SailorStar9: This is Chapter 37. Read and review.
Disclaimers: I own nothing, except the pairing, I hope.
Chapter 37: Ryu's Determination
"Interesting." Mine scoffed. "Let's hear it then, DDS boy. First, what is the unnatural action that a certain person took?"
"What certain person?" Obana asked.
"The criminal." Kyu replied. "The day after Goura-san was killed, we were washing our faces. Well, it's complicated to explain. Kinta and I tried to sneak into the women's bath to peek. Megu saw me and threw everything she could find at us, bruising us all over."
"And then, this morning, Kinta's face was swollen" he added. "Actually, it was worse until a little while ago."
"You don't need to explain that!" Kinta protested.
"Stupid." Mine remarked. "I assumed you were just in a fight."
"Did you think so, too, Nastumi-san?" Kyu asked.
"No," Mozu replied. "I just wondered what happened."
"Yes, that's right." Kyu agreed. "With a face as bruised as that, people would normally assume had had got in a fight. People was usually curious regarding what happened."
"Don't you agree?" he turned to Hachiya.
"Yeah." Hachiya replied.
"But there was one person who burst out into laughter upon seeing his face." Kyu added.
"Right," he turned to Hitsuki. "Hitsuki Yuri-san?"
"What are you saying?" Hitsuki gaped. "I just..."
"No, you laughed." Megumi corrected.
Flashback
"Oh, look at that face." Hitsuki chuckled
"Don't laugh!" Kinta protested.
"By saying that, you agreed with me." Megumi added.
Flashback
"Oh, don't worry, it's his own fault." Megumi teased.
"That's probably true." Hitsuki replied as Kinta turned into stone.
"You said that and agreed with me." Megumi noted. "I made a terrible mistake, you see. Yuri-san was with Kyu and his company until just before the peeking incident, so I thought you were present the entire time. In fact, you had left the bath and did not return that evening. So, there's no reason you would have normally laughed at Kinta's face. It's an extremely unnatural reaction."
"Yuri-san didn't know we peeked, so where she she find that out?" Kyu posted a question. "There was only one opportunity."
"Around 10:45, when we walked past Goura-san's room, that was that we were talking about." Ami added.
"And at that time, the light in Goura-san's room was off." Kyu continued.
"He may have left the room in order to kill himself." Mine pointed out.
"I don't think so." Megumi protested. "He had just received a long fax from Nastumi-san a few minutes prior."
"Yes." Mozu nodded. "He was working in his room. The time was around..."
"The time recorded on the last page was 10:30 PM." Megumi supplied. "It's hard to imagine that he'd ignore a fax important enough to be sent late at night."
"Which means..." Mine prompted.
"The criminal was in the room at that time." Ami replied.
"And she heard us talking." Kyu added.
Flashback
"That thing you hit us with was solid wood!" Kyu pointed out.
"It's because you both were peeking." Megumi snapped. "Jerks."
"That's just..." Hitsuki stammered. "Just a hypothesis. I laughed because it looked really funny! That happens sometimes. Can you say it's impossible?"
"No, we can't." Kyu replied."So we all looked for evidence to prove this hypothesis."
"Evidence?" Hitsuki echoed.
"We found it." Ryu cut in. "While Kyu, Megu, Ami and Kinta were in front of his room, it seems Goura-san still had energy left. 'At this rate, I'll be killed.' Goura realized that and used the last of his energy to write a message. We found the message hidden alongside the fax documents."
"That was one of the first things we investigated." Mine told him. "Piece by piece. But there wasn't anything there."
"Of course there wasn't." Ryu replied. "The criminal might have found something as obvious as that and removed it. Goura-san thought the same thing; he wrote a message on the sides, rather than the front. He then scattered the paper around the room."
"Please, try and put it back in order." he handed the police the stack of fax.
"Hey." Mine looked at the officers with him.
"We're done." an officer handed there arranged paper to Mine.
"Kashiya?" Mine gaped when he found the writing on the paper's edge.
"Those are the people who sent this fax." one of the officers remarked. "Kashiya Designs Offices."
"But why is 'Ya' the only character in hiragana?" the other officer pointed out.
"No!" Kazuma protested. "That's not it, detectives."
"Lend it to me." he approached the puzzled Mine.
"I knew it." he looked at the order the papers were arranged. "You ordered it beginning from the first page."
"Hey!" Mine rebuked as Kazuma walked over to the counter.
"The faxes here come in reverse order." Kazuma replied. "They come out on top of the other."
