CHAPTER 5. "Carry on My Wayward Son."
Ironically, it began to rain soon after that.
As Kazamori's tears fell, so did the heavens open up to pour down upon the world.
I had no idea how it had come to this moment, but here I was, wandering the world in silence getting drenched with rain.
At some point, I'd slowed down to a walk.
Didn't matter.
A car drove past- and I got splashed with water.
It really didn't matter.
What had I done?
I've probably screwed things up royally with Kazamori. There's no denying that much.
I don't know how long I walked for, or where I even was when it happened...
But I suddenly ran into a familiar face.
"Inga!?"
It was An Osada... holding an umbrella as she walked through the rain for some reason or another.
"Come on, let's get you inside...!"
Wait, where was I?
It was the Osada Mansion.
Somehow I'd ran to this place from Shinjuurou's apartment.
"What happened?" An was asking a lot of other things besides that, but I'm pretty sure that was the gist of it.
I wasn't even paying attention as she had one of the servants take me into the bathroom to get cleaned up.
I wasn't even paying attention when I got brought over to a dinner table to get something to eat.
...Was that chandelier shaped like a globe...?
It's funny how sometimes you just move the motions without even thinking, how sometimes you just... live without even thinking. You'll focus on the strangest things.
But, by that point, I was just in shock of what I'd just said.
I'd read once that it's a dangerous spiral- this 'depression' thing.
I suppose I'm fortunate enough that An was the one to catch me out of that downwards spiral.
SLAP.
"STOP IGNORING ME AND TELL ME WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, INGA!" An yelled after I'd thoroughly ignored her for what was probably...?
Where was a clock?
Didn't matter.
I didn't even know what time I'd gotten here.
"I screwed up."
"You...what?"
"I screwed up...with Kazamori."
"...Oh."
She...actually seemed surprised?
"I hurt her," I said, "I...it's..."
Screw it.
"We ran into Yuuko-" I said- "the other me who I can't become anymore."
And...I just...I spilled it out.
Everything that had happened up to that point.
I don't know how many times I rubbed the tears out of my eyes or how much more I ended up just sobbing instead of talking...
But, An...She just listened to it all.
"...Yup," She said finally, "you screwed up alright." She sighed, "Inga, look, I'm not going to pretend to know what's going on with this mystical magic gumbo jumbo stuff. I'm just a girl who couldn't be a singer...But I know one thing."
"What's that?"
"If you didn't actually love this girl deep down in your heart, you wouldn't be so torn up about this right now."
"What?"
"Way I see it, it doesn't matter if you got her knocked up or even if you two weren't even dating up until this point. You love Kazamori, and that's all there is to it."
"But I'm just a..."
"Shell? No way. Shells don't feel 'regret' or 'remorse' or anything like that." An looked like she was ready to slap me again. "A Shell wouldn't spend five hours walking in the rain to come stand at my doorstep looking for someone to talk to."
"Five hours!?" Did that mean it was...?
"Yes, five hours," An said with a nod- "and no, we're not discussing that right now!"
"...Ok." I didn't want to get slapped again.
"Look, Inga. I don't care if you or Kazamori weren't anything but human as of a few months ago, every time I see you two together, it's so painfully obvious that you two like each other. But you're just being stubborn by not admitting it!"
"We do too...!"
"When's the last time you told her "I Love You," in those exact words?"
"..."
"When's the last time she told you "I Love You," in those exact words?"
"..."
"Uh huh. Thought so." And then she was nodding.
"What's that supposed to mean!?" I asked rather indignantly.
"You two are at that awkward stage where you're trying to figure out what to do with each other after you've gone and had sex and now have a kid on the way. You've pretty much skipped every single date between 'being friends' and going straight to 'lovers' and now you're both not sure where you stand with each other."
That was actually pretty accurate, all things considered.
"So here's what we're going to do. You'll stay here the night and I'm going to teach you everything there is to know about apologizing. And before you say 'no', there's no way I'm letting you back out into that weather."
As if to prove another thing I'd been good at ignoring this entire time, there was a sudden howl of wind outside as what sounded like a bucket-full of water hit a window.
"Ouch..." I said.
"Yeah, I hope the garden survives this," An said with a look that clearly screamed 'Plotting!' "If it does, you're definitely taking some of those Violets back with you. Kazamori said she liked those last time she was over."
"Violets?"
"Sigh. Lesson one, Kiddo. Your girlfriend has a favorite flower. Learn it and memorize it!"
"G-Got it."
