A Delayed Departure
Cast:
Kiriya, Irizawa Kiriya - age 24
Irizawa Kaoru - age 22
Cure Mint, Akimoto Komachi - age 23
July, 2014
The ceremony has been completed. Kiriya and Kaoru are now husband and wife. Likewise, the rituals with the bouquet and the garter have been carried out. Cake and ice cream. Music and dancing.
People have been watching Cure Mint. Komachi is famous for her pranks, and especially famous for her wedding pranks. Especially when her friends are getting married, and Kaoru is one such friend. Oddly, she has not been seen to leave at any time during the ceremony, nor during the reception.
By tradition, and according to plan, this is the part where the newlyweds are to leave the venue. They are to get into a car (Kiriya's) that has been ritually vandalized with easily-removed markings, and from there proceed to the airport and their honeymoon.
However, the car is missing. By all accounts, it should have been right outside the exit. Instead, there a detailed chalk drawing on the pavement. It is a car, the very car that ought to be parked there, enclosed within an arrow that directs them around the side of the hotel that has hosted the event.
The wedding party and the guests search in that direction. How could they not? Cure Mint trails behind the rest. Nobody doubts that she is the instigator, but "whodunnit" is not her preferred brand of mystery.
A second arrow directs the seekers around a corner, and points directly at the hotel's swimming pool. A pool that is enclosed by a perfectly intact chain-link fence, one and a half meters tall. At the center of the pool, Kiriya's car, wheels resting on the surface of the water.
There is no such thing as magic in this world.