"The faxes at HQ are like that too." one of the officers remarked.
"Is that so?" Mine inquired.
"So when it arrived, the order was like..." Kazuma continued as he rearranged the fax. "Natsumi-san, when you delivered this to Goura-san, you didn't reorder it or anything, did you?"
"No," Mozu replied. "I just took what was there."
"I knew it." Kazuma replied. "Just as I thought."
"Here you go, it's done." he declared after a while and showed the written edge to everybody else. "Now what does it say? You can read it, right? It says Hitsuki."
"What?" Mine gasped.
"This was the second hint." Kazuma added. "The way the fax arrives. We were surprised that the characters changed if you line the paper up in reverse. But we were even more surprised when they looked like the name of the sender lined up in the wrong order!"
"This is a trap." Hitsuki said. "A trap set up by Goura as he killed himself! He tried to set me up before he committed suicide!"
"What do you mean?" Kyu asked.
"I..." Hitsuki started. "I... I was his lover."
"What?" Kyu, Megumi and Kinta gasped.
"What did you say?" Obana inquired.
"It seemed as if the corruption affiliated behind this case was about to be made public." Hitsuki replied. "So I went and said my goodbyes. And then this happened. He was really in trouble."
"That's impossible!" Kinta protested. "You didn't look like that kind of person at all when you were visiting your boyfriend's grave."
"You can't judge a book by it's cover." Hitsuki snorted. "Ah yes, I'll admit that I was in Goura-san's room when you passed by. It's not unusual for lovers to be together in the same room with the lights off, is it?"
Lying through her teeth, huh? Ami mused as Kyu and Megumi blushed at Hitsuki's implication.
"Don't make such an obvious lie, please." Kyu besieged.
"But it does make sense." Mine noted.
"See?" Hitsuki barked. "It would appear that to be DDS that doesn't make sense. How was I supposed to kill him in the first place? No, not just me. It's impossible to murder someone in a locked room and escape!"
"Because that locked room murder was so perfect, it doesn't matter if the other murders and suicides are fakes" Ami voiced. "That's what you thought?"
"You're right: as long as the mystery of that locked room is unsolved, the only course of action is to declare it an accident or suicide." Kyu added. "But you know, it's all over. Your final fortress has crumbled."
"What?" Hitsuki gasped.
"Kid!" Mine looked at him.
"Are you saying you've solved the mystery of the locked room?" Jinnai asked.
"Yes." Kyu nodded. "I'll show you how it was done at the scene."
At the warehouse...
"I'm going to recreate the locked room murder." Kyu declared.
"Please observe." he added, showing everyone a map. "This is the way the inside looked at the time. There were only two windows and both of them were locked. The one door leading to the interior was being obstructed by a huge concrete block from the inside."
"I pulled the door out with the construction vehicle." Kinta noted.
"I fixed it." he remarked, looking at the taped up door. "As you can see, it now closes."
"OK." Mine started as he walked towards the door.
"It doesn't open." he noted when the door refused to budge. "Did you lock it or something?"
"No," Kyu replied. "There's a large mass blocking it from the inside, just as we first found."
"With all the doors and windows shut, how did you manage to block the door from the inside?" Obana asked.
"There's only one way." Kyu replied. "The same way the criminal did."
"That's the 3rd hint." Megumi added. "The vinyl sheet under the concrete block."
"I'll recreate this scene." Kyu looked at Mine.
"Yuri-san." he looked over at Hitsuki. "How did you create a perfect locked room murder? The brilliant trick behind it all is..."
"Detective Mine, would you take down the tape and open the door?" he requested.
"Here you go." Kinta handed him a paper cutter.
Sliding the blade up, Mine sliced through the tape holding the door up.
"Here." Kinta added and took the door from Mine.
"What?" Mine gasped when he saw a water-filled wooden box behind the door, a plastic cover preventing the water from leaking out. "That's just cardboard."
"Not just cardboard." Kyu corrected. "In order to block the door, it's been sealed with vinyl and filled with water."
"This is how it's done." he looked at Hitsuki. "Put a vinyl bag on the inside of the cardboard before opening the door and leaving. Place it on the foyer, open the door and walk outside. Then, pull the string attached to the cardboard, pulling it to the dirt floor. Then, using a rubber hose from the fan vent, put water into the cardboard box. This becomes a weight that blocks the door."
"So what?" Mine asked. "It wasn't a cardboard box blocking the door, it was a huge concrete block."
