Wow! It's been a long while, but it's finally here! DRDT Chapter 2 is back with part 2 starting since more than a week ago!
...Oh? What's that? There's some reveals that is damaging my theory and I should get to fixing? Awwww, man.... what a drag.... I am so doomed... nanchatte!
Anyways, hi! It's me, the dude who makes-overly-complex-and-ridiculously-long-theories-in-the-hopes-of-trying-to-solve-the-murder-case-that-not-many-people-agree-with-for-more-reasons-than-my-theory's-word-count. (Okay, the last part about the reasons is probably not true... yet!)
I am back yet again with some more updates regarding my theory.
NOOOOO!!! NOT AGAIN!!! PLEASE, I DON'T WANNA READ ANOTHER GODDAMN DICTIONARY LENGTH OF A THEORY POST!!!!
Woah! Calm down, imaginary self that is under the impression that some people were way too overwhelmed by my latest part of the theory post! You have nothing to worry about!
It would be silly of me to rewrite all of it again with some small changes. I will of course link up my part 5 later as source of reference, but really, all I'm gonna be doing here today is point out the newest problems with my theory ever since episode 12 and 13 and give my personal thoughts on those.
Also, to make sure that people hasn't forgotten what I've been all about since the beginning, I will do a short recap of my theory, displaying only what's most relevant to the murder case.
Besides, ain't no way I'm writing something this long ever again (except for maybe trying to solve the future chapters, but that's a matter for the far future).
With that said, I feel obliged to point out that this is spoilers for the fangan Danganronpa Despair Time Chapter 2, up until episode 13.
With that out of the way, let's get to it!
Hey look! I still remember how to use that show more button again, hurray! (I'm really sorry again to @1moreff-creator and everyone else who's been reading my very first posts last year that didn't have a show more button)
So, first things first, I'd like to apologize in advance because as amazing the episode 12 and 13 were, I will not be doing a reaction post of said episodes. I think I'm just too lazy to actually display my whole stream of consciousness through two whole videos and I think it is safe to say that practically all of us had a very similar reaction to those episodes.
What was the common reaction, you may ask? Well, it's simple, really... it went something like...
OMG, THIS IS SO FUCKING HYPE! OMG!!! THAT WAS SO INSANE!!! THE DRAMA!!! DAVID BEING DAVID!!! THE LEVI REVEAL!!! THE FLASHBACK PART 2 SCENE!!! OMG, WHAT IS EDEN DOING?!! AREI IS HOLDING DAVID'S HANDS?! WE'RE FINALLY TALKING ABOUT THE MURDER METHODS?!?! OMG, SO GOOD!!!
...right? Yeah! I thought so! :D
Although I may not be showing proper and precise reactions to these episodes, if you're interested, I'd definitly recommend reading @venus-is-thinking 's, reactions on episode 12 and episode 13, @1moreff-creator 's reactions on episode 12 and episode 13 and @accirax 's reactions on episode 12 and episode 13. They're pretty good reads (and no, I'm not just saying this because they all believe that Eden is the culprit, I swear!).
And for those who are totally blind or new to my shenanigans, yes, I do believe that Eden is the culprit behind this murder case.
There is indeed a few problems that arose ever since the latest episodes, so to make sure that everyone is up to speed with what I'm gonna be talking about, I'm now going to be doing a short recap of the events, according to me.
DAY 1 : The day where everyone receives their mixed up secrets and explore the second floor.
DAY 2 : The day where the attempted murder on Ace happened.
DAY 3 : The day where Whit suggests David to chill for the evening in the relaxation room.
DAY 4 : The day (morning) of the body discovery announcement.
Ever since Arei bullied Eden who then cried and exited the playground on DAY 2, that was what triggered Eden to decide to commit murder for the sake of escaping this hellish killing game. Knowing that her secret is that she kissed a girl, I deduced that she's probably trying to escape because she misses her beloved dearly.
So while she was off screen during most of that day, she spent time making plans for the murder set up and narrative, which is why she decided to share Arturo's secret (as seen in the flashback).
During the evening of DAY 2, Ace was working out in the gym, then he hears a conversation happening between David and Arei in the relax room. The conversation that Ace was quietly listening to did not happen in the evening of DAY 3, but rather the evening of DAY 2. Ace lied about when he was listening to that conversation.
At some point during the conversation or perhaps even after the conversation, Eden sneaks up on Ace and knocks him out with the turpentine that anyone could've gotten access to that day. Ace is Eden's chosen murder victim.
Sometime later, Eden eitheir used a letter or called out Arei's name to lure her into the playground or somewhere close to knock her unconscious with that very same turpentine. She then moves Arei's body into the relaxation room to lock her up inside because of the specific nighttime rules regarding that room.
Eden also brought old spares of clothing to cover Arei's body to make sure she doesn't get stained with starch from the water misting formula from the relaxation room.
During the night of DAY 2, she prepares the murder mechanism in the gym with some needed tools from the storage room and some wire that she took out from possibly a grandfather clock that she may have in her dorm. I deduced it as such because of Whit's description of everyone's dorms being suited to their needs.
I also deduced that there is actually a switch to turn on and off the fans, which is important since the attempted murder involved the fans. As Eden finished setting it up, as she was about to clear up with evidence, she heard someone using the elevator.
She hid in the dress up room, then Nico enters the second floor, looking for Ace to kill him. As Nico explores the gym, Teruko shortly enters the elevator to get to the second floor as well.
Teruko, looking for her spares, runs into Eden, who was hidden in the dress up room. After some talk, they heard a loud noise coming from the gym, which they both take a look inside.
Upon seeing this mess of a crime, Eden realised that her murder plan failed and that she needs to come up with a plan B really quick. So while she is taking time to "process this emotionally", Teruko was investigating.
Eden finally comes up with a plan B and figured that she needed to get her hands on the roll of tape ASAP. She managed to do so with a sleight of hand when Ace "suddenly wakes up", knocking Eden out of the way, distracting Teruko in the process.
Later that night, Eden proceeds with her plan B by making a murder mechanism in the playground. She also took the rope from the storage room. Once it's all properly set up, all's left was waiting for the relaxation to unlock at 8:00 AM on DAY 3.
In the morning of DAY 3, she retrieves Arei's unconscious body and proceeds with murdering Arei. Then, she proceeds to conceal the body somewhat behind the curtains in the relaxation room. She also grabs her glove, her monopad and the necessary materials in the dress up room for the next step of her plan.
She spends the rest of the morning to prepare her disguise trick. Then during lunchtime, Eden spends a short amount of time disguised as Arei to hide the actual time of death.
Once lunchtime is over, she returns to eitheir her or Arei's dorm to remove the disguise, spend time cleaning up, relax, power nap, etc. Then, during the evening of DAY 3, she spends time with Hu to fabricate her perfect alibi.
Later that evening, David explores the relaxation room. That's when he notices something wrong with the room and becomes the first person to discover Arei's dead body.
For some personal reasons, David brings the body back into the playground and hangs it by the swingset. Eitheir he or Eden (earlier in the morning) balls up the clothes and hides it in the closet of the dress-up room.
Then, in the morning of DAY 4, David grabs everyone's attention to the fact that Arei is missing right before the secrets reveal. Then fast forward a bit, then we get the BDA of Arei
And there ya go, that's my recap regarding how I believe the murder case happened. Pretty short, eh?
HELL NO!!! THAT WAS STILL PRETTY LONG!!! AHHHHH!!!!
Eh... I guess I couldn't really make it that shorter, my bad! If I tried to make it any shorter than that, it would've been extremely confusing.
Ah! Speaking of which, if you're confused in the sense that it feels like none of this should work at all, and there's a lot of contradictions and whatnot, then I would heavily recommend reading my actual theory post. I am not going to spend time refuting with people in the comments about points I've already pointed out in my previous post.
However, if there are things that are unclear to you, things that you do not understand and want to know what I'm talking about, please, feel free to ask away! I will help in any way I can.
With that out the way, I guess I can now start with pointing out the pr-
HAH! THERE IS A MAJOR ISSUE WITH YOUR THEORY!!! BASED ON EPISODE 12, THE MURDER COULD'VE ONLY HAPPENED IN THE MORNING OF DAY 4 BECAUSE OF THE BODY SWING! YOU'RE DONE FOR!
Ah... yeah... that! Of course! That's not a problem!
I'd like to come clean with something, everyone. Ever since I came up with the theory that murder happened at a totally unexpected time, there was something that was constantly bothering me.
That's right, I was very well aware of the body swing happening during the BDA ever since the beginning.
HUH?! Then all this time, you wrote all of this despite knowing that?!
Correct! I'm really sorry about that, but please, understand that I had a very good reason for it. For you see... everytime I saw it, I was often under the impression that this was simply an eerie effect / animation, to give a more dramatic intensity towards the BDA, without meaning anything. I legit thought it could be a thing, I swear!
But despite all that... I couldn't help but feel uneasy about it. Deep down, I felt like that maybe there was an actual meaning to it, maybe it was an actual clue that I shouldn't disregard. But I figured that because of my theory beliefs, then it would be rather unlikely that it would be used as evidence.
But alas, I was wrong about that. The body swing plays a very important rule in determining what happened in this murder case. I cannot deny that fact, especially since Teruko brought it up, plain as day. Despite it seeming like it damages my theory, I'm thankful that the dev finally cleared that little doubt I had since then.
Then you admit it, the murder actually happened in the mor-
Oh, not so fast! Let's not jump to conclusions just yet, alright? Arei's body swinging by the swing set doesn't quite exactly prove that the murder occured during the morning of DAY 4. The body swing only proves that someone messed with the body by the swingset.
W-What?! That doesn't make sense! The murder clearly happened in the morning of DAY 4!
Nuh-uh, not quite. You believe it clearly happened in the morning because that's what the cast concluded on top of Charles pointing out that the culprit could've clearly fake the time of death by saving the fishes for later.
But unless we have decisive evidence that the murder happened in the morning, we can't be 100% sure that the murder happened in the morning of DAY 4.
From the looks of it, you just seem very desperate, if you ask me.
At first, when episode 12 released, I kind of was... up until I figured out a fairly logical solution to it. That's right! I have a way to explain who made the body swing and why.
You're not going to suggest that David did all of what he supposedly did in the evening of DAY 3, but instead in the morning of DAY 4, right?!
Nope! Not at all. Disregarding the facts that it wouldn't really make sense and that he'd have to move the body out of the relax room anyways before nighttime (because of the water misting rules), David actually has an alibi in the morning of DAY 4.
(As does Veronika too as she was with them in the cafeteria)
With all of these reasons mentioned above, as much as I initially wanted to make it somehow possible that David came back to the crime scene to mess with the body somehow, it just isn't possible.
So instead, someone else did it.
Then out with it already, you staller! Who is it?!
There is only one possible candidate that would make the most sense in that scenario : Eden. Eden is the person who messed with Arei's body in the morning of DAY 4.
WHHAAAAT?!?! WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?! THAT'S SO RISKY!
That's what I initially thought at first, not gonna lie. But then... something hit me : Eden doesn't have an alibi for the morning of DAY 4 eitheir.
I thought that there would be absolutely no need for Eden to come back to the crime scene a certain short amount of time before the BDA, so instead, I needed to reverse my way of thinking.
What could she possibly aim to do that would prompt her to come back to the crime scene last minute?
Considering the facts (based on my theory, mind you) that she killed Arei in the morning of DAY 3, hid the body somewhere in the relaxation room, built up an evening to night alibi with Hu and that David was the first person to discover it during the evening, there is a simple explanation behind it.
Arei's BDA was meant to be triggered much earlier than the morning of DAY 4. The original intent behind this whole scheme was to have the BDA trigger during the evening of DAY 3.
That doesn't make sense!
No, that's wrong! It does make a whole lot of sense. Think about it. Let's say you were a participant in this killing game and were in David's shoes during the evening of DAY 3... you come across a dead body in the relaxation, what would you do?
!!!
That's right, you wouldn't just mess with the body and move it somewhere else, now would you? Aside from freaking out, the most natural and human thing to do would be to gather help.
If it were anyone else than David who discovered the body in that exact scenario, they would cry out for help, tell everyone that they found Arei dead inside the relaxation room, which would then result in a body discovery announcement.
But what if the person who found the body were to personally ask for Hu's and Eden's help, wouldn't that ruin her plan since it wouldn't trigger the BDA?
There's an easy solution to that. Eden could've simply decided to find more people to share the news to meet up with the corpse. This wouldn't ruin her plan in the slightest.
Quite the opposite, actually. If the body were to be discovered and trigger the BDA during the evening, it would solidify her air tight alibi even further as she wouldn't have any possible timeframe to commit murder in the evening as she was spending time with her friend Hu.
Ugh, so what? It didn't really happen anyways because of David being David! That doesn't change anything!
Actually, it does change things considerably. If you put yourself in the culprit's perspective where the whole intent was to have the body discovery happen in the evening of DAY 3 and that during the whole night, nothing happened, you would certainly find that very strange.
The culprit would be clearly confused, yet really curious to find out what even happened.
Couldn't she have taken a look much later during the night?
Perhaps, but she figured it would've been pointless. The reason why is that if she thought that nobody found the body, then the body would've still remained hidden in the relaxation room which would then be currently locked away because of the water misting.
So instead of checking it out during the late night of DAY 3, Eden decided to investigate during the very early morning of DAY 4, sometime past 7:30 AM.
But the relaxation room is still locked up until 8:00 AM! Why not wait until then?
It's simple! She just wanted to be there a little bit in advance to make sure she can enter the room as early as possible. And so... while she is waiting for the relaxation room to unlock, she probably figured that she should take a look around the other rooms, why not?
And thus, that leads to Eden finding the body being hung by the swingset, alongside fishes scattered around the floor for some reason.
To reconfirm, I still believe that David is the first person who discovered Arei's dead body in the relaxation room and that he's responsible for hanging her body alongside placing those fishes by the playground.
Okay, Eden discovers that the body has been moved to the playground? What now? Everything's already in place, so what could she possibly do with the dead body?
Well, since the BDA was not triggered on the evening of DAY 3, she figured that she may as well put Arei's monopad back into the corpse's pockets.
But what about her missing glove? Why didn't she return that as well if she wanted to return her monopad?
That's a good point, that's for sure. But there are two easy fixes to this counter argument. First one being that she simply forgot about the gloves. No one's really perfect, after all. She was so concerned about the body not being discovered yet that this completly slipped her mind.
The second fix would be that it would've been way too risky to try to retrieve the glove. Maybe initially, Eden, after she removed her disguise, she placed the clothes and the glove back into Arei's dorm. So if she wanted to retrieve the glove, she'd have to return to Arei's room, unlocking it with a monopad that isn't her own.
Would she really risk that again after making this much progress without getting caught so far? Like imagine if she tried to take that risk one last time only to get caught, that would be quite the devastating result, wouldn't it?
Ok, fine. Nevermind the gloves. Is that all she did?
Pretty much, yeah. She returned the monopad back into her pockets, which moved the body somewhat.
...
Well, it's also possible that she tripped and moved the body even more by accident. Or perhaps she felt like she was in such a hurry to avoid getting found out that she accidently bumped into Arei's dead body.
...Are you kidding me? There's no way that's gonna be enough to move the body for this long!
Well... maybe her being there at exactly 7:30 AM is not the exact time. She could've been there a couple minutes before 8:00 AM, which could make this possible.
But that's ridiculous! There's no way Eden is strong enough to make the body swing that way. To make the body swing for a good amount of time, she'd need more than just accidently bumping into the body! It needs considerable force.
And I'll stop you there. If you've read my last theory post, you should know by now that I'm a firm believer that because it's a work of fiction, anything that seems unlikely can become possible.
The main thing we should take from Arei's body swinging during the BDA is that at some point in time during the morning, someone messed with the body, proving that someone was there during the morning of DAY 4.
And there you go, that's my whole explanation as to how Arei's body was swinging during the BDA that doesn't necessarily mean that the murder occured during that exact morning.
If you're not quite convinced yet, there is a certain part of my theory that begins to make a lot more logical sense with this solution in mind. Take a look at this!
Thanks to the solution I suggested, these two lines become a lot more fitting to my updated theory. Here's why!
If Eden were to explore and find the body hanging by the swing set during the morning of DAY 4, she would know that at least 1 person found the body, but not who exactly.
Because of Whit's silly comment, Eden immediatly thought of the body in the playground and jumped to the worst conclusion : Whit is the person who found the body first.
So if they were to open the door to the playground, the BDA would not trigger since Eden is the culprit. So in a moment of panic, Eden uttered : "Teruko, wait--".
It is still pretty much the same as what I had in mind according to the previous part of my theory post, except that it works a whole lot better now that Eden personally saw the actual state of the dead body in the morning of DAY 4.
So there you have it. This seemingly major problem for my theory actually turned out to be very beneficial for my theory after all! Ah, the joys of making logical sounding deductions! My theory should be saf-
HAH! YOU THINK YOUR THEORY IS SAFE FROM HARM YET?! WRONG!!!! IN EPISODE 13, THEY ACTUALLY SHOWED HOW THE MURDER MECHANISM WORKED! NOT ONLY IS EDEN TOO WEAK TO OPERATE IT, BUT THEY PUT FISH WATER INSIDE THOSE JUGS! SINCE THEY REVEALED THAT MURDER METHOD, IT HAS TO BE THE SOLUTION. YOUR THEORY IS RUINED! GOOD DAY SIR!
Oh, you mean this?
Oh no, this murder mechanism is different from mine and this one requires a certain amount of strength that Eden possibly doesn't have! And the fishes! Since they brought it up, then there's no way my theory can work! Whatever shall I do??? It's joever.... just kidding!
I don't mean to alarm you guys, but the current proposed murder mechanism idea actually has flaws. Let's talk some more about the murder mechanism in the playground, shall we? :)
TERUKO'S CURRENT MURDER MECHANISM IDEA : RIGHT OR WRONG???
Before I get into it, I'd like to remind everyone that just because we've been shown how the murder may have been done for the first time means that's how it actually happened. Let's not forget that they spent so much time arguing and discussing about the secrets that they barely ever talked about the murder case in itself.
So if anything, episode 13 is practically just them beginning their actual work! Mistakes are bound to happen. We shouldn't jump to conclusions just yet. Besides, there is actually a problem with this murder mechanism.
I'll present it to you in pictures to show you what I'm talking about.
The taped up wrists. This was practically the decisive proof that this wasn't a suicide nor could it have been an assisted suicide. So now that they've introduced a murder mechanism in an actual episode... what's actually the point of the taped wrists in that scenario?
If the culprit used exactly this kind of murder mechanism, then there would be absolutely no need to tape up her wrists together.
Maybe it was to stop Arei from trying to struggle?
Nope. If that was the case, we would've seen much more signs of struggle coming from Arei. There may be scuffs on the ground, but there's absolutely no other form of injury on Arei aside from her broken neck.
Well, I saw a theory where the accomplice was Levi and he could've easily overpower her!
(I believe that was something that @1moreff-creator theorized, if I recall? At least, that was the theory pre part 2)
It used to be borderline possible, but not this time anymore! Thanks to the first two episodes of part 2 of chapter 2, it seems extremely unlikely that Levi wanted to work with the culprit as an accomplice.
Not only because of what we find out regarding his secret, what kind of character he is, but also because of something he said in episode 12.
I don't know about you, but this doesn't look like something an accomplice would say at all, right? If the culprit was someone who didn't have an alibi in the evening, it would be a different story, but the most fitting theory for having Levi work as an accomplice is to work for Eden, who happens to have an alibi in the evening as you already know.
So since we gotta take Levi out of the equation, then we don't really have much other possible candidates who could've easily overpower Arei to the point where taping up her wrists would've helped better on that regard.
Therefore, the most logical solution would be that Arei was knocked unconscious with the turpentine. But since that's the most likely scenario, then what's up with the taped wrists?
If the taped wrists weren't used to prevent any remote chance for Arei to try to get out of this situation, then it must've been used as part of the murder mechanism.
But since the murder mechanism as shown by Teruko doesn't explain the taped up wrists whatsoever, then this becomes a discrepancy. Therefore, that can't be quite the correct answer to solving the how this murder mechanism works.
And since this murder mechanism idea is flawed, it also means that there's no guarantee that the jugs contained fish water inside, they could've simply gathered water somewhere else or perhaps there jugs were already filled with clean water to begin with.
Because this murder mechanism idea is flawed, there's no guarantee that the culprit used this method which required some unknown amount of strength, but an amount of strength regardless (unless the author wants to pass it off as anyone could've done it since it's easier to do it by spinning it, I'm not sure).
Because of that flaw, my theory isn't affected by the murder mechanism idea that Teruko suggested since there is no guarantee that this is the correct answer.
So yeah, there's no problem whatsoever! Also, as far as I'm aware, since the release of the latest episodes, I have a very logically sound reason to explain the taped up wrists as shown in part 5 of my theory.
To give you a small reminder, it was for something like this!
(Whole murder mechanism not properly shown in the drawing because I'm lazy as heck, but just take a close attention to the arms)
By having Arei's arms go between the pillars of the seasaw, you can make it so that she can't get out of it by taping her wrists together, which plays an important role in the murder mechanism. Not going to elaborate further, if you want to know more, you gotta read the big post right there!
And there you have it! Those were the two main concerns that could've negatively affect my theory, but fortunately for me, it doesn't. In fact, it supports it even more than before.
Especially regarding the David / Arei conversation flashback (shown from David's memory's perspective). This conversation told us a lot more between these two, do you know what that means?
That's right! It means that Ace is full of shit! There's no way he didn't hear anything else. The only way he could've not hear anything else is if he gets snuck up from behind and gets knocked out with the turpentine, but it could've easily simply been Ace witholding that information to make David look more suspicious.
Therefore, if he lied about this, he could've also easily lied about when he actually overheard that conversation for his own selfish gains!
There's also a few couple other points that could further support my theory, but I don't feel like going over every single little detail as of now. I mainly wanted to solve these two issues and nothing else.
So, DRDTers, I need to ask you the following : Do you still believe that I am delusional with this overly complex theory of mine? :)
Thanks for reading another one of my big posts, as usual!
Edit : Go read the finale of my theory next, it's worth it!
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I have a very important announcement to make regarding the murder case of drdt chapter 2.
You guys can go ahead and think I'm coping all you want, I don't care. You can turn away just like bef... actually.. no. You should stay here. In fact, everyone that's been watching chapter 2 episode 15 should pay very close attention to what I'm about to say.
Because... you see... I just made a massive discovery!
I've been rewatching the episode a few times, not the whole thing over and over, of course, but like bits here and there. And then... I stumbled upon something incredibly revealing.
Ladies and gentleman, there is a massive contradiction with someone's statement in that episode compared to what we know about the murder case.
Let me explain. Early in the episode, they were discussing about how Ace knocked Arei unconscious. He couldn't have gotten the turpentine, so he needed to use something else.
So one of them suggested that he strangled her to unconsciousness, which sounds fair, right? Well, about that...
In case you guys have forgotten, other than a broken neck and red marks on her wrists, there was nothing else noteworthy about Arei's corpse.
Charles couldn't have known about that because he never investigated the dead body for obvious reasons.
And in case you're doubting me, go ahead and rewatch episode 8, the investigation. It's clearly stated that there's nothing else on Arei. They couldn't have missed it out eitheir because both Teruko and Arturo checked the body.
Oh... this is all coming together... You thought that you defeated me with this shocking and dramatic episode, drdt dev, well think again!!!
I. remain. undaunted!
And now, I can say with pure and absolute confidence...
*slams an imaginary desk and points finger at the general direction*
Hello! It's me again, the pretend-detective-that-will-prove-once-and-for-all-that-my-solution-is-the-closest-to-the-truth.
Oooo boy, we're getting very close to the end with chapter 2, eh? Man... episode 14... that was quite the episode!
I got a lot to talk about, so I'll try not to waste too much time this time around. And of course, this is MAJOR SPOILERS WARNING OF DANGANRONPA DESPAIR TIME CHAPTER 2.
Let's talk!
As you can see in the title, this is pretty much the last time I'll be talking about my theory for good. The reason as to why should be obvious. We're getting really close to the end of the chapter as well as getting close to having the truth revealed by the series itself.
So in other words, this is my very last attempt at solving the murder mystery. So since this is most likely my last time (until there's another murder mystery I want to solve), I better go out with a bang, right? :D
For those who read part 5, it's mostly similar as part 5, but I added a few more things to support my theory. The main difference will be things that I really have to fix.
Anyways... this latest episode revealed a lot of things. A lot of these things are affected by my theory too. I will split those in three categories : The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
The Good
Then MonoTV explains that broken and missing things take longer to replace and...
So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. It is now confirmed 100% that the tape was truly missing since the murder attempt. We could even say that because of this on top of how the narrative is going with this episode, there is no other form of grippy tape inside this killing game aside from the one that came from the pull up bar.
Phew! I'm so glad it's finally cleared up, even though it should've been so obvious! (Well, the clue of when the tape was missing was subtle, but you get what I mean, right?)
It was honestly blowing my mind when people were claiming crazy things about the tape... such as "Well, it's a design error by the dev! There's supposed to be a tape there, they just forgot about it!"
So, I'm actually glad and happy that I was absolutely right on that matter, especially since I was the first person who vocally pointed out the missing tape ever since... episode 9, I believe?
It's possible that there were a few people who noticed it before me or around the same time as me, but I don't recall seeing anyone else posting about it. Nonetheless, for those like me who discovered the moment of the missing tape a long time ago? Honestly, kudos to y'all! Amazing job!
Another thing that's also considered good for me is something regarding the attempted murder that I deduced correctly.
"Ace had woken up and was struggling"
I deduced that at some point during the attempted murder, Ace woke up. The reason why I firmly believed that was the case is because of this picture!
If you take a closer look, you can see that there's blood on Ace's fingers. Since those are not finger injuries nor would Nico have a reason to stain Ace's fingers with blood, then the only logical conclusions would be that he got blood on his fingers because he touched his neck wounds, therefore, he woke up at some point during the murder attempt.
Another W for me, let's go! Hurray! Speaking of W... another good thing for my theory happened. In regards to Eden being innocent because the BDA triggered when Teruko, Eden and Whit saw the body at the same time.
YES! FUCKIN YES!!! THANK YOU DAVID! THANK YOU FOR SAYING THOSE WORDS THAT I WANTED TO HEAR SO BAD! I LOVE YOU, BUT ONLY AS LONG DISTANCE FRIENDS!
You guys have no idea how much it heavily supports my theory thanks to what he just said. It was also something that I deduced for a very long time too! There's of course a lot to talk about on this matter, which I will discuss another time.
But for now, let me savor what I consider to be the biggest W of my crime solving theory of this murder case. Things are looking really good for me.
But of course, I have other problems that crossed my way in exchange, so let me show you what I mean.
The Bad
Let's start with the elephant in the room. Nico is sole person responsible for the attempted murder of Ace.
Before I forget, here's my theory post as reference so that you can have a fair idea of what's been debunked.
Anyways, this truth shatters a good chunk of my theory post, especially regarding the attempted murder itself. Because... according to my theory, I thought that the person responsible for the attempted murder was the same culprit as whoever killed Arei. Thinking it was Eden who did the attempted murder on Ace.
But this theory of mine on that matter has sadly been completely denied. Eden did not attempt murder on Ace, that much is a fact that I can't ignore.
But that's not all. It's practically confirmed that the wire found in the gym was indeed Hu's custom weapon.
This shut downs my idea that Eden must've gathered some kind of wire inside a grandfather clock.
I'm well aware that I was kinda pushing it with this idea (even though there were a conversation supporting this idea), but mannnnn.... IMAGINE HOW FRIGGIN SICK IT WOULD'VE BEEN IF THAT WAS ACTUALLY WHAT HAPPENED?! IT WOULD'VE BEEN SUCH A 1000 IQ MOVE ON MY END!!!