And so An Osada's night-time boot camp of "The art of Apology" began.
Kazamori had fallen asleep.
I sat there on the couch stroking at Kazamori's hair while Shinjuurou hung up the phone and walked over.
"Well, that was An," he said after he sat down.
"Did she...?" I didn't even finish the question.
"She did," He nodded- that was a relief, "and she's drilling him on 'make up dates' now."
"You know, now that I think about it, we've gone out on more dates this last month than they have."
"Which is why An's teaching him how to make chocolate next."
"Oh dear..."
"Don't worry, she's prepared for a mess."
Kato slipped up onto the couch and curled up next to Kazamori then- purring softly to comfort her in her sleep.
That silent trembling that I'd gotten used to over the last hour suddenly seemed to calm down a bit.
"I hope things work out for them," I said. "I really do."
"Well, we'll know soon enough, I suppose," Shinjuurou said, and I nodded at that.
Tomorrow morning. Something surely unique would happen then.
"Honestly," Shinjuurou began, "I'm concerned that Yuuko might have actually planned this as a way to escape, and that Inga was wrong about not being able to bring her back entirely."
"Something doesn't seem right about that though," I said. "Didn't you say that Yuuko had no clue what happened to make them split apart?"
"She certainly seemed surprised, that's for sure."
"Okay, so correct me on this, but wasn't Inga just possessing Yuuko's body, and then shape shifting into his kid form, rather than there being two separate bodies?"
"Yeah."
"And Inga's the sole owner of that body now, isn't he?"
"...Yeah."
"So how is Yuuko able to manifest separately now? Shouldn't that be impossible?"
"I think I see what you're getting at," Shinjuurou frowned, but the glimmer in his eyes said all the thanks needed.
"So if Inga has the original body, then it can't be Yuuko's body herself out there causing trouble, can it?" I deduced.
"That's right, she can't possibly be the same body...she's just memories...a soul." He looked at me with concern- "Yuuko's possessing someone else. That would explain why her face and age is different."
"Someone at the school, obviously," I agreed, "or else we wouldn't have run into her there."
"So who? A student?"
"Probably. That'd explain the age difference too. Atsuhiko might have accidentally stumbled on that secret identity, and Yuuko killed him for it to prevent him from causing any trouble." I frowned, "Could it be a teacher though?"
"A teacher would make a lot of sense. They'd have a lot more reason to remain hidden because of that."
"But then why go after Watanabi and Matsuda?"
"Why leave Watanabi alive, and deep fry Matsuda?"
I snapped my fingers- "Information and Control."
"What?"
"We're assuming that Yuuko's just a collection of memories for now, right? What if they're only fragments of memories and not the whole memories?"
"Inga swallowed one of Yuuko's memories to get that bit of relevant information." And then there was a look of horror. "Inga said it was just a brief glimpse, not nearly enough to pull her back in, but...what if Inga's rant earlier wasn't his thoughts but Yuuko's?"
"That's exactly what I'm thinking. The way it just came over him all of a sudden... I'm pretty sure that was one of Yuuko's memories surfacing." And then I went into the core of my theory: "I think Yuuko can't remember how to use her powers correctly. The deep-frying might be a completely hit or miss thing! There's no telling how many other people she's fed on and lived."
"So those students might have lived even if we hadn't interrupted them," Shinjuurou thought for a while, then spoke again. "We need to figure out who Yuuko's possessing, though."
"It can wait until tomorrow." A yawn pierced the whole sentence. "I think we should all get to bed."
"That's as good of an idea as any..." And then Shinjuurou yawned too. Hehe...
The Next Morning, I woke up alone, like I had for the past week.
Unlike when I was an R.A.I., waking up is something confusing to me now. The defined points of "shut down" and "start up" are no-longer applicable.
Instead- you drift seemingly from one moment to another in your dreams, and then wake up sometimes without even realizing that you've fallen asleep.
Such as what happened just mere moments ago.
I had been on the couch crying over what Inga had said and...now...
I was in my own bed.
Alone.
I believe I'd already said that.
That initial moment of confusion leads you to start off with a fresh mind- supposedly.
Instead, it just made my heart ache even more.
A heart.
R.A.I.'s had been programed with human thinking, but not emotions.
How did humans live with such things? Fear- anger- hate- sorrow- regret.
Hope.
Happiness.
A longing desire for a returned presence.
I stepped out of the room and into the main bulk of the apartment.
Kato purred from the counter.
"A reasonable compromise."
