A/N: Made sure to post the next chapter, though it wasn't easy. I've been sick the last couple days, and that made rereading it a bit of a headache. Still, I had this chapter pretty much squared away beforehand, so it shouldn't be too damning.
*Dong, Ding, Dong!*
"WELL, THIS IS QUITE THE PREDICAMENT YOU'RE ALL INVOLVED IN. THE BODY OF ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS HAS JUST BEEN DISCOVERED. NOW, I'M AWARE MANY OF YOU ARE PROBABLY CONFUSED, NOT TO MENTION DISORIENTED. I AM WILLING TO GIVE YOU SOME LENIENCY IN REGARDS TO HOW YOU SPEND YOUR INVESTIGATION TIME. OTHERWISE, I'M AFRAID THIS MUST BE PLAYED OUT THE WAY IT HAS PREVIOUSLY. ONCE I BELIEVE YOU'RE READY, YOU MUST COME TOGETHER TO FIGURE OUT THE TRUTH OF THIS MATTER. I WILL BE PROVIDING THE APPROPRIATE FILE SOON ENOUGH. THAT IS ALL."
As IMONO's voice faded out, Naoko, Yori, and Mareo exchanged looks of fear and concern. Not only did they just find one of their friends dead, covered head to toe in viscous molasses, but it seemed like they were simply unaware of what could possibly have caused his death. Naoko had a gap in his memory, and nobody else had given any indication thus far that they knew any more than him. If they did, for whatever reason, Naoko figured he'd have to ask about it himself.
"Do either of you remember anything about…this?" Naoko asked.
"I'm afraid not," Yori replied. "Obviously, something happened to all of us, and I doubt we were simply knocked unconscious."
"The last thing that I can recall is that we were waiting for Bankei to answer my inquiry," Mareo explained. "Kimi said something about an odd feeling, and soon after, I found myself waking up in the common room."
"Same here," Naoko replied.
"That's what happened to me as well," Yori added.
Suddenly, their phones all went off simultaneously. It must've been the file, Naoko thought. Perhaps it could shine some light on their situation? He was going to take a look at it, but before he could, some more people rushed into the room. First Ishi, then Eryu, and then Kimi, and it looked like Mariko wasn't too far behind either.
"What's going on?! What happened?!" Ishi asked frantically, her eyes darting around the room. "Wait…Bankei? Is she…?"
"No, she's fine," Naoko replied. "It's…It's Takeshi. He-"
"What?!" Ishi exclaimed, rushing to Naoko's side in order to get a look at what he'd just uncovered. "Holy shit, Takeshi?! Is that him, under all that…What is that?"
"It's molasses," Yori explained. "This room had a large tank of it for distillation purposes. Now…I'm not sure what happened, but if everyone else is accounted for, then it's definitely him."
"But how did he…How did that happen?" Ishi asked, baffled.
"Like I said, I'm not sure," Yori reiterated. "Based on the state of the room, though, it looks as though some sort of violent altercation occurred."
"Well, yeah, but that's not just for this room," Kimi pointed out. "The common room is a total mess, and I must've…Well, okay, I don't know what I did, specifically, but something definitely happened to me."
"I noticed earlier you looked rather hurt," Mareo replied.
"Uh huh," Kimi confirmed. "It feels like I got hit in the stomach. And I mean real fucking hard."
"I'm feeling pretty sore myself," Eryu responded. "That, and I think someone might've…" He paused and shook his head, looking embarrassed. "You know what, I'll get back to that. There's worse things to worry about right now. Like that nobody here seems to remember anything about what happened." Multiple other people murmured in response, confirming that none of them had any memory of recent events.
"Wait," Mariko said. "If nobody remembers what happened to us, how are we supposed to figure this out?"
"Someone probably knows something, at least," Kimi pointed out. "It's not like one of us couldn't just be hiding it. That and, obviously, someone still hasn't given us a response."
"Right," Naoko replied, glancing over at Bankei. "She still hasn't woken up yet."
"Here, let me try to wake her up," Eryu offered, moving towards her and doing his best to shake her awake. It took several seconds, but eventually Bankei seemed to respond to it, as she woke up with a start.