Haha! Sorry! I got the hype get the best of me there! I mean, to be fair... I was under the assumption that Eden's must've done the deed and that she must've gathered that wire some other way. You can't fault me for being this creative!
But at the very least, from this narrative, we can deduce that the DRDT Dev may not try to pull a move where we need to imagine something that could've existed somewhere, they probably never intend to make us go for something far-fetched unless there's enough clues to suggest it. I think that will be something very important to remember whenever we get to watch chapter 3 in a future time.
Moving on!
Nico is the person responsible for stealing the turpentine.
This may not seem much at first, but it's actually very bad for my theory. Reason why is that to have my Eden!Culprit theory work, I need a way for Eden to subdue Arei in some shape or form.
The best way to do it would be by knocking her out with the turpentine, but unfortunately for me, Eden initially didn't have access to the turpentine. Nico did. This means that I lost my prime way for Eden to subdue Arei.
Eden obviously can't overpower Arei for obvious reasons... on top of having no signs of struggle on Eden and Arei's body like bruises and such.
So because of it, I need to figure out a way for Eden to be able subdue Arei without having to steal the turpentine as it was Nico who stole it initially. I'll discuss more about it later.
There is also another problem with my theory, not something the episode directly showed, but it's still very noteworthy. Since Eden is not the culprit behind the attempted murder of Ace, my plan of having Arei locked up and hidden in the relaxation room no longer works anymore. Therefore, I currently don't have a way to explain the purpose of the ball of clothes since my whole murder attempt theory is crushed.
So these are the bads, one of them being a lot more problematic than the others. Anyways, I don't even think that's the worst of it all. The worst comes with...
The Ugly
"It's you two, isn't it?"
I'm happy that we finally got Teruko to actually accuse someone... but NOT LIKE THIS!!!
God friggin dammit!
I get it though. I understand why the creator did that. It gives a lot more suspense and a much better reveal at the end of it all, but aaaaggghhh! This is literally the worst case scenario!
Instead of having people try to figure out why this one person is the culprit and how they did it, we now have the community practically split in two to decide which one between Ace or Eden is the culprit of the murder case.
Ugh.... what a pain in the ass! I can't believe you've done this, DRDT dev! Not giving us the final answer until the very end. I will admit though... that was very unexpected and a very cool twist. That makes it much different from what we're used to see in the dangans and fangans! So yeah... well played, dev! But you should know by now... you're not fooling me with this. I know very well what the heck happened behind this murder case! I remain undaunted.
So are you saying that...
Yes... I still believe that Eden is the culprit behind the murder case of Arei. Ace has nothing to do with the murder of Arei and there's absolutely no one else but these two suspects who could've possibly commited murder.
I'm sorry to say this to the people who believe that a third party is responsible for the murder, but that's just impossible. Only these two could've taken the tape and they had absolutely no reason to give it to someone else. Nor did they get it stolen.
Otherwise, why would they not reveal it at all? It wouldn't make sense no matter how you put it. Not only that, but it would be so unsatisfying of a plot twist especially considering that with all the clues we've been given so far, only the people in the gym at a specific time could've taken it, which still comes down to Ace and Eden.
It's also practically confirmed that there's no other source of grippy tape. I understand that you guys are trying to do this because there's a lot of issues with solving the case if eitheir Ace or Eden is the culprit, but instead of going for an unrealistic scenario of who else could've done it, you guys need to figure out how eitheir of these two suspects managed to pull it off despite these problems!
And that's exactly why I'm still dead set on accusing Eden. Because despite all these problems I've encountered since the beginning of it all, I figured out a lot of ways to solve these issues and it's going to be the same thing here. These new problems I have encountered... I will solve them... all of them!
Therefore, being open-minded is crucial in solving this murder case, a complex one at that!
Alright, with these news out of the way, it's finally time for me to solve this murder case! Although, unlike the giant recap that I did on part 5, I'm not going to do that. I will begin by discussing with you all the biggest mystery of this entire murder case.
The Biggest Mystery?!
What are you talking about? Are you referring to the fishes? The broken lights? The ball of clothes? Their murder motive?
Nope! There is something that's been brought up very few times at the very beginning of the trial and never again... even though there's something seriously strange about it.
(I'm sure there's other moments where this was brought up, but I couldn't find them.)
But yeah... there are two suspiciously strange things about this (that people simply brushed it off as nothing wrong happened) and I seriously think we need to look into this.
During lunchtime of the day before the BDA, Arei was seen in the cafeteria, but didn't utter a single word.
Aside from the "conversation between Arei and David in the relaxation room", no one saw Arei from lunchtime up until the BDA.
Let's face it... Arei, who's usually a loudmouth, didn't say a single thing at lunch? That's just incredibly weird! It doesn't make sense! You guys know very well that she would, at the very least, say something mean or troll someone at least slightly.
But even weirder than that is the fact that no one else saw her since lunchtime! There is absolutely no way that Arei would've spent the rest of the day eitheir hiding herself in her dorm or just simply avoiding contact on anyone. That is just so out of character!
Well... maybe Arei was deeply concerned by David's actual secret and was being secluded up until it was the right time to visit David. I mean, David and Ace clearly saw her that evening, so it's fine, right?
Yeah, I don't think so. Let's say she was deeply concerned by David's secret since lunch, why didn't she try to contact David much sooner than that? Doesn't quite make sense now, doesn't it?
Oh! I know! She was spending time with Eden because they're friends now, right?
I'm sorry, but that's not gonna work eitheir. Let's say Eden was the culprit in that scenario... why would Eden lie about not seeing her since lunch?
Well... suspicions would've been thrown at her, that's why.
And why would that be the case? Remember that during that day, Eden spent time with Hu from the evening up until the night time. And since we're under the assumption that the murder occured in the morning of day 4 (the day of the BDA) and that she spent time with Hu as said earlier, her supposed time spent with Arei in the afternoon would be irrelevant to the murder case!
Besides, wouldn't someone at least have noticed that the two of them were spending time together in the afternoon?
And even if we were to presume that Ace is the killer there, it's the exact same thing! Eden would have absolutely no reason to lie about spending time with Arei if that were the case.
Well, maybe Ace intimidated Arei and stayed quiet this whole time because of it!
...really? We all know very well that there's no way Ace would be able to intimidate Arei, of all people!
Then maybe-
I'll stop you there! Let's face it, there's no normal reasons to explain why Arei didn't talk at lunch nor why she was missing for a considerable amount of time. Besides, if it was something irrevelant or completly mundane about what was happening with Arei, what would be the point of doing all of that? Why make it seem like it was a mystery if "nothing special" happened.
I'm sorry, but it just simply doesn't make sense. Especially if the fact that she was missing was brought up multiple times. There is no way that this is unimportant, no matter how you look at it!
This is also one of the reasons why I firmly believe that Ace is not the culprit. It is impossible to give a reasonable answer to this mystery if you go for the Ace!Culprit route.
It's unsolvable! You can't solve it even with Eden as the culprit!
No! That's wrong!
For those who read part 5, I'm sure you know already what the answer to that is. As for everyone else, there is a very interesting and logical way to solve this mystery.
But before I reveal it, let me first bring back a topic from earlier that I wanted to talk about.
David Chiem...
Okay... so what? He's clearly lying about it, as stated by Nico and J!
And why would you assume that he's lying? Is it because he's a lying and manipulative asshole? Is it because you don't believe in anything he says? Is it because you don't understand him? Well... to be fair... he's rather complex and a bit hard to understand his gameplan, however...
Doesn't that statement feel too important to simply disregard it? I'm not just saying this because his quote is in gold and bolded text, but also because of the timing and what he said earlier.
Also... shortly after that, after he asked Teruko, Whit and Eden if they saw the body at the same time and that Teruko answered with "What are you getting at?", here's how he behaves...
Isn't it peculiar? Like... doesn't it feel like there's a sense of emergency behind his defense and reaction? It's almost like... he's been waiting for the right moment to reveal that piece of information. Whether he wants to help or just want to make Teruko despair for the sake of exposing Eden as the culprit, it doesn't matter. He wanted to reveal that information.
His statement that he saw the body first is clearly wrong because he couldn't have seen the body in the morning, he had an alibi at 7:30 AM and it's physically impossible for David to instantly search the playground, find the body, do nothing and go back without being seen by eitheir Teruko, Whit or Eden.
Well, of course, he's lying about seeing the body in the morning. It's literally impossible.
Huh? But why are you insisting that-
David is the first person to find the body, but he discovered it at an earlier time. It doesn't make sense for anyone else to have found the body first. Otherwise, they wouldn't have hidden this piece of information at all, there's no reason to. But if we're talking about David however... it's whole different story. I also have plenty ways to support the idea that he found the body much earlier.
This is after Ace tells the group what he witnessed and after David gets his secret exposed and decides to reveal himself.
Ace claimed that he witnessed David and Arei having a conversation about David's secret during the evening, the day after the attempted murder.
David claims that he's a lying piece of shit and an unreliable witness.
Ace couldn't possibly have lied about the secret he heard from the conversation since that was indeed David's secret. So what else could David be referring to when he claimed that Ace is lying?
Lying about where he heard the conversation wouldn't make sense eitheir, it wouldn't really change much. And we already know for a fact that David visited the relaxation room that day.
Therefore, by process of elimination, the logical deduction would be that Ace lied about when he heard that conversation. Also, doesn't that weirdly coincide with the reveal that he found the body first?
So if you match his body discovery information with the logical possibility that Ace lied about when he heard the conversation with also David's confession that he did indeed meet with Arei that evening without revealing what the conversation was about, we get this amazing solution : David didn't have a conversation with Arei in the evening of the day 3. He had a conversation with her in the evening of day 2 instead, the day of the attempted murder on Ace. David found Arei's corpse in the relaxation room in the evening of day 3.
I know I had many people who used to believe that this can't be true and that David is lying about his claim that Ace's a liar and all that... but quite frankly... can you still make that claim after watching episode 13 AND 14?
In episode 13, we learn from David's memory flashback that there was more to David and Arei's conversation than what Ace let on, which already gives a sign that Ace is hiding something.
And in episode 14, there's of course the reveal that David was the first person to find the body. Let's be real here everyone. I seriously doubt that this is a mere coincidence after all this time.
Anyways, now that I've explained my point regarding David, it is time to connect the dots!
Connecting the dots...
Going back to the biggest mystery...
As I said before, I stated that there's a way to solve this mystery with Eden as the culprit. There's also a very good reason why I brought up the idea that David must've found the body at a much earlier time.
Let's think back on the mysteries regarding Arei.
She did not talk at lunch and she was never seen again since then.
We've already established that it wouldn't make sense for her to stay silent and not be seen again for a long period of time. So what would be the most logical way to explain that discrepancy?
Something wrong happened to Arei that day. If you think back on my idea regarding David, he found Arei's body in the evening of day 3. Then, if you combine that with the fact that Arei was mysteriously missing since lunchtime, we can then deduce that Arei was actually dead for quite some time. It would make sense to deduce that Arei must've been dead during the whole time she was missing.
But Ace witnessed the conversation betwee-
Nope! Remember, I made the deduction that Ace lied about when he witnessed the conversation. He most likely witnessed the conversation happening in the evening of day 2. Therefore, Arei was alive during the evening of day 2.
(FYI, by day 2, I mean the day of the attempted murder while day 3 refers to the day after the attempted murder. Day 4 is the day of the BDA)
Okay, but what does that have to do with Eden being the only culprit that can explain the mystery behind it all?
Don't worry, I'm getting there.
So with the idea that Arei was already at least dead after lunch, it changes a lot of things, but it still doesn't answer the other oddity regarding Arei... Why was she being silent during lunch time?
Before I propose the crazy (and repeated) idea, let me share a fact with you all. During lunch time, Eden was nowhere to be seen in the cafeteria.
Combine everything I've shown you and then we get this beautiful conclusion : Arei was silent during lunch time because that was not Arei. It was Eden disguised as Arei. Arei was already dead during lunch time.
I'm sure you have a lot of questions or things to object to this, but let me first state that it would perfectly explain a lot of things. Not only would it solve perfectly that big mystery I've just shown, but it would also explain why David claimed that he was the first person to find the body. It would also explain this little goofy event in the morning of day 3.
To give a small recap, Teruko wakes up at 8:00 AM, but still feels sleepy. So she's like "5 more minutes."
Then, we get a black screen saying "4 hours later", so she ends up waking up at around noon instead. Funny 5 more minutes turns into oversleeping for hours instead joke, that one! (Let's face it, it's relatable)
Anyways, this little scene right there could be an extremely subtle way to indicate that Arei actually died in the morning of day 3 and they made us unable to witness her death thanks to Teruko oversleeping. It also helps with camouflaging the possibility that Eden was taking the time to set up her disguise trick.
But if you have issues with the disguise trick, I've already explained it many times in part 5 with clues and hints found throughout the series on top of reminding everyone that this is a work of fiction, so as long as there's plenty evidence to suggest it, then it can be possible.
So for that to work, Eden needed to kill Arei in the morning of day 3. So first, she would need to sneakily knock her out with turpentine as it is the only way to-
HAH! YOU IDIOT! IT CAN'T WORK!! IT WAS NICO WHO HAD THE TURPENTINE! HOW COULD EDEN POSSIBLY GET HER HANDS ON IT?! YOUR THEORY STINKS!
Ah, right... the turpentine! Nico stole it from Rose...
That's no problem! Eden got her hands on the turpentine anyways!
WHAT?!?!
Turpentine, where are you?!
You're not possibly suggesting that there was a second turpentine, RIGHT?!?!
Of course not! I'm not that crazy! Come on now! Do you really think I'd make such a claim even though I made the claim that there doesn't exist any other source of grippy tape aside from what we've seen thus far? The same applies with the turpentine.
It is true that the fact that Nico had their hands on the turpentine first is truly troublesome... but then I learned some more facts about the case and realised that there is indeed a way for Eden to get her hands on the turpentine.
That's impossible! Nico had their hands on it!
Nico may have gotten their hands on the turpentine first, but did they actually keep it forever?
Think about it. What else do we know about the attempted murder that we know is true and confirmed by Nico themselves? Nico stole Hu's custom weapon : the wires.
And what was the reason for stealing the wires? To pin the murder on Hu. They were trying to get away with murder, after all.
Now, if we follow that logic, there is also another way to further pin the blame on Hu. Nico could've dropped the turpentine in the dress room, close by Hu's old uniform. It's also possible that they used some of Hu's clothes to knock Ace unconscious with the turpentine.
That way, if the crime actually succeeded, then there would be much more than Hu's wires to pin her as the culprit. But alas, as we all know, Nico's murder attempt failed. So whatever happened to the turpentine in that scenario?
Nico most likely didn't run back to the dress room to grab it back, that's for sure. Which means that in that scenario, from the time Nico knocked Ace unconscious up until Teruko runs into Eden in the dressing room, Eden had an opportunity to grab the turpentine that Nico might've purposefully dropped in that room.
But how could she possibly know that there was turpentine in here?
That's the thing. I don't think she knew that she'd find the turpentine here... well... unless she saw Nico knocking Ace out and has been quietly sneaking since then.
Why would she even bother going there this late at night to somehow stumble on the turpentine if she didn't know that she'd find it here to begin with? That makes no sense.
You're right, it wouldn't make sense. If anything, that was simply an incredible coincidence that she managed to find turpentine, something that she would clearly need to succeed in her murder plan.
I don't get it! If finding the turpentine was mere coincidence, then what was the point of Eden visiting the dress room this late at night?
Initially, before episode 14 was released, I thought for sure that she was there because she orchestrated both crimes on top of locking Arei inside the relaxation room during nighttime. However, both of these ideas are denied.
So by eliminating the impossible, only one truth remains : Eden needed to place Hu's and Teruko's old clothes inside the relaxation room before 10 pm so that they can get covered in sticky starch next morning.
It is a known fact that the "ball of clothes" is covered in starch. We also know that the only source of information we have that could potentially have a source of starch is from the enriched formula of the water misting of that plants for the relaxation room. We also know for a fact that Eden was indeed in the dressing room past 10 pm on day 2.
I highly doubt that she went there late at night only for the sake of being nice and retrieving Teruko's spare uniforms. Therefore, the only way to explain her suspicious presence in that room is if we were to believe that she's the person responsible for the "ball of clothes".
There is no other logical or reasonable way to explain it. This is the only conclusion I could arrive at. Therefore, it has to be the truth!
Alright then... what was Eden trying to do with these starched clothes then? What was her plan?
At the time I'm currently typing this... I do not know.
WHHHHHAAAT?! YOU DON'T KNOW?!?!
That's right... I don't know yet. I have a few ideas, but I don't like them just yet. So by the time I keep working on this post, I'll figure out a proper solution, I promise.
What are you saying?! Are you seriously trying to solve this problem as you are writing your theory post?!
...That's right... I'm still working on it as I'm typing this. But pay no mind to it, the solution will come to me eventually, I'm pretty sure!
...You are out of your mind, you know that?
Yeah... I know. For now, let's just say that having the clothes in that room so that they get starched was very essential in her plan for unknown reasons. At the very least, I found a reasonable way to explain how she get her hands on the turpentine.
For that matter, I know there were people asking me why Eden would even bother grabbing the tape. The answer is fairly simple. It was very convenient for her to get her hands on the tape as it would be necessary in her murder scheme.
In fact, she probably wanted to get her hands on the tape earlier than that, but Nico was already occupying the gym. She must've heard the sounds of Nico setting up something inside the gym (since the walls aren't soundproof) and must've waited inside the dressing room for some time... until the gym was clear. But of course, instead of that, Teruko runs into Eden.
So with that, I believe that I explained every mysteries regarding the attempted murder. Eden was indeed on the second floor on the night of day 2 for a suspiciously specific reason that I've already explained.
So... while I'm trying to figure out the most logical purpose of this ball of clothes, I'd like to give more points that further supports the idea that Eden is indeed the culprit.
Take that, Eden!
Let's start with one of my favorite observations in episode 14.
Ah... that scene was very touching, wasn't it? For a moment there, I almost believed Eden... up until someone in the youtube comments pointed out something really interesting about this scene. Doesn't this remind you of something? ....no? Let me help you out!
Hmm? What does that have to do with anything?
A lot of things, actually. Like... the pictures I've shown you from episode 3, Eden claims that relationships aren't transactional, that she didn't do something good so that Teruko would return the favor. Eden also claims that she wants her to be her friend, but not because Teruko feels obligated to.
Then, in episode 14, Eden asks Teruko to help her, because friends help each other. She also says that Teruko is her friend.
I know most of you will say that Eden was being desperate and in big need of help, maybe there is a tiny bit of truth to it. However, I just find it rather strange because as far as I'm aware, from the beginning of chapter 2 up until the trial, Teruko never showed any signs of wanting to be friends with Eden. So why would she now claim that Teruko's her friend and then ask for help when initially, Eden didn't do something good simply just so that Teruko would do something good in return?
In a subtle way, they're kinda like opposites to each other, the scene between episode 3 and episode 14, I mean.
To further prove my point, I'd also like to point out that during these two scenes, they both played the exact same background music. Coincidence? I think not!
Another point I'd like to talk about is something I've already brought up in the past, but it's still very important to remember it...
This happened in the morning of day 4, before the BDA was triggered. She said this a little bit after Whit made a silly comment about Arei hanging around the playground.
You could brush it off as simply Eden being not ready to seeing the corpse of Arei in here, since all the other rooms were explored on that floor, but of course, I don't believe that one bit.
Whit's comment made Eden panic considerably because for a few seconds there, she really thought that her murder plan was about to be ruined because she thought that Whit was the first person to find the body of Arei.
If Whit was the first person to find the body, then the BDA wouldn't trigger which would be dangerous for Eden. As I stated before, someone else discovered the body first and it was David Chiem.
Also, that reminds me. Timing wise, it was impossible for Eden to bring the fishes from relax room to the playground. It was also impossible for Eden to hang the body by the swing set, she's most likely too weak for that. Meaning that Eden never brought those fishes nor did she hang her by the playground. That was never in her plan to do that. She hid the body behind the curtains of the relaxation room.
Therefore, the only person who could've transported the fishes as well as hanging Arei's corpse is the first person who found the body. David is responsible for those two actions during the evening of day 3. He did it for his own selfish reasons, of course!
But wait... if David hung the body during the evening of day 3, how do you explain the body swinging during the morning of day 4?
Ah, that! It's something I've already brought up in part 6, but I'll explain it a little.
There was a reason why she put so much efforts into disguising the time of death by putting on a disguise and building a solid fake alibi from 7pm to 10pm. Eden's main goal was to have the BDA triggered during the evening of day 3, not the morning of day 4. She was hoping that someone would run into Arei's corpse that evening, which that person would go gather help to trigger the BDA.
If that actually went according to plan, Eden's alibi would've been perfect. !!! Come to think of it... the letter would make a lot more sense with this idea in mind.
Since she had nothing to do with the fishes, the initial plan was to bait the people into thinking that eitheir Arturo or someone who may have overheard the conversation would be the one who tried to lure Arei to the playground.
Except that compared to what we've seen in part 1 of chapter 2, the letter was actually supposed to properly display 7:30 PM rather than just 7:30. It was part of her grand scheme to further solidify her alibi.
(There's a missing corner, as you can see, which is very convenient to where PM could be written)
Wait, hold on... if that was the case, then Arei wouldn't be having a meeting in the playground in the morning, but rather the evening! That doesn't work! You said it yourself that she was murdered in the morning of day 3!
Hah! That's not a problem! Eden didn't need to lure Arei with a letter. She simply needed to call her out vocally. Hell, she didn't even have to be calling her out in the morning of day 3 eitheir.
She could've knocked to Arei's door right after the exchange between Ace, Levi, Teruko and herself after the attempted murder. It could be something as simple as : "Um... Arei? There's something really important I need to tell you, but I don't wanna say it here because the others might hear it since the dorms are so close to each other. Besides, it's getting really late. Can we meet up in the playground early in the morning?"
But of course, since the BDA didn't trigger in the evening of day 3, there were a few change of plans. She needed to go back to the second floor in the morning of day 4 to find out what's going on.
While she's heading there that morning, she figured that she should bring back Arei's monopad. Arei's monopad was essential in pulling off the disguise trick as she needed to gain access to her dorm to wear her spare uniform. Initially, Eden arrived to the second floor possibly a little bit before 8:00 AM, thinking that the corpse would still be hidden inside the relaxation room.
But it turns out that Arei's body was actually hanging by the swingset, in the playground. And there's fishes for some reason? (Just saying this based on the culprit's perspective)
Eden figured that it would be way too risky to mess with the crime scene even more than what she was originally going to do.
And what was she doing here in the morning of day 4?
It's simple! Eden put the Arei's monopad back inside the victim's pockets and she retrieved the letter and tore the bottom right corner of it, removing the PM on that letter. She then tore the rest of the letter and threw it in the trash bin. It's also possible that the reason why she tore the rest of the letter is to disguise the fact that the killer purposefully removed a corner of the letter.
Wouldn't it be more beneficial for Eden to not tear up the pm part since she had an airtight alibi at the time?
Not really, no. Since everyone else would be discovering the corpse at around 8 am in the morning rather than last evening as intended, there's no telling how the group would actually attempt to solve the trial.
It's possible that if the PM part was still there, they might believe that the time might be fake, especially since the body would be found next morning. In fact, if they presume that the murder happened in the morning of day 4, they would suspect anyone who had an alibi last evening because of that part of the letter. That's also practically what happened earlier in episode 12.
Levi : Is it possible that the killer tried to confuse us all on the time of the murder to create a false alibi? In that case, we should be suspicious of the people who do have an alibi in the evening but not in the morning?
Teruko : That's another assumption that would lead us astray. Forget that thought.
Levi : Why?
Teruko : We're only guessing that the killer created a false alibi to their benefit. But it's still entirely possible that it was just coincidence that we mistook the murder as taking place at a different time. The killer might not have cared as much as we do. [...]
Charles : Are you not simply dismissing the idea that the killer intentionally falsified the time of the murder?
Teruko : I'm not dismissing it. But it's far more dangerous to dramatically narrow down our suspect pool based on speculative evidence, especially when we barely understand the murder at this moment in time. In other words, we can't consider Levi's idea as evidence unless we have proof.
And there you have it. If the PM part remained on that letter and they realised that the murder could've happened in the morning of day 4, then that whole letter would've been proof enough that the killer purposefully faked the time of the murder, even if the murder didn't happen in the morning of day 4.
Anyways, if touching Arei's pockets wasn't enough to keep the body swinging, it's also possible that Eden accidently ran into the hanging body on her way in or out because she was still in a little bit of a hurry as she didn't want anyone to catch her in the act.
Hmmm... interesting... how very interesting...
What now?
Well, the idea (that I recently came up with) that the letter always displayed "PM" and that she tore up that part of the letter because her plan didn't fully work as intended... it just gave me another amazing idea.
People have been wondering for quite some time what could be the decisive evidence to pinpoint that someone is truly the blackened... I think I finally figured out what the evidence is.
Well, out with it already! Show us what will prove once and for all that Eden is the culprit!
Gladly! I used to think for a long time that the roll of grippy tape would be the ever so decisive evidence for it, since it was practically a smoking gun type of evidence. But alas... you saw what happened in episode 14, so...
HERE'S THE DECISIVE EVIDENCE : THE TORN UP CORNER OF THE LETTER CONTAINING "PM"
Think about it. We know for a fact that Arei's body was swinging in the morning of day 4 and according to my theory, only Eden could be the logical explanation behind this event happening.
Therefore, Eden most likely visited the second floor in the morning of day 4. Since her original plan was to have the BDA trigger in the evening of day 3 but it failed, she needed to remove the part of the letter that mentioned "PM".
Now, here's the fun part : what could Eden possibly have done with it afterwards? She couldn't really dispose of it in the trash bin, that's where the rest of the letter was. Eden still needed that letter to build up her narrative to make her seem the least suspicious.
She couldn't hide it anywhere else on the second floor. She didn't want to risk having someone stumbling upon a piece of paper that just happens to perfectly match the rest of the letter.
She couldn't really dispose of it anywhere on the first floor eitheir. While it might've been a logical way to get rid of that evidence, it would've been incredibly risky. By the time Eden did her finishing touches on the second floor, it should've been 8:00 AM by then, if not really close to it.
Every participant was supposed to meet up in the movie screening room for the secrets reveal, Eden couldn't risk doing something slightly suspicious when she should be heading straight for the movie screening room. She couldn't have gotten rid of it during and after the investigation eitheir, there were witnesses close by.
So by process of elimination, there is only one remaining place that Eden could've make the corner of the letter disappear. She hid the torn up corner of the letter in one of her little bags on her belt!!! It's still there as we speak!
How's that for a decisive evidence, eh? :D Take that, Eden Tobisa!
Yeah, yeah, whatever! That's cool and all, but at the end of the day, all of it doesn't really matter if you can't manage to explain what was the point of the starchy ball of clothes! If you can't explain it, then your theory just crumbles!
...heh! :D
Y-you can't be serious... there's no way you managed to-
It took me roughly a day of thinking about it, but you BETCHA that I managed to solve the issue with the ball of clothes! I have a very good idea on what Eden might've done with this piece of evidence during the murder of Arei.
The sticky situation of the ball of clothes
As I mentioned before, I used to think that the clothes were used as a way to protect Arei from the water misting if Eden were to lock her up inside the relax room. But of course, that no longer works because of the actual truth behind the murder attempt.
Yet, Eden clearly placed those clothes for a night inside the relaxation room, so surely it must've been really important to do that, right?
The answer to that is YES. It was a very necessary step in the murder scheme. In fact, I'm willing to bet that without it, her plan wouldn't have worked.
It's just some starchy clothes. Why would it be that important?
Well, as we already know, there's no way Eden could pull off the murder mechanism as shown in episode 13 (aka the drop hanging murder idea) as it would require a good amount of strength that she doesn't seem to have.
