Takaaki

"What is that?" Eikichi almost immediately asked.

Ayuna, however, didn't immediately answer, taking a moment to shuffle the papers even though they were bound together. She then held it up so we could see the front. It looked like a title page, simply bearing the words Trapped (which I assumed was the title) and Seiko's name underneath.

"It's a script Seiko was working on, back when we went on the road-trip. One of her own, I mean. A new movie. This isn't actually the original copy that she had with her at the time, but a spare that I acquired later…in any case, it was kept in Seiko's luggage even though a couple of other bits she was working on had been taken along with her phone…"

"I don't get it, though? Why's a play script so important?"

To our surprise, in response to Friede's question, Ayuna simply handed over the script. Friede frowned delicately but took it, and flicked through. We all watched her, practically gawping, but she didn't seem to be bothered as she flicked through, eyes widening with whatever she was reading. Finally, she looked up.

"Is this…?"

"Sort of."

Ayuna took back the script and explained:

"To put it simply, the plot centres around a class of high-schoolers on a trip who find themselves trapped in an old house and forced to do increasingly horrible things…including killing each other as punishment for breaking various rules."

Nobody said a thing at that. Instead, we all looked at each other, the implication thick and heavy between us. Even I didn't dare to make a comment. Eventually though, Ayuna sighed and shook her head.

"I mean, she specialised in horror movies, so it's not that unusual that she'd come up with things like that, you know? But the timing of it-"

"When did she start it?" Azami asked, curiously.

"The year before, thereabouts, if I remember correctly," Ayuna added. "But yeah…if you had seen this before, or known of it, what would you have thought then after we'd ended up in such a situation?"

"That….that it was based on her own work?" Mai gasped. "Does that mean…?"

"No!" Ayuna burst out. "God, no, how could you think something like that, Mai-chan? Do you really think…"

She trailed off and sighed, looked down at the script.

"I'm sorry, Osamu," Seiko looked over and sighed heavily. "Really, I am. I thought I could hold out against this motive too, but I suppose that wasn't true in the end. This was my breaking point."

"B-but, there wasn't a motive…?" Ayuna managed to say.

"Yes, there was."

Surprised, Ayuna and the rest of us looked at Kimiko, whose expression was stony. She flicked her glance over to Seiko who still looked sorrowful, and nodded at her.

"The waiting, the wondering…that itself was meant to be the motive. There never was meant to be something that we'd be gathered together for. Isn't that right?"

The bear did not answer, simply tipping its head back and laughing, laughing, laughing. It was all the answer that we needed. Seiko rubbed her face, then turned to the bear.

"It's time now, isn't it? We may as well begin it."

"Seiko, no!"

Ayuna sighed again.

"Do you all remember the 'your fault' motive?"

"How could we not?" Eikichi said.

I just nodded. Fumiaki, Rin, Teiichi and Sen'ya had all been blamed for being our drivers. Katsuya and Moeka had been blamed for being our Class Representatives. Azami and Akari had been blamed for being our photographers and helping to plan the route…as had Ayuna now I was thinking of it. In fact, the bear had tried to blame all of us, but those were the ones who had been specifically had reasons attached to their so-called guilt.

"Are you saying that when the bear pointed to her, it wasn't just to round off the motive, but because of this script?" Eizo asked, brow furrowing.

"Essentially, yes."

"How?" I asked.

"Look for yourself."

I took it and opened it up on a page at random, and stared.

Naoko looks over at the mascot uncertainly, her hand hesitating over the lever.

Naoko
(trembling)

Do I…do I really have to do this?

Mascot
(sneering, points to the guns above her head)

If you want to die along with her, then please feel free to just sit back…but your friends will die too!

Kenji
(slams fist against wall)

Just get it over and done with, dammit. I'm dying anyway, aren't I?

Naoko starts to CRY, loudly and next to her Marika leans over and manoeuvres her hand to go over the lever and PUSHES it forward. Both girls FLINCH VIOLENTLY and turn away as gears start to clink and-

"This is an execution, isn't it?" I asked, waving the page at her. "It's like the executions.."

