The victim is the SHSL Golshi, Gold Ship.
Estimated time of death is 8PM
Her body was discovered in the cafeteria.
Victim was killed by blunt force trauma to the head. There also seems to be some damage dealt to her eyes.
That was what the electronic notebook that we'd each been given had to say about this. It also contained a list of rules which we'd spent the last few hours going over.
Any violence against the headmaster or destruction of property was forbidden, as we'd previously learnt.
Aside from that, the rules also mentioned it being forbidden to leave the campus at any point.
How we would even go about doing that with all of the windows boarded up and the only door out being a vault was beyond me.
There were also a few rules about nighttime, but those didn't matter too much at the moment. What did matter were the rules relating to murder.
Anyone who kills a fellow student will be able to graduate (Monouma's term for leaving, I guess? Why does she treat this place like an academy? What are we learning?), unless they're caught.
Once a murder takes place, we'll all have to take part in a class trial.
If the guilty party is exposed, then they will be executed. But if we fail to expose them, then we'll all be executed instead. So either one person gets out free and the rest of us die, or one person dies and the rest of us get to stay trapped here, basically.
Well, this might all be a bit much at once. How about we retrace the steps that led us here?
After that meeting, we read through the rules we'd been given. A few hours were spent fruitlessly looking for any exits we might have missed, in desperation that there was some way out we weren't seeing.
To be honest, I dedicated a bit of that time to trying to find some evidence that this was all a prank, but that was a bit too hopeful.
While trying to find a way out, we became acquainted with the rest of the school. Most of this isn't too relevant, so I'll keep it brief.
In the area where I woke up, there were two classrooms. Down the hall there were some large doors that I couldn't open and a room for watching videos.
To the right of that was a mysterious shop that seemed to have a gacha machine inside. When I was checking it out, Monouma suddenly appeared to let me know that I'd need Monocoins to use it. The questions of what Monocoins are and how I could go about obtaining them went completely unanswered, however.
The only rooms left after that were the room with the vault door that I met everyone in, a medical room, toilets and the gym where all of the explanations happened. There were also stairs, but they were behind a gate.
As for the other side of the building were rooms for each of us. Other than that there were baths, a laundry room, and a room with just an incinerator in it, a storage closet, a rather large dining room attached to it and once again, the stairs seemed to lead somewhere, but there was no way up to get them.
While exploring the storage closet, we happened upon some vaguely interesting things.
"Hey, hey! Look at this!" Gold Ship held up a cardboard box. "Mystery box."
"What is in there?" Tosen Jordan asked back.
"I don't know, that's why it's a mystery box."
"Well can you open it?"
"But then it won't be a mystery box anymore. It'll just be a box."
"I'm fine with that."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"
"You're just going to make the decision to kill this mystery box, just like that?"
"Yes, just open it already."
"Fine." She opened it. "See? It's dead now. You monster. This mystery box could've had a family, but you went and killed it because you were curious about what was inside. All for what?"
"I won't know what it was for until you show me what's inside."
"No, I've got to make you feel guilty for at least five more sentences. Now, where was I? Ah, right. This mystery box here, you see, it spent years of its life-"
"I'm done here." Jordan walked out of the closet without shutting the door behind her.
"Ehh." Gold Ship stared for a few seconds before looking back to the now opened box. "Oh well. Let's see what we got here."
She reached in for a few seconds, before going "Oh." and chucking something towards Mcqueen.
"Really, you should give some warning before you throw objects at peopl-" Mcqueen stopped reprimanding her when she noticed what she'd caught. "A baseball?"
She squeezed it, causing the ball to deform.
"This is definitely not a baseball."
"Is it one of those…" My brain briefly whirred while trying to recall the correct word. "Stress ball things."
"A stress ball?"
"It's a ball that you can squeeze for the purpose of relieving stress and such. I've never used it, but I've at least heard of it before."
"Hmm. But why does it look like a baseball?"
"No way of knowing."
Mcqueen turned to the wall and threw the ball towards the floor, causing the ball to bounce onto the wall and then back to her left hand. She repeated the motion a few times, bouncing the fake baseball around the enclosed space.
Even if it wasn't the real thing, it still seemed to work well enough.
Gold Ship continued to look through the box, drawing a new item. A portable camera. Quite an outdated looking one, at that. Though it at least seemed recent enough to not require developing film. I heard the sound of the shutters snapping as she pressed the button down. After a few button presses and a few moments of inspection, she fitted it into one of the pockets on her race outfit.
"What are you going to do with that?"
"Dunno yet. Now, back to the box… hey, look at this."
Gold Ship pulled out a revolver.
My eyes widened.
"What!?"
Mcqueen dropped the baseball out of alarm.
"Put that down!"
Gold Ship swung it around carelessly.
"Don't worry, it isn't even loaded. I think."
"I still don't like having it around, put it back."
"It's fine, it's fine."
She pointed it at her head.