So, for her be able to murder Arei, she would instead need to use a murder mechanism that doesn't require a lot of strength. And not too long ago, I finally realised that using the starchy clothes would be incredibly helpful in pulling off that kind of murder without much troubles. Let me elaborate.
Do you guys remember my murder mechanism in part 5? If not, that's alright, let me give you all a reminder.
(Yeah, I recently added those pink lines as compared to my previous picture, just bear with me.)
Here's the order of how that murder went according to my theory
(The pink line is the longer rope and the green line is the shorter rope)
While waiting for the body to be available, she threw the longer rope above the rafters by using the roll of tape as anchor.
She then uses one end of the long rope by tying it to the filled water jugs, by the handles.
She tapes up the bars of the carousel and then keeps some remaining tape for later.
She then ties up the other end of the long rope to the carousel
She drags the victim's body out of the relax room and brings it close to the seesaw.
She places the victim's arms through the gap between the pillars of the seesaw and the tapes her wrists together.
She ties one end of the shorter rope to the victim's neck while placing the other end of that rope very close to the carousel.
She then spins the carousel on one side, let's say counterclock wise. By spinning it, the long rope would get pulled which would pull the water jugs upwards.
She keeps spinning up until the water jugs are high enough. Once it's high enough, she keeps the carousel from moving.
She ties the end of the shorter rope (the one that was close to her already) to the bars of the carousel.
She then spins the carousel clockwise, making the water jugs fall at a rapid while the shorter rope is quickly getting pulled.
The shorter rope keeps getting quickly pull up until it can no longer pull... up until it reaches the victim's neck, which would serve as a brute stopper.
SNAP! Her neck breaks and the handles of the water jugs also break from the sudden stop.
By using this method, it explains the purpose of the taped wrists as well as the scuffed marks on the ground, which happened to be in proximity of the victim's legs. Because of the sudden pull of the neck, the rest of the body would follow, the legs would be what would move the most since it's not restrained, thus creating those marks.
By keeping her arms locked up by the seesaw, it ensures that her whole body wouldn't follow along of the rope pull, which would instead result in a rather funny ragdoll moment, which would probably not kill the victim if her arms weren't restrained.
It sounded really good on paper. Like I seriously thought that I finally figured it out, I thought that it made so much sense. Unfortunately... there are some issues with it.
Ha ha! Your method is flawed! I'm looking forward to these issues!
...very well. For starters, this might cause bruises on Arei's body with this murder method, especially around the arms and shoulders. The only thing that was really restrained were her wrists, so anything else would be violently moving.
But the reason why it could bruise the arms and shoulders especially is because her head and the rope are in the way of her arms. Her head could potentially hit her shoulders and arms... or it could be the other way around too. This becomes a discrepancy since we know for a fact that apart from her broken neck, there is nothing else noticeable about her body.
Next up, the distance between the scuffed marks and the seesaw is fairly long... most likely longer than Arei's height as well. I was aware of this issue in the past, but I simply brushed it off as "it works because it's a work of fiction."
But the more I look into it, the more I feel like it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to prove that the marks were caused by the movements of the legs. We also have to keep in mind that the rest of the body would surely move, so why would nothing above her legs leave no scuffed marks? That doesn't quite make sense. If the marks were way closer to the seesaw, it'd be a whole different story, but alas... that's not what happened.
And finally, it is very doubtful that the legs' movements from the killing blow would be causing all these marks we've seen back in episode 8.
As we can see from this picture, there's a lot of traces on the left side, a faint trace in the middle and a few traces on the right side. I don't think there's a valid reason I can come up that would explain why one leg would be leaving more marks than the other. On top of that, it wouldn't explain why there's a faint mark in the middle and gaps between the others.
Unless I were to presume that her legs did a few skips somehow, but I honestly think that's a stretch at this point. But that's not all, from the way the victim's body would be positioned according to my theory, it would actually be physically impossible for her legs to leave marks in such manner.
As you can see in the picture, the dragging of those marks are going up and down rather than left and right. If we follow the logic of how the victim's body would be positioned according to me, then the legs should be making those marks sideways, not what we're currently seeing.
Dang, those are pretty big flaws. Are you sure that your murder method is correct?
I used to think it was back then, but not anymore. At least very least, the idea of the pulley mechanism sounds right while the body setup and positioning is entirely wrong.
But honestly, my idea mainly didn't work because I forgot to factor in a really important element to this equation : the friction! That's right! To make sure my murder method works, I need to find some way to add friction so that the body wouldn't move as much. And how do you make that happen? With the help of starched clothes, of course!
Huh?! What do you mean by that?
This line is very important because we also know for a fact that the turf in the playground uses the same exact materials as the one in the relaxation room. Meaning that a wet turf in the playground would get sticky too.
I can't believe I let this go unnoticed after such a long time, but the stickiness of both the wet turf and the starched clothes played a major role in all of this.
Here's what I believe the culprit did with the starched clothes : Eden placed the starched clothes under Arei's body and above the turf. Basically, the starched clothes in that scenario would serve as a double sided velcro of sorts.
Would the victim's body really stick to the clothes?
Hard to say, but based on my deductions, it has to, right? We don't quite know how sticky it is, but it must've been sticky enough so that it would add friction, at the very least. I don't think it'd make her completly restrained, but rather her movements would be drastically reduced, I'd imagine.
But hold on! Wouldn't only one side of the clothes have starch on it?
Most likely, yes, but the clothes would probably be wet still. So the double sided velcro idea could still work.
I don't think so! MonoTV clearly stated that at 8:00 AM, the turf in the relax room is completly dry so it's safe to walk on it. If the turf dries up by then, so does the clothes!
Hmm... maybe, maybe not. It's true that the ground would be dry, but it's hard to say that the same would happen with the clothes. But if it is truly how it was intended, then that's no problem! Eden just needed to dip one side of the clothes into the pond and they would be wet again.
Okay, but was there enough clothes to cover the whole body?
Hard to say, probably not, if I'm being honest. But I don't think the culprit intended to lay out these clothes so that it would cover the whole body. No, I think Eden mainly wanted to place the starched clothes under the victim's head and the victim's legs.
The head and legs are pretty much what would be moving the most from sudden violent pull of the short rope attached to the neck, so putting the velcro there would be most effective. They might still move somewhat, but definitly not as much as without the adhesive. In fact, I believe that having the velcro effect under Arei's head would make it even easier to ensure that the rope pull delivers a killing blow.
You forgot something : THE ARMS!!! What about the arms?! Wouldn't they just be flailing around everywhere?!
Oh, that? Well, the wrists were clearly taped up and then-
Then what, her arms are restrained under the seesaw again? You already said that it doesn't work!
Heh, of course not! That's not what the culprit did at all! Arei's body was not placed next to the seesaw for the murder. I've already established previously that there's major problems with it. It wouldn't make sense. Therefore, she must've been placed somewhere else.
There is only one specific place that would perfectly explain the scuffed marks on ground. The area where there's scuffed marks? That's exactly where the victim's body was positioned! Arei died on this specific spot!
W-whaaaaat?!?! That makes no sense! How does that even explain how her arms were restrained from moving anywhere?
Don't worry, I'm getting there! :)
So... when we take into consideration the position of the scuffed marks, there's really nothing close by that can be used to restrain her arms, right? And placing her arms above her head like I did in my year old theory wouldn't quite work eitheir. We'd still have the same issues as what I pointed out already.
So from there, we can deduce that the victim's arms must've been positioned somewhere differently than my previous idea in my older theory. And I believe I found the perfect position to place those arms of hers.
The culprit placed Arei's arms behind her back and then taped her wrists. That way, since her back would be facing the turf, it should keep her arms mostly steady. They might move, but her back should be moving along as well. Her wrists were bound because there was still a risk that her arms would free up from her back since their movements wouldn't be as restrained.
That's ridiculous! There's no way that can be right!
...heh! :D Are you sure about that? Let me give you a reminder of how I briefly described the scuffed marks on the ground. There's a lot of traces on the left side, a faint trace in the middle and a few traces on the right side. If we combine everything I've deduced so far, we get this!
Be mindful that even though I just showed you how the victim's body would be positioned, the body part themselves isn't what fully caused those marks, it was mostly caused by the starched clothes' stickiness below the legs and head.
That would certainly help explain those odd shape and patterns on the ground. As for the wrists area, it could eitheir be caused by her hands or the taped up wrists.
But yeah, as shown in this picture, her head would be moving a bit, but not too much since that's where the culprit needed to make sure remained stable. Her wrists wouldn't be moving too much in this scenario since they would be stuck under her back. As for the legs, even though there would be adhesive below, there would still be a fair amount of movement since her legs have more freedom of movement than her head or wrists.
Just to remind everyone, by movement, I'm referring to the drag caused by the rope making a violent pull on Arei's neck.
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen! This is my final solution to this complex, yet incredibly fun murder case! I don't know if you've noticed, but everything I've said in this post, it would match up perfectly with a heck load of clues and information that we've been provided in this fangan.
So with that said, I only have one more thing to say : The only one who could've commited this crime is you, Eden Tobisa, Ultimate Clockmaker!
Thank you everyone for reading this till the end! There's probably a few things I unintentionally left out, so I'll try to add up anything missing if that's the case. But otherwise, I think that was most of it. If there's anything you don't understand or feel like there's something that may not work, feel free to ask me anything!
And don't forget : because it's a work of fiction, as long as there's enough provided information, then it can be possible!
BADJOE'S LAST REMAINING MYSTERY FOR THE CASE OF DRDT CH.2
Hi, it's me again.
Yes, I watched episode 15 and I'm not going to share my thoughts on the matter. Because honestly, the only thing I'm gonna talk about is the latest hole in my Eden!Culprit theory and I wanted to solve it as soon as possible.
So yeah, spoilers warning for drdt ch.2, as usual, but most importantly... if the first thing you ever wanna say out of your mouth upon reading this so far is something among the lines of : "bro is coping still!", then respectfully, turn around and take your sorry butt out of here! I don't need you.
I'm only here to talk about solving the newest problem to my theory because of episode 15 under the assumption that Eden is the culprit and nothing else. Got it? Good! Let's go!
Now, for the sake of understanding the problem, let's just all forget about Ace's suspicions for a few minutes and focus on Eden. I recommend reading part 5, part 6 and part 7 if you don't know anything about my theories. I don't think you'll need it to understand the main problem, at least, but it's always good to understand the context behind my solution, ya know?
Moving on, I'm sure most of you still around are wondering what kind of mystery to solve I'm referring to, right? Well, it's very simple. According to part 6, because it was confirmed that Nico took the turpentine first, I made the theory that they dropped the turpentine by the dress up room, close by Hu's clothes to further pin the blame on Hu for their murder attempt. That way, Eden, who originally went there to grab the clothes, managed to stumble on the turpentine by coincidence, which was very good for her.
However, as of episode 15, that idea is completely shut down by Nico's statement.
Nico kept the turpentine with them, which means that it's literally impossible for Eden to have gotten her hands on Rose's custom weapon whatsoever.
That sounds really bad for my theory, right? Yeah... absolutely. And if I'm being honest, despite being really confident in this solution I proposed to solve the murder mystery, this idea I had for the turpentine... I still had a few doubts about it.
For starters, the murder looked like it was extremely planned out. Eden is too weak to subdue Arei, so she needed something to knock her out easily without resorting to force. So she needed to come up with something that she can use for it.
But according to my idea, that made it seem like Eden was still trying to figure out how to knock her out and she just happened to run into the perfect tool for it by mere chance and coincidence.
That... just doesn't sound right, doesn't it? Like if she seriously planned on doing the murder, I don't think running into the turpentine by chance is an acceptable answer, definitly not anymore with this episode, that's for sure.
Ha ha! Sorry about that... I suppose I still am a selfish asshole and still don't second guess my doubts over and over, huh?
But thanks to that episode, I know without a doubt that for Eden to be able to knock Arei unconscious, she needed something else than the turpentine. That much is a fact.
And how can you possibly solve that problem? There's literally nothing else that could be used as a means to knock her out as easily as the turpentine. There's no other way!
...are you sure about that?
The solution
This line will help solve the turpentine problem!
Okay... what does the laundry starch have to do with knocking Arei out?
It has nothing to do with knocking Arei unconscious, but this line in particular gives off massive implications. Let me explain.
Up until this episode, a lot of us were under the impression that the starch on the ball of clothes came from the relaxation room. The reason why is because of the water misting automated system during nighttime. MonoTV mentioned a special formula, which according to some searches, starch is a really great ingredient for such formula.
Because we were given this information and clue by dialogue text, it seemed to make the most logical sense to deduce that the starch only came from the relax room.
But then Teruko just outright states that the culprit could've taken the laundry starch in the laundry room to explain the ball of clothes. This pretty much confirms that we are allowed to come up with a resource/item that may come from a certain location of the killing game as long as it's realistic without having it spelled out to us in dialogue.
Thanks to that giant hint, we now have an easy way to explain how Eden managed to knock her unconscious.
You're bluffing!
Let's see about that! Really, we just gotta think about the turpentine's properties. With the way they described the turpentine this whole chapter, it was heavily implied that this worked very similarly like chloroform, right?
So... what if the thing that Eden used to knock her out was actually chloroform?
Think about it. What are the two main ingredients that are usually found at home that can be used to make chloroform? Bleach and rubbing alcohol! It is a known scientific fact that mixing bleach and rubbing alcohol together makes chloroform. Feel free to look it up.
Fuck.... I should've seen it coming a long time ago. In fact... I'm pretty sure there were a few people on tumblr who made that suggestion a long time ago and I don't recall if I rejected it because there were no visual/text proof of it? If I truly did that, I want to seriously apologize to these people for my wrong assumption. (If you are one of these people, please, let me know)
Where could Eden possibly have gotten her hands on bleach and rubbing alcohol?
Come on! It should be obvious by now! We have a laundry room and an infirmary. Meaning that the bleach came from the laundry room while the rubbing alcohol came from the infirmary. And don't you dare say that it's far-fetched! We have evidence that this can work because of Teruko's line and the implication behind it, you can't refute that!
Therefore, Eden created her own chloroform by mixing the bleach from the laundry room and the rubbing alcohol from the infirmary. You could even say that it was partly the reason why Eden wanted to have a conversation with Arturo in the infirmary, although that's just a moot point. Eden could've gotten the rubbing alcohol alongside the bleach anytime late at night.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Eden knocked Arei out! It is literally the only way for her to be able to subdue her victim, there's no other way around it.
And with this, my solution once again explains all the mys-
Hold on! What about Eden's stalker? According to her, Ace was the most likely person who stalked her! Do you have a way to explain who the stalker was?
It's easy! The so called stalker was none other than Nico!
What? That doesn't make sense! Why would Nico stalk her?!
I said "so called stalker", not stalker. Nico had no reason to stalk her, they were planning on murdering Ace while Eden felt like she was being followed at some point this late at night.
Let me give you a recap on what I believe happened during the evening/night of the attempted murder according to my theory. (Okay, this part, you might need to read the theories if you want to understand better)
Nico found Ace somewhere on the second floor and knocked him unconscious with the turpentine.
Nico dragged Ace's body inside the gym and closed the door.
Nico went back to the first floor to gather the right equipments in the storage room alongside Hu's wires.
Meanwhile, Eden goes to the second floor and heads straight to the dress up room.
Eden gathers Hu's and Teruko's clothes and brings them to the relaxation room before it becomes locked as it was a very important step to her murder scheme.
As she finishes that, she's about to head to the gym because the remaining tool she needed to complete the murder was the grippy tape.
All of a sudden, she hears the sounds of the elevator, she knows that someone is approaching, so she quickly hides inside the dress up room.
At that time, Nico arrives on the second floor with all the required tools for it and heads straight to the gym, where their unconscious victim is.
Eden still waits inside the dress up room up until Teruko runs into her, making her utter the line "I know you've been following me!".
The rest is history.
And that would perfectly explain the stalker/being followed situation. It by no means damage my culprit theory whatsoever!
Hold it right there! One of the people who helped with the production of DRDT (I think?) posted a tweet confirming a very simple reason as to why Arei's glove was gone that morning!
Oh, you mean this?
I'll admit, it does sounds very bad for my theory on paper, but... I think there's a hidden implication behind it.
You... can't be serious!
Here's my interpretation of the message : Arei's glove was not present because she didn't bring it with her in the morning. We wanted to properly show the tape marks on her wrists.
Which means that it's not an issue with the disguise trick if she enters the-
Gen said that there was no ulterior intent with their absence!
Right, because of this, it's practically there to say that there's no other reason why her glove was gone, right? Therefore, I can't explain it with the disguise trick, right? I'm sorry, but I don't buy it for a second.
I seriously think that the hidden implication behind it is that there's no need to come up with a theory as to why the glove is gone. It has nothing to do with the culprit taking it nor messing with it. In fact, the way it's typed, it almost makes it sound like if they were really wanted to, they could've kept the glove on her corpse, but they wanted to show the red marks more than anything else and removing it seemed most helpful. Therefore, there was no other reason behind it.
Which, in other words, for the sake of solving this murder mystery, Arei's missing glove is completly irrelevant to the case.
Doesn't that just destroy your disguise trick though?
Not exactly. The message roughly implies that the glove disappearing is irrelevant. Which means that my theory can still work because there was absolutely no need for Eden to take Arei's glove that she would've been wearing... there were plenty spares of Arei's glove in her dorm!
There's a certain someone that was having a debate with me more than a year ago about how it didn't make sense for Eden to take Arei's current glove to complete her disguise as there should've been plenty spares.
Well, guess what? It looks like you were right, after all! :)
Aside from the make up kit and the wig, everything else that was needed to completle the disguise trick was available in Arei's dorm, including her glove!
Because of this, it easily explains why Eden never returned her gloves in the morning of day 4 (gotta read part 6 and part 7 to understand).
When Eden went back to the 2nd floor in the morning of day 4 because her main bda plan failed, she needed to make a few fixes. But while she was there, why didn't she bring back her glove too? Arei usually wears it, after all! Now that we know that the sole intent of the "missing" glove was to show the red marks on her wrists, then that means that Eden had absolutely no need to bring the glove back to the body, she didn't have it on her the previous morning anyways.
This, once again, makes perfect sense, just like my previous posts.
Ah! While we're at it, I may as well share something that I realised that I should definitly bring up. It's regarding the taped up wrists. According to my theory, Eden killed her in the morning of day 3 and removed her tape on the same day too. So, people were arguing that her red marks shouldn't be lasting this long. It should've been a sign that this was recent.
I figured that it might've been an oversight on the creator's end, however... I have my doubts and I want to avoid making that very same mistake again. I will not second guess my doubts.
Fortunately for me, I have a perfectly reasonable way to explain it. When Eden murdered Arei in the morning of day 3, she didn't remove her taped up wrists, she left those there. Otherwise, people would've been able to tell more accurately when was the time of death.
David then found the corpse in the evening of day 3, dragged her to the playground, hung her by the swing set and placed those fishes on the ground. Her wrists were still taped up.
Because Eden's plan for the perfect alibi failed, she paid a visit to the second floor in the morning of day 4 and found out what happened. Among many fixes that she did, she also removed the tape on the victim's wrists to further fake out the time of death.
And with this, I believe that I actually, finally, solved all the mysteries surrounding this murder case while using Eden as the culprit for this case. Aside from the "it should be very hard and risky to pull of the disguise trick" argument (to which I respond with the "it works because it's fiction" card), there should no longer be any holes in my theory.
For any of you who bothered reading all of this because you're in denial, want to laugh at me for whatever reason, still believe that ace is innocent or want to see if I still got it or if I'm full of shit, let me just tell you all this...
The murder case is not over until the chapter is over.
I’m incredibly curious to know your thoughts after last episode. Nico seemingly being the lone Ace culprit, David admitting (truthful or not) to having seen Arei’s body, and whatever was going on with Eden at the end of last episode are all pretty relevant to your theory. Whatcha thinking?
Woot! Someone asked me a question! Hi hi! :D
I'll try not to spoil it too much because I'm currently working on another theory post to explain all of it. But I'll give a few general thoughts anyways. (DRDT CH2 SPOILERS AHEAD, ALTHOUGH I PROLLY DON'T NEED TO DO THAT BUT WANNA DO IT ANYWAYS)
You're right, a lot of what's been revealed this episode has been incredibly relevant to my theory, both positively and negatively.
I was honestly surprised by the culprit reveal. I honestly didn't think that Teruko would choose two suspects rather than only one, the seemingly obvious one (in my eyes). That was an interesting plot twist of sorts, for sure.
But realisticly, I suppose that it makes sense that she would narrow down to two suspects mainly because even though Teruko knows that the tape disappeared within a certain timeframe, she was way too distracted to notice who took the tape and exactly when.
The one thing I don't understand though is people going out of their way to claim that it was actually a third party who commited the crime and took the tape from them (somehow?). I honestly doubt that such kind of final twist would ever happen, especially being this late into the chapter.
I believe that, as it stands, we are supposed to try and solve the murder mystery once and for all between these two suspects in mind : Ace or Eden.
I get it though, sometimes, you just really don't want eitheir of them to get executed, but still, we can't ignore the painful truth and we gotta push through no matter what.
That aside, I was really happy with nearly all the reveals. Not only we got closer to the truth of the case, but we also learned a lot more about some characters. The one that caught my attention the most, surprisingly, was Rose. I didn't realise until this episode how incredibly rough it must've been for her. Poor woman. I'm really looking forward to see her development in the future.
And of course, that goes without saying, but the cutscene with Eden towards the end was just simply amazing! I really enjoyed the voice acting there alongside the repeat of that one song. We also got a lot of character growth out of Teruko, which is always a W in my book.
Oh, sorry! I've been rambling more about my thoughts on the episode by itself rather than explaining what it does to my theory, haha! But yeah, like I said before, I'm not gonna spill the beans on that matter just yet. All of you will find out soon enough in my next theory post... sometimes this week, for sure! (I'll try to push for monday, we'll see!)
I'll say at least one thing though, as a tiny reward for reading all of that. This crime solving theory of mine is starting to look a whole lot better as the chapter 2 goes on. :)
Thanks for reading, y'all. Also thanks for the question, @venus-is-thinking!
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...It's been a while, hasn't it? I spent time working on a different project and I suppose I needed a break.
I'm here to give you an update regarding my culprit theory in DRDT chapter 2. So of course, SPOILERS WARNING FOR DANGANRONPA DESPAIR TIME CHAPTER 2 in case it wasn't obvious enough. It's also a very long read, so...sorry about that! Before I start, I'd like to say something. This is a message for DRDT-dev.
Not gonna dwelve on the past except for one specific moment : the appeciation/thank you e-mails you've received ever since the start of your hiatus after episode 11 was launched.
I wanted to give you words of appreciation at the time, but it completly slipped my mind because of real life + me working on my crazy theories. I felt bad that I missed it because I seriously wanted to thank you and your team for the amazing work that you've done in this fangan.
I've never been this attached to a fangan before and it's not like I've played/watched through a lot of those eitheir. But this one... it was really enjoyable! I don't think there's a single character that I dislike in this fangan. Like they all got something interesting going on or something interesting that might be bound to unfold. The mystery's also really good. I got really hooked to trying to figure out the truth behind the murder mystery of chapter 2.
I can't do art nor music, but the least I can do to show how much I appreciate the amount of work put into this is by proving it to you. This... is the final time I'm making a theory post for the murder case of chapter 2. After that, I have my own projects to work on.
Of course, I can't ask you to read it all (it's super long anyways), but the post itself is proof that I'm truly passionate about this fangan and that I truly appreciate the amazing work. It's a good source of inspiration. So honestly, thank you! Looking forward to see the future of DRDT!
So... I know I've pretty much covered everything I could explain from part 1 to 4 regarding my Eden Culprit theory. However, I feel like that this is a big confusing mess. After all, I changed a lot of things over the course of these 4 parts and even past that, I updated my culprit theory even further, but didn't provide any updates or edits to my posts.
So I'm gonna go over my whole theory once again, from beginning to the end, in a more logical order. I'll start with the easiest topics being the whodunnit and whydunnit. After that, I'll talk about the rather long howdunnit and give a better and updated explanation as to what I believe happened in each scenario.
I will also have a few texts in bolded blue to represent my evil ego personality trying to take down my whole theory, which really, they're just pretend questions/arguments based on things I believe people will think about or things that's been brought up before in the past.
Then, I'll finish it off with a section to talk about a certain something that may possibly change people's mind about not just mine, but many other theories. Let's do this!
Whodunnit
Of course, if it wasn't obvious enough, I accuse Eden of being the culprit of DRDT Chapter 2. There's a couple reasons why I suspect her, but let's focus on only one for now : the smoking gun evidence.
The decisive evidence lies in this video. Chapter 2, Episode 6 : The "Body Discovery" of Ace in the fitness room.
I skipped it to the proper scene, so no need to worry about that. So there are 4 characters involved in this scene. There's Teruko, Eden, Nico and Ace. At first sight, it really looks like Nico was trying to kill Ace, so Teruko yells at them and then they run away.
So since then, we need to focus on the following three characters : Teruko, Eden and Ace. So judging that Ace is probably dead, Teruko decides to investigate while Eden needed a minute to process this.
Not gonna list everything. For now, let's just focus on what's important to prove that Eden's the culprit : the roll of grippy tape.
This is an important clue because even though it wasn't pointed out by Teruko herself, it was clearly shown in the background (you can see it clearly at 19:55). This clue in question is what the culprit clearly used to set up their murder mechanism for the murder of Arei considering what was found in the playground in episode 8.
At 20:32, Eden decides to give a hand to Teruko with the investigation.
For the following couple seconds, it's a bit hard to see, but behind those speech bubbles, you can still see the roll of tape.
At 20:50, Ace wakes up and shouts that he's not dead. Then at 20:54...
The tape is no longer there, where it's supposed to be.
So what happened there? Was it a creator error? That's actually very unlikely considering how important this clue is. So the only logical explanation to this is that someone took the roll of grippy tape in that moment. Therefore, eitheir Teruko, Eden or Ace took it meaning that eitheir one of them is the true culprit behind the murder of Arei!
It can't be Teruko because she'd literally have no reason to commit murder and we've been under her POV most of the time, so it's very unlikely that there were windows for her to commit murder. Nothing would make sense if she was the culprit, so it's not Teruko.
Ace... there's a slight possibility, but it's still unlikely. I have a couple ideas that could make him seem like he could be the culprit (that I might explain later in the howdunnit), but it's still really difficult because of the fact that Ace is clearly wounded and he probably wouldn't be thinking about killing Arei at some point later. It would be hard to explain certain events, so it's not Ace.
So by process of elimination, that only leaves Eden. She would definitly have a perfect window to grab the roll of tape without being seen. The proof lies in 20:32 in the video. She wanted to help out Teruko in the investigation, which would've been the perfect opportunity to grab it.
This is a very sneaky and demonic trick that the DRDT creator pulled here. Giving us an incriminating evidence that was so hard to spot that they must've been wondering when it'd be found out. It really makes me wonder what would've happened if I was never part of this. Would someone actually discover this damning clue?
Let's move on.
Whydunnit
Man, I came up with plenty wild theories for the motive a while back. It went from "she wants to eliminate bullies" to "she has a dark secret she wants to keep it hidden" to "she misses her beloved dearly".
Eventually, the "she misses her beloved dearly" motive become the official one for my theory and it's not just applied to mine eitheir. There's a few others who seem to approve this motive and use it in their own theories as well.
To give some context as a reminder, Eden Tobisa is a very kind girl. We also know that her secret is "Ever since you kissed her, you were afraid your sexuality would ruin your friendship." This would indicate that she's most potentially in love with someone.
She tries to help whenever she can and tries to organize fun activities with a few, become friends with as many people as possible.
She's basically trying to keep her hopes up. Especially considering her reaction during the prologue...
She appears to be quite a tad desperate in wanting to get out. Anyways, the murder and trial happened in chapter 1. That inflicted quite a mental hit to most of the cast.