We hadn't even been able to name a Cat-toaster properly without arguing.
In the end, we had settled on figuring out the Cat's gender and choosing a name off of that.
And that had gotten a neighbor's toaster cat pregnant as a result.
I looked forward to seeing what toaster-kittens looked like, but at the same time...
Where was our impulse control?
As an R.A.I., I...I'll admit that I hadn't been the best at acting rationally.
It's a risk of emulating human thought, I suppose, but now I wasn't even emulating it.
My mind had been rearranged so drastically that suddenly being...being...
Just simply being.
I suppose.
Adding onto that the complications involved with being pregnant...
What a foolish experiment that had been. Surely there could have been something else that we could have tried see if Inga's powers had changed any.
But no- we had gone straight for that risk.
I...it wasn't something either of us were prepared for, I know now.
There was always that deep-seeded thought that what we had done was a mistake, deep within my mind... Had Inga felt the same way...?
"Ah, Kazamori!" Rie said- happily cooking away at something on the stove while Shinjuurou stared on in...abstract horror, if I'm reading his facial expression correctly."Good morning!"
I was eating my own breakfast soon enough while Rie continued with some sort of food experiment involving pancakes with bacon strips inside the batter...
I have no clue whether or not to congratulate her on coming up with such an odd concoction.
Regardless, Shinjuurou explained Rie's theory about Inga's alter self being a fragmented spirit, and that a piece of that memory might have slipped through into Inga's from the fragment he'd eaten.
I wasn't sure if that made me comfortable with the ideas of forgiving him for running off or not.
I, Mayoi Katawase, am not amused.
"You're telling me," I said flatly to Max The Coroner, "that Matsuda here literally had the breath knocked out of him?" I pointed at the body that looked like a dried prune. "That guy? Choked to death?"
"The body's mummified state arose within moments of death, but yes," Max adjusted his glasses, "the cause of death was a lack of oxygen due to a lack of oxygen."
"Right right right." I asked, "So what about Atsuhiko?"
"That was caused by quite a similar asphyxiation, identical in all respects save for one."
"And that's...?"
"Matsuda's lungs were turned inside out into the airways."
What the ever loving chocolate fudge-cake?
"...Care to repeat that?" I had to ask even though I didn't want to.
"All of the oxygen in both of our victims lungs was missing- however," Max pulled open Matsuda's dehydrated chest, revealing the ghastly sight of inverted lungs, "Matsuda died due to the oxygen being pulled out of his lungs at an incredibly fast rate. Atsuhiko's lungs, on the other hand were flattened, as if slowly drained of oxygen."
"So...We're dealing with a madwoman with a vacuum cleaner," I mused.
"Even modern vacuum cleaners would struggle to be able to pull this off, Chief Katawase," Max said. "The result is something more like explosive decompression. Although how that would be caused in a human being is-"
"It's a figure of speech, Max!" I rubbed at the bridge of my nose.
Good grief this guy could be dense sometimes.
"Sorry, but something like this is a rare sight. If possible, I'd like to see how this was accomplished and-"
"Trust me, Max, you really don't."
My cell phone rang as I exited the morgue.
"Chief Katawase," I answered.
"F.Y.I., Inga's back now," Shinjuurou said. "So you can call off that APB on him if you haven't already."
"Good to know, anything else?" I asked.
"We think Yuuko's possessing a student or teacher at St. Chronica's, probably a student than teach, and that she's just a bunch of fragmented memories held together by magic powers, but other than that, no, not really."
Well that was an awkward sentence.
"How's it going on your end?"
"Official cause of Matsuda's death is having his lungs sucked out through his throat," I offered that tasty tidbit.
"Considering how souls usually come out of a person, I can't say I'm surprised."
He didn't sound surprised either.
"So what's the plan for dealing with Yuuko?" I asked.
"Don't have one yet," Shinjuurou replied, sounding somewhat distracted, "we're going to go over Watanabi's testimony after lunch to see if there's anything we missed."
"Should I put eyes on the school?"
"Yeah, that's a smart idea."
And with that, we said our farewells, and hung up.
Becoming Police Chief had changed how most people looked at me now.
Every single time I stepped into the main office room, everyone would stand up from their desks and salute.
"Back to work everyone! And stop doing that, please!"
Didn't matter that I'd told 'em to cut it out a thousand times by now. They just kept on doing it.
I sat down at my desk, and opened up the email page. Gah! "...so much junk mail...!" Ignoring that, though, i went and sent out an email to dispatch to get surveillance put on St. Chronica Academy.