"No," Kyu replied. "That was a trick that fooled us. In other words, she didn't move that heavy concrete block. Just like with the water, she lowered liquid concrete in where it dried and solidified!"
"Inside this?" Obana asked.
"The concrete became solid..." Jinnai added.
"Modern concrete begins to dry in about eight hours." Kinta supplied. "After 24, it will be tough enough to support a car."
"Since those were nearby," Ryu added. "We all thought it was taken from there."
"But the box," Mine pointed out. "What did they do about the box then?"
"Burned it!" Kazuma replied.
"After the concrete hardened, the proof was concealed." Ami explained. "But that alone would be suspicious, so she set fire to the body too. Setting it to follow the legend of Maya-hime's Hitobashira. But there was one part that she couldn't do anything about, the bottom. After the concrete hardened, the vinyl on the bottom couldn't be burnt. So, she used a sheet from the construction site that wouldn't appear suspicious when found."
"The vinyl sheets on the top of that pile of sand were the same color." Kyu added. "So I figured it out."
"Yuri-san." he looked at Hitsuki. "It's over. Just admit it."
"No way." Hachiya gasped.
"Yuri-san, there has to be a reason that someone like you did that!" Kinta remarked. "Right?"
"You're right." Hitsuki sank to her knees. "I did it. I killed those two."
"No way." Hachiya remarked. "You were a traitor."
"You're wrong, Musashi." Kinta corrected. "In order to continue fighting against the dam's construction, which began with her lover, she deliberately became his secretary."
"He's right, Musashi-kun." Hitsuki replied. "That was my goal. But it didn't work at all! No matter how much data I gathered, no matter how much I tried to persuade him against the construction, it didn't matter. They wouldn't listen to me! Money was their only excuse for drowning this village!"
"Then, that was your motive?" Jinnai asked.
"No!" Hitsuki replied.
"Hey, Musashi-kun." she looked at the younger brother of her late lover. "You said it was as if Takatobi and Goura had killed your brother, right?"
"Yeah." Hachiya nodded. "If they hadn't built that dam, then he would never have opposed the construction. He never would have been in that accident."
"It wasn't an accident!" Hitsuki snapped, stunning everybody. "It wasn't an accident. They made it look like one, but it was murder!"
Flashback
"Well, everything turned out all right." Goura remarked. "But Sensei, I was worried when you got into a fight with him. Could you have pushed him off a cliff?"
"Well, maybe." Takatobi replied, the two unaware that Hitsuki was outside the door, eavesdropping. "But thanks to his death, we are now proceeding much smoother.
"Hitobashira generally come with dam construction huh?" Goura joked and the two burst out laughing.
"How awful." Megumi muttered. "That means..."
"If that was the case then you should've come to the police!" Mine told her. "Why?"
"'Why'" Hitsuki echoed bitterly. "I didn't have any proof. And even if they were caught, it wouldn't have quelled my anger. I decided to burn anyone who tried to destroy our village for his own benefit."
"Using the power of the village's guardian, Maya-hime." she declared, drawing out a knife.
"What are you doing?" Mine demanded when Hitsuki pointed the blade her her throat.
"So, ever since this idea was given to me, I decided." Hitsuki announced.
"'Given to her?'" Kazuma echoed.
Pluto! Ryu realized the mastermind behind this.
"That even I succeeded, I would go to him." Hitsuki declared. "The final Hitobashira that will protect this village is me!"
"Stop it!" Hachiya screamed as Hitsuki proceeded to plunge the knife into her neck.
"Yuri-san!" Kinta dashed forward to stop her.
Just then, Obana revealed an stopwatch, activating Hitsuki's hypnosis.
Taking her moment's of hesitation, Kinta jumped at her.
"Yuri-san1' he called out.
With the hypnosis activated, Hitsuki turned the blade onto Kinta's back, preparing to sink the knife into him.
"Kinta!" Kyu gasped.
"Oh no!" Kazuma shouted a warning.
Jinnai came to Kinta's recuse in the nick of time, knocking Hitsuki unconscious with a hand chop to the back.
"Yuri-san!" Kinta caught Hitsuki before she hit the ground.
"Jinnai-san." he looked at the photographer.
"Hypnosis." Ami supplied, as Athena manifested through her.
"Kinta!" the rest of Class Q rushed to his side.
"Hey, you guys." Athena turned to the stunned officers. "Get an ambulance."
"Right!" the two officers replied.
"Kinta!" Kyu rushed over.