Right before the beginning of chapter 2, we get the following quote : "I still miss you. I miss you so much that I wish I you had never been a part of my life. The worst part is, even though you left me like this, there's nothing I can blame you for."
Then in chapter 2, after monoTV reveals the motives, Eden suggests that they should take that opportunity to work together and escape. She's the first person who brings up the escape topic.
Even though she tried to keep her and everyone's spirits up, most of the time, it's been people arguing over everything and nothing. It's mostly a few specific people, but still, it was definitly unpleasant. But the worst part of it all is the event that unfolded in the first 4 minutes of Chapter 2, Episode 5.
That bullying that Eden received was the final straw. She had enough of all of this. That made her realise that there's only one thing that matters to her : getting the heck out of here to meet her beloved, the person she kissed.
This is mostly my logical explanation for the motive based on all the possible clues that were given to be able to find a viable motive for the murder.
For those who believe that it'd be bad writing or whatever, I'm not really gonna delve into this myself, but I'd heavily suggest reading @venus-is-thinking's post here. There's some interesting points related to the narrative possibilities. (Might not fully support my theory, but you get the idea). In any case, whether you believe it or not, the fact remains that this is a possible motive that can be used to explain why Eden commited murder.
Howdunnit
Oh boy, here we go. The most difficult, yet most fun part to explain in this theory. Even though it's only a chapter 2 murder case, there's A LOT that happened that led to the crime. This time around, I'm gonna make sure to list everything in chronological order while also providing the most updated information regarding my theory.
I'll also separate certain events in Acts, to make it easier to comprehend. Let's do this!
Act 1
It all began a few days ago, when monoTV announced the motive reveal. MonoTV gave each participant a troubling secret and told them that if no one commits murder, the secrets would be revealed to the whole world.
MonoTV is a dumb dumb however because it made a mistake and all the secrets have been swapped around, meaning that no one has their own secret. So each participant has a secret that belongs to someone else.
For a few of them, it was pretty much "eh, it's whatever!", but it was especially troubling for David. The reason why is because he knows deep down what his secret is, it's a pretty meaningful one, after all.
We already know by now that his secret is "You exist to manipulate others. Everyone else exists to be taken advantage of." Considering his talent, it would totally ruin his career. So he needed to come up with a plan to not be exposed, and fast.
MonoTV also reveals that the second floor is unlocked and they're free to explore. We're not gonna go over each one of them yet, but I want to talk about this particular scene in the fitness room.
During the investigation of the new rooms, Teruko meets up with Ace and Levi in the gym. There's an argument going on because Levi is trying to apologize to Ace for his behavior in the trial of chapter 1 (when he threatened Ace). Ace is having none of it.
Ace was also arguing with Teruko a bit regarding some comments she made behind his back that he heard, which made him behave like so...
So what is he actually gonna do about it? You'll see shortly in the next coming acts.
Act 2
Teruko spends the rest of the first day secluded in her own room until next morning because girl has to eat, ya know? As soon as she gets out of her dorm, this happens...
Eden sneaks up on Teruko to surprise her, which she didn't see this coming at all. On top of that, she claims that she could hear Teruko clearly in her dorm doing a puppet show with the cactuses. The walls are pretty thin, therefore not really soundproof. This was also shown in Act 1 when Teruko talked behind Ace's back, but could hear that conversation.
Truth bullet acquired : Eden's sneakiness
Truth bullet acquired : Non-soundproof walls
Because of that embarassing reveal, Eden used it to her advantage to blackmail Teruko, forcing her to do friendly activities with her. So Teruko has no choice but to follow her orders and go eat breakfast with Eden.
As they're preparing something in the kitchen, they suddenly hear people arguing in the cafeteria, so they go check it out. It's of course that scene where 3 different pairs fighting against each other.
So first we have J (Julia Rosales) asking Arturo to leave her alone and to stop pestering her with her secret. Nothing too relevant for the murder.
Then we have Ace bullying Nico hardcore all of a sudden. Considering the events that happened in the gym in Act 1 and the purpose of a bully, it's safe to deduce that he's doing this because he's trying to act tough. Ace is trying to display superiority over a targetted victim by bullying them. Ace wasn't really hostile towards Nico before that.
It's also very important to take this into consideration since in chapter 1, most of the time, he was behaving like an absolute coward and that's no pretending. He really has a fear of a lot of things.
Well, actually... Ace bullied Nico once in chapter 1!
Sure, he made a dumb mean comment by calling them losers for liking animals or whatever, but that wasn't just directed at Nico, it was directed at Xander as well. I think he was mostly trying to get attention by being provocative.
Besides, that was only one time compared to the multiple times that Ace bullied Nico throughout the whole chapter 2, so there's clearly a behavior change there.
Truth bullet acquired : Ace's phobias
Truth bullet acquired : Ace acting tough
Moving on...
We also have Arei arguing with monoTV about getting rid of the rope. Arei believes that this is a cruel joke of a custom weapon for her since it reminds her a lot of her past. She wants to dispose it, but monoTV refuses.
They eventually come to some kind of agreement and monoTV places that rope in the storage room, so anyone can take it if they wish.
Truth bullet acquired : Easily accessible rope
They arguing kept going for a while until David comes in, telling them to shut up and that he has an announcement to make. He reveals his secret : "My family has a history of depression."
He makes that reveal because he is suggesting that it would be best for everyone to share their secrets before the time is up. That way, once it's already out in the open, no one would have any remaining motive to commit murder according to David.
But as we know already, that was all a lie. He revealed a fake secret and wanted others to share secrets since it would help create even more conflicts which could lead to more dramatic results... like murder.
That was his master plan to instigate a murder. He wanted to have others cause a murder before the deadline, which would keep his secret safe.
Truth bullet acquired : David's plan
Act 3
Eden tells Teruko about her fun activity plan being decorating the clocks in this killing game establishment, but she wanted to invite one more person. She wanted to invite someone who complained that she wasn't invited at the cake decorating activity back in chapter 1 : Arei.
So they both enter the playground, meeting up with David and Arei who were about to have a discussion about secrets. You know the rest of that scene afterwards, I've also brought it up in the whydunnit.
Arei bullies Eden, putting the blame on her for Min's death. Eden gets out of the playground, crying in utter sadness. Then right after that, Arei laughs and...
Truth bullet used : Non-soundproof walls
Even though she got out of the room, it's very possible that Eden heard it which would be the absolute final straw. She had enough of all of this, then her actual motive kicked in : she wanted to get out of her as soon as possible to meet her beloved.
Of course, we know by now that Arei wasn't really that spiteful. She just wanted to give a tough and harsh lesson about this killing. To stop being so nice and naive as that would make Eden the most vulnerable target to any murder cases in the future. But alas, Eden didn't stick long enough to listen to that part, which makes me wonder if it would've made a drastic different in how chapter 2 would play out.
Well, it's possible that Eden actually heard that part of the conversation!
But we don't know that for sure. Considering the smoking gun evidence, it makes more sense to believe that she didn't hear the rest of the conversation happening in the playground.
Anyways, this was the very beginning to Eden's murder scheme. She had a lot of work to do.
Act 4
Teruko proceeds to meet up with Rose in the dress-up room who was currently having a painting session. She had Rose's secret, so she figured she might as well share the secret, which Rose agreed to.
Then they have a chat about various things, then to Teruko's surprise, she realises that Nico was here this whole time, laying down on the ground.
Nico asks Rose if she could teach him how to paint, which Rose said yes.
Let me pause for a bit to mention an important clue : Rose's custom weapon. It's turpentine. It wouldn't be out of the question to think that since this is a painting supply, she would bring it with her during painting sessions and based on what we know in later episodes...
Well, realisticly, that's not how turpentine is supposed to work!
Probably not, but this is made very clear that the author wants us to believe that it works that way in their world. There's no reason for them to make something up about it other than explaining its intended purpose.
This turpentine is meant to be served as a tool/weapon to knock someone out, kind of like chloroform.
Truth bullet acquired : Turpentine
Teruko was already out of that room to head to the cafeteria while the other two were thinking about going there because they were hungry.
Fast forward a bit in the cafeteria, Ace is having another argument with poor Nico.
Truth bullet used : Ace acting tough
He's bullying Nico once again to make himself look tough. He's even ready to threaten Nico that he would reveal their secret (we learned in the trial that Nico and Ace have each other's secret).
This failed however because David managed to snatch it from Ace's hands while he was distracted. Then Ace proceeds to keep on bullying Nico, asking : "What are you gonna do about it?"
This surprised Ace, no doubt. Then afterwards, he gets slapped by Hu. She defends Nico, telling Ace that she's had enough of this.
At the time, I thought that Nico's death threat would've been the main reason why Ace kept suspecting that Nico tried to kill him, but it's actually a lot more simple than that. I'll explain it later...
While I'm at it, let's keep in mind that Hu's custom weapon is wires.
Truth bullet acquired : Nico's motive to kill Ace
Truth bullet acquired : Hu being protective of Nico
Truth bullet acquired : Hu's wires
Then we later have Nico's secret reveal, which is not too relevant to the actual murder. What's important however are two things.
Not everyone was present in the cafeteria at the time
Rose was later sleeping in the cafeteria for an unknown amount of time
Let's go back a little bit and talk about what happened to the few other relevant characters.
Meanwhile...
Eden was working on her murder scheme. Based on a Q&A that the DRDT creator did a while ago, we learned that Eden's not very strong or fit. So if she wanted to pull a good murder, she needed to be really smart about it.
So she needed to come up with a murder mechanism to pull it off. So to make it happen, she needed the right materials.
Truth bullet used : Turpentine
She remembered the list of custom weapons written by Charles that Whit showed during the trial. Considering the hidden purpose of this weapon according to this world, she knew that she could use it to knock someone out.
It would be very easy to get a target unconscious without resorting to physical force. Next up, she needed some kind of murder weapon that would do the deed for her.
Truth bullet used : Hu's wires
Eden probably considered using Hu's custom weapon, but that would've been incredibly risky. Even if she was friends with Hu, how would she be able to get her weapon without seeming suspicious?
She needed to use something else. Something that could work just as well as Hu's wires.
Initially, I was thinking of the analog clocks that could be found in the killing game building, a specific wire within it, but it seems quite convoluted on top of being unsure if that would've been enough wire to pull it off.
So I kept looking into it, and I discovered two interesting facts about this fangan.
During the prologue, we learn a few things about Eden, but most importantly, she loves hand-making antique clocks. Meaning it's not wrong to assume that she loves antique clocks overall.
The other fact is the following...
Whoever made this killing game, everyone's dorm has been customized to fit their needs and style. So if we combine this fact, Eden's talent and her love for antique clocks, then it's safe to deduce that she must have antique clocks in her dorm, don't you think?
Not only that, but it could very well be a grandfather clock! There's a seemingly grand variety of grandfather clocks, but what's important is that you can find clock cables in them. They're usually used to maintain the clock's weights.
This could very well be the weapon that she used for the murder attempt on Ace. Otherwise, it could very well be some kind of material that she already had available considering her talent and her love to craft antique clocks.
Truth bullet created : Eden's cables
Murder attempt on Ace? Isn't it Nico who tried to kill Ace in the gym?
I'll explain that confusion later... For now, let's just say that her initial plan was not killing Arei in particular. At least, not the things we've seen in the playground. Whatever we discovered in the fitness room instead was her initial plan.
Well, there's no way to know for sure that Eden had those wires.
No, but as long as it's a possibility, it can work.
But that's only based on your assumptions, that's just wrong!
It's a logical deduction based on facts about this fangan. But you know what? I refuse to elaborate further on this. I'll explain why in the finale.
Moving on, Eden did something else while there was an argument happening in the cafeteria. She decided to have a meeting with Arturo in the infirmary to share his secret. Eden has Arturo's secret : "Your younger sister killed herself because of you. You should have never left."
This is pretty much the flashback scene that we see in Chapter 2, Episode 10. Eden reveals the secret, Arturo threatens her, Arei comes in to save the day. Arei then apologies for her bullying back in playground. Then Arei and Eden become friends.
There's of course more to it than that, but you get the idea.
Wouldn't your motive become null and void when Eden became friends with Arei?
Not necessarily. Eden probably made up her mind already about leaving this place. Besides, there's no guarantee that she fully believed what Arei said.
I personally think that this was a perfect opportunity for Eden to take advantage of Arei when she would need it most.
But this was supposed to be a meeting with Arturo. How would Eden know that Arei would come to the infirmary?
That's the thing. She didn't know. The fact that Arei came in to save her was an unexpected, yet pleasant event. It was literally a golden opportunity for the culprit.
Then she was only expecting Arturo. What would be the point of that meeting if she intended to murder someone that wasn't necessarily Arei?
Right, cause back in episode 10, we were led to believe for a while that Arturo could've been a suspect of the murder of Arei. It was also because of the fake letter that was adressed to Arei.
Well, we know that Eden knew Arturo's secret and that's no light secret eitheir. It's a pretty bad one. So she must've been expecting a negative reaction out of Arturo.
Truth bullet used : David's plan
I doubt that she was aware of David's intentions, but she could've used David's idea to her advantage. She had a feeling that some of these secrets could cause conflicts. Which is precisely why she decided to share it to Arturo.
She was creating a potential suspect for her plan in the future.
Why would that matter if she was only meeting up with Arturo? She would have no other witnesses if that went according to plan!
Truth bullet used : Non-soundproof walls
She knew that any conversations could be heard from outside of said room, so she made a gamble on it. She was hoping that someone else would hear the conversation happening and they would be the potential witness.
Luckily for her, that worked out a lot better than anticipated when Arei came in to save and befriend her.
Truth bullet acquired : Eden's incident in the infirmary
Before getting her murder scheme in motion, all that was left was grabbing Rose's turpentine.
Wasn't it Nico who stole the turpentine from Rose?
I'll explain the thing about Nico later, but no, it could've been anyone else. Like I said before, she was painting in the dress-up room, her turpentine could've been there.
Also, after the argument between Ace and Nico, Rose fell asleep, so for an unknown period of time, the dress-up room was left unattended, meaning that anyone could've stolen it, not just Nico.
But how would Eden know that the turpentine was there?
Normally, she would think that it's in Rose's dorm, but it's very likely that she saw Rose painting in the distance and spotted the turpentine. It's not because we don't see her since the bullying that we should expect her to be secluded in her room for an unknown amount of time.
But then she would rely on luck yet again to get what she wants!
It's possible that she considered to use something else to knock someone unconscious, but when she came across that turpentine in the dress-up room, she figured it would've been a much better option.
But wouldn't Rose have noticed the turpentine missing during the practice session she was supposed to have with Nico later?
Not necessarily, she tends to be easily distracted and absent-minded. So she might've not noticed until later.
Well, she also has a photographic memory. She can precisely remember things. Wouldn't she remember when it was missing?
Not if she didn't notice it beforehand. Anyways, we're getting nowhere with this, so I refuse to elaborate further. I'll explain why later in the finale.
Act 5
During the evening of DAY 2, a few things happened on the second floor. Ace was working out alone in the gym and a meeting was about to happen between Arei and David in the relaxation room.
Hold up, didn't that happen on the evening of DAY 3?
That's what we're all led to believe, but there are plenty reasons to believe that's not what happened. I'll explain it later when the time comes. For now, whether you believe it or not, let's say that this happened in the evening of DAY 2.
So Ace is working out during that time, most likely doing benchpress. The reason why is somewhat related to this...
Truth bullet used : Ace acting tough
Obviously he's not pretending to work out, he's actually a fairly fit and strong person, which was also shown during the Q&A with DRDT creator. He's also an athlete.
Even since the scene in the fitness room in DAY 1, he's trying to rely on himself alone and doesn't want others to see him as a joke. So he's also working out to stay in shape.
Truth bullet acquired : Ace working out
Isn't that because of his eating disorder that he's working out?
Probably, but I don't think it's just that. I think it also has something to do with trying to get stronger to make sure he can survive the killing game.
He then hears a conversation happening between Arei and David in the relaxation room. Ace got curious, so he stopped training and decided to eavesdrop on them.
This is pretty much the flashback scene that we get in Chapter 2, Episode 11. Of course, the events according to my theory are different compared to what's shown in episode 11. Aside from it happening at a different day, there's a few other details that Ace tricked us into believing that this truly happened on DAY 3.
Truth bullet acquired : Ace's testimony
I'll explain them later once we get to this particular Act. There is one thing that's very important thing to recall right now though.
He said that right after Arei asked David to say something. That was after she revealed David's secret in private because she was seeking an explanation for his actions. Since she knows David's actual secret, it means that she knew that he lied about "family history of depression" secret and that his secret share plan is suspicious.
So Ace claiming that he didn't hear anything else right after that moment is just incredibly suspicious. It just wouldn't make sense! David must have said something to Arei. He couldn't have simply ran away because he would've run into Ace otherwise.
David must have said something afterwards, regardless of what it is.
Then can you explain what happened then? Why didn't Ace hear anything else.
Ace truly didn't hear anything else, but not for the reason that most are led to believe.
What's that supposed to mean?!
Something happened shortly afterwards that made Ace physically unable to hear anything else.
Truth bullet used : Eden's sneakiness
Truth bullet used : Turpentine
In that precise moment, Eden snuck up on Ace and knocked him unconscious with the turpentine that she stole in the dress-up room earlier. Ace became the intended victim target for Eden's murder scheme.
Wouldn't Arei and David hear anything happening?
Probably not. As long as she's stealthy enough and that the turpentine is strong enough, it could knock him out pretty quick with having time to react to it. It's entirely possible to do this quietly.
Alright, but wouldn't they see the unconscious body sometime later after the discussion?
Not if Eden dragged the body to hide it. Initially, I thought she would bring it to the dress-up room and hide it in the changing room, but I think it'd ask too much physically for Eden. So the only option remaining is dragging the body back to the gym. This should work as long as it's not in the hallway and the door is closed.
But earlier, you said that Eden's weak and not fit. How would she be able to drag a body?
In a real life scenario, it would probably be really different and incredibly difficult. But that's the only explanation I can come up with to explain how she was able to do that without getting caught.
It's not like she waited for Ace inside the gym. Otherwise, he would've prolly heard more about the conversation.
Anyways, I refuse to elaborate further on this. I'll explain why later in the finale.
Moving on...
After capturing Ace, she had one remaining step to do before preparing the murder mechanism : she needed a scapegoat. Arei was the perfect target for that.
Truth bullet used : Eden's sneakiness
Truth bullet used : Turpentine
So Eden knocked her unconscious at the most appropriate time when no one else was around.
Wasn't David here? Wouldn't he have known?
Obviously, the culprit didn't do that while they were both present. Considering the matter of the discussion, it's probably likely that David got out of the relaxation room first, before Arei. So Eden simply needed to wait for David to use the elevator.
Otherwise, she could've also prepared a fake letter, asking Arei to meet up in the playground so that she could knock her out. This is probably the most logical explanation to this. It would match up the contents of the letter that was revealed in Chapter 2, Episode 10.
Truth bullet created : Eden's letter
Before I proceed with the next Acts, I'd like to pause it to explain every other possible clues that was found on the second floor that could be relevant to the murder mystery.
The 2nd Floor
The dress-up room
A few things to note about this room that even though none of the characters talked about, as long as it's presented, it can be used as a potential clue. We got some wigs on the left and the pink heart shaped case looks most likely to be a makeup-kit. It would make a lot of sense, considering where it is.
Truth bullet acquired : Wigs
Truth bullet acquired : Makeup-kit
Then post Arei's murder, Charles finds a ball of clothes in this room.
Truth bullet acquired : Ball of clothes
The relaxation room
There's a few things I'll list that may seem mundane at first, but they will become important as I explain it later.
First, we got those green mats, they look like light green yoga mats? Let's call em green yoga mats, why not?
Then, we have the incense sticks. They give a pretty good smell inside that room. Burning a whole stick can take up to an hour, but the lingering smell can last for multiple hours. They originally come the incense box that we're seeing to the right.
Truth bullet acquired : Green yoga mats
Truth bullet acquired : Incense sticks
Truth bullet acquired : Box of incense
We also learn about a special feature within this room in Episode 2.
We also learn that the room becomes locked at 10:00 PM up until 8:00 AM because of this misting system that monoTV implemented. He doesn't want anyone to enter that room at night while this is happening since it would leave a mess.
Truth bullet acquired : Relax room's nighttime features
The fitness room
I decided to use the crime scene in Episode 6 since most of the much needed clues are found in here.
Let's start with both the broom and the stepladder. They're not from the gym originally, so someone must have brought them here. They must've played a role in setting up some kind of murder scheme in here. Are they from the storage room, perhaps?
Truth bullet acquired : Broom
Truth bullet acquired : Stepladder
Next up, we have the whole weight rack. It wasn't there originally. Uh... I mean, it came from the gym, but not in this unusual position. So someone moved it. Was it part of the murder scheme?
Truth bullet acquired : Moved weight rack
Then, we have those benches adjacent to Ace that's been moved. We also have the right fan that fell down. It was ripped out according to Teruko. Also, the left side fan isn't working.
This is strange because the first time Teruko explored that room, it was working just fine and even after monoTV finishing cleaning up that failed murder attempt mess, the left side fan was working again. Why would it suddenly stop turning if that fan wasn't ripped out?
We have two weight plates neatly placed next to the threadmills. Why are they here?
Truth bullet acquired : Moved benches
Truth bullet acquired : Ripped out right fan
Truth bullet acquired : Left fan not spinning
Truth bullet acquired : Weight plates next to treadmill
Onto the more important clues.
We have a piece of wire that's attached to a blade of the fan with tape. A part of it has blood on it. The other piece of the wire, which was held by Nico when Teruko and Eden came across this crime scene, but then they dropped it. There's also blood on it, but there's a couple spots where there's no blood somehow. Is it two wires or the same wire snapped in two?
Truth bullet acquired : Piece of wire attached to fan
Truth bullet acquired : Other piece of wire
Speaking of tape, this is the roll of grippy tape that I was talking about in the Whodunnit part of my post. According to Rose in Episode 7, when she failed to do a pull-up, she says that there was originally grippy tape on that bar, which Teruko didn't believe.
But if you rewind back to the previous episodes, you can clearly see that there was something on that pull-up bar, but then during the crime scene of the attempted murder, it's no longer there. It's very safe to presume that the roll of tape and what was on the pull-up bar are the same kind of grippy tape.
Truth bullet acquired : Roll of grippy tape
Truth bullet acquired : Missing tape on pull-up bar
Let's take a closer look at the body.
A couple things to note...
The neck wounds on Ace. We were first led to believe that he died to those wounds, but it turns out, he's still alive. They must still hurt though. Right behind that we can see a glimpse of smeared blood on the wall, behind his neck. Even when Ace wakes up, the blood on the wall is still trying, so it's no magic trick or illusion there. It's very real.
Then, even more subtle than that, there's blood on his Ace's fingers (on his right hand). Because of the way it's positioned and because the other hand is hidden, it's possible that there's more blood on these hands.
And then we have Nico being "caught in the act". Anyone who sees this will immediatly think that Nico tried to kill him, no doubt about it. While I'm at it, let's keep in mind the odd position that Ace's body is found. Another thing even weirder than that is the utter lack of other traces of blood. There's no blood on any of the equipments, other walls and so on. What happened here?
Truth bullet acquired : Neck wounds
Truth bullet acquired : Smeared blood on the wall
Truth bullet acquired : Blood on Ace's fingers
Truth bullet acquired : Nico caught in the act
Truth bullet acquired : Ace's sitting position
Truth bullet acquired : Lack of blood anywhere else
Quite a lot of truth bullets in that room, ain't it?
The playground
(I can't find a good screenshot to take to see the whole crime scene without any distractions, so I'll trust that you have a fairly good idea of what it looked like. Also, I'm getting close to the limit of pictures I can send, so...)
Let's start with the body.
She is seen hanging by a rope on the swing set. Someone tied her up there, but who would be strong enough to pull that off? Then when Arturo inspected the body, he found out that Arei has a broken neck, so something with the rope must caused her neck to snap somehow.
We also find red marks on her wrists, indicating that her wrists must've been tied up with something. Other than that, there's no other visible wounds or details regarding the body. Well, there is one thing... it's not mentioned by the cast, but it's clearly visible : Arei's glove is missing.
Truth bullet acquired : Rope attached to Arei's neck
Truth bullet acquired : Arei's broken neck
Truth bullet acquired : Red marks on Arei's wrists
Truth bullet acquired : Arei's missing glove
Close to the seasaw, which is like in front of the swing set, we can find scuffed marks on the ground, which is caused by something being scraped against it. Seemingly easy to damage the ground.
And there's also the dead fishes found close by. Why are they here? According to Nico, the fishes were fed last evening/night by them, so the fishes were still alive by then.
Truth bullet acquired : Scuffed ground
Truth bullet acquired : Dead fishes
Moving on... to the right, if we look at the carousel aka the spinny thing, there are two clues. First one is the long rope found under the carousel. The bars of the carousel are wrapped with tape. It looks like the very same tape that was found in the fitness room.
Truth bullet acquired : Long rope under carousel
Truth bullet acquired : Carousel wrapped with tape
Oh right, before I forget... according to MonoTV, there was also a broken ceiling light on the ceiling, so they turned it off for now.
Truth bullet acquired : Broken ceiling light
Then in the hallway, Rose knocks over the only trash can available on the second floor and they find a couple clues.
We have the empty water jugs with broken handles. Quite peculiar, don't you think? Then we have a torn-up note which we already what it is by now. It's the letter "signed by Eden" adressing to Arei to ask her to meet in the playground about an issue regarding a secret being exposed.
We also have scrunched up tape, which looks very similar to the tapes we found in both the playground and the gym. Can't be a coincidence!
More subtle and not mentioned by the characters, there's a needle with a black string attached to it.
Truth bullet acquired : Empty jugs with broken handles
Truth bullet acquired : Torn-up note
Truth bullet acquired : Scrunched up tape
Truth bullet acquired : Needle with black string attached
I believe that's all the relevant clues I can find in each of these rooms. Time to get back on track!
Act 6
So to give a tiny recap to where we were last time in Act 5, Eden knocked Ace unconscious, dragged him back to the gym. Then sometime later, she knocked Arei unconscious.
Why would she knock Arei unconscious?! The culprit already found her intended victim for the murder!
There's only one possible explanation for this. Arei was supposed to be the scapegoat for her murder scheme. She was supposed to be the main suspect.
That makes no sense! If it went according to plan, during the trial, Arei would've mentioned that she's been knocked unconscious by Eden.
Not quite!
Truth bullet used : Eden's sneakiness
If she can sneak up on Teruko without her noticing, then she can also sneak up on Ace to knock him unconscious without being noticed. Therefore, if she can do that with Ace, she can do the exact same thing with Arei.
So sure, she would've mentioned that she's been knocked out, but who would believe her? Would they rather believe Eden or Arei? I think the answer is pretty clear.
But she must've been knocked unconscious not too late at night, meaning that she could've woken up sometime later at night and no one would suspect a thing about her!
There's no way to tell if the turpentine's effect would make someone go unconscious for a short or long time. That aside, there's a simple solution to explain how she couldn't escape without being suspected. To make sure that she doesn't go anywhere, you just need to trap Arei somewhere, lock her somewhere.
But there's no such place for that!
Truth bullet used : Relax's room nighttime features
The culprit hid Arei's unconscious body inside the relaxation room. Even if Arei somehow woke up early, she would be unable to get out of here because of the features of that room.
The room closes at 10:00 PM and only reopens at 8:00 AM. It's heavily implied that it would be locked. If someone wouldn't be able to enter that room at night, it's possible that someone wouldn't be able to exit that room eitheir if they were stuck inside.
But according to said features, it's locked because of a misting system that uses an enriched formula for the plants inside. Wouldn't Arei be covered in said enriched formula as well?
She would, unless the culprit used something to cover her body.
Truth bullet used : Ball of clothes
Truth bullet used : Needle with black string attached
The ball of clothes has starch on it and according to some google research, starch is actually very beneficial in plant growth. So it's safe to presume that this enriched formula that monoTV mentioned has something to do with starch. Meaning that the ball of clothes is physical proof that it was used in the relaxation room for the night.
