New Hope University: Major in Murder (SYOC CLOSED) Chapter 42: Mimesis in Theory and Practice, Part F, a dangan ronpa kibou no gakuen to zetsubou no koukousei fanfic

The trial room was blank: white walls, floor and ceiling. No knick-knacks or decorations. Only the familiar circle of lecterns stood out... Bepi's picture standing in his place (a crude M.I.A. scrawled over it), while Juliet smiled sweetly at everyone from behind a lipstick-drawn XOXO.

But the surprising emptiness very quickly disappeared with something even more surprising: as we stepped closer to the center of the room, the floor around the lecterns spun around, revealing two rows of large machines.

"What?!" Rodrigo barked.

Jane glanced up at Monokuma, indicating the machines with a nod of her head. "Are you offering us suntans, darling?" She was right; the machines did look like tanning booths: reclining seats in a little cyber-pod.

"Oh, something more exciting than that!" Monokuma answered, skipping to his place. "We have a special treat for you! We don't have some boring, brick-and-mortar trial room! Step into the future with our virtual trial room!"

"Virtual... are you kidding?" I asked him, glaring. "Why? What's the point?"

"Technology is its own point!" he crowed. "We have to appreciate the wonders that rationality can produce! The Western World..."

"Gahhhh okay, okay!" Rocky interrupted. "We'll get in your stupid machine!"

"It'll be worth it!" Monokuma promised. "Trust me. There's stuff in there you're going to want to see."

Some people grudgingly approached the pods, but I eyed Monokuma suspiciously. "This is dumb. We're just putting ourselves in danger."

"Huh?" Monokuma asked, tilting his head in confusion. "Why would this be dangerous."

Other people were also seeming confused, and I blushed slightly. "You know," I said. "You die in the simulation, you die in real life. That sort of thing."

"What?" Monokuma couldn't change expressions, but I got the sense he was looking at me in utter bafflement. "Why would you die in real life if you died in the simulation?"

"Uh." I realized I hadn't thought this through, but I also didn't want to back down. "You know. If you think you're dead, then... you're dead."

By now, everyone was looking at me weirdly. "Do you need me to go get a dictionary and look up the word 'simulation' for you?" Monokuma asked.

"No!" I snapped. "But... well, but you could just shoot us while we're lying in the pods!"

"Oh, give me a break, my programming doesn't even allow me to hurt you unless you break a rule!" He paused. "I should not have said that." He paused more. "Oh well, we're almost done. Anyway! You got it backwards! It's a rule that you have to get in, so I'll shoot you if you don't!"

I glared but couldn't think of any other arguments. I walked to my pod and grudgingly started figuring out how to hook myself up.

"Oh, cheer up!" Monokuma assured us. "You'll like it, I promise. There's a couple of surprises I can't wait for you to see."

"Dude, that's like the most ominous thing you could have said," Rocky remarked.

"Pu hu hu!" the bear laughed, "at least I still got that!"

I think everyone just decided continuing to talk to him was useless. I sat in the pod, strapped myself in to the included helmet piece, and pushed the big red button in front of me. As the lid slowly lowered shut, the last thing I saw was Katy staring at me, hopelessness in her eyes.

VIRTUAL REALITY: SYLVAN GLEN

From a dark grey void, the world flickered to life. It was less disorienting than I thought. I was standing behind my typical podium in the trial circle, looking at Ashley's death-portrait across from me, but we were in a beautiful, tranquil forest clearing, moss-covered and shaded. It was autumn.

"Holy shit," Rocky mumbled. I was inclined to agree. The detail was amazing, I could look down and see my hands plain as day, and when I moved, I felt the weight and the motion.

"Ehehe," snickered Juliet. "Look at Jane, she's all better."

I did look at Jane, who seemed confused and annoyed. She wasn't wearing her gloves, and her bare arms had just the same shade of color as her face. Her skin was actually beautiful, and she...

My brain suddenly caught up. I froze, still staring at Jane. I felt like one of those people in a horror movie who's scared to turn around because there might be a ghost there.

"Ods bodkins!" Rodrigo shouted. "It is the demon!"

I finally looked, and... yes. It was the demon. Juliet stood there, smiling languidly around the circle.

"I told you, you'd like the surprises!" Monokuma called over from his perch atop a nearby boulder.

Juliet laughed softly. "Well! Judging by the way everyone's looking at me, I guess I must be dead. That's..."

"Shut the fuck up," said a voice I'd never heard before.

Despite the harshness of its tone, I actually swooned a little bit at this voice. It was incredibly gorgeous and musical, like a whole orchestra. So, I wasn't alone when it took me a couple of seconds to even try to figure out where the voice had come from.

But when I tried, the answer didn't make sense. Because the spot where I thought the voice had come from was occupied by...

"Lucina!" Katy gasped in absolute wonder. "You talked!"

"I... did," Lucina agreed, looking just as surprised as everyone else.

"I tooolllddd you you'd like the surpriiiisssesssss!" Monokuma crowed.

"It's been such a long time," Lucina marveled, her hand delicately touching her own throat. Then she blinked and pointed across the circle at the smug-looking ultimate girlfriend. "No. Forget about me. What's she doing here?"

"I thought you might miss your recently departed friend!" Monokuma replied cheerfully. "This simulation is based on all we know about her. Isn't it impressive? The Ultimate Personality Psychologist is a real genius, isn't he?"

"Uh, okay," Rocky said, "well... Juliet, who killed you?"

Juliet rolled her eyes. "I'm just a simulation of Juliet; I don't have her memories. I'm just who she was at the point she came to the school."

Katy looked caught between nauseated and terrified as she beheld Juliet. "Then how come you aren't acting like you did then? All innocent?"

"It'd be pointless," Juliet replied, shrugging. "I'd definitely have revealed myself by the point in the game where there'd be so few people left."

"Wait, fiend!" Rodrigo declared, pointing at her. "How did you even know about this game, if you lack your flesh-and-blood counterpart's memory!?"

"Oh, I have access to some of the databases here," Juliet replied casually. "Information about the game and about all of the students. Including some very interesting information regarding myself, which was not to be released until the final exam. I'm... relieved I died before I could find out."

"Do you mean whatever was in that diary?" I asked, arching an eyebrow. "No, you had that, but you didn't let anyone else see. It got released early."

Juliet started to speak, then paused. She glanced up at Monokuma. "Well. How unexpected."

"Aggh, don't even talk to me about that!" Monokuma groaned. "I can't go against the thought-leaders in charge here, but..." he paused, shaking his head as if to clear it. "Never mind! We're in a trial, and trials make sense! Oh, and by the way..."

He clapped his paws and suddenly it was like a force field popped up in front of Katy and Lucina. They got all blurry and I suddenly couldn't perceive any sound from where they were standing.

"I can block off communication from anyone, to anyone!" the bear snapped. "Miss Sorenson and Miss Thorson may not contribute any of their witness knowledge to the solving of this case in any way! If they try, I'll just block 'em off before they can even start speaking!" He snickered slightly, then raised a paw as if remembering something. "Oh! And if, for any reason, you want to communicate privately with someone, go ahead and tell me!"

"Yo, I want to do that," Rocky said. "Let me talk to Rodrigo for a second, okay?"

"Very well!" And with a clap, a semi-transparent set of walls suddenly appeared around me. But, after only a few seconds, they disappeared and I was suddenly met with the sound of Rocky laughing. Rodrigo had his hand over his mouth, obviously trying to avoid breaking.

"New rule!" Monokuma barked, fuming. "Students may not abuse the force field system to call your adviser a fuck-balls!"

