Fifteen horse girls stood in an elevator as it slowly descended. We- wait, I've already said all of this enough times, haven't I? Enough to convey everything that's important, at the very least, so let's just hurry up and move on to the class trial derby.
After having the rules explained to us, we took our places at the podiums assigned to us.
They were in a circle facing each other. The podiums were organised in the same order that we were listed in inside the student handbooks, which saves the trouble of having to write out the order here.
To be honest, standing next to a picture of Gold Ship with a pink cross over her face felt quite uncomfortable.
We stepped into the podiums, getting ready to discuss.
An invisible countdown seemed to tick down, before finally reaching zero. The following result was complete and utter chaos.
A dozen of us talking simultaneously, unable to hear a single thing.
What I could pick out was limited. I think there was something about Shiraoki's revelations, security camera recordings and drugs that make you see new colours in there.
"Excuse me!"
Fine Motion's voice echoed through the courtroom, bringing everything
"We can't discuss anything like this. Let's stay calm and talk, one person at a time."
"I'm glad that you said something, otherwise I would have." Eishin Flash carried on with traces of irritation in her voice. "Let's go about this in an orderly fashion. For what we discuss first… how about the cause of death?"
"Shouldn't Rice be the most suspicious here?" El asked.
Rice let out a squeal in response to the accusation.
"I mean, she's got a knife on her right there." El pointed to the sheath attached to the left side of Rice's race outfit. "That's what people would call sus, right?"
Something about her words bugged me. With the information I'd gathered, I felt as though I could tear them apart. Of course, tearing something such as words apart was impossible. But if I was going to do it, then it only made sense to kill words with words.
"No, that's wrong!"
El stared at me in shocked silence. Despite the fact that she was being defended, Rice seemed more upset than before.
"Eh? That was a bit louder than I thought I'd be."
"You didn't have to yell." Ryan told me.
"Yeah, I know."
"You're really into this, aren't you?" Teio asked me.
"It was an accident, honestly."
"You've got some nerve doing that after I just sorted things out." Flash stared at me with a look that could kill.
"That's not entirely my fault, is it? Can we stop shaming me and move on? I haven't even gotten to explain yet."
No one provided a retort for that one, finally giving me a chance to talk.
"The Monouma report we were given says that the cause of death was a result of that giant carrot hitting her head. No other wounds. The knife has nothing to do with it, so we can rule that out. That goes for all the knives in the kitchen, too."
"Ah…" Rice finally chimed in. "No, wait. This might be a bit too late to mention, actually. Rice was too slow. Sorry."
"Mention what?" Bakushin asked straightforwardly.
"It's too late now, so don't worry about it."
"But it seems relevant."
"It's not."
"What if it is?"
"Fine, but don't expect it to be too great of a revelation at this point." She paused. "This knife is plastic."
"Ah! So that means you couldn't possibly have hurt anyone with that."
We were past the point of having any belief that a knife was used by this point, but I reached the conclusion that taking the time to point out that this diversion was pointless would've been even more pointless than the diversion itself.
"So the culprit attacked her with that oversized carrot?" Mcqueen asked.
"Yeah. It seems like all there was to it. We couldn't actually check for any other injuries, so we'll just have to take the report's word for it."
"Huh?" Teio asked as I said that.
"What's wrong?"
"What do you mean you couldn't lift it?"
"Ryan, Bakushin, El and I all tried to lift the carrot off her. But we couldn't make it budge."
Teio seemed confused.
"So if you can't lift it, then how would the culprit have hit her with it?"
Was I stupid? Were we all stupid? Even though it was such an obvious question to ask, we had somehow gotten all the way to this trial without asking it. By contrast, without even knowing that it was immovable, Teio felt that something was off.
I guess that as frustrating as it may be, geniuses really do exist.
"That's a good point." Fine continued on before contemplating for a few seconds. "What if the culprit set up an elaborate trap to attack her with the carrot?"
"That would be a bit much, wouldn't it?" Mcqueen asked back. "I think we would've noticed something like that."
"What if it's an elaborate trap that destroys itself after being used once?"
"But we'd never be able to prove or disprove that." Tachyon replied to her.
"That's exactly the point, isn't it?"
"I get the impression that would be in violation of a few rules of mystery stories."
"This is real life though." Shakur reminded her.
"Exactly." Fine seemed happy.
"Again, this is real life. Something like that can't exist."
"I've finished consulting Shiraoki." Fukukitaru spoke up after having gazed into her crystal ball for the duration of the trial so far.
"I agree!" I involuntarily found myself yelling again.
"Heh? What are you yelling for all of a sudden?"
"Ah, sorry. It's like earlier, I just got too into it. I'll try to avoid it in the future. But you must be right, there's no other way it could've happened. Where was the carrot before?"
"Atop the fridge." Tachyon informed me.
"I concur." Flash backed her words up.
While it was only the memory of two people, something that easily could've been inaccurate, that was the best we had to go on. At the very least, with two people saying it, the chances of the culprit slipping anything to confuse us was lowered. It really would be nice if we'd taken some photos
Somehow, having that thought finally reminded me of the preparations I'd taken but forgotten about.
"Hey, now's a good time to bring those up. El, Bakushin, which one of you brought the camera?"
They both looked back at me cluelessly. Realisation only seemed to come to El, Bakushin remained just as confused. I changed my focus.
"Er, Ms Momouma… is there any chance we can quickly head back up to get something?"
"Of course not. Preparation is an essential life skill. You'll die if you can't handle it."
"Like I thought."
"Do you mean this camera?" Flash presented the same camera that I was talking about.
"Ah! Why do you have it?"
"After looking at the photos I assumed you were counting on those two to bring it as evidence, but I didn't feel particularly confident leaving our fate to chance like that. So I took initiative."
"Could you perhaps have taken it to get rid of some evidence?" Tachyon asked her while her right sleeve covering her mouth.
"I wouldn't have presented it if I had anything to hide, now would I? You can check the camera for yourselves to see if I deleted anything."
She threw the camera across the room to Ryan. We flicked through the photos.
The first was a random one taken inside the storage closet. The rest were of the kitchen. The first of those was taken with flash, while the rest were various parts of the crime scene.
"Looks right to me."
"Yup, nothing seems to be missing. Well, here's my theory. Everything on one side of the kitchen is scattered, while the rest is more or less untouched. What if the culprit and Gold Ship got into a fight, which resulted in her being slammed into the fridge. That impact could've loosened the carrot enough for it to fall on top of her. Now that I say it aloud, it seems really unlikely that could happen, but I really can't think of any other method that would make sense here."
Bakushin raised her hand.
"Yes, Bakushin."
"Wouldn't I have heard if that was the case?"
"It could've happened in the three minutes you were busy."
"But there were others standing near the kitchen at that point."
Ryan put her hand to her chin.
"I feel like something we heard might go against the idea of that?"
"That's it. Okay, just to check. Jordan, Flash and Mcqueen. You three are sure you didn't hear anything from inside the kitchen at any point?"
"Not until Shakur came running out all freaked out." Jordan replied, the other two not seeming to have anything to add on to her account.
"I wasn't that freaked out." She told Jordan. "But I get what you're setting up here."
"Shakur was already yelling for someone to show up when she was inside the kitchen, but no one heard her. The hallway you were standing in is right next to the kitchen, so if you couldn't hear her then that must mean that no sound could get from the kitchen to the hall."
"So a fight could've happened in there at any time, and no one would've noticed."
"I guess you found out. At this point, I might as well tell you. " Monouma seemed somewhat disappointed, for some reason. "Almost every wall in this place is sound proofed. It'd be boring if the culprit got caught just because someone heard too much, right? In order to have exciting mysteries, it's important to only have the culprit get caught in interesting ways."
"You lock us up, force us to kill each other and only focus on what's fun about that? You're not human!"
"You lock all these horse girls up in here and only focus on having them kill each other in interesting ways? There's nothing funny about that! You're not human!"
I was surprised to hear Agnes Digital finally speak up, but I guess if anything was going to make her break her silence it would be that.
"That's exactly right." Monouma replied to her. "I'm not a human. I'm a horse. I know that well, but you clearly still have yet to realise what it means. It's because I learnt everything about the universe that I fell into despair. That is to say, ignorance is bliss."
I wasn't sure how to respond to anything that she was saying.
"Knowing everything is such a burden. Have you noticed how I keep switching between uma and horse with so little rhyme or reason? Inconsistency like that is despair inducing too. Just like throwing in jokes that will horribly date things. Joe Biden is the current president of the United States of America. That's the entire joke here."
I didn't know who she was talking about. I decided to take her word on ignorance being bliss by not asking a single question and moving back onto the investigation. The others seemed to share my sentiment. Digital returned to her state of mourning.
"So to recap…" Ryan got the ball rolling for us. "The culprit must've gotten into a fight with Gold Ship, which resulted in her getting pushed into the fridge and having that carrot dropped on her. Anything I missed."
"No." Flash answered. "That in itself is the problem. We haven't got anything else to go off from that. There's nothing within this that points to the identity of the culprit."
"There was a parfait there, wasn't there?" Teio asked. "It's gotta be Mcqueen."
"Why would that indicate it's me?" Mcqueen asked, sounding rather shocked.
"Well, y'know. It's like how serial killers have a trademark that the detectives identify their work by."
"Many people eat parfaits. They're popular all over the world."
"Yeah, just like the trademarks of serial killers. People use drills all the time, but if someone drilled a bunch of holes into people then it'd be a problem."
"But a parfait just happened to be there, it wasn't the murder weapon. That comparison is completely illogical. In the first place, it's not serial killing if only one person is dead."
"So you're planning more!?"
"I'm not planning anything of the sort, nor have I done so in the past!"
"Monouma," Flash asked the creature "Are diversions like this allowed?"
"Eh, it's fine. Whatever pads the word count out enough."
"...Understood."
"I can't really see anyone but Gold Ship putting wasabi on a parfait," I explained. "So I can't see any explanation but her having been the one eating it before the culprit arrived. I don't think they could've gotten it from the fridge once the murder had happened without stepping in the blood."
"Wasabi?" Mcqueen asked back.
"Yes, wasabi. No, I don't know why."
"I see."
"Isn't it about time we moved on to the testimonies?" Mihono Bourbon spoke for the first time in this entire trial.
"Let's use mine." Bakshin added. "Allow the class president's words to enlighten you all."
Bakushin recounted her story.
She first saw Tachyon and Digital, going to the other part of the school.
Then Bourbon and Rice. Then Ryan.
Then Gold Ship went to the kitchen, unlike the rest.
Then El went the same way as the rest.
At this point on her patrols, she noticed the incinerator was on.
When she returned from dealing with that, she saw Mcqueen, Jordan and Flash at the closet. At that point, Shakur and Fine were coming down the hall.
Exactly the same as we'd been told before.
While most of us ruminated on what could be gained from this, an idea appeared in Tachyon's mind almost instantly.
"I get it now. I know who the most suspicious person here is."
"Oh, great, she's gonna say it's me cause I've got the most reason. It's time to suspect Tosen Jordan. This is seriously unfair. I'm just gonna preemptively vote for myself before everyone else does."
"It's none other than our very own Sakura Bakushin O!"
"Huh?"
"CHOWA!?" Bakushin's tail and ears jolted up to accentuate her shock, as though the tone of her voice wasn't enough to convey it. "I could never do something like that!"
"But think about it. If we go by your account of the events, then the culprit must have created a distraction, run into the kitchen, killed poor Gold Ship then run back out. How could this culprit have possibly known she was in there? I can't imagine someone going out of their way to distract, only to leave the second half of their plan up to complete chance. Since you were the only one who knew that she was in the kitchen, that makes you the most suspicious! Not only that, but you could have easily unlocked the incinerator and placed the ball there to make it look like someone other than you powered it on."
"Wha-I" Bakushin, for once, found her words stuck in her throat. "Could I really have… murdered one of my own classmates?"
Something seemed off, though. Beyond just the unlikeliness of Bakushin having done such a thing, it felt off. The pieces finally assembled.
"No, it probably wasn't her."
"Oh? And your proof, Dear Watson?"
My resentment towards being called that slightly fueled my next words.
"The rules that Monouma gave us in the Monopad. If you'd pay attention to the rule on the body discovery announcement, it says that it'll only play once three or more people spot it. Those who were there should remember how things went, right? Just in case, I'll recap it. Fine and Shakur walked in first, making two. Then when Shakur went to get the others, Bakushin was the first to follow her. To be honest, it's not very clear if the killer is counted within those three witnesses. But if the body discovery announcement only played when Bakushin laid her eyes on the body, then that makes it very likely that she is innocent."
"That's the most boring way you could've disproved it." Monouma told me. "Do that again and I'll shoot you."
"Got it."
I wanted to argue that we were here to deduce things and that Monouma reply only helped support my theory, but I kept my mouth shut out of fear of bullets.
"That doesn't discount her completely. What if she attacked without the lights on, so that she wouldn't see the body, specifically to take advantage of this potential loophole?"
"Would Bakushin really be able to do that?"
"It's not about whether she would, but whether she could. That's the basis of this discussion."
"We're talking about Bakushin."
"Y-yes, we are. But still…"
Tachyon seemed to have lost her desire to continue. I knew that my reasoning was flimsy, but I had achieved my goal here.
"If we go with the idea that Bakushin isn't the culprit, then who could be?" Flash asked.
"The three who were standing nearby are the most likely suspects, right?" Shakur asked.
"Oh, it's finally here. The part where everyone assumes it's me because I'd be the most justified in killing Gold Ship."
"I said there's three of you that are suspicious, not just you."
"But you're thinking about it."
"...Yeah. Can't fully deny that."
"Why don't we establish what happened there?" Ryan asked. "I don't think we're fully clear on that."
"I went there first, since I wanted to see if they had any nail polish. That's when Flash appeared behind me and seriously made me freak out from the shock. Then Mcqueen showed up a little while after that."
"I was just going to see if the stress ball from earlier was still there." Mcqueen explained.
"Hm. And Flash?"
"I was just taking a walk."
"Towards the storage closet?"
"Towards anywhere."
Even though she was clearly trying to hide it, the pressure of every other person in the room finding her behaviour
"Okay, fine. All of this threw my schedule completely off! Today was meant to be a normal day of school, but all of a sudden I woke up here. It's completely unplanned for. And even when I finally replan, things get thrown off course again and now I'm down here in the middle of the night in a murder trial. How could I not feel stressed over that? I was also looking for the stress ball, since Mcqueen had told me about it at dinner. That's all."
I got the impression that confession meant more to herself than any of those listening, but it was good that she quickly decided that admitting something she found embarrassing was a better fate than all of us dying.
"This mystery doesn't make any sense anyway." Flash complained after getting her thoughts off her chest.
"What about it?"
"Every single part of it. Think from the start. With no way to sneak past, the culprit must have turned the incinerator on before committing the murder. Why would you do that? Surely it would have made more sense to use it for getting rid of evidence?"
"But they couldn't get in."
"Just throw it through the gap, I don't know. Doesn't turning an incinerator on for no reason seem just as strange? Then they went to the kitchen, where they couldn't have possibly known Gold Ship was. They got into a fight with her, then knocked her into the fridge to knock the carrot on top of her. What are the chances of that working? This took place in the kitchen. When thinking of potential murder tools in a kitchen, knives have to come at the top of this list, don't they? The only method that could rival their popularity is poisoning food. Why a giant carrot? Why is there even a carrot large enough to kill someone upon contact in this building?"
"Ah, yeah. I guess that's all true."
It was kind of frustrating to admit. Even with everything that we'd talked through, the truth still wasn't clear. In fact, I'd say that the events made less sense to me than when we'd begun. Before worrying about the possibility of voting for the wrong person, as things were there wasn't any one single person who stood out as suspicious enough for us to vote for.
There must be something we'd missed here. A stone left unturned. As I traced things back through my head, going through every piece of evidence we'd gathered, I was reminded of an innocuous detail.
"Oh, so that's it."
"What? You didn't say what it was." Shakur pointed out.
"I think that she's about to, that's what lines like that usually lead to." Said Tachyon.
"Ryan, you remember using the camera to take photos of the kitchen earlier, right?"
"Yeah, it wasn't that long ago."
"And you remember the first photo you took?"
"...I thought I already apologised for that. I'll say it again cause I still feel kinda bad. Sorry about startling you three, I didn't realise the flash was on."
"Yeah, that's what I had to confirm." Ryan seemed confused, but I switched targets anyway. "Mcqueen, you remember when Gold Ship first found the camera, don't you?"
"Yes, that's correct."
"She took a photo of the closet to see if it worked. That's the first one on the camera. So, what's so important about that?"
"This would be quicker without the rhetorical questions." Shakur seemed bored of my routine, so I decided to get to the point.
"No flash. We would've noticed, since when Ryan used the flash in the kitchen it was blinding. But isn't that strange? Since Ryan didn't even check the settings before taking her photo, they would've been left as they were. Well, I guess there's the possibility the culprit could've adjusted the camera settings after doing the deed, but I'm not sure why. The person who most likely turned the flash on was Gold Ship herself."
I finished my analysis and left the room in silence.
"And? What does it matter if she turned the flash on?"
El Condor Pasa's question was completely genuine, giving me the impression she thought I worked all of this out for nothing. I decided to continue on.
"What if we had things the wrong way around? Rather than the culprit coming to the kitchen to attack Gold Ship, Gold Ship was waiting in the kitchen for the culprit?"
The room was filled with "Heh!?" and other such exclamations of surprise. It was no shock, I guess. What I'd just proposed was a pretty unreasonable leap in logic.
"You seem to like using evidence that only you could possibly know about." Tachyon commented.
"It's just coincidence. The reason I didn't bring it up earlier is because it didn't seem like it mattered at all. Though I'll admit that the only reason I'm able to stay ahead here is because of how many important things only I and a few others know about."
"Even if we go with that," Teio continued the discussion on "That still doesn't change much. We still don't know why she was so sure the culprit would come. If she was planning a murder, then why would she just let Bakushin see her? She'd be caught the instant it happened in there. And now it makes less sense that there weren't any weapons used. Camera flash freaks me out as much as any horse girl, but I don't think I'd die from just that."
"Ah. You're right. That's gotta be it. Thanks, Teio."
"Huh? But I didn't do anything?"
"No, you told me the answer."
"But I don't know what the answer is."
"Then I'll explain it. She wasn't planning to kill anyone. She wanted to play a prank."
This time there were no exclamations of surprise. I had kind of been expecting a similar reaction to earlier, but instead I got nothing. Glancing at the corners of my vision, I noticed Ryan looking somewhat worried about me. Teio seemed completely baffled.
Shakur, Flash and Tachyon were each giving me distinct looks that conveyed the same feeling of "You can't possibly be serious, can you?"
In the face (faces?) of such a tough crowd, I really couldn't keep my cool for more than a moment.
"I mean, really. It's Gold Ship we're talking about. I know that she's Gold Ship, but she'd never kill someone. Not even in a situation like this. But what she would do is play a prank. She does stuff she finds funny. We were all on edge because of this situation, right? Some of us just wallowed in the uncomfortableness. Some of us worked out. Quite a few of us tried to do what we normally do, in order to regain some sense of control. The list goes on, but I think that's the common thread behind almost every testimony we've heard here. So if you asked Gold Ship to do what she normally does, what do you think she'd end up doing? Something weird. Isn't that right? That's what Gold Ship does. If Gold Ship is known for nothing else, then Gold Ship is known for doing weird things."
"I suppose you're right." Mcqueen agreed with me. I was completely waffling through the majority of that speech, so it was a relief to have the support of someone that knew the deceased better than I did. "That is exactly who Gold Ship is."
I wanted to thank her. Unfortunately, my mind went somewhere else. Something about her words finally made the gears turn. As I realised it, I also realised that the truth had been staring me in the face all along.
I could curse myself and call myself a fool all I wanted for having been so blind for so long, but before doing any of that I had to confirm it. So, almost unconsciously, my lips moved.
"You're the one she was targeting with the prank. Weren't you, Mcqueen?"
"Wha-"
And so, the third twist dropped. This time I got the kind of response I was expecting.
"What proof do you have of that!?"
"Not much. But if Gold Ship was going to target anyone for pranks, it would either be you or Jordan. I don't think Jordan cares all that much for parfaits, so…"
"That's not good enough at all for an accusation like that."
An accusation, she said. I wasn't accusing her of being the killer, just a target of a prank. But I guess with how things were, those of us in this courtroom thought of those two as one and the same.
"The other thing that makes me think it is… well, the distraction. Jordan left the closet before you found the ball. And well, I don't know how good you are at baseball, but I'd certainly assume that someone who Monouma gave the title of 'Baseball fan' would be somewhat decent at that. So if someone here was going to throw the ball with enough accuracy and force to switch the incinerator on, it'd probably be you."
"Are you sure you want to just accept those titles at face value? Yours was something like eternal third place, was it not?"
It didn't, but I guess it wasn't that far off.
Mcqueen was now on the spot, looking at her breaking point.
"Okay, fine. I'll admit that I did go to the kitchen. I'll admit that I was probably a victim of Gold Ship's prank. But just let me tell my side of the story. I promise that there won't be a single lie in there."
She took a breath before starting.
"My story starts after dinner. While we were walking back to our respective rooms, Gold Ship offhandedly mentioned that she had seen some parfaits in the fridge. I… may have had a desire to eat something sweet in this situation. But I didn't wish to be seen. I poked my head out of the door and saw her patrolling, after a few minutes I worked out what she was doing. I also already knew that Bakushin was in charge of the incinerator, so I used that to my advantage. I used the ball that I had brought with me earlier to create a distraction after Bakushin had already gone past, then I quickly snuck into the kitchen. My aim was just to get in and out as quickly as possible."
She paused.
"When I entered the kitchen the lights were off. I decided it would be best to leave them as they were, anyone walking into the dining room would have become suspicious if they saw them switched on. I went to the fridge and found the parfait. Now that I think about it, it was strange that there was only one, but in my rush I didn't stop to ponder it. I closed the fridge, found a spoon from the drawer and stepped towards the nearby counter to eat the parfait. But when I took my first bite, the taste was completely unexpected, so I ended up dropping the parfait. That's when I heard this terrible crash behind me and… how do I put this? My mind went completely blank. I thought I'd accidentally knocked something over, and got so afraid of someone coming to investigate the noise that I rushed. When I got to the hall I heard someone approaching, so I tried to hide in the storage closet. But I found that Jordan and Flash were already there, which caused a slight quarrel. Then Shakur returned, Bakushin went with her, and the body discovery announcement played before the rest of us reached the kitchen."
She paused once more, seeming to try to find the right words to say.
"I know that I look the most suspicious here. When I saw her body, I thought I must be dreaming. From my perspective, it was completely inexplicable. But if I told anyone of this, then they'd assume I was lying. You all probably assume I was lying. I can't prove it, but I am telling nothing but the truth here. I didn't see Gold Ship at all while I was in the kitchen. There was simply a crash, then when I returned there was a body. You see this kind of set up often in dramas, right? The person who it looks like is absolutely the culprit is actually a fake out, and the real culprit did something sneaky to set them up. That must be the case here. They must have used some trick to kill Gold Ship in the dark, then slipped out with some other yet unseen trick. Because I know for a fact that I didn't lay a single finger upon her!"
I wouldn't say that what a detective feels towards a culprit is hatred. It's simply their job, right? I can't speak for every detective in existence, just for the ones I know. They're here to uncover the truth. The one who committed the crime just happens
In a setting like this, maybe it's slightly different. When everyone already knows each other, relentlessly hounding someone until they give up the truth has different connotations. I realised that it may look to the others like I hated Mcqueen. That should've been obvious to the start. Getting the truth required backing her into a corner until there was no choice for her to escape.
Well, it wouldn't be fully correct to say that's the case. After all, our lives were at stake here. Regardless of what intent the culprit may have had if she wasn't caught, then it would be the rest of us that would die. So with the lives of fourteen people on the line, it would be irresponsible to leave a stone unturned. It wasn't any personal grudge, just simply survival. For a detective, it was something similar. They aren't allowed to hold grudges. They simply find the truth, and the one who happens to be the culprit is exposed.
Not as though I'm anything resembling a detective, though. I'm sure that any kind of story like that starring me would be a parody of its genre at the very best. I overlooked obvious things, I used half-baked reasoning. What more could you expect? Those smart horse girls like Tachyon and Flash were better suited to this than me, but at the end of the day, none of us were detectives. We're built for running, not solving things.
And so, with those thoughts buzzing through my head, I presented my flimsiest logic of the evening.
"What if it hit her eyes?"
"What are you talking about?"
"The wasabi."
"When?"
"When you were startled and slammed it into the table."
"What? What would indicate that?"
"The autopsy report there was some damage to her eyes. And, uh…. Y'know."
I paused, trying to gesture my meaning. It had little effect, so I just had to switch back to talking.
"Whenever she tries to play a prank on you, she almost always gets hit in the eye. I've seen it a few times. I think that everyone here's seen it at least once. It's like an unwritten law that Gold Ship always gets hit in the eye when her plans backfire."
"What on Earth do you mean? You'd accuse someone of murder just on a bunch of coincidences!? You- you-"
Gradually, the movement of her lips came to a halt. Her voice died down. Hundreds of memories of Gold Ship being hit in the eyes came flooding back to Mejiro Mcqueen's brain.
I guess this meant it was over. Sakura Bakushin O raised her hand.
"I still don't understand anything that happened."
"I think I've got the full idea by now, so I'll recap it for you."
To get to the very beginning of this case, can't just start from after dinner. It began while we were investigating the school. Jordan, Gold Ship, the culprit and I were looking through the storage closet for anything interesting. After annoying Jordan with a mysterious box enough to the point of making her leave, Gold Ship opened it and found a stress ball, which she passed to the culprit. She also found a camera that she took a single photo with. The final item was a gun, but surprisingly that was the only thing that went unused.
At this moment, Gold Ship's scheming began.
During dinner, we exchanged information on everything we'd found. After that was over, while walking back to their rooms, Gold Ship mentioned to the culprit that she'd seen some parfaits in the fridge in the kitchen. Then they returned to their bedrooms uneventfully.
At around this time, each of us was feeling the pressure of being put into a situation like this. Bakushin decided to continue with business like usual. By patrolling the halls of the dormitory, everyone would pass by her on their way to different parts of the building. Doing this should have reduced the chance of a murder occuring, since she was keeping track of the locations of each of us.
Gold Ship left her room after a few minutes of preparation, passing by Bakushin on her way to the kitchen. From inside there, she began her preparations. She found a parfait from the freezer, found some wasabi paste and put it on top of it. Then she placed it back in the fridge, somewhere obvious enough that it would stick out. Finally, she switched the lights back off and hid herself in the kitchen.
We have no way to confirm this now, but from the actions she took her plan was likely as follows. She would wait in hiding for the culprit to find the wasabi covered parfait she'd left in the fridge, then once she did eat it she would appear to take a photo of her face of surprise at the spiciness and at Gold Ship suddenly appearing.
I doubt she had any way of guaranteeing the culprit would appear. If she didn't, then she would just go back to her room.
In the meantime, the culprit was making her own preparations. She felt embarrassed about people seeing her going for dessert in a situation like this, so she wanted to avoid being seen as much as possible. Of course, Bakushin's patrols threw a major wrench into that plan. Through poking her head out of the door, she must have realised how her patrols worked. Using this information in tandem with what she had found out earlier at dinner, she hatched a plan to distract her.
Once Bakushin was on the other side of the room, she slipped out of her room and immediately went towards the incinerator. Whens he entered, the large iron gate blocked her way. While she didn't have any way of reaching the incinerator normally, she did have the stress ball she had picked up earlier.
She threw the ball through the gap, hitting the button next to the incinerator and switched it on. Then all she had to do was sneak towards the kitchen in a hurry.
A few seconds after that, Bakushin noticed the door had been left open and went to investigate. After finding the incinerator on, she hurried to unlock the door to switch it off. At the time, she probably thought it had been switched on by coincidence. Even after getting in there and switching it off, the stress ball she spotted took up some extra time before she returned to her patrol.
The culprit continued on to the kitchen. Knowing that distraction would only buy her a little time, she hurried through the process. She avoided switching the lights on because she didn't want to risk drawing attention. Then she opened the fridge and got the first parfait she saw, not paying enough attention to notice how out of place it was or what was on it.
In the meantime, the light from the fridge revealed to Gold Ship that the culprit was there. Since the lights hadn't been switched on, she turned the flash of her camera on and started to close in.
The culprit, still focused only on the dessert, found a spoon and moved to the counter to eat it. Gold Ship closed in with her camera, awaiting her moment to strike.
But, something unexpected happened. In shock at the taste, the culprit ended up dropping the parfait. Not enough to break the glass, but enough to spill some of the wasabi. That wasabi flew through the darkness, as if magnetised towards Gold Ship's eyes.
Unable to see, Gold Ship stumbled backwards. Through more bad luck, she slammed into the fridge and knocked the carrot atop it loose. It fell on top of her, which caused a crash loud enough to knock over the knives and several other items in the kitchen.
This created a noise loud enough to startle the culprit, previously completely unaware that anyone was in the room with her. Unable to see anything and with no idea of what had happened, she wasn't able to think clearly. The first thought that came to her mind was that someone might hear the crash and come to investigate, so rather than confirm anything for herself she ran out of the room without checking anything.
By sheer bad luck, it was around this time that several other girls became active.
Jordan must have left her room first, intending to check the storage closet that she had missed the chance to inspect earlier for any nail polish.
Flash followed shortly afterwards, looking for a way of relieving her stress at having things go off schedule.
Flash found Jordan in the closet, causing both of them to become startled. Jordan, because she hadn't expected to open it, and Flash, because this was outside of her plan and she didn't want other people to see her.
At around the same time as this, Bakushin was returning to her normal patrol. Meanwhile, Shakur and Fine were heading down the hall to go to the kitchen themselves. For the culprit, this was the worst possible situation. She was unable to sneak back to her room through either hallway, and instead thought to hide in the storage closet. This resulted in her adding on to Jordan and Flash's surprise.
In order to not raise suspicion, she used the excuse that she was looking for the stress ball.
Shakur and Fine entered the kitchen at around this time, discovering Gold Ship's body. After her yelling seemed to go unheard, Shakur ran out to the hallway to get the others. Once Bakushin followed her into the kitchen and went around the table, that's when the body discovery announcement played, notifying everyone to come to the kitchen immediately.
The culprit was, of course, the most baffled of all those present. For she had been made into a murderer without even knowing it.
That person, the person who Gold Ship was targeting, the person who created the distraction, could have been none other than Mejiro Mcqueen!
"Ah, now I understand completely."
"Most of that detail was completely unnecessary." Tachyon let me know her honest thoughts on my review of the case. "A lot of the story was repeating what Mcqueen had just told us."
"Yeah, but it just felt right to do something like that here."
"Okay, that's enough of the recapping." Monouma stood up in her chair. It was hard to tell when she was sitting down as a four legged deformed creature, but she was definitely now standing up. "You're all ready to vote, right? Just use your monopads."
As she said that, a screen appeared with icons representing each of us in the room.
Mcqueen still seemed to be in a state of disbelief, muttering about how there was no way she could've done something like that.
"Wait, wait. Wait. There's no way it's Mcqueen, right?"
Teio was the one who objected before any of us could start voting.
"Teio… I know that it's hard, but…"
"I agree with her." Ryan interrupted. "I can't believe that it'd be Mcqueen."
It was a decision too harsh to make. To vote for one of our classmates to die. I was lucky in this situation. For me, it was only something extremely difficult. For those who were truly close to Mcqueen, I couldn't imagine the kind of pain they were feeling. It would've been wrong for me to tell them to get over it, to move on. To do so would've been underestimating the weight of that burden they were now undertaking.
"No, I'm not denying it because I care that much." Teio continued on. "I just don't think it would count as her having done it."
"Huh?"
"I mean, think about it. That's basically an accident, right? If anything, Gold Ship set all this up, so she should be the culprit. I don't think that almost dropping a glass counts as a form of murder."
The room went silent. I guess she somewhat had a point?
"Uhm," Rice was the only one who managed to find something to say, "Does anyone here have any familiarity with the laws on these things? I feel like that's the only way we're going to work this out."
"My information in this department is lacking." Mihono Bourbon grimaced. "How neglectful of me."
"No, no. If anything, it'd be weird for one of us to know them well."
"I believe this would count as manslaughter, if anything." Tachyon told the room, completely going against my statement. Or maybe she didn't?
"Upu. Upupupupu!" That which claimed to be a horse laughed for the first time in this entire trial. "You're feeling the despair now, aren't you? The uncertainty. Which will it be? Vote against your friend, or bet everything on the small chance that it was a suicide? I won't rush you. Take all the time you want, so that you can blame the consequences of your decision on no one but yourselves."
"No." Flash replied.
"Huh?"
"You didn't think this would happen at all, did you? You never considered anything even resembling this. You're just acting like you planned for this all along, but you're clearly just making it up as you go along. Why did I have to get my schedule disrupted for a mystery this boring? What was the point of going through such a roundabout path to find out it was all an accident? I could kill someone better than this if I wanted to!"
"Hey, maybe not that far on the last one." I tried to throw in a comment, but it got drowned out by the others now getting into the mood of complaints. Shakur continued on.
"This mystery really is boring. And what's with the part where she solved part of it using a loophole in the rules? At least have an interesting exploit, that one was just splitting hairs. Check your rules better before starting! Have some playtests or something."
They continued on, blending together. From the wall of the words, I managed to pull out a few.
"Bad mystery."
"You're not even a proper horse. Why do you have four legs? And hooves, too."
"I bet you don't even know who the culprit is yourself and you're just going to go with whatever we work out."
Monouma went silent in the face of the bombardment of complaints, not even finding an opening to threaten them with violence.
"Wait a minute."
Fukukitaru spoke up.
"What's that sound?"
After hearing her say that, we finally noticed the sound of something descending, getting closer to this courtroom.
The doors pulled themselves open.
"Yo. I looked everywhere in the building, what are you all doing down here? Hey, this place is cool. Is that a photo of me?
"G-G-Gold Ship!?" Mcqueen stammered out her name before running towards her.
"Yeah, that's m-"
In the space of just a second, Mcqueen completed a perfect dash across the room to tackle her at top speed.
"Hey, she's going to finish the job." Tachyon commented, going mostly ignored.
"Seriously, what did I miss? Did you replace Mcqueen with a clone that acts completely different? I'm not complaining but I'm super confused here."
"We're the confused ones here." Ryan told her. "This entire trial is about finding out who killed you. In fact, we saw your dead body
"Oh, you mean that? Well, you know how it is." With a completely innocent look on her face, Gold Ship declared "I can't die."
"But all the blood?"
"Blood?"
"It was all around you."
"But my blood's red. That was probably the grape soda I had inside my hat breaking, now that I think about it."
Ryan ignored the obvious question here and went for something more important.
"...How did you get the carrot off you?"
"Eh, it wasn't much."
I glanced over at Monouma to see what she had to say about this.
"What the hell? That's scary. You shouldn't be able to do that."
I could sense Flash about to go on another tirade at her, so I kept my mouth shut. Perhaps Monouma could sense that too, because she quickly followed her sentence up.
"You win, I can't do this anymore. I'll unlock the door. Bye."
And with that, she disappeared.
The elevator ride back to the surface felt slower than the one that had taken us down.
By some sick coincidence, I ended up standing next to Mcqueen. Was now the right time to say anything? Reasoning that the longer this went on the worse it would get, I decided to strike as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, I gave myself no time to prepare my words by doing so.
"Um… sorry about accusing you like that."
"It's fine. It's what had to be done, was it not? "
It didn't seem like I'd be forgiven for a while yet, if ever.
We reached the surface and headed to the vault door that we had seen when we first arrived here, less than a day ago. Someone unexpected was standing there.
"President!" Teio excitedly yelled in her typical voice.
"Yeah. I was here the whole time. But secretly. Monouma didn't know."
"I see. That's just like you, president."
"Yup, that's definitely it."
Her voice sounded rather unstable, but I was too focused on finally attaining freedom to question any part of this.
The vault doors slowly opened. At last, we could get out of this place and return to our
"Huh? Why's everything destroyed?"
"Oh, right." I heard Rudolf mutter. "We didn't get far enough in to reveal this part."
Thanks for reading all that if you didn't skip to the end, from here on out's the author's comment. I decided to put all my thoughts at the end to not disturb the flow that much (I wrote every chapter in one doc), so everything below this is pointless rambling. Just click away if you stop caring, you won't miss much.
Ok, let's start from the start. The idea for this story came to me not in a dream, but in the space between waking up and dreaming, which makes it far stronger than any bullshit like a dream.
I think the first character I imagined being in this situation was Rice, which is why the first things decided was her presence and the knife thing.
Anyway I initially was planning on my usual type of ensemble cast third person story, but as I was working out each character I had a flashback to the episode of Umayon with Nature as Columbo. So Nature became the story's protagonist.
This was all about a year ago. I'm glad that I got distracted with other things enough to have put it off for this long, because I'm far more knowledgeable about horses than when I first started.
Additionally, during that time I went from feeling ambivalent towards Nature to being completely Nature obsessed. Can you blame me for her not sticking initially? I didn't even remember she was in season 1 until my rewatch because she's not Nice Nature there, she's Normal Nature. In season 2 she's how she should be but she's kind of overshadowed by everything Teio has going on with her other rivals.
It wasn't until I started the game that I became a true Nature fanatic. Enough to mourn for the real Nice Nature. Bless up Nice Nature, my favourite real life horse.
So at some point along the line this switched to just being from the perspective of Nature.
As a result of that year spent brewing in the back of my mind I went through a lot of ideas on who to fit into this limited roster of 16. I remember wanting to include Brian right off the bat as a delinquent-like character, but she got dropped pretty quickly. Both her and Rice felt like they fit this kind of scenario well, I can picture the kind of sprites they would have during scrum debates perfectly.
The ones who stuck around to the end before getting changed out while I was writing it were Air Groove (the SHSL Empress), who was the initial idea for the culprit because of her usual relationship with Gold Ship, Haru Urara (the SHSL Loser), who would've just been there for the joke that Nature shouldn't feel too bad about her title and Nakayama Festa (the SHSL Gambler), who would've just been there as the group's chill guy.
I don't really remember who the first two were replaced by, but I do remember that I swapped out Festa with Flash for the complete Umayuru reference and because Flash is close enough to Celeste's personality that the reference works with her as well. I remember this specifically because I wrote the first chapter before deciding on the change. I'm quite glad I decided to publish this all at once, really.
I also had Maya in there at some point as the SHSL Tom Cruise, that one didn't last so long but it felt like it was worth mentioning.
Really this was a lot of firsts. My first time working with a cast of entirely existing characters, my first time writing something this long in first person and my first time writing a mystery story, if you'd be nice enough to consider it that.
Maybe it's unprofessional to admit this, but I am unprofessional, so I feel kind of frustrated with how much switching genres is making me feel like I'm starting over from scratch. I guess that's what happens when you spend so long only writing one type of thing.
Honestly I'm wondering if this is even good enough to publish but I get the feeling that if I let that take too much of a grip on my mind this will never see the light of day in any form, so I'm going to act now and regret it later.
But the greatest challenge with this was working out a way to get honourifics to work in English.
I don't particularly mind honorifics being used in translations, even in cases where there's better options it's probably fine. But I strongly hate hearing people say them in English, every single Persona game from 3 onwards is awful for this. I could go on a tirade about 3 in particular (because it's the only one I had the patience to finish) and how it has characters use honorifics they didn't even use in the original, but I won't. Point is, since I hate it so much, writing honorifics in my own work would go against the point.
Which creates quite a problem when you're writing a story for a multimedia series that only has official translations for some of the anime.
So I had to improvise. Adding a ms. at the start of people's names to show that character's respectful nature is easy enough. The real problem is with Tachyon.
The way she addresses others always feels slightly condescending and slightly affectionate to me, so in an attempt to convey that feeling I had her add dear or my dear to to the start of everyone's names.
I guess it kind of brings up connotations of Sherlock Holmes anyway, even though he never really said that.
The problem I encountered after making this carefully considered (snap) decision is that writing that out every time she refers to someone by name feels really unnatural.
I could've just had her drop it when she speaks a lot in quick succession, but that would create an inconsistency that only exists in my version and not the original, and cutting corners like that doesn't feel very Tachyon.
So, as always, I had to dig out of the hole I'd dug myself into by changing how she refers to Gold Ship and Bakushin to be different but still keep the same energy.
I went through a similar process with Fukukitaru. I've seen at least one translation that has referred to Shiraoki as Lady Shiraoki, but that'd be inaccurate because Lady Shiraoki was a granddaughter of the original Shiraoki. Fukukitaru is only descended from Shiraoki, not Lady Shiraoki. As far as I can tell, Spe is the only character in this series descended from Lady Shiraoki (Tact will also count eventually and Buena Vista if she's ever released from purgatory).
Really adding any kind of title to her name makes her sound like a different horse entirely. I'm pretty sure Lord is a crown name so that's out. Divine sounds too weird.
I initially wanted to go with the great Shiraoki but that made her sound kind of like a wrestler.
So in the end all I could do was write Shiraoki.
Anyway, as one final digression. When I first got into this series I thought to myself that a lot of horse names are weird. Then I got used to them, but when I started digging deeper I went back to thinking that. Every goddamn time I do research on pedigrees I come across Tosho Boy which means I also come across Tesco Boy. Grass Wonder had a daughter called Wonder Grass. There was a horse called TM Precure which was of no affiliation to Toei Animation as far as I'm aware. Deeply unserious.