"Let me see?" Eizo asked.

I handed it over, and he had a look, frowning.

"This…sliced with ribbons thing…..it's like Lao, isn't it?"

I hadn't read that far, so I just nodded. Eizo handed it over to Ayuna and she took it quietly, closing it again and tidying the pages.

"I don't get why this is significant." Eikichi said. "How many people knew that she was working on this?"

"Before she showed it to me? Nobody knew, specifically…except one person. I don't suppose you remember that movie director, the one who's related to Kazuo Tengan's lawyer…"

"Wait, wait, wait?" Eizo's eyes were wide. "You mean…him? The one always hanging around us?"

"I remember him, vaguely…some of us thought he was creepy…" Azami mused.

"He's dabbled in the film industry before, and though I don't know how he came to know about this particular script and take a particular interest in it…well, that's what happened."

"So, wait, are you saying that all this time you may have had an idea who the mastermind, as he was called, could have been and you didn't say?" Friede asked, her tone slightly demanding.

"Excuse me?"

Ayuna whipped around and glared at Friede.

"We all decided not to say anything, remember? How do you think I could have said that without dropping Seiko in it? Without explaining exactly what happened?"

"But, still…"

"In any case, if you didn't notice I got you all here because I want to say something now. I'm at least trying to fix my mistakes but we clearly can't say the same about you!"

"Ayuna-chan, please!" Mai cried out.

"Woah, woah, guys!" Eizo hurriedly said at almost the same time.

Mai and Eizo exchanged startled glances while Ayuna and Friede glared at each other. The rest of us just sat there, waiting for the next person to make a point, or ask something. Or, I assumed they were. I was just sitting there, feeling trapped. The windows were still there, the curtains flung open. I could see the door, and though it was closed it most certainly wasn't locked. I wasn't trapped, I wasn't.

But everything felt like it was shrinking, all of a sudden. I had not really cared for that man back then, barely paid attention. I mean, sure I watched films but I didn't really care about the lives of the people behind the works unless there was a philosophical question that I could ruminate upon from their life stories, unless they were like thought experiments. Mostly I just watched the things. I certainly wasn't into horror. But now, I was wondering, could I have noticed something if only I'd paid proper attention? Could I have?

I was not trapped, but I felt trapped. I needed to leave. I needed to…that man lived in this city, right? Or nearby? Surely…

"J-Jinsai-kun?"

"Wait, where are you go-?"

I didn't listen, couldn't listen.

I just had to leave.

…

Gabriel

I rubbed my eyes tiredly as I exited the video and moved onto the next one, making sure to increase the speed slightly. I'd seen a lot worse in other cases, but there was something about this that was getting to me. If not for the hoops that the kids were going through just to try and protect their privacy the scenes would have been mundane-getting changed, doing up hair, answering the door, reading, writing in a diary…

Halfway through this particular recording of Kimiko's room, I heard the door open and immediately paused the video. The Superintendent came in and looked around and her eyes met mine.

"Detective Matsu, could you give me an update?"

"Yes, yes, sure."

Admittedly a bit too eagerly, I got up and went over to the timeline that we were establishing and pointed to it.

"We're establishing a time line of when the students died based on when the last sets of film footage for their rooms were to corroborate the estimated times of death from the bodies." I explained.

I tapped the incomplete timeline, with sticky notes indicating that Kiran had died on the 15th of April while it was most likely that Katsuya had been the next day. Then, Rin had died nine days later with Fumiaki most likely being on the same day.

"We'd wondered if Akari Kishinami had died immediately after Fumiaki Amai, but it turns out that actually she moved into her sister's room by then instead. I'm alternating between her and Kimiko Tsukuda's videos at the moment."

"Yes, I think that came up, didn't it, that the twins had started sharing their room after a while? "

"Yeah. She must have been particularly scared," I mused. "The last video of hers I checked she did look particularly tense and she seemed to be making a point of checking the beds. A few times she practically dragged her sister into the room before she could relax."