"Fuck-balls," Jane mused, giving Rocky an approving nod. "Excellent."

"Gaaugh!" Monokuma waved his arms around. "Stop! You've had your fun, now solve the murder! Any more nonsense and I'll just make you vote here and now!"

"Yes, let's please get down to business," Juliet said. "I'm quite curious about the identity of my murderer."

No one seemed to want to talk, but eventually Rodrigo got the ball rolling. "All right. We... we have more information this time than before. Because we know the killer could only possibly be one of two people."

FACT 2: MONOKUMA'S STATEMENT.
Monokuma is the one who tied up and gagged Lucina and Katy; he also bandaged and dressed any cuts they had. He didn't interfere in any other part of the crime scene. Monokuma told us that Juliet's killer was in the rare books room when we came in.

"And only Friend Katy and Friend Lucina were present."

Jane raised if her eyebrow. "That is, if we decide to trust the murderbear. Which we shouldn't."

"Nay, Friend Jane," Rodrigo argued. "Even my minimal examination of the corpse suggested she had not been dead long, which matches other information we were given."

FACT 3: BODY REPORT.
Juliet had a broken leg, a broken arm, a crushed larynx, and extensive cuts all over her body. She died of blood loss under ten minutes before we arrived on the scene.

"I cannot see any way in which she died early this morning, but the rest of us were together, first at breakfast, and then watching the video on the magic computer. Alas, the killer could only be the two suspects in question."

"Wait!" Rocky interrupted. "Hold on a second. No, that's not true! Monokuma said the killer was already in the room when we all arrived. But Luce and Katy weren't the only people in the room! Juliet was also there! What if she committed suicide?!"

"Hm." Jane tapped her chin in thought. "Do you know who else was in the room, darling? The bear himself."

Monokuma gasped loudly. "How could you even suggest a humble educator like me could do something so terrible as commit murder?!"

"Yeah, he was there, too!" Rocky agreed. "So it could have been him, too! So maybe both Luce and Katy are inno..."

"You're wrong," I interrupted.

Everyone looked at me in surprise. I just shrugged.

"Beg pardon?" Jane asked.

"Rocky's wrong," I answered. I had no interest at all in approaching hopeful dead-ends with this trial; I couldn't take it. "It had to be either Lucina or Katy."

Katy was just gaping at me. "Y... yes, you're right, but how can you prove it?"

"It's the same reason for both," I replied. "The way we found the body."

FACT 3: BODY REPORT.
Juliet had a broken leg, a broken arm, a crushed larynx, and extensive cuts all over her body. She died of blood loss under ten minutes before we arrived on the scene.

"My goodness," Juliet whispered, pressing her hand against her chest.

"Why does that mean Monokuma or Juliet couldn't have been responsible for the deaths?" Rodrigo asked.

"Because of the other important thing of the way we found her."

FACT 4: NOOSE.
Juliet's feet dangled about an inch off the floor. The nooses were all different heights.

"Juliet was in one of the lower nooses, but it was still over five and a half feet off the ground. And we all saw why Monokuma couldn't be responsible for getting her up there."

Now!" he shouted officially. "Investigate! Hurry! I'm going to take these witnesses somewhere they can't cause any more trouble while you're doing that!" He strode over to Lucina and grabbed the rope tied around her ankles. He pulled, straining backwards, and she didn't move a centimeter.

After a few moments of straining, he walked to her head and tried to grab her under the shoulders to lift her up, having no success at all.

"He couldn't even drag Lucina across the floor. There's no way he could lift Juliet up into the noose, much less reach up there to hang her or make all those cuts."

"But what about Juliet herself?" Jane asked. "She would definitely be able to reach the noose. Remember? There were stacks of books on the floor, and if she stood on some, she could just reach up."

I shook my head. "Not with a broken arm and leg. I don't think she could balance on a stack of books while reaching up, and she'd need both hands to her her head in the noose and tighten it."

Jane grimaced at me, a little petulant. "Still, it's not impossible."

"It is," I insisted. "The cuts were all over her body, including on her right arm. Even, precise cuts. She couldn't have made those her her left arm like that."

Rocky looked like he was going to argue, but he eventually just sighed. "Okay," he said. "So it has to be Luce or Katy. But why would either of them kill Juliet? Why now, after all this time?"

"Ugh," Jane grunted, rolling her eyes. "Because of the video we watched, obviously."

"Oh yeah," Rocky said, scratching his head. "Uh, I didn't really get that."

I glanced up at Monokuma. "Can we hear Lucina explain that? It's not giving us new information."

"Hmmmm. All right! But!" The bear pointed starkly at Lucina. "Don't try to sneak anything in, or I'll cut you right off!"

Lucina blushed reflexively when we all looked at her, but it didn't affect the beauty of her voice. "Uh. Okay. That video was made by my father. He's a speech therapist... he's always taped a lot of his appointments, because the patients can look back at the way they move their mouths."

"It helped," Juliet said. "We'd always chat like that at the start of appointments. I think he liked me."

Lucina wouldn't even look at her. "He was always... critical. Neither of my parents were ever afraid to be cruel. But when I really started getting into music, it..." She trailed off, looking down at the ground. "I can't talk about what they did." She laughed darkly, pressing her long, lithe fingers against her forehead. "'Can't talk about it.'" Juliet laughed too and we all successfully ignored her. "They hurt me."

"They were monsters," Katy snarled.

Lucina whipped her head at her. "N...no! They..."

"They actually were," Juliet remarked. "Your father was a sociopath. Your mother was psychotic and unmedicated. Or just undermedicated; I couldn't tell, I was seven."

"Shut. Up." Lucina's voice was icy and vicious.

"The video showed Juliet was his patient," Katy jumped in quickly. "And she's the one who gave him the idea."

"She's the reason," Lucina spat. "All this time, it was her. All she's ever done is hurt people. And she didn't even know me, but she saw her chance and... and she convinced them."

"It's not..." Juliet began, but then she just sighed. "Whatever. That's Lucina, but why would Katy want to kill me?"

"Christ, this is so weird..." Rocky muttered.

"Because I love Lucina!" Katy declared. "I hate Juliet for what she did, too!"

"Let's not forget the whole 'sacrifice' point," Jane said. "If Katy thought Lucina was going to commit murder, she'd do it first to protect her from getting executed." I tried to keep myself from glaring at her; I gave that theory to her earlier and she acted like it was silly.

"I fear Friend Lucina might do the same if she thought Friend Katy might commit murder."

"Ugh," Jane grunted. "So they both have a motive to kill Juliet, including the other one's motive to kill Juliet. This is why human relationships are asinine."

"Okay, well... how do we figure out which one did it?" Rocky asked. "We weren't there. It coulda been either of them."

"Let's go over what we do know," I said. "There was some sort of confrontation, and it ended with Juliet dead in the rare books room, and both suspects in there with her."

"They both had a great deal of blood on their skin and clothes," Rodrigo pointed out. "And Juliet had not been dead for very long. Does this suggest both of them attacked her together?"

"Shit, who would be the murderer then?" Rocky asked.

"Believe it or not, Monokuma answered this question right after we first got here," I said. "Remember?"

"Oh." Jane looked at him coolly, clasping her arms across her stomach. "What if, say, I stab someone, and then someone else stabs that same person, and then the victim bleeds to death. Who's the killer?"

Monokuma glared as well as he could with his teddy-bear eyes. "Whoever's attack drew more blood. Stop asking questions!"

Jane nodded smartly. "You are all very welcome for my foresight."

"Yes, but let's not jump to conclusions," I added quickly. "Yes, both Katy and Lucina had lots of blood on them, but that isn't necessarily because they were both involved in the murder."