"Wha-?" She opened her eyes and they began darting across the room. Once she was finished, she seemed to become calm once more. "Oh. I'm awake. Hello there, Eryu. I can see by the look on your face that you have questions."
"I do," Eryu confirmed, stepping away from her. "Takeshi is dead, and we don't seem to know how it happened, because there's a gap in all our memories. Do you know anything about that?"
"Takeshi is dead, eh?" Bankei responded curiously, glancing over at the shape in the molasses. "Well, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. I too seem to have a gap in my memory."
"Huh?" Naoko responded. "How did that happen?"
"Do you truly think I'm in a better position to answer that question than you are?" Bankei asked rhetorically.
"Oh, shut the fuck up," Kimi interjected. "For all we know, you could've manipulated us all into getting together so that another murder would happen."
"Now that's just factually incorrect," Bankei retorted.
"What?!" Kimi exclaimed in frustration.
"I'll admit, while Bankei is certainly manipulative," Mareo weighed in, "I'm not entirely sure how she would make us lose our memories."
"How we lost our memories seems to be a difficult question to answer in general," Yori reasoned. "We'll have to solve that through our investigation."
"Okay. So then what should we do now?" Mariko asked. "Should we…take a look at that file?"
"File?" Ishi responded confusedly.
"Oh, right." Naoko had almost forgotten about it. That seemed like the best source of information available to them at the moment. He grabbed his phone and opened the file.
"'The victim is Takeshi Alfonso. His time of death is around 12:30 PM. His body was found slumped in front of a large liquid storage tank in the distillery, underneath a thick layer of molasses. Cause of death appears to be suffocation.'"
"12:30?" Eryu said to himself confusedly. "The get-together happened at noon. What could've happened within that thirty minutes?"
"What time is it now?" Mariko asked.
"It's about 3PM," Yori answered.
"So, about thirty minutes after the gap in our memories started, Takeshi died, and at some point after, we fell unconscious," Naoko figured.
"Why did we fall unconscious, though?" Mariko asked.
"We'll have to figure all that out during our investigation as well," Yori replied. "For now, let's start with the basics. We'll have to investigate this floor as thoroughly as we can. We'll also need to get a better look at Takeshi's body for a more in-depth inspection."
"I'm afraid I can't help with cleaning up his body," Mareo said. "That molasses is highly viscous. If it got into contact with my suit, it could get inside it, and cleaning it up would be a hazardous affair."
"That's alright," Eryu replied. "I think we can manage."
With any luck, they could, but investigating was always easier said than done. And since everyone alive seemed to be lacking in recent memories, getting reliable testimony from them was unlikely. So it seemed like the best thing to do was simply go over everything the best they could and extrapolate from there. With any luck, what was left of that missing thirty minutes or so would be enough to piece things together.
Starting with the distillery, there was a lot of what Naoko originally noticed. The blood trail that led to Takeshi's corpse also led to a spot in the common room, in front of a chair. He'd have to take another look at the chair, though. So, he just noted that Takeshi probably went to or was taken to the distillery after something happened to him that led to a lot of bleeding.
There were also the various signs of a fire that he'd initially noticed. Discolored floors and burnt, slightly cracked glass shards showed that at some point, the flammable liquids stored inside the distillery were released from their containers, then ignited. A lot of the glass shards were on the floor, though some were on the counter, and those shards seemed untouched by the fire. Additionally, the discoloration and blackened glass went in what appeared to be a semi-diagonal line on the floor, going from one end of the room to the other. It looked like it was just enough to split the room into two halves, and the only saving grace, danger-wise, was that one of those halves had the door leading out of the room.
One half of that "line" ended near the glass cabinet, which had its cabinet doors wide open and its contents destroyed, leading to a mess of charred glass underneath it. Going to that area of the room, though, Naoko noticed something on a nearby corner of the counter. That corner of the counter was rather close to where the cabinet was, and seemed to be where a lot of the spilled liquid originated from, given all the glass around that area. Aside from all those details, it also looked like that specific part of the countertop might've been chipped. Naoko wasn't sure why that would be, since, after all, the rest of the counter seemed undamaged. Still, he took note of it, since he was quite sure that that was new.