I paused before adding:

"I mean, nobody ever particularly relaxes, but you know."

Shizuka nodded and studied the timeline.

"So, so far it roughly matches our estimates, which is good to know. Has anything else come up in anybody else's videos?"

I looked around at the detectives and officers who were helping me comb through the videos diligently.

"Not at the moment, or it'd be noted on this timeline or elsewhere."

I pointed at some other notes that had been made with observations, including a few instances where some of the kids had attempted to throw things over the camera only to have taken them off later, apparently being berated by what looked like an animatronic bear (I'd put question marks around that one, since even after looking over it and getting someone else too I was still not sure what I had seen); some putting chairs underneath their door handles, and the different way they were handling the Electro-IDs they had been given. Shizuka read these quietly and nodded, then looked at me.

"Have you been here until morning?"

"Yes, I have."

Shizuka nodded and considered this, and then said:

"Take a short break and then come back. I'll take over for a short stint."

"Yes, Ma'am!"

I held in my sigh of relief until I was outside the room, and then I leant back against the wall, closing my eyes. Then, I fished my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time. The twins were still in school, but I knew Hibiki was working from home today. He wouldn't mind if I gave him a call, had a chat, made plans for whatever extravagant date night and family outing we could plan once this investigation was done.

Yes, I'll do that. Then, once I had, my mind would be cleared and I'd be able to get back to work. And finally, perhaps get justice once and for all.

…

Shizuka

When Gabriel had gone, I looked around at the others and noticed that a few of them were staring at me.

"Anybody who's been here since morning, take a break and then if you can't find someone suitable to take over come back here. If you've only been here for the last couple of hours, keep going for a couple more. I will be covering for Detective Matsu until he comes back."

I didn't see a problem with this, as there was nothing particular that I myself had to do beyond keeping tabs on all the aspects of the investigation and this undoubtedly fell into that remit so I settled down and continued with the video that Gabe had been watching. Checking the title, it appeared to be a video of Azami's room, dated the 27th of April. I watched as the girls got up, seemed to debate who went into the bathroom first, and then as it cut to the bathroom shots. It then went back to the bedroom for a moment when Akari came out and I watched her take a piece of paper out of the pocket of the pyjamas she had just hung up and take a look at it. From the angle, it didn't seem like zooming in would allow us to see what the note was, so I made a note and moved on. The rest of the video for that day seemed to simply show the twins coming back in and undressing for the day, before sitting in bed for a while talking and then going to bed. It occurred to me that it was strange that none of the videos came with audio, but then again these videos had clearly only been kept for the visuals.

I went straight onto the next day's video for Azami's room, and the morning portion went much the same although Akari didn't look at any note. In the evening, though, Akari was dragging a pouting Azami in, looking troubled. The girls appeared to squabble briefly before Azami wilted and gave her sister a hug. Akari patted Azami's head and gave her a slightly scolding look before heading into the bathroom. The two then proceeded to clean up and get ready for bed, both going straight to sleep rather than staying up and talking as they had the night before. I expected the video to end there, but instead, it seemed to run on. Frowning, I looked closer.

Because the speed was up, it didn't take very long before slowly, one of the twins stirred. Akari. I watched her sit up and glance at Azami before reaching into her pocket and taking out the sheet of paper, opening it out in her hand and staring at it. She looked from the note, to her sister, and back again before sighing and putting the note in her pocket and then reaching under the mattress.

Hold on a minute…wasn't there something…? I was sure that Gabe had said something about Akari checking the beds, but…my thoughts paused as Akari straightened up again, holding something carefully. At first it was obscured, but as she carefully got up, clearly taking care to make sure that Azami wasn't woken, I could see it clearly.

A knife.

Gripped, I watched as Akari held the knife by her side and walked to the bedroom door. She glanced back at the sleeping and utterly oblivious Azami, her expression haunted, but then she gritted her teeth, opened the door and left. And there, the video ended.