"Look. Persona."
Making such a pointless reference, she pulled the trigger. Time seemed to freeze as the unthinkable occurred.
Then nothing happened.
Not a thing.
Gold Ship pulled the gun back, looking down the barrel.
"What's wrong with this thing?"
Not letting the chance get away, Mcqueen ran to her and seized the gun before throwing it as far into the pile of boxes as she could.
"What? Come on."
"Don't play with guns." I reminded her, though I had my doubts that my advice was heeded.
I specified that all of these were only vaguely interesting for a reason, okay?
After giving up on that, there wasn't much else to do. We went about our days in about as normal a fashion as we could. Some training was done, we had some conversations to catch everyone up on what had been found, then after eating dinner as a group we returned to our rooms.
I guess it might seem a bit strange to be training under circumstances like this, but for horse girls like us I guess it was the best way of getting our minds off things.
When I was in my room, the television suddenly switched on and Monouma announced the discovery of a body in the kitchen. By the time that I arrived the kitchen was too crowded to even see what had happened. Before I could even come close to the body, that strange creature appeared again.
"Upupu. Upupupu. You've really gone and done it already! I spent all this time preparing motives for you, but that's gone to waste. I thought it'd take a few days at least. I guess that one of you here is just that desperate to get out of here."
No one responded. To be honest, my instincts were telling me to try kicking her as hard as I could just to see how far she could fly, but knowing how badly that would end up I held myself back. I'm no mind-reader, but I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't the only one going on through that process.
Unfortunately for Monouma, focusing everything on choosing pacifism meant that we didn't have much mental energy left over to expend replying to her. Without anyone to mess with she seemed to get quite bored.
"Oh, by the way. You've got a little while to investigate before the trial starts. Make the most of it or you'll die."
Leaving us with words that sounded like she was just going through the motions, she disappeared once more.
Silently, the group moved to the nearby dining tables to have a meeting.
"Okay, so what do we do from here?" I asked, trying to break through the stifling silence.
"We have to find out who the culprit is." Bakushin dutifully reminded me.
"Yeah, I meant more… how do we go about that?"
"Well, I think that we should simply ask the culprit in question to confess. It's okay, whoever you might be! I will refuse to cast any judgement upon you if you admit to it now!"
"There wouldn't have been much point in having done this if they were going to own up to it, would there?" Eishin Flash asked her in response. "The culprit only escapes if she's undiscovered, remember?"
"Hmm. But it's not right."
"Murder is not right, either."
I never thought I'd have to hear that stated.
"Well, the only thing we can do is investigate." Flash continued on. "I think that it would be a good idea to have at least two people stand near the scene of the crime to act as bodyguards while we do so. As for who-"
"Leave it to me!" Bakushin O replied with enthusiasm.
"El's willing to help out too."
"...I wasn't done. But that should work. As for the rest of us… make sure you're at least in a group of two. We must be careful. Does that sound acceptable?"
Hard to find any flaws in Eishin Flash's words.
And so, the investigation began. With it, the room erupted into a scramble as the thirteen of us not on bodyguard duty tried to find someone to partner up with.
Even though we had been told to form into pairs, the odd number of us meant that someone would inevitably be left with the dreaded fate of being the one left over. I'm not sure how the perfectly calculating Eishin Flash could've overlooked such a thing, though it could've been that schadenfreude thing that Ikuno told me about once. But I put all thoughts relating to that aside, because I had a bigger priority at that moment than the embarrassment of being left out. My own safety.
One of us had already died. We were already inside a murder mystery. It's hardly uncommon for those left alone in these types of stories to be killed too. It's simple logic that anyone can work out. If someone who wasn't on their own got murdered there'd be no mystery to it, since everyone else would immediately know what happened and who did it. The only thing left to ponder would be the motive, and while I guess that could be interesting in its own way it wouldn't have much meaning in a situation like this.
The point is that those who went off alone were in danger, and we were currently all going off alone. While there could be some solace taken in the fact that we were all splitting up and that if something did happen statistically there would only be a one in six or seven chance of it being me it happens too, that still wasn't enough. I needed someone intimidating enough that no potential murderers would ever even consider targeting her. I needed someone dependable enough to keep me safe in case that happened anyway. More than anything else, I needed the strongest person here.
With all of that in mind, only one person in this room was eligible.
"Huh? Nature? What's up?" Mejiro Ryan asked me innocently.
By the first stroke of good luck I'd had today, I was sitting closest to her. That put me in the most ideal position for acquiring safety first. Looking at the chiselled abs that her race outfit flaunted only reassured me that I'd made the right decision.
"Are you okay?"
Her voice broke me out of my trance. Had she not interrupted, I was likely going to stand there gazing with the same admiration one would have for a finely crafted sculpture. Knowing that I'd already wasted so much time that things were reaching the critical point of becoming boring, I had no choice but to throw out the first response that came to my head.
"How are you doing?"
Wrong. I'm sure there were worse choices I could've made there, but there were infinitely more better ones.
"Well, I can't really say I'm good in a situation like this, but I don't want to be such a downer to say I'm bad. So I guess all I can say is relatively alright. Why?"
"Oh, just because. Wanna work together?"
"Sure."
I should've just gone with that from the start. With no further ado, let's begin the investigation.
To start, it made sense to go with what was closest. Ryan and I headed to the kitchen, currently being looked over by Bakushin and El.
As I stepped in, I finally took full notice of the awful smell. It had been faintly noticeable in the dining room, but the panic and discussion had distracted me from it. Without any of that to lessen its impact, it was absolutely overwhelming.
It was something that I'd never experienced before, but I knew without a doubt that it only could've been called the stench of death. I thought that the shock would've subsided by now, but looking now I realised that it hadn't even hit me to begin with.
That impossible to predict girl was now on the ground, completely unmoving.
It was a cruel rule that everyone would have to encounter at some point in their lives. That everything that moves would eventually permanently cease to do so. Right in front of me was just another case of that.
Gold Ship lay on her right side, face down. Most of her body was covered up by the giant carrot. Around her was a pool of… purple liquid.
"What's up with… that purple stuff? You'd think there'd be blood or something, but it's just purple."
"You can't ask questions like that! This whole thing will be doomed if you do! Don't you understand the basics of psycho pop?"
The robot popping up once more completely took me out of my shock and returned me to normal. Though if I stayed shocked forever I was likely to end up exactly like the girl before me, if not worse, so I guess I had to thank that creature for something.
"What is that?"
"Acknowledging and explaining it inside the story would also go against psycho pop, but nice try."
"But you just did that?"
"Want to get shot?"
I didn't.
"So can you explain why there's purple liquid all around her, or not?"
"That's blood."
"But blood isn't purple."
"Yes it is."
How much could I press here without getting shot? I didn't want to find out. Monouma continued without any need for my input.
"What's covering the ground is what came out of her head. If any of the rest of you get cut open or lose blood through any alternative means, the same liquid's going to pour out. That's a fact. How do you know for sure that blood was always red, anyway? Maybe you remembered wrong. Colours are only what people perceive them as anyway, so maybe you just see it differently now. There's no right or wrong answer there, just like good and evil. Or maybe while you were sleeping I pumped all the blood out of your body and replaced it with grape soda. I certainly can't confirm or deny anything, so have fun turning that over in your mind."
Leaving all of us with that, she disappeared once more.
"I don't think I'll ever fully get what she's talking about." Ryan admitted to me.
"It'd probably be bad if you did, so don't sweat it too much. Shouldn't we just focus on investigating?"
"Yeah. I don't want to think about grape soda more than necessary."
Tearing my eyes away from the elephant in the room, I noticed the state of the kitchen.
"Hey, does it seem like anything's missing to you?" I asked Ryan.
"Hmm. I'm not sure, it's not like I have a photographic memory. There's stuff that's clearly been knocked over, but nothing looks like it's gone. Just… knocked over."
She was right, as far as I could tell. While they were scattered around, everything was still accounted for. If a murder happened in a kitchen you'd think for sure that one of the knives would have disappeared, but all of them were still there, in roughly the same area. It was also worth noting that all of the knives were completely clean, save for the small one partially in the puddle of blood (I'm just calling it blood now, no more time for digression).
The only thing that had seemed out of place was a single parfait. While there was hardly anything unusual about a parfait being in a kitchen, it had been left out with only a single bite taken out of it. It was also strange how it had just been left out in the middle of the room.
"Hey, now that I look a bit closer, there's something on top of it." I said while closing in, scooping up a tiny piece and putting it in my mouth.
Ryan put her finger to her chin as I did this. With both actions happening simultaneously, she only got her words out the second I put the mysterious paste into my mouth.
"Ah, what if the culprit used poison?"
"Say that before I put it in my mouth."
"Sorry, you just went a bit fast about it."
"Yeah, maybe I should hesitate more in a situation like this. It's not poison though, as far as I can tell. I think it's wasabi."
"Really?"
She tried some herself, despite having thought it was poisonous just moments prior.
"You're right."
"I'm not a parfait expert or anything, but I've never heard of wasabi going on one. It seems kind of ill-fitting."
"I'm not an expert either. Maybe that's just her taste?"
"...Possibly. Well, I think that's about all we can do to avoid the main subject. We should probably get that carrot off her, right?"
"Huh?"
"What's the point of a murder investigation if we don't investigate the body?"
"I guess you're right, but that's just a bit- a bit much."
Her response was more than reasonable. Enough to disarm my bluff to the point where I felt uncertain about whether I really wanted to look as well. Desperate to distract myself from what I'd have to do, I decided to pick another low hanging fruit of absurdity.
"Really, what's up with that giant carrot? I can't speak from any experience with killing, but if you're in a kitchen surely there's murder weapons more effective than a carrot. Surely, even as ingredients go as murder weapons there's better picks out there."
Ryan stared at me in bewilderment. I guess
"Now we're finally on the same page, girl!"
As much as I would've loved to have gotten such a positive response from someone I cared about, those words were emitted from Monouma as she abruptly reappeared once more.
"I went through all this effort to stock this kitchen up with all kinds of poisonous ingredients. Pufferfish, blowfish, even tomatoes! And yet, after all that effort, what ended up doing someone in was the world's largest carrot. A carrot killed a horse girl. Isn't that despair inducing?"
"Wait, that's the world's largest?"
"If you're going to fill a building with horse girls and ask them to kill each other it should be obvious to put a comically large carrot in there somewhere. Everyone knows this."
No they don't.
At least we found out more about the murder weapon, I suppose.
Monouma disappeared again.
"Ok, so shall we just get on with moving the carrot? Before I lose any more of my will to do so."
"Ah, sure. I guess there's no other way."
"Just a moment." El Condor Pasa interrupted. "We're here to stop anyone from messing with the crime scene, so we can't let you move that."
How long was she waiting to interject with that for? We certainly took a while to get from the point of having the idea to putting it into action with all that was discussed. She must've been on standby for all of that time, waiting for her chance. I feel sorta bad, even if most of it was because of that damned creature's ramblings.
With that guilt weighing me down, I couldn't exactly find the words to argue.
"That does sound reasonable, but how are we meant to investigate when most of her body's covered by this thing?"
"Why not take a picture?" Ryan suggested. "That way we'll have something more reliable than just our memories as well."
"Yeah, that's a good idea. Now that I think about it, what became of that camera Gold Ship found earlier? If it's still in her room then we can just run there and back."
"It's been right there the entire time." Bakushin pointed it out to me.
"Huh? Really?"
I then noticed the camera in the pool of blood.
"Eugh."
The same one that she'd found earlier. Had it fallen out of her pocket? Or was she using it before she died? There was no way for me to know, but looking at it did give me an idea.
"Do you think that there might already be some photos on there that could help us out?"
"Oh, like if she took a photo of the killer or something?" Ryan asked.
"That's possible, somewhat. Probably too convenient though, you know? I'm hoping for a few hints at best."
"Right."
We had even more incentive than before to pick up that camera. The problem that was causing us to procrastinate doing so still hadn't changed. If I were to rank all possible actions that I could take at this moment in order of how much I wanted to do them, starting from what I wanted to do most, I could probably talk for days before reaching the idea of picking up that bloodied camera.
Noticing my hesitation, Ryan seemed to brace herself.
"Alright. Let's do this."
She reached into the pool of blood with little hesitation and picked up the camera. I quickly threw her a paper towel to clean both the towel and her hands. It took quite a few until it was okay to touch.
After having overcome all that stopped us from getting to this point together (I was emotional support), we could finally check the camera.
"There's only one photo."
"What? Seriously?"
"Yeah."
I looked over Ryan's shoulder at the camera, seeing that the one photo was of a random wall.
"Where is this?" She asked me.
"The storage closet. I remember when she took it just to test it out."
"Do you think that the culprit could've picked it up and deleted the other photos?"
"You're still insistent on the picture of the culprit theory, huh? It's not like we have any way of confirming or denying it now."
"Oh, there might be… a way to check if photos have been deleted? Something like that sounds plausible. Right?"
"I don't know enough about cameras to say whether that would or wouldn't exist, so yeah. Plausible."
Several minutes of looking for such a feature later, we found nothing. In response, what could I do but shrug?
"Figures. That would be a bit too convenient."
Ryan seemed rather dejected. I decided to switch things back to what we were focusing on originally.
"Okay, so what did you two want us to take photos of?"
"Oh, you're finally getting to that." El had clearly gotten bored of waiting. "Just get her."
"How specific."
Ryan was already holding the camera, so she ended up being the one to go through with it.
As she pressed down on the button, a blinding flash of light came from the front of the camera.
My sight took about a second to return to me, after which I took the earliest opportunity to complain.
"You don't have to have the flash on in here, it's already bright enough with the lights on. Are you the type who uses flash for everything? I don't know much about photography, but I know enough to know that messes all the lighting up."
"No, I usually don't use it. It was already on when I picked the camera up, sorry. The photo's almost impossible to see with all the light, so I'll take another."
I guess there's no point in being mad over something so petty. After taking photos of the crime scene, I had another idea.
"Hey, we should just use this in the trial."
"But we have to leave it here for everyone else." Bakushin interjected.
"Yeah. That's perfectly fine. Let's take some photos of the crime scene, so we have something slightly more reliable than our memories to work with when we're trying to figure things out. I'm trusting you two to remember to take it with you if we can't get back to it, okay?"
Bakushin nodded.
We took a few more photos of the entire room and everything else that seemed like it might be relevant.
"Okay. It's fine now, right?" I looked at El Condor Pasa while talking.
"All ok."
"Alright, now for the moment of truth I guess."
I moved over to the carrot and mentally prepared myself to lift it, while Ryan took the other side.
Unfortunately, focusing everything on mental preparation left me woefully unready for the ordeal of moving the world's largest (and presumably most heavy) carrot.
I heard Ryan audibly straining herself.
"I don't think this is working, maybe we should change tactics?"
We tried trading places, lifting it from the sides and even lifting it on the same side together.
It didn't even so much as shift.
We enlisted some help from Bakushin and El, but still to no effect.
Trying to catch my breath, I sat on top of one of the counters.
"How did they even get that thing in here? No, no. More importantly than that, how strong would our culprit have to be to use that as a weapon?"
We'd have to each take turns comparing our strength to get a concrete idea of who the strongest in this building was, but just off the top of my head I felt it was a safe bet to say that it was either Ryan or El. I wouldn't exactly consider myself weak, just to be clear. So if those two combined, plus Bakushin and myself were unable to budge it, that made the idea of someone picking it up and bashing Gold Ship on the head with it a near impossibility, bar the culprit being a superhuman.
This resembled a boulder more than a carrot. Just how could someone even grow this?
"Ok, really. Let's change tracks. This was all kind of a waste of time, so let's do some more normal detective stuff. What do detectives do?"
"Ask people about what they were doing?" Ryan suggested.
I snapped my fingers at her.
"Yeah, thanks. Alibis. Testimonies. Alimonies. All that. I remember now."
Going first would probably cast suspicion on me, but as the one suggesting the idea I had no other choice. Someone had to get the ball rolling.
"As for me I wasn't particularly doing anything when it happened. I went to my room early because I didn't feel like doing much else. Though it turns out that it's unexpectedly hard to relax in a bedroom without hearing constant cries of 'Marvelous', so I was just sitting around with a strong sense of unease."
I paused and shrugged.
"Not having an alibi makes me sound kind of suspicious, doesn't it?"
"Not to worry." Bakushin smiled at me. "I can verify your innocence."
"Huh?" I titled my head. "That's nice to hear, so perhaps I shouldn't be looking too much into a gift, but how can you do that?"
"I was keeping watch the entire time. That's my responsibility as the class representative, after all."
"That's a big deal. Why did you never mention this?"
"Because you were investigating the body."
Yeah. We were doing that. It's a good thing that I got frustrated enough to change topics, otherwise that might never have come up.
"Ah, I can back her statement up." Ryan added. "I went back to the gym for some extra training because I couldn't relax, I went past her on her patrols."
"I went back too." El added. "We were both there when the body discovery went off."
"I can confirm that I saw her go." Bakushin told me.
"And I can confirm that she was there to see me."
"This is all getting a bit cyclical, but it's good to know these things. Now I'm the only one that seems suspicious. So, can you give us a list of everyone you saw?"
"Yes!"
Bakushin seemed to take a second to reflect before her expression turned to a troubled one. Reacting sooner than me, Ryan asked her "What's wrong?"
"I failed to account that things might come to this, so I didn't keep track of the time."
"Ah, well… who could've expected something like this? Don't worry about it, just saying who showed up and where they went in order should be enough."
"Understood! Well, the first to pass me were Tachyon and Digital. When I asked them where they were going, Tachyon told me she was going to the nurse's office to properly check out what they had there."
"And you didn't think that was a significant enough threat to our safety?"
"Pardon?"
"Never mind, just continue."
"After that I saw Rice and Bourbon, who said they were going to check out more of the school. They went to the other part. The next was Ryan, we already talked about that one. Then after that I saw Gold Ship."
"Makes sense, she couldn't have gotten in there without going past you. Did you notice anything strange about her?"
"Not particularly. She told me she was getting something to eat and went straight to the kitchen."
"And you never saw her leave at any point?"
"No. Shortly after she left, I saw El Condor Pasa go past. Oh, there's something else that I have to mention. When I was doing my rounds, I noticed the door to the incinerator was left open. Thinking it was strange, I went to investigate, at which point I found the incinerator had turned on."
"Hold on, you can get in there? What about the massive gate blocking the way?"
"Getting through there's easy if you just bend your body a little." El smiled with confidence.
"No, that's a step beyond just flexibility. I think getting through there would require dislocating some joints. I don't think any of us can do that at will."
"I'm trying to learn."
"Why would you need to know that?"
"You need a key to get through," Bakushin continued explaining "Which Monouma bestowed upon me, recognising me as the class representative."
"Oh, I didn't know that."
"She also said something about needing to change who holds the duty each week, but I'm reluctant to part with my class representative title."
"I don't think that's what she meant, to be honest. But back to the point, how long did that take?"
"Turning it on and off is as simple as pressing the large red button. Most of my time was spent getting it unlocked. So, I estimate it was somewhere within the range of one to three minutes. Oh, there was something else that added on some time."
She reached into her pocket, picking out a baseball.
"I found this lying next to the switch, so I picked it up. I wonder how someone ended up leaving this here."
"Hey, try squeezing it."
"Hm? Why?"
"You'll see. Or I'm wrong and you won't, in which case I'll explain what I thought the case was."
She squeezed the baseball, causing it to deform.
"Chowa? I don't think this is how baseballs are meant to work."
"They're not. That's a stress ball. We found it in the storage room earlier."
"I see! So what does learning this lead us to?"
"Huh?"
"Hm?"
"What?"
"The fact that it's not a real baseball has to mean something, does it not? That's why you made me check."
"Ah, uh… it doesn't really change anything. I just wanted to check because I knew about it. Sorry."
Ryan seemed to notice my embarrassment, so she changed the subject to focus on the investigation once more.
"So there was a blind spot during that time. Well, maybe patrolling around the halls like that created a slight blind spot that was always there, but those three minutes were a major one."
"I missed quite a lot. When I returned to the hall, there were five people there. Shakur and Fine were walking towards the kitchen. Meanwhile Mcqueen, Jordan and Flash were standing around the supply closet. Before I could properly ascertain anything, Shakur came running back out of the kitchen and told us to come with her. Naturally, I went ahead of the rest. The body discovery announcement went off when I walked around the counter to see Gold Ship's body."
"Hmm." Ryan tilted her head. "Well, that definitely was helpful. If you'd seen who else went into the kitchen then that would've been this case as good as solved, though."
"There's no way it would've been that easy. At least this helps us narrow it down. Thanks, Bakushin."
"Yes! Happy to help!"
We'd spent more than enough time exploring the kitchen, so it was finally time to move on.
Shortly after exiting, we came across another pair that were investigating.
"Ah, Teio."
"Nature."
"Mcqueen." Said the girl standing next to me.
"Ryan."
With those quick introductions out of the way, we got down to business.
"So, found anything?" I asked her.
"Not really. We wanted to check out the kitchen more, but you two have been hogging it the entire time."
"Ah… yeah, that's right. Sorry."
"You took way too long. What are the rest of us investigating meant to do?"
"A person's average reading speed is two hundred to three hundred words per minute. Do you really think that today's youth can stand to spend over ten minutes reading about a single room?"
"You were measuring how many words we exchanged? No, before that, who's reading this anyway? Before even that part, I refuse to believe that people read that slowly."
"I was talking about the average person, I wouldn't know. I'm a pretty fast reader, you know? I went from the start to the end of Dune in a matter of minutes."
"How would that even be possible?"
"I started reading it because I was pretty sure it was about emperors, but I got bored when they started talking about spice so I just flipped to the last page."
"You need to read every page of a book to say you finished it. Don't look down on other people's attention spans when you couldn't even stay focused for more than one page!"
"What are you two even talking about?" Mcqueen asked. "Our time here is limited, so could we please focus on what matters?"
Dropping the discussion of literature, we filled Mcqueen and Teio in on what we had found, as well as our alibis.
"I see."
"That brings up what I wanted to ask. So Mcqueen, what was going on at the storage closet?"
"What?"
Mcqueen stopped for a second.
"There wasn't all that much to it, your question is posed as though something major happened. Do you remember that object that was a baseball but not quite a baseball that Gold Ship found earlier. I was returning to see if it was still there. On the way, I encountered Ms Flash and Ms Jordan. We were briefly talking when… you know what happened next."
"Ah, so that's it. Thanks."
"Good luck with your investigation." Ryan added.
"But we're just going to check the kitchen, which you've already checked."
"Then hopefully you'll have good enough luck to find something we missed."
Moving on from that, the next pair we encountered were Rice and Bourbon. After the greetings and such, I decided to cut the point.
"To be honest this might not end up mattering that much, but what were you two up to at the time of the murder?"
"Has Rice… done something bad?"
She looked worried.
"No, no." Ryan reassured her. "We're just checking what you did so we have everyone's story."
"So you think that Rice did it… you think that Rice killed her."
Without any context, the words of her mouth may have sounded like she was being accused and about to make a dramatic counterargument to defend herself, but she seemed to retreat inwards with each syllable.
"We left to explore the rest of the school. Specifically, we were looking to see if there was anything that could be played in the A/V room when the discovery announcement played. That's all."
Mihono Bourbon explained things in a robotic tone of voice, before pulling Rice away from us. Rice offered no resistance or response to this, resembling a mannequin being moved more than a person.
Her tone was completely robotic. As expected of the cyborg. That's all there should have been, but for some reason I couldn't help but feel some hostility towards us mixed in there.
Next up were the Agnes duo.
"Oh, so you want to ask me what I was doing at the time? I see, you two really are acting the part of detectives? So who's the Watson in this relationship?"
"Um, I don't know." Ryan answered back. "I want to ask something before we start, though."
"Oya? Should I be on guard for this? In a setting like this, an innocuous question could be the most dangerous of them all. Well, ask away, dear Holmes."
"Is she okay?"
Ryan pointed to Digital, currently curled up into the floor on a ball.
"Oh, her. You know how much she loves horse girls. So she's been in despair ever since dear Gold Ship died and ended up like this.
"...Will she be okay?"
"If she recovers any time within the next few years then I've severely underestimated the strength of her obsession. To be honest I fear that she may shrivel up and disappear completely if left unattended for too long, so I'm unable to do much investigation myself. Would you mind filling me in?"
"Sure." I replied, getting ready.
"Thank you, dear Watson."
"Don't call me that."
"There's nothing wrong with being the Watson in the relationship. Without him we wouldn't have any of the books in the first place, you know?"
But I'm the one acting as the detective here, was what I really wanted to say. Unfortunately, I lacked the arrogance to do so. Accepting my role, I explained everything so far to Tachyon.
"I see, I see." She put her lab coat up to her lips, ruminating on the information she'd received. A few seconds passed with her eyes closed before they snapped open abruptly. In spite of the suddenness, she continued the conversation like normal. "As for my end, we didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I brought dear Digital with me to the nurse's office to see what kind of chemicals they have."
"That's all? That's all you did there? Really, that's all you did in the room with all those chemicals?"
"Alright, you got me. We were experimenting a bit. She might've started glowing a little, nothing too dangerous."
"You mean her skin was glowing?" Ryan asked.
"Yes, it was blinding. Thankfully I had prepared sunglasses ahead of time, otherwise I may have lost my sight. When she went back to normal the discovery announcement played."
She pointed to Ryan with her right arm, still completely covered by the lab coat.
"I believe that you can verify that we were there when it went off."
"Yeah, we saw you two just ahead of us heading to the kitchen."
"Then that is all. I have nothing more to say. Shouldn't you hurry up and get on?"
"Yeah, we will. Thanks for the help. Make sure Digital doesn't fade away."
"That's what I've been doing this entire time."
We moved on, next moving Flash and Jordan.
"I definitely didn't do it, okay!?" Was Tosen Jordan's opener.
"Lines like that only make you more suspicious than if you hadn't said anything, you know?"
"How am I meant to clear myself of suspicion otherwise? This is the worst. Why'd she have to be the one to die? Now everyone's totes gonna think I did it. Even I'd think I did it if I wasn't me."
"I mean… you may have a strong motive, but that doesn't absolutely mean it's you. It could've been any of us."
"Yeah, but think about it. The set-up like, couldn't be more perfect. I've been unfairly tormented by her for so long, isn't it only natural for the victim to turn on the oppressor in a desperate situation like this. If anything I'm hella mad at the culprit for taking away the chance to kill her from me."
"I think your best bet for not raising suspicion here is to not say anything at all."
"Oh. That was all a joke. Did I get you?"
"It didn't sound like it."
"Our time is limited." Flash reminded us. "I doubt this is even the first time you've been told this today."
Her stern tone of voice put me back in my place.
"Okay, we'll hurry then. Bakushin had to go for a bit while standing guard, then returned to find both of you at the storage closet, as well as Mcqueen. What went on with that?"
"I definitely wasn't hiding there after doing anything in the kitchen, got it?" Jordan reassured me in a way that made me lose faith in her.
"Then what were you doing?"
"Well, there were a whole bunch of things in there that I didn't get to look at earlier because of her. I tried chilling in my room, but I couldn't relax. So after a while of that I thought about what might help with that, then I realised I should paint my nails. So I went back to check in case there was any there."
"I see, that's reasonable. And Flash?"
"Is it a crime to go for a walk?"
"Well, I don't think so."
"We're here to investigate a crime, so please stay focused on that. I was simply going on a walk for the sake of it. I happened to see the storage closet door opened, so I went to investigate.
"Isn't walking around alone kind of dangerous?" Ryan asked her.
"I strongly believe in my ability to run. If any potential culprits had appeared, running back to the dormitory to call for help would've been my course of action. Besides, being in a pair of two is hardly any less dangerous, when you think about it."
"I-I guess so."
Figuring that there was nothing more we'd be able to get out of these two here, we hurried on. There were only three left over to ask.
Air Shakur, Fine Motion and Matikanefukukitaru.
"What exactly is she doing?"
"Fortune telling, I think." Ryan tried to help me out.
"Thanks. I knew that much, so I think I asked the wrong question. Why exactly is she doing that?"
"I'm consulting Shiraoki on this one. She should be able to tell us who did it."
"I keep telling you, that stuff doesn't make any sense." Even though I had only just arrived, her tone of voice gave me the impression that she had already complained about this at least a half dozen times today. "You're just saying whatever you want to say and using the crystal ball as justification, right?"
"You wouldn't get it."
"You're exactly right, there's no way I could get that."
"Now, now, Shakur." Fine Motion interrupted her. "These two are acting like detectives, you know? We have to be good suspects and give our testimonies to them."
"You know that you're supposed to be acting like detectives too, right?" Is definitely what I wanted to say, but I kept those words at bay for the time being.
"Calling us suspects is a bit much, ain't it?"
"Ok, before we continue with this." Ryan cut into the conversation. "We have no idea what happened, so if you'd mind letting us know we'd appreciate it."
Fine Motion decided to explain for us.
"Since I wasn't able to properly relax, I invited Shakur to come with me to the kitchen. I wanted to see if they had any ramen. While we headed down the hall, we heard some kind of discussion around the corner. That was Mcqueen, Flash and Jordan. A few seconds after we reached them, Bakushin arrived there and went to talk with them. Shakur and I carried on to the kitchen. It was quiet and empty there. When we went to the kitchen and switched the lights on we didn't see anything, but after stepping towards the fridge we saw Gold Ship's body. I was so shocked I ended up falling over."
Shakur continued on for her.
"I tried yelling for the others, but got no response. So I left Fine there to run to the hall where they were still arguing about whatever. Once I got them to come with me to the kitchen, that's when the body discovery announcement went off. More specifically, Bakushin raced ahead of all the rest, it went off when she saw it. If I remember correctly."
"Oh, I see." I replied.
"Now you should get why calling us suspicious is a bit much. The two of us were the ones who found the body. The rules of this place rule out any chance of there being cooperation. What kind of idiot would help cover up the killer's actions if them getting away with it results in you dying anyway?"
"Eh?" Fine looked genuinely shocked. "But I'd be willing to die for you."
"Don't say things like that so casually. That makes us look more suspicious anyway, so really, don't say things like that."
"Out of curiosity," I tried to distract myself from their back and forth "Fukuitaru, what were you doing during the evening?"
"I was contacting Shiraoki."
Of course she was.
"Right, that was the last thing we had to ask." Ryan seemed to remember. "About the camera."
"Oh, I totally forgot with everything that happened since then. Thanks."
"What about the camera?" Fine asked me.
"We were hoping to ask the tech expert here something. If somebody deleted the photos on a camera is there a way to get them back? Or see if there were deleted photos?"
"The hell are you talking about?"
It would've made sense to stand my ground and inquire further, but somehow looking at her expression I couldn't. Her face didn't show any anger, but her befuddlement somehow felt worse than that. She looked at me as though I was speaking an entirely different language.
The understanding of an expert and a layman are two completely different things. The idea of "layman's terms" exists for a reason.
While it would be easy enough to assume that only a layman could be confused by the words of an expert, it actually goes both ways. Just as someone unversed in a subject may be confused by more in-depth explanations, those versed may be confused by the naive assumptions of those with no idea of what they're talking about.
This was one such case. From the look on her face, what I had was something equivalent to asking what the eighth day of the week was.
In this situation the only thing I could think to say was-
"...I'm sorry."
Before any further comments could be made, we heard a familiar ring.
The television nearest to us switched on, showing Monouma. For some reason, he was relaxing at a bar. How she was able to hold any glasses in spite of her strangely shaped hands was a complete mystery to me, but a low priority one.
"I'll keep this to the point. Investigation time is up. We're going to the trial. Come to the elevator room or else you'll die."
The monitor switched off with that brief message.
"Damn. Already?"
I could feel my heart begin to pick up the pace. At this point, I didn't feel as though there was any stone unturned. But even so, I wished to keep turning those stones over and over, simply because I dreaded what was to follow.
In contrast to me, Ryan seemed unwavering.
"Do you have any idea of who it might be?"
"About as good an idea as you do."
"Well, that's not exactly ideal, but that's what the trial's for. I think that at least… we've got enough to work things out."
That smile at least gave me some hope. I guess I must have made the right choice after all.
As the fifteen of us stepped into that room, a heavy silence weighed down upon us.
After a few moments, the giant metal doors slowly opened up. As though inviting us into its jaws. With no choice but to comply, we stepped in.
With all of us inside, we were sealed in with no hope of return. The elevator slowly began to sink into the ground.
As we descended, there was something that I knew for certain. That someone in here with me was a murderer.
I wasn't alone in that belief, causing the entire room to stare around
I had hoped that gathering information would dispel my worries. In the end, all it had done was make them worse.
If everyone's testimonies were to be believed, then there couldn't have been a killer.
What this naturally meant was that someone here was a liar. That should've come as no surprise, really. Murder is a bad enough crime already, right? Lying about it is hardly as serious.
I kept turning the information over in my mind, desperately searching for what I had overlooked. The one hole in the story that would allow me to tear it open and find the truth within.
But before I could find that opening, the elevator reached its destination. Having no choice but to follow the crowd, I stepped out.
"It's finally time… for the class trial derby."
And so, it came time to put everything together. In hope of our survival.