This ball of clothes in question is a bundle of all the old uniforms that Teruko and Hu used to have until monoTV changed their style.
Then, it's possible that the culprit used a needle with string to attach pieces of clothes together to make a custom blanket of sorts.
But the turf in the relaxation room would get wet at night and that would stick to Arei's body!
Truth bullet used : Green yoga mats
The culprit placed the body on top of a yoga mat. That way, it wouldn't leave any traces on the back side of her body. Then add the blanket of clothes as mentioned earlier and she'd be covered from all sides.
To summarize this act, after hiding Ace's body in the gym, she knocked Arei unconscious with the turpentine and made sure that Arei would be locked up inside the relaxation room and covered from the misting system. She did all of that before 10:00 PM.
Act 7
Now that Arei's unconscious body was taken care of, it was now time to set up the murder mechanism!
Truth bullet used : Moved weight rack
Let's get that out of the way right off the bat. We know Eden's weak, so there's no way she could've moved the weight rack, even though it seemed to have been moved to make space for the murder mechanism. I doubt that Eden would put the time and physical efforts to move the weight plates one by one, then the weight rack and then putting back the weight plates.
So if she didn't do it, who did?
Truth bullet used : Ace working out
According to my theory, Ace was working out that evening, so wouldn't it make more sense to believe that he's the one who moved that weight rack? That would also be evidence that he was working out during the evening of DAY 2, not DAY 3 (I know what some of you think about this, but I'll get back to it later, don't worry).
But that doesn't make sense! The way that the weight rack was moved and toppled over, it's facing away from the bench where he would be doing the bench pressing.
Maybe, but we don't quite know what the characters are truly thinking. For all we know, this could be his actual workout preference, as weird as it may seem. With that said, I refuse to elaborate further. I will explain why in the finale.
Besides, we know that Ace is fairly fit, so he could move a bunch of these weight plates easily. Moving on...
Truth bullet used : Missing tape on pull-up bar
Since we know that Eden took the roll of tape with her as shown in the whodunnit, sometime after the failed murder reveal, it's logical to conclude that she's also the person who removed the tape on that bar. She removed all of the available tape on the pull-up bars to make a single roll of grippy tape.
Ha! There's a problem with that! It doesn't seem like there's a lot of tape on that pull-up bar, it's highly doubtful that it would be the same quantity as what's shown on the roll of tape. She must have gotten that tape somewhere else.
There's a very simple explanation for it...
See this on the left? That's also a pull-up bar, but slightly hidden by the weird workout contraption directly in front. But still, there's definitly a pull-up bar there.
So tell me... if there was grippy tape on the pull-up bar to the right, wouldn't there be tape on the pull-up bar to the left as well? There was a reason why I mentioned "available tape on the pull-up bars" and it wasn't a typo.
If you combine the tape from both pull-up bars, there would surely be enough to make a complete roll of tape. Moving on...
Truth bullet used : Eden's cables
Truth bullet used : Piece of wire attached to fan
Truth bullet used : Other piece of wire
Since the culprit didn't use Hu's custom weapon according to my theory, it's safe to presume to the wire that was found in the gym is the exact same as Eden's cables that I came up with. This also means that both pieces of the wire were originally a single, longer piece of wire.
So she used her accessible weapon for the next step...
Truth bullet used : Piece of wire attached to fan
Truth bullet used : Roll of grippy tape
Truth bullet used : Stepladder
She attached one end of the wire to one of the blades of the right fan. The culprit circled the cable around the blade a few times and then did the finishing touches by sticking tape to it to make sure it'll stay there.
Of course, she's not as tall as a giraffe or as tall as Arturo, so she needed something to boost her height. That's where the stepladder comes into play. She placed it below the fan, climbed up and did the thing.
But when Teruko finds the body, you can see that the tape is facing upwards, above the fan. Wouldn't it be much easier to place it under the blade?
Sure, it would make sense, but from a mystery game/novel perspective, what would happen if the tape was placed under? You wouldn't really be able to see it now, would you? Granted, some could easily arrive at the conclusion that the wire was attached with tape since there was a roll of tape found at the scene.
So in that case, there's another simple and logical explanation to it. If you had the option to place tape eitheir above or under the fan, which would be the most efficient?
The right answer would be above the fan! Think about it. The wire is supposed to be holding something, so there would be weight attached to it. If the tape was applied under the blade, it could've easily come off because of the pressure of the weight. If it was taped above the blade instead, even though there would be weight pressure, it wouldn't affect the tape much in that situation.
Therefore, Eden placed the tape above the blade of the fan because that was the most efficient option. While I'm at it...
Truth bullet used : Ripped out right fan
Truth bullet used : Left fan not spinning
Considering what I've said previously regarding the left fan not spinning during the body discovery of Ace, there's a simple solution for this mystery.
The left fan stopped spinning because it was turned off. There is most likely a switch in the gym to turn on and off the fans.
That would easily explain why the left fan started spinning again after monoTV cleaned up the room the following day. That would also easily explain how the culprit managed to place tape on the right fan as well. Even though we have no one mentioning the existence of a switch for the fan, it's very easy to come up with that conclusion.
Truth bullet created : On/Off switch for the fans
Act 8
Now that the cable was set up on one end, it was time to take care of the other hand of the cable. That part would require more steps and efforts than what's shown in Act 7.
First off, to make sure her murder mechanism worked, the end result required Ace's body to be standing up with the wire attached to his neck. So it needed to be just kinda long enough to make it work.
So the body needed to remain in a standing up position while Eden is setting up the other end of the cable to his neck. Of course, she didn't have an accomplice nor would she want to work with one, so she relied on a few materials she planned beforehand to make it work.
Truth bullet used : Moved benches
Truth bullet used : Weight plates next to treadmill
Truth bullet used : Broom
The culprit used the back wall so that Ace's body would rest against it. That way, it wouldn't move backwards. Then, she squeezed the victim's legs with the benches, placing one of them on each side so that the body wouldn't move sideways. She also placed a weight plate on each foot so that his feet wouldn't move around, which could move the body if that were to happen. It would help keep the body stable.
Even with these steps however, it still wouldn't be enough to keep the body still. After all, these steps I mentioned only affect the lower part of the body. So if the culprit let things play out like that, the upper body would simply bend forward which would make all that stability effort go to waste.
Fortunately, the culprit is smart, she thought about that beforehand. That's why she brought the broom to the gym. That was the final step needed to keep the body still.
All Eden had to do next was place the broom through Ace's shirt in the back. As long as the body is standing against the wall, Ace would be unable to bend forward because of the broom. It's physically impossible.
You can even try it out yourself at home if you'd like. Pass a broom (preferably a clean one) through your shirt in the back, stand against a wall and try to bend forward. The broom blocks you from doing that.
Wouldn't the upper body be able to move sideways though?
Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't really matter though because the culprit simply needed to hold the body for a bit and all Eden needed to focus on is making sure that it wouldn't move sideways, everything else was taken care of. Moving on...
Truth bullet used : Eden's cables
Truth bullet used : Neck wounds
Truth bullet used : Smeared blood on the wall
Truth bullet used : Lack of blood anywhere else
Now that the body is stable, she needed to place that wire around Ace's neck, but how? Well, if we look at the neck wounds, you can see multiple slashes across his neck. And judging by the smeared blood on the wall, it seems to heavily imply that the neck wounds also reach the back side of his neck.
Well, actually, there's some incredibly minor pixelly details that seem to indicate that the neck wounds doesn't extend to the back. There's also this and-
Those are incredibly niche and minor details to claim that neck wounds doesn't go around the back of his neck which is still incredibly odd to me that people believe is the case considering the smeared blood. To me, it seems more like the creator added that blood on the wall to indicate that the neck wounds also go around his back even if we can't physically see it. In any case, I refuse to elaborate further on that. I'll explain why in the finale.
Anyways, there's also the lack of blood anywhere else during Teruko's investigation of the attempted murder. It seems really weird that there's not much other signs of blood considering how seemingly complex that mechanism must be. Some claim that some of these bloody spots must've been wiped off somehow, but I think there's a much, much simpler solution to this.
The culprit wrapped the cable around Ace's neck multiple times.
The best part in all this is that the culprit doesn't even need to tie it up. Even though it's simply going around his neck multiple times without a noose, the cable wouldn't come off. Heck, if you were to pull the wire one way, it would just tighten up Ace's neck.
If you're not convinced, you can try wrapping a plastic water bottle with some long wire and then try to pull it. It usually doesn't come off.
Act 9
Now that the cable was properly wrapped around Ace's neck, Eden had a few remaining finishing touches to complete the murder mechanism.
First off, now that Ace is properly tied up with the fan, all the materials that was used to keep the body stable was no longer needed and could be discarded.
Truth bullet used : Moved benches
Truth bullet used : Weight plates next to treadmill
Truth bullet used : Broom
Truth buller used : Stepladder
She removed the broom that was stuck in Ace's shirt. Then, she moved at least the left bench so that she'd have an easier access to drag the unconscious body. After that, she removed the weight plates on his feet and put it next to the treadmills. To finish it off, she moved the stepladder away from the fan since it was in the way.
After doing so, she then dragged Ace's standing body closer to the fan. Or rather, right below it, at the center.
Why didn't she place Ace's body under the fan to begin with? Moving it towards the wall seem unnecessary!
No, it was very much needed. Remember, Eden's not strong and she needed to make sure that the unconscious body wouldn't move while she's setting up the murder mechanism. Even if she were to make the body sit down, she would then need to make him stand up to tighten up the wire, but if there's no way to stabilize the backside, it would just fall backwards. Then if she would try to make sure it wouldn't go backwards, it could bend forward and so on. It wouldn't be practical.
That's precisely why she needed to make his body lean against the wall initially. Anyways, once Eden placed the body under the fan, she readjusted the wire a bit to make sure it would remain tight.
Couldn't she just leave the body standing against the wall for the murder mechanism?
Not really. The way the murder mechanism is supposed is work is like so..
Ace's body would be held by the wire which is attached by a blade of the fan. The fans are currently turned off. The only thing the culprit needed to do to commit murder is turn on the switch. By turning on the switch, the fan would spin along with the wire.
If the body was standing against the wall at the time, the wire would somewhat try to drag the body forward, which could potentially make the body fall, which could potentially break the fan.
If the body is standing right below the fan however, the wire wouldn't really drag his body since it is at the very center of the rotation. Once the fan spins along with the wire, the wire would wrap around his neck further, which tightens it even further, which could be what caused those neck wounds.
And that's what I think is what the murder mechanism is supposed to be.
Why would she go through so much work and efforts to make that kind of mechanism?
There's a couple reasons. Eden's not strong, as stated before, so there's a bunch of murder methods that she couldn't do by herself. Granted, she could easily do something like stabbing, but it's possible that she's the kind of the person who doesn't want to do the actual murder action herself. So the culprit would be more at ease if it was some kind of mechanism that would do the dirty deed for her.
But for a more reasonable explanation, working on a murder mechanism like that reminds her of her time spent working on clocks. Since clocks usually involve mechanisms, Eden would be more at ease working on something that's closer to her talents.
Truth bullet used : Hu's wires
Also, less practical reason, but still a reason nonetheless, since the culprit used some kind of wire as murder weapon, it could've been served as a way to throw in suspicions towards Hu. Even though the plan was meant to have Arei be the main suspect, it doesn't mean she couldn't throw suspicions indirectly on others as well. Besides, the more suspicions that's thrown at others, the less likely she would be caught.
Another good reason to it is because of the BDA rule. The rule states that "The Body Announcement will play when three or more people who did not witness the murder discover the body." She crafted that whole killing machine so that she would be able commit murder without witness the moment of murder.
Truth bullet used : On/Off switch for the fans
Eden simply needed to turn the switch of the fans back on and then exit the gym. She could go back to the dorm, letting the mechanism do its work and then next morning, if she goes with 2 other people to find Ace's dead body in the gym, it would trigger the BDA.
Act 10
That sounds great and all, but the murder plan failed anyways. What is even the point of all this?
Well, if everything went according to plan, it could've been a nearly perfect crime. But that didn't happen, as we all know. So what happened instead? Well, there's a simple reason why I suspect why Eden is the person responsible for the attempted murder on Ace.
Truth bullet used : Nico's motive to kill Ace
Truth bullet used : Nico caught in the act
Consider that Teruko and Eden found Nico next to Ace's that night, they're definitly involved in some shape or form. But since the murder mechanism was all of Eden's work, it would mean that Nico is the third party behind this fiasco.
While Eden was working on her murder mechanism, Nico decided that they wanted to murder Ace. The constant bullying pushed them to the edge. So they were desperatly looking for their target to commit murder.
But wait... if Nico was caught in the gym, how would they know to find Ace in here? Wouldn't they think that Ace would be sleeping at night in his dorm? Why wouldn't they look for him in the evening.
It's hard to say. I think there's honestly a lot of things that we don't know about Nico. They're quite the mystery. What we do know is that they were willing to murder Ace. We don't know their whole thought process, but they probably wanted to kill him at night since they would be less likely to be found out.
They probably tried knocking on Ace's door first, or maybe they kept a close eye to when Ace would come back to his dorm, but it never happened. So they probably eventually decided to go take a look around the building to see where he could be hiding.
But apparently, Nico never really thought about it when Veronika asked about how they envisioned killing Ace.
Maybe, but like I said, there's a lot that we don't know about Nico and from the looks of it, when Ace bullied Nico and they then replied that they would kill him, it seemed like a totally different behavior.
I don't know what's up with that, but that sinister behavior makes me believe that this is like a different form of Nico. Like a split personality, or his true self or something. We don't know for sure what it could be, but that different behavior could be what caused them to want to kill Ace at night.
My point is... because there's so much unknown about Nico, there's a vast amount of possibilities that would explain why they decided to murder Ace then and now. Moving on...
So Nico's looking around for his prey (hehe), they probably look around the first floor, but don't find him anywhere. So the only remaining option is taking the elevator to go on the second floor, he must be there after all.
Truth bullet used : Non-soundproof walls
Meanwhile, Eden suddenly hears the elevator making sounds. She realises that someone is approaching, but who and why this late at night?
Even though she completed the murder mechanism, she still wanted to clean up the crime scene a bit. Like... you know... placing the broom and stepladder back where it came from (storage room maybe), placing the discarded weight plates and moved benches back to their original position.
Unfortunatly, she can't do that, someone's coming, she needs to hide. So what does she do? She turns the switch of the fan back on, exits the gym and then hides in the dress-up room. Now, all she can do is hope and pray that whoever arrived will go back to the first floor.
But how would she not be aware that someone would arrive late at night? Wouldn't she have known that Nico probably wanted to kill Ace?
That's actually impossible. She couldn't have expected this at all.
Truth bullet used : Eden's incident in the infirmary
While the argument between Nico and Ace happened that day, Eden was busy having a private discussion with Arturo in the infirmary. She had a meeting so that she could reveal his secret and cause a potential conflict.
When Ace was threatening Nico that he would reveal their secret, at the time, Arturo, Eden and Arei was nowhere to be seen in the cafeteria, so it matches up perfectly.
So yeah... that was an unpleasant and unexpected surprise for Eden. The worst part in all of this is that when Nico reached the second floor, they actually entered the gym and that's when they discovered Ace about to be murdered by this weird mechanism.
This just became a disaster for Eden, someone found out about it too early and there's nothing she can do about it at the moment except to wait. So what does Nico do next?
Truth bullet used : On/Off switch for the fans
They turn off the fans.
What?! What would be the point of that?! He wants Ace dead, he doesn't want to save him! That doesn't make sense!
This is a golden opportunity for Nico! Think about it. They want to murder Ace, but then they see that potentially someone else already tried to murder him. It's hard to say if they knew what this whole mechanism meant, but they could see that the fan was playing a part to it.
So they probably realised : "Wait, I could turn it off and then kill him myself." That way, if the group somehow figures out the murder mechanism, they might not realise that someone else killed Ace in that moment.
But then Eden would've told the group about it. She would've been a witness and Nico would've been doomed at the trial.
Maybe, but the thing to keep in mind is that at the time, Nico didn't know that the person responsible for the murder mechanism was hiding somewhere on the second floor. After all...
Truth bullet used : Eden's sneakiness
Even though the walls are not soundproof, Eden is really sneaky, so she might've been able to hide without being noticed by Nico.
But like I said before, Nico never really thought about it when Veronika asked about how they envisioned killing Ace.
...Again with this. Like I said before, there's a lot that we don't know about Nico yet. It's precisely because he never thought about it that it makes me think that something's going on with Nico.
If Nico had something like a split personality, similar to Toko Fukawa, it would explain those oddities. Cliché'd or not, this is a fangan. So creators could definitly take inspiration from the original ones without a doubt. It would also explain why they weren't willing to share to Charles what happened there. Whether they was filled with regret or not, it's possible that they don't quite clearly remember how it went.
In any case, I refuse to elaborate further on that. I'll explain why in the finale.
Now that the fan is turned off, there are eitheir two things Nico could do : Kill Ace directly with a slightly different method, like physically strangling him or they simply turn the switch back on.
As long as they get the finishing blow, that should work.
Act 11
It's around this time that someone else joins the murder party on the second floor. We must not forget about Teruko! Based on what we saw on Episode 6, Teruko realises that she forgot her spare uniforms in the dress-up room on the second floor because she didn't want to use the same ol stinky clothes after taking a shower. So she then uses the elevator to go get her clothes on the second floor.
Eden hears footsteps, noticing that someone's approaching the dress-up room. Thinking it's the person who was in the gym, she goes : "W-who's there? I know you've been following me!"
But that was in fact Teruko who entered that room, so she replies : "What? No, I'm not. What are you talking about?"
Then Eden gets embarassed and nervous. She asks : "Oh, it's just you, Teruko. What are you doing here?" At the time, the culprit thought that it was the other person who visited the gym : Nico.
Teruko replies : "I could say the same to you. What are *you* doing here, at a time like this?" She makes a very good point. It's very suspicious of Eden to be present in here this late at night and Eden is aware of that. She's in trouble. If she doesn't come up with a valid excuse quickly, her plan will be completly ruined.
Truth bullet used : Ball of clothes
She then remembered that when she was gathering clothes to make some kind of blanket to cover Arei from the starched water, she noticed spares of Teruko's uniform. So with her quick wit, she came up with this : "Hu told me all about how MonoTV gave you both new outfits. I noticed you didn't take any of your new clothes, so I was going to deliver them to you! But I'm guessing that's also why you're here right now."
That excuse worked like a charm. Teruko believed it, as mistrusting as she may be. She was even nearly about to thank Eden for being so nice, but then remembered she needs to retain a mean and mistrusting persona.
So then they talk for a bit, they're about to go back to the first floor. Or at the very least, Teruko was about to go there first because she doesn't trust anyone else to take the elevator with her. Then all of a sudden, they hear loud noises coming from the gym. They enter the room and then we get to the scene of the attempted murder on Ace with Nico being caught in the act.
Act 12
While this whole scene between both girls happened, something else was happening back in the gym. So according to my theory, Nico turned off the fans. That wasn't just because of malicious intents by the way, there was also a logical reason behind it.
Truth bullet used : Left fan not spinning
Truth bullet used : Nico caught in the act
When Teruko and Eden discovered Ace's body while Nico was holding a piece of the wire, in that moment, the left fan wasn't working. It wouldn't make sense for the left fan to be broken like the one on the right since it was working just fine the next day.
This means that someone must've turned off the fans and the only possibility I can think of is if Nico turned them off for their own personal reasons. It just makes sense.
Anyways, as they were about plotting to murder Ace, something else happened that put a stop to their plan.
Truth bullet used : Non-soundproof walls
They heard someone using the elevator. Not only that, but they could hear Teruko and Eden talking in the dress-up room. They are now aware that there are people close by. They can't afford to do any funny business like murder if there are witnesses close by. They had no choice but to wait for them to go back to the first floor.
To make sure that they were indeed gone, they put their head against the door to listen closely to what's going on outside the fitness room.
While this was happening... yet another unexpected thing happend. Ace came back to consciousness!
That makes no sense! You have no proof of that!
You'll understand why I make that claim shortly. Be quiet and let me continue!
So let's think about Ace's point of view for a minute here. He wakes up in the fitness room. What are some of the things that he notices? Well, he sees Nico in the distance, by the door. Nico doesn't notice Ace who came back to consciousness because they were busy listening to the conversation between Teruko and Eden.
Truth bullet used : Neck wounds
Shortly afterwards, he would notice that his neck hurts. Confused, he's wondering what's going.
Truth bullet used : Eden's cables
Truth bullet used : Blood on Ace's fingers
Truth bullet used : Nico's motive to kill Ace
Truth bullet used : Ace's phobias
So Ace touches his neck and that's when he notices that there's blood. Then upon closer inspection, he realises that he's stuck with a wire wrapped around his neck. The terrifying conclusion comes to him in a flash : "Oh my god! Nico is about to freaking kill me! I don't wanna die!" This is partly why there's blood on Ace's fingers. He's having a moment of panic, but...
Truth bullet used : Non-soundproof walls
He can also hear two girls talking from outside the gym. So Ace knows that there's people around. He probably wanted to scream, but his neck probably hurt so bad that it might've been nearly impossible to speak at the moment.
So he needed to come up with another plan. What could he possibly do to get everyone's attention?
Truth bullet used : Ace working out
Truth bullet used : Piece of wire attached to fan
Truth bullet used : Other piece of wire
Truth bullet used : Blood on Ace's fingers
There's only one possible option he could do in a situation like this : brute force his way out of this death trap. So he grabs the wire from the front of his neck with both hands, tries to break that wire with all his might. While doing that, he's also pulling his body backwards.
That way, it would put stress on both the wires and the fan. So as long as eitheir breaks, that would do the trick. That would certainly explain why there spots on the wire that didn't have blood : Ace wiped them simply with his hands.
HOLD ON JUST A MINUTE! That can't be possible! You can't fully wipe blood on wires with just your hands that way. You'd need something to clean it up. Also, the position of the spots wouldn't quite realisticly match up the positions of where his hands would be and-
.........I refuse to elaborate on that. I'll explain why later in the finale.
Moving on... Fortunately for Ace, when he tried to eitheir break the wire or the fan, both happened at the same time.
Truth bullet used : Moved benches
Truth bullet used : Piece of wire attached to fan
Truth bullet used : Other piece of wire
Truth bullet used : Ripped out right fan
Truth bullet used : Ace's sitting position
Truth bullet used : Smeared blood on the wall
So what exactly happened when he succeeded in brute forcing his way out? Well, the cable break in two, which would explain both pieces of wire found. Then, the right fan would be ripped out of the ceiling, which would perfectly explain why it was found on the ground.
As the fan breaks, Ace's backwards momemtum would make him fall behind. This would result in him having a sitting position with his back against the wall. The impact of his head against the wall, would make his head move a bit, which would perfectly explain the smear on the wall.
Also, while he's falling backwards, he would also hit the right bench, which would make it topple over. That would cleanly explain why Teruko found a toppled bench during Ace's body discovery.
And of course, all of that creates a very loud noise, which got Teruko and Eden curious.
But what about Nico?
Well... they're kinda screwed. But more importantly, they're as confused as the girls outside. After all, they were busy listening to the conversation, so they have no idea what the hell just happened there.
So when they turn around, they just see this mess... They can't help but wonder what in the heavens happened here. So they approach the "crime scene" and get rather curious about the broken wire. So they grab one piece of the wire and...
Act 13
Truth bullet used : Nico caught in the act
Truth bullet used : Nico's motive to kill Ace
Truth bullet used : Hu's wires
Truth bullet used : Hu being protective of Nico
Truth bullet used : Turpentine
That's when we get the scene where Teruko and Eden finds Ace presumably dead. They also find Nico holding a piece of the wire that has blood on it. This, ladies and gentleman, is how the whole attempted murder on Ace went down in my opinion. It would perfectly explain all the clues found here.
Not only that, but that would be perfect to make us believe without a shred of a doubt that it was Nico who truly did all of that.
Why? It's simple! Teruko catches Nico in the act, so that's already very suspicious. We also know that they wanted to have a painting session with Rose, so it's very easy to believe that Nico might've stolen the turpentine to knock Ace unconscious.
Then, we see that the murder weapon looks like some kind of wire. What do we know about wires? According to the list of custom weapons, Hu's weapon are wires.
Add that to the fact that she's trying to protect Nico from all the bullying like an overprotective mother, we get the following result : Nico really wanted to kill Ace and Hu wanted to help, so Hu became the accomplice by giving them wires.
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to believe that all of this is just a giant red herring?! A devil trick pulled by the DRDT creator themselves! If that's truly what happened, then I can't help but applaud the creator for coming up with such an elaborate mystery.
Another thing to take note : Eden is really surprised and confused upon seeing the chaotic mess. Her whole mechanical creation broken apart. She couldn't but utter those words : "AHHHHHHH! Wh...What?? What is this??"
Also, Eden notices something else that's entirely wrong : she knows that Ace is not dead.
Huh? How come?!
Think about it. The reason why she made this murder mechanism is to be able to count as a person for the BDA rule since she didn't need to be in the gym for the murder to happen. So when they came across this whole mess, there were at least 3 alive people : Teruko, Eden and Nico. If Ace was truly dead, the BDA would've triggered by now, but that's not what happened.
So Eden knew that her whole murder attempt on Ace failed. Her whole plan failed.
Anyways, Teruko shouts at Nico, they run away and leave the crime scene. So what about Ace? Well...
Act 14
Ace is supposed to be back to consciousness, yet at the time, he's presumably. Well... it's more accurate to say that we were led to believe that he's unconscious. So what's up with that?
There's two options. He eitheir hit his head so hard against the wall that he lost consciousness again. It's a funny theory to think about, but I seriously don't think that's what happened.
So that means it's most likely the other option : Ace pretended to be dead/unconscious.
That's just insane! Why would Ace do that?!
Well, initially, I think it was to fool Nico. Since Ace was absolutely that he was the murderer, he didn't know what to expect of them. So by pretending to be unconscious still, Nico would turn around to see the mess and they would probably not immediatly suspect that this was caused by Ace. It would make sense since they were seen holding a piece of wire, probably wondering what the hell happened.
Well, Nico's gone though. Couldn't he have dropped the act?
He probably could've, but there was something that made him not want to reveal it.
Truth bullet used : Ace acting tough
By that, I don't mean that he's pretending to be dead because he wants to act tough. That wouldn't make sense. I'm referring to the argument scene with Levi way back in Episode 2. He had a change of behavior since then and he even stated that he would rely on himself alone.
In simpler terms, he's practically acting like Teruko : not trusting anyone and working on his own. In essence, when Teruko does that, it really does make her look tough. Maybe Ace took a little bit of inspiration from it, who knows?
Wouldn't it make more sense to reveal to the girls what truly happened? That would make him look like a tough badass!
Maybe, but remember, he doesn't trust anyone else anymore and wants to work on his own. So by pretending to be dead at the time, no one would realise what truly transpired in the fitness room. So by doing that, he's hiding secrets from others, kind of like hiding the real strength of his hand in poker by making it look weak. That's also why Ace refuses to share anything to Charles about what happened in the gym. Moving on...
Teruko proceeds with the investigation while Eden is busy crying over this "body discovery".
What is Eden truly plotting here? It's simple. She's trying to think of an plan B and quick. After all, like I mentioned in the whydunnit, she really wants to get out of here, so she needs to murder someone.
On top of that, Arei is still stuck inside the relaxation room. If no murder happens real soon, things would look pretty bad for Eden. But then, she realised something... Arei is still trapped inside the relaxation room. This is the perfect opportunity.
As long as Arei is trapped in here, she could proceed to kill her next morning at the earliest time. She would rather not do it, but she has no choice, especially if she wants to complete her goal of exiting this killing game. This is the only remaining move possible. It's all or nothing!