Quickly, I went to April 29th and watched the first few moments, enough to see Azami wake up and get ready, though clearly surprised and worried, constantly glancing at the bed, and then opening the door hesitantly before starling as if hearing something and scrambling down the corridor. The scene then merged into another, but I didn't look at that one, instead returning to the 28th and playing it, over and over, until I was sure:

Here was evidence of one of the victims walking to their own death.

…

Eikichi

"I'll go after him."

I wasn't sure why exactly I'd volunteered myself to do that, but then again it wasn't as if I had any idea why it was that Takaaki had suddenly just upped and left. I assumed he was coming back, but even so. Standing up, it looked like that nobody else was planning to until:

"I'll come with you," Eizo said. "He didn't look too good, did he? Azami, are you alright here?"

"Of course," Azami frowned. "I'm not the one you need to worry about right now."

"No…did anyone know he was a flight risk?" I asked.

"Flight risk?" Ayuna raised an eyebrow. "Dramatic, much? Also, no. How would we?"

I decided to ignore the jab. After all, that promise had essentially crumbled, so what did it matter now? With Eizo following, I quickly left the room and headed down. Takaaki had clearly managed to leave the hotel in the short time that had lapsed, but once we were out of the hotel proper, it was not that difficult to spot him further down the street. He was walking fast, but I couldn't tell if he was aiming for something, or aiming to get away from something. Either way I sped up and called out.

"Jinsai! Hey, Jinsai!"

Eizo echoed me, gaining us more than a few annoyed looks as we tried to not shove past any passers-by, but after a few moments we were soon closing the gap.

"Jinsai, stop!" Eizo called out. "Wait a moment!"

Takaaki stopped abruptly, and turned around, blinking at us.

"Oh. What are you doing here?" he asked, sounding blank.

"Coming after you, silly!" Eizo said before I could give a more biting response. "What happened there?"

Takaaki kept blinking, and eventually ran a hand through his messy hair. He looked around, bewildered for a moment and Eizo softened.

"There's a park bench there, let's sit down."

Gently, still smiling, Eizo took Takaaki's elbow and steered him to the bench that had been pointed out, and I followed. Takaaki sat cross-legged at one end, and Eizo plonked down next to him. This of course left me the space at the other end, so I settled myself there.

"It's because I can."

Both Eizo and I stared at Takaaki, and eventually I sighed.

"Because you can what?"

"Escape. Sometimes I just…need to know, that I can get up and walk away, that I won't be stopped by a steel plate or guns or any kind of lock. I feel like sometimes, if I don't test it, that I'll be taking the ability to escape for granted and then I'll lose it again. Have you ever felt like that?"

This was quite possibly one of the most direct things I'd ever heard Takaaki say, but it didn't make much sense to me even for that. I opened my mouth to ask a question but then shut it abruptly.

The rain continued pouring, the drops looking impossibly huge as they dropped down on the ground, the plants, the fences. Onto me. I held out my arms and watched my sleeves darken and get heavier with water. I watched my skin became shiny, tinier drops dripping off my fingertips. Felt my hair get plastered to my head. The sky was grey and utterly dull, and yet somehow miraculous in its expanse, and I could not stop looking back up at it.

"Eikichi?"

I startled and turned to where my mother had wheeled up, her brow furrowed.

"Eikichi, it's pouring, what are you doing? You'll catch a cold."

I stared at her for a long time, feeling the rain continue to beat down. I stared back up at the sky for a moment, then started to shiver.

"You're right. Sorry, Mum."

I stepped back in, ignoring her questions as I towelled myself off and changed my clothes, and then I headed to the kitchen window, leaning against it and watching the rain, still relentless. From here, I would not be soaked by it.

But here, I could still see it.