At that point, Naoko decided to turn to Mareo who, while he wasn't participating in cleaning up Takeshi's body, was still helping the investigation in the room. "How could a fire have started in this room?" He wondered aloud.
"Well, given the amount of flammable materials that were stored in here," Mareo began, "I would have to assume that something as small as a single spark could potentially have caused an ignition."
"Where'd the spark come from, then?" Naoko asked. "I know there's some electrical equipment that could potentially cause a spark, or even just a small bit of flame. There's hotplates, bunsen burners…"
"Yes, I can see the logic in that," Mareo supposed. "Still, those items are on the counter, and the fire seemed to have occurred only on the ground, despite there seemingly having been some flammable liquid on the counter."
"Yeah," Naoko replied, seeing what Mareo was getting at. "It doesn't look like any of the electrical equipment was knocked over, either. So I could imagine it being caused by something else. There's just the question of how the flammable materials got spread across the room."
"Given the large quantity of shattered glass, I would have to assume that something rather treacherous occurred here," Mareo reasoned. "Even before the fire. And after, well, not only would the fire itself have been a concern, but it could potentially have caused harmful gasses to be released into the air."
"That's true," Naoko agreed. "Do you think that could've played a role in Takeshi's death?"
"Well, depending on the exact materials burned and how much harmful gas was released," Mareo began, "it could have caused him serious harm. Especially if there were enough toxic elements in the air at any point. If the room's ventilation wasn't sufficient, that could certainly end up happening."
"Ventilation?" Naoko asked, looking around the room. He supposed that the room had more in the way of ventilation, at least from what could be seen, compared to other rooms. Presumably, that was due to the obvious danger of airborne poisons, since they'd been working with some rather dangerous stuff. In fact, the laboratory probably also had some especially robust ventilation for the same reason. "I guess that would help, in the case of a fire."
"Yes, but what would help more would be a fire extinguisher," Mareo pointed out. "Speaking of…I don't see any in this room. Have there ever been any fire extinguishers in this room?"
"I know there's one in the laboratory," Naoko replied. "I remember because when we were experimenting, we had no idea which compounds that we made would and wouldn't be flammable. I guess the last time we worked in this room, we put back some stuff we took from the lab, including the fire extinguisher. I…guess it would've been handy if we'd left it here."
"Well, yes, it would be," Mareo supposed. "But, then again, you all had no reason to think that a fire would break out in this room while you weren't currently working in it."
Naoko sighed. "Yeah, I guess that's true. I guess we should just focus on how things are now. For example…" He glanced over to something he'd noticed previously. "There's some medical grade bandages on the counter there."
"From the fourth floor medical room, if memory serves correctly," Mareo noted. "It appears as though the bag of bandages was brought here by someone." He moved over to it and lifted it up. "There's a couple of small glass fragments underneath it. These, too, appear to have been untouched by the fire."
"So, someone must've put them there after the glass stuff got broken," Naoko deduced. "That's interesting, I guess. Aside from that…is there anything else here to examine? I don't see anything else myself."
"Well, cleaning up that mess in front of the molasses tank seems as though it will take some time," Mareo replied. "Once it's been cleaned up some, investigating the tank, as well as Takeshi's body, should be much easier. Until then, perhaps we should take this investigation elsewhere."
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," Naoko agreed.
From there, the most obvious place to go was the common room, as that was where he was before losing his memory, as well as where he and many others first regained consciousness. He stepped out of the distillery and saw it was still a mess. Turned over furniture, blood, drink cups on the floor, their contents spilling out…and that was just the more obvious stuff. Something that was a bit less in-your-face, but still quite noticeable, was right there when Naoko left the distillery.
"What the…?" He moved over and knelt down to take a look at something on the ground that he hadn't taken note of previously, and that he hadn't seen in some time. It was, of all things, a shovel. Or, more specifically, the shovel that Haru showed him once.
"A shovel?" Mareo said aloud. "What's that doing here?"
"I don't know," Naoko admitted. "It looks like someone put it off to the side here, but…I thought that Eryu was keeping this in his room."
"Huh? Why was it in his room?" Mariko asked.
"Well," Naoko responded, "originally, it was in Haru's room. He made it for us when we were sprucing up the pool room for that party."