So by the time Teruko finishes the investigation, Eden finally comes up with a proper plan B for the murder scheme. For that to work, she needed something in that gym.
Truth bullet used : Roll of grippy tape
So Eden tells Teruko : "Okay, I'm ready. I'm okay. Am I needed, Teruko? Let me help investigate." She would then proceed to "investigate" the crime scene when in reality, she's trying to grab the roll of tape while she's distracted.
The distraction happens around the time where Teruko approaches Ace's body to inspect it more closely.
This is bad for Ace for two reasons. One, she would notice that Ace is still alive which we do notice her reaction in Episode 6. Two, she would notice the blood on his fingers/hands. If she were to notice that, it would help her get closer to learning the truth about what happened here and that's not what Ace wants at all.
That's why he comes up with potentially the best bluff I've ever seen.
Act 15
Truth bullet used : Ace acting tough
Truth bullet used : Blood on Ace's fingers
Truth bullet used : Neck wounds
Ace decides that now's the best time to pretend to wake up to consciousness and make this hilariously loud shout to showcase that he's not dead. Here's something really interesting about this pose however.
Look at his hands. He put his left hand on his neck wounds while he's clenching his right hand. What do they both have in common? Well, it's meant to hide the fact that there was blood on his fingers beforehand, of course! The same thing happens later on.
Ace now placed his right hand on his neck wounds, covering his hand with blood to make it look like the blood on his hands originally came from touching his wounds at the moment, not before.
So by putting on this act, Ace was able to disguise his bloody hands which hides the truth behind what may have truly happened while also putting on this tough guy act. Neitheir Teruko or Eden would suspect a thing.
And of course, this would also explain why Ace is so insistent on believing that Nico tried to kill him : He saw them with his own eyes. Anyone in Ace's shoes would believe the same thing.
Truth bullet created : Ace's actions in the gym
So later on, Ace tries to chase after Nico back to their dorm. MonoTV kicks Eden and Teruko out of the gym and locks it. Then they back to the first floor to follow Ace. Then there's the scene with Teruko, Eden, Ace and Levi involved. Ace claims that he doesn't need help because he doesn't trust the others and wants to act tough and on his own.
Ace goes back to his dorm, Levi goes back to his dorm and Teruko doesn't care about Ace's condition, so she goes back to her dorm. What about Eden? Well... it's time for plan B!
Act 16
Now that everyone went back to bed. Eden shouldn't have to worry about any other surprises, so late night of DAY 2 should be the perfect time to set up the second murder mechanism among other things. There was yet again a lot of work to do. But that's fine, she mentioned in the prologue that she can work on something for many hours without taking a break.
She had two main goals in mind to make her whole murder scheme work.
Create a murder mechanism at a different location so that the mechanism would do the dirty deed for her. The best possible location for this would be the playground.
Create a perfect alibi so that no one would suspect her. For that to work, she would need to disguise the actual time of death so that people would presume the victim died at a later died, which would be a time where the culprit would have an alibi.
So while Arei is still trapped inside the relaxation room, Eden could work on gathering the materials to make a nearly perfect disguise and make the necessary preparations for the murder mechanism in the playground. Let's start with gathering the materials for the disguise.
Why would Eden need to make a disguise?
It's simple. What would be the best way to make it look like Arei was still alive on DAY 3? By having someone disguised practically like her and being present in a place where there's multiple people for a short period of time.
But she looks nothing like Arei! That's impossible!
We have a lot of clues that could make it possible, as unbelievable as it may sound.
Truth bullet used : Wigs
Truth bullet used : Make-up kit
Truth bullet used : Eden's sneakiness
First, she stealthily entered Arei's dorm (she probably had Arei's monopad or whatever it was to unlock that door) to take a look at her spare uniforms. Upon closer inspection, she notices that there's a small problem : there are no spare gloves. It would appear that this is a unique kind of accessory for Arei, so she's gonna have no choice but to take it from Arei's body after killing her.
Truth bullet created : Arei's spare uniform
Next up, she would go to the second floor to grab a certain wig and the make-up kit in the dress-up room. There's this blue wig that looks like Arei's hairstyle, so that should do the trick. Once it's been gathered, she temporarily placed them in Arei's dorm. Most of the disguise materials were collected, time for the next step.
Act 17
It was time to gather the materials for the second murder mechanism.
Truth bullet used : Roll of grippy tape
Truth bullet used : Long rope under carousel
Truth bullet used : Rope attached to Arei's neck
Truth bullet used : Empty jugs with broken handles
Eden already had the roll of grippy tape with her, so we don't have to worry about that. She first grabbed the water jugs that probably came from the fridge. Of course, the handles weren't broken at the time.
And finally, she took the rope that belonged to Arei, but was sent to the storage room. I don't know if there were two ropes or only one very long rope. But if there was only one, then Eden must've used a knife in the kitchen to cut it in two. That was necessary to make her murder mechanism work. That would explain the two ropes found in the playground on Episode 8.
Truth bullet created : Water jugs
Now that this was all gathered, she then needed to move them to the playground to start building that murder machinery.
Truth bullet used : Roll of grippy tape
Truth bullet used : Long rope under carousel
Truth bullet used : Broken ceiling light
Once she arrived at the playground, Eden first needed to throw that rope above this metal railing by the ceiling, whatever it's called. She wanted to create a pulley system, so that step was important.
The culprit picked the longer rope of the two, then she put the rope through the roll of tape, tied it up and then threw it upwards as hard as possible.
It's two floors high, Eden's not strong enough to throw it up there!
She may be weak, but she can definitly pull that task. There's a specific reason why I believe the culprit used the roll of tape. It'd be incredibly light and it has a handle, which makes it really easy to chuck it high up in the air.
Even if she doesn't succeed the first, she had plenty time to keep trying until she succeeded. Eventually, she would succeed, but she would accidently hit the lights which would break it in the process.
The weight of the tape is probably not enough to break it.
We don't know that for sure. Besides, if I recall, MonoTV mentioned that the lights were flickering, which can simply be caused by a misplaced light bulb. So it could very well do the trick with enough speed. But in case you think that's not enough, I'll go ahead and say that I refuse to elaborate further on that matter, I'll explain why in the finale. Moving on...
Truth bullet used : Roll of grippy tape
Truth bullet used : Carousel wrapped with tape
Next up, the culprit wrapped the bars of the spinny thing with tape. The reason why was because the carousel was essential for the pulley system. She needed to spin it to raise the rope among other things
At the moment, the bars are pretty slippery, so she needed something applied to the bars so that she wouldn't the grip. Hence, the grippy tape.
Well, that's impossible! The roll of tape by itself wouldn't be enough to cover all the bars of that carousel. Where would she get more of that tape?!
Eden didn't need more tape, that was all that she needed to wrap all those bars.
Now, you're just being delusional! It can't cover all the bars with that alone!
Heh! Are you sure about that? I know that most of you are under the impression that the bars of the spinny thing must be wrapped up horizontally, kind of like putting tape on a tennis racket's handle.
By thinking outside the box, there's actually a way to explain this issue. It's very simple once you realise it. The culprit wrapped the bars vertically!
By that, I mean that she starts applying the tape from the top of the bar and then drags it straight down. Once it reaches the bottom, she just needs to cut the tape and then the extra width of the tape will go around the carousel bar. That way, Eden can save a lot of tape and would have plenty with that roll of tape.
The bars seem fairly large though. I doubt it would be enough to cover the bar with only one length of tape.
Hard to say. But if that's truly a problem, you can easily fix it by using a second length of tape on that same bar. So each bar would have 2 lengths of tape.
And if that somehow makes you think that there wouldn't be enough tape by doing it that way, then there's nothing else I can do to please you. I refuse to elaborate further on that. I will explain why in the finale. Moving on...
Truth bullet used : Water jugs
Truth bullet used : Long rope under carousel
It's not time to attach that rope to the appropriate items. On one end, she would tie both water jugs together in such a way that it would be hanging from the handles. At the other end of that rope, Eden makes a noose around one of the bars of the carousel.
She then tests out the pulley system to see if it actually works. If the pulley system doesn't properly work from simply tying up the rope to one of the bars, then there's an alternative. As @1moreff-creator suggested in the past, you just weave the rope through some of the handlebars and that should do the trick.
Truth bullet created : Pulley system
And with that, the preparations for the second murder mechanism would be complete at the moment. There are a few remaining steps, but she can't do it without the body, so she'll have to wait next morning.
Act 18
While Eden is waiting for the door of the relaxation room to unlock at 8:00 AM, there were a few things that she could do. Those are not necessarily things that she did, but could've happened to make sure the plan was perfect.
Truth bullet used : Wigs
Truth bullet used : Make-up kit
Truth bullet used : Arei's spare uniform
Truth bullet used : Needle with black string attached
Of course, she didn't put on the disguise at night even though that would technicly save time. The reason why is because if Eden proceeded to disguise herself into Arei at night, waited for the doors to unlock next morning, murder her, then hide back the body, it would take so much physical efforts out of her that she would be sweating. This would ruin the disguise.
So instead, she tested out the products to make sure that they worked perfectly. For the wig, the culprit could try to readjust the hair so that it would look a lot more like Arei's hairstyle.
Then, for the make-up kit, she would find the right materials to change her skin tone so that it would match Arei's. She probably puts it on her hand or wrist and tries out various combinations until she finds the perfect color. Once she's done with that, she can simply wash it away for the time being. Oh, also, she would take the time to find proper contacts to match Arei's eye colors as well.
Next up would be the uniform. She tried it on to make sure it would fit perfectly. Eden probably knows that she's a bit smaller than Arei, so there could be some differences. She cannot recreate Arei's height, that would be impossible. It's not like Arei is wearing high heels anyways.
If the disguise is not quite perfect, she could probably try to readjust it somehow with a needle and a few basic sewing skills. I'm no expert in this, and it's unsure if Eden truly did that anyways. What matters is that there was the option available before her if needed.
Now that she's fully prepared for the murder scheme, it was time for the culprit to wait in front of the relaxation room until the door unlocks.
Act 19
It is now 8:00 AM of DAY 3, it's time to retrieve the body!
As the door of the relax room unlocks, Eden would proceed to grab Arei's body and drag it to the playground. The turf would probably be dry by now. Otherwise, why would MonoTV allow others to enter that room this early and potentially make a mess if the ground happened to still be wet and gross?
There's no way Arei would still be unconscious for such a long time. Ace woke up in fewer hours than the time it took for the culprit to wait for the doors of the relax room to open.
Ace woke up earlier because of the neck wounds, most likely. We don't really know how effective or potent this turpentine actually is. But based on my deductions, it would make a lot more sense to believe that Arei was unconscious this whole time.
Otherwise, she would have starch all over her if she woke up at night and wandered around that room. For all we know, maybe she was about to come back to consciousness very soon that morning. Maybe the culprit brought the turpentine with her just in case to make sure she remains unconscious. With that said, I refuse to elaborate further on that. I'll explain why in the finale.
Anyways, now that the culprit brought the body back to the playground, she now had access to the missing piece to complete the perfect disguise.
Truth bullet used : Arei's missing glove
It appears to be unique. So Eden took it off Arei's hand and stored it somewhere safe... like her pouch that's around her belt. That would perfectly explain why the victim's glove was missing during the investigation in Episode 8.
Act 20
The final preparations are complete, it's now time for murder! Eden needed to place the body at the right position along with a few remaining props.
Truth bullet used : Roll of grippy tape
Truth bullet used : Rope attached to Arei's neck
Truth bullet used : Red marks on Arei's wrists
Truth bullet used : Scrunched up tape
Truth bullet used : Scuffed ground
Considering the red marks on Arei's wrists when she was found dead alongside the scrunched up tape found in the trash, the obvious logical conclusion we can get out of this is that her wrists were tied up with the grippy tape. The real question though is for what purpose did she do that?
According to my theory, the victim would still be unconscious, so there's no point in tying her wrists to make sure she doesn't escape or fight back or whatever. So by thinking outside the box, I've concluded that the culprit did it because it was a necessary step for the murder scheme.
Then you have to consider the scuffed marks that was found on the ground of the playground in a specific location. It couldn't have been from a fight or struggle since Arei should've been unconscious, so something else should've happened. That's when I came up with this brilliant idea.
For reference, the scuffed marks were found a few feet away from the seasaw (Don't mind the drawing). Also, the yellow stickman where we can't see the legs represents the victim : Arei. The green scribbles represent the other piece of rope, the one that's not as long as the one used for the pulley, but still somewhat long. The subtle grey scribbles by the seasaw and the yellow man's hands represents the grippy tape applied to Arei's wrists.
So here's how it's supposed to work. First, Eden brings the body close by the seasaw and then place Arei's arms between both poles (supports) of the seasaw. Next up, she would bind tightly the victim's wrists together with the grippy tape so that the body wouldn't be able to easily move away from the seasaw through a forceful pulling motion.
Then, she would use the other rope to make a noose around Arei's neck. However, she wouldn't tie the other end of the rope to the spinny thing just yet, she will do that later. For now, she placed that end of the rope as close to the carousel as possible.
I still don't see how that would create scuffed marks to the ground...
That's because I haven't shown you the magic trick yet! Let's continue!
Truth bullet used : Pulley system
Now that the other rope was set up, it was now time to use the pulley system she created last night. First, the culprit spins the carousel in the rotation (let's say clockwise) that would pull the water jugs (that are hanging by the other rope of that rope) upwards. She would pull as much as she possibly can. Then once the water jugs reach the maximum height, it was time for the next step.
Truth bullet used : Rope attached to Arei's neck
The culprit needed her hands to tie the other rope that was close by her with the spinny thing's handlebar. Of course, there's a bit of weight from the water jugs, so she couldn't simply let go of the pulley. Therefore, she must've been holding the carousel with one or both legs. If tying the rope with one of the handlebars wasn't enough, Eden could've also weaved through a few of them like before.
Now, here comes to most exciting part, the "tada!" of the murder trick! She takes out her leg(s) from the spinny thing, she holds it again with her hands and then... she spins it counterclockwise as hard and as fast as possible!
That way, the water jugs would fall down pretty fast, especially if the spinny were to cause resistence of friction (making it fall slowly if it was the culprit only released). So they would fall fast, while the other rope would wind up along the carousel up until that rope reaches the limit.
As the rope reaches the limit... SNAP!
Truth bullet used : Arei's broken neck
Truth bullet used : Empty jugs with broken handles
Truth bullet used : Scuffed ground
So what happened in that moment? Well, Arei's dead. It breaks Arei's neck because of the immediate stop of the rope attached to her neck which was also pulled in by spinny thing in a pretty fast rate. This is the mainly reason why her wrists were bound. Otherwise, her whole body would've been dragged towards the carousel, which wouldn't really guarantee a killing blow.
But since the victim's wrists were stuck around the seasaw, it wouldn't move much... except for her lower body. It created a knee jerk movement reaction of her legs because of that violent pulling motion. Because of that, this would scrape the ground, which would cause the scuffed marks on the ground.
Hold on! Would it actually be enough to explain ALL these scuffed marks on the ground?
Maybe, maybe not. At the very least, the culprit could've simply created more marks on the ground to make it look more like it came from a struggle. That wouldn't be a problem at all since it's very easy to do damage the ground purposefully.
Anyways, that wouldn't be the only thing that would break. There's also the water jugs! As the rope holding Arei's neck would come to an abrupt stop, it would also make an abrupt stop to the longer rope used for the pulley system which is also what was holding the jugs by the handles. The violent motion would make the rope cut through these flimsy plastic handles, which the jugs would then fall to the ground and spill all over the playground.
The water spill is no issue at all whatsoever and was already planned by the culprit because she knew beforehand that the wet ground would dry up fairly quickly because of the fans at the ceiling.
And there you go! This... is how the actual murder happened... in my opinion. That would explain a lot of clues found perfectly, wouldn't it?
Anyways, Eden's nowhere done yet. That would only her first goal achieved : create a murder mechanism at a different location so that the mechanism would do the dirty deed for her.
Next up, it was time to create a perfect alibi so that no one would suspect her. There was still a lot of work to do.
Act 21
She had a disguise trick to do, but before doing that, she needed to get rid of a couple pieces of evidence. The main issue however is that because she had no choice but to murder Arei past 8:00 AM, someone could wake up very soon if they haven't done so already. But Eden couldn't leave all that evidence behind, especially the body. So whatever she needed to get rid of or hide, it needed to be done really fast. So anything that wasn't too essential in hiding could help her save time. So here's what she did...
Truth bullet used : Scrunched up tape
Truth bullet used : Red marks on Arei's wrists
Truth bullet used : Long rope under carousel
Truth bullet used : Eden's letter
Truth bullet used : Torn-up note
Truth bullet used : Empty jugs with broken handles
Truth bullet used : Needle with black string attached
Eden took off the tape that kept the victim's wrists bound. Even though it leaves red marks which would make it fairly easy to deduce for the others to figure out that she was bound, she had no choice but to remove that tap if she wanted to move that body and hide it.
She untied both ropes that had a noose on the spinny thing. She then pulled the longer rope used for the pulley system and then put all that rope under the carousel. She left the tape stuck on the handlebars, it would take too long and there was not enough time.
Next up, Eden's letter. It's hard to say if the culprit truly made that letter as a mean to lure Arei into the playground earlier in the evening of DAY 2 and then knock her unconscious or if she simply made up that whole message at nighttime instead for the whole purpose of fabricating a perfect alibi.
Whichever it is, the culprit needed to tear up that note and throw it in the trash can. She didn't want to downright get rid of it. She wanted the others to find out about it sometime during the investigation. It was a necessary step of her plan to both make her alibi look more credible and also make herself look the least suspicious.
She also threw away the tape that was bound to Arei's wrists previously (which would now be scrunched up), the empty jugs and that needle to the trash. She no longer needed them and it wouldn't make it as easy to figure out the crime if the jugs were separated from the playground. Of course, she couldn't bring those jugs with her and get rid of them completly in case that she ends up running into someone back on the first floor.
Truth bullet used : Rope attached to Arei's neck
Truth bullet used : Ball of clothes
Later on, Eden would drag the body away from the playground to then hide it in the relaxation room. She knew a decent spot to hide the body. She didn't undo the rope attached to the victim's neck since it was unnecessary.
People would know that her cause of death has to be related to the rope. It was also a waste of time, so not doing anything about it would save time which is exactly what the culprit needs. Also, she probably put the blanket of old clothes above the dead body to hide it better.
Ridiculous! Where would Eden even hide the body?
Truth bullet used : Box of incense
If I had to guess... probably somewhere behind those blue curtains. Preferably close by the box of incense. This spot appears to be further away from where most of the people would be relaxing. Most people would relax where there's the yoga mats and pillows. So that spot by the box of incense wouldn't be as obvious. Besides, there was another reason behind it.
Considering that the culprit is hiding it to fabricate their alibi, it would mean that the corpse would be here for a full day possibly. Wouldn't it mean that the body would decompose and create a noticeable smell?
It's honestly hard to say. I have sources that tells me that it doesn't go through that stage of body decomposition after 24 hours, it's usually more than that. But it also depends on various conditions. We don't know eitheir if the creator took that into account at all. But whether or not it was intended, I have an idea that would suggest that Eden planned ahead and used something in the relaxation room to make her alibi even stronger.
That's just utter nonsense! There's no such thing!
That's where you're wrong!
Truth bullet used : Incense sticks
The culprit used the incense sticks to create a natural timer mechanism!
WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!
Do you remember what I've said about these incense sticks before act 6? "Burning a whole stick can take up to an hour, but the lingering smell can last for multiple hours." That wasn't made up. That was something that I found out with a simple google search.
So let's rewind the story back to DAY 1. MonoTV announces that they have access to the 2nd floor. Teruko proceeds to investigate and finds out interesting facts about each room. It's very possible that Eden was also investigating at a different time period that day.
That would explain how she was able to come up with such complex and ingenius murder schemes according to my theory.
Culprit complimentations aside, she learned things about the relaxation room and probably noticed the smell of the incense sticks. Because we had a timeskip due to Teruko isolating herself to her dorm most of DAY 1, it's possible that Eden came back to the relaxation room later in the evening and noticed that the smell of the incense sticks disappeared. She would then have a rough idea of how long this incense smell lasts.
Now fast forward to the night of DAY 2, after the attempted murder on Ace failed. When she was plotting a new murder plan and figured out her only remaining option was killing Arei, she would remember the time of the lingering smell of said incense sticks. She would use that seemingly minor detail to her advantage.
Why does it matter having a timer?! That doesn't make sense!
It all has to do with her second goal : creating the perfect alibi. She didn't just want to hide the body for an unknown period of time, she wanted someone to find the body at some point while she's busy building her alibi with someone else.
So by using the incense sticks as a timer mechanism, she would just need to wait for someone to spend time in the relaxation room sometime in the evening. That person would eitheir notice a weird smell (of the corpse decomposing) or a lack of incense sticks smell and they would approach the box of incense to eitheir burn new sticks or to follow the source of the weird smell.
And that's how it works!
Act 22
Now that Eden cleaned up most of the important clues, she then went back to the first floor, back to Arei's dorm.
Truth bullet used : Eden's sneakiness
As long as she's sneaky enough and waits for the right time, I'm sure she would be able to enter Arei's dorm without being noticed. And then she would spend a couple hours putting on the make up and the disguise. Well actually... maybe she took a shower first.
You don't have a single shred of proof that any of this happened! Your theory just doesn't work!
If that was the case, then why does my theory line up perfectly with most of the clues found. But more importantly, why does it line up perfectly with what happened to Teruko in the morning of DAY 3?
Teruko overslept at the most convenient time for someone like Eden to commit murder around the morning of DAY 3 while also setting up her disguise.
This also lines up perfectly with what's happening afterwards. Teruko wakes, decides to go to the cafeteria during lunchtime. She finds a group of people there. Ace is having an argument with Nico because he's pretty sure that Nico tried to kill him, which is understandable. The others have their eyes on that heated argument and then...
Truth bullet used : Wigs
Truth bullet used : Make-up kit
Truth bullet used : Arei's spare uniform
Truth bullet used : Arei's missing glove
That's all you get from Arei and you don't see her anytime afterwards up until the BDA. Not only that, but she doesn't say a single thing, she's staying quiet. There's no way you can't find that suspicious in any way. Having Eden pull off a disguise trick would explain it perfectly!
Truth bullet created : Eden's disguise trick
This can't work! Teruko was staring at Arei, she would've noticed something strange about her!
Nope, she wouldn't. It's heavily implied that Teruko has prosopagnosia. This defines as having the inability of recognizing faces. She can only recognize people with their hair, eye color, skin tone. At least, that's what it seems to be when she's having a chat with Veronika in the movie screening room in Episode 7, in the evening of DAY 3. Therefore, she couldn't have recognised that something's off about her.
Anyone else who was in the cafeteria would've noticed something strange about her!
Aside from the fact that she's being quiet, not really. Why? It's simple.
Truth bullet used : Ace acting tough
Truth bullet used : Hu being protective of Nico
The constant bullying and arguing that Ace is doing towards Nico is causing a big distraction within the cafeteria. Hu was also busy defending Nico, which also plays a part in the distraction. Also, Ace is doing this because he's trying to show how much of a badass he is, despite being nearly killed. He's not holding back.
Well, Rose would've noticed! She saw her at lunch and she has a photographic memory!
Maybe, maybe not. Granted, she did see her, but we don't know for sure if she truly saw something off. After all, she tends to be absent-minded. It is possible that in future episodes, she will remember something that was a little different about Arei thanks to her photographic memory. We shouldn't fully deny the disguise trick just because of a potential witness.
Even then, it would be ridiculously risky! What if someone wanted to talk to her? The wig's light blue, not blue like Arei's hair! Is Eden even good at using make-up? I don't think she'd be able to replicate a good skin tone. And there's also that bowling pin, it's an accessory, shouldn't it be unique like the glove? What about-
Enough! ...I refuse to elaborate further on that matter. You'll understand why later in the finale. What matters for now is that I found a way to explain how the disguise trick could work and fit in with most of the clues.
Act 23
Now that the disguise trick is completed, what happens next? Well, now that the hardest part of the plan is done, she no longer needs to stick around as Arei, so she probably goes back to her actual dorm when no one's around.
Next up to the plan would be to create her alibi, but she only needs to do that from evening to night. So for the time being, Eden can take a good, hot shower and take a good nap. She did a good job, she deserved it! Let's go Eden! (We're proud of you!)
While it's not evening yet, let's take a look at two other characters who had some pretty big events happening to them yesterday. Let's start with Ace! He... had a very terrifying and traumatic experience last night, that's for sure.
Truth bullet used : Ace's phobias
I mean... He's afraid of a lot of things. Death is especially one of them. So there's no doubt in my mind that this scared the crap out of him. I'd like to believe that when he was arguing with Levi, Teruko and Eden last night sometime after the murder attempt, when he went back to his dorm, he probably shattered.
He was probably shaking at the thought that he honestly seriously died. Not only that, but it was Nico, of all people, who tried to kll him (according to him, of course). Nico, the person that he bullied constantly because they were inferior to him was able to pull that off? He has a weak mental fortitude, so for him to not break down at all anytime we see him after the attempted murder just seems suspicious to me.
Truth bullet used : Ace acting tough
Of course, he's trying to act tough, he doesn't want to show it. Or maybe he wants to be in control of his emotions or whatever. Which, it kinda makes sense, but... there's only so much you can manage mentally. As much as he tries to put on a tough guy act, eventually, the phobias will get to you, the old habits will come back.
Of course, you can improve those kind of issues to the point where it barely becomes a major issue anymore, but these kind of things take time. But of course, that's just my perception and assumption of things. What matters is that there's the possibility that this near death experience affected him a lot more than it seems which will be important later.
As for the other person... let's talk about David for a bit.
Truth bullet used : David's plan
He didn't have an experience as traumatic as Ace, but something happened that messed up with his manipulative plan : Arei knows about his secret and his plan. Well, she doesn't quite know precisely about David's intents regarding the plan of sharing secrets, but she knew something was off and wanted to make sure that there was no ill intent behind it.
Regardless, learning that someone else found out about his secret and their suspicious plan gives a pretty bad taste in his mouth. Not only that, but if his murder instigating plan succeeds, if the victim was someone else than Arei, she could've called him out on it, which would ruin his whole plan.
David is probably constantly thinking about that. He's realising that he's in a very bad spot right now. If no murder happens in the next days, then his secret would be exposed still. So no matter which will it'll go, he's always gonna have his secret exposed. David is literally screwed. That's why he's not in a good mood as shown in the evening of DAY 3.
So what does he do for the afternoon? Nothing much, really. He's probably pondering about a lot of negative things, thinking how miserable he is or something. In any case, he needs some time to be alone.
Act 24
We are now approaching the evening of DAY 3, what happens next?
Let's start with the obvious. Eden wakes up from her nice nap and proceeds to meet up with Hu to spend time with her for the evening. This is pretty much confirmed ever since Chapter 2 Episode 10 when Hu explained her alibi with Eden. According to my theory, that would be part of the culprit's plan to fabricate the perfect alibi.
Next up is Ace. Under normal circumstances, he would've spent the evening working out in the fitness room. However, because of that horrifying near death experience, he didn't want to bother with that at all and he doesn't trust anyone else. So he figured that the best thing to do was isolating himself in his dorm for the night.
But his eating disorder would've compel him to work out in the gym anyways!
Maybe, maybe not. There's no way to tell if the creator really intended for that to happen. So eitheir option would be possible, but the one that would make the most sense is if he stayed in his room. It would match up perfectly with my theory alongside a few other events I haven't explained yet. As long as my method is possible and makes sense, it should do.
And finally, we have David. His plan became a mess, he's in a bad mood. He doesn't know what to do. In any case, he somehow decides to go to the kitchen in the evening.
Why's that? Unsure, there must've been some reason, or maybe there wasn't. Maybe he just wanted to wander in the kitchen. Or maybe he thought he was gonna be able to spend time alone in kitchen, but he didn't think there would be people here at that time. Who knows?