"My game, my rules!" he replied happily. "But, as a gesture of good will, I'll go ahead and tell you her answer to that question was true. Right after the door opened, bam! I knocked 'em down and tied 'em up at gunpoint! I felt like a cowboy. Pu hu hu!"

"Monokuma knocked them both down in the blood when he tied them up. So they both would get bloody from that." I frowned... there was something else about what he said there, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Rodrigo clasped his arms in front and frowned. "So that is how the scene ended up," he mused, "but how did it begin? Who initiated the altercation, and where?"

"Well, let's hold up," I said. "Because we know a couple of things that happened earlier... before Lucina and Katy even got there. Juliet had been busy."

"Yes," Jane agreed. ":She'd been living in that silly room for several days. She had bedding, clothes, food, water..."

"Nooses," Katy added.

"Nooses?" Juliet tilted her head in confusion.

"Yeah," I said. "You hung six nooses from the ceiling."

"Uh. Why would I do that?"

"You said they were for us to kill ourselves," Katy answered, looking down at the ground.

"Oh." Juliet considered that and then shrugged. "Fair enough, I guess."

"Yo, there's also all that other shit," Rocky said. "The weird shit in the bookshelves."

"I made traps in the bookshelves," she continued, getting more aroused and upset. "I tied tripwires... they won't kill anyone, because I'll want to do that myself. I spread the explosives on some of the floors... also probably not enough to be deadly. I hope.

"Oh! And I put the paint on the floor, so I'd be able to track anyone through the maze. She'll be helpless. With all these tools at my disposal, she'll be helpless. I can defend myself." She held up the butcher's knife, a small stream of blood on the blade. "I can..."

"Yes," I said. "I saw the string and paint when I came to the library earlier. And I smelled the explosive chemicals."

"Hm." Juliet crossed her arms, frowning. "That's strange. I don't know why I'd do that, either."

"You weren't making a whole lot of sense," I said to her, looking closely for any sign of deception. "You just kept saying 'it's not suicide, it's a murder' on the video where you were talking about it."

"I..." She paused, then nodded. "Yes. All right, that makes things clearer."

Jane raised an eyebrow. "Why's that, darling?"

"That'd be a spoiler." Juliet indicated Monokuma with a tilt of her head. "You'll figure it out."

"Ugh." Jane rolled her eyes and then looked around the circle at everyone. "Moving on, then, it may be most fruitful to get a sense of the timeline. We know that first, Juliet put the traps and the paint in the stacks."

"Three other places were important," I added. "The rare books room, of course. But also the main room, and the hallways in the stacks. We know things happened there because of the paint."

Rodrigo held up an index finger, excited to make a point. "We know the confrontation ended in the rare books room," he said. "So it must have begun somewhere else. Perhaps in the main room?"

"No," I said.

Everyone looked at me, Rodrigo seeming kind of hurt. I shrunk in on myself slightly, and I'm honestly not sure if it was an act or not. "Sorry," I clarified, "but just because they finished in the rare books room, that doesn't mean they couldn't have started there, too. In fact, I think they did."

"Saya..." I looked up in surprise; it was Lucina who had spoken. She hugged herself. "You're acting different."

I blinked; it was very weird to hear her talk. Weird in a good way. A very distractingly good way. "...Different how?"

"More direct. It's..." She paused a moment and then sighed. "Never mind. I trust you."

I was thrown, but luckily Rodrigo picked up the slack. "Classsmates, even the small amount of information I know has overwhelmed me. I feel at times like this we must follow the example of Friend Ashley."

"Uh," Rocky asked, "Ashley?"

"Indeed. I have met very few people since leaving the monastery, but luckily each has served as a different kind of example and model. Friend Ashley, were she here, would apply rigid organization, and I feel we must do the same."

"That's a good idea," Jane said, "though I feel I should point out that I, unlike Ashley, am organized enough to not get myself murdered. Let's take all the things we know happened and try to figure out when they occurred relative to one another."

"That's a good idea," I agreed. It made it more like a chess game... step by step by step. "Let's make the list, first... let's start with the two things we know the time of: Juliet making the video on the computer at 10:20, and her death at 10:50. And..."

I trailed off, because, with a shimmering flair, two sets of words appeared hovering in the mid air inside the circle. They said: Juliet dies and Juliet makes video

"What on..." Lucina began, but Monokuma's chiding cut her off.

"Hey, I'm not going to use this expensive stuff without showing off what it can do! I'm just helping you out!"

"Ah." Rodrigo pointed fearfully at the words. "Friends, can I trust you that this magic is from technology and not Lucifer?"

"Could be both," I remarked, but I regretted it after seeing his horrified expression. "I'm kidding! It's technology. And... I hate to admit it, but it does help keep track of things."

"Indeed," Jane said. "So what else was there? There was the bookcase falling over. And the two individuals going into the stacks, and then coming back out."

The words built up:

Juliet dies
Juliet makes video
Bookcase falls over
Individual 1 enters stacks
Individual 2 enters stacks
Individual 1 leaves stacks
Individual 2 leaves stacks

"The smashed window," Rocky added. "And that weird knife sticking out of the door."

"Each of Juliet's injuries," I pointed out. "I don't think it's likely they all happened at the same time. There's the arm, the leg, the larynx, and cuts, and the gash on her ankle."

Juliet dies
Juliet makes video
Bookcase falls over
Individual 1 enters stacks
Individual 2 enters stacks
Individual 1 leaves stacks
Individual 2 leaves stacks
Rare books window is broken
Butcher knife is impaled into door
Juliet breaks arm
Juliet breaks leg
Juliet's larynx is crushed
Juliet receives multiple cuts
Juliet gets gash on ankle

"And," Jane added, "there is the bizarre evidence from the paint on the floor. The two parallel lines, the handprint, and those running footprints."

"And..."

"Gahh stop, I'm getting confused just looking at this!" Rocky bellowed. Jane rolled her eyes but complied.

"Uh... I agree this is overwhelming, but I will attempt to begin," Rodrigo said hesitantly. "Um. It was apparently the loss of blood that ended Foul Juliet's life. So therefore, the terrible cuts across her body must have been the last of her injuries, occurring just before her life slipped away."

"That makes sense, but it's probably not right," I said. "Not when we consider what almost certainly caused her crushed larynx: hanging in the noose."

FACT 5: JULIET'S DEATH (revised).
It takes several minutes to die from behind hanged. It probably took Juliet a long time to bleed to death, and many of the cuts would be particularly painful. The cuts were all even and precise and were all over her body.

"She was probably cut a lot before she was hanging from the noose. Uh. Both Lucina and Katy pretty much said they put her in the noose, but didn't let her hang until she was almost dead."

Rodrigo clenched his fist, then released it, then clenched it again. "So it seems the purpose of the cuts was merely torture." He raised his eyes to Lucina, then glared at Katy. "I... want to trust in the good hearts of my friends, but..."

"I don't have a good heart!" Katy yelled at him. "I'm..." but a wall of fuzziness blocked off all sound coming from her. She gave up and the force field receded; she glared at Monokuma in silence.

"So anyway," Jane said breezily, "the hanging must have happened just before her death, after at least most of the cuts were made. And! Remember the video we watched."

Juliet popped up on the screen, sitting primly at the desk. Despite her calm, official demeanor, her hair was mussed and she was breathing hard. "Thank you for watching this," she said, sounding just slightly agitated. "This was not a suicide. It was murder."