Of course, the moment I finished that, a knock came at my door. "Yeah?" I motioned the poor lieutenant in.
"They're bringing in a body that just washed up at the harbor," he said.
"I take it there's a reason you're telling me beyond us having another corpse for the corpse party?" I asked.
"...You need to see it."
"Damn." I followed the poor Lieutenant down to the morgue once more...
"Jane Doe, age unknown," Max was speaking into a tape recorder as I walked into the room, detailing the body on the table before he began to cut into it, "Damage: what appears to be sword wounds to the stomach and neck, inflicted before death. Hands, feet, and most limbs removed, likely post-death. There are minor bite wounds, also likely post-death..."
And the case changed entirely.
"Like previous victims Matsuda and Atsuhiko, Jane Doe shows signs of rapid dehydration and mummification prior to being dumped into the water. Many body parts seem to have been removed post-death as a means of obscuring the woman's identity, with the wounds crudely sewn up again in an attempt to hide this. Missing organs were likely tossed into the water elsewhere, probably devoured already by indigenous life... It's impossible to tell if cause of death was caused by asphyxiation due to a lack of lungs inside the body."
"Max," I spoke up then, "How long would you say she's been in the water?"
Max paused slightly, then spoke up, "Based on the water temperature, and state of decay on the skin, I would say Jane Doe has been deceased for a little over one week."
"Thank you, Max!" I turned to leave immediately, brushing past the poor Lieutenant as I pulled out my phone and hit a speed dial number...
Only to get voice mail.
Damn it.
"Yo, Detective, we've got another body. A Jane Doe, 'bout a week old, been in the water for the whole time. We need to talk 'A Sap.'"
Just what was going on over there that he wasn't answering all of a sudden?
Back in time by (more than) a few minutes...
"Inga," Kazamori breathed once she saw what the boy was presenting her.
Two whole heart shaped boxes filled with assorted chocolate pieces (I've got to admit, I'm impressed that Inga managed to pull off making that much) and a whole boquet of Violets (Did he get those from An's garden?).
"I'm sorry, Kazamori!" Inga, it should be noted, really looked decent when he cleaned up and wore something other than his usual outfit. Said something happened to be a tuxedo that looked to have been recently sized to fit him.
I spared An a glance out of the corner of my eye, and she just smiled in return as she chatted with Rie.
"I'm really sorry for everything I said- I was being completely out of line and I wasn't thinking at all!" On the other hand, you could argue that he'd been thinking way too much. "So...I'd just like to ask...if it's alright with you...could we-"
And then Kato jumped into one of the boxes of chocolates and spilled it over.
"AH! NO! Bad Cat!" I'm pretty sure we all yelled that in that single moment.
While we all rushed to pick up the spilled candy- Kato sneakily absconded with the other box without spilling a single piece.
It should be noted that after the following incident, it was posted to the internet that Toaster Cats should never be allowed to have chocolate.
The smell of burnt chocolate alone is enough to make you understand why, let alone the fact that- much like a normal flesh and blood dog- Toaster Cats seem to be incapable of ingesting chocolate without experiencing discomfort.
(Spoiler alert: It was the veterinarian we took Kato to who posted said warning of toaster-cats and chocolate onto the internet.)
But Meanwhile in the present...
Meh. Whatever it was that was happening, it was probably important.
I took advantage of everyone standing up to turn to bow this time to make an announcement; "Alright everyone! I want search teams out in the harbor dredging up every inch of that pond! We've likely got multiple bodies out there, so I want them found before the fishes do! Ya got that?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" Ah- and there was a row of saluting.
I could get used to the saluting.
Hours later, I'd still not heard back from Shinjuurou.
But that was alright, he wasn't missing much right now.
I took a sip of coffee, then took a bite out of a doughnut as the sunlight of the mid-afternoon sun reflected off of my sunglasses.
'Yeah, that's pretty cool looking,' everyone's thinking whenever they spare me a glance. It's mostly the citizens on the other side of the police line doing the glancing though.
That's right, Citizens! I wear the shades 'cuz I'm the Chief!
So far, only two bodies had been found in the harbor- the one that had surfaced this morning, and another about half an hour ago- little more than shark chow, though.
To be honest, we'd lucked out that the first body hadn't been eaten up like that one.
But this didn't make any sense at all.
Why would Yuuko go to the trouble of hiding bodies at first, only to leave Atsuhiko's out in the open? Was it the distance? Had she been too far from her usual dumping ground?