What matters is the following...
Whit suggests to David to chill in the relaxation room, which is exactly what he does. This would conveniently line up well with Eden's plan.
Act 25
At this point during the evening of DAY 3, sometime before 10:00 AM, we only need to focus on David. So upon entering the relaxation room to... you know... relax, David notices at some point something that's off with that room.
Truth bullet used : Incense sticks
There's no longer a lingering smell of a burning incense stick (or maybe it was the weird smell from the corpse).
Truth bullet used : Box of incense
So he approaches the box of incense and then he notices something different about the blue curtains. There's something there! So David removes anything that was in the way and that's when he discovers the dead body of Arei.
David is the first person to discover the victim's corpse.
I object to that! Nico was feeding the fishes earlier that evening. Shouldn't they have noticed something odd about the smell?
Not if the lingering smell of the incense sticks was still there at the time. They wouldn't have noticed if the smell is the same as usual.
The lingering smell of the incense stopped sometime between Nico's visit and David's visit to the relax room. That was a pretty convenient timing, but it makes sense.
Now, we gotta wonder how David reacted to it. He was obviously surprised and shocked. It's hard to say if he felt happy, angry or sad about for one particular reason.
Truth bullet used : David's plan
Earlier, his plan was ruined because Arei knew about most of it. The only way he could make sure that he gets away with his secret hidden would be to have Arei dead. This... is exactly what happened. Arei's been murdered. His secret is now safe again.
Maybe he had a mix of many emotions. His plan was no longer ruined after all. There was a problem however : if he leaves things as is and the group later finds the body, David would become a prime suspect and they would force their way to find out about David's secret.
Not only that, but if they seriously suspect that he's the killer, then he, alongside the others, would lose the class trial and die. David's in big trouble.
Uh... why would David care about the trial? In chapter 1, after the execution, he commented that everyone's gonna die.
Truth bullet used : David's plan
Oh, he does care about death for sure. His whole plan was creating conflicts with others through sharing secrets in the attempt of instigating a murder.
If he didn't care about death or the trial, why wouldn't he simply kill someone instead. There's only one possible explanation : he doesn't want to die. He wanted someone else to do the dirty deed so that he would both have his secret and safe and live to see another day. He tried to kill two birds with one stone.
So anyways, David finds the body, he's shocked and confused. He needs some time to take in what happened. Actually, what happened to the body? He surely doesn't know aside that she's been murdered, of course. Was it a dream? No, it's very real, Arei's dead.
So what did he do afterwards? Well, he probably started doing his own investigation, to try to process how this happened.
Truth bullet used : Rope attached to Arei's neck
Truth bullet used : Arei's broken neck
Truth bullet used : Red marks on Arei's wrists
Truth bullet used : Arei's missing glove
Truth bullet used : Ball of clothes
As far as he's aware, Arei's neck is broken, which must have something to do with the rope, but it doesn't seem like the relaxation room would be the right place to pull that off. Otherwise, it wouldn't be hidden here. Maybe he notices the red marks as well, but doesn't quite know what to make of it. Same thing for the missing glove. It's really hard to say if he actually paid attention to it.
And there's the blanket of Hu and Teruko's old clothes that are used to hide and cover the body. Aside from hiding the body, is there even any other uses for it? He doesn't know the answer to it. Eitheir way, he at least knows that this murder couldn't have happened here, so it was time to look at the other rooms.
He didn't have to look too hard to find out where the crime actually took place. He simply needed to go to the nearest room : the playground.
Truth bullet used : Scuffed ground
Truth bullet used : Carousel wrapped with tape
Truth bullet used : Long rope under carousel
The scuffed ground is the first thing David would probably notice. He's probably wondering if there was a struggle happening here. If so, then whoever killed her must be someone pretty strong. Or maybe it's a trick? After all, he remembers that in the first trial, they've been easily fooled into thinking that Teruko was the murderer. So he can't jump to conclusions just yet.
Next up, he finds something strange with the spinny thing. There's some under there and the handlebars are wrapped up with some kind of tape. What does that even mean? He has frankly no idea.
Also, one thing that I need to point out regarding what David might've done investigation wise... Aside from it being a big assumption, it's possible that he didn't do much of that. At the very least, he was probably trying to figure out where the crime actually took place.
Whether he actually put some kind of efforts into investigating or not, there was still another problem that he needed to deal with quickly...
Act 26
Truth bullet used : Relax room's nighttime features
The relax room is about to close soon. This is bad for David because if he doesn't move the dead body, it will remain locked inside that room for the whole night and early morning. Then someone would definitly discover her corpse next morning, which would get him in big trouble since it would lead to having his secret exposed.
There was no time to waste. He needed to get that corpse out of here and that's what he exactly did. David dragged the corpse back to the playground. Now, he needed to figure out what he could do to indirectly help the group with the investigation.
He must've imagined that her cause of death must be from something like hanging. So he decided to hang her at the swingset. He couldn't quite exactly figure out how it was done, but that's all he could think of. As long as they don't think that it was hidden in the relaxation room to begin with, then he wouldn't be suspected.
But then he realised another problem : How will the others know when she died? If things are left out as is, they might think she was eitheir murdered at night or very early in the morning? There's a lot of possible time of deaths which would stray the group further away from the truth. In David's mind, he's pretty sure she must've been killed sometime in the evening, before he entered that room.
Why would he believe that this was the only possible time of death?
Truth bullet used : Eden's disguise trick
Even though we know, according to my theory, that Eden used a disguise trick to hide Arei's real time of death, the others don't know about it. David saw Arei alive at lunchtime, which means that she was definitly killed sometime after according to his logic. He probably figured it wasn't in the afternoon since it would be much easier for the killer to run into potential witnesses, so the evening was the only option.
Wouldn't David deduce that Nico might be the prime suspect? They were feeding the fishes sometime before David entered that room. Nico saw David use the elevator.
He might've been seen by Nico, but it doesn't mean the opposite applies. It's very likely possible that when David used the elevator, he never saw anyone passing through because Nico had already gone out a while ago. Nico probably noticed David when they were roaming around the first floor.
In any case, he needed to figure what he could do to make the others follow the "right path" into deducing that the crime happened sometime around the evening. David couldn't directly tell them, as ridiculous as it may sound. Remember, he doesn't want his secret to be found out. If he told the group about the actual time of death, they would start questioning him.
They'd be like : "How do you know that she died at that time?" That'd just make him become suspicious no matter what he tries to come up with. Because of that suspicious, they would then press on David which would lead to uncovering his secret.
So what could he possibly do to help them without directly telling them about the "right" time of death? That's when he came up with this crazy idea!
Truth bullet used : Dead fishes
Truth bullet used : Relax room's nighttime features
Truth bullet used : Ball of clothes
He remembered about the fishes in the pond and the nighttime features of the relaxation room. What if he brought those fishes to the playground? It would seem very weird and confusing that there's dead fishes found in the playground, but because of the fact that the relax room closes at 10:00 PM and reopens at 8:00 AM, they would conclude that the fishes were brought to the playground before the relaxation room closes.
Even though the fishes has most likely nothing to do with the whole crime in itself, the others would probably not think too hard about it since it's a seemingly very convoluted crime scene to begin with. He figured that a little "red herring" wouldn't hurt as long as it helps them in knowing the time of death.
That way, he wouldn't need to open up about what he found out, the dead fishes would tell the story for him. Of course, he couldn't simply grab them with his hands. Maybe one by one, but that would be incredibly inefficient.
That's why he used the blanket of old clothes instead. He used that to scoop as many fishes as possible and then brought them to the playground. It's confirmed, everyone! David is a mass murderer! He killed all those fishes that we saw in the playground! (Oh nooo!)
Anyways, once that was taken care of, there was one more thing that he needed to do : get rid of these darn clothes. He doesn't want to leave them in the relaxation room, that would obviously indicate that something or someone must've been hidden there. He can't bring it back to the first floor eitheir, that would be incredibly risky since he could run into someone.
So the next best thing he can do is hide them and also hide what they were supposed to be to begin with. David rolled up that blanket of clothes into a perfectly shaped ball and hid it in the changing room inside the dress-up room. This would explain why Charles found a ball of clothes in the dress-up room.
Now that all of that was done, he headed back to the first floor and called it a day. Nothing else significant happened that night.
Act 27
It is now DAY 4, 8:00 in the morning. Everyone gathers up to the movie screening room. Everyone except... well... you obviously know who by now. It's been 4 days already, so it was time for MonoTV to reveal the secrets, but before that happens... David goes : "Wait! Stop!"
So everyone starts counting and they notice that there's indeed someone missing. So David leads them by saying : "Arei isn't here."
So people start to panic and proceed to look for Arei. Teruko picks up Whit and Eden to make a group of 3 people to find her if she's indeed dead. That way, it would definitly trigger the BDA if all three of them are innocent. Otherwise, one of these three would be suspicious.
Of course, Eden expected that to happen, but she was prepared with her whole murder scheme. Someone should've found the dead body first already last night so it shouldn't be an issue.
So Teruko's group investigates the second floor. Teruko looks inside the gym, she's not here. Whit looks inside the dress-up room, she's not here eitheir. Eden looks inside the relaxation room...
Two things of note here...
Eden did not find the dead body in here even though that was the last place she left it. So she knows for sure someone found the body first and moved it somewhere else.
She could've easily lied about claiming that there's no place where she could be hiding. That would make a lot of sense for her to lie if she was indeed the culprit and hid the body there previously.
So everything's going really well for Eden. It's all going according to plan. The last room remaining to explore was the playground. At this point, the culprit knew that it must be hidden there. There's no way someone would drag a dead body back to the first floor.
But then, before they enter, Whit makes this silly comment : "Do you really think that she'd be hanging out in the playground right now?"
It seems absolutely goofy at first since whether the viewers were making the prediction or they already saw how she died, they would find Whit's comment to be pretty unintentionally punny (or perhaps intentionally even).
For Eden however, that was literally the worst case scenario. She took Whit's comment seriously. Or maybe she didn't at first, but then quickly started to doubt that he was joking. At some point, she must've thought : "What if it was Whit that discovered the body first?"
So as Teruko's about to open the door, in a moment of panic, Eden shouts : "Teruko, wait--" And that's when they discover the corpse of Arei hanging by the swing set, which then triggers the BDA later on.
Unfortunatly for Eden, she made a little slip-up there which could be really troublesome if Teruko catches on to this. Fortunately for Eden however, the BDA still happened, so she's still looking innocent there. On top of that, it doesn't seem like eitheir Teruko or Whit noticed her slip-up (...yet).
And that's how this whole murder mystery happened. From DAY 1 to DAY 4. And you know what? I'm not even done yet. I still have a few remaining events to explain after the body discovery announcement. Let's get into it! We're almost there!
Act 28
Everyone gathers at the playground, they find the body and they're all shocked and stuff. It's investigation time! Obviously, I won't talk about the investigation much details since I've already explained all of the evidence that was found there. Instead, I'm gonna talk about a few noteworthy things that happened during the investigation.
Eden's reaction to finding Arei's dead body is kinda suspicious. Naturally, she would act all sad and in grief upon losing dear Arei. The suspicious thing is what happens afterwards.
Not even a minute after finding the body, she quickly recovers and claims that she's ready to investigate. I know this is a class trial and that they need to take it seriously, but wouldn't it be more natural for Eden to need more time to recover from this? Especially when she was supposed to be friends with Arei according to her narrative.
The next thing is the secrets reveal. J was about to ask MonoTV about the secrets reveal since it would probably help in solving the murder. But then David interjects by claiming that MonoTV would only reveal the motive if a murder didn't happen in the allocated time. But since a murder happened, he's not obligated to reveal them.
Then he goes on about if MonoTV were to reveal the secrets based on the deadline (8:00 in the morning on DAY 4), it would mean that she died very recently, which would narrow down the time of death.
Of course, David knew that she didn't die then. He was just practically forcing MonoTV to not reveal the secrets since he knows that Arei died in the evening of DAY 3, according to his deductions. Basically playing with the rules of the motive reveal deadline. He didn't want his secret exposed, after all.
Sadly for him, MonoTV claims that it's based on the time of the body discovery and not the time of death. So if it was found shortly after the deadline, then it's already past the deadline.
This messes up with his plan to keep his secret from being exposed. So he has no choice but to see that list to find out what this is really all about. At the very least, David knows that it won't directly show whose secret it is since MonoTV himself doesn't know who it belonged to (because of the mixed up secrets).
So later on, David goes to the movie screening room to see the list and he sadly sees that his dark secret is actually there. So he's gonna have to do everything he can to make sure it doesn't get exposed. Of course, all of the actions David's done ever since the beginning of Chapter 2 made Teruko grow very suspicious of him. At least a lot more than the Prologue and Chapter 1.
Enough talk about the investigation. Let's talk about the trial!
Act 29
Kinda like the investigation phase, I'm not gonna go too much into details. I'll only reveal parts of the trial that would line up and make sense if it went according to my theory. So there are three characters who play a big role in this trial.
Eden wants to make sure that no suspicions would be thrown at her. She wants to be the most innocent out of everyone in that trial.
Ace wants to keep up the tough guy act, doesn't want to be seen as someone useless in trial and he doesn't want others to find out what really happened during the attempted murder.
David is hoping that the group will figure out the truth of the trial with a narrowed down time of death (dead fishes) while also being able to keep his secret from being exposed.
Let's start with episode 9! Eden doesn't reveal Arturo's secret. She's going to later, but she needs to build up an innocent girl narrative first.
We get a confirm from Nico that they intentionally try to make a serious attempt on Ace's life when Charles asks the question. The important thing to note here is that this could mean a lot of things. Their mind was most likely set on wanting to kill him, but it doesn't mean that they did all the setup required to make that attempt.
But Rose claimed that they lied and stole from her. Nico's response was : "I--! I didn't kill Arei! I swear!". He didn't deny Rose's claim. That's practically a confession!
Not necessarily! Despite the implication, it could also very well be them wanting to deny that claim, but stopped themselves to simply swear that they didn't kill Arei. There could be various reasons for it, but one that could be the most reasonable is if they were having doubts about it. What if they weren't sure if they actually stole from her or not? His mind could've definitly been chaotic ever since they snapped. So they probably were unable to remember it.
But they were able to remember feeding the fishes and seeing David use the elevator during the evening!
Sure, but that was on DAY 3, not DAY 2. Like I said before, there's still a lot that we don't know about Nico during the events the evening/night of DAY 2. And because it's such an unknown variable, it also leads to a massive amount of possibilities.
Besides, remember what I said in Act 12? It could've been a massive red herring by making us easily believe that Nico's the one responsible for everything involved in the attempted murder on Ace. That trial interaction could also be another trick made by the creator to make us further believe that they're indeed respondible for it all.
Anyways, sometime later, Rose believed that Arei's death was an assisted suicide where the victim played a big role into this. Eden goes out of her way to convince everyone that can't be true. There's no way that someone like Arei would commit suicide.
Why would she do that if she was the true culprit? Wouldn't it make sense to let them believe it was suicide to end the trial early?
There's no guarantee that the smarter people out there (especially Teruko) would let it end that soon. She would've figured out by herself that there's no way it could've been a suicide. So Eden went out of her way to deny the suicide claim simply to direct the group into the proper narrative in regards to Arei. It was a necessary step since she wanted to reveal the incident that happened in the infirmary. That would further confirm that this wasn't suicide.
Next up, Teruko manages to narrow down the time of death by bringing up the dead fish. Based on their knowledge that they last saw the victim at 12:00 PM on DAY 3 and the features of the relaxation room. They were able to narrow it down to sometime between 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM.
Not a satisfying time window for what David had in mind when he placed those fishes, but that will do for now. At least, his plan kind of worked. They won't think that it happened during nighttime. Maybe they'll find out a more accurate time later on.
Act 30
On episode 10, before Eden gives the note, she quickly claims that she didn't do it, whoever did it is trying to impersonate her. So we get the reveal of the torn up note which gives us the letter we all know by now.
She would seem a tiny bit suspicious at first, but that was all part of her plan. Most wouldn't think that she'd be the killer if she wanted to help put the note back together. But in fact, she needed to help for both the narrative and making sure that the ripped apart note would be properly put back together.
She needed to play the scene of the revealed note to make sure that it would eventually lead to the reveal of Arturo's secret. When she would feel like that it'd be best for her to tell the truth, she would also explain the incident in the infirmary.
That would explain why she's friends with Arei. That would explain why she was insistent on believing that she wouldn't kill herself. That whole play would make Eden look the least suspicious so far. Everything's going according to her plan.
Fortunately for David, that note helped narrow down the time of death more accurately. Unfortunatly for him however, this is a fake time of death trick pulled by Eden, the real culprit. Until something major happens, no one's going to believe that Arei actually died in the morning of DAY 3, slightly past 8:00 AM.
Moving on... everyone's discussing their alibis now that the suggested time of death is sometime between 7:30 PM and 10:00 PM.
Hu talks about her time spent with Eden in the kitchen during that whole evening. Which further proves her innocence thanks to Eden's carefully crafted alibi plan. A few have alibis, a few don't have one like Nico.
So Ace lashes out at them as usual, nothing new here. Hu gets defensive and asks for his alibi.
Truth bullet used : Ace's actions in the gym
Truth bullet used : Ace acting tough
He thought about it for a little bit, but then he came up with a great idea. He lied about going to the gym that evening. That'd make him look kinda badass going there the day after being nearly killed.
Also, he doesn't want the others to know the truth about what he actually did during the night of DAY 2 as he wants to hide that kind of strength from the others since he doesn't trust them.
That doesn't make sense. Ace is actively trying to act tough according to your theory!
I know, it seems kinda contradictory, but here's the thing. Ace's kind of an idiot. He's trying not to, but you just can't really improve that in an instant as if you drank an intelligence potion or something.
Truth bullet used : Ace's testimony
There's another reason however. He really wants to tell the others about David's secret. About what he saw and heard in the relaxation room. But so far, he only knows that David's been to the second floor that night. He couldn't have known about DAY 3 since according to my theory, he stayed in his dorm.
So if he decided to reveal it at the earliest time of the trial, he would have no choice but to admit that this happened during the night of DAY 2 which would then lead to others asking "wait, isn't that the night where you almost died?"
This would lead to more questions and getting closer to the truth and they'd find about what Ace was hiding from them since then. Ace doesn't want that to happen. So he holds that information for the time being.
But then a golden opportunity arrived! Teruko calls out David that he should've been in the relaxation room during the evening of DAY 3.
At first, David was starting to play dumb, hoping that no one actually saw him so that he could lie about it and pretend that he went somewhere else. That didn't happen however, Nico saw him use the elevator, so David can't lie his way out of this sadly. Luckily for Ace, that was the perfect opportunity to expose David. He was in the same location both nights? Sweet!
So then Teruko asks the two if they saw anything strange going on in the playground. Ace claims he saw nothing. This is technicly the truth, even though he lied about being in the gym during the evening of DAY 3.
David claims that he didn't find anything odd and never looked at the playground. That's obviously a lie. He doesn't want others to suspect him. Otherwise, that would make them start being curious about his secret.
Then he adds that he never saw Ace once, which he finds strange. You could believe that he's just lying to put the suspicion on Ace, but there's a better idea that would make a lot more sense. David is telling the truth about never seeing Ace because Ace never went to the second floor during the evening of DAY 3 to begin with.
Unfortunatly for him, that was the perfect time for Ace to expose David's secret and making his claim of being in the gym on DAY 3 more believable.
Act 31
Almost done! Time to tackle episode 11!
So Ace starts explaining what he saw and heard in the relax room. We get a flashback scene regarding that event and then-
We literally get a flashback scene! There's a few details that would indicate that Ace is telling the whole truth, including the fact that he heard this on DAY 3, not DAY 2!!!
No, that's wrong! You should never take everything from granted once the author starts giving us more than 1 character point of view. Some could easily lie about the events to fit their narrative and fantasy.
I haven't read or played a lot of mystery novels, but there's a certain tactic that's sometimes used by the author, if not often. It's called unreliable narrator. From a google search, it says : "An unreliable narrator can be defined as any narrator who misleads readers, either deliberately or unwittingly."
Ace could've easily been an unreliable narrator. Here are a couple things that he could've lied about.
There's a missing fan on the right side. Could've been an illusion to make us believe it happened on DAY 3.
We see Ace with neck bandages. Could've been an illusion to make us believe it happened on DAY 3.
When Ace was eavesdropping, Arei says : "Nico got super pissy and tried to turn Ace into cat food." Could've been a line of dialogue that Ace made up to make others believe that it happened on DAY 3.
Then Ace claims he didn't catch anything else. Which, once again, would make sense if he's been knocked unconscious right after that. But he doesn't want to admit that since it would reveal the truth on when the meeting actually happened.
As a few others claimed, it's very strange that Ace brings up that important testimony this late into the trial. So it would make sense if he didn't want to expose him just yet because he didn't want the others to know the actual truth in the gym.
In any case, David's plan is ruined. He eventually gives up and confesses that the manipulative liar secret is actually his secret. (pretty amazing reveal, by the way!) His career's officially over.
We get a few interesting lines from David that would match up insanely well with my theory.
"Normally, I would continue to insist that Ace is an unreliable witness, and a worthless lying piece of shit as well... But I know how it is with you people. Once you've reached a conclusion, you'll refuse to believe any evidence that contradicts it. So I'm not going to bother."
Unreliable witness and a liar... interesting. Doesn't that match perfectly with my claim that Ace is lying about being at the gym during the evening of DAY 3 as well as my claim that he is an unreliable narrator?
"But I will admit, I did indeed meet with Arei last night in the relaxation room." He's telling the truth. He met with her alright on DAY 3. Doesn't mean she was alive though.
"As for what I actually talked about... Well, I've already forgotten! She's dead now, so who cares?" He's lying... or to be more accurate, he's hiding the truth. He doesn't want the others to know that he found her dead body.
Why not? Why wouldn't he tell the whole truth?
For a few reasons. First off, everyone just learned he's a liar. So they might simply think that he's lying about it. Secondly, that would make him incredibly suspicious. He wants to avoid being seen as the main suspect if he can avoid it. Not that it matters anyways since most of them think he's the culprit shortly afterwards.
Also, another reason to explain it is because he's probably still angry about the fact that they exposed his secret. He's been letting all out ever since the reveal anyways. So he probably wants to act like a butthole as a mean to vent off.
But still, he tries to convince them that he's not the culprit (in his own way), but quickly realises that this is pointless since most of them are so stupid and quick to draw to conclusions, just like last trial.
So then he got an idea. He gives up and confesses that he's the murderer. He's gonna lie all the way through up until someone calls him out on it. The interesting thing to note here is that as soon as he made that confession, he looked incredibly nervous. It's almost like... he's afraid of something. Something like being afraid of losing the trial if no one realises that he's lying?
By the way, another interesting thing to add here : As soon as David confessed, Eden starting being "emotional" and "seriously believes" that he actually did it. The real culprit figured that she may as well push the direction of that accusation to end the trial and be the sole winner.
Here's another interesting thing about Eden. I think she made another slip-up and created a contradiction. No one seemed to have noticed though, thankfully. She made those comments about David that she couldn't believe that he would mentally push Arei into commiting suicide.
That's strange... because I'm pretty sure that at the beginning of the trial, she was very insistent on claiming that Arei would never commit suicide.
Anyways... Teruko asks David about how he killed Arei into more details, but will later realise that his story doesn't make sense and that he's just lying. Then Teruko and David argues about it back and forth up until Charles stops the argument.
He realised something major and says : "Teruko, we really fucked up."
Most of us fans seem to believe that this refers to the time of death being wrong (7:30 PM ish on DAY 3). My theory that the actual time of death was slightly after 8:00 AM on DAY 3 would match that up perfectly.
Time For The Finale
Phew! That was quite the long closing argument! With everything I've written here, hopefully that should explain the whole truth behind that murder mystery and explain most of the clues out there. So... what do you guys think about this theory?
.......NO!! It just doesn't work!
It's incredibly CONVOLUTED! Way too convoluted for such a murder mystery! It's also very RISKY! Eden is doing a lot of risks to make her murder scheme work. A single mistake could've ruined it all. There's no way that plan works! It's impossible. Also, there's still a lot of things that wouldn't work. Like the disguise trick, there's just no way! She doesn't look anything like Arei! She doesn't have her physique. You've overthinking this! There are certain things about your theory that wouldn't be able to explain how things actually work in real life, like the blood wipe. It's just not realistic! Your theory doesn't work!
...It's pointless... all of this is just pointless...
...huh?!
You heard me. This is all pointless. All these counterarguments, even those that I refused to elaborate and would talk about it here instead... they're all actually meaningless in DanganRonpa Despair Time.
When it gets to finding errors in a theory by relying on reality or very niche or minute details. Or things like risk factor or things like no one would be able to pull off x trick, unless it's an actual contradiction of the actual facts of the fangan, then all of these arguments are actually pointless!
How dare you?! You can't just simply ignore these arguments because they hurt your theory!
As a matter of fact, I actually can ignore those. After all... most of these arguments fail to follow a certain rule in this murder mystery.
What are you even talking about?!
Alright... let me tell you! THIS IS FICTION, NOT REALITY!!!
!!!
Let me explain. For quite some time, we've been trying to prove/disprove certain theories by claiming that a certain event would be impossible because that's not how it works in real life.
One of the examples in regards to debunking my theory would be that the disguise trick would be impossible because it would've been incredibly risky and the plan could've easily failed if someone decided to speak with her or looked at her closely. Another example would be when Eden knocked out Ace without being noticed by Arei or David, seems incredibly unlikely and really risky.
From a reality perspective, it would be indeed ridiculous of a plan and nearly impossible to pull it off. But that's exactly the problem! Danganronpa Despair Time is a work of fiction, not reality! Anything that seems completly ridiculous or painfully impossible can become a miracle in the world of fiction!
You don't even have any proof that the DRDT creator is using that rule!
I do, actually. Think back on Chapter 1. I don't know if this chapter had weekly releases like Chapter 2 but regardless, let's give ourselves a scenario in regards to what would happen if the latest trial episodes of chapter 1 were not revealed, then the creator takes a break, so the fans have time to investigate and come up with theories to solve the murder mystery. I personally believe that this is made so that you could solve the murder mystery without watching the climax of the trial.
Anyways, let's say there's someone out there who comes up with a theory that's practically the solution of chapter 1. Then, we get to the actual murder method which is from the light switch that's been stripped. So Xander got electrocuted by trying to turn on the lights when he was soaking wet.
Most people who would see this without knowing what the actual solution is would simply believe that this is just impossible. This seems extremely likely. Like even if it was really dark and Xander wanted to turn the lights back on, he should've heard the sound of something being removed. Otherwise, he should've still been able to see light since the door would've been opened anyways.
Or what if the theorist came up with the idea that the culprit lure Xander into the light switch by taunting him or something? What exactly would be the odds that Xander would charge straight towards the light switch?
Yet, Xander truly died from the light switch because he wanted to turn on the lights. Seems really crazy and unbelievable, but when we think about it, the creator made it possible because this is fiction.
So there you have it! I'm sure none of you see it that way (and it's fine!), but to me, this is the perfect solution to the murder case of Chapter 2. I'm running out of lines to write, so there are two things I wanna say before I go.
Feel free to try to debunk my theory or come up with alternatives to this theory or anything else that's related to it. I don't mind. I'm most likely not gonna reply to it however since I have other projects unrelated to tumblr to work on.
I'd like to thank @1moreff-creator, @venus-is-thinking, @accirax and most likely a couple others for trying to find faults in my theories or points that I've made. Even though it may not seem like it, there were some points that helped me get closer to an answer that I would be satisfied with. Also huge thanks for anyone else who's been supporting my theory.
While I'm at it, feel free to disregard some points I've made to debunk certain theories that rely on stuff like reality. As long as you believe that it could work within the world of fiction, then that's good enough! Sorry for the long post! Thank you for everything! Take care!