"When I moved into dorms for uni," Eizo was saying. "One of the first things I did was check the locks-the doors, the windows, everywhere. The door locks were okay but the window locks…whoever had chosen those had clearly taken the lazy route, they wouldn't have stopped anything. So I blew off the rest off freshman orientation to research the best window locks, then went out to buy some and on a day my lectures finished early I went back and changed all the locks before anyone else got back. I was in the middle of doing the kitchenette windows when my roomie at the time came back…I remember his face, just the complete utter bug eyes…"

Eizo laughed, sadly.

"When the rainy season started that year, after we came out, I couldn't get enough of the rain. It seemed like the most…miraculous thing after what had felt like forever not seeing the sky at all."

I stopped at that. It was all I could offer. Any more than that felt too much, as though I was ripping off yet more of my skin, offering up yet more of my soul. Eizo nodded kindly at me though, which was something.

"Maybe," Takaaki sighed. "You had forgotten."

I grunted at that. For a moment, we just sat there silently, each of us thinking of our own lingering hang-ups. I'd naturally managed to once again normalise the rain, because of course I had. I couldn't spend the rest of my life soaking myself to death once a year, could I? And yet sometimes, when the drops poured down relentlessly I found myself looking out of the window at it all. If I was walking in it and nobody was there to watch, I'd extend a hand from underneath my umbrella and take in the cold, abrupt sensations. I paid close attention to the way puddles splashed beneath my boots, how drops slid off the ends of canopies. I hadn't stopped noticing the rain. I wasn't sure I could.

"We lost so much, didn't we?" Eizo said after a moment.

"That goes without saying." I replied, slowly.

"No, no, I don't mean…well, I do, of course but also…everything afterwards." Eizo tried to explain. "The decisions we made and the way things turned out afterwards. I mean, we all managed more or less, to get ourselves something approaching a life but don't you ever wonder if it could have been different if we had stuck together?"

"There was no way we could have."

"Couldn't we?" Eizo challenged, before sighing. "Well, I don't know. I like to think we could have, maybe…but there's so much we all could have had…things that could have been but never did happen, all because of this."

"You've got a particular thing you're thinking about. Or I should say, a particular someone."

Eizo startled and looked over at Takaaki before laughing softly and shaking his head.

"That obvious, huh?"

He then looked over to me.

"Azami." He said, simply.

"You know," I pointed out. "Even if none of this had happened, or even if we'd done what you would have preferred and stuck together to help us through it all, that wouldn't have guaranteed anything. You may not have still been together. It was high school, after all."

"I know that, silly, "Eizo huffed. "But that's not the point really."

"Then what is?"

Eizo didn't answer immediately, instead just looking out ahead of him. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and then his chin in his hands. When he did eventually speak again, his voice was softer and dreamier:

"I mean, I can't lie to you and say that I'm not hoping for some kind of happily ever after, or that I don't imagine that that's what could have happened. But I do know that we were young back then, and in a normal life anything could have happened. Maybe we would have dated a while and broken it off because we thought we were better as friends. Maybe we would have gotten serious and tried to make a real go of it and have it not work out. Perhaps we'd have broken up once, and then gotten back together again.

Or maybe, just maybe, it would have been the real once-in-a-lifetime deal. Any of those things could have been the thing that was supposed to have happened, the way our lives were meant to go and while I would have been sad at anything that wasn't happy, because duh that's…well, that's how life was meant to go, right? Whatever my life was, the worst heartbreaks that I endured should have been of that variety. All of this, what happened to us…it stole that. It stole the what was meant to actually happen, it crashed right through our lives and wrecked it and I thought I'd never, ever, ever get to know even a flavour of what could have been. And you know, I can't just pick up where we left off, twenty years ago, but all the same…"

Another pause, and then he concluded with:

"I cared, you know? Yes, we were nowhere near serious just yet, but we were happy. And I'm sure…I'm sure that for some portion of time at least, we could have continued that way."

Well now, what could I say to that? I wasn't sure that I agreed with all of what he thought, but I thought I understood a little of it. I remembered thinking it was stupid for us to take off across the country more or less footloose and fancy-free, but I'd pictured disasters like getting lost, a flat tire on a motorway, food poisoning. Not the thing that had actually happened.