But then there was the teleporting across town she'd performed yesterday...
It was right around then that the second body was finally dredged up from the harbor with a mighty splash.
"Well," I said as I adjusted my sunglasses, "I think we've just thoroughly cannon-balled Yuuko's day."
"YEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!" A kid on the other side of the caution line yelled.
I couldn't help but to flash a thumbs up and a grin at the kid, even as his parents scolded him for being loud.
Yup. Made his day, that I did.
Back at the Morgue...
"Victim is male, John Doe, same removal of internal organs as before on the Jane Doe and from the partial remains of the third, unidentified victim," Max read off the list of injuries nearly identical to the Jane Doe's.
It was about that point that my cell phone rang again.
"Yo, Shinjuurou, you've missed out on quite the day," I said before the Detective could even speak. "How goes the research?"
"Not at all. We just got back from the vet."
"Oh?" I gave off a "Hue Hue Hue!" and said, "It sounds like you've had an eventful day yourself!"
"You could say that. What's this about a Jane Doe?"
"Jane-chan, John-kun, and Same-Chum," I giggled at my own little joke. "Shark-Chum" Hahah!
"Three!?" Wow, Shinjuurou actually sounded surprised.
"Yeah, seems li'l ol' Yuuko's been a busy little butterfly," I said. "We're still dredging the harbor in case we missed anything."
"So...any ID on the new bodies?"
"What part of the Theme naming did you not understand? We've got nothing on 'em."
"Ouch. You sound a bit irritated there..."
"You would be too if your double murder investigation just turned into a quintuple homicide."
"How old are they?"
"There's not enough of ol' Chummy to tell, but Jane and John are a little over a week old, best Max can tell."
"Max?"
"The Coroner."
"Oh, right." He paused, then said, "So a week? That lines up almost exactly with Atsuhiko's murder."
"I take it that means whatever Yuuko's been doing since she split from Inga, she's either been doing it quietly, or..."
"Or she only regained consciousness around one week ago."
"You've got a theory on that part, right?"
"Oh, right, I don't think I told you about it earlier, did I?"
"Depends, I might've forgotten. Lay it on me anyways." Busy day for everyone, that's for sure.
"Rie and I have a running theory that Yuuko is just a bunch of splintered memory fragments slowly pulling themselves back together."
"I think I heard that part...but then again..." I shook my head, "Never mind. So you think the late wake-up-call has to do with this too?"
"If Yuuko's slowly been recollecting herself, then by the time she formed enough to be able to wake up and be able to siphon souls to sustain herself...It might have happened a little over one week ago."
"So now we're looking for a trigger incident," I sighed. "Great, Shinjuurou. Just great. Do you know how much trouble those are to pin down?"
"About as hard as Lynch Pins, I'd suppose," and as he said that I have no clue what he's referring to. Actually, he sounded a bit distracted now that I think about it.
"Is everything alright over there, Detective?" I asked after a moment of silence on his end.
Silence still, and then, "I just thought of something Watanabi said. I need to double check it, but come over later and we'll see if it pans out."
And then he hung-up without so much as a goodbye.
I looked at my cellphone with a look of disbelief. "Well!" I said with a huff. "No rest for the wicked, I guess..."
The Trip over to Shinjuurou Yuuki and Rie Kaishou's shared apartment was the usual one, dragged down only by the weary weight of this case...
"Wow, this place looks tossed," I remarked upon entering the house.
"That'll happen when a Toaster Cat absconds with a box of chocolates," Surprisingly, it was An Osada who was there to greet me.
"So what's the story?" I asked her.
"Oh, Inga said something stupid, ran off before he could think it over, got lost in the rain," An listed off the list of events since last night, "he stayed the night at my place as I talked him through all of the steps of making up with Kazamori, and even taught him how to make chocolate candies-"
"Yum."
"-And then Kato goes and screws the whole day up by stealing a box of said chocolates, and then proceeded to eat it all, forcing us to spend the whole day at the Vet while they pumped his systems to clear it out."
"Ew."
"Exactly," and with that, An lead me into the main room where Shinjuurou and Rie were talking over a laptop.
"Speaking of, where're Inga and Kazamori?" I asked.
"Oh, they went out to meet the Dinner Reservations I placed last night- thankfully this was all over with before then so they could have that..." An sighed. "It would've been a waste of planning otherwise."
"So what exactly brought all this on?" I asked, "Inga saying something stupid?"
"Inga quoting one of Yuuko's newly made memories," Shinjuurou and Rie said at the exact same time.