"I seriously doubt she had any of her injuries at that point. Here..." She reached out and waved her arms around, discovering, with obvious delight, that she could move the list of events around like icons on a phone. When she was done, it read:

Juliet makes video
Rare books window is broken

Bookcase falls over
Individual 1 enters stacks
Individual 2 enters stacks
Individual 1 leaves stacks
Individual 2 leaves stacks
Butcher knife is impaled into door
Juliet breaks arm
Juliet breaks leg
Juliet gets gash on ankle
Something leaves behind parallel lines
Someone leaves handprint in yellow paint
Someone leaves footprints in the main room

Juliet receives multiple cuts
Juliet's larynx is crushed
Juliet dies

"Ah, hold on a moment," Rodrigo said. "Why did you move the window to the beginning?"

"Oh, right, you didn't see it," Rocky said. "We heard it happen during the video. I mean... that's what it had to be, right?"

FACT 31: 'CONFESSION' VIDEO (revised).
About a half-hour before she died, Juliet recorded a video of herself where she repeatedly asserted she was not committing suicide. She admitted to setting traps and leaving the paint in the stacks. There was someone injured in the room with her, and she hit them at one point, drawing blood. The video ended with two sounds of glass shattering.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Let's talk about that first, since it's on tape. How did the window get smashed?"

"Hmm." Jane rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "I think we can be certain Juliet didn't do it herself, because she was being recorded at the time."

"Right!" Rocky yelled enthusiastically. "But! I thought about it, and it's obvious Juliet wasn't alone then, right?"

She looked down to her side. Annoyed, she set the knife down on the desk and whipped her hand down as fast as a cobra. There was the distinctive sound of a palm striking a face, and an offscreen voice shrieked and moaned, gutteral and agonized and impossible to identify.

"Indeed..." Jane said, looking skeptical about where this was going.

"So it must have been them!" Rocky smacked a fist into his palm in triumph. "They got up and, like, threw a chair out the window or something, smash!"

"Smash!" Juliet agreed, looking delighted.

"Ah..." Rodrigo held up his hand. "Friend Rocky, your energy and heart are helpful to us, but I do not think you're correct in this case."

"Aww," Rocky groaned, but, a bit surprisingly, he didn't look too annoyed. "Why do you say that?"

"Because the broken glass was upstairs," Rodrigo answered.

FACT 7: WINDOW.
The big, floor-to-ceiling window in the rare books room was smashed. All the glass was on the floor of the rare books room except for some jagged pieces around the edges.

"If a chair had been thrown outwards, glass would be on the floor of the large room below. But, there was no glass there."

"No, that's not right," Jane argued.

FACT 15: GLASS AND FISSURE.
There was an ugly piece of glass, covered in blood, in the main room under the window. Next to it, there was a small but deep slit, like something had been planted into the floor. There was a small blood trail leading from here to the stacks.

"There was..." She paused scrunching her forehead in thought. "On second thought, no, let's get to that later. Let's finish about how the window got broken." She gazed at Rodrigo coolly. "Please continue, darling."

Rodrigo nodded to her. "Yes. Because the glass was upstairs, the only conclusion is that the window was broken from the outside." He threw up his hands in confusion. "But there is where I am stymied. For no one could possibly reach the window from the outside!"

"Oh!" Rocky was at least twice as excited as he had been before. "I... wait!" He put his hands on his hips and stared off at nothing, concentrating.

Eventually, Jane reached out towards him. "Uh. Are you..."

"Gimme a second!" Rocky barked, then was silent again. That lasted about exactly one second before he let out a triumphant whoop. "I got it!" he yelled. "I got it, I got it! The things that broke the window!"

FACT 9: SOFTBALLS.
There were two softballs lying around the rare books room. I hadn't seen them when I had been in here before.

"Two softballs, and we heard the glass break twice! If someone threw them hard, they'd break the window! And Katy and Lucina are both totally buff. They could do it!"

FACT 30. STRENGTH.
Both Katy and Lucina are probably much stronger than Juliet was, but Juliet's nature might plausibly overcome that disadvantage.

"I think you're right," I said, finding myself genuinely smiling at him.

"And the person throwing the balls had the advantage of height," Jane added. "For it is terribly obvious who threw them, correct?"

Rodrigo, still frowning, nodded. "Aye. It could only have been Friend Lucina."

Lucina was doing an amazing job of keeping a poker face, but I think I could see a very slight bit of pride every time we unraveled a new step. "Why did it have to be me?" she asked, glancing up at Monokuma, who just stood still.

"Because if you and Katy were the only people involved, then one of you had to be the person upstairs, in Juliet's video. And it's pretty easy to tell who that was."

"It had to be Katy," I finished. "Because she made a sound."

"And it explains one of her injuries; the bloody nose!" Jane added.

Katy went silent, but she wasn't looking at the gun, she was looking at me, pleadingly. I noticed that she was more beat-up than I'd thought, with a badly bloody nose.

"So... so at the time of the video, a half hour before the death, we know that Juliet and Katy were upstairs in the rare books room, and Luce was downstairs," Rocky said. "But how'd Katy get up there? And why did Juliet record a video?"

"From what I know, there's only one way for Katy to get in," I replied. "And that's if Juliet let her in. She kept the door locked, but... uh. She let me in a couple of times."

"Did I?" Juliet asked, giving me a very strange look.

I tried to ignore her. "I think what must have happened is, Juliet let Katy in, and they had a confrontation, which Juliet won. Lucina must have come later."

"Indeed," Jane agreed. "And Lucina came later. Because she couldn't get in through the door, she broke the window." She paused, thoughtfully. "Wait. No, she had to buy the softballs at the student stores. Which means she went to the library already planning to break the window."

"Or thinking she might have to," I pointed out.

"So... so perhaps nothing else matters," Rodrigo said. "If Friend Lucina was trapped downstairs, then perhaps Friend Katy simply overpowered Foul Juliet in a moment of distraction."

"No way," Jane argued. "It's not easy to break someone's arm and leg, and I didn't see any signs of that happening in the rare books room. Katy's strong, but she's not strong enough to do that with her bare hands! No, Juliet had to leave the rare books room at some point between the video and her death."

"But why would she do that?" Rocky asked. "She's got Katy beat-up and Luce can't get to her! She's safe up there!"

"I'm not sure I understand why Juliet did anything," I said. "But." I stared down the vaguely flickering simulation across from me. "Someone here does."

Juliet gazed at me coolly and then shrugged. "Fine, fine. But first: let's be clear on the motivations of our other key players." She indicated Katy and Lucina with a dismissive head nod. "Why were they there? Why did the short one fight me, and the tall one break my window?"

"We presume, because they wanted to kill you," Jane replied. "We already talked about that."

"Not quite," Juliet said, leering. "They each wanted to keep the other from killing me. And that very well might have meant killing me first."

"But would Juliet have known that?" Rocky asked.

"Yeah, she would have," I answered. "She knew about Lucina's DVD. Katy yelled at her about it while Rodrigo and I were in the library."

"You can't get in, no matter how much you bang on the door." A pause. "I'll let you in if you want to use one of my nooses. But that's the only way I'll... to kill yourself, of course, what else would you use a noose for? ...Look..." She actually paused in what sounded like surprise. "That... doesn't make sense. I was seven when I stopped going. Listen, the timing doesn't... My journal... Christ, if you'll just stop throwing a tantrum and listen, I'll explain..."

"But what changed?" I asked. "Why didn't Juliet let her in at first, but she did today?"

"How badly have any of you ever wanted to die?" Juliet asked.

No one said anything for a moment; we were all just stunned. Finally, Lucina's voice spoke up. "Pretty badly."

"Mmm." Juliet nodded to her. "Yeah, you get it. None of the rest of these kids do."

"Fuck off," Lucina's musical voice sneered.

Juliet laughed, then looked back around the circle at all of us. "I never let myself die. I tried and tried, but... I was always too smart. Can you imagine what an amazing opportunity I must have seen when I knew there were two people coming after me at the same time?"

"W...wait," Katy said. "You wanted us to kill you?!"

"Well, I couldn't give the plan away to myself," Juliet replied, utterly casual. "I had to let myself truly believe that wasn't what I wanted!"

She ran her hands through her hair in an apparent attempt to calm herself down, and she looked back at the screen. "I could never put myself in a position to die," she asserted. "Never, never, never. I could never handicap myself, do you hear me? That would be suicide, and I can't commit suicide. It was a murder."

She laughed. "I've always been... what's a good word? Suggestible. I just change based on the influences I get."

"Yeah, you told me that," I said.

"Interesting." She shrugged. "Anyway, there you go. Of course I set myself up for failure, even while I struggled with every muscle to survive." She leered at Katy and Lucina. "I did struggle, right?"

"You fought like an animal," Katy said, gaze drooped to the ground. Juliet clapped her hands in delight.

"So..." Jane mused. "All those traps, the paint, the chemicals... it was there to be used against you."

"And you didn't even care which one you took down with you," I growled, eyes burning into her. I somehow kept forgetting how furious she could make me.

She had tears in her eyes at this point. "If it was suicide, then I would like to die for love. Or for revenge. Either one would be something I deserve. But... but it doesn't matter, because this wasn't a suicide. This..."

"If Lucina kills you, you die for revenge. If Katy kills you, you die for love. You didn't care."

"Would you care, in my place?" she asked simply.

"Ugh." I decided to even look at her as little as possible. "So, we know what Juliet's motivations were, but that still doesn't explain why she left the rare books room."

"Oh, I think I know this one," Jane said, seeming happy we weren't still talking about human motivation. "It was something that came up a little while ago. If we're correct that the softballs broke the window, then it explains that most of the glass was in the rare books room."

"Uh huh?" Rocky said. "...and?"

"Well. Remember, I said most of the glass. There was one noteworthy piece of glass we found elsewhere."

FACT 15: GLASS AND FISSURE.

There was an, ugly piece of glass, covered in blood, in the main room under the window. Next to it, there was a small but deep slit, like something had been planted into the floor. There was a small blood trail leading from here to the stacks.

"If it simply fell from above when the softballs hit, there wouldn't have been blood on it. No, that little shard of glass has a more interesting story to tell."

I got it. "Hm. Yeah. If Juliet 'believed' she wanted to survive, she wouldn't choose to leave the rare books room. So..."

"So it wasn't her choice!" Rodrigo finished.

Jane nodded. "Let's consider the picture. We saw Juliet directly after the window broke."

The sound of shattering glass cut her off, and she turned in surprise to her side. Glass shattered again, and Juliet closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She reached over onto the desk and picked up a pink hand-mirror... the same one we'd found down by the fallen bookcase. She looked at herself, preening and fluffing her hair in the mirror. "This is it," she murmured. "You look beautiful."

Still holding on to the mirror, she reached over with her other hand and picked the knife up off the desk. Then she looked back at the computer, apparently turning the recording off. There was a tiny look of relief on her face when she did it.

"She was holding the hand mirror and the butcher knife. And what would anyone, even a person as bizarre as she, do after a nearby window has just been smashed in?"

"You'd go over and see what was out there," I answered. I glanced up at Lucina, who was softly smiling.

"Wait," Rocky said, scratching his head. "So... so she went up to the broken window. Uh... but what does that mean about her leaving the room?"

"Well, think about it," Jane replied. "She's not alone. She's in there with someone who almost certainly wants to do her harm."

"Oh, shit." Rocky gaped at Katy. "You... you pushed her?!" Katy started to speak, but with a glance to Monokuma she shut her mouth.

"This explains Juliet's first injury," I said thoughtfully. "The gash on her ankle."

There was some glass still in the pane, a good amount hanging from the top like stalactites, and a couple of inches of sharp spears sticking up along the bottom. It wasn't even; there were places where it was lower or higher, but basically there was just the big hole in the middle.

"She fell forwards, and she jammed her leg into the glass at the bottom of the pane. That's why it was bloody, and how it ended up outside."

"That also explains how the two items she was carrying ended up out of the rare books room, too," Rodrigo said.

FACT 17: HAND MIRROR.
There was a pink hand mirror next to the bookcase.

FACT 10: BUTCHER'S KNIFE.

Juliet's knife was stuck into the exterior of the door to the rare books room. It had a thin, dry bloodstain on the blade and yellow paint on the handle.

"Ohhhh, and that was that weird mark in the floor!" Rocky exclaimed. "The knife fell with her and thmmp, it got impaled in the floor!"

"And this must be the source of the broken arm and leg, yes?" Jane continued. "An uncontrolled fall from that height wouldn't just leave bumps and bruises. But nonetheless, in her feral mania, she gets up and still tries to escape."

FACT 15: GLASS AND FISSURE.
There was an, ugly piece of glass, covered in blood, in the main room under the window. Next to it, there was a small but deep slit, like something had been planted into the floor. There was a small blood trail leading from here to the stacks.

"Her ankle was bleeding; therefore, the blood trail shows where she went next."

"Waiiiiiiit," Rocky jumped in. "She just... gets up and runs off to the bookshelves?"

"Uh... yes," Jane replied impatiently. "It's a blood trail. You can't argue with blood trails."

"Yo, but why didn't Luce try to stop her?" Rocky protested. "Luce was right there. I don't think she'd want to kill Juliet, but she wouldn't just let her get up and run away, would she?"

"There's... another problem," I added, receiving a glare from Jane. "I think you're right that Juliet ran off to the stacks after falling out of the window. But... I don't think she had a broken arm and leg."

Jane raised an eyebrow. "How could you possibly know that?"

"Because the blood trail went right into the paint, which means one of the sets of yellow footprints is hers. And because her ankle was bleeding pretty badly, it's easy to tell which was her."

"The one with the dark color in half of her steps, yes," Jane agreed. "Blood, drying and mixing with yellow, would plausibly make a dark brown. But that doesn't mean her arm and leg weren't broken!"

"True." I was actually really enjoying proving her wrong about something. I decided not to worry too much about it. "But something else about the footprints does that."

FACT 21: FOOTPRINTS.
Two sets of footprints led down the hallway into the stacks. Both people were barefoot, and the one with a slightly longer stride had smears of a brown color mixed in some of their footprints. Both sets of footprints were even and wide, as if the people were running.

"Juliet's stride was even; she wasn't even limping. There's no way she had a broken leg."

"Hmmf." Jane looked away. "Very well. But she must have had a broken arm! It'd be terribly unlikely for her to fall out of the window without some sort of injury."

"I agree," Rodrigo said, thoughtfully. "I find it incredible that she could not have been more badly injured, but I suppose it's possible, depending on how she landed."

"Hey, this is great though!" Rocky enthused. "We got a better sense of the timeline. See?" He proudly fiddled with the list:

Juliet makes video
Rare books window is broken
Juliet gets gash on ankle
Juliet breaks arm
Individual 1 (Juliet) enters stacks

Bookcase falls over
Individual 2 enters stacks
Individual 1 leaves stacks
Individual 2 leaves stacks
Butcher knife is impaled into door
Juliet breaks leg
Something leaves behind parallel lines
Someone leaves handprint in yellow paint
Someone leaves footprints in the main room

Juliet receives multiple cuts
Juliet's larynx is crushed
Juliet dies

"Hold on, you don't know that's right!" a voice suddenly shouted. I looked up in surprise to see Katy glaring at us; she'd been so silent, I'd almost forgotten she was there. "Lucina might have gone into the stacks first! You don't know it was Juliet."

I glanced up at Monokuma, who seemed unperturbed. I guess because she wasn't trying to add evidence, her contribution was acceptable. "Maybe, but..."

"And!" Katy insisted, "this would explain why Lucina didn't stop Juliet before she ran away!"

"Yes, but..."

"And and and!" Katy was really on a roll now. "You don't know the bookcase hadn't fallen over yet! Maybe the bookcase fell over first, and Juliet walked across it, so she never got yellow paint on her feet! You..."

"Katy!" Lucina exclaimed, sounding close to panic. "Please don't..." She trailed off and took a deep breath to calm herself; it appeared to halfway work. "Please don't make all this harder!"

"Well, but they can't prove any of it!" Katy insisted. "They're building a whole narrative without any evidence!"

"But..."

"No," Jane snapped. "Both of you. Stop. No." She put her hands on her hips and shook her head in disdain. "At least give us the benefit of being able to see with our own eyes. Juliet absolutely did have yellow paint on her, and not just on the soles of her feet."

FACT 6: JULIET'S BODY (revised).
Juliet was barefoot, and her soles had yellow paint on them. She also had yellow paint on the front of both of her legs.

"With the paint on her soles and a bleeding foot, she must have been one of the people whose footprints we saw."

Katy stared for a moment, then just kept right going. "Okay, but you don't know she went first! Lucina might have..."

"No," I said, feeling that familiar iciness. Katy trailed off, looking defeated from my saying just one word. "No, Juliet was definitely the person who went first."

"But... but how do you know? She..."

"Because she set the traps," I interrupted. "She knew where the tripwires and the explosives were. And the footprints we followed..."

FACT 23: CHEMICALS IN THE STACKS.
Some of the paths in the stacks have been coated with all three of Barrett's chemicals and would be very dangerous to run down. The footprints appear to entirely avoid these paths.

"...completely avoided the dangerous paths. It would be a huge coincidence unless the person who went first is the person who set the traps in the first place. The other person just followed Juliet's footprints."

Katy sputtered for a moment, then gave up.

But, surprisingly, Lucina spoke. "You still haven't figured out why I didn't stop Juliet, and this whole thing doesn't make sense without it."

Juliet raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't want to make things harder."

"Well, maybe I changed my mind!" Lucina barked at her loudly. She quickly blushed at her outburst and hunched her shoulders a little more, but she kept going. "If... if I was downstairs, and Juliet fell out the window, why didn't I catch her then?"

We looked around one at one another, and clearly no one had an answer. I was not faking it: I really didn't know. It kind of didn't make sense, unless something was missing.

"Let's address the issue later," Rodrigo said quickly. "For now, consider Friend Katy. If we assume she did push Foul Juliet, what did she do afterwards? Did she simply stay in the rare books room? That is most likely, yes? It's where she ended up later, and she was injured."

"That does make sense, but I don't think it's right," I replied. "We found a piece of evidence in the rare books room that suggests Katy left it at some point."

FACT 12: BOOTS.
Katy's boots were in the rare books room, near the door. One of them had a broken-off heel, which was found across the room, near the desk.

"If her heel was broken in the fight with Juliet, then she'd have a hard time moving around. If she wanted to run, she'd take her boots off."

"Ohhhhh." Rocky smacked his forehead. "I was wondering why she'd take her shoes off in a room full of broken glass!"

"So does this mean Katy had to be the other person in the stacks?" Rodrigo asked. "If both sets of footprints were made by bare feet?"

"Um, no," I answered. "Because Lucina took her shoes off, too."

FACT 20: LUCINA'S SHOES.
Shoes and socks like the ones Lucina wears were near the fallen bookcase.

"Why would I do that?" she asked me. She was trying to look smooth, but she was clearly still a little frantic, and it was adorable.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"Ugh, forget about weirdo Lucina," Jane grunted. "We're doing good; we've explained a lot of the evidence."

"Yo, I think I'm on to something," Rocky spoke up. "Like... okay. Juliet runs into the stacks, and if creepy weirdo virtual Juliet is right, she was really trying to get away."

"I thought I was really trying to get away," Juliet clarified.

"Ugh, whatever! The point is, if someone went in after her, even if she was really trying, she couldn't have gotten away, right? She was leaving a trail! So whoever went in must have caught her and dragged her out."

"Those footprints didn't look like one was dragging the other out," I replied. "They were both running both ways."

"Yes, this is my least favorite part of the whole thing," Jane said. "There was some sort of stratagem played out, but thinking about it makes even my brilliant head hurt. First, Juliet's footprints appeared to stop and start out of nowhere, and the others lead directly to a tripwire."

FACT 22: FOOTPRINTS SUDDEN START:
"Brownfoot's" exiting footprints suddenly appear out of nowhere, for no clear reason. Other than the fact that one of the nearby bookcases is empty, there is nothing unusual about the place where it happens.

FACT 24: FOOTPRINTS' SUDDEN END.

"Brownfoot's" footprints stop suddenly after rounding a corner. The other footprints carry on a couple of more steps, before the person apparently tripped over a tripwire. Then they seem to have started running back the other way.

"I'm really starting to fucking hate footprints," Rocky grunted.

"Join the club, darling."

But before Jane and Rocky could commiserate more, a soft laughter captured all our attention. It grew louder and more unhinged, and it took me a second of staring before I realized it was coming from Katy.

"Katy!" Lucina exclaimed. "What's wrong?"

Katy chortled. "It's just so stupid. It's all just... footprints in paint. I can't believe it!"

"Oh wonderful, does she have a split personality, too?" Jane grunted.

"No no no!" Katy desperately tried to control her laughter. "It's just... have you noticed? The footprints in paint? Does that seem familiar?"

"Um." It did seem familiar, but it took me a second to force myself to remember events like that. "Yeah. Therion planted some. Remember? To try to frame Ashley."

"And cutting a victim with a knife, over and over?" Katy literally wiped a tear of laughter (this simulation was amazing).

"...Yo, that's what Juliet did to Emily," Rocky murmured.

"Yup!" Katy shook her head in wonder. "This... this stupid, stupid thing has elements of all the other murders and trials. Barrett's chemicals. The traps. It's all just..." She looked over at Juliet, seeming kind of crazed. "It's all just a prank you played on us, isn't it? All pat and perfect."

Juliet blinked at her. "I don't know."

"Yeah, but you're enjoying it," Katy argued. "That's really obvious."

"I don't really have sentience."

"Ignore her," Lucina's voice was harsh and curt. "She's dead. Ignore her. It doesn't matter what she did in the past. This is just a stupid... ghost."

"I'm a ghost that figured out how I got away from my pursuer in the bookcases!" Juliet said cheerfully. "Do you still want to ignore me?"

"Holy shit, it is really eerie how true-to-life this Juliet is," Jane marveled.

"It's okay!" Juliet assured us. "Just get going; you probably won't need me."

"Um... all right," I said hesitantly. "So... any theories?"

"Um, perhaps we have the owners of the footprints backwards?" Rodrigo offered. "Maybe Juliet tripped over the tripwire. That might explain her broken leg."

"No, the stride on the way out is just as even as the stride on the way in," I said. "Juliet definitely didn't break her leg until she was out of the stacks."

"Hm." Jane stroked her chin in thought. "Well, leaving aside how it was accomplished, I think it's fairly clear why she did it. Yes?"

"Um, why?" Rocky asked.

"Because it allows her to take advantage of one of her tripwires, of course!" Jane answered, looking proud. "Her pursuer was following her footprints. They round a corner, and before they even recognize that Juliet's footprints have disappeared, they've already plowed into the trap."

I nodded. "And that would give Juliet a chance to escape."

"Indeed," Jane agreed, kneeling down by the string. "It's just a string, no mechanism or anything. Nonetheless, if you were running full-speed, you'd take quite a spill. You'd probably be stunned for at least a few minutes."

"Which means," Jane continued, "we know more about the order of events."

Juliet makes video
Rare books window is broken
Juliet gets gash on ankle
Juliet breaks arm
Individual 1 (Juliet) enters stacks
Individual 2 enters stacks
Individual 1 (Juliet) leaves stacks
Individual 2 leaves stacks

Bookcase falls over
Butcher knife is impaled into door
Juliet breaks leg
Something leaves behind parallel lines
Someone leaves handprint in yellow paint
Someone leaves footprints in the main room

Juliet receives multiple cuts
Juliet's larynx is crushed
Juliet dies

"No!" Katy yelled again, predictably. "If you don't know how Juliet supposedly got away, then none of this makes any sense."

"She's right," Lucina agreed, still trying to act calm. "She's not magic. She can't disappear."

I looked at both of them in confusion. Why were they doing this? One of them apparently wanted to be caught, so was she trying to lead us to the right answer? Or were they both somehow guilty? Or both innocent? I couldn't understand why they were acting like this.

"Want a hint?" Juliet asked.

"No, they do not want a fucking hint," Lucina answered sourly.

"I dunno... they all look pretty lost."

"They..."

"Lucina, please." She looked a little shocked that I interrupted her, and I found myself agreeing with her facial expression. "She's not the untrustworthy one, here."

Lucina looked down, either angry or embarrassed; I tried not to think about which.

"Okay," Juliet said, grinning. "Saya, you're into old movies, right? You've watched a bunch with your mom?"

Something about that question caught me off guard, but I tried not to show anything. "Yeah."

"Well, ever seen The Shining?" She nodded smartly. "I have. There's your hint."

"Ugg, you're talking about movies?" Jane asked, rolling her eyes. "Why not talk about something useful?"

"I like it when the blood comes out of the elevator," Juliet explained.

"Wait, this... might mean something," I said quickly, trying to avoid getting sidetracked. "Because in The Shining, a guy chases a kid through a maze, and there's snow on the ground, so the kid leaves footprints. Just like what happened today."

"Holy shit, that's intense!" Rocky exclaimed. "How's the kid get away?"

I took a deep breath. This fit. "He heads down a path, and then walks backwards in his own footsteps. That way, he seems to disappear into thin air."

"But where did she go?!" Jane barked. "Okay, she can make it look like her footprints just stop, but she'd still be standing right there!"

"She hid," I answered. This was really making sense. "She sat down, keeping the soles of her feet off the floor, and scooted to her hiding place."

"The bottom shelf of the empty bookcase. She just lay there, and her pursuer ran right past her. Then she just scoots back out and start running back towards the entrance."

"I'm super-smart," Juliet remarked. Lucina looked at her with utter hatred, and Juliet held up both of her hands, palms forward. "Hey, one of you is clearly smarter! You got me. I'm just kinda proud it made it so hard."

"Silence, foul demon!" Rodrigo barked. "Just because we must abide your presence, that does not mean we will subject ourselves to your manipulations!" Juliet rolled her eyes but pantomimed zipping her lips shut.

"I think we've done a good job figuring this out, even with her here," I said. "We know that Juliet and Katy were in the rare books room when Lucina broke the window. Then Juliet ended up outside... we think because Katy pushed her out the window. Juliet runs into the stacks... but here we lose track of Lucina and Katy. Katy probably went downstairs, but that's all we know."

Jane nodded. "And one of them ran off in pursuit of Juliet and was stunned. The other... we don't know."

Rodrigo scanned the list. "We still haven't accounted for several events, some quite major. But... I believe I can guess some of what happened."

Jane raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You can?"

"Aye. For Juliet still has one major unexplained injury, correct? Her broken leg. And I can think of only one event, suggested by the evidence, violent enough to cause such an injury."

FACT 16: BOOKCASE AND YELLOW PAINT.
There was a large paint puddle right at the entrance to the stacks. It was partly covered by the collapsed, wooden bookcase. The two yellow lines go out one side into the main room, with a single handprint smearing one of them next to the puddle.

"Whoa, holy shit," Rocky exclaimed. "You're saying... she tripped over the bookcase?"

"Oh christ, no, you imbecile!" Jane snapped. "The bookcase fell on her!"

"Whaaa..." Rocky squinted in thought. "Huh. A hell of a coincidence, right? The bookcase just happens to fall on her?"

"It didn't just happen to fall on her!" Jane argued. "It fell because of Barrett's explosives! Someone did it on purpose!"

FACT 18: BOOKSHELF.
A lot of the books and part of the bookcase were burned and charred. It looked like two of the shelves near the bottom of the bookcase had been obliterated.

"Ohhhh!" Rocky grinned nodding. "Gotcha. blow out the bottom, the weight on the top pulls it right over."

"We saw evidence of some sort of trap," I confirmed.

FACT 19: STRING.

A string lay in front of the fallen bookcase, going around the corner and ending in a full spool. the other end was just a black nub.

"And, of course, the chemicals themselves."

FACT 17: GLASS CONTAINERS.

There were four containers near the entrance to the stacks, containing sugar, spice, everything nice, and paint thinner. Sugar, spice, and everything nice are inert on their own but violently explosive when all three are combined. All four liquids are visually identical, but they have very distinctive smells.

"Wait..." Juliet said, looking genuinely confused. "But... really?"

Rodrigo glared. "Hold your tongue, demon! ...but what do you mean, 'really?'"

Juliet waved her hands around as if that would help her explain. "It's just... that's how they got me? I just ran into one of my own tripwire traps? That's... disappointing."

"Oh!" Rocky pointed, excited again. "No! No, you didn't! Because remember, Saya? The traps Juliet set were different!"

I nodded. "Yeah, we saw one. And we smelled the chemicals, too. I don't think she was lying about those. But..." Rocky looked up at me curiously and I sighed. "Whatever happened at the entrance to the stacks, by that paint puddle... that one was different. That one involved string and the chemicals, and Juliet's traps in the stacks just used one or the other."

"Indeed," Jane agreed. "And if it was a trap you set, why did you trip it on the way out, but not on the way in?"

I nodded. "And why didn't the pursuer trip it on the way in? No." I glanced at the two suspects, still trying to keep my iciness. "No, I think the whole thing had to be set up while Juliet was in the stacks. That's the only way it'd catch her coming out."

"But aren't you making a lot of assumptions?" Katy argued. "If the bookcase fell right on top of Juliet, wouldn't there be evidence for it besides just a broken leg?"

"There is," I answered. "On the body itself."

"Wait, is that..." I forced myself to touch the corpse, running my finger over her skin. "What are those things?" Poking at one of the odd objects protruding from Juliet's skin, I realized they were wooden splinters.

"I only saw one thing that could have been responsible for wooden splinters: the destroyed shelves of the fallen bookcase. Juliet had to be right there when it exploded."

"Oh shit, that explains everything else!" Rocky yelped. "The lines and everything! Right?"

FACT 14: YELLOW PAINT IN MAIN ROOM.
Two parallel yellow lines are on the floor in the main room, between the fallen bookcase and the stairs to the rare books room. They get fainter the closer they are to the stairs. One of the lines has dark brown mixed in with it. There are smeared footprints in a couple of places, like someone running in the same direction as the lines.