"You all know, Kimiko was important to me."

Now we both stared at Takaaki, whose voice was almost disturbingly blank for what he was saying. He barely reacted as he continued:

"That's it, that's how I would describe it. She was important to me. I suppose you'd have called it friendship back then. But still, that's not the point. I don't talk about this, any of this, but when I tried to, to someone who didn't know us well…even my family, what they'd ask is 'Did you love her?' 'Were you dating?' 'Do you think you would have gotten together?'. Now, it's not like I could ever know the answers to the last one, but the first two were a definite no and that, apparently was a disappointment. Or made me a disappointment. After all, if it's not family or it's not romance, it's not supposed to be important, right? I could tell, that's what people think. And while usually I enjoy thinking about all the what-ifs and whys and so on…sometimes I wonder, isn't what I actually had in the first place enough? Why do I have to wonder about things lost or that never were in order to legitimise any grief that I might have? What's wrong with simply being important?"

"There's nothing wrong with that, at all." Eizo said strongly. "Nothing at all."

After that pronouncement, there was a silence as we all sat there on the bench, looking out at the scenery in front of us. I had no follow up for those two soul-bearings, nothing that wouldn't seem dismissive or inadequate. So I sat there and let the silence settle the way they were letting it. Silence enough for a memory to drift in.

"Upupupu, remember, the motive is coming soooooooooooooon…"

"You keep fucking saying that!" Sen'ya exploded at the bear's rapidly retreating form. "For fuck's sake!"

"I do believe he's trying to wind us up, no?"

Sen'ya whipped around to glare at Lilian.

"No blimming shit, Sherlock."

"Yes, it does seem like it, given he hasn't actually said what the motive is for days…" Friede mused. "What could it be though? What else could they give or threaten us with?"

"Ooooooh, ooooh, maybe it'll be a treasure hunt this time!" Yuki exclaimed.

"Yuki, it's never going to be a treasure hunt," Yuri said quickly. "You know it's not."

"Awwwww, that's mean!"

Yuki pouted and Yuri just patted his head wearily as we all stared at each other.

"We just need to stay calm," Seiko said. "Sooner or later, he'll tell us."

"I sure hope so, or I don't care what the rule is about assaulting the bear, I swear-"

"You are not going to assault the bear, for crying out loud." I told him brusquely. "That's the last thing anyone needs."

Sen'ya's shoulders sagged, and he glared at me.

"I know, I know."

I rubbed my face. There were so many scenes like that I could recall, all of them leading to Yuri's death. And to Seiko's too, of course. With hindsight, I could see that such a thing was inevitable. There was only so much suspense any of us could have taken and yet now, knowing what we all knew now, I realised that that was barely the sum of it. I did not believe for a second that Seiko's role had been active, or willing, but the burden of it must have been heavy. If it had been me, I could not be so sure that I would not have succumbed instead.

Rubbing my face, it occurred to me that for all this, we still hadn't actually found out what Ayuna wanted to propose in terms of us finally coming clear.

"We should get back," I said. "We never actually came to a conclusion about anything."

"Did we not?" Takaaki blinked.

"No…"

"You're right, let's go-"

Eizo started to get up but paused as his phone went off. Fishing it out of his pocket, he answered it and straightened. After listening to whoever it was on the line, he came out with:

"They…what for? Did they say?"

A pause.

"She's alright though, yeah? No…arrest or anything?"

Ah, of course. He'd had that expression on his face when talking about his feelings for her, of course it was Azami they were talking about.

"Us as well? No, I'll go straight over there…okay, okay, bye. Bye."

Eizo hung up and looked over at us, biting his lip, frowning deeply.

"What is it?" Takaaki asked curiously, before I could.

"They've found something on the video clips."

Spent some time looking up formats of screenplays and scripts to try and write the little screenplay snippet for this chapter. Of course, with the limitations of this website it's not a perfect replica of a real screenplay. Nonetheless, I think it gets the point across.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter!