*Ding, dong, ding!*

"A BODY HAS BEEN DISCOVERED. IT CAN BE CONFIRMED THAT THIS IS THE RESULT OF MURDER. ALL STUDENTS, TO ATONE FOR THEIR COMPLICITY, MUST INVESTIGATE. THEN, AFTER A SUFFICIENT INVESTIGATION HAS BEEN CARRIED OUT, A TRIAL WILL BEGIN."

Naoko was mortified, staring at Sasa's dead body. It had happened again. And Kimi...he found her trying to leave the scene. He looked over to her, and saw that she was incredibly panicked, and looked like she was going to make a break for it at any moment.

"Kimi," Naoko said, voice trembling. "Did you…?"

"What?!" she blurted out. "N-no, I-" She suddenly stopped, her face contorting as if she were ill. "Oh my god...how could this have-"

At that point, some footsteps began moving towards their location, and someone peeked through the door. It was Yasuo.

"They're in here!" he called out. "Naoko and Kimi!"

Within seconds, Naoko and Kimi had to move further into the music room in order to make room for all 11 of their fellows, who scrambled inside only to look on in shock.

"Oh my god," Mariko gasped, petrified. "How could this happen? I thought that...I thought…"

Mariko took a step back to catch her breath as the rest continued.

"Sasa…" Hoshi said, forlorn. "I can't believe it...She's dead? I…"

"Naoko," Eryu spoke up, "what's going on here? What happened?"

"Well," Naoko began nervously, "I went to check the game room, and I heard some noise coming from in here, and-"

"I didn't do it!" Kimi blurted out.

There was brief silence after this outburst, and many of them, including Yori, looked at her suspiciously.

"What do you mean you didn't?" Yori asked. "What happened here, then?"

"And hey!" Haru called out from the back of the group. "What the hell's one of my mallets doin' here on the floor?"

"Huh?" Naoko responded. "The mallet? I think...Kimi was holding it when she crashed into me."

"She was holdin' a mallet?!" Haru shouted back. "Kimi, what the fuck did you do?!"

"Me?!" Kimi snapped back. "I didn't do anything! I just…" Kimi stopped, her inner fire visibly dying as she suddenly began to look more and more distressed. "Guys, please, you gotta believe me, I-"

*Ding!*

There was a noise that interrupted her that came from several members of the group. Those that did began to fish out their phones, and looked to see what they had just received.

"IMONO Murder File 2?" Bankei read aloud. "I suppose that's to be expected."

"Quick, what does it say?" Eryu asked.

"Oh?" Bankei responded, looking over at him knowingly. "Are you asking me?"

"Are you trying to be playful or something?" Eryu asked incredulously. "There's a dead body in front of us!"

"Don't worry, everyone," Yasuo said. "I can read it. Hang on a moment…"

Yasuo took a moment to clear his throat, and began to read with a grim expression.

"The victim is Sasa Hamasaki. The time of death is estimated to be 1PM. Her body was discovered in the music room. Cause of death was suffocation caused by a flute found lodged in her throat."

He put his phone down and looked on with a frown. "I...don't know how to feel about this, really."

"This all seems like a fucking disaster to me!" Haru piped up. "Someone grab Kimi before she can escape!"

"Huh?!" Kimi gasped, stepping back. "You're going to treat me like that? Please, I'm telling you, I didn't do it!"

"Theeen, who did?" Ishi asked, bemused. "Naoko, maybe?"

"That's not possible," Eryu spoke up. "He's been in the pool room since noon. There's no way he could've been here."

"Then we'll need a thorough investigation, won't we?" Yori asked, moving towards Naoko. "That's what we're supposed to do, isn't it? It's not as though we can take this at face value."

"I suppose that makes sense," Mareo replied. "Still, to be frank, it's pretty obvious in this case, right? She was running away, and she was holding a weapon. So, logically, she's the killer."

"You..." Kimi looked at the rest of the group with a pained expression. "You can't be serious! Do you all hate me that much?!"

"'Hate' is a strong word," Yori pointed out. "I think that, despite any negative feelings we have towards her, we shouldn't rush our investigation."

"Affirmative," Mareo said. "Do we have any sort of standard procedure for this situation?"

"We could do things the same as last time, probably," Naoko suggested.

"So, everyone stays in groups, Naoko and Mareo will investigate the crime scene, and we'll also need alibis," Eryu said, counting off each item on his hand. "Also, I'm going to need someone to keep an eye on Kimi for the time being."

Kimi sighed defeatedly. "Okay, just...let me lie down somewhere. I don't feel so good."

There wasn't much else that they could do but stay calm and work together on uncovering the truth of the murder. Those that seemed particularly affected by the murder of who was, all things considered, a good friend, were taken by most of the others to the room in which they had been partying in. There, they would have to wait, not to mention steel themselves for what would be happening soon enough.

Meanwhile, Naoko and Mareo were in the music room, tasked with the investigation of the scene of the crime. Just as last time, Yori was there to supervise them and weigh in on their discussions with her own thoughts.

Of course, the first thing that they started on was Sasa's body. Working with a body was still something that Naoko wasn't very comfortable with, but at least there wasn't any blood that he could see.

"Alright, so," Mareo said, inspecting Sasa's mouth, "I can see the flute that the file mentioned. I should probably remove it for closer inspection. Hang on a moment..."

Naoko looked away momentarily as Mareo reached out his hand to slowly and carefully remove the murder weapon. Once it was over, he looked at the item in question, to see it was a fairly simple metal flute.

"Is that it?" Naoko asked.

"Indeed," Mareo confirmed. "It's not very large, and there's not much to its design. There's a blowhole here at the top, and multiple holes running across its length. That's about all I can see."

"I was under the impression that flutes generally had more to them than that," Yori said.

Naoko looked at the instruments on the walls. "There's other flutes on the walls, it looks like. This one is simpler than any of them that I can see."

"Right," Mareo replied, looking at the wall of instruments himself. "I believe I see...that's referred to as a concert flute, isn't it? This one looks a bit different, doesn't it? Not to mention it's smaller."

"We can worry about that later," Yori pointed out. "What about Sasa's body? Anything strange?"

"Let me take a look."

Mareo proceeded to take a more in-depth examination, while Naoko took a step back to look at the room itself. He took note of the knocked over chair and music stand that he initially noticed when he first entered, as well as Sasa's broken glasses that laid nearby, and figured that it probably related to some sort of struggle between Sasa and the killer. Probably. The only other thing that he noticed around that area of the music room was something about the floor. There was something that caught him and Yori's eye in front of the knocked over music stand and chair. It was some sort of indentation in the wood, small and somewhat round.

"Hmm," Yori vocalized in contemplation. "Something definitely happened between the killer and Sasa in here."

"Yeah, it looks like it," Naoko agreed. "Is there anything else you can see that's odd?"

"Anything I can see?" Yori asked.

"Yeah, as in, uh, different."

Yori took a moment to think about that. "I've not been in this room very much, but I suppose I remember something a bit different here."

"What is it?"

"The grand piano in the middle of the room," Yori said, looking towards it. "I don't remember the lid being propped up."

"Huh?" Naoko took a look, and realized that she was right. He was quite sure that the piano hadn't had its lid up before. He trusted his memory. "You're right. I don't know what that means, though. Why would she or her killer prop up the piano lid?"

Mareo suddenly popped up between them. "Maybe it was propped up before the party," he suggested.

Naoko and Yori darted their attention to him.

"Oh, right, apologies," Mareo said, holding his hands up apologetically. "I've finished looking at Sasa's body. I noticed some mild bruising and what look like fingernail marks on her arms and hands, as well as a large bruise on her forehead. I've already compared it to the mallet Kimi was holding, and I'm certain the mallet was the cause of the latter."

"Really?" Naoko asked. "So, was Sasa killed with the flute after being hit with the mallet?"

"Possibly," Yori replied. "If so, this case and our last one seem eerily similar."

After going through the contents of the music room to the best of their ability, what Naoko wanted to do was talk to everyone else the best he could. Relying on someone else to collect alibis sounded efficient enough, but something told him that he'd have better luck finding evidence if he asked people directly. Starting off, he decided to step into the game room to talk to its current occupants. As soon as he entered, he took a look at the current state of the people inside. Mariko still looked rather pale from seeing Sasa's body, and Mareo, upon seeing this, moved over to her to try and comfort her. Takeshi eyed Mareo strangely for this. Hoshi didn't seem to care, as he had his head down, and was slowly and aimlessly flipping through his strange notebook.

"Ah," Takeshi said, looking over at Naoko. "Hey there. Made any headway?"

"At the moment?" Naoko asked. "I'm not sure. I just want to ask about what happened with you guys."

"Huh," Takeshi said, absentmindedly fiddling with his saxophone. "Well, like you're probably thinking, me, Sasa, Mariko, Mareo, and Hoshi were in here together for a while. As planned, I played for everyone here for most of it."

"I suppose that would make sense," Yori weighed in. "However, Sasa must have left at some point, correct?"

"Oh yeah," Takeshi replied. "Well, as for what Sasa was doing during the party, she stuck around for a bit, but she left kinda suddenly after a little while. I wanna say it was around 12:40."

Naoko couldn't help but take interest in Takeshi's statement. Not necessarily due to what he said, but more how he said it. There seemed to be something odd about it, but he wasn't sure how to approach it. Luckily for him, Yori was able to do so for him.

"Your inflection just now was odd," she said. "Have you noticed anything about her before this?"

"Ah, sorry about that," Takeshi replied. "I guess I have. In fact, I was just thinking about something that happened with Naoko, Sasa, Haru and I a couple of days ago."

Yori looked towards Naoko. "You know what he's talking about, don't you?"

Naoko nodded. "Yeah, I know exactly what he's talking about."

"I mean," Takeshi continued, "I wasn't 100% about it at the time, but when you and Sasa met me in the music room, the way she acted didn't slip by me. Knowing what we all figured out afterwards, connecting the dots was easy, even for a guy like me."

"Alright," Naoko said, "I think I know what you're talking about."

"Of course you can," Takeshi said. "You seem like the kinda guy that doesn't let anything slip your mind. Not easily, anyway. But yeah, I think she might've had something of a crush on me, 'cause of that stuff that's still in our systems."

Hoshi looked up with a sudden interest. "You...really think so?"

"That's what I think," Takeshi replied simply. "I think she might've even wanted to...I dunno, meet up with me or something."

Hoshi looked at Takeshi skeptically. "Where did you get that idea?"

"Well," Takeshi began, "I remember sometime in the afternoon a couple days ago, before I met Naoko and such in the music room, I saw Sasa leave the music room. I don't know how long she might've been in there, but she was in there for something, alright."

"She, um," Mariko spoke up. "She never told me anything about any of that."

"Huh?" Takeshi asked.

"Sasa," Mariko shakily replied. "I actually got her to agree to talk to me. I told her I was the new therapist, and if she needed help, we could meet in her room. It happened last night."

"What happened between you two?" Yori asked.

"I wasn't able to get her to talk much," Mariko admitted. "She just told me that she was scared. She was scared of being here forever, scared of being yelled at...With what happened to Keiko, she was even scared of being killed. I don't know if it was dumb of me to do, but...I really felt her pain."

"Well, I don't see anything dumb with that," Mareo commented.

"Well," Mariko elaborated, "she did a lot of crying, and I kind of teared up a little, too. I ended up just giving her a hug and telling her things would be okay."

"Aw, that's sweet!" Mareo said encouragingly, placing a supportive hand on her shoulder. This act left a bad taste in Naoko's mouth, but he couldn't place why. Maybe just because of what he had already heard about Mareo. He suddenly felt very glad Kimi wasn't in the room with them.

"Thank you?" Mariko replied hesitantly. "I just think that I didn't do a very good job, is all. And seeing her body...I didn't think something like that could happen between us. Not a second time, anyway, and not to her. I wanted to help her. Could I have...done better? Would that have helped? Maybe if I could get Eryu on board-"

"Maybe we should focus on what happened during the party," Naoko said to redirect the conversation. He didn't like the direction that Mariko's thoughts were heading in.

"Ah, well," Takeshi said contentedly, "I remember Hoshi left to use the bathroom. I think it was…ten minutes after Sasa left? So around 12:50."

"Yes," Hoshi replied. "I would say that's about right. I can't say I kept track of how long I was gone, though." Hoshi sighed ashamedly. "I'm sorry about that."

"You were only gone 5 or 6 minutes," Mareo cut in.

"That sounds about right," Hoshi replied.

"Oh, before I forget," Mareo continued, "Takeshi, you left a couple minutes after Hoshi did. I don't remember you saying why you left, though."

Takeshi froze up for a moment. "I didn't?"

Hoshi looked at Takeshi suspiciously. "Where were you, Takeshi? You weren't here when I came back. You came back a short while later."

"Uh, sorry. Went to the bathroom," Takeshi said. This answer didn't look like it sat well with Hoshi.

"Huh. Interesting," Hoshi said with a suspicious stare.

"Well then," Yori said, "if that's everyone here's alibis, then we should be able to return to this particular topic during the trial."

As soon as Yori and Naoko left the game room, Yori stopped and looked at him.

"You're doing well," she said.

"Oh, thanks," he replied. "But, well, something about all that bothered me. I think it was what Takeshi said."

"He definitely seems to be hiding something," Yori agreed. "Perhaps we should investigate him further while we have the time. Last time we did this, we searched everyone's rooms, and didn't find much in most of them. I still think we should do so again, mind you, but once we do, we should make sure we're thorough when searching Takeshi's room."

This reasoning seemed solid, and Naoko didn't really want to say no to her, so he agreed. That was all that they could reasonably get from the game room and music room for the time being, so their next stop was obvious enough. They were going to have to visit the pool room. Hopefully there'd be some information about the murder they could gather there.

A/N: Yeah, this investigation ended up being really long. Because of that, I've made it a two-parter. Next chapter will conclude the investigation.