Something we mustn't forget about chapter 2 (DRDT)
As usual, this is a spoilers warning for DRDT chapter 2, so beware.
So, I'm sure some of you have seen me have a reasoning battle against a few people, most especially @1moreff-creator. We've had some really interesting back and forth happening.
This post is meant to be a response to 1moreff's latest post regarding their theory. So think of it as a reblog.
Why don't you just simply reblog then?
Well, that's the thing. I... messed up. For any reblogs I've made on their original theory post, they were all long posts that didn't have a cut section, a "read more" button.
So everytime you look at a reblog, you'd have to scroll through all of that to reach the latest reblog. Even though I eventually edited them all later on, the original versions are still there on the previous reblogs because the edit doesn't go through previous reblogs and the reblogger cannot edit others' posts eitheir.
So yeah... sorry about that.
But trust me however, this is a very interesting read. Especially if you've seen my version of the theory. 1moreff's uses the same whodunnit and whydunnit in their theory, but they used a totally different path as for the howdunnit. I'd recommend you all to read it if you haven't already.
With that out of the way, let's get to business. It won't take too long, I promise.
So uhm... I don't really have much to add in regards to your reblog. You've made your point in regards to anything I tackled on and we're pretty much at a stance where I can't really prove that x thing happening while you can't prove that y thing happened. Eitheir of those could work. And because they both work, they're both technicly valid.
Besides, you've already pointed out what could be your issues in regards to your theory.
the glove; the BDA having a lacking explanation; how hard and risky it would be to convince Levi of being an accomplice (though narratively consistent because of the good person thing); and how risky it is to use such a time-sensitive method.
Your biggest issue is definitly the glove, no doubt about that. Even though you do have some kind of explanation for it, it's not something you're quite convinced yourself eitheir.
In any case, I'm not gonna dwelve on it much unless you can eventually think of more solutions to these problems.
So what's the point of this "reblog" if you're not gonna refute against any of these points?
Well, upon doing my own detective work to fix my own holes in my deduction, I discovered something really interesting. Something that I can't believe I didn't realise sooner.
It has something to do with Ace's testimony. There's something off about it. There's a glaring issue with it which will become quite an issue for you.
What do you mean?
Let's start with a very quick recap. According to you, everything that Ace saw according to the flashback really happened. Meaning that in your theory, Ace was working out in the gym during the evening of DAY 3, then he heard Arei and David talking. So he decided to spy on them. So everything he heard and saw must be the truth.
According to my own theory however, Ace was not working out in the gym during the evening of DAY 3. Instead, he was working out in the evening of DAY 2, spied on them that evening and then got knocked unconscious for the attempted murder later on, which would explain why the weight rack was moved in the fitness room. So ace was eitheir lying or confused about the day he witnessed the conversation.
Anyways, if people were to believe that your version of that theory is indeed what truly happened, then we'd have to deal with a very glaring issue that I can't believe I didn't notice until yesterday. I'm convinced more than ever that Ace is wrong about the day he witnessed the conversation. It's based on simple common sense.
Common sense? It can't be that simple!
Oh, it sure can!
So according to Ace, he heard Arei talk to David in the relax room during the evening, the day after he nearly died, right? According to him, at the time, he was working out before he heard them.
So tell me... would he really dare spend time ALONE working out in the gym, literally the place where he nearly died, A DAY after he's been attacked?!
I don't think so. Especially Ace, of all people. He's a coward. That makes no sense.
But Teruk-
Teruko's different from Ace. She's no coward and she's been through a lot of bad crap her whole life based on what we learned so far. Teruko's unlucky.
Anyways, If you cannot find a proper explanation for this, then I'm afraid that your theory could potentially crumble.
I could go out of my way to explain how it would crumble, but essentially, it would come down to me explaining that the more issues you would be able to explain if you were to admit that Ace was indeed lying about the day he witnessed that conversation, the more it would look like my theory.
But before I do that, I'm gonna give you the opportunity to solve this issue I've mentioned about Ace's testimony. I think I have an idea of what you'll claim, but let's see how this plays out.
(Sorry for not reblogging this time around and sorry again for the mess I've created in those reblogs)
Heyo! It's me again! I'm here to solve a mystery regarding this chapter. AS USUAL, MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR DANGANRONPA DESPAIR TIME CHAPTER 2, SO BEWARE! (Click here to see my previous parts if needed)
The heck are you talking about?! You've already solved the case!
Not quite. There is one mystery that I never managed to solve... until now. So yeah, I'm going to share my ideas in regards to what happened during the failed murder attempt on Ace in chapter 2.
On top of that, there's a few other discoveries that may help or hinder my theory that I also wanna share with you guys. So sit tight people, this may be the last ride to my crime solving theory (I hope...).
Let's bring up a picture of the crime scene, shall we? Actually, better than that, I'll bring 2 pictures!
The fitness room before the murder attempt (Picture A)
The fitness room after the murder attempt (Picture B)
As you can see, there is quite the major difference between the two. Yes... quite indeed! There is no mistaking it, there was no body before the murder attempt then poof! Ace's body appeared after the murder attempt!
...............................................
Alright, alright! I'm sorry! That was a bad joke. Let's get to business!
Let me give you a list of the relevant and noteworthy discoveries.
A fan that fell down (Ripped out according to Teruko)
A bloody wire broken in half (one half attached to the blade of the fan)
A stepstool
A broom
A roll of grippy tape (originally came from the bar by the wall)
2 weight plates on the ground next to the treadmills
Moved benches (Right bench toppled over)
Moved and toppled over weight plate rack
Traces of blood on the wall, behind Ace's neck
The fan on the left in Picture B isn't moving
So last time I talked about this crime scene, not knowing exactly how it went, I simply presumed that because there's a part of the wire taped up on the blade, it must've been some complex murder mechanism involved to make it work, kind of like the mechanism the culprit pulled for the murder of Arei (Part 1 for reference).
It is the logical way to think about this, after all. However, if you were to think that the culprit created a mechanism that works in a loop motion like a chainsaw, but in slowmotion, there are two issues with it.
There is no blood traces shown on any of the props.
Aside from the wall, the body and the wire, there are no other visible traces of blood, which is very problematic. If we want to make that looping mechanism work, the wire would probably need to be going around some prop so that the wire pattern would be more on Ace's neck height. But since there's missing blood traces, it's just simply impossible.
As long as one end of the wire is attached to the fan, the possibility of a looping mechanism doesn't exist.
Think about it. For the looping effect to work, the beginning part of the wire would also need to be moved so that it would do a lap, but once you stick the beginning of that wire to something, then that part of the wire can't move away from here.
Therefore, once the whole wire follows its intended path, it doesn't come back, it doesn't create a loop. It's yet again another impossibility.
Why does creating a looping effect mechanism matter anyway?
Because according to my theory, the culprit (Eden) created a mechanism that would work on its own while she's away from the crime scene for the sole purpose of playing around the killing game rules which would make her seem even less suspicious.
Not only that, but because of the wounds on Ace's neck, it seemed like the wire damaged his neck multiple times, so surely the mechanism must've gone back and forth to make that happen.
Yet, creating that kind of mechanism is just plain impossible.
Ha! Then your theory doesn't work! Someone else did it!
Nope, not quite. It just narrows down the list of possibilities as to how it could've been done by Eden. It's an impossible mechanism because there's no other traces of blood and it cannot be looped?! Sure, but I just gotta think outside the box.
How do I create a murder mechanism involving a wire attached to the blade that doesn't loop nor does it leave traces of blood on any of the props? There's only one possibility I can think of. Here goes!
The wire was wrapped around Ace's neck multiple times, somewhat tightly.
Huh? That can't be right! Wouldn't the wire simply leave the body after a short while, not damaging the neck enough?
That's what I thought initially at first, but then I decided to make some experiments. ....No! Not that kind of experiment! I did not wrap it there to test it out, I promise! Well... I tried out around my arm first, but took precautions.
There is a way to test it out without endangering ourselves. Find some kind of wire and use it to wrap around an object that doesn't take most of your wire to make a lap like a bottle or a deodorant and try pulling eitheir ends of the wire. You will notice that the wire just stays there, it remains tangled around the object, it even tries to kinda squeeze the object and that's precisely what happened to Ace's neck.
Because of how many times it was wrapped around Ace's neck and the type of wire it was used, with the pulling motion from the fan, it would make considerable damage to his neck which could've turned for the worst if the mechanism wasn't stopped early enough.
And that's how the culprit created a murder mechanism that can do the job without being around to see it, without creating a looping mechanism and leaving barely any blood traces on the props.
There are some issues with this idea however. But since this is the most logical sound conclusion for the murder mechanism, there's most likely an answer to each issue.
It would be very difficult to wrap the wire around Ace's neck without any kind of help.
Let me explain. First things first, they didn't wrap the wire while the body was sitting down against the wall, it would most likely be impossible. Reason why lies in the blood traces of the wire as shown in Picture B.
Only parts of it is bloody, but more importantly is the fact that a good portion of the wire starting from the part that's attached to the blade doesn't have any blood. The beginning part that's clean is obviously the length between the body and the blade of the fan. We can kinda guess from this that it shouldn't be able to reach his neck if it was sitting down.
Therefore, the body needed to be standing for the whole duration, even setting up the murder mechanism. And that's where the benches come in handy, by keeping him in place. The weight plates probably helped a bit too? In any case, there's still another problem.
The body would bend forward as there's simply nothing supporting the upper part of Ace's body.
You could say that the culprit tried to hold the body against the wall with one arm while she used the other arm to wrap the wire around the neck. However, that would be pretty difficult to pull it off as the body could problably move still (she's probably not that strong to begin with) and it would take a greater amount of physical efforts to pull it off.
So she must've used something to help with that. Some kind of prop. It took me quite some time to think about it, but I think I found a pretty good answer to this riddle.
The culprit used the broom to increase the stability of Ace's body while setting up the murder mechanism.
Honestly, the broom confused me a lot when I was trying to figure out how this whole scheme worked on the murder attempt on Ace. To me, it made no sense as to why there was a broom laying around the fitness room. I couldn't understand it.
But now, I'm pretty sure I know why. The culprit placed the broom through Ace's shirt, in the back. Then, she placed the body against the wall and with the remaining support on the lower part of Ace's body (the benches), the body would barely move from its initial position.
Hah! I don't believe you! I'm calling bluff on that one!
Oh yeah? Then how about this? Why don't you test it out yourself? This one is a pretty simple and safe test to do (as you as you don't pull any stupid stunts).
Pick up a broom or a long wooden/plastic pole, place it through your shirt, from top to bottom, in the back. Lean against the wall or a door and try bending your upper body forward. I can guarantee you that it will be very difficult to do so.
That way, it would explain the purpose of most of the props found at the crime scene.
Not true! You still haven't explained why the weight rack was moved and toppled over!
Yeah... you're right. This toppled weight rack was probably the most challenging and annoying piece of the puzzle. No matter how much pondering I've made, even to this day, I can't find anything that relates the weight rack to the murder mechanism. Yet, it has been moved.
Considering who I believe the culprit is, I don't think she would be strong enough to move it wothout someone else's help. But according to my theory, she doesn't have an accomplice.
Then you admit it. Your theory doesn't work because of this.
No, that's wrong!
It's true that I can't make a connection between the weight rack and the murder mechanism, but why should I? We already know that most props aren't part of the murder mechanism as there's no traces of blood on them. Even though the broom was used to keep the body steady while setting up the murder, the culprit removed the broom afterwards.
Alright, but what about the culprit? You just said that she can't move it without someone's help, but you denied the possibility of an accomplice. So it's impossible!
Heh! It's impossible because we're looking at this from the wrong perspective. If it's not the culprit who did it, then it's clearly someone else who did, but I highly doubt it was Nico. Considering what we know, I propose the following possibility :
The person who moved and toppled the weight rack was Ace himself.
Huuuuuh?!!! Ace?! Why would the victim do that?! That doesn't make sense!
You say that because you think that this happened around the time of the murder setup. But that's where we got the wrong idea. In fact, the weight rack in itself has nothing to do with the attempted murder at all!
Ace moved it during the evening, when he was working out. The reason why he did it is most likely to get it closer to the bench press, making it more convenient to swap around weight plates. He basically did it to match his preferences.
Didn't he work out at evening, the day before the BDA?
Nope. I've proved last time that this actually happened the previous evening, before the night of the failed murder attempt. Not only that, but my proposition would actually prove that Ace was indeed working out that specific evening. Therefore, he didn't lie about working out.
So with this, that should explain the purpose of every single clue. The rest are pretty self explanatory.
The fan was stopped to set up the murder mechanism, then turned back on only to be turned off later again by Nico, who saved Ace unintentionally or not. Otherwise, it turned off automaticly as soon as it broke. The stepladder was used to reach the fan as she was setting up the murder mechanism and the roll of tape has already been explained in part 1 of my theory.
This is a discovery made by thefandomenchantress! (Thank you btw!). This discovery actually helps support my theory and I'll explain why.
So there is this one very subtle clue that can be found in the trash can as seen in the post. There's actually a needle with black string in that small hole. It must've been part of the murder scheme somehow cause I don't quite see why else it would be found here. I have 2 possibilities that could explain the use of that needle while also supporting my theory.
First one is that the culprit used it to do adjustments to her Arei costume. Remember, Eden's pretty small compared to most of the cast, so it's possible that Arei's outfit would've been a tad too tall for her. It would require some considerable amount of time to do it, but she could've easily done it during the night, while waiting for the relaxation room doors to open next morning to pull off her murder.
Second one is related to the ball of clothes. It's possible that she sew the old clothes together to make a bigger piece of cloth, like some kind of tarp to hide and preserve the unconscious body. It would'be been easier that way instead of trying to place multiple pieces of clothing and hope that it covers the whole body.
Heck, it's possible that the culprit used it for both possibilities instead of only one of them. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would explain why there was a needle with black string in the trash can.
This has probably been mentioned a couple times in the past, but it definitly caught my attention when I read this subreddit thread. Let's take another look at Arei's corpse, shall we?
So according to OP in that subreddit thread, some observations about her indicate would indicate that these parts were done recently, like probably in the morning, a bit before 8:00 am and I'm sadly inclined to agreed on that.
Basically, there are two important things to note about the BDA : the red marks on her wrists and the fact that her body was swinging at the time. There's also the fact that the crime scene left out a lot of clues, like many of them weren't removed from the scene. The left out clues are explained in the 3rd part of my theory, so I'm not gonna dwelve on that.
Instead, I wanna talk about the red marks and the body swing. Initially, I thought the body swing was just a way to had some kind of mood to the BDA while I didn't bother thinking that deep about the red marks.
But I can't deny these two visible clues can't remain that way for a long time, especially the body swing. The red marks, I don't know how long it lasts, but it probably doesn't last that long. That's why the OP in this subreddit thread figured that this whole crime must've been carried out by 7:30 AM instead, but if you read all my theories so far, you should know that it's impossible (I also explained it in that thread's comment if you need a reminder).
It is conflicting my theory slightly however because the body hanging among a few other clues (like the dead fishes in the playground and the ball of clothes thrown in the dress up room) must've be done in the evening by David, before the day of the BDA. Yet he couldn't hang the body then otherwise the body would've stopped swinging a long time ago. So that's a contradiction. Yet, it feels like David is the only person who could've done it considering what I've told in my theory. So instead, I just need to fix my idea a bit to make it work.
When David found Arei's corpse, he figured out some kind of plan that would benefit him. First, he hid the body inside the changing room in the dress-up room. Then, he proceeded to grab the fishes with the old clothes to place them in the playground and once that's done, he rolled up the clothes into a ball and discarded it somewhere in the dress-up room. Then, next morning at 7:30 AM, he retrieved Arei's body and hung it at the swing set in the playground. He then removed the tape on her wrists and threw these in the trash before meeting up with the group in the movie screening room.
Why wouldn't David move the body to the playground much earlier, during the evening instead? He placed the fishes there already, so what gives?
About the fishes... you know what? I just made a quick realisation. Let me add something.
It's possible that he didn't place the fishes in the playground during the evening, but rather kept them inside the clothes, hidden in the dress-up room, waiting for next morning to "set up the crime scene in the playground".
Going back to the question previously, considering that it's possible he didn't move anything in the playground until next morning, I'm more inclined to believe that maybe he panicked. It was the evening, everyone else was still awake at the time, there was no telling when someone else would show up, so he neede to quickly hide the body somewhere else.
Why somewhere else? Remember the conversation that happened earlier that evening in the kitchen?
He knows damn well there were a few witnesses who knew that he headed to the relaxation room at the time. So if he left that corpse there and everyone else would find it the next day, he would've been the prime suspect almost instantly, no doubt about it.
So once he hid it somewhere else for the time being, went back to the first floor and took that time to think of a plan to solve the case while hopefully not having suspicions thrown at him and possibly even get his secret safe. Sadly, he really couldn't tell whodunnit (I mean, who could?), so the best thing he could do is investigate a bit.
So he goes back into the elevator next morning, probably around 7:30 AM and lo and behold, he finds clues in the playground. Those were clues that the real culprit left them there because she was in a hurry. So upon seeing this, he knew what he had to do. He needed to drag the remaining clues into the playground, thinking that it would make it a lot easier to pinpoint the culprit and solve the case.
But why the fishes? According to your theory, he grabbed and hid them quickly before even having a plan to set up the fake crime scene.
Well, since he couldn't grab the fishes before 8:00 AM nor would it have made sense to do so if he was able to, there's only one reason I could think of : he did it for the insurance.
Insurance? What do you mean?
That's because at the time, he didn't actually know much about the murder. He didn't actually know if that was the real place where she died or if that was a temporary hiding spot. So he must've figured that if someone else were to find the body hidden in the changing room, the fishes would indicate that the relaxation room is related to the murder somehow.
Like sure, he wanted to avoid having his secret revealed at all cost, but there's something else he wanted more than anything else : David wants to survive.
And since he's not the culprit, the best thing he can do is help the group solve the murder in his own way. If he left those fishes there, if he ever became a suspect and tried to tell everyone that he found the body in the relaxation room, it's very likely that no one would've believed him. So the fishes serve as proof in that scenario.
So there you have it. This should explain the meaning behind these clues discovered recently. While we're at it, it's been stated from others, but did you notice Arei's hair during the BDA? It looks pretty messy and I'm fairly it's because her hair was wet before, just like what some people suggested before.
And before you ask, no she was not drowned. It wouldn't make sense at all and I'm fairly sure it would've shown clear signs of drowning if that was the actual cause of death, so I'm gonna leave it at that.
So... there is a discovery that I made on my own and it's not a good look on a certain aspect of my theory. Let me explain.
While I was finishing up my theory, making sure I didn't miss anything, I replayed in my mind how the crime happened according to me and I somehow managed to spot a major flaw in my own theory. It's such a big flaw, I'm actually surprised I didn't notice it for quite some time after making that post.
The major flaw in question lies in my motive.
Your motive? Again?! You've been changing your motive practically every post! What's up with you?!
Sorry, sorry! I thought for sure that I was right on the money with my crazy motive theory, but it looks like I'm way off the mark. You know... motives can be pretty complicated sometimes, they're a real pain in the you know what!
So to give a little reminder as to what my proposed motive was, it has something to do with the secrets. I deduced that there must've been a possibility that Eden had the exact same secret as David (the manipulator one) and she thought that this was going to be the revealed secret if no one commits murder.
I figured it'd make sense considering her murder scheme. It practically requires a fair amount of lying and manipulation. And if she indeed had that dark secret, since David had the same secret, the host had to make a decision choosing which one of the two should inherit that secret as the public reveal. The host wouldn't want two people having the same exact secret revealed, it would seem really odd.
So the host chose David as the person who would get this secret revealed to the public (if the murder is not done on time) while Eden would have a different secret. Not a fake one, of course. Something that's still part of her, not as dark, but still embarassing enough.
I figured that since Eden's secret seemed so light compared to the others, there must've been more to it. So that's why I came up with this idea. But you know what? This actually can't work. It wouldn't make sense.
Why not?
To explain it properly, we're gonna have to go back a couple episodes and use our imagination to think of what-if scenarios. Trust me, it'll be worth it.
So Eden plans ahead for a murder because on the first episode of chapter 2, when the secrets were given, because of the unknown, she thought for sure she had a very dark secret that she didn't want anyone to know.
So what was the actual murder plan? Killing Arei? Nope! Her intended target was Ace, mostly because he happened to be at the right place at the right time while also dropping his guard. It was the perfect opportunity.
Then later on, she knocks Arei unconscious and locks her inside the relaxation room so that she'll become the prime suspect of the murder of Ace. So the culprit sets up the murder mechanism, she turns it on, then leaves the room. Then all of a sudden, Nico comes in and screws up her plan as the murder attempt failed.
And that, right there, is where we're jump into a what if scenario. Let's go back a bit and pretend that Nico never showed up to begin with. Let's do one better, let's pretend that the murder attempt on Ace actually succeeded and he actually dies. So what now? What would happen?
Well, for starters, monoTV wouldn't display the secrets on the monitor since the BDA would most likely be done much before the deadline. Then Arei would become the main suspect, as predicted by the culprit. Then after that, they would struggle a lot more to figure out who the culprit is and whatnot. So whether the groups solve it or not, at the end of that trial, they wouldn't be able to figure out Eden's dark secret (let's pretend that she actually had a very dark secret for now). So everything works out in the culprit's favor, right?
BZZZZZZZ! WRONG!
We would be forgetting a very important fact if we believe that it would go down that way in a what-if scenario. Because the secrets were mixed-up, everyone knew the secret of a different person. So in that case, Charles knows Eden's secret.
Let's keep moving with the what-if scenario. So say that they're investigating the murder of Ace, they would find a few clues, but probably not enough to solve the mystery.
So what would happen if they have to do everything they can to solve the case, but don't have a lot of information to go on? They would reveal the next best bit of information they have at their disposal : the secrets!
Considering Charles' personality, there's no way he wouldn't reveal Eden's secret. He would definitly let everyone know about her secret. Whether it was indeed a very dark secret or not and whether they find out Eden has something to do with the crime or not. He'd even ask Teruko to show it as proof since he gave the piece of paper to her.
Basically, if that was the actual motive, it would only lead to her doom. Her secret would've been exposed anyways. Therefore, Eden's motive of trying to protect her believed dark secret can't work.
While I'm at it. The same applies to any theories out there that uses something like "they want to protect their secret" as a murder motive. None of these work for any individuals... except for one. The only one that could get away with it is whoever Arei had as a secret.
I knew it! Levi did it! Levi has to be the person with the murderer secret. He killed her to retrieve the secret!
Yeah... no. While it would've been an interesting motive and plot, I very much doubt he's the culprit. The roll of tape disappearance from the first part of my theory narrows down the list of suspect by a lot.
This is another reason why my motive theory doesn't make sense. To make sure that she fulfills that "goal", she would need to find out who has her secret and kill that target. She did neitheir of those. Otherwise, Charles would've been the victim.
So now what? Are you gonna propose that there was no motive?
Not at all! There was definitly a motive for commiting murder. It took me some time to think about it, but I may have a more plausible theory for the motive.
Eden has someone she loves and cares about a lot outside this killing game. She misses her dearly.
She... killed someone because of love?! Are you kidding me?!
Nope. Well, it wasn't just love. It was more like a chain of events that led her to be done with this place and wanted a way out of here to meet her beloved ASAP. Once you start thinking about the narrative in Eden's pov, it'll start to make sense. Let's rewind back to the very beginning : the prologue.
After everyone's introductions, monoTV shows up to announce the killing game show, that they're here to kill each other and whatnot. Levi came close to dying because he broke a rule for rebelling against the mascot. Realising the gravity, most people were pretty concerned about this. Eden's reaction in that scene was the following :
Well, to be fair, I'm sure most people, even yourself if you were in their shoes, would react like this. This is pretty scary, after all. In any case, this shows that from the beginning that she wanted to get out of here.
Later on, the next day, they try to figure out any ways to escape this place which, interestingly enough, Eden is the first person to bring it up as a reminder.
And then fast forward during chapter 1, there's some wholesome friendship moments happening with the girls in the kitchen, then some other stuff happens, then there's the murder, the investigation, the trial.
Then once Teruko figures out that the culprit is Min. It becomes quite a big shock for Eden since Min was in the kitchen with Hu and Eden most of the time, but as you know, it wasn't an airtight alibi.
So, to say the least, this chapter was pretty dramatic for most of the ultimates. Even towards the end of that chapter, it was quite a shocker when Teruko pretty much pulled the middle finger on all of them, telling that she carried the trial to victory (which she honestly did). She then swore that she would never trust anyone else ever again, which set a pretty dark tone going forward. Then the screen fades to black, introducing the beginning of the chapter 2.
Right before the beginning of that chapter, we get the following quote : "I still miss you. I miss you so much that I wish I you had never been a part of my life. The worst part is, even though you left me like this, there's nothing I can blame you for."
Then once the chapter begins, we jump right into Eden's pov. So based on everything we know about both chapters and that her secret is : "Ever since you kissed her, you were afraid your sexuality would ruin your friendships," it feels like the quote we saw earlier was actually Eden's thoughts.
Anyways, despite how gloomy this atmosphere seemed to be, after monoTV revealed the motive, she says the following.
Once again, she's the first person to bring up the "escape the killing game plan". She's seems a tad keen on wanting to get out of here. She could've also been trying to lift the mood up because of everything awful that happened in chapter 1, who knows.
We all know that there's been a lot more arguing this chapter, especially that one time where there were 3 different groups bickering : Ace and Nico, Arturo and J, Arei and monoTV. Basically, not a single day goes by without a dramatic moment happening this chapter.
Despite all that, Eden tries to remain positive and try to make more friends despite how stressed out she must've felt deep down. And then this happens...
Yeah, Arei coming in the the very intense bullying on Eden, which broke her down real bad. By the way, do you remember in the first part of my theory, when I claimed that this whole scene was the spark that made Eden decide to commit murder? Then in the second part, I rejected that idea because of her flashback showing a very wholesome moment between Arei and Eden? Guess what? I'm changing my mind yet again : Arei's bullying is definitly what caused Eden to kill someone.
What the heck are you saying?! Arei apologized and they both made up afterwards. You're just contradicting yourself!
I could claim that the flashback was entirely made up, but I seriously believe that everything she told in that flashback was the truth. Yes, it's true that they made up and became friends, but that doesn't matter anymore. She had her sights on something a lot more important : get the heck out of here by any means necessary!
It's exactly because of that bullying that it made Eden realise that she really misses that certain someone outside the killing game. She misses her dearly. So to make sure that she could escape this hellish show, she needed to come up with a flawless murder plan. Hence why there's been so much efforts put into this. She's serious about this.
Becoming friends with Arei was a golden opportunity for her. She could use this to her advantage and betray her. Make Arei become the scapegoat in this case, which was the original intent in her plan. As for the murder victim, it seriously didn't matter, she only needed to sneak on someone that would drop off their guard (which in that case, it would be Ace when he was spying on David and Arei).
Of course, things sadly didn't go according to plan for Eden and she had no choice but to murder Arei if she wanted her plan to succeed. Well, she could've still made the choice, but her desire to meet her beloved out there was much much stronger than anything else. She had to.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole truth behind this case. Well... would be if I end up being right. It's possible I may have a few things wrong once we learn the actual truth. Let's be honest there though : everything I've told you guys so far, it makes sense, doesn't it?
If you combine all my ideas, they all seem to be connected, don't you think?
Well, it's still up to you to decide whether you believe in my culprit theory or not. There's probably a couple other possibilities out there, but it'd take as much work, if not more, to connect all the dots, so be mindful of that.
And with that, I'd like to thank you all again for reading my theory post. It's another big read, I know. I'm sorry. Maybe I could've word things better, make it much easier to read, but hey. We never truly learn or improve if we never try in the first place, right?
Alright! Next post will be a closing argument post, which should make things kinda easier to understand my whole theory. See you then!