"If she falls down, and the bookcase falls down on top of her, part of her would be lying in the yellow paint, right? So then someone picks her up and drags her upstairs, her legs would leave those as a trail, right? Oh! And that's why one of the lines had blood in it, because her leg was still bleeding!"

"Yeah," I said. "And this is confirmed with other evidence."

FACT 6: JULIET'S BODY (revised).
Juliet was barefoot, and her soles had yellow paint on them. She also had yellow paint on the front of both of her legs.

I sighed. "She fell forward, got the front of her legs in the paint. A tripwire is looking more and more likely."

"Mm, no no," Jane said, shaking her head. "I can understand how a tripwire might be used to trigger Barrett's explosives in this setting. You tie a string to a book, and then paint the cover with two of the chemicals. Then, you slide the book into place on the bookshelf. Then you pull out the book next to it, halfway sticking out of the shelf, and carefully paint the final chemical on its cover. When the target hits the wire, the book is pulled out, it touches the chemicals on the book next to it, and the trap is triggered. But!"

She went silent and everyone just kind of stared at her.

"Um... but what?" Rocky finally asked.

"But that ignores one crucial fact!" Jane concluded, as if there had been no pause at all. "This was not a tripwire!"

"How could you know?" Katy asked.

"Because the other end wasn't tied to anything, darling! If there's no tension in the thread, there's nothing to trip on! Which leaves one very interesting question!" She paused, but I could tell it was just flair this time. "What triggered the explosion?"

"Um... maybe just like... the mirror?" Rocky offered.

Jane gave him an unimpressed look. "Why would a mirror..."

"I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas!"

"Actually..." I said. "I... think Rocky might kind of be right."

"Oh, don't be asinine!" Jane snapped.

"No, think about it!" I argued. "The mirror was found directly next to the space where Juliet would be emerging from the stacks, right around the corner. Someone must have deliberately brought it there, or else it should just be across the room where Juliet fell."

Rodrigo frowned. "But why would a mirror... ah." He sighed and nodded at me. "Yes. Yes, Saya."

Jane glowered, but he continued. "Friend Jane, you were correct that a loose thread would not serve as a tripwire, and so I cannot see how Foul Juliet could have set off any sort of trap herself. Which means, for the bookcase to explode right next to her, someone else must have triggered it."

Rodrigo nodded. "They simply held the string, and when she came by, they pulled it."

Jane started to argue, but then she nodded. "And because they had to know when to trigger the trap, but they also couldn't risk being seen, they stood around the corner, watching the hallway through the mirror." She grinned at Lucina and Katy. "I hope whoever is responsible isn't executed, because I genuinely respect your ingenuity." They both glared back.

"And then they dragged her off to the rare books room for torture," Rodrigo finished.

Lucina took a deep breath. "But how did we lift the bookcase? We..."

"It wasn't very heavy," Jane interrupted. Lucina fell silent.

We squatted and got our fingers under the bookshelf, and we managed to tilt it upwards some. I noted again that it wasn't very heavy, and I leaned down to get a better look.

"So this is what we have," Rocky said, and I looked to him in surprise. He had rearranged the list of events.

Butcher knife is impaled into door
Individual 2 leaves stacks
Someone leaves handprint in yellow paint
Someone leaves footprints in the main room

Juliet receives multiple cuts
Juliet's larynx is crushed
Juliet dies

"Huh," Jane mused. "Do we know that? Are we certain this 'Individual 2' left after Juliet was already dragged away?"

"No," Katy stated. "You don't."

"Yes," I stated. "We do."

She looked at me. She was beginning to look hopeless. I felt nothing.

"The yellow footprints in the main room were on top of the lines leading to the rare books room,"

"No, we weren't coming from that direction, she answered. "Hm, but it does look like someone running, doesn't it? Not very carefully, if they stepped right in that hideous color." Jane was right; it looked like the footstep of someone running headlong who didn't care they were stepping in something slippery. "And it angles out only slightly, so it looks like they were running in the same direction as the lines."

"As if someone was desperately running out of the stacks towards the rare books room. Following the lines right up the stairs."

I shook my head. "No, I'm sure of it. The one who killed Juliet is the one who blew up the bookcase. The other one came out of the stacks too late. By the time she got there, she was locked out of the rare books room."

And just like that, I knew. I knew who did it. The one who blew up the bookcase is the one who killed Juliet. And that could only have been...

"Yes, but which is which?" i know which is which. "And what about the other clues?" they don't matter at all

"And how did the knife get stuck on the outside of the door after whoever used it to kill Juliet?" no that isn't how it happened, that

"And why didn't Lucina stop Juliet, if she was outside when Juliet fell out of the window?" look it doesn't matter none of that matters

"Friend Saya?" rodrigo? why are you talking what is happening. "Are you..."

His voice very suddenly went silent. I looked up in surprise; all on my classmates were walled off by force fields except Katy and Lucina themselves.

"Oh god Saya," Katy groaned, already in tears. "No. You couldn't have. You couldn't possibly have..."

"The one who blew up the bookcase is the one who killed Juliet," I heard myself say. It was all I could muster.

"No!" Katy shouted. "It's impossible!"

And the key clue, the silver bullet proving who set the trap... it seemed so insignificant at the time, Jane even laughed at it.

"Um." Katy wouldn't meet my eyes, and her voice was ragged. "I cut her. A lot. For a log time, over ad over, with her own knife. I put her up in the doose, so it'd be eveeh worse than what she did to Emily. I watted her to be straggled and cut at the same time."

To blow up the bookcase so it fell on Juliet, you had to be able to identify all of Barrett's chemicals. You even had to be able to tell them apart from a decoy: the paint thinner.

FACT 17: GLASS CONTAINERS.
There were four containers near the entrance to the stacks, containing sugar, spice, everything nice, and paint thinner. Sugar, spice, and everything nice are inert on their own but violently explosive when all three are combined. All four liquids are visually identical, but they have very distinctive smells.

And Katy couldn't...

Katy just collapsed to her knees. "You think she did it but you're wrong!" she yelled. "I did it! Vote for me!"

Lucina looked more beautiful than I'd ever seen her. She looked peaceful. Hopeful. "I knew you'd figure it out," she said, her voice like Mozart.

Missy Elliot appeared in between us. "Hi!" she said.

Even in probably the most dramatic moment of my life, this threw me. It was... yes. It was Missy Elliott. I'd seen her in a couple of music videos on youtube, and that was clearly her. Missy Elliott. The famous rapper. "Um..."

"Hm?" She glanced at herself. "Aw, shit. I was hoping to change this. Sorry about the avatar. It's me! the mastermind!"

Lucina instinctively took a step back, but I was too surprised to move at all. "What..."

"Look, ignore the Missy Elliott thing!" Missy Elliott barked. "I'm here to give a message! An important message, Saya."

She leaned in close to me, but still spoke loudly enough for Katy and Lucina to hear. "I'm going to tell you a little secret, okay? I don't particularly care which one of those two idiots actually did the murder."

It took me a few seconds to find my voice. "Wait, what are you saying?"

"I don't care who actually did it! And if they both want to get executed so bad, who am I to stand in the way?" She grinned. "So I'm giving you a special deal. Whichever one of the suspects you get people to vote for, I'll execute her. The other one goes free. I couldn't care less if it's the guilty one or not."

Missy Elliot disappeared. A moment later, all the force fields disappeared.

Lucina, Katy and I just stared at one another in complete, dreadful shock.