"Are you OK?" Megumi asked
"Yeah." Kinta replied.
"What happened?" Mine asked when their attention was caught by the sound of a car.
"That man is..." Muzo gasped as Obana got into his runaway car.
"Obana-san?" Megumi finished her sentence.
"What?" Mine demanded.
"Could that just now have been..." Megumi gasped.
"Pluto." Ryu supplied.
"What?" Kinta hissed. "Damn, they got away?"
"My, my." Jinnai sighed. "I've gotta go back and report this."
"Jinnai-san." Kyu started. "You're with DDS, aren't you?"
"Seeing through my disguise, Class Q is much more skilled than before." Jinnai admitted.
"What?" Kinta gasped as Jinnai chuckled.
"At one time, I was the reporter Jinnai Takuma." Jinnai declared. "Another time I was the waiter of Ryouzanpaku, the inn in the Hyoutanmura Kirihara Masaya. And another time, the butler for the Ichinose family, Ootaguro Tamotsu. I was also Genjira and Karuizawa! Panda! Cactus!"
"I knew it!" Ami sighed as everybody else in Class Q deathpanned.
"But my true identity would be the one who supervises Class Q from the shadows," Jinnai declared, ripping off his disguise. "The right hand of Dan Morihiko, Nanami Koutarou!"
Back in the inn...
"You had a request from the real Jinnai to reveal the corruption behind Takatobi and Kagaki Construction?" Megumi inquired after Nanami-sensei revealed his the reason he was here.
"Yeah." Nanami-sensei replied. "I was surprised when you guys showed up."
"That makes sense." Kazuma mused. "Since you were here, Hongou-sensei relaxed and went back to DDS."
"That's correct." Megumi agreed. "You wouldn't need two of DDS's best detectives supervising Class Q."
"Oh, don't flatter me." Nanami-sensei waved her praise aside.
"But two jobs after the same crime is quite a coincidence." Kinta pointed out.
"I hope that's all to it." Ami noted.
Back in DDS...
"Why did Hongou-sensei leave the crime scene without investigating?" Katagiri-sensei mused.
"That's who he is." Dan-sensei replied. "There must have been some reason."
"I wonder." Katagiri-sensei noted. "It may just be my imagination, but ever since his wounds healed upon returning to DDS, Hongou-sensei's actions have become suspicious."
"I'll go see if there's been any kind of contract from him." she excused herself.
With Katagiri-sensei out of earshot, Dan-sensei pulled out the drawer and took out the picture of him and his late partner.
On the outskirts of the village...
"Ryu-sama." Anubis greeted the waiting Ryu.
"Anubis." Ryu warned. "Stop following me!"
"So your decision remains unchanged?" Anubis asked.
"Tell King Hades that from this point on, we're enemies." Ryu informed him.
"Are you certain?" Anubis inquired.
"I am." Ryu barked and cycled off.
"I have no choice but to set my last resort into action, Ryu-sama." Anubis noted.
Outside the village...
"Thank you very much." Muzo remarked as she and Hachiya sent the Class Q students off.
"If you's like, you can come again." Hachiya added uncertainly.
"Sure! If you really wanted me to, I'd be glad to come again." Kinta added.
"I don't really." Hachiya protested.
"But Ryu's late." Ami noted, covering Kyu's nervous laugh.
"Okay..." she trailed off, upon hearing Ryu's startled exclaim, the said teen bursting out of the bushes.
Then, she winced when Ryu crushed onto the ground.
"Ouch..." Ryu muttered.
"Ryu-kun." Megumi blinked.
"I'm sorry." Ryu apologized. "I ruined your bike."
"No, it was a mess from the start." Muzo told him.
"Never saw that coming." Ami sighed, offering her hand. "Come on, take my hand already, Peacock."
Ryu nodded and allowed her to pull him up.
"You seem different from usual, Ryu." Kyu noted.
"You think?" Ryu asked and laughed.
"Has he changed a bit?" Kinta wondered as Ami dusted the leaves off her live-in boyfriend.
"There's something very strange going on." Kazuma agreed.
Stop acting out of character. Ami passed a mental message to Ryu. You're scaring everyone.
Right, right. Ryu replied jokingly.
"Come on, the crime's been solved." he declared outloud. "Let's go back to DDS."
"Yeah!" everyone else beamed.
Elsewhere...
"That much." the leader of the gang remarked over the phone. "Is it OK?"
"Yeah, try and stir up DDS." Anubis instructed.
SailorStar9: Now that's done, read and review.