedy if one person dies because of what may or may not have been a shameless murder. But still, a murder in a small town is pretty farcical. It sounds like something that would happen in a TV drama.

But like I said before, the genre would be drama, so that's only to be expected.

But you know, it wasn't even a big deal for me, someone who had known the victim personally. Even if I hadn't gotten to know her well. I'd seen death before. I've seen someone I love die. I have seen it play and replay before my eyes and in my dreams hundreds of times. Or, maybe I'm lying to you, and it wasn't that bad. Maybe I'm dramatic and I just like to exaggerative. But, something I'm not going to exaggerate on is the fact that after a while, I guess I became a bit numb to death.

But if someone that people care about dies, it seems like a big deal to the few people who actually do give a damn.

I remember Detective Hiyama's exact words.

"If I'm correct, you're Miss Nekomura? Something upsetting happened, may I come inside? You'll want to sit down,"

Something did happen. Something that less than a few people truly cared about. I didn't have to sit down, but we did anyways. And I had to sit for over two hours, answering questions that would prove to be mostly useless in the future. The detectives that I've affiliated with tend to be like that. They gather empty information. If you want to solve a mystery, you just need the basic clues. Just the main ideas. And from those main ideas, you can see bits and pieces easier. You get to see more, and you don't have to pick it all apart by asking questions like detective Hiyama did. But he was just an amateur anyways.

You know, he probably thought I was gonna burst into tears or something, when he told me about what happened. But no, I didn't. I did cry, at one point, but certainly not in front of that man.

And in the end, he just left, saying he'd be back again if another event occurred. I doubt he had even considered that I might continue to get myself involved, to the point where my life was literally dangling from a string. Or, it was more of a rope, really, but either way, it was incredibly hazardous and insecure. But we'll get to that later.

The way I got involved, it was entirely out of character for me. My life was like an inconsistent story, where the characters change so much in such a little time that they start to blend together, and you can't help but wonder, "This book is awful, how did it even get published?" I usually stay out of things. That's what I learned, growing up in the urban area that I did. Someone's getting mugged? Not a big deal. You hear the shot of a gun? Happens everyday. Or maybe you perceive the screams of a girl who's about to get raped? She's probably a tough girl, she'll be fine. Although it's not like that in many cities, in the city where I lived, you had to ignore it, and figure it wasn't your problem.

You know, that summer, when I lived in that small, quiet, suburban town, something happened.

Something bad.

Teto Kasane?

That summer, she was murdered.

I wanted to write a mystery with Iroha as the main character. I love Iroha. A lot.

I'm REALLY glad I finally got this all finished.

So here you go. This is just the first chapter, so yep, it's short. It's kind of a prologue though, so I don't think it needs to be long. Review, please, and continue to read further chapters! Even though I can promise you that updates will come as slow as a snail. But that's just because I want to make this story one of my best. For it to be good, it'll require bunches of revision, and that'll take me a while. But it'll be worth it (I hope)!

Oh, and this is my first mystery, yupyup. But mystery is my favorite genre. I'll do my best. Hopefully I can impress you!

Cheers to a (hopefully) successful and intriguing story!

~Meimirigu