Aw, how cute!
I laughed, "You guys are adorable!"
Rie just motioned me over, saying to Shinjuurou, "Yeah, I think that's what we're looking for."
"So what's the scoop?" I sat down next to them to look at the screen, a transcript of Watanabi's questioning, before her memory got wiped.
"Watanabi said something the other day about Atsuhiko being a sort of..." He then moused to highlight a certain section of text, and read it, "'A perverted Influence of having fun', that some of the others in the Student Council might not take so kindly to Hinata's dating."
"You're thinking Yuuko's hiding in the student council?" I asked.
"The thing is she then said," Rie moved to highlight a different section of text to read. "'The only one who wouldn't throw a fuss would be Dog-girl.' Inga asked who for clarification, and she replied, 'Yusa-Chan.'"
"Wait, isn't that the girl who Yuuko was trying to talk to when you ran into her?" I asked.
"Aoi Yusa," Shinjuurou said with a nod. "I think she'll be worth talking to tomorrow."
"So...Yuuko's basically chowing down on all the perverts of the school?" I had to ask.
"Or at least everyone related to the Student Council in some way," Rie agreed.
"Okay, that'd make sense...if we didn't already have three bodies fished up from the harbor," I frowned. "They're definitely not students of the school. Besides Atsuhiko, there haven't been any reported deaths or disappearances."
"Parents then?" Shinjuurou offered.
"You think some kids would have lost their parents and not said anything?" I asked, somewhat in disbelief.
"You'd be surprised how little you care about someone who doesn't want to act like a parent," An said, scowling as she thought of her mother, no doubt.
"I'm thinking-" Shinjuurou said- "that the main key here is that Yuuko is targeting people who are being bad influences and doing it ironically at the same time. Atsuhiko was sexing up Hinata, so Yuuko killed him for that, using his own sex drive as the key to getting in to eat his soul."
"Yusa wouldn't bat an eye to Hinata and Atsuhiko, so that's why Yuuko was trying to go after her... Maybe to see what made her tick before trying to go in for the kill?" Rie continued. "But Shinjuurou and Inga stopped that, and that made her skip ahead to the next target."
"Watanabi," I said, "but she didn't have the time to kill her, so instead she just took the girl's memories and ran."
"Right," Shinjuurou nodded- "And that lead back to Matsuda, Atsuhiko's parental figure, and..."
"The one who was keeping Atsuhiko out of trouble with the school by taking him out clubbing," Rie finished that sentence.
It couldn't be helped, An and I both 'daww'ed over their sentence finishing.
They didn't seem to notice.
"So then if 'corrupting influence' can refer to the parents and not the kids themselves..." Rie continued to wonder.
"Maybe the students whose parents are missing have been used to their parents vanishing for long periods of time?" Shinjuurou asked.
"Or they could have mob ties," Rie continued, "which would explain the harbor dumping and hand removals."
"But why cut out the organs and chop off the hands?" I had to ask. "That sounds more like they're trying to hide the identity of the bodies, or obscure the cause of death."
"Maybe it's an irony thing- they were butchers?" Shinjuurou asked.
"Or maybe they worked at the morgue?" Rie suggested. "Organs get removed like that all the time, don't they?"
"Hold on," I spoke up. "Max said that Jane Doe was cut open with a sword. That doesn't fit at all."
They went silent.
"A sword?" An asked, surprised. "What kind of sword?"
"I dunno..." I shrugged, "Max said they were sword wounds. I could call and ask if he's figured out what kind, but...I doubt it after the amount of decay. I'd guess a Katana or something- it'd leave pretty distinctive marks."
"Yuuko had access to a sword?" Shinjuurou frowned- "Why would she use a sword?"
"The wounds were sewn shut too," I added, "after the organs got removed."
"Why would she go to all that trouble?" Rie asked.
"Maybe the first few kills weren't Yuuko who did it," Shinjuurou seemed to have had a realization. "What if it's whoever Yuuko's possessing who accidentally killed then, and woke Yuuko up?"
"That raises the question then," I said, "who's she possessing?"
The remainder of the week would go by without any major break in the case as we held questionings at the school of every single student and teacher, regardless of if they'd had any ties to the case or not.
Strangely, the girl we wished to talk to the most, Student Council Treasurer Aoi Yusa, didn't come into class at all. As for her father... He hadn't seen her since the morning of Inga and Shinjuurou confronting Yuuko in the hallways.
What a load of bull!