"Haru made that?" Kimi responded confusedly. "Does that mean that when you threw that party, it was just a cover so that you guys could make a simple hand tool without IMONO noticing? Because that sounds like a pretty big fucking waste of Haru's skills."
"No, it wasn't just for that," Naoko insisted. "At least, not originally. But yeah, we had Haru make us some things on the side. Then we moved it to Eryu's room when we moved Haru to that cell."
"Wait," Ishi said. "So, that was what was in that container in his room?"
"Uh huh," Naoko nodded.
"Huh," Ishi replied. "Well, okay, I guess that kinda makes sense. So, like, someone took it out of that container, and then brought it here, right?"
"Who did that, though?" Mariko asked. "Eryu?"
"I dunno," Ishi admitted. "That, or maybe someone, like, took his room key from him."
"That sounds like something one would need to ask Eryu about in person," Mareo pointed out. "For now, there's still a lot of ground to cover. For instance, Takeshi's blood trail seems like a rather prominent clue."
"Oh, uh, yeah," Mariko replied nervously. "It looks like it leads over to the distillery, but at the start of it, in front of that chair, there's…a lot of splatter."
"It sort of seems as though he were sitting, or standing in front of it," Naoko began, "and then something happened that caused him to start bleeding heavily. But…what could've caused that much bleeding?"
"Some sorta weapon, I guess," Kimi supposed, cocking her head in Naoko's direction. "Does that shovel you got have any blood on it?"
Naoko glanced down at the shovel. "No, I don't see any. It must've been something else around here. We'll have to do some more investigating around here, for sure."
"Yeah, that seems about right," Kimi supposed, looking around the room. Her eyes stopped on something within view, but she just gave it a disgusted look and turned her view away from it. Looking where she looked, he could see why she reacted that way.
"Oh," he said aloud. "Looks like someone threw up on that couch."
"Yeah," Kimi responded bitterly. "Threw up right on my couch."
"You do realize it's not exactly your couch, right?" Mareo pointed out.
Kimi sighed. "I know, I know. Still, I think I have a right to be a little mad that someone threw up on it."
"Oh, absolutely," Mareo replied. "Then again, I should point out that for all we know, it could have been you."
"What?!" Kimi exclaimed. "Why would I do that?!"
"You may not have wanted to," Mareo clarified. "But you still could potentially have done it. You did say you were hit in the stomach earlier."
"Ah, fuck, I did," Kimi swore to herself. "Well, what about you guys?"
"Us?" Mareo responded. "Well, we all seem to be harmed to some degree. I myself seem to have something wrong with my knee. Perhaps I fell on it, or it bumped into something."
"I'm okay, I think," Mariko added. "Though I think maybe someone hit me in the face. I think my nose is bruised."
"I noticed when I woke up, my arm hurt," Naoko added.
"You did?" Ishi responded. "That's funny. Both my arms feel sore. Feels like I was doing some, like, real heavy lifting or something."
"Jeez, alright," Kimi replied, pacing around the room discontentedly. "I guess it might've been me. I still don't wanna touch that shit, though. I already take out the trash around here, I don't wanna have to clean up-" Kimi stopped as she seemed to notice something odd.
"What's wrong, Kimi?" Naoko asked. "Did you find something?"
"I think so?" Kimi replied. "Right here, underneath this chair, near where the hallway is. There's something…" She crouched down and reached for whatever it was she found, only for her eyes to widen with shock. "Holy shit."
"What is it, Kimi?" Naoko asked concernedly.
"Something you're gonna want to take a look at, that's what," Kimi replied, carefully grabbing whatever it was and presenting it to the rest of them. As soon as she did, they all realized just why Kimi seemed shocked, and were right there with her in terms of emotion.
"Oh my god!" Mariko gasped. "Is that…?"
"That's a revolver!" Naoko exclaimed, baffled. "Where the hell did someone manage to get a revolver from?!"
"I don't know!" Kimi said defensively. "I just found it!"
Well, they had just found something they definitely didn't see coming. An actual firearm, in the room that they were in when they had that memory blackout. That sort of evidence would definitely end up creating more questions than it'd answer. For example, where did it come from, and why did they find it where they did? They'd definitely need a second opinion on this finding.